The Lord Jesus said "A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house" (Mt 13.57). This was the experience of James Turner for, though he saw folk saved in his native town, it was in the smaller fishing villages around the coast that he was mightily used in the 1859-60 revival. Initially, Peterhead (with a population of around 10,000) seemed impervious to revival. It was a typical seaport of the time except that, in addition to trading vessels and fishing boats, it was home to Britain's largest whaling and sealing fleet, whose hardy seamen and harpooners sometimes made it a pretty rough and tough old place! The respectable folk of the town were mainly content with their formal religion.
James Turner and his brother, George, continued preaching in 1860-61, and numbers were saved despite some hostility. Turner was wont to advise converts to read their Bibles. One man remembered "the last words he spoke the hin'most time he was in Portessie, 'Young men and women I will never see you again in the flesh, and I've nothing greater to leave with ye than this: take to your New Testaments and to your knees.'"¹ One young man doing that very thing was William McLean, born at Peterhead in 1835, and converted on 1st January 1854. He had begun his lifelong service in the proclamation of the gospel with James Turner and others. "Not a close or alley of his native town, or street of surrounding villages but knew his voice."²
The Beginning of Assembly Testimony in Peterhead
William McLean was one of a few Christians who began to meet to read and discuss the Scriptures. They did not have a great deal of light, but they began to see that their existing position was not correct. In conversation with a lady visiting Peterhead, McLean said that he was a Baptist. She remarked "Do you not think that the names given us in the Word of God should be sufficient for a believer?" The sufficiency of the Word of God, with the Spirit of God as Teacher and Guide, became increasingly impressed on his heart and mind, and this led to action. In 1868 an advertisement in a local newspaper announced that the Church of Christ in Peterhead would meet at No 1 Rose Street. On the day appointed, a few believers were seated in the best room of Mr McLean's house above his shop, when two ladies entered. Mr McLean rose to welcome them. The younger whispered "We saw your advertisement." Her eye ran over the room, as if taking in its dimensions, and she continued "Was it not rather a big claim to make, the Church of Christ in Peterhead, to meet in this room? I believe you really meant, where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them." "Yes, yes" Mr McLean replied, "that is exactly what we meant." Thus began the first assembly in Aberdeenshire, probably predating by a year or two the earliest such gathering in Aberdeen.
The North East Coast Mission
Evangelism in the coastal communities continued throughout the 1860s, through the work of the North East Coast Mission, founded in July 1858. One of the Mission's early directors was the scholar Alfred Edersheim,³ then minister of the Free Church in Old Aberdeen. Though directors were appointed from various denominations, the Mission had strong links with the Free Church of Scotland. Donald Ross, born in the parish of Alness in Ross-shire in 1824, was its first Secretary and Superintendent. His godly parents had taught him well, but it was the serious illness of a brother that led to his conversion when 15 years old. Before that, in his own words, he had been "proud as a peacock, and as empty as a drum." He was a master of the pithy saying! Ross, a firm friend of Duncan Matheson, and like him an exceptionally gifted evangelist, was a shrewd judge of character. He gathered a band of likeminded men who laboured from Ferryden near Montrose in the south, to Thurso in the north. Donald Munro, a fellow worker, wrote about Ross "He often visited the places where missionaries were stationed and held special meetings. During these wonderful years of revival from 1859 to 1870, there was a continuous work of grace going on somewhere along the north-east coast, often in two or three towns or villages at the same time."4 For example, Footdee, a village at the mouth of the river Dee, witnessed revivals in 1861, 1862 and 1869. The clear preaching led to conversions among respectable church members, and the clergy of the Established Church and even some ministers of the more evangelical Free Church became critical of the missionaries. In turn, the missionaries were becoming deeply exercised about their own position. One Lord's Day, Ross was sitting in the Free North Church in Aberdeen. It was sacrament Sunday and, as he looked around, he saw on each side a whisky seller. He thought "I am surely in strange company, and by my very presence with them I am encouraging them to think they are Christians, and thus helping the devil to lead them down to Hell. I shall never be found here again."
Growing Light and Liberty
Early in 1870, he and others resigned from the North East Coast Mission with its denominational links, and commenced the Northern Evangelistic Society. Its field was to be the inland districts of Northern Scotland. Further light broke upon them when the question arose, "What about baptism?" Disruption of one of Ross's meetings by young men who were church members caused a lady, who was a true child of God and a Baptist, to remark "No wonder that they should behave so. Are they not made to believe that they were made Christians when they were christened, and that they are all right?" It was a bow drawn at a venture and, soon afterwards, Ross was baptised in the river Dee by John Davidson of New Deer. It was a momentous step for a staunch Presbyterian whose 12 children had all been christened. Soon Ross learned the truth that the Lord Jesus, whom he had long preached as the Saviour of the lost, was the Centre of gathering for His own. The Mission was dissolved in 1871 so that its evangelists could act as led by the Lord, and Ross took his place with a small company of Christians meeting in Aberdeen.
John Ritchie, the founder of Believer's Magazine, first saw and heard Donald Ross in Inverurie Town Hall in 1871. He was deeply impressed by "the tremendous force and great solemnity, yet melting tenderness" of the preaching. On a summer Lord's Day that year four men, including Ritchie, walked eight miles to Old Rayne, where they were received as young believers from Inverurie. Ritchie remembered:
It was a wonderful gathering, the first of its kind we had ever seen. The place was a country joiner's shop, with whitewashed walls, plank seats supported by cut clogs of wood, a plain deal table covered with a white cloth, on which the bread and wine stood near the centre. There was true worship there that day, such as has to be shared to be understood; it cannot be explained.
Soon many assemblies were established across the North of Scotland as Christians, warmed and invigorated by revival blessing, gathered unto the name of the Lord. Ross quickly discerned the need to encourage believers in isolated places, and took up his pen as editor of The Northern Evangelistic Intelligencer. This became The Northern Witness and, eventually, The Witness, which under successive able editors was widely read for many years.
¹ Elizabeth McHardie, James Turner, or, How to Reach the Masses, p 150.
² W H McLaughlin, William McLean Veteran Evangelist.
³ Edersheim was a Jewish convert to Christianity. He wrote the well known book The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah.
4 CWR (ed), Donald Ross (John Ritchie Ltd, Kilmarnock). (Later quotations are from the same source.)
