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As long as the Macgregor
Chiefs had the patronage,
they naturally presented clansmen. Mr Alexander
Macgregor was succeeded by Mr Alexander Murray
Macgregor, who, before his translation, was minister
of Atharacle in Argyllshire. He was related to a
landed family in that district, and his father had
been a captain in the army. There may be a hidden
similitude in contrast, but to the people who knew
him there were only two binding links between
these two Macgregors, and these were their names
and their striving to reach one end by pursuing
widely different ways. It was a blessing for one to
know Mr Alexander Murray Macgregor. Of all the
good ministers and priests of the different denominations into which the
Christian world is divided, with whom I came in contact during a long life,
I thought I had found in him the finest type of the Christian guide and
example most fully realised. During the Ten Years' Conflict he sympathised
with the popular party, and was reckoned one of them. But like the rest of
the "Forty Thieves'" party, and like so many of those who were hurried out
at the Disruption, he wished to exercise patience and to proceed by civil
methods to seek the removal of grievances. He was by nature and reflection
bound to recoil from violent agitation and a policy which, after the meeting
of Convocation, directly threatened to destroy the integrity of the Church
of Scotland. And because he did not go out in 1843, the "Witness" assailed
him in one of its bitterly unfair articles in which it was then running down
the ministers with popular sympathies who did not go out. Fiercely hot and,
too frequently, scandalously unjust as were the mutual recriminations
of those days of angry partings, it is impossible to
believe that, had he personally or by truthful report
known the minister of Balquhidder, Mr Hugh Miller
would have allowed that particular article to go into
the "Witness." Peace-loving, pious, and charitably-minded, Mr Macgvegor was a sensitive man who was
no seeker of vain-glorious applause, but he expected
justice from his fellow-men. The instant he read
the attack upon him, he decided to give up his
charge. Forthwith he sent his resignation to the
Presbytery of Dunblane, packed his boxes, and, having provided for pulpit
supplies, left the parish. After seven years' service among them, the Balquhidder people knew his worth, and even those
who had joined the Free Church were unwilling
that the parish should lose him. As for his own
congregation, they were thrown into a state of
consternation and sorrow at first, but, rallying
quickly, they sent remonstrances after the fugitive
minister, and unanimously petitioned the Presbytery
of Dunblane to refuse the acceptance of his resignation. The Presbytery did so, and added its remonstrances to those of the parishioners. Deeply
moved and conquered by these proceedings, which
he looked upon as amounting to a renewal of his
commission, he came back, declaring that as long as
he could do his work there nothing would tempt
him to leave Balquhidder. He kept to that resolution when he might have had more lucrative and,
what some would have considered, more desirable
charges.
The incident of Mr
Macgregor's resignation and
triumphant restoration helped to clear and sweeten
the local ecclesiastical atmosphere, surcharged as it
was for a short while with Disruption electricity.
No one could deny that the parish minister had
been enthusiastically recalled and elected by his
congregation after seven years' work. The placing
of the Free Church and manse at Lochearnhead
also did much to reduce sectarian friction. At
Lochearnhead the Free Church was less like a
rival than a desirable supplement to the parish
church. In far-off days, indeed, the Bishops of
Dunblane placed at Carstran, very near where the
Free Church stands, a chapel of ease, the ruins of
which were pointed out to me and may yet be
visible. It was at Lochearnhead and Strathyre that
the Free Church strength lay. And the Lochearnhead congregation were fortunate in getting Mr
Eric Findlater for their first minister, and in having
him for a long period of years at their head. Parish
minister and Free Church minister were personally
good friends with separate spheres of labour. So
there was more peace in Balquhidder than was
usually found in Highland parishes after the Disruption. Mr Findlater came from the north side of the
Grampians. And so, a quarter of a century before, did
his uncle, Mr Robert Findlater, who gained a high
reputation when missionary minister at Ardeonaig
on the south side of Loch Tay as an ardent young
revivalist. He was called back to a more important
charge in his native region, and died before the
Disruption. His successor at Ardeonaig, Mr Hunter,
was a revivalist who, in a few years, received a
better appointment, and in 1843 lost repute among
his former admirers by not going out. The sturdy,
rustical, short-trousered successor of Mr Hunter in
Ardeonaig, Mr Donald Mackenzie, seerns to demand
a nod of recognition. He was the nephew of Mr
Lachlan Mackenzie, minister of Lochcarron, in Ross-shire, who was believed to have the gift of prophecy.
The nephew shared in that belief, and revered his
uncle's memory. Outside the range of the ideas held
by the pious folk of Ross-shire regarding dreams,
visions, and sudden flashes of communication with
the unknown world, Mr Donald Mackenzie was the
most practical of men, and his sermons were of
the same practical character as the cultivation of
his carefully farmed glebe. But he imported from Lochcarron the sing-song habit of intoning which
the Ross-shire "men" loved, and their favourite
ministers imitated. The sing-song intoning of Mr
Donald Mackenzie spoiled his English sermons, but
in his Gaelic seemed to fall into not unmusical
cadence. He went out at the Disruption without
the slightest hesitation, although he had not taken
any prominent part in the preceding controversy,
and after the parting there was no lessening of the
old friendship between him and the scholarly,
scientific and gentlemanly Dr Duff, minister of
Kenmore, his former ecclesiastical superior.
Balquhidder had four schools.
Three of these,
the parish school and the side schools at Strathyre
and Lochearnhead, were under the superintendence
of the Church of Scotland. The fourth was the
Free Church school at Lochearnhead, which received
an endowment from the Maclaren Trust. This Trust
was formed by the will of Mr Donald Maclaren, a
native of the parish, who, as banker and wool dealer
at Callander, made what was then held to be a
large fortune, and left the bulk of it for Free Church
purposes, chiefly in the locality with which he was
connected by birth and business.
Poor Mr Carleton, my
predecessor, lingered on
in a dying state for six weeks after I began the
teaching of the parish school, and after his death,
some more weeks elapsed before I was fully
installed, as I had first to be appointed by the
heritors, then examined by the Presbytery of Dunblane, and sworn again to bear true allegiance to
Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Throughout the
whole of that houseless time I was the guest of Mr
Macgregor at the manse, and a happy time it was
for guest and host until a fearful outbreak of
diphtheria among the children filled many homes
with sorrow and threw gloom over the whole
district, and especially saddened and harassed the
parish minister, who had been partially educated
for the medical profession before taking to the
clerical profession, and as the nearest doctors were
ten and seven miles away, gave medical aid in
simple cases, and in serious cases saw to it that the
doctor's instructions were carried out. In 1857-8
diphtheria was a new disease to the British people,
just as appendicitis was to a later generation. No
doubt there had been cases of both in former days,
but they had been too few to be classified as specific
diseases. The deaths of five children of the Dean of
Carlisle, Dr Archibald Campbell Tait, who, after
being Bishop of London, became Archbishop of
Canterbury, took place not very long before the
Balquhidder outbreak, and raised discussions in the
medical journals about what was called "Boulogne
sore throat," but no treatment beyond burning the
throat affected with nitric acid seems to have been
found out. At Mr Carnegie's expense, Dr Julius
Wood, Edinburgh, gave help as a specialist to the
local doctors, but it was the coming of snow and
frost which really stopped the plague suddenly and
thoroughly. Before the purifying snow and frost,
there had been a long spell of foggy, oozy weather,
when people looking down from their homes on the
flooded meadows could almost feel as if they were
beginning themselves to get covered with green moss.
The victims of the scourge were the smaller school-
children and those who were too young to be sent
to school at all. There were no deaths among
children in their teens, and adults were not
attacked at all. |
