From the Free Presbyterian Magazine, Sept. 1932, Vol 37(5): 229-231.

The Late Mr. Donald Macleod

Duartbeg, Scourie.

THE subject of this notice was born in Elphin 62 years ago. He had the example and instruction of godly parents. His parents followed the good old paths, and their children were brought up in the same atmosphere. Donald took Duartbeg sheep-farm some 30 years ago, where he lived with his wife and family until he died on the 16th March of this year.

Owing to his modesty and reserve we cannot say exactly much about the ways and means adopted by the Lord in effecting his conversion, but that there was a manifest change real and certain, the life and conversation, the spiritual experience and the knowledge of the man gave abundant proof. He told on one occasion that it was the death of a brother after a short illness that gave him the first serious concern about his soul. The Lord has often used the death of near and dear relations as means in awakening immortal souls from the lethargy and thraldom of spiritual death. This appears to have been true in the case of Donald. Much given to reading and praying in his own home, the Sabbath was especially set apart by him to these exercises. He usually rose early on Sabbath morning for these exercises, and thus prepared himself for the worship of God in the stated means. No consideration of an earthly nature would preclude Donald M’Leod from presenting himself in God’s house on the Lord’s day. Although the owner of a considerable number of sheep, he was never known to go to the hills after them on the Sabbath. He left them at the divine disposal on that day, and he was never disappointed with the results, for he had hardly ever lost any of them on the Sabbath.

He became a member in full communion in the year 1925, and the Session, which had hoped he would have come forward earlier, were very pleased. They were well satisfied with his knowledge and experience of the truth at his examination.

Some time after he became a member, the Session, realising its need of further strength and support, sought to press upon our late friend the duty of accepting the eldership. All necessary steps were taken to this end up to the stage at which it lay with himself to decide on acceptance. After being given some time to consider what he should do, he wrote the interim-Moderator saying that he felt such mountains rising up between hint and taking such a solemn step, he could not consider that he should become an elder. This shows how unfit and unworthy he felt himself to be to take office in the Church of God. But that he would have proved a worthy and capable office-bearer, being well read, intelligent, and a spiritually-minded man, no one who knew him had any doubt. His remarks on “the question” at the fellowship meetings at Communion times which he attended bore evidence of the grasp he had of the truth and its spiritual meaning. The Scourie congregation were well served while he lived, and he rendered great support to their aged and worthy missionary, Mr. Hector Morrison, who, in his declining years, mourns his loss. His removal, seen fit by the Lord, has made a great blank in his family, the congregation of Scourie, and in our Church as a whole. Donald had no use for shams in doctrine, worship, discipline, or the government of the Church of Christ. He adhered whole-heartedly to the Free Presbyterian testimony because of its uncompromising maintenance of the principles and doctrines of Christ’s true Church on earth. The present-day tendencies of marked departures from all these characteristics of the Church of God, all faithful contendings for Gospel truth, doctrine and worship in our day, serve to show all the more the urgent necessity there is of holding fast our profession and the form of sound words. The Church of Scotland is drifting into Episcopacy; which, in turn, is drifting to Roman Catholicism in all its shapes and forms. In other words, Scotland is rapidly departing from its Protestantism, and what shall the end be?

To his wife and family of sons and daughters, deprived of a worthy husband and father whose exemplary life, we hope, will not be unavailing in their case, we extend our deepest sympathy, and may the family continue to walk in the example their late father left them so that when their time to depart will come it will be said to them, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, and inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” “Help, Lord; for the godly man ceaseth, for the faithful fail from among the children of men.” Ps. 12:1.

M.M.