Rev. John Goldby, M.A.
Part One – From Campbeltown to Africa
SIR William Mackinnon was the Chairman of the Imperial British East Africa Company, from its incorporation on 18th April, 1888, and he was also the founder and head of the British India Steam Navigation Company. He was a staunch member of the Free Church of Scotland from its beginning in 1843. He used his great wealth unstintingly for the furtherance of the cause of Christ and for the good of his fellow men. From his own and his friends’ resources he founded one of the earliest Christian missions in the interior of what is now the Republic of Kenya. Sir William vehemently opposed the Rainyite movement in the Free Church. Although his illness and death in June 1893 prevented him from joining the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland there is no doubt that his sympathies were with those who founded that Church in 1893.
Childhood and Parentage
William Mackinnon was born in Campbeltown, Scotland, in March 1823, in the humble cottage in Argyle Street which was the family home. Duncan Mackinnon, his father, whose family came from the Island of Arran, was the captain of a revenue cutter. Duncan’s wife was the devoted mother of a large family of which William was the fourteenth child. The Mackinnon family was
among the more serious and faithful worshippers in the Church of Scotland of those days. Providence, remarked one writer, placed him in a home where religion was the ruling impulse. In after life, Sir William made frequent and grateful reference to the piety of his father and his mother.
He proved a faithful son who laid to heart the wisdom of Solomon, “My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: For they shall be ornaments of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck,” (Prov.1:8,9).
Young William received an ordinary education in the local school run by Duncan Morrison, and also had private tuition from Dr. Brunton, the Rector of the local grammar school. He began his working life in a Campbeltown grocer’s shop.
The Disruption of the Church of Scotland – 1843
William Mackinnon was twenty years of age when the Disruption of the Church of Scotland, which resulted in the formation of the Free Church, took place in 1843. It would appear that he had an intelligent grasp of the issues involved and of the threat posed to the gospel. We read that he was “full of the fervour of the day” when he took his stand with founders of the Free Church in defence of the doctrine of Christ’s Crown prerogatives. He believed firmly in the Establishment Principle or the Principle of the National Recognition of Religion.
According to the teaching of the Bible, the civil power is a divine ordinance to which we all owe obedience in their lawful commands. “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God,” (Romans 13:1). On the other hand, it is the duty and privilege of nations and civil powers to honour Christ as King of Nations by observing His truth and promoting His true gospel, (Psalm 2:10-12). This has been the universal view expressed in the Confessional statements of the Protestant Churches of the Reformation. In 1843, as many as 450 ministers of the Church of Scotland felt compelled to take up a separate position and to form the Free Church of Scotland because of unlawful interference in the spiritual affairs of the Church by the civil courts. This stand had to be made in order to honour the kingly office of Christ and preserve the freedom of the Church in spiritual matters.
These Biblical principles William Mackinnon held fast till the day of his death. Later when the subtle Dr. Rainy and his party emerged to trouble the Free Church, he, unlike most, had the discernment to reject their policies as being detrimental to the interests of the gospel and foreign to the doctrine of the original Free Church.
Success in Business
After a short time in the Campbeltown shop William MacKinnon moved to Glasgow where he obtained work as a silk-merchant’s clerk. His diligence in business soon gained him advancement and in 1847, at the age of twenty-four, he accepted a partnership with another Campbeltown man, Robert Mackenzie, who was in business in India. Together they ran a general stores business in a small town situated on the River Ganges. The Lord prospered the enterprise and it soon moved its head office to Calcutta.
Following the suggestion of a sea captain, Mr. Mackinnon became the owner of a ship. From the first small beginning in 1854 his shipping company developed rapidly to become the famous British India Steam Navigation Company, one of the largest shipping companies in the world. Other groups came under Mackinnon’s control, such as the Netherlands India Steam Navigation Company. By the 1880’s, his Companies had 181 ships at sea. His business interests also spread to East Africa.
God’s Providence Unfolding in Africa
We have seen that William Mackinnon was a firm believer in the Bible and a faithful supporter of the Free Church. To understand him aright and what motivated him to become involved in East Africa we must look beyond his interests as a mere man of business to those Christian beliefs which were the real springs of his actions in connection with East Africa.
He followed with deep interest the progress of missionaries like Moffat, Livingstone, Mackay of Uganda and Stewart of Lovedale. Professor J.S. Galbraith in his book, Mackinnon and East Africa, 1878-1895, has observed that economic considerations alone would not have aroused businessmen or governments to action in Africa and that no businessman dominated by considerations of profit would have embarked on the schemes projected by Mackinnon. The movement for opening up Africa was not a mere cloak for exploitation, and the zeal for carrying out the injunction of Livingstone to open up Africa to both the gospel and commerce was widely and honestly held. For a secular historian, Galbraith’s analysis of Mackinnon’s motivation is striking. “He accepted unquestionably the superiority of his own moral standards and the truth of the precepts of his church. He undoubtedly believed that Africans would benefit from British trade, British institutions, and British religion.”
We must also observe that this was the era of the British Empire and the period of industrial revolution in which Scotland was in the forefront. The advances in transport and technical achievement were immense. The mighty British Empire, like the empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome before
it, was a mere instrument of God’s purposes in providence, and it was through this channel that the gospel was being disseminated in Africa.
The Evangelisation of Africa
William Mackinnon’s involvement with East Africa must be seen also against the background of the exploration and evangelisation of a continent whose people and interior were largely unknown until the second half of the 19th century. The Christian Church, especially, had a great reason for entering this unknown continent: the gospel commission of Jesus Christ. “And He said to them, Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature,” (Mark 16:15). Such was the obligation Jesus laid upon his disciples and the whole New Testament Church.
The Protestant Churches had been hitherto very slow to heed the divine commission. In Scotland, at the 1796 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, an attempt was made by the Synods of Moray and Fife to interest the Church in foreign missions. The Synods’ pleas fell on deaf ears. “It was vain,” they were told, “to Christianize the savage… Why should they go so far for a field of labour? Was there nothing to do at home? Was there no heathenism at their own door?” Yet though these were the universal sentiments of the day, and though the first ordination of a minister specifically for missionary work did not take place in the Church of Scotland until 1843, the Christian conscience of the nation was aroused and expressed itself in the formation of missionary societies.
In 1796 the London Missionary Society, which had a prominent Scots element, was formed. Rev. Dr John Love was one of the founder members, and Robert Moffat and David Livingstone were notable among its missionaries. The Glasgow Missionary Society was also formed in 1796 followed, a few weeks later, by the Edinburgh Missionary Society. When Dr Love moved from London to Anderston, Glasgow, in 1800, he became the secretary of the Glasgow Missionary Society. The Africans themselves observed this slowness in fulfilling the great commission, as the question put to Livingstone by Sechele, chief of the Bakwains, illustrates: “Since it is true that all who die unforgiven are lost forever why did your nation not come and tell us of it before now?”
At home in the early 19th Century there were men like Rev. Robert Murray McCheyne, who ever cherished a missionary spirit. He read missionary reports for his own use and often to his people at the weekly prayer meeting. When an opportunity of evangelising occurred there was none in Scotland more ready to embrace it. Letters to his friends were sealed with this seal, “The Night Cometh.” (Memoirs, pp 83-84).
An example of the kind of concern now manifesting itself for the souls of Africans was recorded in a letter in which Livingstone reproaches himself on the occasion of the death of one of his chief helpers. “Poor Sehamy, where art thou now? Where lodges thy soul tonight? Didst thou think of what I told thee as thou turnedst from side to side in distress? I could now do anything for thee. I could weep for thy soul. But now nothing can be done. Thy fate is fixed. Oh, am I guilty of the blood of thy soul, my poor dear Sehamy? If so, how shall I look upon thee in the judgement? But I told thee of a Saviour; didst thou think of Him, and did He lead thee through the dark valley? Did He comfort as He only can? Help me, O Lord Jesus. Remember me, and let me not be guilty of the blood of souls.”
Among the disappointments there were also notable successes as the light of the gospel began to penetrate the “Dark Continent.” Dr. James Stewart, Free Church missionary at Lovedale (named after Rev Dr. John Love) in South Africa, records an interesting account of two African students from Lovedale. Stewart wanted to start another mission on Lake Nyasa among the fierce and warlike Ngoni. Volunteers were called for from among the Lovedale students as they were able to speak the language of the Ngoni. A friend and helper of Stewart said, “Black men will listen to black men who come with white men, and to white men who come with black.” One volunteer was William Koyi, an ex-bullock driver, who made a wonderful impression upon both blacks and whites. He said that he could only go as a hewer of wood and drawer of water, and that he only had half a talent but that he wished to use it for Christ. Of him Stewart said, “He was the human agent largely used by God in opening the way for the gospel among the Ngoni – a tribe as cruel, as fond of bloodshed and raiding as any in Africa.” Near the end of his life Stewart declared with deep feeling that William Koyi was one of the best men he had ever known.
Stewart, it seems, had great patience with the erring. He “often exercised his prerogative of mercy” in preventing the dismissal of some who had broken the rules, for he hated putting away. William Koyi and Shadrach Mgunana were both guilty of offences which warranted dismissal and yet ultimately they both rendered very great service at the Livingstonia mission.
God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness was to shine in many African hearts with the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, (2 Cor. 4:6). William Mackinnon was destined to play a significant role, in God’s purposes of mercy, in East Africa, for great obstacles had to be overcome.
To be continued