2. “The Great Sacrament”
When Findlater came to Lochtayside, there were between 500 and 600 communicants in the district – everyone above a certain age unless they were guilty of some serious outward sin. But he feared that not many of them were converted, although the people were well acquainted with scriptural
1The first section of this Theological Conference paper appeared last month and spoke of Findlater’s early years: his studies, his profession of faith, his appointment as a missionary minister at Rothiemurchus and then at Lochtayside, in Perthshire. All page references that are otherwise unidentified are from: William Findlater, Memoir of the Rev Robert Findlater, Glasgow, 1840.
truth. Yet a few among them prayed earnestly for better days spiritually. Some of the followers of the Haldanes so criticised the Church of Scotland, her ministers and her doctrines that many people treated all her ministers as unsound, rejected her services and even The Shorter Catechism. The work of some Independent preachers, including John Farquharson, who proclaimed the gospel briefly in the Isle of Skye, was blessed to the good of souls in the wider area in Perthshire.
Writing some years after Findlater’s death, a neighbouring minister spoke of the earnest piety of the missionary minister at Lochtayside, his humble disposition, and how clearly, faithfully and in the spirit of the gospel, he expounded Scripture and applied its doctrines to the conscience and the heart; the result was that he gained the esteem of the congregation. Findlater was responsible for a district with a population of about 1500, extending more than five miles on each side of the middle of Loch Tay, which is over 14 miles long and about a mile wide. The manse was at Ardeonaig, on the south side of the loch, but he lodged for the first year on the other side at Lawers, near the foot of Ben Lawers, one of the highest mountains in Scotland.
The story is told of a young woman who came to visit her daughter’s grave at Ardeonaig the first Sabbath that Findlater preached there. She had walked some miles over a hill and arrived well before the people gathered for the open-air service. When she was ready to leave, the congregation were assembling in the churchyard and she felt obliged, against her will, to join them. Before the minister was halfway through his sermon, the woman was so much arrested by his manner and doctrine that she forgot for a time why she had come there. Before he had finished, she was so convinced of her lost, sinful condition that sorrow because of her daughter’s death gave way to concern for the salvation of her immortal soul. She heard too, in that sermon, of a living Saviour and she was to give evidence for the rest of her life that she was indeed trusting in Him. The minister just quoted wrote, “She uniformly maintained a holy and consistent profession and was distinguished as one of the most pious and zealous for the glory of God and the salvation of sinners, in her day, in that part of the country” (p 138).
There seems at first to have been only one service on Sabbaths, alternately on each side of Loch Tay, perhaps a long service by our standards today. Later Findlater began to hold a second service about 5 pm, on the opposite side of the Loch, while there was sufficient daylight. One motive was that otherwise, in his own words, “the Sabbath must be profaned by idleness and indifference to their religious concerns” (p 156). He did not expect many to cross the Loch for the second service but, as it turned out, so many wanted to cross that the difficulty was to find enough boats to take them over.
In October 1812 Findlater tells his brother about a recent communion season, when John Macdonald – then in the Edinburgh Gaelic chapel and later Charles Calder’s successor in Ferintosh – made what was presumably his first visit. Findlater commented, “May the Master of assemblies crown the work with His blessing! I hope it was not without His presence” (p 158). After some future communions there could be no doubt of the Master’s presence and blessing.
In a letter to his brother, the following December, Findlater speaks of planning to begin a prayer meeting and adds, “We are very destitute of spiritual life”. When the dark afternoons prevented the people coming to a second service, he visited the Sabbath school he had begun the previous summer; he reported that it “continues to flourish and increase in numbers, and really their progress is commendable. I find more pleasure in it than with the old people” (p 159). Indeed he believed that two of the pupils, about 14 or 15 years old, were under “deep concern” of soul. His catechising sessions revealed that, while some said there was a real improvement, he felt that it was, on the whole, only a change “from open unconcern to formality”. Though people were acquiring knowledge, he said that “it would grieve a feeling mind to observe the vanity and want of concern of a rising generation. At this season of the year they collect at the public houses to dance. Nothing effectual will do but omnipotent grace – the exercise of which, alas, is little to be seen or felt in our day or generation” (p 160).
It must have been rather encouraging for Findlater when a young man started walking nine miles from Glenlyon to hear his preaching in Lawers, having to climb over part of Ben Lawers in the process. Two years later, in 1814, one or two others joined him; in 1815 a few more; and in the spring of 1816 the number increased to 12 or 14. During their morning journey one man, in some ways a leader of the group, might recount what he had heard or read about revivals in various parts of Scotland. On their way home they would go over the sermon they had heard that day. Over a period of months in 1816 people felt that Findlater’s sermons were becoming more and more impressive. They noticed that he “was unusually urgent in pressing home truth upon the consciences of his hearers. . . . Some confessed a sense of shame for withstanding so much earnestness” (p 180). Findlater had in fact been influenced to seek an outpouring of the Spirit in his own district by reports that had reached him of a work of grace in Ferintosh, under Macdonald’s preaching. Local prayer meetings were set up and, not long afterwards, people were coming to Findlater under concern of soul.
The increased spiritual impressions continued till, in August, the Lord’s Supper was held in nearby Killin. Donald MacGillivray, then of Strathfillan
– described as “truly faithful and godly” – preached on the Sabbath evening in the churchyard, on the “fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness” (Zec 13:1). The people from Glenlyon who were attending Findlater’s preaching in Lawers were present and “felt a more than ordinary solemnising influence on their minds under the preaching of the gospel” (p 178). John Kennedy of Dingwall, in his life of John Macdonald, soon to be known as the Apostle of the North, describes Findlater as “a godly man, a faithful, fervent preacher, and the lack of learning and talent in his discourses was well supplied by the unction of a broken heart”.2 If Findlater’s abilities were indeed comparatively limited, it is clear that the results of his preaching were all the more clearly brought about by the Holy Spirit – by divine power rather than human power.
A month later a communion season was held at Ardeonaig, and John Macdonald, now of Ferintosh, took most of the services. During Macdonald’s sermon on the Thursday, “an extraordinary degree of attention was excited, and towards the close of it a young woman from Glenlyon cried out, unable to repress her feelings”. He preached again on the other side of Loch Tay later in the day; the service was followed by a night so dark that the people from Glenlyon could not return home. In any case, some were quite unfit for the journey; they were so deeply convicted of their sin. Those who walked home the next morning told of the tremendous effects of Macdonald’s preaching; the result was that most of the people in Glenlyon were at Ardeonaig for the Sabbath morning service.
Macdonald preached for two hours and 20 minutes with particular unction to a congregation reckoned to be between 4000 and 5000. His text was: “For thy Maker is thine husband” (Is 54:5). Findlater reported to his brother: “I may say, during the whole sermon, there was hardly a dry eye. Eagerness to attend to the word preached was depicted on every countenance, while tears were flowing very copiously . . . The most hardened in the congregation seemed to bend as one man, and I believe, if ever the Holy Ghost was present in a solemn assembly it was then. Mr Macdonald himself seemed to be in raptures. . . .
“The people of God themselves were as deeply affected as others, and many have confessed they never witnessed such a scene. It will be a day remembered through the ages of eternity, as many, I trust, have enjoyed eternal good” (p 182). Many hearers cried out as they listened to the sermon, in spite of their efforts to restrain themselves. Kennedy once met a man who had been converted under this sermon; everyone who knew him believed he
2John Kennedy, The Apostle of the North, Inverness, 1932 reprint, p 64. This valuable book has been reprinted by Free Presbyterian Publications.
was truly godly. The man testified that he knew 50 in all who had been awakened under that sermon, and that he was the only one of the 50 whose conversion he was tempted to suspect.
Macdonald preached again on the Monday on: “Give an account of thy stewardship” (Lk 16:2). “Several”, wrote Findlater, “were pierced to the heart and some came to speak to him [Macdonald] after [the] sermon. I have seen and conversed with some of them myself and have every reason to believe that they are under the gracious operations of the Holy Spirit. Some of them probably I may never see or hear of in this world, but it is a glorious consideration that real good is done in the conversion of sinners and in the edification of His people” (p 183). Findlater expressed the hope that the impressions made on those who attended the services would not wear off quickly and asked for prayer that what had taken place would be only a beginning of glorious days in the district. He went on: “Let our thanksgivings be accompanied with continued and fervent prayers for [God’s] blessing to accompany His own Word and ordinances and that we may not grieve His Spirit to withdraw His gracious influences from us”. Nearly 60 years later, this time was still referred to in the district as “the great sacrament”, and the main preacher as “the great Macdonald”.3