WORK AND WAR IN HUNTLY.
Huntly was one of the last places Mr Ross visited before removing to Edinburgh, and there the storm of opposition raged with a violence unequalled in any other place. It was here. that Duncan Matheson, the earnest evangelist and bosom friend of Mr Ross, was converted. Here he and others preached the Gospel with great power and blessing.
In the days of the godly Duchess of Gordon, thousands gathered in the Castle Park, near the town of Huntly, where the Gospel was preached by the best and most honoured soul-winners of these times, and many won to Christ. Some old believers still live who shared these never-to-be-forgotten times, and tell how, under the arousing appeals of Duncan Matheson and Brownlow North, the stripping and searching ministry of Dr. W. P. Mackay of Hull, and the full-orbed death, resurrection, and union with Christ Gospel of J. Denham Smith, hundreds passed out of darkness and bondage into the light and liberty of the kingdom of God, seated on the green sward or under the canvas tent where, all day long, anxious ones awakened on the field were pointed to the Saviour.
In 1872 all this had subsided, and spiritual death reigned, when Mr Munro and several fellow labourers began to preach in the courthouse, and subsequently in a large hall. We remember being there over a Saturday and Sunday and seeing something of the early stages of the work of God and the opposition of the enemy. About half a dozen scoffers sat in the courthouse, under the terrific fire of judgment to come, until they could endure it no longer, then rose in a body and went to an adjoining public house to try to stifle their convictions in strong drink. But "the Lord's hook" was in them, and they could not rest there, so back they came to hear more. Some wonderful trophies of grace were won, and the fury of the enemies of the Lord waxed hotter until they threw off all religious disguise and rushed the platform, knocking the preachers to the floor and shamefully abusing them. Writing of the work in Huntly, Mr Ross, who had his full share of the abuse which emptied itself weekly through the columns of a local newspaper, says-
"In this town the unhallowed sham in which the people are being deceived has been laid aside by many, and the enmity to the truth of God manifested was almost beyond precedent in this or in any other country. And the curious thing is, that the converts, in general, do not see that they ought to be separate at once and forever from that though which they were nearly in 'hell before they discovered their whereabouts. To that which God used and blessed there was given savage, brutal, and cruel treatment, worthy of Spain in the palmy days of the Inquisition. God's honest truth 'has laid bare the sores, arid they are very sore. We have often thought that the scoffers in this county might someday join with the hypocrites, and have a newspaper organ of their own to be called The Man of Sin, for the advocacy of hypocrisy, sham, white lies, and persecution. To all appearance this is not unlikely now to be realised - that is, if shadows foretell coming events."
It was scarcely to be expected that the truth thus plainly told would be relished by those who were affected by it, but Mr Ross was not the man to keep back his sword from blood or to take the edge off for fear of giving offence. He believed it was a sacred truth committed to him by God to unmask hypocrisy wherever he found it and to leave God to look after the results. Would to God we had more like him and less of the fashionable timing of God's truth to make it palatable to religious worldlings and carnal Christians, who, if they were made to smart under the sharp edge of the Word, in the mighty power of the Spirit, would either flee or rise up in opposition against those who brought the message from God against which the core of their enmity is directed! Popular preachers of "moderation" and "charity" seem to think that, by trimming the truth of all that gives offence, and omitting all that would cause a winnowing of the chaff from among the wheat, they will get Christ and the Devil, God and the world, the flesh and the Spirit, to run in pair, and thus be able to carry on what they pompously call "the Lord's work" on a much more extensive scale and in such an attractive and pleasing style that not a dog will move his tongue, or a shot be fired from the enemy's battery. Nay, more: that the world's newspapers and religious rna, magazines will advertise the number of converts, and tell of the "success" of the meetings, and ungodly ministers and church members will give "votes of thanks" and purses of sovereigns, with pressing invitations to return, to the preachers. Mr Ross had not learned to reckon after this fashion. He believed in the old-fashioned doctrine of the Son of God - "If they have persecuted Me they will also persecute you; if they have kept My sayings, they will keep yours also" (John xv. 20); and a coming day will show that he was right.
The fruits of the work in Huntly are to be found over the face of the whole earth, and some who then opposed the truth have since, through grace, been conquered by it, and become themselves witnesses to its saving and sanctifying power.
From, "Donald Ross, Pioneer Evangelist," pages 179-83