2. Some Fruits of His Work
Robert MacDougall
This noted evangelist’s grey pony was well known over a wide district of the Highlands. Taught by its master, the docile animal soon learned to halt of its own accord in approaching or passing any person on the highway. After MacPhail’s death, the pony became the property of a very different master. Still it would insist on stopping as before on the way, and the irritated owner soon exchanged it for a more pliant animal. The pony would have suited the Welsh evangelist, Thomas Charles of Bala, who in those days seemed to have received part of the mantle of the departing northern pastor and to have unweariedly preached Christ, not in the pulpit alone, but in the schools, in the huts, and on the highways and wild mountains. If Charles met a poor man or woman on the road, he would stop his horse and ask, “Can you read the Bible?” So he soon became known everywhere by this practice.
MacPhail was ever most anxious that the young would be led to the Saviour and never lost an opportunity of teaching them to pray. On one occasion he prayed by the bedside of a young boy, Barrington Ferguson, who was seriously ill. As he was leaving the room, he said very earnestly to the youth, “Be you much in prayer, and you will one day be in a lovely place beyond the sun”. The little boy recovered. He became in time a worthy and devout elder, fruitful in old age, and lived until 1850, when he soared into the land that is brighter than the sun.
Passing idle herd boys, MacPhail would draw them to his side, and many were the kindly methods he would use in order to adapt the truth to the capacity of the young and ignorant. Sometimes he would offer a silver coin on condition that the youngster should form habits of prayer in future.
He took into his own service a herd boy whose religious education had been sadly neglected. On being asked if he was in the habit of praying, the boy excused himself by pleading that he did not know what to say in prayer. His master at once replied, “Is there nothing that you stand in need of? Whatever need you feel, just make that the subject of prayer.” Then he quietly told one of the servants to listen to the boy’s attempts to pray. The boy was soon in a quiet corner on his knees. He had no shoes, rather a common want in those days, for poor parents ruled that the first shoes worn by their children should be purchased by their own youthful earnings. Then the boy’s porridge, it seems, was cold when he came in hungry to breakfast from herding animals. These wants he audibly expressed, in simple but earnest Gaelic expressions. The boy’s grievances were reported to his master, and they were at once attended to.
A day or two after that, MacPhail, in his usual earnest, kindly manner, asked the boy how he was getting on. With boyish glee he replied, “O so nicely; I never was so well off as now; whatever I need, I have only to put it in the prayer, and I find it very quickly given me”. This was the happy opportunity for which the pastor waited. He taught the boy that he had a soul, that was neglected, guilty, starving; and he showed him how to pray for better things than those bodily comforts that perish with the using. Henceforth the attention of the boy was turned to the more pressing necessities of the soul. Awakened by the Holy Spirit to a sense of his sin and misery, he was led in a day of power to a saving interest in Christ Jesus.
The story of Luke Heywood is well known, but a brief account of the conversion of one who became afterwards an honoured witness for the truth, and a successful labourer in Christ’s vineyard, may appropriately be given here. Fort George lies on the seashore between Inverness and Nairn, on a point jutting out into the Moray Firth. It was built in the middle of the eighteenth century at a cost of £200 900, and it contains accommodation for nearly 3000 troops. Beneath its formidable-looking walls there is a ferry crossing about a mile broad. The boats are stationed on the opposite side from Fort George and cross for passengers in response to a signal. There booths were erected for the convenience of the military for the sale of country produce.
One afternoon, MacPhail was returning home from the east coast, and from the Fort George ferry lay the direct route northward to Resolis, nine miles distant. As he waited with his faithful pony for the ferry boat, a profane soldier, whose name was Luke Heywood, a private in an English regiment stationed in the Fort, came out to the wooden booths to purchase meat and asked the price of a leg of mutton lying on the table. On being told the charge, the godless soldier invoked damnation on his own soul if he ever paid that price for the joint. But the butcher would not give way, and much loud wrangling ended in the soldier accepting in full the original demand.
MacPhail was all the while standing nearby and was greatly shocked at the profanity of the purchaser. As Luke Heywood turned in the direction of the Fort entrance, the minister greeted him kindly. MacPhail entered into conversation with him and remarked, “What a fine leg of mutton you have got there!” “Yes,” was the reply, “and was it not cheap?” “What, may I ask, did you pay for it?” “So much,” said the soldier. “No! You are mistaken. I, in waiting for the boat, overheard the bargain. You prayed that God might damn your soul if you gave the figure you have just named. Know you not that you have thrown away your immortal soul for that piece of meat?” And now the way was opened for those solemn warnings and appeals which the devoted pastor was so pre-eminently skillful in addressing to the conscience. At length, bidding the saddened soldier farewell, MacPhail stepped into the ferry boat, which had by this time reached the pebbly beach.
“The words of the wise are as goads”, and they pierced Luke Heywood to the heart. As he returned to the barracks, a tumult of emotion swept over his stricken soul. He tried hard, but could not shake off his convictions. The doom of a lost soul was thundering louder in his ears than all the cannonry of the Fort. At length, agonized in soul, he hurried out to where the ferry came to the shore, and asked for the gentleman with the grey pony. Of course he was told at once that the person he inquired after was the well-known minister of Resolis, who by this time was well on his way home. Then, in his agitation, he said he must hasten after him and, making some inquiries as to the way, he leaped into the ferry boat, now leaving for another passage of the Firth.
Arrived at the north side, Heywood hastened over the heath-covered ridge that separates Rosemarkie parish from Resolis. Towards evening he arrived at the manse door and anxiously asked for the minister, who gave him a most cordial welcome. What a change the sword of the Lord had produced on the careless soldier, “piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit”! What cries from the depths were now rising up in one who had bartered his soul “for one morsel of meat”! But what a mercy for the wounded soldier to be under the treatment of so skilful an under-physician. MacPhail’s study was a veritable spiritual doctor’s surgery, and very many were the cases of wounded consciences that were successfully treated there. Three days the soldier remained at the manse, days of concentrated agony, such as Saul passed at Damascus. All that tradition has handed down in regard to those days of soul-conflict is MacPhail’s remark: “Poor Luke Heywood in three days passed through those depths in which I sank and struggled for so many long months”.
His deliverance out of the horrible pit was very remarkable, and deep was the joy of this sincere convert on experiencing, with power, that the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin. With a heart yearning over him with parental affection, MacPhail parted with this “brand plucked out of the fire”. I can fancy the rapturous melody with which they both sang Psalm 126: “When Zion’s bondage God turned back, as men that dreamed were we. . .”.
But I must meantime leave Heywood going on “his way rejoicing” to the Fort. His conversion was a wonderful illustration of “grace abounding to the chief of sinners”. A somewhat similar story is narrated in the Memoir of the famous John M’Laurin, who laboured with such success in Glasgow in the eighteenth century. Caught on one occasion in a crowd in one of the streets, he was subjected to considerable pressure and jostling. Some profane person near him was annoyed at the crush and called on God to damn his soul for Christ’s sake. M’Laurin turned to him and remarked with impressive solemnity, “God has done many things for Christ’s sake, and perhaps He will do that too”. The remark sank into the man’s conscience. A blessed change of character followed, which he ascribed to the simple but emphatic rebuke of the faithful, devout and heavenly minded divine.
So, in like manner James Thomson, a noted Resolis catechist, of deep Christian experience, was in his career of sin before his conversion, “in the act of uttering a tremendous oath to one of his horses when the arrows of the Almighty pierced his conscience and, after a fiery struggle between hope and despair, he became another and a new man,” whose memory is deservedly revered in Ross-shire.
But let no profane swearer take encouragement from these pages to “continue in sin that grace may abound”. These reformed swearers were made to feel, with intensest bitterness, the wormwood and gall of sin. So Saul of Tarsus, arrested in his career of mad persecution, was ever after vile in his own eyes, “less than the least of all saints” and “not meet to be called an Apostle, because [he] persecuted the Church of God”.
Luke Heywood, in the full fervour of his first love, returned to resume his military duties at Fort George. The Lord had done great things for him, whereof he was glad. One can fancy his feelings and emotions as he recrossed the ferry and, moving in a new world, gazed upon the haunts of his former dissipation. It is likely that he brought a letter from his spiritual father to the Governor, Sir Eyre Coote, written in part like that model of elegant apology, Paul’s Epistle to Philemon. Even supposing him punished for his three days’ absence without leave, the severest penalties would be trifling to one who had so recently cried, as it were, “out of the belly of hell”, and God heard his voice. Like the Gadarene demoniac, “clothed and in his right mind”, he was longing to tell his comrades “how great things” Jesus had done to him. At once he began to keep a prayer meeting, which the soldiers attended with feelings like those of the hearers of the newly converted Saul of Tarsus, and similar results followed.
The story of so remarkable a conversion, and the fame of the prayer meetings at the Fort, extended far and wide and were the talk of the countryside. Civilians, some of whom walked 12 miles from neighbouring parishes, mingled with the redcoats that listened, after the daily routine of military duties was over, to the wonderful things God had done for the fervid convert’s soul, and had their hearts bowed as they joined in the prayer of the contrite spirit. How many of the soldiers were converted cannot now be ascertained, but there is no reason to distrust the reports handed down by tradition of the change effected in many hearts hitherto strangers to grace and to God.
But persecution because of the Word was not long in arising. The captain of the company to which Heywood belonged was an avowed and determined enemy of the truth. He resolved to put an end to this outbreak of fanaticism in the Fort and threatened to punish the devout Christian leader with flogging if the meetings were not discontinued. The soldier, however, knew that he had broken no law of the army. Meetings for boisterous mirth and revelry had been – in the evil days now behind him – allowed to pass unchallenged, and now that an evident reformation was spreading among the ranks, why should so good a work be interfered with? Heywood counted the cost. The sphere of conscience was invaded, and he must serve God rather than man. The God whom he served continually would deliver him; and if not, it would be an honour to suffer shame for Christ’s sake.
One day the persecuting captain and another officer – said to be a brother of his own – received an invitation to shoot on a moor near Culloden, a few miles from the Fort. Before starting on his hunting expedition, the captain summoned Heywood to appear before him. He then told Heywood he was going away for the day, and if on his return he found that he had been holding any prayer meeting, he swore profanely that he would order the culprit before him to be publicly flogged. Luke was silent for a minute or two, and then, almost echoing the words of doom spoken of old by Micaiah to Ahab, he answered right solemnly, “Captain, if you return alive, God never spoke by me”. Of course, the warning words were treated with contempt, only deepening the persecutor’s resolution to stamp out the meetings, as he hastened up the beach and on to the hillside. In the course of the day he had occasion to crouch behind a dyke, watching the approach of deer. His brother officer came in that direction and mistook him for game and, firing suddenly, shot him dead on the spot.
It may readily be believed that there was no further interference with the prayer meetings at the Fort. But the Head of the Church had work for him in his native land. The regiment was soon afterwards ordered back to England, where Heywood obtained his discharge from the army. He is said to have laboured with success as a minister until his death. To Heywood, however, it matters very little whether his name is remembered or forgotten by his countrymen, for it lives on high among those who have turned many to righteousness and who shine as stars for ever and ever.
“As a preacher,” in the words of the eminent John Kennedy of Dingwall, “Mr MacPhail was peculiarly edifying to the people of the Lord. He could deal with their cases more closely and more tenderly than almost any other minister in his day. He does not appear to have been so careful in the composition of his sermons as some others of the fathers in Ross-shire. He was careful to feel, rather than to arrange, the doctrine which he preached, but what his discourses lacked of order was well made up by their unction and freshness. Having to preach on a Sabbath in Petty, and after a large congregation had assembled to hear him, he was in the wood without sermon or text wrestling with the Lord. The hour for beginning the service had long passed before Mr MacPhail was seen approaching the tent; but of all the remarkable sermons he ever preached, the one he preached that day was, perhaps, the most refreshing to God’s people, and the most fruitful in the conversion of sinners.
“Some of his own people were there and, wishing for their fellow parishioners the benefit which they themselves had derived and expecting a renewal of their former enjoyment, they requested their minister to preach the same sermon at Resolis. He did so, but those who had heard it before were this time greatly disappointed. [Someone] mentioning this to Mr MacPhail, he accounted for the difference by saying, ‘When in Petty, you were looking to the Lord, but in Resolis you were looking to me. There you got the manna fresh from heaven; here you got it after it had mouldered in my memory.'”
Petty, here referred to, lies between Fort George and Inverness. The minister, John Morrison, was distinguished for his piety and unflinching boldness in delivering the gospel message. MacPhail assisted at the communion there, and at such times people used to assemble from neighbouring parishes. The church could not accommodate half the crowds who gathered; so a wooden tent was commonly erected in a carefully selected spot for the convenience of the worshippers, before the preparatory services of the annual sacramental season. It was no wonder that the Petty assemblies should contain a good sprinkling of Resolis people. To some of them the distance would be only 13 or 14 miles, and people today travel much further sometimes to attend Highland communions, when a notable evangelical preacher officiates.
The accounts handed down of MacPhail’s deathbed sayings and experiences are what might have been expected of so devout and self-denying a Christian. His profound humility shone out in his life and, like the setting sun, gilded his closing hours with surpassing lustre. A much-loved elder, the godly Thomas Holm, came to see him in the beginning of the illness that proved fatal. As he stood by the bedside, Holm asked him if he expected to recover. “Yes”, said his pastor. “And what ground, may I ask, have you for the hope you are expressing?” “Well, that passage of Scripture, the message vouchsafed to Jacob of old, has been occurring to me with much power and sweetness, ‘Fear not to go down into Egypt . . . I will also surely bring thee up again’.” “Good news, verily, for you, but sad, sad news for the people of Resolis and for the Church in Scotland,” was the sorrowing reply, “for it was Jacob’s corpse that was carried back.” “Yes, Thomas,” said MacPhail pleasantly, “you were ever ahead of me in discernment, and you have the advantage of me still.”
This is but one of many evidences of that lowliness of mind that esteemed others better than himself. One night, we are told, he was specially restless. His friends asked him if the cause was bodily pain or was any cloud coming between him and the Saviour in whom he trusted. Were his evidences of a saving interest in Christ darkened? Or what was the reason of his tossings to and fro on his bed? The memorable answer he gave was that he felt as much assured of being for ever with his Saviour as he was of lying on his bed, adding, “but I know not how I can look Him in the face, when I think how little I have done for Him”. His deep sense of unworthiness and indebtedness to free sovereign grace constrained him to say, “I am an unprofitable servant”. His death and burial, and the high estimate formed of him by contemporary worthies, may be left over for a concluding article.
1 Reprinted with editing from The Free Presbyterian Magazine for February 1916. The previous article last month included an account of MacPhail’s conversion.