Robert Findlater

4. The Fruits of a Faithful Ministry

The second of the Lochtayside converts whose spiritual experiences were recorded was CD, a woman of about 20. She had attended the communion in Ardeonaig in September 1816 but confessed, “Nothing I heard made the smallest impression; all I can say is that I thought oftener of eternity”. Yet during a Sabbath service at Lawers the following month, Findlater quoted the scripture, “They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced,” and at

¹The previous article appeared last month and told of the effects of Findlater’s preaching at Lochtayside, in Perthshire. It gave the first of the recorded experiences of 10 people who professed conversion during the revival, all of whom had witnessed a good confession. No names are given; they are distinguished only by letters. This is the final part of a paper read at last year’s Theological Conference All page references otherwise unidentified are from: William Findlater, Memoir of the Rev Robert Findlater, Glasgow, 1840.

once she thought she saw her sins piercing Christ. The words, and their disturbing effects, followed her till the following Wednesday, when she heard someone reading from the Bible and she realised that the wounds of Christ were the cleansing fountain for her sins. She “could do nothing but wonder at such a mystery”.

After some days of unclouded peace and joy she read for herself the passage that had so much encouraged her and became afraid that it did not apply to her condition at that time. The thought left her uneasy, yet she took encouragement from the view she had obtained of Christ. She expressed grief because of her hardness of heart, but she added, “I think that I would be content to go mourning all my days, provided I could love the Lord and be enabled to obey Him”. She was troubled by sinful thoughts but, after going to a meeting, she opened her Bible and found help in the words of Psalm 103: “Like as a father pitieth His children . . . ” (pp 240-3).

EF was a friend of CD and about the same age. She confessed, “Although I knew it was necessary I should be converted, yet, as I thought conversion within the compass of my own power and not willing to relinquish all my pleasures at so early a period of my life, I indulged the temptation of delaying till a more proper time” – as she thought. One Sabbath, Findlater preached on Zacchaeus and remarked that Jesus was one day passing through Jericho, but before the next He might be riding in triumph to Jerusalem – by which presumably he meant that the next day Zacchaeus, for all he knew, might have had no further opportunity of meeting Him. This was how EF understood him; she said, “I was pierced to the heart . . . Then I saw that there was not one moment for delay. . . I thought and believed that justice was ready to seize upon me that instant.”

One morning, about a fortnight later, when she was reading her Bible, she was comforted by the words of Jeremiah 31: “Is Ephraim My dear son? Is he a pleasant child? For since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still: therefore My bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord.” Yet she did not dare count herself one of God’s children, but she added what indicated that she may already have been one of them: “I felt I could not be happy if I were not with them and of them” (pp 243-5).

For a final example we will take 25-year-old LM, who had become notorious for “revelling and drinking”, though he had kept from such sins during the two years he had spent in Lochtayside learning his trade. Afterwards he went back to his old habits. Yet while, after some time, he became tired of this lifestyle, he could not give up his sins. At a Thursday service at Ardeonaig during a communion season, he envied a woman whom he saw

under concern of soul. During the evening service, at Lawers, the sermon impressed him slightly. The impressions continuing through the following week and, the following Sabbath, he very much wished “to be truly convinced of sin”.

He could scarcely believe that Findlater, who was preaching, had not been told a great deal about his heart and life; it seemed “that he directed every sentence to me”. These impressions of his sinful state did not leave him; he was “not so much concerned for the torments of hell, which I believed to be my just portion, as for the painful reflection of being excluded from the company of Christ and His people. I often thought thus: Let me but suppose that I am on the outside of the wall of the new Jerusalem, and [experience] no other torment but seeing the blessed host [of saints] within – how could I bear it?”

When LM “found relief”, he went at once to tell three people whom he thought would rejoice with him. However, they gave him no encouragement and he began to question the genuineness of what he had experienced. He assumed “that these persons were better informed and had right knowledge of the nature and effects of regeneration; that they certainly knew the proper time that one ought to be under conviction before he found relief; and that it was because I did not continue that time they knew all was wrong. He concluded that he was deceived; so active is the devil in tempting the spiritually-inexperienced. The account concludes with the somewhat cryptic statement: “However I soon got another clear view, and that relieved me”. Yet, though the object of his faith is not spelt out, we must – in the light of what is said about the “good confession” of all ten who were interviewed – understand what LM says about a “clear view” to be a reference to a view by faith of the Saviour.

John Brown of Whitburn visited Findlater’s district in 1818 and wrote approvingly of the spiritual state of Glenlyon in particular: “Everything about it wore the impress of divine influence, and its consequences have been of the most satisfactory kind. As one of them, it may be mentioned that an intimation of sermon, which a few years ago would with difficulty have drawn together a dozen or two, will now collect the inhabitants by hundreds.”²

In July 1820, Findlater visited Inverness and was persuaded to preach in the East Church there. It was a chapel of ease, an extra church built to ease the situation where there was too little accommodation for worshippers in the existing church buildings, but it did not have a kirk session of its own,

²Tom Lennie, Land of Many Revivals, Christian Focus Publications, 2015, p 262. John Brown of Whitburn was the son of John Brown of Haddington (not the grandson, as stated in the book cited here).

and the minister had no seat on the local presbytery. Before the end of that year, Findlater was called to the congregation by the managers of the chapel, where he was to be succeeded by Finlay Cook, who in turn was followed by David Campbell of Glenlyon. But before accepting the call, Findlater insisted on hearing what the mind of the people in the congregation was. In deciding on his duty, he was influenced by the fact that his preaching seemed now to be making little impression on his flock in Lochtayside; indeed he felt quite discouraged by indications that the influence of the Holy Spirit was now being withdrawn.

Findlater was inducted to Inverness on 31 May 1821. Attendances in his congregation could number over 1800, especially at the morning service, which was in Gaelic, and the people came not only from the town, but also from surrounding villages.

Writing to a fellow minister about this time, Findlater encouraged him to “press the acceptance of the gospel by all the solemn and awful misery of those who refuse it. Urge it on their acceptance by all the winning arguments of its richness, its freeness, its love, its suitableness, its efficacy . . . . Bring these things to their consciences, and you will find that these are the truths which will meet the heart and awaken the most hardened conscience.”

He went on to describe his new situation: “We are here so much accustomed to the terrors of the gospel and to its free offers that they fail to produce [any] effect, and I know not a situation more discouraging than addressing a people of that description. Notwithstanding, I trust there has been more than one instance, even in Inverness since I came here, that have had their consciences awakened, but alas the dense mass of careless sinners and of formal professors [of Christianity] that meets me every Sabbath seems often, to my view, like a wall of brass – impenetrable. The Lord hasten the day when the walls of Jericho shall tumble down at the sound, even of the rams’ horns” (p 300). His biographer stated, “His great aim was to profit more than to please his audience . . . so that even casual hearers admitted that he spoke as one in earnest, who felt deeply interested in the subject, as one ‘anxious that his hearers should feel it too’” (pp 300-1).

It was Findlater’s practice to return to Lochtayside every year. His last visit was in August 1832, when he took some of the services at the communion season in Glenlyon. When he returned to Inverness he found an outbreak of cholera sweeping through the town. The next Sabbath morning he preached from Psalm 106:29: “Thus they provoked Him to anger with their inventions: and the plague brake in upon them”, words which were solemnly appropriate to conditions in the town. The following Wednesday Findlater himself took ill with cholera. He asked a brother minister to pass a message to his cong-

regation: “Tell my people – tell them – to make sure of an interest in Christ, that a deathbed is not the time”. In a short time he had passed into eternity to receive his reward, on 7 September 1832. He was 45 years old. In retrospect there was a striking relevance in the text on which Findlater had preached his last action sermon, the previous month, in Glenlyon: “Gather My saints together unto Me; those that have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice” (Ps 50:5).

Let us now note William Findlater’s “concluding reflections” (pp 315-45) on the revival at Lochtayside (he enlarged on each of these points at some length):

1. The sovereignty of God’s grace in the influences of His Spirit, in the means He used, and the time when and the place where the blessing came.

2. God’s sovereignty as to who received a blessing.

3. When God has a purpose of mercy toward a people, “He leads those who obtain it earnestly to desire and pray for it”.

4. When the Lord has a purpose of making the gospel effective in the conversion of souls, “He generally makes use of preparatory means”. In this case, the Bible was now being circulated in Gaelic, the language of the local people; schools were established; “a young missionary was appointed who zealously and prayerfully devoted himself exclusively to the work of the ministry”. Prayer was another such means; in particular, the Friday morning before the Lord’s Supper was given over to an extended prayer meeting to plead for God’s blessing and for the outpouring of the Spirit – not only on that occasion, but throughout the world.

5. When God, in providence, calls ministers to unexpected, exceptional duties, they have a warrant to expect extraordinary help from God. William Findlater gives the example of his brother having unexpectedly to preach in November 1817 when John Macdonald was unable to make it to Lochtayside.

6. The subjects of the sermons which were blessed during the revival were “repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ”. William Findlater lists the doctrines proclaimed as “original sin, the demands of a righteous and holy law, regeneration, justification by faith, and the necessity of divine influences” – while the people were directed “to the finished work of Christ as the only standing place on which they could build with confidence, be furnished with true motives to holy obedience, or relish the consolations arising from the gracious promises revealed in the gospel”.

7. The moral influence of the revival was very noticeable, which was a strong evidence of the power of the gospel. The revival had a restraining influence even on the unconverted.

8. During times of revival, there may be, not only powerful effects on

the mind, but even bodily agitation. “This was the case”, states William Findlater, “with a few individuals at this time.”

1. God is sovereign in how long a revival continues. The biographer comments, “While there are visitations of mercy, there are also visitations of judgement. When spiritual mercies and privileges are not sufficiently improved and acknowledged, God withholds those influences which are resisted.”

2. The importance of the gospel ministry being extended farther.

One final reflection: How much this secular, God-denying twenty-first century needs the gospel to be spread everywhere and the Holy Spirit to be poured out abundantly on those who hear it!