04.00. Robert Murray M'Cheyne
Robert Murray M’Cheyne by Andrew A. Bonar (1810-1892)
CONTENTS
Introduction Chapter 1. His youth and preparation for the ministry.
Chapter 2. His labours in the vineyard before ordination.
Chapter 3. First years of labour in Dundee.
Chapter 4. His mission to Palestine and the Jews.
Chapter 5. Days of revival.
Chapter 6. The latter days of his ministry. (not found)
Introduction.
, on 25th March 1843, Robert Murray M’Cheyne died at the age of twenty-nine, it was inevitable that men should turn to Andrew Bonar for a Memoir of the one whose brief ministry of seven-and-a-half years had "stamped an indelible impress on Scotland." Both men were born in Edinburgh, Bonar three years before M’Cheyne, and after an education at the High School and University they entered the Divinity Hall in the autumn of 1831. From that point onwards they were the closest friends. They met with a few others every Saturday morning at half-past six for Bible study, together they sought out the spiritually needy in the poor quarters of the city, and they exhorted one another to the pursuit of that personal holiness which was to be so characteristic of their future lives. Already it was their mutual conviction that "it is not great talents God blesses so much as great likeness to Jesus," and their common aim was to live near to Christ. At the end of their course, in 1835, their ways temporarily diverged; Bonar went southwards to aid the minister at Jedburgh and M’Cheyne westwards to assist in the parishes of Larbert and Dunipace near Stirling. In the autumn of 1836 M’Cheyne was called to his historic pastorate of St. Peter’s, Dundee, and immediately we find him inviting Bonar to make the first of many visits; "I subjoin a map that you may find the house where I live; it is about five minutes’ walk further west than the church—the west-most lane in Dundee going down to the sea." Two years later M’Cheyne was offered a charge in the not far off beautiful village of Collace in Perthshire. He declined the invitation but secured it for his friend Andrew Bonar and thus once more they were settled within easy reach of each other. In 1839 they went together, with two other Church of Scotland ministers, to Palestine for six months, to explore the possibilities of missionary work. In their absence a revival commenced in Dundee and, not long after their return, in some measure, at Collace. This brought the two pastors into even closer fellowship, and they often rode over to assist one another.[1] On one occasion as M’Cheyne arrived at the door of the Collace manse on a wintry day, he said, "I have been riding all the way to-day through the pure white snow, and that verse has been in my mind all the time, ‘Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.’" Years afterwards Andrew Bonar’s old servant used to describe M’Cheyne’s last visit to Collace. "He preached in the church on ‘Lest I myself should be a castaway’, and the folk were standin’ out to the gate, and the windows were pulled down that those outside might hear. I had to come awa’ after he began, and I could see from the house the kirk lichted up, and oh, I wearied sair for them to come hame! They stayed at the kirk that nicht till eleven. The folk couldna gi’e ower listenin’, and Mr M’Cheyne couldna gi’e ower speakin’. I mind the time when Mr Bonar couldna get his tea ta’en for folk comin’ and speerin’[2] if conversion was true. Oh, to hear Mr M’Cheyne at prayers in the mornin’ ! It was as if he could never gi’e ower, he had sae muckle to ask. Ye would hae thocht the very walls would speak again. He used to rise at six on the Sabbath mornin’, and go to bed at twelve at night, for he said he likit to have the whole day alone with God."
Andrew Bonar outlived M’Cheyne by nearly fifty years. He laboured on in Collace till 1856, then amongst Glasgow’s multitudes he worked with the same undiminished prayerfulness that had characterized his Perthshire ministry, until his death in 1892. But throughout the course of his long ministry the memory and example of the friend of his youth never left him. "Life has lost half its joys, were it not the hope of saving souls," he wrote on that sad March day in 1843. "There was no friend whom I loved Eke him." Nearly forty years later when Bonar was visiting the scenes of Jonathan Edwards’ ministry in America, we find such comments as these in his Diary: "Saturday, 20th August 1881—How deeply interested would Robert M’Cheyne have been today had he been with us! he who used to speak of this place. It was really strange to me and wonderful that this morning I should be on the way to Northampton where so much work was done for God in other days. The day was beautiful, everything bathed in sunshine...We came to what was the old street where Jonathan Edwards’ house stood..." The next day his thoughts were still dwelling on old memories when he wrote: "Filled with alarm and regret in reviewing the Lord’s mercies to me, in using me to write the Memoir of R. M. M’Cheyne, for which I am continually receiving thanks from ministers. Why was I commissioned to write that book? How poor have been my returns of thankfulness. Oh, when shall I attain to the same holy sweetness and unction, and when shall I reach the deep fellowship with God which he used to manifest?"
Andrew Bonar’s biography of M’Cheyne was written at Collace between the months of September and December 1843, and it conveys the fragrance of his life in a way that no later writer could ever recapture. It is as though a breath of the revivals which were then refreshing Scotland still linger over these pages, and as the reader is led back into the atmosphere of those times he is made to feel that the prayers which were once offered for the original publication are still being abundantly answered from on high. Being dead, M’Cheyne yet speaks and it may be doubted whether any Christian can seriously read these pages without having an example of the power of godliness stamped upon his conscience in a manner that will abide with him all his days. So close was M’Cheyne’s life and ministry to eternal realities that even with the passing of years and generations the importance of the lessons he taught abides the same. There is no doubt that could we regather the long departed flock at St. Peter’s and summon back their pastor from the New Jerusalem, the message they would receive would be exactly as it was:
"Oh ! brethren, be wise. ‘Why stand ye all the day idle?’ In a little moment it will be all over. A little while and the day of grace will be over—preaching, praying will be done. A little while, and we shall stand before the great white throne—a little while, and the wicked shall not be; we shall see them going away into everlasting punishment. A little while, and the work of eternity shall be begun. We shall be like Him—we shall see Him day and night in His temple—we shall sing the new song, without sin and without weariness, for ever and ever." The Publishers,
August 2, 1960.
ENDNOTES:
[1] It is interesting to note that during the times of revival of this period Isabella Dickson, who became Andrew Bonar’s wife in 1848, was converted. Recalling her first impression of M’Cheyne, she later told her husband, "There was something singularly attractive about Mr. M’Cheyne’s holiness. It was not his matter nor his manner either that struck me; it was just the living epistle of Christ—a picture so lovely, I felt I would have given all the world to be as he was, but knew all the time I was dead in sins."
[2] Asking.