From Ferintosh Manse to Keswick Speaker

I was surprised on reading the biography of George H. C. MacGregor to discover that one of the best-known and much appreciated of the early Keswick speakers was born in the Free Church of Scotland manse in Ferintosh in 1864.

His father was Malcolm MacGregor and he succeeded as minister of Ferintosh Free Church the famous Apostle of the North, Dr. John MacDonald. Malcolm was minister there from 1850 to 1888 (the year in which he died). He was born in Lochtayside in 1820.

His younger brother Duncan (1824-91) was better known: he was a minister in Stornoway, Glasgow and Dundee, as well as being the author of several books. Like his brother Malcolm, Duncan was also the minister of a church with a famous predecessor – he was minister in St Peter's Dundee (1864-1876), the church of Robert Murray McCheyne. Indeed, Duncan went there in the same year that his nephew George was born.

The author of the biography was Duncan’s son, also called Duncan. He was two years older than his cousin George, but like him he was a Free Church minister (in Elie) who moved to a London Presbyterian congregation (Wimbledon). This means that the biography is also a family portrait.

No doubt the biography can be approached from many angles. What interests me is how a son of a conservative Highland manse made the journey from there to his involvement in the deeper life spirituality connected to the early Keswick conferences.

His Childhood and Education

Having an upbringing in the Ferintosh manse enabled George to participate in the large communion gathering that amassed there each summer. It was unusual for young people to profess faith publicly at that time in the Highlands, but George’s father did not prevent members of his family from doing so and they would be the only young people at the Lord’s Table in Ferintosh. While the author correctly points out that the lack of young communicants was a defect found in Highland Protestantism at that time, he also observes that ‘nowhere have the majesty and glory of God, the completeness of Christ’s substitutionary work, and the dignity and grandeur of life in the Spirit, been more powerfully set forth than in the Highlands.’ It is not known when George first believed he had an interest in Christ, but it was probably during his years as a schoolboy in Inverness.

George attended the local Free Church school for four years (5 to 9), and then went to the Academy in Inverness for five years. He entered Edinburgh University in 1878 when he was fourteen and there his favourite subject was mathematics. Yet his intellectual abilities struggled at times with what he was taught, and he lost belief in the verbal inspiration of the Bible. When he completed his degree in 1883, he won prizes in most of his classes. Yet he knew what to do with his degree, as revealed in his diary entry of April 20: ‘The degree sought for has been obtained with not one slip. Oh, how thankful I should be to God for His great goodness! The degree sits lightly upon me. I hope I have already laid it at the Master’s feet; it will do little good if not given to Him.’

Theological training

George had resolved to be a minister. Instead of going immediately to one of the Free Church’s Theological Colleges, he went home for a year. This year was spent tutoring the sons of a nearby laird, furthering his own reading, and preaching at various churches and other meetings in the area. His father was approaching sixty and not well in health, so no doubt was glad of his son’s help. It soon became obvious that George’s preaching was attractive and a weekly Bible class he started soon had over one hundred young people.

Yet at least two unusual features are seen here: one was connected to the church practice of that time which did not allow a prospective student to preach until he had been licensed by a presbytery at the end of his theological training (George had not even started his); the other was that an individual with doubts about the verbal inspiration of the Bible was given access to several pulpits in the area (of course, he may have kept these doubts to himself).

In 1884, George went to New College in Edinburgh and was there until 1888. His mathematical bent helped him in his Hebrew studies, and such was his ability in that language that he functioned as assistant lecturer in Hebrew during his final year. Given his interest in Hebrew, it is not surprising that he was an enthusiastic appreciator of A. B. Davidson (the professor of Old Testament) and regarded him as a seeker for the truth contained in God’s revelation in the Old Testament (despite Davidson’s acceptance of higher critical theories). Davidson, according to George, had strengthened his belief in the inspiration of the Bible ten-fold, although it was not belief in the verbal inspiration of the Bible that he had been taught in his youth. Nevertheless, he left New College ‘deeply versed in the Bible. He had read the Old Testament through in Hebrew. The Greek New Testament he knew intimately, and great portions of the English Bible he could literally repeat by heart.’ His biographer observes of such attainment, that ‘For a minister there is no learning equal in value to this.’

What were the developments that helped shape George’s spiritual attitudes as he prepared for the ministry? No doubt he was affected by the religious life of his family and community of his childhood, and he stated that he was helped by Dr. Black, a Free Church minister in Inverness during his years of education.

The ministers whose churches he attended in Edinburgh were those of Alexander Whyte and James Hood Wilson. They would not have been the ministers one would have expected a minister’s son from Ross-shire to attend in Edinburgh. But it is possible to trace how strongly they influenced MacGregor.

Alexander Whyte seems to have been the minister George listened to during the period when he had his intellectual crisis over the verbal inspiration of the Bible. Whyte was well-known for a type of preaching that stressed human sin and engaged in probing analysis of it. At the same time, he was tolerant of higher critics and defended their investigations. How did George get relief from his problem concerning verbal inspiration? It came initially through realising that the Bible dealt with sin, and then by appreciating that God was involved in the compositions by its various authors. George’s opinion now was ‘that the inspiration of the Bible did not lie in its being a miraculously accurate book, as in its being a book written from God’s point of view.’ While George does not state that it was Whyte’s teaching that helped him, it is noticeable that he had similar emphases to Whyte regarding (1) inner sinfulness and (2) the opinions of higher critics.

A second influence was opportunities to preach, firstly in Edinburgh during his university years, and then during the year he spent at home in Ferintosh before moving on to theological studies in New College. Despite his rejection of verbal inspiration, his preaching was accepted by all who heard him, even in the theologically conservative Black Isle. The year that he spent at home was one in which claimed to have experienced deep personal revival. Further his involvement with young people through his Bible Class was effective as he explained to them the Christian life, with one of his textbooks being Pilgrim’s Progress by Bunyan (the use of Bunyan’s classic may indicate another influence of Whyte on George). And he preached a message which was very evangelistic. During one college break, he went to a small community in Nova Scotia for four months as pulpit supply. While there, his preaching was so influential that church attendance tripled, and it is not surprising to note that the congregation wanted to call him once he finished his studies.

George also had an interest in foreign mission, which had been stimulated by the missionary emphasis that was predominant in Wilson’s church. Indeed, Macgregor was approached by the relevant church committee to replace Ion Keith-Falconer, who had died at a young age while serving Christ in Aden. (His story is told in the volume They Were Pilgrims by Marcus Loane). George was willing to go, he had his father’s blessing, but a medical examination indicated his health would not allow him. So he would have to find a place in Britain.

MacGregor was an ardent reader of the Bible. For example, during a period of illness in 1886 he wrote: ‘My illness broke off my other studies and sent me to my Bible, and there I have had many a rare feast. I have read and marked very carefully Matthew, Luke, Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Timothy, 1 Peter, 1 John and 1 Corinthians. Some of them are glorious.’ I suppose he could say to me, ‘Do you as an upholder of verbal inspiration spend as much time reading the Bible and enjoying it as I did?’

There are also hints that he was being influenced by ideas similar to the Keswick message. He writes in his diary in February 1825: ‘How often we strive and struggle after holiness, say after likeness to Christ, as if it were a thing to be given as a reward for our striving. I don’t think it is so. Salvation, by faith, I believe, means not only justification by faith, but sanctification by faith too. Oh, to what might we not attain, if we were to surrender ourselves entirely to Christ, and trust him by his Spirit to work out his likeness in us!’

What is striking about MacGregor is the type of spiritual character and level of service that he attained while, at the same time, denying verbal inspiration of the Bible. Of course, it is well-known that this type of Christian living was common in the second half of the nineteenth century as various denominations responded to the advance of higher criticism. What is not so well-known is that it could be lived out in the Highlands, that an articulate and passionate exponent of this outlook could preach undetected by orthodox office-bearers and listeners in very conservative congregations. I suppose his earnestness of character and orthodoxy in other doctrines prevented his view of inspiration being noticed.

Becomes a minister in Aberdeen

In February 1888, George MacGregor was asked to preach in Aberdeen East Free Church and made such an impression that a congregational meeting was immediately arranged, and a decision made to call him as the colleague of the current minister who was in declining health. Among his predecessors as minister was James S. Candlish (son of Robert) who had been appointed Professor of Divinity in the Free Church College, Glasgow, in 1872. William Robertson Smith had been one of its elders, and one of the elders who welcomed George was William Alexander, the editor of Aberdeen Free Press. The involvement of James Candlish and Robertson Smith indicates the outlook of the congregation and explains why it had no difficulty calling a person who did not belief in the verbal inspiration of the Bible.

The days between Monday April 30 and Friday May 4 were very significant for George. On the Monday his father died, on the Tuesday he was licensed by the Edinburgh Presbytery, on the Thursday his father was buried, and on the Friday Aberdeen Free East elected him as their choice of minister. He was ordained on Thursday 28 June, but had another sore bereavement before then when his brother died at the age of 26. George himself was 24.

The congregation had been declining in numbers for several years, although it is a reminder of how church attendance in Scotland has changed when it is realised that the congregation numbered about 500. MacGregor set about recovering the church and engaged in earnest evangelistic preaching. Soon numbers increased: over 120 joined in his first year and by the time he left in 1894 the membership had doubled. George delighted in evangelistic work and was a strong supporter of the missions of D. L. Moody who came to Aberdeen during that period.

George married the daughter of one of his elders in 1891. Two other details are highlighted by his biographer as of importance and they indicate the outlook of MacGregor. The first was his initial attendance at the Keswick Convention in 1889 and the other was the death of William Robertson Smith in 1894. A tribute to Smith by George indicates that he accepted Smith’s higher critical ideas. Returning to 1889, George longed for fresh experience of the power of the Holy Spirit and taking the advice of several ministerial colleagues he went to the Keswick Convention. His visit to the Convention was a turning point in his life as he understood in a new way the place of faith in sanctification, the significance of union with Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit. The biggest change in his character as a result of what happened to him was the suppression of a bad temper, a feature of his character from childhood. Apparently, it seldom revealed itself after this convention experience.

MacGregor became a conference speaker during his Aberdeen ministry. His next visit to Keswick was in 1892, but he went back as a speaker and did so each year until 1900. In 1892 he published So Great Salvation, which had a preface by fellow Keswick speaker, Handley Moule, and which went through three editions.

George MacGregor has come a long way from the Ferintosh manse. Still denying the verbal inspiration of the Bible and commending the life of one of those who introduced such notions into the nineteenth-century Free Church (Robertson Smith), George has become an effective evangelist, a revitaliser (to use a modern concept) of a moribund church, an author, and a regular speaker at one of the biggest annual conferences in worldwide evangelicalism. This has all happened before he was thirty. It is not surprising that vacant congregations elsewhere were interested in calling him away from Aberdeen.

But what is happening in his denomination during his years in Aberdeen from 1888 to 1894? Conservative ministers and elders are trying to prevent doctrinal decline, and among them are the ministers of Ferintosh (Angus Galbraith who was there from 1890 to 1893 and Donald Munro who was inducted in 1894). I wonder what they thought of the journey taken by the son of their predecessor in the Ferintosh manse?

Moves to London

Inevitably, since his star was rising, George MacGregor was approached by large congregations looking for a pastor, including churches in London and Melbourne. A church in Toronto and the church in Chicago associated with D. L. Moody (he was personally invited to come by Moody and later written to by R. A. Torrey) expressed great interest in him. The church that was successful in calling him was Trinity Presbyterian Church in Notting Hill, London; its first minister had been the well-known Jewish convert, Adolph Saphir, who had been called there thirty years before. Saphir had been unable to build a strong congregation and he resigned after a few years. Decline continued under Saphir’s successor, so by the time MacGregor was called, the church only numbered about 200. He took several months to make up his mind, but eventually he accepted the call to London.

The reasons George gives for accepting the call are interesting. First, he said that he only wanted to be where he could use the abilities God had given him in the place God had chosen for him. Second, the pastoral demands of the Aberdeen church had become too great for him. Third, demands of the work in Aberdeen had prevented him from developing his reading and he was afraid that this would weaken his work as a preacher. Fourth, he had delivered the special message that God had sent him to deliver to the Aberdeen congregation. Fifth, he was attracted by the difficulties of the London situation because London for years had weighed heavily on his heart.

George began his ministry there in May 1894. He saw growth, but not on the scale he had seen in Aberdeen. His biographer suggests that George’s work lay not only in enlarging, but also in deepening. His conference work also continued, and his biographer notes that George ‘respected his audience; he took care to have something to say.’ One positive outcome was an increased interest in his congregation in world mission and several of his congregation became foreign missionaries. His congregation had two monthly prayer meetings for missions. George also participated in the congregation’s open-air outreach because it gave him the opportunity of ‘carrying to the audience outside the church the message he had presented to the congregation within’. He also was involved in the work of the YMCA because it attempted to win the young men of London for Christ.

Inevitably, the many demands made of him limited his time for pastoral work in his congregation. He compensated for this by being available for personal conversation after each service and spoke with many by this means. He also engaged in an extensive writing ministry with members of his congregation, sending them notes of encouragement.

While he persisted in denying the verbal inspiration of the Bible, George continued to accept doctrines that others found difficult. Divine election was defended by him; he stated that ‘it is an awful blasphemy to think that men will be worse off when their fate depends on the Will of God than when it depends on anything in themselves.’ Regarding eternal punishment he wrote that ‘If we saw sin as God sees it, we would not wonder at what is said of the punishment due to it.’

One of MacGregor’s favourite authors was John Owen. In 1893 James Stalker advised him to read the works of Owen and Thomas Goodwin on the Holy Spirit (Stalker was concerned about some suggestions of perfectionism that appeared in George’s sermons). The advice was taken, and he authored a book called Praying in the Holy Ghost, which he said was based on Owen.

Yet despite his defence of difficult doctrines and his preferences in theological reading, George was adamant that the conclusions of higher criticism were valid. His biographer hits the nail on the head when he says that George ‘remained all his days Professor Davidson’s pupil’. The light caused by George MacGregor’s many fine attainments and activities was permanently clouded by the influence of one unorthodox professor. The question is not, ‘What did MacGregor attain through Davidson’s influence?’ but ‘What did MacGregor, a man with great talents and notable successes, also fail to achieve through Davidson’s influence?’ Because it is impossible to build something lasting in the Christian church and in one’s Christian life if it is not built on an inerrant Bible.

George Macgregor died suddenly in May 1900 after a fortnight's illness brought on by meningitis. His biographer paints an almost idyllic deathbed scene with George passing away in full assurance of faith. The news of his illness had led to much prayer for his recovery, and for a while it looked as if he would recover. But it was not to be.

His funeral service in London was led by leading evangelicals of the day, including F. B. Meyer (who gave the address) and Campbell Morgan (just recovered from a serious illness). Next day, another service was held in his old church in Aberdeen, after which he was buried in Allenvale Cemetery in that city, in a layer chosen by him when he was minister there.

Some reflections

From one perspective his life was like a meteor, shining brightly for a short time before disappearing from the scene. From another perspective, his life was sad because it was cut off so soon. Inevitably his early death led to comparisons with McCheyne (which the author does several times in the biography). He also links Macgregor with Andrew Bonar and Alexander Moody Stuart, which seems to me to be an attempt to link Macgregor with their party in the Free Church. There may have been a few similarities in the way they preached, but neither of these men would have understood Macgregor's willingness to accept higher critical notions.

If a reader was unaware of church life during the years of Macgregor's ministry, he might assume that his ministerial career was unique and that he was more successful than others in revitalising churches and having a widespread preaching and conference circuit. Yet these features were quite common during the decades preceding and following 1900. Many preachers could be classified as Reformed in doctrine, evangelistic in practice, and approving of higher critical treatment of the Bible. Their churches were full of listeners, and it seemed as if their kind of church life would enjoy great success in the twentieth century. Of course, looking back we know this did not happen. The church life that was prominent was unable to cope with the trauma created by world wars, great human suffering, and the existence of other religions.

We can compare their legacy (very few have heard of them today) with those of other Christian periods such as the Puritans (whose writings help many Christians today). Will future generations of Christians turn to the men of Macgregor's circle for spiritual help? I doubt it.

Of course, our journey began at the Ferintosh manse, which was a few miles away from the manse of John Kennedy in Dingwall, the leader of the Reformed Church in the Highlands. Kennedy spent much effort defending the inerrancy of the Bible. I wonder did he realise that even from within his own geographical sphere of influence, there were those who did not follow his example, even from the manse which once was the home of the man he much admired, John Macdonald of Ferintosh.