REV. JAMES MACGREGOR, D.D.
Macgregor (1759-1830), sent by the General Associate Synod to Nova Scotia in 1786, has written hymns (1819) which have been highly valued by sections of Highlanders at home and abroad. He was a native of St. Fillans, in Perthshire, and wrote and spoke Gaelic with greater purity and elegance than the natives of that county in the present day are able to do. The University of Glasgow conferred on him the degree of D.D. in recognition of his arduous and successful labours in the Colonies among his countrymen. His poetry, although not of the first order, is yet sweet and natural—metrical effusions in which the simple truths of the Gospel are rehearsed with earnestness and freshness. The following verses are translated from his poem on The Resurrection:—
Great must be that might,
Keen must be that sight,
That so wisely all parts exhume;
All the craven and brave,
The master and slave,
He shall call from the dust of the tomb.
Widely scattered though be
Heads and bodies, yet He
Reunites them in one again;
Then forth shall be hurled
From the graves of the world
All the ashes of slaughtered men.
The bones that are placed
On the hill or wild waste,
In the desert, or pit, or shore;
In the ocean deep,
’Neath the river’s sweep—
To life he shall then restore.
When the earth shall be shaken
All classes shall waken—
The poor, and the king, and the brave;
Then forth shall be rolled
The young and the old,
The maiden, and lover, and slave.
Some will rise in great fear
When the Lamb shall appear,
The just from the evil to sever;
Some will wake with delight
In garments all bright,
As the heirs of the kingdom for ever.
Macgregor’s grandson, the Rev. George Patterson, D.D., has written his life, much of which is founded on an autobiographical sketch.