Rev. John Goldby, M.A.
William Mackinnon, born in Oban and brought up by pious parents, joined the Free Church when it was formed in 1843 and loyally adhered all his life to the Biblical principles upon which it was founded. He set up in business, eventually established the British India Steam Navigation Company, and dedicated his wealth to promoting the cause of Christ. He was called by the British Government to administer its territory in what is now Kenya and Uganda. He therefore formed the Imperial British East Africa Company in 1881, which had very praiseworthy objectives. It was observed at the time that Sir William Mackinnon and his fellow directors were “full of zeal for the extension of Christ’s kingdom”.
Part Three – The Closing Years
ONE day in 1994, as we entered the main door of the large St. Andrew’s Church near the centre of Nairobi, we saw a prominent brass plaque bearing the following inscription: “This plaque was erected in September 1991 to commemorate the 100 years of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa. The Missionaries from Scotland arrived at Kibwezi in 1891. To the Glory of God.” This first mission at Kibwezi was started as a private endeavour by Sir William Mackinnon. The reason for his choosing private sponsorship for the mission rather than seeking Free Church sponsorship may have been his lack of confidence in the leadership of the Church.
During our visit we noted with sadness that the sermon and form of worship in that Presbyterian church in Nairobi did not bear the hallmarks of those precious scriptural doctrines which adorned, and were the foundation of, the worship of God in the better days of Presbyterianism. The scriptural rule for preaching is, “If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God” (1 Peter 4:11). Death, eternity and the judgement seat of Christ are before us. What we need is the clear and heartfelt preaching of the Word of God with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Practical application of Biblical doctrine and powerful appeals to the unconverted, with suitable encouragements for believers, was the mode of preaching which God was pleased to bless in former times. The minister must not preach himself but Christ Jesus the Lord.
It was the loss of such scriptural preaching that men like Sir William Mackinnon feared would be a consequence of the introduction of the Declaratory Act in the Free Church in 1892. He was not mistaken. The watered-down gospel preached in this country and abroad today shows the ill effects of allowing a spirit of doctrinal compromise to come into the churches.
The missionaries referred to by the plaque were Dr. James Stewart from Lovedale and certain others. The mission, called the Scottish East Africa Mission, was conceived and paid for by Sir William Mackinnon and his friends out of their private resources. It had four objectives which were aimed for by its religious, medical, educational and industrial activities. In September 1891, Dr. Stewart set out on the 200 mile journey to Kibwezi. He employed 273 porters to carry the necessary supplies and equipment for the new mission. The walk was very hot and the path took them through a thick jungle of thorns, cactus and mangoes before crossing the burning Taro Desert. On arrival, a 500 acre site was purchased from the local chief, and the mission village, with church, school and houses, was established. (Subsequent to the death of Sir William in 1893 the mission passed into the hands of the Church of Scotland and later developed into the Presbyterian Church of East Africa). One of Sir William’s last acts was to commission the construction of 200 miles of road from the coast to Kibwezi.
The providential effects of Sir William’s Christian generosity may be seen very clearly on a personal level in the case of a Free Presbyterian divinity student, Neil Cameron, later minister in Glasgow. Mr. Cameron records in his memoirs that as a young man in the 1880s he had been watching the departures of the Free Church from the Word of God and the doctrines and principles of the Reformation. To his deep grief he saw that the doctrine of the absolute infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible as the Word of God had become a thing of the past. The Westminster Confession of Faith, that once highly prized and excellent statement of Bible doctrine, was repudiated as an antiquated document. He perceived that the majority of the ministers of the Church were either pleading for anti-scriptural teaching, or were conniving at serious departures from God’s Word.
It was impressed upon Neil Cameron’s mind that he would have to study for the ministry. The difficulties in the way were enormous. “The Alps,” he said, “were like molehills in comparison with the mountains of unsurpassable difficulties which I saw standing in the way.” Having received comfort and strength from the words of Psalm 90:17, he decided that should the Lord be pleased to open a door he would go to study and that he would continue as long as the door remained open. How it would open he could not see. “I spent day after day pleading with the Lord to give me a portion of His Word as my warrant for proceeding to such a very responsible and important work, but received no answer. At last I concluded that He did not mean that I should go… As I was walking up the side of the bank in which the cave was, it occurred to me that I should stand under a bush that was there, and pray this once for His guidance. I took off my hat, but I had hardly said a word when the scripture came to me as if it were spoken: ‘And the Lord said to Moses, wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward’ (Exodus 14:15).” This decided his mind. (Memoir, pp 26, 27).
In October 1886, he set off to begin his studies at Edinburgh University. “It was evident to me,” he wrote, “that unless the Lord would provide for me, my purse would be empty by the end of January; but as the condition upon which I bound myself was that I would proceed while the Lord kept the door open, and that whenever it was closed I would stop, to go seemed to be my duty. So I went, feeling quite ignorant of how my way would be opened. My purse came so near its bottom that I had only what would pay the next amount due for my lodgings and one pound over, which I would require for my passage home. I made up my mind that the Lord was going to close the door, and that in accordance with the condition upon which I began to study I should stop.” On the Friday of the same week that his money supply was exhausted he received the then generous amount of £12 from Sir William Mackinnon! “This sum he continued to give me all the time I was in Edinburgh. I was now enabled to proceed with my studies till the end of the session. I saw the hand of the Lord clearly in a way that I least expected.” (Memoir, pp 30 and 33).
Sir William himself felt strongly about the downgrade in the Free Church. He was especially opposed to the introduction of the infamous Declaratory Act which vitiated the Free Church constitution. He foresaw its evil consequences. “So passionately did he believe in his version of orthodoxy, that he refused to accept a Declaratory Act passed in 1892 relaxing the stringency of subscription to the Confession, and he provided financial assistance to the small number of congregations mostly in the Highlands who rejected this ‘dilution’ of the faith.” (The Scotsman, Obituary, June 23, 1893). He looked upon the subscribing of creeds in the same way as he looked upon subscribing a charter or making a business contract – as binding the subscriber to honourably adhere to it and interpret it in the sense originally intended.
His view of these departures was made clear on Friday, 11 September 1891, at Inverness, when he laid the memorial stone of the new church building of the Free North Congregation – a congregation which was formed in 1836 and had the Rev. Archibald Cook, later of Daviot, as its first minister. In his address at the ceremony Sir William took the opportunity of speaking against the innovations which Principal Rainy and others of the Free Church leadership were supporting. He spoke of the ancient landmarks being removed by these men who were indifferent to the sufferings to which their forefathers were subjected for the sake of the truth. He warned against tendencies toward Popery, ritualism and other deviations from the scriptural form of worship. There were clergymen in the Free Church, he said, who were turning the church into a political engine and not consulting the wishes of the people, and it was for this reason that he had joined the Laymen’s League, formed in 1890, with the worthy aim of preserving the Establishment principle and promoting the reunion of Scottish Presbyterians in accordance with the scriptural principles enshrined in the Westminster Confession of Faith. We should note that the Rainy party sought union with other churches at the expense of scriptural principles’. Sir William concluded his address with a quotation from the metrical version of Psalm 74:6,7.
But all at once with axes now
and hammers they go to,
And down the carved work thereof
they break, and quite undo.
They fired have Thy sanctuary,
and have defiled the same,
By casting down unto the ground
the place where dwelt Thy name.
Sir William took a much stronger stand against the Declaratory Act than the majority of the Constitutional Party who, unlike those who formed the Free Presbyterian Church in 1893, remained in the Free Church despite the passing of that Act. Drummond and Bulloch wrote of those who remained, “Deeply unhappy, they felt in their hearts that the Free Presbyterians had been right and that they had allowed themselves to remain in a Free Church which had slipped its moorings and was adrift in uncharted seas” (The Church in Late Victorian Scotland, p. 315). The Constitutionalists were not ready to withdraw their support from a church which was now constitutionally unsound, but Sir William was of a different mind, as his last will and testimony reveals.
In 1884 he had made a will leaving £10,000 for Free Church bursaries, £10,000 for Free Church Missions, and £20,000 for Free Church Missionaries. In April 1893 Sir William revoked his bequests to the Free Church by the following codicil: “I hereby revoke, cancel, and annul and withdraw, the bequests of all and every kind made by me in my trust, disposition and settlement, dated 21st April 1884, to or in favour of the Free Church of Scotland, or all or any of its schemes, whether for its missionary purposes or otherwise. I take this step because of what I consider is its departure in many ways from the constitution and principles of the Disruption Church of 1843, and last of all by its acceptance of what is now known as the Declaratory Act, which will in my opinion have a baneful effect on the Church’s future usefulness.” How true his opinion turned out to be.
Sir William Mackinnon, a kind, warm-hearted, faithful Christian man died on Thursday 22 June 1893, and so did not live to see the beginning of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, formed a month later in order to preserve alive those Scriptural doctrines which he held so dear and that gospel which he himself had learned at his mother’s knee. The Times correctly described him as “a perfect type of the old fashioned Scotch Presbyterian.” Professor Galbraith says, “Mackinnon, was no ‘Sunday Christian’; no shadow of scandal ever touched his name, no suggestion of impropriety or sharp practice. He acted in accordance with God’s injunctions as revealed by the Bible and God’s favour had been bestowed upon him”. (Mackinnon and East Africa, page 31).
He was loved by his brethren as is shown by the remarks of James Hall, one of the subscribers to the British East Africa Company, and a long time associate of Sir William. In a letter to Sir William he laments his friend’s absence, and adds, “Truly His Goodness and Mercy have followed us, and our hands still join. May we, when the journey here is ended, resume again and sit together in the house of the Lord forever.” After Sir William’s death in 1893 James Hall said, “My home in Kintyre is not the same to me since he went away, and as long as I am in the flesh I shall miss him and mourn him.”
Concluded