John Kennedy
It was in the interval between two of his college sessions that John Macdonald began in right earnest to ask, “What must I do to be saved?” There is reason to believe that the reading of Jonathan Edwards’ works was the means of beginning the work of conviction which issued in his conversion to God. This in his case was a fiery process. He has been heard to declare that such was his experience then of “the terror of the Lord” that he was at the time persuaded that the agony of his soul was an anticipation of hell. Shut up to Christ as his only resource by the felt desperation of his case as a sinner, and by the authority of the command to believe in the Son, on the one hand: and on the other, shut out from Him in darkness under the power of unbelief and in the impotence of spiritual death, he well knew then
1Abridged from The Apostle of the North, Kennedy’s biography of Macdonald, who was latterly minister of the Highland parish of Ferintosh, in the Black Isle. The book has been reprinted by Free Presbyterian Publications (304 pages, £4.50); it is still available.
the agony of a soul lying without hope at the disposal of Him who will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, and who hardeneth whom He will.
In this state of mind, as he himself once told the writer, he was walking one day by the seaside. Under the pressure of despair, and at the suggestion of the tempter, he advanced within the sweep of the great billows that were breaking wildly on the shore. Before the advancing wave had reached him, a ray of gospel light pierced the darkness in which his soul was shrouded. Rushing at once from the danger which he had rashly provoked and climbing up into a quiet cave in the rock hard by, he was there and then enabled to commit his soul to Christ. He went to the shore that day in the grasp of the destroyer; he returned from it in the arms of the Saviour.
The place in which the Lord then met him became his favourite resort. Only a few days had passed when, as he was pouring out his heart before God in the cave, a young man, whose soul was just entering on the felt darkness of despair, was going towards the sea. Overhearing a sound from the cave, he stood to listen. The words which he heard were the means of arresting him, of dispelling the shadow of death from his heart, and of assuring him that there was hope in the gospel even for him. Thomas Forbes was that young man’s name. He was afterwards well known in Glasgow as a consistent, fervent follower of the Lamb.
It is impossible to trace with any distinctness the steps of Macdonald’s progress in the knowledge of Christ. He himself refrained from referring to his personal experience, regarding it as selfish and indiscreet to do so. He kept no record then of God’s dealings with his soul. This much, however, is certain, that the works of Edwards, his father’s wise and prayerful instruction, and the clear and unctuous preaching of Mr Robertson, then missionary at Achreny, afterwards of Rothesay and Kingussie, were the means employed and blessed by the Lord in guiding him into the truth as it is in Jesus. For Robertson he continued to cherish the warmest affection, to which he gives fervent expression in an elegy written by him after Robertson’s death, unquestionably the best of all his Gaelic poems.
Macdonald was licensed to preach the gospel, on 2 July 1805, by the Presbytery of Caithness. He was then known only as the son of James Macdonald. His father’s fame as a Christian and as a catechist heightened the expectations for his preaching, and the love and respect entertained for the father made many anxious for the success of the son. His first sermon was not accounted worthy of his father’s son. Some expected in his preaching a reproduction of his father’s maturity of thought and feeling, and were therefore greatly disappointed. One of his first texts, “I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory,” startled others. A sermon on such a subject they regarded as too
ambitious an effort for a young man, and not a few shook their heads and hinted that a young head suited young shoulders better than an old one.
His first discourses, though carefully prepared, were very unpretending; they were distinctly but coldly delivered. Some of the more discerning of his hearers found a germ of promise in his earliest sermons but, except to a few, there was in his appearances as a probationer no indication of his future pulpit power. There may have been an excess of care as to the composition of his sermons, a forgetfulness of his hearers’ needs and an overrating of their knowledge, a desire to write well rather than to preach effectively, and a nervousness which made him diffident, and set him to commit his sermons to memory with a painful exactness that acted as starch on his manner in delivering them.
Two months after being licensed, he started on a tour of the north-west Highlands, during which he did not forget that he was dedicated to higher service. He preached in every parish which he visited, and thus, within three months, he began to acquire some training for the great work in which he became famous as “The Apostle of the North”. Having preached in the parish of Glenelg, the minister, a genuine Highland moderate, said to him after the service was over: “That was a very good sermon, I suppose, but it was quite unsuitable here; for you spoke all day to sinners, and I know only one in all my parish”.
Crossing the hills between Assynt and Lochbroom, his guide across the trackless moor was a girl just entering her teens. As they were parting at the journey’s end, he slowly and solemnly repeated the words, “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them”. Twenty years afterwards he was preaching at Contin during a communion season. After the sermon a woman greeted him and told him that she was the young girl who acted as his guide across the hills of Assynt, and that the words he had repeated to her on that occasion had made an abiding impression on her heart. Inquiring about her, he ascertained that she was regarded by all who knew her as a truly Christian woman.
He returned to Caithness in November and officiated as a missionary in the districts of Achreny and Halladale for six months. His first marriage took place in January 1806. He was ordained as a missionary minister at Berriedale in September 1806 and he laboured there till his translation to Edinburgh in January of the following year. While at Berriedale he continued to improve as a preacher, but did not even then excite very high expectations. He was greatly respected by the more judicious of his hearers, and was regarded as a servant of Christ by all, but none anticipated his future eminence.
Having received from the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge a presentation to the Gaelic Church in Edinburgh, he deemed it his duty to accept that charge. He left Berriedale in December 1806, and was inducted as minister of the Gaelic chapel in Edinburgh in January 1807. His father visited him at Berriedale on the eve of his departure, and helped him in preparing to leave. The day on which he left his humble home at Berriedale was very stormy; and as he was taking his last look at the cottage, its roof was lifted by the strength of the gale and strewn in fragments on the ground. His father turned to him and said, “John, I think it was high time to leave Berriedale!”
While in Edinburgh his work gradually increased, till at last his labours became excessive. Besides delivering two Gaelic discourses during the day, he preached an English sermon every Sabbath evening. Besides prayer meetings and district catechising, he delivered regularly a weekly lecture. As his fame was rising, demands for his services multiplied. He preached occasionally in Greenock, Port Glasgow, Dundee and Perth, and frequently in Glasgow and Stirling, where Highland regiments were stationed. There were blessed fruits of his preaching to the Highland soldiers. Not a few of them were converted to God through his sermons at that time, and when their regiments were disbanded they returned to their homes in the north, to labour in the service of the Lord and to live to His praise.
During the earlier portion of his ministry in Edinburgh he steadily visited his people. This was work in which he could easily excel. His cheerfulness, conciseness and punctuality enabled him to overtake an amount of visitation impossible but to a few, and to make it always pleasant and instructive.
He visited, on one occasion, a member of his congregation whose husband was a Roman Catholic. At the time, the man was lying apparently on his deathbed, and the minister was asked to speak to the sick man. He found him very exhausted, but it was owing to lack of food rather than to lack of health – the priest had administered extreme unction and forbidden him to taste food thereafter. The minister’s persuasion, backed by the sick man’s hunger, proved stronger than the priest’s authority. He was given food and was taking it when the priest came in. Indignant, and even furious, he moved forward to snatch the food from the sick man’s hand, but the broad shoulders of the Highland preacher were thrust between him and the bed; and the priest, after discharging a mouthful of curses at the heretic, sullenly withdrew when he became conscious of the muscles of his opponent. The man recovered and was a regular hearer ever after in the Gaelic church.
Macdonald passed through an important change during his time in Edinburgh. There is no record of his experience at that time, but there was abundant evidence that he had made a fresh start in the way of life. There
have been instances of persons becoming “other men” who were never new creatures in Christ, but there have been also instances of renewed men becoming other men under a fresh baptism of the Spirit. This was the change which Macdonald underwent in Edinburgh. It was soon apparent in his preaching.
Always clear and sound in his statements of objective truth, his preaching now became filled with life. It was now searching and fervent, as well as sound and lucid. Knowing the terror of the Lord as he did not know it before, he warned sinners in Zion with such faithfulness and power as excited the wonder and the awe of his hearers. His statements of gospel truth were now the warm utterances of one who deeply felt its power. The Lord’s people could now testify that he spoke from his own heart to theirs. His manner in the pulpit underwent a corresponding change. His action became most vehement, but it never seemed extravagant to any hearer who could sympathise with the views and feelings of the preacher. His melodious voice, though often very loud, was always under his control and was pleasant in all its tones. His sermons, always full of thought, bright with illustration, and teeming with feeling, were fitly delivered in the most unaffected and intensely earnest way.
So marked was the change which then passed over his preaching that many were led to judge that he had never preached the gospel till then. This is entirely a mistake. He preached the gospel in Berriedale as surely as in Edinburgh, though with far less unction, discrimination and power.
Soon after this change he visited his father in Caithness and preached in several places during his journey, exciting the astonishment of all who heard him. In Tain, on his return from Caithness, he was asked to preach by the local minister, Angus Mackintosh, and he at once agreed to do so and occupied his pulpit during all the services of the Sabbath. Being an utter stranger to the people he received but a cold welcome from them when he was seen mounting the pulpit stairs instead of their own revered minister.
There was present in church one who, on that day, had walked 16 miles, as he had often done before, to hear the great minister of Tain. He thus described his feelings on that occasion: “I was greatly disappointed on seeing Dr Mackintosh walking towards the manse seat and, instead of him, a smart-looking young man walking, as I thought, with too rapid progress and with too light a step, towards the pulpit. I felt at once as if the day was lost. I expected no good and shut up my heart against the youth who came in between me and my wonted Sabbath fare. He gave out the psalm. ‘You can’t spoil that at any rate’, I said to myself. The prayer began, but I scarcely heard the first part of it. Gradually my attention was attracted, but towards the manse seat I found my eye still wandering. Before the prayer was over I ceased to look away from the pulpit.
“When the sermon began I forgot all but the doctrine I was hearing. As he warmed up with his subject, the preacher became most vehement in his action; every eye was rivetted on the speaker, and suppressed sounds testified to the effect which his sermon was producing. His second discourse was so awe-inspiring that the audience became powerfully affected. Such was the awful solemnity of the doctrine and the vehemence of the preacher’s manner that I expected, before he was done, every heart would be pierced and that the very roof of the church would be rent.”