Rev A E W MacDonald (1)
When faithful watchmen are removed from their posts on the walls of Zion, the Church has a duty to remember them as those who have spoken the Word of God, and to follow their faith, “considering the end of their conversation. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever” (Heb 13:7,8). Rev Alfred MacDonald was an eminently vigilant and able watchman upon the walls of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and in this obituary, we endeavour to keep fresh the memory of his life and labours among us.
He was born in the year 1926 in Oban, amidst the rolling green hills of Argyll and by the beautiful Firth of Lorn, overlooking the mountains of Mull. Upon these same mountains the simple but godly Ewen Cameron gazed on his last night on earth, and exclaimed, “Is not the world which God created beautiful? But what is good for me is that I have found Christ in it.” Alfred MacDonald was named after a wealthy English gentleman, Alfred Ebenezer Wenham, who then resided in Kilbowie House, a baronial mansion overlooking the Island of Kerrera just outside Oban. Wenham became a member of the Free Presbyterian Church and showed much kindness to the MacDonald family and to others in the Oban Congregation. His grandson was the well-known Biblical scholar, John Wenham, who authored a standard textbook on The Elements of New Testament Greek.
Alfred MacDonald’s father and mother were faithful Free Presbyterians who feared God above many. His father, John, was an elder in the Oban congregation and was raised on the Island of Mull. John MacDonald’s own father, Allan, originally from the Isle of Barra, was brought up by relatives on the tiny Island of Muck, part of the Inner Hebrides to the north of Mull. Having run away to sea as a teenager, the Lord called him by irresistible grace and he became a follower of the Lamb through good and evil report. He cast in his lot with the Free Presbyterian Church after its formation in 1893, and held the office of Deacon in the Oban Congregation when he came to settle there with his family. Both Allan and John MacDonald were noted for their
godliness, and had such a zeal for the honour of Christ and His day that they became known for their reproofs against open Sabbath-breakers.
Alfred MacDonald’s mother, Jessie, was a woman of eminent piety. She was one of a large family of Frasers who grew up at Seanlios, a farm in Clunes, part of the Kirkhill area west of Inverness. Her father, Alexander Fraser, was a gracious man who was known to travel by foot over the hills and across Loch Ness by boat to attend communion seasons at places such as Stratherrick. Jessie came under the power of the Word while still in her teenage years. During that period she heard Rev J R Mackay preaching in the Inverness church on: “My head is filled with dew, and My locks with the drops of the night” (Song of Solomon 5:2), and being so overcome with the power of the truth on her soul, she had to be carried out of the church. It was not till quite some years afterwards that she believed she had come to the liberty of the gospel. She made a public profession of faith in Glasgow under Rev Neil Cameron. She proved herself to be a lover of the Lord’s people and often the busy family home in Oban would be full of visitors at communion seasons. A particularly close spiritual bond was formed between herself and the late Rev Donald MacLean, Glasgow, who ever after spoke of her with the warmest affection and highest regard.
But returning to the subject of this obituary, Alfred MacDonald grew up in a home permeated with godliness, and under the saintly ministries of Rev D A Macfarlane, and his successor Rev Donald Beaton. Gospel privileges, however, do not in themselves bring grace and cannot without the accompanying power of the Holy Spirit overcome the dominion of sin. Thus he grew up, like all the fallen sons of Adam, as careless and independent as a wild ass’s colt. Speaking for one of the first times at a fellowship meeting many years after, he concluded by saying that he had to confess that these words in Lamentations were true of himself, “They that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills” (Lam 4:5). Naturally fearless and strong-willed, he ran on in a course of rebellion against God, though preserved from any scandalous outbreaking of sin.
While in his late teens, the conversion of one of his older brothers, Fraser, proved to be the means of awakening him to a concern for the salvation of his own soul, and a desire to possess “like precious faith”. His mother read out in his hearing a letter from Fraser, detailing the Lord’s saving work in his soul under the ministry of Rev D A Macfarlane while residing and working at the old family farm in Clunes. The instant he heard these tidings he came to see that nothing else would do for him henceforth but to have what his brother had. Incidentally, this afterwards proved to be an occasion for the accuser of the brethren to assault him with the temptation that it was only
natural emotion and not true spiritual concern which led him to begin to seek a Saviour. Others have had such a temptation, as pictured by John Bunyan in The Pilgrim’s Progress, where Mercy in seeking entrance to the wicket gate was afraid and confessed, “I am come for that unto which I was never invited, as my friend Christiana was. Hers was from the King, and mine was but from her. Wherefore I fear I presume.”
However, the truth of God took hold of Alfred MacDonald from this time forward, and especially the words of the call given to Abraham to come out of Ur of the Chaldees: “Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee” (Gen 12:1). He would recall how in his experience, when these words would speak to him as they often did, they were always accompanied with the call in metrical Psalm 45, “O daughter, hearken and regard, and do thine ear incline, Likewise forget thy father’s house, and people that are thine”. A period of deep soul exercise followed, sinking at times to a fear that he had sinned the unpardonable sin, and that therefore there was no mercy for him.
When the time came for higher education, in Glasgow, he pursued the line of mathematics and business, as well as Spanish. He was only in Glasgow for around a year before he was called up into the army to join the war effort. During his year there he had frequent opportunity to hear Rev Roderick Mackenzie, who was then minister of the St Jude’s congregation, and whose preaching made a deep impression upon him. With the Second World War raging, he began service with the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME), and spent some years stationed in the southeast of England. For a while he attended one of the local Strict Baptist chapels. He spoke of one particular night there when the Word was with great power and sweetness in his experience, so much so that on the way home he felt compelled to dismount from his bicycle and to turn aside into a field to pour out his heart in gratitude to the Lord. Indeed, it is likely that this experience was his coming to the liberty of the gospel.
One Sabbath, when presumably he was not free to travel to the Strict Baptist chapel, he was in a quandary as to whether or not to attend the preaching of the army padre. His decision to attend was not regretted as he received a rich blessing that day under the padre’s preaching on “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten” (Joel 2:25), and often afterwards he continued to find great encouragement from these words. His desire was to be able to attend regularly the Free Presbyterian services in London under Rev J P MacQueen. He requested permission from a senior military officer to be allowed to travel to London for the weekend in order to
worship there. Suspicious of the motives of a young man seeking freedom to be in London every weekend, the officer refused the request. Needless to say, the expedient of using public transport run in systematic disregard of God’s holy day never entered his mind. However, the Lord was to open the door for the young soldier to have the desire of his heart.
After some time, all the soldiers in the barracks were given a special reward of a free ticket to the theatre in London one Friday or Saturday evening. Alfred MacDonald, having been weaned from the vanities of the world and alive to their deadly poison, refused the offer. The senior officer who had before refused him the permission to travel to London every weekend, heard of his principled refusal of a night’s free amusement there, and was so impressed that he soon approached him to give him full permission to travel to London every weekend, leaving on Saturday and returning on Monday morning. Thus began his acquaintance with Rev J P MacQueen, under whose ministry he now sat, and in whose manse at Battersea Park, London, he used to stay during his weekend visits to London. To the end of his days, Alfred MacDonald held Rev J P MacQueen in the highest esteem. His love to the long-departed saint had obviously not perished with Mr MacQueen’s death, and he delighted to regale the Lord’s people with striking and valuable quotes from him. One such quotation which he would repeat was Mr MacQueen’s persuasion that in prayer we may take everything to the Lord “from the inconceivably vast to the infinitesimally small”.
During these war years in London, he also came to form a close and lasting friendship with Duncan MacSween, Glasgow, who was then also a young man in London who had recently set out on his way Zionward. A close bond was also formed with Jan van Woerdan, a young Dutchman working for the Dutch Embassy in London, who attended the Free Presbyterian services in London and was awakened to a concern for eternity under Rev J P MacQueen’s preaching. Their paths would later intertwine at different stages of their lives.
It was during his time as a soldier that he was led to take the solemn step of making a public profession of faith in the Divine Redeemer. Upon his release from the services in 1948 he resumed a course of academic studies which led to him graduating with an MA degree from Edinburgh University. He was in Edinburgh for three years, where he had the privilege of the last years of Rev Neil Macintyre’s ministry, and the first year of Rev Donald Campbell’s. Having undertaken teacher training in Moray House, Edinburgh, he now pursued a career teaching mathematics. His first post was at Wick High School in 1951, placing him under the ministry of Rev R R Sinclair, Wick. It was here that he was first prevailed upon to speak in public, when
Mr Sinclair asked him to take the services in Thurso. During the long summer holidays, he would spend the weeks at the family home in Oban and would sometimes be asked to conduct public worship.
After four years in Wick, he took up a new teaching post at the Nicolson Institute in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis. His brother Fraser was then the Free Presbyterian minister of North Tolsta, and another brother, Iain, also resided on the Island, teaching at the same school. Alfred MacDonald was popular among his pupils, but his zeal for the truth and refusal to compromise with error came to be well known in the school and further afield. Sometimes his minister, Rev James Tallach (senior), asked him to take services and it is known that at least one hearer received a blessing for eternity under his preaching there. It was during his time in Stornoway that he began to wrestle in earnest with the call to the ministry. It is possible that he had been led to wonder whether he was called to the ministry prior to this, because while in Wick he had studied for a Bachelor of Divinity degree.
After two years in Lewis, he came forward desiring to study for the ministry, constrained by the divine call. Having been accepted, he began his divinity studies in Portree, Isle of Skye, under Rev Donald MacLean who was then in his first year as the Church’s Systematic Theology tutor. His fellow students were the future Revs Alexander Morrison, Donald B Macleod and John Martin. Mr Martin’s ministry was sadly very brief, being cut short by his death after only four years. But a lifelong bond of brotherly love and mutual respect was formed between Mr MacDonald and his fellow students.
His course of divinity studies was to take a rather unusual turn. Before the first academic year had been completed, he was asked to go out to the Church’s mission in Zimbabwe, upon the occasion of the death, on 28 March 1959, of Rev James Fraser, who had been labouring with much acceptance as a missionary there. Rev Donald MacLean, the then Clerk of the Foreign Mission Committee was, it seems, the inspiration behind the suggestion. It is likely that this unusual step took account of his previous private studies in the biblical languages while studying for his Bachelor of Divinity degree. To this proposal he agreed, and some further studies were undertaken with Rev Malcolm MacSween in his home town of Oban, including Pastoral Theology, Church Law, and the Confession of Faith.
The Jewish and Foreign Missions Committee noted their appreciation of this arrangement: “The Committee is much indebted to Mr MacDonald for his willingness to step in and help in the difficult circumstances which have arisen due to the lamented death of the late Rev J S Fraser. Mr MacDonald himself is a fully-trained and experienced teacher and his going out to the Mission will be a great encouragement to our staff there, who are being very
much over-worked as they do their utmost to serve the needs of the Africans.”2 The Synod meeting in May 1959 granted the crave of the petition of the Outer Isles Presbytery to ordain him before he went abroad. He was licensed on 21 July 1959, and was ordained to the ministry the following day in Stornoway, with Rev James Tallach (senior) preaching the ordination sermon on 2 Corinthians 4:14, “for the love of Christ constraineth us”.
After the necessary arrangements were made for the journey, he sailed to Africa early in August of that year, arriving safely on the twentieth of the same month to commence his labours at Ingwenya. His old London friend, Jan van Woerden was now labouring in medical work on the Mission, so that their acquaintance was renewed. During 1960, Mr MacDonald conducted the ordination service on the occasion of Mr van Woerden being ordained to the office of elder.
Fresh opportunities arose to preach to those outside the Church, and to compel “the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind” to come to the gospel feast. Only six miles from the Ingwenya mission there was a “vagrant’s camp”, housing unemployed men. These men had rioted on several occasions, attacking the guards who were over them. Jan van Woerden had gained access to speak at the camp, and he addressed them from John 8:36, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed”. These poor detainees gave a warm welcome, and begged to be addressed again. Accordingly, Mr MacDonald went on a subsequent Sabbath and preached the glad tidings of great joy that “this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”. The opportunity was taken to distribute copies of the Gospels in their own tongue.3
In addition to the core work of the gospel ministry, Mr MacDonald also took a lead role in the School at Ingwenya and even taught some mathematics classes. This brought him into close contact with the pupils at the School. He was a firm disciplinarian, enforcing high standards of behaviour in and out of school hours. But it was the preaching of the gospel which was ever uppermost in his mind and affections. During his first spell in Africa, he had one particularly memorable experience in preaching. It was at a Zenka communion and he preached the action sermon in the open air amidst the warmth and sunshine of the African summer on Song of Solomon 2:1, “I am the Rose of Sharon, and the Lily of the Valleys”. It seems he was anointed with the unction of heaven that day and could join the Psalmist in saying, “My head Thou dost with oil anoint, and my cup overflows”. At least one poor sinner, David Ndlovu, was drawn that day to the beauty of Sharon’s Rose,
2The Free Presbyterian Magazine, vol 64, p 94.
3The Free Presbyterian Magazine, vol 65, p 370.
and afterwards became a much valued elder in the Church, and was noted for his zeal and godliness.
When the late Rev Alasdair B MacLean was zealously labouring in Ingwenya many decades afterwards, he found that the older people could still recall, and loved to speak about, the sermons they heard from Mr MacDonald’s lips during these years. He also told the story of how he asked one old woman in his congregation, an established member in the Church for many years, how she had first come to the church. She replied that she was not brought up in the Church but one day Mr MacDonald was visiting her village and he saw her carrying a little infant without any blanket for warmth and protection. Obviously touched at the indigence of this poor woman, he later returned with a blanket for the infant and directed the woman to give attendance to the needs of her soul by beginning to attend the services of the Church. She did so from then on and, decades later, three generations of her family were also in attendance with her. Most importantly, she had apparently found Christ for her soul under the preaching of the Word.
(Rev) I D MacDonald