IT is now well over a year since the Rev Donald John MacAskill passed away and it is a matter of regret that this period of time should have elapsed before the appearance of an obituary in the pages of our Magazine. The delay is partly due to the difficulty that has been experienced in gathering sufficient biographical information, especially that which was related to his spiritual pilgrimage. Most of his contemporaries pre-deceased him. Had his brother John been spared longer, he would, no doubt, have provided all the information required but three short weeks after Mr MacAskill’s death he was to follow him to the house appointed for all living. It is not on account of any unwillingness on the part of Mr MacAskill to speak of the Lord’s dealings with his soul in bringing him from darkness to light that we have this dearth of information, for he quite often referred to it; it is just that the opportunity of writing it down at the time was let slip and in the absence of anything formally written by himself one now feels rather hesitant in putting on paper what is almost solely drawn from memory.
Born in Stornoway on 30th July, 1909, Mr MacAskill was, on his mother’s side, the great grandson of Alexander MacIver of Ranish who, in his day, was much revered as a man of God. He stood firm on the side of the Truth in 1893 and was foremost among those who formed the nucleus of the Free Presbyterian congregation in Stornoway.
As a matter of interest, the first entry in the Record of the Stornoway Kirk-Session is dated 16th February, 1894. The interim Moderator was the Rev Donald Macfarlane, and Alexander MacIver and Murdo MacFarquhar were the ruling elders who were present to make up the quorum. The Clerk, in whose handwriting the minute is entered, was John MacLeod, then a divinity student but at the time temporarily a teacher of Classics in the Nicolson Institute. He was later to be the first Free Presbyterian Church minister in Lochbroom before moving to Kames, from where, in 1905, he was persuaded to move to Edinburgh – some would say enticed – in order to occupy a professorial chair and in due time become the Principal of the post-1900 Free Church’s College in Edinburgh.
Mr MacAskill’s grandfather, Donald MacIver, was for long an elder in the Stornoway congregation and also served for some time as a missionary in South Harris and North Uist. His father’s people came from Sandwick and were also connected with the Free Presbyterian Church from 1893.
Although Mr MacAskill did not, as already noted, formally leave on record any biographical material, he did, however, towards the end of his life, write many letters, and in one addressed to the writer he, in passing, briefly referred to his conversion. “My brother-in-law”, he wrote, “drove us to the pre-Reformation church at Rodel. It made me sick to see, on the old walls, an image of Christ on the cross. That was not the living Christ that came into my soul after the November communion in St Jude’s when I was twenty years of age. I had often wept in Stornoway when listening to the Rev Ewen MacQueen on the promises and on the love of Christ, but I never got such full assurance of God’s love in the three Persons, and peace of conscience and joy in the Holy Ghost, as the Shorter Catechism says, till my third year at the University.” We thus gather – and this is what is confirmed by one of his contemporaries still with us – that Mr MacAskill was outwardly circumspect from his youth. The same source confirms that he was in soul trouble prior to the occasion mentioned in the letter and that he was earnestly seeking relief in the means of grace over the days of that communion season but that he did not obtain what he sought. It was afterwards, and in his room in his lodgings, that the portion of Scripture – “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee” – brought comfort to his stricken soul. “I wrote home to mother”, his letter states, “that I thought that I had passed from death to life, and from the power of Satan to God’s dear Son, by the Spirit of adoption by Whom we say, ‘Abba, Father’. ‘For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’.” Mr MacAskill’s life, walk and conversation over the many years that he was to be spared, made it evident, even to the world, that he was indeed one who had passed from death to life.
After completing his secondary education at the Nicolson Institute, Mr MacAskill matriculated at Glasgow University in 1927 and four years later graduated with an honours degree in Classics. In the meantime, he was, on 30th August, 1930, accepted as a member in full communion by the Stornoway Kirk-session and on 17th September, 1931, the Rev Malcolm Gillies reported to the Outer Isles Presbytery “that the Stornoway Kirk-Session had examined Mr Donald MacAskill and had agreed to recommend him to the Presbytery as one who should be received as a student of the Church.” He explained that this student was to sit his final examination in Arts during the next week, that he had spent a goodly part of the last three years in Glasgow, and that it would be more convenient for him to be translated to the Southern Presbytery for reception and trials. Subsequently Mr MacAskill offered his services to the Jewish and Foreign Missions Committee with a view to going out to Rhodesia as a teacher but the Synod, meeting in May 1933, was informed that, as he was not suitably qualified for the post, it had been decided not to send him. He was eventually, on the 2nd October, 1934, after having completed his divinity studies, licensed to preach the Gospel by the Outer Isles Presbytery. Later that year, on 12th December, he was ordained and inducted to his first charge, that of the South Harris Congregation. There being, as yet, no manse built to house the minister, he stayed in the home of Mr and Mrs Norman MacKay, Geocrab. From that base, he shepherded a scattered congregation, regularly walking many miles, mostly over rough village footpaths, to visit homes and keep services. Much to the regret of the people, he left South Harris in 1948, moving across the sound to the neighbouring island of North Uist. After seven years in that charge he was translated to Lochcarron from where he removed to Raasay after a period of time. In 1968, he accepted a call addressed to him by the Uig Congregation and so returned to his native island.
In 1974, however, mainly for health reasons, Mr MacAskill retired from the active ministry and took up residence in Stornoway. In 1988, when our Home of Rest in Leverburgh was opened, he and his wife were among the first residents to arrive, and it was there that he was to be suddenly called into His Master’s presence in 1995.
He was married twice; first to Mary Mackay, of Stornoway, who died in 1962, and then to Catherine MacLeod, of Raasay, who passed away in 1992. Both of them were worthy helpmeets.
Mr MacAskill regarded the office of the ministry as one which carried with it solemn obligations, and throughout the years of his ministry he was deeply conscious of his need of Divine help in the discharge of them. He was well aware of his own limitations as far as preaching gifts were concerned but what he lacked in that direction was more than compensated for by his faithfulness to the Truth and to his ordination vows – and after all is said and done, it is the faithful servant who is to receive the Lord’s commendation at His coming. The trumpet, even if he was not able to sound it as expertly as others, did not give an uncertain sound, and his hearers could not honestly say that life and death had not been set before them.
He loved the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland and its testimony and when it came under attack, as it did on a number of occasions over the course of his ministry, his attachment to it remained unshakeable. In 1989, for instance, Mr MacAskill had no difficulty in deciding that it was his duty to stand by the Church of his fathers when it was called upon to witness against the blasphemy of the Romish mass and the total impropriety of Free Presbyterian office-bearers being present where such heaven-provoking idolatry was being practised.
A peaceable and guileless man, he will be remembered (to quote the Synod tribute) as one who was “a diligent pastor, much loved and respected by the godly in all his charges, one whose aim ever was to bring souls placed under his care to a saving knowledge of Christ. The day shall declare the measure of his success. His approach to the throne of grace was marked by a solemnity which indicated that he was aware of the holiness and majesty of the Divine Being to Whom he was then drawing near.”
His death, on Wednesday, 8th March, 1995, was sudden. In the forenoon he had, with the help of a kind friend in Leverburgh, visited the shop and attended to other mundane matters before returning to the Home. When he did not, as usual, arrive in the dining room for his lunch a member of the staff, on investigation, was to find him sitting upright in a chair but inanimate, his spirit having returned unto Him who gave it. Death came without warning but he who was summoned was not found unprepared; in the twinkling of an eye, he was absent from the body and present with the Lord. The Matron and staff at the Leverburgh Home of Rest were greatly attached to him and much lamented his passing.
The removal of Mr Macaskill means that a voice often heard praying for the good of Jerusalem is now silent, and that is to our loss. To the end he was alert, keeping abreast of current affairs, and, having an intense interest in all matters relating to Christ and His cause, he earnestly longed for the coming of His kingdom. Like those of David, the son of Jesse, his prayers are now ended and shall yet be answered: “Let the whole earth be filled with His glory; Amen, and Amen.”
(Rev) John MacLeod