James Grierson
How ought communicants to maintain a conscientious, habitual attention to the personal and secret duties required of communicants? It is a matter of the utmost importance, and this is how they ought to regard it. Without such attention to secret duties, there is no likelihood – not even a possibility – that duties either in public or at home will be performed adequately. Then the honour of Christ and the interests of religion must be seriously injured.
If communicants therefore would seek to promote either their own spiritual improvement, or the welfare of the spiritual kingdom to which they profess to belong, they must apply themselves with the greatest diligence to their secret duties. The faithfulness and relish with which these duties are carried out provide the true means of estimating the real amount of spiritual life in the soul – just as a thermometer placed in the shade is the true means of estimating the degree of heat in the whole body of the surrounding air.
It is not difficult to determine what these duties are. Among the first of them is self-examination. It is indispensable to the thorough knowledge of our heart and life, of our imperfections and necessities. Without it nothing effective can be attempted, and no suitable plan adopted, for promoting one’s own improvement. Yet this self-examination cannot be conducted properly, nor can this self-knowledge be attained, without examining the Holy Scriptures diligently each day. The Scriptures were given by inspiration of the One who knows what is in man, and in them we are given a key to all the intricacies of the human heart. And after this self-knowledge has been ascertained it is just as important to watch the state of the heart.
1Another extract, with editing, from Grierson’s volume, The Lord’s Supper. It is the fourth point in a chapter headed, “The general conduct which all who partake of the Lord’s Supper should be careful afterwards to maintain”.
The vessels of the sanctuary had not only to be examined, but kept constantly clean and fit for daily use. A person in poor health, or recovering from sickness, is careful to notice his state and progress from day to day. Similarly communicants are especially bound to keep their hearts “with all diligence” and to be on their guard against the entrance and indulgence of evil thoughts and of all the corrupt affections “which war against the soul”. But in order for them to perform this duty aright, it is necessary that, in their most secret prayer, they should be under the abiding impression of God’s invisible presence – that “all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do”; that His eyes are over them continually; that He searches the heart and tries the reins of the children of men; and that He will one day “bring every work into judgement, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil”.
Under this deep and solemn impression, communicants are habitually to attend to the duty of self-examination, after having partaken of the Lord’s Supper. It is also their duty to spend some portion of every day in studying the Holy Scriptures. This latter duty they are to practise,—not merely to obtain a more thorough knowledge of their own hearts, but also to acquaint themselves more fully with God – with the revealed counsels of His will and with the exceeding riches of His grace.
Nor are the Scriptures to be only searched and read; they are to be the subject of much serious and profound meditation. This is another secret employment in which communicants are to engage habitually. They are to meditate on His perfections, as displayed both in His works and in His Word. In particular, they are to meditate on these perfections as set forth in that glorious plan of salvation, to all parts of which their thoughts are directed in the ordinance of the Supper. They are to meditate, moreover, on the personal interest which they themselves seek after, or actually possess, in a plan so glorious; and on all the loving-kindness and tender mercy that He has, in numberless instances, manifested to them individually.
We need scarcely add that all these private religious duties are to be consecrated by frequent, fervent prayer. Without this, no other duties can be conducted profitably. We have already seen prayer to be necessary for the growth of all Christian graces. And these graces are indeed inseparably connected with the various private religious duties to which we have just referred. Communicants must always be conscientious about the duty of praying to God in secret, or they will act inconsistently with the profession they have made by sitting at a communion table. To neglect prayer is to neglect one of the most important means by which the Lord’s Supper is made useful for their spiritual improvement and comfort.
Obituary
Mr Norman Thomson
Norman Thomson was born in Skigersta, one of the villages in Ness, Isle of Lewis, on 6 April 1935. His parents, Mr and Mrs Angus Thomson, were careful to instruct their children in the teaching of the Word of God, and his grandfather, Donald Thomson, was a missionary in the Ness congregation until his death in 1948.
While the godly examples Norman witnessed in his youth were not sufficient in themselves to bring salvation to his soul, yet they clearly made some impression by the time he first left home for sea at the age of 16. When he met his former classmate Malcolm (Calum) Gunn in London one day, Norman took Calum to show him his ship. On being questioned as to why there was a Bible beside his bed in the cabin, Norman stated his belief that, if one read a chapter of it every morning, things would go better during the day. While neither of the two young friends had any concern of soul at this stage of their lives, this shows how the example of family worship can make a deep impression on tender minds. “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Prov 22:6).
The time came in the Lord’s sovereign purpose when He brought Norman, then aged around 20, under a deep conviction of his lost and ruined condition as a sinner before a holy God. This work of the Holy Spirit took place on a vessel which was sailing out of Buenos Aires, and so powerful was the effect of what he was passing through in his mind that Norman on one occasion had to be carried out of the wheelhouse by other crewmen.
No comforter could he find among the crewmen, who were nonplussed as to what he was experiencing and no comfort visited his tempest-tossed soul from the One whose way is in the sea and in the waters great His path. He remained under this intense law work for around two weeks until the Lord in His great mercy revealed Himself to Norman as a sin-forgiving and merciful God in Christ. The rain was over and gone and he began to drink of the fountain of life, the streams whereof make glad the city of our God. The impression made by this experience never left our friend, and we believe that much of the solemnity, fervency and spirituality which ever afterwards characterised his prayers, can be traced to this initial meeting between the spirit of Norman Thomson and the Spirit of God.
Norman professed faith in Christ for the first time at the Ness communion in October 1956. He was a lively, intelligent man, with a retentive memory, who relished spiritual conversation. Where Norman excelled was in the gift
of prayer, especially in public. We never heard him pray without feeling that there was a very evident connection between his soul and the Hearer of prayer even when, in his latter years, his faculties were much impaired. Such strength in prayer was, we believe, a fruit of much secret wrestling with the Angel of the Covenant and demonstrates in Norman’s case that “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh”. He loved to meditate on the truth and was particularly well-versed in the Old Testament Scriptures. He often quoted the words, “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them” (Is 41:17).
On one occasion while sailing in the Pacific, he was greatly impressed with the portion in Numbers 16 about Aaron staying the plague in the camp of Israel. When he heard an action sermon on this passage, in North Uist many years later, he recalled with evident delight the effect this part of the Word produced on him in the days of his first love.
Norman was ordained to the eldership in the Ness congregation in 1987, and around that time there were a number of able and spiritually-minded office-bearers in the congregation, including his godly younger brother, Finlay. In addition to Ness, he was able over the years to keep services in other congregations, including North Tolsta, Breascleit, Halkirk, Staffin and also in the Aberfeldy area.
Apart from his time at sea, Norman’s working life was spent in various places, including periods in Greenock, Lochaber and Perthshire. He married Anne Macritchie, from Dell, in Ness, who was a like-minded companion until her death in 1993. Norman’s care for his first wife in her illness was noteworthy. The Lord provided another helpmeet for Norman in His great goodness, in Christine Macdonald, from the Isle of Skye, whom he married in 1998 and who cared for Norman most lovingly and dutifully during a prolonged period after he took a series of strokes.
Norman Thomson was a strong character, with a mercurial temperament. He was great admirer of the North Country Separatists, such as Sandy Gair, John Grant and Joseph Mackay, and in many ways he reminded us of them. Like them, he had much secret communion with the Lord and seemed often to have deep experiences in the spiritual life. But, also like them, he could be too hasty in his speech at times.
We think that Norman towards the end of his days could have heartily agreed with the following remarks of the late Tommy Macleod, who was a godly elder in the Gairloch congregation at one time. Once when speaking to the question, he likened the old Christian to a horseshoe fixed for many years above the entrance to a blacksmith’s smithy to advertise the kind of
work that was taking place inside. Unlike other such horseshoes, this particular one – if it could only talk – might complain of its inactivity and coldness and might feel it was only rusting away while others were being profitably used. Where, it might ask the blacksmith, is all the energy and care you showed towards me when you first formed me? But the smith would reply, You may well complain of your current condition, but never forget that I put a shape upon you then that you will never lose.
Tommy Macleod’s observation certainly illustrates the sentiments of many old believers who have the complaint that Norman himself often uttered, “O that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when His candle shined upon my head, and when by His light I walked through darkness; as I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle” (Job 29:2-4). Sovereign grace, however, put an indelible stamp upon our late friend and we believe that that grace has now blossomed into perfect holiness, complete likeness to Christ and eternal glory.
Norman and Christine moved to the Isle of Skye in 2011 and latterly Norman lived in the Budhmor Care Home in Portree, where he was kindly looked after. Norman Thomson departed from this world in Broadford Hospital, on 27 March 2016 to be, we fully believe, with the Lord, which is far better. We extend our sympathy to Christine and to Norman’s wider family. “I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water” (Is 41:18). (Rev) A W MacColl