Some of the most noted triumphs of the gospel have been among those that were the despised of this world. God has chosen the weak things of this world to confound the things that are mighty. He has chosen the base things. He has chosen things that were not that he might bring to nought things that were, that no flesh might glory in his presence. One such trophy of gospel power and grace lived in the Highlands fifty years ago, and the memory of Angus of the Hills is still fresh among the people of the North Western Islands.
Dr. William Blackadder was born in 1647. He was sent to the University of Edinburgh in 1665 and went over to Holland to graduate at Leyden in 1680. In Holland, he appears to have formed an acquaintance with some of the illustrious refugees and other diplomatic characters, and to have been much in their confidence. He came over with the Earl of Argyle in his unfortunate expedition in 1685, and was taken prisoner in Orkney.
During the middle part of last century, the parish of Resolis was blessed with one of the most eminently useful and laborious ministers that the church of Christ has ever seen. When the name of Mr. Hector M’Phail meets the eye of the more northern reader, it will recall to memory not a few of those striking anecdotes current among the older inhabitants of the district in which his labours were best known, and which may be stated generally as lying along the shores of the Beauly and Cromarty Firths.
All over the Highlands the name of Hector M’Phail is mentioned with peculiar veneration. Tradition has handed down many striking illustrations of the zeal for salvation of souls that consumed him. But for seven long years his ministry proved unedifying. “The hungry sheep looked up and were not fed.” The elders and others soon found out that they had simply an amiable formalist for a minister, and they “spoke often one to another” and to God at prayer-meetings for the conversion of their blind leader.
In Brown of Wamphray’s ministrations, we have not obtruded on our famishing souls that oily sentimentalism, or that iced intellectualism, which so abound in this epicurean age of the church—but we have the true bread, just as it has been gathered, wholesome and nutritious. Oh, that amidst the multitude of our popular and evangelical preachers and writers, we had but a phalanx of godly and spiritual men like him—men of heart, men of business, who would, in right earnest, negotiate between the Prince of Life and dying men, and not merely transact between a dead doctrine and a blind intellect; men who will not ever be substituting the vague idea of “religion” for the living person of the Son of God, or “moral influence” for the personal operation of the Holy Ghost!
Christian biographies display the impact of God’s truth and grace upon human lives. We find them both encouraging and challenging. While we certainly benefit from faithful doctrinal, devotional, and practical works, we gain models of Christianity when we read the lives of faithful men and women who trusted, loved, and served our Savior. They help us see what is possible in God’s children by his grace. In doing so, they often elevate our own expectations and longings for a greater measure of God’s grace to us.
The following story aims to illustrate the display of God’s providence and grace, in his patient pursuit of an elect soul. It provides an account of the conversion of a young woman named Sarah Baker. The excerpted portion below are her own words as recorded in an interview. Born to parents of some wealth, Sarah spent her earliest years in a loving, pleasant home and was afforded a full array of comforts and care, including an education at a boarding school and instruction in general morals. When she was nine years old, however, an event occurred which completely changed her prospects and course of life—the untimely death of her beloved father. From that point forward, one disastrous circumstance after another caused her formerly comfortable life to unravel into poverty and hardship.
Arthur Walkington Pink, a writer of good theological books, was born in Nottingham, England, on April 1st, 1886. His father was a diligent Christian, who read the Bible and good religious books to his children. He had a younger brother and sister. Pink joined the theosophy movement as a young man. His father, however, awakened his son’s soul by quoting to him the text, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Prov. 14:12). A. W. Pink was converted by this text in the year 1908.
The circumstances which led to this statement were briefly as follows. For some time past the writer’s mind was much drawn towards foreign missionary work. The knowledge of this circumstance led the Committee of the General Assembly on Missions to inquire into his willingness to enter upon their missionary service in India. This communication from the representative body of the Church, as a Presbyter he laid before his brethren for counsel: and after full procedure, in the course of which his Congregation presented a Memorial expressive of their interests and feelings, and the Presbytery delivered their mind both on the Call and the Memorial, he was led to the decision recorded in the following document. In a day when, on the one hand a carnal fanaticism would counterfeit, and on the other an earthly intellectualism would supplant, the self-evidencing and personal operations of the Holy Spirit, Christian men, however timid, ought not to shrink from avowing their grounds of spiritual judgment.
My eldest son, Robert Stockton Green, died the very close of this year 1813. He died at Boston, on Tuesday the 28th of September, and the next day his corpse was deposited in Mr. Dexter’s cemetery;—the very day of our annual commencement, eight years after taking his degree in this College. He was born July 30th, 1787; and was, of course, twenty-six years and two months of age when he died, wanting two days.
