Rev D W B Somerset
A fellowship (or “question”) meeting is a public meeting, nowadays held almost invariably on the Friday of a communion season, for the consideration of religious experience. Meetings for “Christian conference” have been a feature of Christianity from the beginning, especially in times of persecution or revival, but in the Highlands of Scotland such meetings have developed a particular form, here described by John Kennedy: “The minister presides, and after prayer, praise and the reading of a portion of Scripture, he calls on anyone, who is anxious to propose a question to the meeting, to do so. This call is responded to by some man who rises, mentions a passage of Scripture describing some feature of the Christian character, and expresses his desire to ascertain the marks of those whom the passage describes, and the various respects in which they may differ from merely nominal Christians. The scope of the passage of Scripture is then opened up by the minister, and the exact import of the question founded upon it is explained. He then calls by name, successively, on such as are of repute for piety, experience and gifts to ‘speak to the question’. One after another rises, as he is called, states briefly his view of the question, and, without attempting either to expound Scripture, or to deliver an exhortation, or venturing to parade his own experience, speaks from the heart what he has felt and feared and enjoyed under the power of the truth. Thereafter the minister sums up all that has been said, correcting, confirming and expanding, as may be necessary, and makes a practical improvement of the whole. The person who proposed the question is then usually called to engage in prayer, and, with praise and the benediction, the meeting is closed. Such was the fellowship meeting in the good days of the fathers in Ross-shire.”1
In former times, fellowship meetings were far more common than they are today. In the 1740s John Balfour of Nigg used to preside at two separate meetings “for prayer and spiritual conference” in his parish, each of which took place every third Monday. In 1762 James Calder was holding a “monthly fellowship meeting” in the parish of Croy; and Gustavus Aird, quoted below, indicates that such monthly fellowship meetings were normal in the Highlands in the nineteenth century.2 In some cases the practice persisted into the twentieth century.3 The earliest mention of fellowship meetings on the Friday of a communion season is in an Act of the Synod of Sutherland and Caithness in 1737, and as this Act was seeking their abolition, they must already have been well-established in the northern Highlands.4 It seems likely, then, that they originated in the seventeenth century, and there has been considerable speculation as to their precise beginning. There are four principal theories.
1. The first theory, due to Gustavus Aird, traces the origin of the fellowship meeting back to the famous Covenanter Thomas Hog of Kiltearn (1628-92). Hog was minister of Kiltearn from 1654 until his deposition in 1661, and was restored to the parish in 1690, a little while before his death. Gustavus Aird (1813-1898) was the Free Church minister of Creich for over half a century, and it was said of him that “no man in his day knew more accurately and extensively the past religious history” of Ross and Sutherland. He was far from dogmatic in his suggestion that fellowship meetings had their rise under Thomas Hog’s ministry. Here are his views, expressed in a letter written shortly before his death.
“As to the origin of the Monday monthly meeting and then of the Communion Friday meeting, I really am not sure. I thought, from a paragraph in Mr Steven’s Life of Mr Hog of Kiltearn, that I saw there the origin of the monthly question meeting, and that it originated in a revival of true religion, and that where true religion manifested itself in other parishes the minister set on foot the question meeting, just as Mr Hog did in Kiltearn. Then, during the time of persecution, such as would not hear the curates assembled in meetings on the Sabbath, and this was to some extent the case until the Revolution. Then, after the Revolution, as Presbyterian ministers were got and settled, this practice was followed on Mondays once a month. It was from 30 to 40 years after the Revolution ere Presbyterian ministers were got over the whole of Ross and Sutherland. Then a revival took place to a considerable extent along the coast of Sutherland and the Reay country, and the most part of the Synod of Ross, and then, I suppose, the question meeting on the Communion Fridays was set on foot.”5
The passage in the Life of Mr Hog is as follows, and probably relates to the year 1656: “So soon as it pleased the Lord to bless Mr Hog’s parochial labours with a gracious change wrought upon a considerable number of people, he took care to join the more judicious amongst them in a society for prayer and conference; these he kept under his own special inspection, and did heartily concur with, and assist them in, exciting and edifying one another”.6 It seems likely that this “society for prayer and conference” would have survived until Hog’s restoration in 1690, because it is said that, after his deposition, “there was not a parish in Scotland that complied less with the corruptions and defections of the time than his did”.7
2. A second theory, due to Lewis Rose of Tain, traces the origin of the fellowship meeting to a slightly earlier date. Lewis Rose (1791-1876) was minister successively of Nigg, Duke Street Gaelic Chapel in Glasgow, Kincardine, and Tain. In the earlier years of his ministry he was an Evangelical, and friendly with Dr Kidd of Aberdeen, but some time before the Disruption he became a Moderate, remaining in the Established Church in 1843. In a footnote to one of his books, Professor J S Blackie refers to a manuscript in his possession, written by Lewis Rose, in which it was stated that “the Friday question meetings had their origin at Inverness 200-odd years ago [that is, about 1650] from the action of a very zealous minister of that town named Alexander Mackenzie”.8 Unfortunately, no further information is provided in the footnote. It happens, however, that the present writer has a cutting of a letter to a newspaper, without name or date, pasted into the back of a book. It is entitled “Origin of ‘The Men’ etc”, and it seems likely from its contents that it was written about 1850, and probably by Lewis Rose. Part of the letter is as follows:
“It may not be uninteresting to your readers to know when and where the ‘Question’ and the ‘men’ first originated in the north. I may state that it was in the year 1641, at Kingsmills, Inverness, in the house of the Rev Murdo Mackenzie, one of the ministers of that town, where, during his incumbency, he regularly had, on the Friday preceding the communion, a select party of pious men assemble together for the purpose of expressing their views on passages of Scripture, thus edifying and instructing each other in the words of eternal life. In 1645 Mr Mackenzie was translated to Elgin, but the solemn exercises he had begun with at Inverness were subsequently followed out by keeping meetings in both churches, and that publicly, and some years thereafter adopted in the surrounding parishes, and ultimately in the counties of Ross and Sutherland. Whether Mr Mackenzie continued to follow the same good practice in Elgin, I never could learn.” Unfortunately the writer of this letter gives no clue as to the source of his information.
The Murdo Mackenzie who is here referred to had a checkered career. He was born in 1600, ordained as a chaplain to a Scottish regiment in the Swedish army in 1634 and settled as minister of Contin in 1636. In 1640 he became one of the ministers of Inverness and in 1645 he moved to Elgin. At this stage he was a zealous Covenanter and “was famous”, says Wodrow, “for searching people’s kitchens on Christmas day for the superstitious goose, telling them that the feathers of them would rise up in judgement against them one day”.9
By the 1650s, however, he had either changed his views on Christian conference, or else become excessively jealous for ministerial oversight. An Act of Assembly of 1647 had approved directions drawn up by Robert Blair for “secret and private worship and mutual edification, for cherishing piety, for maintaining unity and avoiding schism and division”. Among the particular directions for masters of families was one enjoining “reading of Scriptures, with catechizing in a plain way, that the understandings of the simpler may be better enabled to profit under the public ordinances, and they made more capable to understand the Scriptures when they are read; together with godly conferences tending to the edification of all the members in the most holy faith”. Extraordinarily, by 1656 Murdo Mackenzie was publicly opposing various parts of the Act, including this one, maintaining among other things that parents should not catechize or explain Scripture to those under their charge. On 6 June of that year, the godly Alexander Brodie of Brodie, near Elgin, recorded in his diary his distress at hearing of “the strong-rooted prejudices which Mr Murdo Mackenzie had against the act for promoting piety”.10
In 1661 Murdo Mackenzie conformed to Episcopacy, and the following year he became Bishop of Moray. He had a principal hand at this time in the persecution of Thomas Hog of Kiltearn, and was Moderator of the Synod which deposed him in July 1661, he himself pronouncing the sentence. Wodrow records the strange influence that the Synod seemed to be under and how “the sentence was pronounced with a peculiar air of veneration, and looked rather like their consecrating him to a higher office than a deposition, and that the moderator, in a kind of consolatory discourse after the sentence, spoke very near nonsense. Among other things, he was pleased to remind Mr Hog that our Lord Jesus Christ had suffered great wrongs from the scribes and Pharisees.”11 In 1677 Murdo Mackenzie became Bishop of Orkney, dying in 1688.
3. A third theory, attributed to Donald Munro of Ferintosh, puts the origins of the fellowship meeting somewhat earlier still. Donald Munro (1860-1937) was Free Church minister of Ferintosh from 1894 to 1936 and then of Rogart for the last 18 months of his life. He was an authority on “the old religious life of the North”. Rev J P MacQueen, in his article on fellowship meetings, states that Donald Munro was emphatic that the fellowship meeting derived from Scottish soldiers in the army of Gustavus Adolphus. “He told the present writer,” says Mr MacQueen, “on more than one occasion, that God-fearing soldiers from Sutherland, who took part in and survived the Thirty Years War under the command and leadership of the great Christian Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus, became accustomed to the spiritually-edifying practice while serving in the army of that Protestant hero. On their return home they continued the good custom in their native Sutherland.”12
Gustavus Adolphus was killed in 1632, and many of the Scottish soldiers returned home about 1638, at the time of the signing of the National Covenant, so this provides an approximate date, according to this theory, for the introduction of fellowship meetings in the Highlands. Unfortunately, once again we are not told what sources Donald Munro was relying on for his claim. Perhaps one piece of evidence was that fellowship meetings seem to have arisen in the very same areas where the six “long tunes” of Gaelic Psalmody were found, and it is supposed that these tunes were brought back by soldiers from Gustavus Adolphus’ army.13 It is interesting to notice that Murdo Mackenzie, mentioned above, had been a chaplain with the Swedish army, so that there is no incompatibility between this present theory and that of Lewis Rose.
4. The final theory is that of John Kennedy (1819-1884), that fellowship meetings had a gradual development, with no particular event originating them. “[They] arose”, he wrote, “spontaneously out of the lively feeling pervading the first groups of believers [in the Highlands]. We cannot conceive of a party of exercised Christians met together without some converse regarding the fruits and evidences of true godliness. Such converse would naturally arise if there was any unsuspecting interchange of thoughts in their intercourse. One of them would be sure to have his doubts and difficulties; these he would state to his brethren, and they, from the Word of God and their own experience, would endeavour to afford him suitable counsel and comfort. Finding such converse to be edifying, and remembering that Christians are exhorted to comfort and to edify one another, what would be more likely than that they should set apart seasons for that duty . . . In order to conduct the exercise in an orderly way, what would be more likely than that they should choose him whom they accounted the most advanced among them to preside over them, and that he should ask each one who could do so to speak to the question in course? Thus the fellowship meeting would at last be set up. Why should not the minister then adopt it and, by taking the direction into his own hands, do all he could to provide for its being conducted ‘decently and in order’? And this is just the story of the rise and establishment of the Highland fellowship meeting.14
Rev Donald Beaton, in one of his articles on fellowship meetings, indicates that he was inclined to accept Kennedy’s view. He acknowledges that the origin of fellowship meetings is involved in obscurity, but then gives an approving summary of Kennedy’s position: “According to Dr Kennedy’s testimony, exercised believers used to meet in private houses and for their mutual edification discussed their religious experiences. In this way the fellowship meetings began, and in order to have them under the control of the ministry it was ultimately decided that they should have a place in the religious exercises of the Church and especially on the Friday of the Communion, when they would be presided over by a minister.”15
Whichever of these theories, if any of them, is correct, we believe that it is important to recognise that the fellowship meeting is not something unusual, irregular, or distinctively Highland. As Kennedy says, “It was the product, not of the peculiar natural temperament of Highlanders, but of the lively spiritual feeling of Christians, fostered by the warm brotherly love that prevailed in the days of its origin”.16 While certain historical events may have contributed to its development and its present form, it is in itself simply a feature of true religion in times of revival. Where there is a revival of religion, fellowship meetings of one sort or another will arise; and where there is a decline in religion, and a disinclination to talk about religious experience, fellowship meetings will die out. Where there is the fear of the Lord, there will be spiritual conversation: “Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon His name” (Mal 3:16).
1John Kennedy, The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire, Inverness, 1897, pp 86-7.
2William Taylor (ed), Diary of James Calder, Stirling, 1875, p 14.
3Murdo Macaulay, Aspects of Religious History of Lewis, Inverness, nd, p 218.
4Donald Beaton, “Fast day and Friday Fellowship meeting controversy in the Synod of Sutherland and Caithness 1737-1758” in Transactions of the Inverness Gaelic Society, 1917, pp 159-182.
5Alexander Macrae, Life of Gustavus Aird, Stirling, nd, pp 143-4; Aspects of the Religious History of Lewis, p 219.
6Memoirs of Mrs William Veitch, Mr Thomas Hog of Kiltearn, Mr Henry Erskine, and Mr John Cairstairs, Free Church of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1846, p 88.
7Memoirs of Mrs William Veitch . . . , p 102.
8John Stuart Blackie, Altavona, London, 1883, p 353n. This statement is repeated in Life of Gustavus Aird, p 144n, and in Aspects of Religious History of Lewis, p 218. Each time the name of the minister is given as Alexander, but undoubtedly it should be Murdo.
9Robert Wodrow, The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, Glasgow, 1838, vol 1, p 237.
10Diary of Alexander Brodie of Brodie, Aberdeen, 1863, p 181.
11The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, vol 1 p 129.
12Free Presbyterian Magazine, vol 63, p 302. In an undated letter, however, which forms the Appendix to Rev Kenneth MacLeay’s booklet Alexander MacAskill (1969), Rev Donald Munro states: “Many think that [fellowship meetings] began during the ministry of Mr Hog in Kiltearn, and I am inclined to believe that such a commonly-accepted opinion has a good basis in truth”.
13Life of Gustavus Aird, p 244.
14Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire, pp 122-3.
15Free Presbyterian Magazine, vol 43, p 201.
16Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire, p 123.