Kilbirnie West
James Dodson
22
II
REV. JAMES FERGUSON
The way was now clear for calling a minister. The number of members at the erection of the congregation was certainly very small, being only seventeen, but in those days a large membership was not considered everything among the Cameronians: they were more concerned with quality than quantity. The real difficulties towards a settlement were the scarcity of ministers and the rule which then held good in the Church that translations from other congregations were inadvisable, if not inadmissible.
In January 1826, however, the prospects seemed auspicious and application was made to the Presbytery for moderation in a call. The Presbytery agreed to the request and appointed the Rev. A. M. Rogerson of Darvel to preside at the meeting of the congregation. Mr Rogerson lost no time in summoning the members, and indeed there was reason for haste because the few eligible probationers were being hurriedly picked up. On February 22 it was reported to the Presbytery that the congregation, which now numbered thirty-six members, had unanimously set their hearts on the Rev. Gavin Rowatt. Mr Rowatt was present at the meeting, but asked for “time to consider what may be his duty in the important
ELECTING A MINISTER 23
affair.” It is evident that he had other expectations. At the next meeting of Presbytery, held on April 11, the call came up for consideration, but it was now known that Mr Rowatt had been elected by another congregation, and the whole matter was referred to the Synod for settlement. When the business came before the Synod it was ascertained that Mr Rowatt had the choice of a call from every Presbytery of the Church, viz., from the congregations at Stirling, Strathmiglo, Whithorn, and Kilbirnie. He chose Whithorn, where his ministry was not of long duration, for he died in 1832.
On January 23, 1827, the congregation was again ready to go forward, and the Presbytery appointed the Rev. William M‘Lachlan, the new minister at Kilmacolm, to preside at the election—an appointment which showed that good relations had been maintained with the mother congregation. When the Presbytery next met it was reported that the Rev. James Ferguson, who had been licensed by the Southern Presbytery in the preceding year, had been unanimously chosen. Mr Ferguson was present and accepted the call, and the troubles of the people were over.
The new minister was not unknown to the congregation. Both as a student and as a probationer he had frequently conducted services among them, and the unanimity of the call, which was signed by 52 members and 108 adherents, bespoke the happiest relations for the future—a promise that was amply fulfilled.
A hundred years ago ecclesiastical movements
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were apt to be leisurely in the matter of settlements, and the ordination was not carried out till September 5, 1827. Mr M‘Lachlan preached the ordination sermon, taking as his text 2 Tim. ii. 3: “Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” The Rev. David Armstrong of Glasgow offered the ordination prayer, and the service was concluded with a sermon by the Rev. Robert Winning of Eaglesham, who preached from Luke iii. 18: “And many other things, in his exhortation, preached he unto the people.” On the following Sabbath Mr Winning introduced the new minister to his people, and Mr Ferguson occupied the pulpit in the afternoon, preaching from the text, 2 Cor. iv. 5: “For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.”
A manse was now required, and in 1830 a feu at the south corner of the park, called Muirhead Park, was obtained from Robert Walker of Bailliestone. The feu-duty was fixed at £2 per annum, a sum at which it still stands. The lease was for the apparently interminable period of 999 years. It is noteworthy that in the deeds referring to the church and manse the congregation is called “Reformed Protestant Presbyterian”—a name which occurs nowhere in the official papers of the Church at large. The manse itself was not of great extent, and in later years was considerably increased in size.
Mr Ferguson entered energetically into his work. In the days when such things were scarcely thought of seriously, he started, soon after his ordination,
REV. JAMES FERGUSON 25
week-day Bible classes for young people, and a school for children on Sabbath, “which has been in operation ever since.” Unfortunately it is impossible to give many details of Mr Ferguson’s activities for the original records of the congregation have disappeared, the earliest minute of the Session being dated January 23, 1845, and that of the Court of Managers, September 10, 1857. More than once the Clerk of Session intimates that he has not recorded many of the details of business brought before his court—to the consequent loss of the congregation in these latter days.
During Mr Ferguson’s ministry there appears to have been a commendable lack of necessity for exercising church discipline. Among the few cases noted was one in 1852 when a member was challenged for “attending and taking an interest in a dog fight at some place in the vicinity of Glasgow.” He was duly waited on by two members of Session who were commissioned to warn him of “the sin, danger and gross inconsistency of such practices”—a judgment which must meet with hearty approval even in these laxer days.
Interesting glimpses of the state of the congregation in 1841 are given in the Statistical Account of the parish prepared by the Rev. Robert Urquhart, its minister in that year. The author was evidently on the best of terms with Mr Ferguson. He says that the church was seated for 480, but “as many of the members belong to the adjoining parishes, the usual attendance does not probably exceed 240.” He placed the membership at 130 and the number of
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Reformed Presbyterian families in the parish at 60. In his account of Kilbirnie’s educational facilities, he speaks of what was probably its only Sabbath school: “Nor in this enumeration of the sources of instruction should a Sunday school under the superintendence of the Rev. James Ferguson be unmentioned. It is well attended and has been the means of disseminating much religious instruction among the youth of both sexes.” He adds: “There is likewise a small library connected with the Reformed Presbytery composed of moral and religious works. It is supported by the heads of families and the books are lent gratis to the young attending the Sunday school.” This library is frequently mentioned in the records, and was evidently carefully attended to until quite recent times.
In similar accounts of the neighbouring parishes it is stated that about the same time there were eleven Reformed Presbyterian families resident in Dalry, comprising 55 individuals; five communicants in Stewarton; and 75 adherents in Beith—all of whom must have looked upon Kilbirnie as their spiritual home.
On October 5, 1845, the Kirk-Session did an unusual thing. For some time previous to that date Mr Ferguson had been lecturing through the first Epistle to Timothy, and in the ordinary course of his addresses had come to the text giving Paul’s advice about the taking of wine. For what he was reported to have said on that occasion, Mr Ferguson was most severely taken to task by the Temperance Advocate, a teetotal journal of the day. The Kirk-
A TEMPERANCE CONTROVERSY 27
Session was highly indignant at the attack on their minister. They solemnly recorded that there had been “the grossest misrepresentation of what was said, as well as the most brutal assault in the replies attempted to be given,” and they conveyed the sympathy of the congregation to him.
The minutes dealing with the matter are most elaborate, and the members of the court record that in framing them “they neither have been advised, influenced, nor assisted by the minister in any way whatever, and that the whole responsibility involving time, place, matter, and terms of expression rests entirely with themselves.” They also agreed that the recent judgment of the Synod “with respect to the kind of elements to be used at the Lord’s Table” should be read from the pulpit before the approaching Communion, part of the controversy evidently turning upon the nature of the elements used at the Sacrament.
The whole affair is a reflection of the agitation then proceeding on the temperance problem, and would almost be impossible to-day. The minutes show a generous appreciation of Mr Ferguson, but perhaps they do more credit to the hearts than to the heads of his aggrieved office-bearers.
The matter, however, did not end with the Session’s chivalrous vindication of their minister. In the following month certain members—three men and two women—petitioned the Session that they should be “allowed the use of ‘unleavened bread and the fruit of the vine’ in the celebration of the Eucharist”—a strange word to find in the minute book of a
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Reformed Presbyterian court. The business thus introduced occupied no fewer than eleven sittings of the court, and evidently created considerable feeling, for the Session were at great pains to set forth the extent of the errors into which the petitioners had fallen in making their request. They were particularly severe on two of them, the delinquencies of one being arranged under no fewer than seventeen heads, and the other under five. It was the first stirrings of the unfermented wine question, and the Session were not prepared to accept an interpretation of Scripture that contradicted the sense placed upon it by long generations and would cut them off from the usages of their fathers. They declared themselves zealous for absolute obedience to what they considered the Lord’s command. It must be acknowledged that, amid much that is harsh and dogmatic, it would be hard to beat the minutes for precision of statement, debating ability and strength of conscientious conviction. The result, however, was deplorable, for the case ended in the extrusion of two of the petitioners and the withdrawal of the others from the congregation. The dust of the controversy has long since settled, but it is noteworthy that the Sacrament is celebrated to-day in unfermented wine.
In 1854 the Kirk-Session determined “to revive the office of the diaconate in the congregation.” In the absence of the earlier records, it is difficult to understand what were to be the duties of the deacons, but in due course the resolution was carried out and
Illustration: group photograph captioned The Office-bearers, 1923.
DEACONS CHOSEN 29
John Fyfe,
John Martin,
John Gillies, and
William Paton
were duly elected and ordained. According to the Kirk-Session minutes they met for a time with the elders and assisted in such matters as the poor of the congregation and arrangements for the Sacrament. But no further additions were made to their ranks and the office seems to have been allowed to lapse. At any rate, in the first extant minutes of the congregational meetings, September 10, 1857, managers were elected in ordinary course. In 1878 another effort was made to institute the order. In March of that year the Session determined to have an election of elders and at the same time asked the congregation to consider the possibility of “having an appointment of deacons.” The congregation referred the question back to the Session, but nothing more was heard of the proposal. The ordinary affairs of the congregation are still under the control of a court of managers.
Statistics are not available during the greater part of Mr Ferguson’s ministry, but the membership of the congregation increased until in his later years it stood at 145. For some time his stipend was £80 with certain allowances for travelling and sacramental expenses, but it was ultimately raised to £100. In 1843-4 the Synod made an attempt to clear all congregational property of debt. Under the impulse, the Kilbirnie congregation met on March 6, 1844, and “after a short lecture by the pastor entered into a subscription for the extinction of the debt on their
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place of worship, and before they separated the entire sum was fully subscribed and the debt swept off at once. . . . All parted with joyful animation, feeling that by one hearty and paternal effort they had thrown a burden off themselves and posterity.” The debt on the manse however remained. In 1860 the newly constituted Ferguson Bequest Trustees offered £1000 to the Reformed Presbyterian Church as a nucleus of a fund to be raised by its members so that all church property might be freed from debt. The Kilbirnie congregation did not see their way to join in the general movement, but undertook to clear off the £100 that still remained as a charge on the manse. A subscription was set about and the result was satisfactory, over £94 being raised. Details of the collection are interesting as perhaps showing the relative strength of the congregation in its different districts:
Kilbirnie . . . . £43 1 0
Beith . . . . 29 7 6
Dalry . . . . 12 10 0
Lochwinnoch . . . 7 0 0
The Synod gave its approval to the effort by contributing an additional £30 from the general Ferguson Bequest grant, and for the first time in its history the congregation owed no man anything.
On Sabbath, September 7, 1862, Mr Ferguson preached a sermon in celebration of the thirty-fifth anniversary of his ordination, and spoke with “unusual vigour and earnestness.” “His people,” it was said, “marked an unwonted solemnity in his
DEATH OF MR FERGUSON 31
manner as he spoke of the delight he had in preaching the glorious gospel and of the earnestness of his desire to win souls to Christ.” On the following day he went off for a short vacation to his native place near Cournance, in Dumfriesshire, where he was born in 1797. On Tuesday he was struck with apoplexy, and died on Monday, September 15. He was buried a week later at Kilbirnie, and the whole town went into mourning as the funeral procession passed through the streets.
Mr Ferguson was considered a man of considerable ability and erudition, though his discourses were probably too metaphysical and doctrinal for the average congregation. He impressed all by the integrity and loftiness of his character. The discriminating notice of him that appeared in the Reformed Presbyterian Magazine frankly stated his limitations: “It could not be said that, so far as regards manner, he was an eloquent preacher. There was some awkwardness about his enunciation. He did not excel in power and fluency of elocution. A fondness for the discussion of principles occasionally imparted a dryness to his public appearances which, however, disappeared in the later years of his life.” He was of much service on the committees of the Church, and was specially useful in the work of the Hall and the care of the students. As was the case with so many of his brethren, his few published works are sermons preached on special occasions, such as those at the ordination of the Rev. John Macleod at Stranraer in 1841, his “Lecture on the Headship of Christ” in the same year, and “The Supremacy of
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Scripture,” a discourse from the Chair of the Synod in 1859. In addition to these he wrote an “Exposition of the National Covenant” in 1843, which appears in the volume entitled “Commemoration of the Bicentenary of the Westminster Assembly of Divines and of the Centenary of the Reformed Presbytery,” Glasgow, 1843; and at the request of the Synod prepared a “Pastoral Address” in 1855—a composition which merited, and received, high commendation. In spite of his narrow means he accumulated a library of 600 volumes, and these he bequeathed to the Divinity Hall.