Whose light aye filled his eye;
His spirit now in glory drest
Surrounds the throne on high.
The popular and living character of Macdonald’s preaching genius is everywhere apparent in his hymns. Sweetness, elegance, and genial, broad spiritual-mindedness, have rendered his compositions universally pleasing. He will probably ever remain the chief type of the Highland preacher.
REV. DUNCAN MACDOUGALL.
The name of this sacred bard was once very popular in the South-West Highlands and Isles, and his memory is still green with many aged Christians particularly in the island of Tiree, where he laboured with success as a Nonconformist minister. His hymns—Laoidhean Spioradail—appeared in 1841, and for many years continued to be great favourites in certain circles. Macdougall and Peter Grant belong to the same order of simple bard-evangelists who have always been a spiritually elevating force in humble quarters where more ambitious labours have been failures. Their productions have been sermons in verse which the common people have received with greater gladness than has been accorded to the more elaborate and ambitious utterances of the regular pulpit.
JOHN MORRISON.
Morrison, originally a blacksmith to trade, and latterly a Free Church catechist in Harris, is one of the most powerful and ingenious of the bards. I do not know in any language a poem like his Duin og is seann Duin’ agam in its subtlety of conception, its felicity of expression, and its cunning weavings and turnings of verses. Its theme is the “holy war” in the Christian soul, which he treats not at all in the style of Bunyan, but in quite an original fashion. It was published in 1835, again in America along with many of his other poems. His poetry shows that he was profoundly exercised and interested in the spiritual problems and difficulties of the Christian life. Few men ever obtained a deeper insight into the human heart, and fewer still possessed equally great poetic gifts for uttering what has been seen and felt. A good edition of his whole works is much required; and it was once hoped that his son, Dr Morrison of Edinburgh, would satisfy the wishes of his father’s admirers. The bard died in 1852, sixty-two years of age, before any of his works in book-form appeared.
Usquba has been the theme of frequent laudations by the secular bards; the following verses are from a preaching poem of a very different strain:—
Ye friends whom I cherish, nurse not in your mind