Passing Milestones, by Rev John MacLeod, published by Reformation Press, paperback, 199 pages, £8.40; may be obtained from the F P Bookroom.
This book contains the New Year pastoral letters that the Rev John MacLeod sent to the congregations of which he was the pastor over a period of 50 years. Mr MacLeod was called to the Stornoway Congregation, and ordained and inducted there on 30 December 1969. The congregation had been vacant since the Rev Donald Malcolm Macleod’s translation to Auckland the previous year. Thus began a pastorate that was to last for almost 34 years until he was called to the London Congregation. Some were doubtful whether Mr Macleod after such a long ministry in Stornoway, and then aged 74, would even consider leaving Lewis. However, Edward Greene and Jessie MacLean and others were zealous that he be given a call to London. There was rejoicing in the London Congregation when he accepted the call.
The induction on 25 June 2004 was held at Grove Chapel in Camberwell, when Rev Donald MacLean, Glasgow, preached from 2 Timothy 2:15, ‘Study to show thyself approved of God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth’. Mr MacLeod retired from the London pastorate in 2020 after a 16-year ministry in the English capital.
At the New Year of 1978 he began sending pastoral letters to his congregation. Mr Macleod’s purpose was to assure the congregation of his “continuing care for them and with the hope that the letters would be of spiritual benefit to those into whose hands they came”. With the exception of four years, this volume contains the pastoral letters from 1978 to 2021. In his foreword, he explains his thinking in reprinting this series of letters as a book: “It is hoped that, both now, and in time to come, there will be found in them a ‘word in season’ by which some weary pilgrim or sojourner will be encouraged to persevere and press on until, passing milestone after milestone, that destination is reached ‘where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest’.”
The reviewer, as an assessor elder in the London Congregation, received these letters during Mr. MacLeod’s ministry in England. In re-reading them in this collected form, among the very many matters with which he deals, several stand out as of abiding value to all our congregations.
The nearness of eternity.
Practically all the letters stress the passing of time, the nearness of eternity and the urgent need for young and old to know the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour. Typical of the emphasis is his exhortation to the Stornoway congregation in 1988, “The passing of a day or even a week, in close succession, seldom reminds us of our progress to our destination. The close of one year, however, and the beginning of another can hardly fail to move us to reflect on how swift our advance is to the point of our departure from time and our entrance into eternity, to give our account to God for all the deeds done in the body. Experience reveals to us how true it is that ‘man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble’. “These ‘few days’, a good man once wrote, ‘are all the working days that ever we shall have. Let this be a spur to diligence and to duty. In heaven there is nothing but rest; and in hell, though there be no rest, yet there is no labour. In hell there is nothing but wages, and in heaven there is nothing but reward; our whole work lies in the few days which are on this side of both. We stand now upon our ‘inch of time’ looking into the ‘abysses of eternity’ and oh! how much depends on how we occupy ourselves while we are still there.”
In 1992 he reminded the Stornoway people of a scroll he had seen on the wall in one of the houses at the Ingwenya Mission in Zimbabwe, “Only one life, / ‘Twill soon be past. Only what’s done / For Christ will last.” A repeated observation was that “the period of time between Christ’s first coming to die on a cross, in the room and stead of the guilty, and His second coming to sit on a great white throne in order to judge the world in righteousness has now been reduced by yet another year”.
The Free Presbyterian testimony.
The first pastoral letter refers to the “goodly heritage” we have as Free Presbyterians and it is an emphasis that continues during the years. He urges his congregations to walk in the paths of godliness, in which our forebears walked in opposition to worldliness, to read their Bibles, to maintain family worship. He asserts that every home should have a copy of The Westminster Confession of Faith; that Free Presbyterians should be known for their witness regarding Sabbath-keeping and purity of worship.
Addressing his London congregation in 2011 he writes, “While fully aware of imperfections and blemishes, we yet believe that there is no other church in Christendom that comes as near to the apostolic pattern as the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland does. The present Free Church of Scotland came into being in 1900 when a remnant was not prepared to enter into the ill-conceived union with the United Presbyterians. From the outset, our discerning founding fathers saw that there were elements within it that prevented them from entering into union with it, however numerous its overtures to do so were. Their wisdom in so acting is now fully justified when the Free Church has now sanctioned the use of instrumental music and hymns of human composition in the conduct of public worship within its bounds. Let us seek grace to be faithful, that we may hand on to others that which we received unimpaired from those who have gone before us.”
Concern for the rising generation.
Throughout his ministry, Mr MacLeod had a tender concern for young people. We cite two examples 38 years apart. The first to Stornoway in 1978, “We are happy to have so many children in our midst. The Sabbath school is well attended and we are grateful to the teachers for their work and labour of love. ‘No one’, says Spurgeon, ‘knows the age of the youngest child in hell and therefore none can guess at what age children become capable of conversion. We at least can bear our testimony to the fact that grace operates in some minds at a period almost too early for recollection. Nor let it be imagined that the feelings of the young are slight and superficial. They are frequently of the deepest character. The early wounds of the Saviour are made upon hearts not yet rendered callous by worldliness and sensuality.” Then addressing his London congregation in 2016 he writes, “We would lovingly remind the children among us, yet again, that the Lord Jesus said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto Me’, and that He took them up in His arms and blessed them. To teenagers and the young men and women we commend the example of Josiah, who, while he was yet young, began to seek after the God of his father David. Peer pressure, we know, can be intense, but we urge them to resist, to attend the church services with their parents, and hearken to Him who exhorts, ‘Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil’.”
Faithfulness.
In Rev Lachlan MacLeod’s Training of the Ministry Report for the 1969 Synod, besides indicating that Mr MacLeod had passed his exit examinations, completed his theological course and was ready to be taken on trials for licence by his Presbytery, he also stated that there were 14 men on the Training of the Ministry Committee’s roll of students.1 It is rather sobering to realise that of those 14 students only five continue as, or died as, Free Presbyterian ministers. Eight of the other nine left the Church, many of them becoming leaders in the APC secession in 1989. Mr MacLeod has continued through these years as a stalwart defender of the Biblical principles underlying our Church’s testimony, much of which is included in the pages of this book.
We thank Mr MacLeod for compiling these letters and Dr R J Dickie of Reformation Press for publishing them. We enthusiastically recommend the book to all our readers with the prayer that you will be blessed by reading it, as was the reviewer.
Roy Middleton
1Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland: Proceedings of Synod May 1969, p 133.