Kilmallie (1840)



'People from all quarters to hear him (the minister Alexander McIntyre) and the effects were wonderful. In the parish of Kilmallie, especially - one of Scotland's largest parishes, being sixty miles long and thirty miles at its widest and covering 400,000 acres - were his incessant labours, day and night, attended with extraordinary results. The earnestness of the preacher his electrifying eloquence and his awful description of perdition and the deplorable state of the unconverted produced such effects upon the hearers as baffles my power of description... The people fell under the power of the Word like the grass before the mower.'

Another witness, 'though the snow was up to people's knees, such a congregation gathered at Kilmallie that the church could not hold them and they met on the hillside near a clump of wood above the church. There they stood for hours while the terrors of the law of God were thundered in their ears.'

And another, 'One night in particular... in a crowded church in Fort William, the weeping was so loud and continuous, the voice of the preacher so completely drowned, that after repeated attempts to still the people had been made, but in vain, the congregation had to be dismissed without the intended sermon.

The effects of such times of refreshing from God upon the whole district generally was truly great and never to be forgotten. The wilderness blossomed as the rose. Open ungodliness under its various hideous forms hid its face with shame. Old and young, far and near, flocked to the preaching of the Word, whether in church or in the open field. Crowded prayer-meetings sprang up in abundance... And for years after, dancing halls, heathenish sports and other kindred vanities which lead the soul away from the fountain of living waters were things of the past in the then highly favoured parish of Kilmallie.'

'The Rev Alexander McIntyre', by Robinson, pages 7-8 and 25. 

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