Editor’s Introduction
The work of God’s sovereign grace in converting a soul ignites the joy of angels and stirs the heart of every believer. While God employs a wide variety of ways in drawing sinners to himself, each instance shares the common features of humbling the soul with conviction of sin and driving it from a sense of spiritual bankruptcy to embrace Christ as the all-sufficient Savior. The following vignette recounts how one laird, the owner of a large estate, experienced this gospel transformation.
The Scottish Presbyterian minister, Alexander Moncrieff (1695-1761), was heir to the estate of Culfargie in the parish of Abernethy in Perthshire and was the grandson of the Covenanter by the same name, a close companion of James Guthrie. Moncrieff joined Ebenezer Erskine, William Wilson and James Fisher in seceding from the Church of Scotland and establishing the Associate Presbytery in 1733. John Brown of Haddington became a member of Moncrieff’s congregation. His colleagues called him ‘the lion of the Secession,’ due to his bold resolve in matters of biblical principle. During a conversation with the famed George Whitefield, Moncrieff pressed Whitefield with the divine-right of Presbyterian church government. Whitefield responded by laying his hand on his heart and saying, “I do not find it here.” Moncrieff countered, however, by rapping the Bible on the table and issuing the rejoinder, “Ah, but I find it here.” He was chiefly known, however, as a man of prayer. On one occasion when Moncrieff paused in the middle of a sermon, a woman in his congregation said, “See! Culfargie is away to heaven, and has left us all sitting here.”
As seen in the account below, Moncrieff was often referred to as ‘Culfargie,’ after the name of his patrimonial estate.
– Robert D. McCurley
The Conversion of a Laird
Selected From: David Young D.D., Memoir of the Rev. Alexander Moncrieff of Abernethy, with a Selection from His Works in David Young D.D. and John Brown D.D., Memorials of Alexander Moncrieff, M.A., and James Fisher, Fathers of the United Presbyterian Church (Edinburgh 1849) pp. xxxviii-xliv.
In his parish, there lived a wealthy young Laird, who in defiance of a pious education had forsaken the God of his fathers, and struck out into a career of headlong wickedness. He was an heritor of the parish, and the representative of a distinguished family; and as such, had occupied a conspicuous place in the house of God. This was now deserted; and he sought by every means to shun the presence of his minister, at home and abroad, as well as that of his associates in the discipline of the church. Every one saw that the young man was hastening on to ruin. His amiable spouse was now neglected and broken-hearted. His very children seemed to be forgotten; and the fireside scenes of his former days, so peaceful and so happy, were lost sight of and forsaken for the haunts of drunkenness and impiety; while his fine estate was melting away, as snow before the sun of summer, and pious parents presenting his case to the minds of their rising children, as a specimen of the misery which a life of debauchery ever entails on its wretched victim. His constitution, as a matter of course, was soon broken down; disease began to prey upon him; his drunken companions forsook him; his conscience became his accuser; and by night and by day was he made afraid by the terrors of the Almighty. The instructions of his godly father, the tears of his tender-hearted mother, the family prayers of other times, in which he had so often been mentioned by name – all rushed on his recollection. The very words seemed vivid before him – “O good and merciful God, the God of our fathers, remember in mercy our dear child! O grant that the grace of the good Spirit may be lodged deep in his heart: and may he stand up in our stead, when we shall sleep in the silence of the grave!”
The first softening of this profligate’s heart, appeared in a gush of tenderness toward his long-neglected wife and dear little children. One day as they were all hanging about him, he took his wife gently by the hand, and said to her, weeping as he spoke; “My dear, can you forgive me the wrongs I have done you?” She could make no reply, but burst into tears; and when her surprise at such words of tenderness, to which she had been so long a stranger, had somewhat subsided, she replied by kissing him, first on the one cheek and then on the other, till her tears flowed down upon his bosom; while the children, in their turn, melted by the unwonted softness of their father’s voice, drew near and embraced him. “My dear,” said his wife, as she wept and witnessed his mental distress, “shall we send for our worthy minister Culfargie?” He gave a reluctant and dubious assent; being evidently overwhelmed at the idea of meeting with his minister. She, however, ventured on her own course, and despatched a servant to tell the minister that his presence was desired as speedily as possible.
Culfargie lost no time in complying with the invitation; but ordering the servant who usually attended him in his pastoral visitations to saddle a couple of horses, he was sitting by the bed of the afflicted laird, in the short space of forty minutes. There was a long and distressing silence. None of the parties seemed disposed to break it. The pastor, on his part, was anxious to know the true state of the sufferer’s mind. He saw his agony, but had yet to learn how far it proceeded from the working of his conscience. At length, he took the laird by the hand, and began to remind him of those things which, if penitent, he would at once admit, and which, if impenitent, he required the more to have distinctly and faithfully rehearsed. He told him of the good example which had been set before him by his godly father, and of the religious instructions with which both his parents, as well as his minister now addressing him, had plied him from his childhood upwards. On these things he dwelt with marked particularity; and, “Oh! Young man,” said he, “what a return have you made? We sow wheat; but nothing has yet sprung up but tares – all tares! Thy Maker and thy Redeemer called on thee, saying, ‘Give me thy heart.’ Oh! How tenderly this call was followed up, by every means calculated to enforce it. But thou didst turn away from God; and thou – thou didst sin still more and more. Thou hast made thy brow as brass, and thy neck as a sinew of iron! Thou wouldst not hear him that made thee. He stretched out his hands to thee all the day long; but thou hast dashed from thee the cup of mercy held out to thy lips. Ah! Sinful young man, laden with iniquity, thou hast forsaken the Lord, thou hast provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger, and now that anger is burning hot against thee.”
The pastor paused, for he was overcome with grief. The anguish of the laird seemed now insupportable. He groaned and sobbed out, “Wo is me, for I am undone, mine iniquity is ever before me. Against thee, O God – against thee only – have I sinned, and in thy sight done all these evils.” On hearing these words, the pastor rose abruptly, and casting a mournful look on the sufferer, hurried out of the room, and rode directly home. But when dismounting at his own door, he told the servant, whose name was John, not to unsaddle the horses, nor yet to retire to bed, but to be ready, at a moment’s notice to attend his call.
John afterwards stated that, according to orders, he remained in the anti-chamber, quite in the dark as to his master’s intentions; although, as the night advanced, he was enabled to understand them. Mr. Moncrieff wished for a spot where he could enjoy complete retirement in the exercise of prayer; and he knew of no place for that purpose equal to his own study. During the whole night, John heard him wrestling in prayer for the heart-stricken penitent. Distinctly he could hear him, all prostrate on the floor, pleading with strong crying and tears, for “the poor perishing son of his ancient friend.” “For thy Son’s sake,” he heard him say, “for his dear sake that hung upon the tree, thine own well-beloved Son’s sake, O Lord have mercy on this sin-sick soul! Spirit of all grace! O life-giving Spirit! Come, in thy love, revive and quicken him: he is broken in the place of dragons: let the bones which thou hast broken yet rejoice. O bind up that broken heart! Look on his disease and pains, and forgive him all his sins.”
Such was the exercise of the night; and as the day began to dawn, he summoned John to bring out the horses, and setting off at full speed, he was again, in forty minutes, in the sick man’s chamber, wearing a benignant smile. Like Jacob, he had been wrestling with the Angel of the covenant, and felt something like assurance that he had prevailed. “O Culfargie! Come away,” cried the distracted laird, the moment his eyes fell on him; “my heart has been broken by the terrors of your message: and how I have longed these slow-moving hours past to see your face again! Great was my trouble after you left me; but when I had tried, again and again, to call on the great deliverer, a ray of hope seemed to spring up, and it gave me some relief. Oh, said I, there is, there is One who is ‘mighty to save!’ O God of my fathers! surely thou wilt not leave me in my extreme necessity! And now sit down, Culfargie, and preach to me this Saviour; and tell me if there be in the holy word, one drop of comfort for this burning spirit of mine.”
This was a joyful moment for Culfargie. He sat down by the bed-side, secretly breathing out a prayer for wisdom to speak a word in season to the heart-broken man, whose wife and children were also present, sharing in the solemn softness of the scene. “It was an hour,” said one present, “of thrilling joy to all.” Taking the laird by the hand, while tears of gladness bedimmed his eye, Mr. Moncrieff proceeded, with more than his wonted alacrity, to speak to him of the love of God in Christ Jesus, and of Jesus himself as God and man our Redeemer, and the head of the everlasting covenant. He discoursed on the atonement of Christ, its necessity, its reality, and its perfection; he made a free and formal offer of Christ, to the eager and anxious listener; and in the name of his Divine Master, he called upon him, at once and without reserve, to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ; declaring to him, earnestly and officially, that in doing this he would be accepted and saved. He next spoke of the Holy Spirit, his divine person, his presence in the church, his work of grace in the souls of men, creating in them a clean heart, and renewing a right spirit within them; and he concluded the whole with a fervent prayer for a gracious out-pouring of this same Spirit on his young friend, now coming up from the fearful pit, and from the miry clay.
When the prayer was ended, both of them for some time wept in silence. All present were in tears. The laird himself was the first to speak: he could no longer conceal his emotion; and aided now by that Christian knowledge which had been so painfully instilled into his youthful mind, he opened his heart as follows:– “O Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief. My Saviour, here I lay down my guilt and worthlessness at the foot of thy cross; and I accept thy blessed righteousness, as freely offered and given to me. My Divine Teacher, thou blessed Spirit, O teach a poor wandering prodigal to come to thee, O my God, and to walk in thy ways. Blessed and pitying Saviour, accept a poor sinner, the vilest of the vile, who ventures, at thy bidding, to come, in all his poverty and need, to the foot of the cross. On thy atonement, and on that alone, I rely. And, O Redeemer of poor perishing sinners, may I venture to call thee my Redeemer? Then, take this heart; it is thine:– wash it in thy blood, O my Saviour; to thee I give it away; to thee, my God, I dedicate this body, this soul, and my all. Oh! What a debtor to free grace. Thine I am, now and for evermore; for thou hast redeemed me, Lord God of truth.
Such is, at least, an outline of the interesting narrative; and by the account, the sequel was a happy one. The laird recovered from his bodily affliction, and lived to a good old age, giving clear and convincing evidence, that he was, in very deed, a prodigal reclaimed. The wife found her husband again, and the children their father; but first of all, and best of all, the God of salvation in Jesus Christ found a monument of His mercy. Nor need we doubt that this incident, apart from its exciting peculiarities, presents to our view a fair sample of the minster of Abernethy’s private ministrations. To the rich, in the intercourse of civil society, he could render the deference which was due; but, in the things of God, he knew no man, so as to pamper his pride, or palliate his iniquity. Being bent on the salvation of all, he regarded all as on the same level, and pointed the poor and rich alike, to one and the same narrow gate, as the entrance into life.
