1. Women and Children
Rev Neil M Ross
A lecture given to the Inverness branch of the Scottish Reformation Society.
In days of what the Bible calls “small things” in the Church of God, the Christian loves to recall the great things He has done for His Church in the past, and to bless God for them. “Sing unto the Lord; for He hath done excellent things,” said Isaiah. God is to be praised especially for transforming sinners into saints, (that is, into born-again believers who live godly lives) throughout Scotland, including the Black Isle.
Before the advent of Christianity in the Highlands, the Pictish inhabitants of the Black Isle were benighted pagans under Druidism. Gospel light began to penetrate the darkness, especially with the arrival of Maelrubha in Ross-shire in the eighth century. The resultant Celtic Church was evidently Biblical, evangelical; it kept the Sabbath and was missionary-minded.
In the twelfth century, the spiritual darkness of papal Rome descended on Scotland, but God mercifully intervened in the sixteenth century, as we have been well reminded during our commemoration of the four-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the Scottish Reformation. The Black Isle, like the rest of Scotland, benefited spiritually from that wonderful deliverance from the yoke of Rome.
The 20-miles-long Black Isle peninsula, with Cromarty at its tip and Muir of Ord at its neck, consists of the parishes of Cromarty, Resolis, and Urquhart (or Ferintosh) on one side, and Rosemarkie, Avoch, Knockbain, Killearnan and part of Urray, on the other. Many were the saints who trod its soil during its long Christian history.
While those saints of bygone days are fully known only to God, we are privileged to have the record of some of the more notable ones. For that we are indebted to such classics of Highland religious history as The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire by John Kennedy, Memorabilia Domestica by Donald Sage, and Religious Life in Ross by John Noble. Among several useful volumes of religious biography are: Disruption Worthies of the Highlands by various authors, Noted Ministers of the Northern Highlands by Donald Beaton, and The Apostle of the North by John Kennedy,
In drawing from such sources, we will be merely recalling what many of us know already, but it is right and good to remember God’s work of grace in His saints, and some of His mighty works through them. We may thus follow the example of the Psalmist who said, “I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High”.
We shall mention firstly, some lay Christians, (children, women and men in that order), then secondly, and mostly, several ministers of the gospel.
An example of a young Christian is Andrew Lindsay, Cromarty, about whom a tract was written by a Rev Mr Davidson. One Sabbath morning in the early 1730s, as Davidson was crossing the Firth to attend a communion service in a neighbouring church, Andrew Lindsay was pointed out to him as a poor boy who was anxiously seeking after the truth. In the church, the lad seemed to be drinking in the words of the preacher. Davidson later visited him in his home and helped him in his struggling, as he said, “between the City of Destruction and the wicket gate”.
Some months later, Davidson saw a great change in the boy. His formerly-sad countenance now reflected a tranquil joy. He had indeed passed through the wicket gate. Although just a young Christian, Andrew had a surprising degree of spiritual understanding, having learned much under the preaching of his godly minister, George Gordon.
In describing the state of his soul, in answer to Davidson’s question, Andrew said it was difficult to explain, because of the sin he was finding within, but he hoped it was like those pools of water which, in dry weather, have weeds matted over them and seem to be dried up. Yet when the weeds are drawn aside, clean water can be seen beneath. “It is thus, I trust, with my heart,” said Andrew. “The life of God in it is often veiled by evil thoughts, but when a new manifestation of gospel truth draws these aside, I can catch a glimpse of what they conceal.”
Having professed faith in Christ from the age of 15, Andrew continued in the narrow way until his death in 1769 at the age of 49. The inscription on his tombstone states:
“He was truly pious from a child,
his whole life and conversation agreeable thereto”.
Another truly Christian lad was a herd boy of Hector MacPhail, minister of Resolis. Soon after the lad began work, the minister asked him one morning, “Do you pray?” “No,” said the boy. “Have you ever prayed?” “No,” he replied, “I’ve never prayed, and don’t know how to pray, or what to ask.” The minister advised him, “Think, and see what you need most, and ask God to give you that, if He sees fit”.
MacPhail later discovered, through one of his servants, that the lad prayed for shoes and stockings. These he got indirectly, not knowing that MacPhail had provided them. The boy now prayed for new clothes and, again, the minister secretly provided them. His third prayer was for warm food, as he was usually the last of the servants to be served, by which time the food was often quite cold. MacPhail privately instructed the servant girl always to give warm food to the boy. A short time after this, MacPhail asked the herd boy if he had been praying as instructed. He replied that he had and, with some excitement, told his story from beginning to end, and how all he prayed for had been given him.
The minister now showed the boy that, while the needs of his body were important, the welfare of his soul was much more so. He affectionately instructed him to plead with God to show him, for Christ’s sake, that he had a soul and what its needs were.
Some time later MacPhail had another quiet talk with the boy. Yes, the boy had been praying about his soul, but now he was exceedingly miserable. He discovered himself to be a guilty sinner before God, and much in need of forgiveness.
“Mr MacPhail,” says John Noble, “now directed him to pray to God to reveal Jesus to him, as able to save from sin, all who come to God by Him.” MacPhail found out by and by that an answer was given to the prayers of the boy, for he had been gradually allured, by the love of Christ, to believe in Him as mighty to save. From then to the end of his days, the reality of the change was shown, we are told, by his being a consistent, holy follower of the Lamb of God.
Among the saintly women of the Black Isle, we may mention Grissel Anderson, wife of Hugh Anderson, the Cromarty minister who was settled there in 1656. She was familiarly known as Grissel Crommie, and was widely recognised as an eminently pious woman – so much so that John Porteous, minister of Kilmuir Easter across the Cromarty Firth, named a tree in his garden after her. Porteous was renowned for comparing various trees and plants in his garden to certain Christians and their characteristics. “About the middle of his garden,” writes Noble, “stood a tree laden with sweet apples, and which never failed yielding fruit. This was Grissel Crommie.” She truly was one of the saints of the Lord, for she had what we read of in Romans 6, “fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life”.
Another woman worthy of notice is Mary MacRae who, because she was weak-minded, was known as Foolish Mary. She lived in Lochbroom, in gross spiritual darkness until she was 50. One day, it came into her mind to go to Killearnan. After a long, weary journey she arrived there on a Sabbath morning as the people were going into church. She followed them in and heard John Kennedy preach. It was under the sermon that spiritual life entered her soul, and views of the glory of Christ were given to her. She remained in Killearnan for the remainder of her days.
The minister’s young son John (later Dr Kennedy) wondered how his father could admit Foolish Mary to his study. “But the time came”, he later wrote, “when I accounted it the greatest privilege to admit her to my own. . . . Of all I ever knew, she was the one who seemed to enjoy the greatest nearness to God in prayer.” After her death he wrote: “Sweet to all who knew her, and who saw in her the working of the grace of God, is the memory of that simple, loving, holy woman”.