The Rev. John Macdonald, D.D., one of the most popular of Gaelic preachers, was born in 1778. He was ordained minister of the Gaelic Church, Edinburgh, in 1806, and was afterwards translated to the parish of Urquhart, in Ross-shire. While at Urquhart, he began a career of remarkable ministerial success; though it was as a missionary, or visitor of other Highland districts, that he established his professional fame. His powerful voice is said to have reached and moved thousands of auditors assembled in the open air. A long-expected volume of Gaelic poetry, consisting chiefly of elegies, hymns, and sacred lyrics, appeared from his pen in 1848. Dr Macdonald died in 1849. At the Disruption in 1843, he had joined the Free Church.
THE MISSIONARY OF ST KILDA. The descriptive portion of a sacred lyric composed by Dr Macdonald on the occasion of his first visit to St Kilda, often called "The Hirt" or "Hirta," after the Gaelic. His missionary enterprise was blessed, we believe, with remarkable success. I see, I see the Hirta, the land of my desire,
And the missionary spirit within me is on fire;
But needs it all—for, bristling from the bosom of the sea,
Those giant crags are menacing, but welcome rude to me;
The eye withdraws in horror from yon mountains rude and bare,
Where flag of green nor tree displays, nor blushes flow'ret fair.
And how shall bark so frail as mine that beetling beach come near,
Where rages betwixt cliff and surf the battle-din of fear?
It seems as, like a rocking hull, that Island of the main
Were shaken from its basement, and creaking with the strain!
But the siege of waters nought prevails 'gainst giant Hirt the grim,
Save his face to furrow with some scars, or his brow with mist to dim.
Oh, needs a welcome to that shore, for well my thought might say,
'Twere better than that brow to face that I were leagues away.
But no, not so! what fears should daunt,—for what welcomes e'er outran
The welcome that I bring with me, my call from God and man?
Nor vain my trust! my helmsman, He who sent me, now is steering,
And, by His power, the wave-worn craft the shore in calm is nearing,
And scarce my foot was on the beach when two hundred echoes spake
Their welcome, and a hundred hands flew forth my hand to take.
And he, believe me, has his best protection by his side
Who bears the call of God and man, from the reef, the crag, the tide;
And, for welcome on the shore, give me the flashing eyes that glow'd,
When I told the men of Hirt the news I brought them from their God!
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