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.
The children of the new birth come to understand that, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh.” There is no virtue in circumcision, as in Paul’s case. They must hear the voice of Christ, there is then a change of heart and a change of fruit.
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.
Thus I have shortly shewed what are the effects or works of the law, when managed by the Spirit of God for this end, to bring an elect vessel to become dead to the law. The man, I say, getting a discovery of these things, must now conclude that there is no hope or expectation of life for him by the works of the law; and therefore he must turn his back upon that and seek relief from some other airth, and row to another shore. For clearing of this matter, let us speak a little to some few questions.
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.
