On Tuesday, 27 August 2019, Rev Angus Smith passed from time to eternity in his ninety-first year. Born into a godly family, of Lewis stock, in Glasgow, he early came under soul concern after the death of a brother and professed faith publicly in his late teens. University and teacher training followed but, after a few years teaching in Airdrie, he was moved to offer himself as a student for the ministry, in the Free Church. Service of 10 years in the charge of Snizort, Skye, and 30 years in Ness, Lewis, followed, but he became increasingly unhappy with, and isolated by, trends and decisions in his denomination.
He applied and was accepted as a retired minister of the gospel into the Free Presbyterian Church at the Synod of 1999. For the remaining 20 years of his life, Mr Smith was active in Free Presbyterian pulpits in the Long Island and much in demand at communions throughout the Church, including in congregations in Canada and the USA. The Stornoway congregation were honoured to have him among us and he was always eager and willing to help where supply was needed. The sword of the Word was never allowed to rest, far less to rust, in its scabbard as long as Rev Angus Smith had strength to wield it.
Mr Smith’s last illness extended over a few short months and was not easy. Death is the last enemy and, in the generations that followed the Fall of man, it has lost none of its potential to cast a shadow over the departing saint. In a letter which comforted Thomas Halyburton (an eighteenth-century Scottish divine) on his deathbed, Samuel Rutherford writes of heaven: “It is in the bud; but there be many things to do before the harvest comes. And we take ill with it, and can hardly endure to set our paper-face to one of Christ’s storms and to go to heaven with wet feet and pain and sorrow. We love to carry a heaven to heaven with us, and would have two summers in one year, and no less than two heavens. But this will not do for us: one (and such a one) may suffice us well enough. The man, Christ, got but one only, and shall we have two?”
To his bereaved wife, Johan, son Murdo, daughters Jessie, Ruth and Shona and grandchildren and great grandson we extend our deep sympathy and acknowledge our personal and congregational debt to the Rev Angus Smith and our sorrow at his passing.
“To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God” (Rev 2:7). (Rev) J R Tallach
1Andrew A Bonar, ed, Letters of Samuel Rutherford, Banner of Truth 1984 reprint, p 170.