Rev J R Mackay
Archibald Cook was the seventh son of Charles and Margaret Cook. He was born at Achariach, Glenscoradale, in the south end of the Island of Arran. The date of his birth can be given only approximately. He was baptised as an infant of, we may suppose, a few weeks, on 19 October 1788. His father was at that time tenant of part of what became the large sheep-run of Achariach. The third of the Cooks’ family of nine sons was Finlay Cook; it was a warmly affectionate family.
Archibald is said to have been a quiet but bright boy. The Island of Arran must have been privileged in his boyhood with educational facilities of real worth, as a number of Arran youths went, about this time, to study at university and afterwards became honoured ministers of the Church of Scotland. The parish of Kilmorie, in which Achariach is situated, had, at that time, a greater privilege than educational facilities; its pastor was Neil MacBride. His ministry was wonderfully blessed. Andrew A Bonar, in his Thirty Years of Spiritual Life in the Island of Arran, mentions two occasions, the first beginning in 1804 and the second in 1812, in which an extraordinary blessing appears to have rested upon MacBride’s labours. Finlay Cook, John MacAlister, Peter Davidson, Archibald Nicol and the subject of this memoir, all well-known names in the Church of Christ in Scotland, were among the many seals of this ministry.
Finlay Cook’s conversion, which took place when he was about 25, must have occurred about the beginning of the first of these seasons of remarkable
1This is the biographical introduction to a volume entitled, Sermons (Gaelic and English) “by the late Rev Archibald Cook, Daviot”; it was published in 1907. Mr Mackay was then the Free Presbyterian minister in Inverness. The introduction is included in the forthcoming volume of sermons by Cook being produced by Free Presbyterian Publications; this volume is a translation of a later volume of Gaelic sermons, also edited by Mr Mackay and first published in 1916. As reprinted here, the introduction has been edited. It is based largely on the Alexander Auld’s Ministers and Men in the Far North, and also Letters of Rev Finlay and Archibald Cook, edited by John Kennedy, Caticol; these letters have been included in Sidelights on Two Notable Ministries, which is still available, and contains memoirs, letters and sermons, of both Finlay and Archibald Cook.
blessing. The unvarying account is that Archibald became the subject of divine grace in early youth; so it must have been about the same period. It appears that religious seriousness manifested itself at first in him in what his friends thought was natural depression. To shake him out of this, some inconsiderate people took him to a dancing school. As might be expected, the remedy proved worse than the disease. The ill-understood invalid had such a terrifying impression of what he saw when he entered that dancing room, then in full swing, that he screamed and fainted. His would-be friends were, we may be sure, thankful to bring him home to his parents alive. He was then only in his early teens, but he carried a solemn impression of this experience with him all his life long.
We may suppose that Cook’s personal experiences, when at first he “received the Word in much affliction, and joy of the Holy Ghost,” were in substantial agreement with an order which he indicates more than once in his sermons. If so, his seriousness began with a sense of guilt – a sense of being under the wrath of God on account of sin. Nor did that trouble come alone; his soul became a prey to temptations. “In the day”, he was wont to say, “in which a soul begins to desire deliverance from sin, there is not a devil in hell but will rise in pursuit of that creature.” His enlarged griefs brought him to his knees, and a cry from his soul for salvation came before the throne of God. Nothing could satisfy him but eternal redemption.
At first, his hope in the mercy of God was faint. It was comparable to that of the leper, whose faith reached only to the power of the Saviour: “If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean”. But that hope brought him to the feet of the Saviour, where none ever perished. There he was at length granted such a comforting view of the cross of Christ that, besides being conscious of the removal of his guilt, he heard, as he thought, a song of praise from the whole creation of God, praising Him for His works of wonder done unto the children of men. His feet once upon the Rock, his acquaintances noted that he continued steadfastly to grow in grace and in the knowledge of his Lord and Saviour.
These were indeed blessed times in Arran, when, through a living ministry, God brought spiritual children to the birth and caused them to come forth, when new-born babes desired the sincere milk of the Word and were abundantly satisfied with it. Finlay Cook long afterwards applied the words of the prophet Zechariah concerning corn making “the young men cheerful, and new wine the maids” to the happy condition, from a spiritual standpoint, of his native island at the time of which we now write.
Some time after Archibald was brought to a saving knowledge of the truth, his thoughts turned towards the service of God in the ministry, and after great heart searchings, he at length resolved to study for the ministry of the
Church of Scotland in the University of Glasgow. His brother Finlay had, with the same aim, become a student of the same University six years before.
Archibald Cook matriculated at the University of Glasgow in 1814. Judging from the fact that Finlay was ordained in 1817 and Archibald in 1823, we conclude that their study of Arts and Divinity extended over a period of eight years. During two sessions of university life, these two brothers lived together. Their brotherly affection, naturally warm, was sanctified and intensified through the grace they experienced. From what they are known to have been to one another in after life, we may certainly conclude that they would have cherished, as a sacred treasure, the recollection of those winters spent in sweet fellowship in Glasgow.
The fact that on occasions they were also brothers in adversity would strengthen their attachment to one another. During one of those sessions at college together, their funds fell so low that the younger brother feared much that he was one too many for a comparatively poor family to maintain at a university and seriously thought of giving up his studies. In this extremity they both sought relief in pouring out their heart to God in prayer. Once, when they had, on this account, unitedly engaged in supplication, they had not risen off their knees when they heard a knock at the door of their room. A lady and gentleman entered, utterly strangers to them, who gave them, one £4 and the other £5. After this deliverance they never found themselves again in financial straits.
We do not have any way of knowing what ability Archibald showed in his university classes. The late Donald Sage of Resolis (in Memorabilia Domestica) thought the range of his mental capacities very limited. I venture to think that no one who reads the sermons which this volume contains will doubt that Mr Cook must have been a man of great mental power. Such an elevation of thought as, in the Gaelic sermons especially, is sustained, from beginning to end of these discourses, was possible only to one so gifted.
The person who seems to have made the deepest impression on Cook during his stay in Glasgow was John Love of Anderston. He was a profound theologian and a saintly character who impresses us as one to whom the Holy Spirit was given in unusual measure. The Lord honours His servants in ways He has foreordained. One of the ways in which Love was honoured was in being used for the deepening of religious life in several of the rising ministry of that time, most of whom had probably known the Lord savingly before they came under his powerful influence. A goodly number of Cook’s contemporaries felt this influence who became, through grace, a power for good in their generation. Cook himself felt it deeply and without doubt, under the hand of God, owed much to it all his life long. Love, in turn, appears to have
been much impressed with young Cook’s piety and took him into his confidence as he took few other young men.
In 1822 Archibald Cook was licensed to preach the gospel by the Presbytery of Glasgow. In the following year he was ordained by the Presbytery of Caithness and inducted as missionary-minister of Berriedale and Bruan. At this time there were Christian men and women of great discernment in the parish of Latheron, of which Cook’s charge formed part. They received Cook somewhat as the Galatians are said to have received the Apostle Paul: as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. His labours in this part of the vineyard covered 14 years and, although his faithfulness in rebuking sin resulted in opposition from worldly people, he appears to have regarded those years as the richest in blessing of all his ministry. Writing afterwards to David Steven, he refers to the Aarons and Hurs that in those days held up his hands in Caithness, and thinks wistfully of the days of liberty and sweetness he used to have there – and at a time when he could say that he still had some sweet days and some few friends that were a help to him!2
His ministry was from its outset most laborious and strenuously earnest. He taught the people committed to his charge not only in the public services of God’s house, but also in the exercises of catechising, from house to house. In addition he prayerfully sought God’s blessing on his labours. “For the fulfilment of the promise that the Spirit should be poured on us from on high,” wrote Sage, “not one in a thousand in our day looks more earnestly, longs more ardently, or prays more frequently than does Archibald Cook.”
There were several heralds of the gospel in the county of Caithness that made Archibald Cook welcome to their pulpits, and their congregations thought it a privilege to hear him. Finlay Cook had been already six years in the county when his brother came there, and another six years were to pass before he left it for Lewis. John Munro, Halkirk, was another highly honoured contemporary labourer and friend in the Lord’s vineyard. In the letter to Mr David Steven from which we have quoted, Cook makes special mention of Watten, where the eminent Alexander Gunn, senior, was minister, as a place where he enjoyed great comfort in preaching Christ.
It was probably on one of those occasions that James MacAdie, a well-known Caithness worthy, heard him so memorably, according to the following note from a friend: “As a fruit of the Lord’s blessing on the Rev Mr Gunn’s powerful preaching, James had been for some time under deep soul concern. One Sabbath morning his trouble came to a great height. He was overwhelmed with a sense of his vileness, and as he proceeded to the church, he avoided
2This letter appears in Sidelights on Two Notable Ministries, Free Presbyterian Publications, 1970, pp 110-112.
the public road lest he should come in contact with any of the people and pollute them, as he thought, with the leprosy of sin, with which he felt himself so deeply affected. As he made his way over ditches and dykes, he looked on himself as viler than the toads which occasionally crossed his path.
“James went that day to the church in the hope of possibly hearing some good tidings for his soul from the lips of his minister, the great Mr Gunn, but when, instead of Mr Gunn with his majestic bearing, there appeared in the pulpit a small, dark-complexioned man and an entire stranger, with nothing at first sight of special promise in his appearance, James received a great disappointment. His hope of hearing some words of mercy and salvation sank fathoms deep.
“However, the little dark man went on with the service; the opening prayer favourably impressed his hearer, and then came the sermon, wherein the preacher described in the minutest manner the very feelings of James’s soul, down to his manner of proceeding to the church that day, avoiding the people on the highway and regarding himself as viler than the toads of the ditch. As the preacher proceeded, James was stirred in every fibre of his being, until at last he could restrain his pent-up feelings no longer, and unconscious of all around him, he rose up in his seat and cried, ‘That’s me’. The preacher was Mr Archibald Cook, and this proved the day of James MacAdie’s deliverance from the chains in which he had been held, and of his experimental entrance into the freedom wherewith the Son maketh free.”