Rev Neil M Ross
We come now to some Black Isle ministers of the nineteenth century. The first we think of is Charles Calder’s successor in Ferintosh, John Macdonald, the renowned “Apostle of the North”. Robert Buchanan, in his The Ten Years Conflict, described him as: “that eminent servant of God, of whom it is enough to say that he was the Whitefield of the Highlands of Scotland”. Thomas MacLauchlan, his biographer in Disruption Worthies of the Highlands, sums up his ministry thus: “Truly he was one of the ascension gifts of the risen and exalted Saviour to the land of our birth”.
One of the clearest evidences of John Macdonald’s godliness was his undying zeal for the glory of God in the salvation of sinners. In him also, said Kennedy, was a striking combination of a consciousness of his God-given gifts and a marked humility, which “was always evident to those who knew him intimately”.
It was, however, his pre-eminence as a preacher of “the glorious gospel of the blessed God” which especially endeared him to the godly. Even before he settled in Ferintosh he was marked out as a remarkable preacher. The anecdote is told by Rev Donald Beaton of a man who walked 16 miles to hear his beloved minister, Angus MacKintosh of Tain, but was dismayed to see instead an unknown young man enter the pulpit. He expected to get no good from this stranger, but “gradually my attention was attracted”, he said. “When the sermon began I forgot all but the doctrine I was hearing. . . . His second discourse was so awe-inspiring that the audience became powerfully affected. Such was the awful solemnity of the doctrine and the vehemence of the preacher’s manner that I expected, ere he was done, every heart would be pierced, and that the very roof of the church would be rent. The sermon over, all were asking who the preacher was.” It was, of course, John Macdonald, then in Edinburgh.
Another incident, given by Allan Sinclair in his Memoir of Campbell of Kiltearn, will serve to show something of his power as a herald of the cross. “It was at a communion Sabbath at Ferintosh,” says Sinclair. “It was his first communion there. His wife had died the previous week, and his elders suggested that the communion should be postponed.
1Part 2 of this lecture to the Inverness branch of the Scottish Reformation Society gave sketches of Hugh Ross (Buie), and of the following eighteenth-century ministers: George Gordon, Cromarty, Thomas Ingles, Resolis, Hector MacPhail, Resolis, John Wood, Rosemarkie, and Charles Calder, Ferintosh. This article concludes the series.
“‘No, no,’ he said, ‘let not my wife’s death interfere with commemorating the death of my Saviour. I feel very unfit for my share of the service, but there are able ministers engaged to carry on the work.’
“His text was Hosea 2:19, ‘I will betroth thee unto Me for ever’. From these words he preached the action sermon, a discourse of great power. A deep impression was made upon the audience, numbering probably 10 000. So much were his assisting brethren convinced of this that they urged him to preach the closing sermon. He consented, and preached from Psalm 45:10, ‘Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear’. He applied the subject from the words addressed to Rebecca, ‘Wilt thou go with this man?’
“The impression already made was greatly deepened. The feelings of the audience were overpowering. Urging acceptance of Jesus upon them with extraordinary fervour, he put the question once more, ‘Wilt thou go with this man?’ A tall middle-aged woman in the heart of the congregation started to her feet, tossed her arms into the air, and exclaimed in tones heard over the vast audience, ‘I will, I will, O I will’. The preacher replied, ‘God grant thee that grace, and to all present here this day!’ The great congregation broke down. It was a scene never to be forgotten. The Burn of Ferintosh was a Bochim indeed that day. Such was the weeping, the crying, the commotion among the people, that the preacher’s voice was drowned. Amid this glorious triumph of the King of Zion, the day came to a close, memorable among the many memorable days of the ministry of this eminent and dear servant of the Lord Jesus.” This was the commencement of a revival which continued for some considerable time.
His evangelistic tours in the Highlands and beyond, included Ireland and the island of St Kilda. They were blessed by the Lord of the harvest to the ingathering of many souls.
John Macdonald departed to be with Christ on 16 April 1849, in his seventieth year. His grave is in the Urquhart old cemetery, beside that of his saintly predecessor, Charles Calder. We cannot but echo the words of Daniel: “They that turn many to righteousness [shall shine] as the stars for ever and ever”.
In the year following John Macdonald’s settlement in Ferintosh, John Kennedy (the father of the more-widely known Dr Kennedy of Dingwall) became minister of Killearnan. He is one minister to whom the term saintly, has been applied more, perhaps, than to any other Black Isle minister.
As to the commencement of his pilgrimage, Noble says, “it would appear that Mr Kennedy, like Josiah, feared the Lord from early youth”. He was a native of Kishorn, in Wester Ross, and had the privilege of being brought up under the ministry of Lachlan Mackenzie, minister of Lochcarron. “From the very outset of his ministry at Killearnan,” continues Noble, he “occupied a
foremost place in the esteem of the Lord’s people, and his services on communion seasons were looked forward to as special feasts.”
“He delighted in preaching,” writes Mr Beaton, “and remarked on one occasion to a brother minister: ‘No wonder though I should enjoy it, for if ever I had a foretaste of heaven’s own joy on the earth, it was while preaching Christ crucified to sinners’; and on another occasion he said, ‘Never did I truly preach the gospel but while I felt that I myself was the greatest sinner in the congregation’.”
“He was thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the Puritan divines, and of some of our own old Scottish preachers,” says Sage. “The leading features of his ministerial and personal character were piety and prayer, the one the necessary offshoot of the other. His closest preparations for the pulpit, and for the weekday discharge of the duties of the ministry, chiefly consisted in prayer. As the close of his life drew near . . . prayer became the great and leading business of every day.”
In the last year of his life, John Kennedy made many references to his death, even although he was enjoying good health. It seemed as if he himself was not only preparing for it, but also preparing his people for the parting. One of his texts for a few of his last Sabbaths on earth was Revelation 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock”. “His sermons on that verse were very remarkable,” said his son. “They were indeed like the utterances of one who was just going to step across the threshold of eternity.” On the Tuesdays of the last few weeks before his death, he preached a series of sermons on Hebrews 12:22,23, especially the words, “But ye are come . . . to God the judge of all”. The last sermon in the series marked the final time he preached in the church. He did preach once more at a school in the parish on the subject of spiritual worship. “His whole soul,” it was said, “seemed to go out in aspirations after the pure service of heaven.”
Next day he felt unwell with a throat infection and remained in bed. He knew the end was near. To those who asked how he was, he responded, “I’ll soon be quite well”. Two days later, on Sabbath evening, 10 January 1841, he entered into the presence of his Lord, to engage in what he thirsted after – the pure and perfect worshipping of “the Lamb in the midst of the throne”. As his gravestone in Killearnan churchyard records, he was
“the peculiarly honoured ambassador of Christ,
through whom shone the excellency of the power,
in the conversion of many a soul to Christ”.
We add the words of Psalm 116, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints”.
Two years before John Kennedy’s death, John MacRae, familiarly known
as Macrath Mor, became minister of Knockbain, the parish next to Killearnan. A native of Kintail, he lived a godless life until the arrows of conviction of sin entered his heart when he heard the Apostle of the North preach at Stromeferry. His conviction deepened, and he went to a Ferintosh communion service in the hope of finding relief. Before the end of the service he experienced the liberty of the gospel as Dr MacKintosh of Tain gave the closing address.
John MacRae was now concerned about the souls of others. When he went to Glenelg to teach in the school at Arnsdale, he conducted worship in the schoolhouse every Sabbath for the benefit of the local people. Although unwilling at first, the people of the village attended the meetings and some of them were savingly blessed. After that, MacRae was led to study for the ministry, which he did most successfully in Aberdeen and Edinburgh.
After ministering in Gairloch and then in Ness, he was translated across the Minch to Knockbain when he was about 35. There he enjoyed the friendship of his like-minded brethren, John Kennedy, John Macdonald, Donald Sage, and especially Alexander Stewart, Cromarty. So great was his attachment to Stewart that he named his youngest son after him.
Mr Beaton writes of his preaching: “He was undoubtedly one of the most powerful preachers of the Northern Highlands. His labours were greatly owned of God. He knew the theology of the heart well and, being a diligent student, he delighted in feeding on the rich, strong, scriptural theology of the great Puritan divines, especially that giant, Dr Owen.”
His son-in-law, Donald MacMaster, who penned his short biography in Disruption Worthies of the Highlands, paints a vivid picture of MacRae in the pulpit: “His appearance as he presented himself before a congregation at once arrested attention; it suggested to the hearers the thought that this was a messenger sent from God. Many in almost all parts of the world will remember services conducted by him, especially on communion Sabbaths, when he appeared, with his countenance radiant, as one who had come down from the mount of communion; and how, by the time he had read the Psalm and engaged in prayer, the congregation, often consisting of many thousands, was awed into eager attention, and an expression of delight appeared on the faces of God’s people, while the most careless were solemnised.”
In 1849, his pastorate in Knockbain came to an end, to the great grief of his congregation, when he was translated to the Gaelic Chapel in Greenock. His preaching continued to be blessed to numerous people for many years afterwards. In his last letter to a member of his family he wrote, “What a meaning is in the word grace for such as I am. It contains everything necessary for the salvation of a sinner, leaping over mountains of aggravated rebellion, infinite in its absolute freeness. What I need is to realise this in its power
and glory.” That grace, which was given him in great measure, blossomed into eternal glory when he died in October 1876 in a good old age.
We turn now to Donald Sage, best remembered perhaps for his Memorabilia Domestica, or Parish Life in the North of Scotland, who became the minister of Resolis in 1822. Sadly, in the 46 years which had elapsed since Hector MacPhail’s death, the parish was grossly neglected by the incumbent, Robert Arthur, in “whose life and ministry”, said Kennedy, appeared “no trait of a true Christian, of an evangelical preacher, or of a faithful pastor”. Sage records that he found “the ecclesiastical state of the parish in utter confusion. There was no kirk session, no ordained elder and scarcely even an assessor, no roll of communicants, no list of the poor.”
In addition he was dealt a devastating blow in the death of his first wife in childbirth, but in the midst of his profound grief he was enabled to draw anew from the fullness in Christ. “In the world I had only trouble,” he wrote; “in Christ I had peace; and in that peace I was enabled to resign, without a murmur, my beloved Harriet, soul and body, to His holy care and keeping.”
His efforts to remedy the declined state of the parish were blessed. Noble states: “He laboured with great acceptance in that parish for 47 years. He was an accurate theologian, well versed in the English and Dutch divines, and had few equals in his time as an expositor of Scripture. . . . He brought a flood of light from the context to bear upon his discourse, and traced with minuteness of detail the setting of the passage in hand. . . . His teaching was blessed to not a few, and many of the Lord’s people found in him ‘a son of consolation’. . . . He aimed at exalting his adorable Redeemer.” He died in 1869 at the age of 79.
Returning now to Cromarty, we find that the parishioners there, in 1824, called Alexander Stewart to be their pastor even although most of them had never seen or heard him. Having heard something of his ability as a preacher but especially on account of the eminence of his father, Dr Alexander Stewart of Dingwall, they set their hearts on him. They were not disappointed. “As a preacher, it is not too much to say,” wrote Sage, “that Mr Stewart rivalled at least, if he did not excel, the most eminently gifted ministers either in or out of the Establishment.”
We are informed by Noble that “he excelled most preachers in the light he brought to bear on Old Testament typology, and his powers of illustration, rarely equalled, enabled him to render his thoughts at once luminous and striking”. Notes of his sermons on the Old Testament sacrifices were posthumously published under the title, The Tree of Promise, a most interesting and instructive volume. Rev Donald Beaton states that “his sermon, ‘Man’s Redemption the Joy of Angels’, on 1 Peter 1:12, which is included in Precious
Seed Discourses, is one of the great masterpieces of the Scottish pulpit”.
Something of Alexander Stewart’s pulpit gifts may be gathered from the fact that Thomas Chalmers, after hearing him preach, was so impressed that he did his utmost to persuade Stewart to agree to be nominated as his successor as minister of the St John’s congregation, Glasgow, when he himself had been appointed to the Moral Philosophy chair at St Andrews University.
Stewart could not countenance the thought, for constitutionally he was somewhat of a recluse. As Mr Beaton points out, “natural diffidence and self-distrust . . . were marked features of his character”, and he had what Alexander Beith, his friend and biographer, calls “a native timidity and want of self-possession”. He was, however, a truly gracious and earnestly-pious servant of God – noted, we are told, “for his high and thorough Christian principles”, but with “no forbidding, affected, gloomy, morose seriousness of aspect and demeanour”.
He was only 52 when he died, much lamented. The circumstances of his death are poignantly interesting. In 1847 the congregation of Free St George’s, Edinburgh, called him to be their minister. Although he shrank from the weighty responsibility, he believed it was his duty to accept, despite feelings of foreboding. Beith tells us that James Buchanan, one of the commissioners sent north to the meeting of Presbytery to prosecute the call, took note of Stewart’s dejected look and remarked to him, “You look as if you were carrying a mountain on your back”.
“No, Dr Buchanan,” came the sad reply, “I am not carrying a mountain, but I am carrying my gravestone on my back.” So it proved, for not long afterwards he caught a fever which proved fatal, and so he quietly fell asleep in Jesus on 5 November 1847.
Many more saints could be mentioned, but time would fail to tell of such men as the Dunoons (father and son) of Killearnan, whose ministries were marked by success; Allan MacKenzie, Knockbain, known as “a saviour preacher”; Alexander Fraser of Avoch, “a preacher of outstanding ability”; Hugh Anderson, Cromarty, who suffered much persecution for his defence of the crown rights of his Redeemer; Donald Fraser, Ferintosh, of whom it was said that he was “remarkable for talent and piety, a profound theologian, and possessed of great skill in expounding Scripture, and his ministry was much blessed for the conviction and conversion of many”. There were many other godly men, and pious women not a few.
I acknowledge that the sketches given of those bygone believers do not present a “warts and all” picture. We know that, like all the saints, they were not without their spots. Although they kept themselves “unspotted from the world”, they did have their infirmities and failings. But it is clear that they
were what they were by the grace of God, even travellers in the way of holiness, aiming for that perfect holiness promised to them, and which they received at the moment of death, and have for ever. Surely we cannot read the accounts of their lives without seeing something of the inestimable blessing of being “fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God”.
We acknowledge also that if the gospel had not come to our shores, there would be no such dear people as the saints of God – in whom, said the Psalmist, his own delight was placed. We are bound also to bless the name of God for delivering to us, at the Reformation, what Scripture calls “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints”. Those saints we have been thinking about stood for its defence, and may we, in our day, be given grace to contend for it likewise.
One last word: it is taken for granted that saints are more in number and have more grace when God gives times of reviving to His Church. This was seen in the Black Isle time and again. The Great Awakening of the mid-eighteenth century was not confined to America; it spread even to the Black Isle and its environs, as is seen in Gillies’ Historical Collections. Not only was there an awakening and reviving in the parish of Rosemarkie and Fortrose, under John Wood, but also in other parts of the Black Isle. Later, in the first half of the nineteenth century, there were numerous showers of blessing in many parts of Scotland, Ross-shire not excluded. It was during this period that, for example, John Kennedy of Killearnan and John Macdonald of Ferintosh had many seals to their ministries. The implication is clear: while we need to be “abounding in the work of the Lord”, we need especially to be on our knees, praying that God would again open the windows of heaven and pour down a blessing, and that we would see the King of Sion going forth conquering and to conquer, through the gospel. Our prayer therefore is: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.