Robert MacDougall
1. Turned to Serve the Living God
The story of the “Highland Kitchenmaid” – with the prayers, “Show me myself”, and, “Show me Thyself” – has had a very wide circulation, but the respected instrument of the Badenoch girl’s conversion is to most readers little more than a shadowy name. The writer of this sketch often heard, in infancy, anecdotes about MacPhail from someone whose father knew the devoted pastor and evangelist.
MacPhail was born in Inverness in 1716. He studied at the University of Aberdeen. At the time of the Battle of Culloden he was a student in divinity, and he was licensed by the Presbytery of Inverness to preach the gospel on 20 December 1746. For some months he preached as a probationer in vacant parishes around Inverness. Resolis parish is in the Black Isle, Ross-shire, which is separated from Inverness-shire by a ferry crossing of more than half-a-mile. It lies, in a straight line, 15 miles north-east of Inverness. This parish became vacant in July 1747 through the death of Thomas Inglis, who had laboured there with much diligence and success for 32 years. MacPhail had preached repeatedly in the vacant parish with such acceptance that he was called by the unanimous voice of the people to be their pastor, and he was ordained over them on 22 September 1748.
But for seven long years, his ministry proved unedifying. “The hungry sheep looked up and were not fed.” The elders and others in the congregation soon found out that they had merely an amiable formalist for a minister of the gospel, and they “spoke often one to another” and to God at prayer-meetings for the conversion of their blind leader. These private conferences for prayer were by no means satisfactory to the self-righteous pastor.
In 1755 he married Elizabeth Balfour, the pious daughter of the worthy minister of the nearby parish of Nigg. She was not long in the manse of Resolis before she perceived, to her sorrow, that she was unequally yoked with one who had only a name to live. Within a few miles of her there lived the famous John Porteous, of Kilmuir. He was the grandson of one of Cromwell’s Ironsides who had settled in Inverness. This famous minister had been labouring with great success at Kilmuir for 21 years, and his ministry had been much blessed to Elizabeth MacPhail before her marriage.
One Sabbath morning she told her husband that her soul was starving and that she must go to hear Porteous. Her intense anxiety overcame all MacPhail’s opposition, and he accompanied her for more than a mile on the way. She arrived at the manse of Kilmuir, some time before service, and her friend Porteous asked, in surprise, what her errand could be. At once she replied that she was hungering for that bread of life, which her poor husband could not supply. Porteous sympathised greatly with her in her sorrowful situation and, after some time spent in prayer in his study, rejoined her and said, “If I am not much mistaken, you will not long have the same reason for leaving your own church, for I expect that the Lord will soon give you, by the hand of your husband, the very finest of the wheat”.
So it turned out. That very morning, in returning home, after parting with his wife, MacPhail was pricked at the heart. His eyes were opened and, as he taught the maid in his well-known prayer, he began to see himself. “My people”, he sobbed out in secret, “have been long sick of the husks I have been offering them from the pulpit, and now my dearly loved wife has to go to another parish for spiritual nourishment.” Overwhelmed in spirit, he retired to a neighbouring wood to pray. The hour for preaching arrived, but the minister could not be found. One of the elders at length, attracted probably by the groanings of the prisoner, came on his hiding-place, but he firmly refused to go to the pulpit. Many days and nights of sore anguish of soul passed over him. MacPhail was led by the Spirit into the same fiery furnace of conviction that Luther passed through in his monastery, and Bunyan at Elstow.
At length, despairing of relief, and refusing to be comforted, he resolved to resign his office. Near him, on the opposite side of the Cromarty Firth, lived the famous, godly theologian, James Fraser of Alness2. MacPhail asked him to cross over to Resolis and intimate his resignation from the ministry publicly before the assembled congregation. Fraser, who knew so well the soul-cutting convictions and sore anguish of his neighbour, complied readily with the request to preach on the day assigned. He decided to make no intimation of the resignation, as he hoped soon to see his distressed brother compassed with songs of deliverance. He came as a Barnabas in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ.
The large audience present was deeply moved, but none so much as the long-despairing minister. His bonds were loosed. Starting up to his feet, his eyes streaming with tears, and his hands stretched out towards his honoured brother in the pulpit, he exclaimed, “My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof”. This exclamation was instantly followed by the sobbing of the people. Fraser paused for some minutes until the emotion had somewhat subsided. Then, addressing his weeping brother, he asked, “Do you still persist in your resolution to resign?” “No, no,” he replied; “I adopted that resolution hastily.” “But”, he prayed, “help me, my Father in heaven.” He added, “I resolve in His name and strength to devote myself to His service, in soul and body, mind and spirit”. For a period of three years afterwards, scarcely a Sabbath passed in Resolis without one or more being brought under saving impressions of divine truth.
2He was the author of an admirable and often-reprinted treatise on Sanctification.
Fraser remained all night at the manse. Next day, full of hope and gladness, MacPhail accompanied him to the Alness ferry. On his way back, he called at the house of one of his elders, who had long wrestled in private for a blessing on his distressed minister. The elder now asked, “What news today?” “Good news”, said the minister; “Hector MacPhail is not to preach to you any more.” The elder sadly replied, “Ah, other and better news I looked for”. “No,” said the minister, “Hector MacPhail is not to preach any more, but the Spirit of God is to preach to you through him.” “O that is good news indeed,” cried the elder in an ecstasy of joy.
MacPhail, having passed through the fiery ordeal mentioned, became one of the foremost evangelists of the north of Scotland. His heart on fire with the love of Christ, eternity ever in view, and “conscious of his solemn charge”, he decided henceforth to spend and be spent in his Master’s service. In the anguish of his soul, he had vowed that, if God would give him deliverance, he would never meet or pass a human being without talking to him or her about “the one thing needful”. And by the grace of God he was enabled in a marvellous manner to pay the vow which his lips uttered, and his mouth spoke, when he was in trouble.
Donald Sage was a successor of MacPhail as minister of Resolis. He wrote, “Hector MacPhail was a man of primitive simplicity, fervent piety, and most eminently successful in his ministerial labours. He resolved never to meet any of his parishioners – or indeed any individual whatever, whether high or low, young or old – without opening up to them, and pressing on their consideration, the ministry of reconciliation with which he was entrusted. He had the happy talent of doing so in an impressive manner. Many people still living in the parish, but now very old men, recollect well the very words of those solemn and affectionate exhortations which this eminent man of God addressed to them when children.” It was when MacPhail was on his way to the General Assembly of the Scottish Church, a journey of nearly 200 miles – and while passing the night at the Inn of Baldow, near Kingussie – that he fell in with the Highland Kitchenmaid.
On a similar occasion, when riding to Edinburgh, on the highway between Inverness and Perth, the carriage conveying the judge who was to hold the Circuit Court at Inverness came in sight. He signalled to the coachman to stop. Saluting the judge, he said in respectful and impressive tones: “My lord, you are on your way to preside at criminal trials that may issue in sentences of death. May I beg of your lordship to remember that there is a higher Judge before whom you and I must one day stand to await acquittal or condemnation?” So far from being annoyed at the interruption, the judge was very pleased and impressed with the kindly manner and appropriate remarks of the stranger. Knowing that he was on his way to the Assembly, he cordially asked him to put up at his house during his 10 days’ sojourn in Edinburgh, an invitation which was cheerfully accepted. The judge became warmly attached to him. In later years, when he met someone from the east of Ross-shire, he was in the habit of asking, “And how is my worthy friend, Mr MacPhail?”
A well-known grey pony carried the evangelist on his rounds over the badly constructed roads of those days. Often, in pastoral visitations of his parish, he would order the pony to be saddled, he would drop the reins over its neck and he would allow the animal to proceed at its will. At the door where the pony stopped, the minister would dismount, enter the house, read and expound the Scriptures, and pray with the family and neighbours. Remounting, he would proceed in the same manner, as the pony carried him, to another cottage, farm or hamlet, and engage in similar exhortations and prayer. Of course the minister, like Abraham’s servant, was devoutly praying, “Send me good speed this day”. And the pony was the unconscious instrument of bearing the gospel message to homes that needed it most. The reader may perhaps recall other instances in which holy men in indecision (sometimes in danger) have given loose rein to the horses on which they rode, as they commended their cause to God in prayer; and “being in the way, the Lord led”, prospered and blessed them.
On a certain occasion, when some parishioners met at the manse, he rose somewhat abruptly and went to the stable for his pony. The animal went on for about a mile with loose rein, and stopped at a deep pool surrounded by a wood. There, at the edge, the minister noticed a woman in a state of intense agitation; she seemed to be preparing to fling herself into the depth below her feet. When he asked what she was doing there, she wildly replied, “O I am to drown myself, because for me there is no hope here or hereafter”. “Stop,” said MacPhail; “whence are you come?” “From Alness.” “And are there no pools in Alness?” “O I could not bear the idea of bringing on the parish of so holy a minister as Mr Fraser the disgrace of my suicide.” “And, wretched woman that you are, do you propose to bring that black stigma on my parish?”
Then, addressing her in tones of pitying sympathy, he asked her to follow him to his house. In her forlorn condition, she consented. No one was better fitted to administer balm to a wounded conscience than MacPhail, and his words spoken in season were soon remarkably blessed to a soul tempted almost to distraction. Next morning she returned to her home, rejoicing in the bright dawn of deliverance. She was the bearer of a letter to her minister, in which MacPhail congratulated him on the high favour shown to Alness parish: The devil was not permitted to cause desperate sinners to destroy themselves there. Would-be suicides had to cross over to Resolis to carry out their fearful purposes. At once Fraser wrote back: “How much greater the honour and blessing conferred by the Head of the Church on Resolis! Those who left Alness purposing self-destruction have returned from your parish in the joy and peace of salvation.” The woman thus remarkably rescued from ruin proved in after life a worthy and exemplary Christian.
One of MacPhail’s best and most-loved ministerial friends was James Calder, of Croy, a church and parish 16 miles south of Resolis. There is undoubted testimony that Calder “was of gentle manners, great humility, extensive charity, fervent piety, combined with unwearied diligence and zeal in his office”. Visiting Calder on one occasion, “MacPhail found him greatly distressed that a respectable farmer in the neighbourhood, whose wife had become violently insane, had determined to consult the Romish priest at Strathglass (many miles distant) in the expectation that he could remove her disease. (A stupid delusion still lingers in some parts of the Highlands that priests can cure epilepsy!) Both ministers visited the farmer, and attempted to dissuade him from his purpose.
“Failing in this, they went in to the farmhouse to offer such consolations as were in their power, and it led to a request that MacPhail should offer up prayer on behalf of the sufferer, which was done with even more than his usual fervour and earnestness; in which he used the following language: ‘O Thou who art three times holy, I implore Thee not to allow me to rise from my knees, should they rot to the earth, until thou makest it visibly known here that there is a God in Israel’ (see 2 Kings 1:3). The prayer was speedily answered; before the pious and good man rose from his knees, the patient was loosened from her bonds, and so calmed and restored that she sat up and conversed with him and the others in a sound mind, giving glory to God.”
To no Scottish minister could the words, “The zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up”, be more appropriately applied. The population of Resolis was then about 2000, and for their conversion “he travailed in birth”. As one expecting to give an account of his ministry, he watched for souls. His manse for some time after his conversion was in full view of that of Alness, and in the long winter nights he used to sit up studying and praying until he saw a light kindled in the study of his laborious friend. Tradition has it that the hearts of both ministers were so “knit together in love” and zeal and sense of responsibility that they agreed thus to divide the night. And so one of them could always be found wrestling for a blessing on both parishes.
MacPhail used to pray in public that not a single soul within the bounds of the parish would become the prey of the devil. To his elders, worthy and prayerful men though they were, such a petition seemed unreasonably large, and on one occasion they ventured to remonstrate. His calm, meek reply was, “Nothing short of the fulfilment of the comprehensive petition you complain of will satisfy me”. Perhaps, as a worthy friend remarked, “it may have been granted according to his faith”. Anyhow, towards the close of his wonderfully blessed ministry, the parish seemed, to competent judges, “like a well-watered garden”, fenced, cultivated and planted. Some hamlets were as Bethels, and there was not a house in the parish but was believed to contain one or more trophies of Divine grace adorning the gospel in life, conduct and conversation. What a sad change has come over this “garden enclosed” since then!