BALMORAL

If the cry for vital being—

‘Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant,
More life, and fuller, that I want’—

ever came from Norman Macleod, it was answered only too well; like a certain prayer for rain, which was interrupted by a ridiculous flood. Not only were his activities immense and various, but there was always an expenditure of corresponding emotion; nay, and what in the life of most men would have been simply an event was in his a crisis, what was a fleeting image with others was with him an indelible impression.

He was summoned to the unique ordeal of ministering to the newly-widowed Queen.

About twenty years before, during a visit to the West of Scotland, Her Majesty had for the first time attended a presbyterian service, on which occasion the preacher was Norman Macleod, the high priest of the Highlands and minister of St. Columba’s. His son first appeared at Balmoral in 1854. The invitation of the minister of Crathie he had refused (having in hand a special service at the Barony), but was informed that it had been sent at the instance of Her Majesty. He preached without any notes a sermon never fully written out, which he had delivered fifteen times. The Queen wrote in her Journal: ‘We went to kirk as usual at twelve o’clock. The service was performed by the Rev. Norman M’Leod of Glasgow, son of Dr. M’Leod, and anything finer I never heard. The sermon, entirely extempore, was quite admirable: so simple, and yet so eloquent, and so beautifully argued and put. The text was from the account of the coming of Nicodemus to Christ by night, St. John, chapter iii. Mr. M’Leod showed in the sermon how we all tried to please self, and live for that, and in so doing found no rest. Christ had come not only to die for us, but to show us how we were to live. The second prayer was very touching: his allusions to us were so simple, saying after his mention of us, “Bless their children.” It gave me a lump in my throat, as also when he prayed for “the dying, the wounded, the widow, and the orphans.” Every one came back delighted: and how satisfactory it is to come back from church with such feelings! The servants and the Highlanders—all—were equally delighted.’

In the evening he was sitting on a block of granite within the grounds, when he was aroused by a voice asking whether he was the clergyman who had preached that day, and found himself in the presence of the Queen and the Prince Consort. This was his first meeting with Her Majesty, and it was only for a moment.

On the next occasion, two years later, he dined with the royal family, and afterwards had some conversation with the Queen; referring to which he says, ‘I never spoke my mind more frankly to anyone who was a stranger and not on an equal footing.’ This he did, because he perceived that Her Majesty was anxious to go to the root and reality of things, and abhorred all shams. His sermons had a peculiar fascination for the Queen. Of the recorded estimates of Macleod’s preaching, that of Victoria, if the warmest, is not the least discerning, and will be a telling memorial when the sermons are forgotten.

The Prince Consort died at the close of the year 1861. In the May following, the Queen came to Balmoral. She sent for Norman Macleod. What a moment! How was he to deal with stricken Majesty—

‘Her over all whose realms to their last isle
The shadow of a loss drew like eclipse,
Darkening the world’?

It was purely as a minister of religion that he had the honour of his sovereign’s command. The truth of God, as he believed it, the same message which a hundred times he had spoken to bereaved wives in the lowliest homes, that, and nothing other, would he carry to the royal widow, whom he should regard only as ‘an immortal being, a sister in humanity.’ Their first meeting was at divine service, and if the occasion was a trying one to the preacher, it was evidently exciting to the Queen. ‘Hurried to be ready,’ so runs the royal Journal, ‘for the service which Dr. Macleod was kindly going to perform. And a little before ten, I went down with Lenchen and Affie (Alice being still in bed unwell) to the dining-room, in which I had not yet been.... And never was service more beautifully, touchingly, simply, and tenderly performed.... The sermon, entirely extempore, was admirable, all upon affliction, God’s love, our Saviour’s sufferings, which God would not spare Him, the blessedness of suffering in bringing us nearer to our eternal home, where we should all be together, and where our dear ones were gone on before us.... The children and I were much affected on coming upstairs.’ After dinner he was summoned to the Queen’s room, and there, after some conversation about the Prince, he told about an old woman in the Barony who had lost her husband and several of her children, and who, on being asked how she had been able to bear her many sorrows, replied, ‘When he was ta’en it made sic a hole in my heart that a’ other sorrows gang lichtly through.’ When Macleod recalled this period, he would express the whole burden of it in the solemn murmur, ‘That May.’ He has written: ‘God enabled me to speak in public and private to the Queen in such a way as seemed to me to be the truth, the truth in God’s sight—that which I believed she needed, though I felt it would be very trying to her spirit to receive it. And what fills me with deepest thanksgiving is that she has received it, and written to me such a kind, tender letter of thanks, which shall be treasured in my heart while I live.’

In the spring of the following year he was for several days a guest at Windsor. ‘I walked,’ he says, ‘with Lady Augusta to the mausoleum to meet the Queen. She had the key and opened it herself, undoing the bolts; and alone we entered, and stood in solemn silence beside Marochetti’s beautiful statue of the Prince.’

With the royal family he was both a social favourite and a trusted counsellor. To Prince Alfred, who seemed to be particularly attached to him, he once gave this advice,—that ‘if he did God’s will, good and able men would rally round him; otherwise flatterers would truckle to him and ruin him, while caring only for themselves.’ Both sons and daughters, when residing on the Continent, had flying visits from this chaplain. One Monday he left Glasgow for Windsor; thence, on royal errands, he proceeded to Bonn and Darmstadt; he was back at Windsor on the Friday: and on the Sunday following, it may be added, he preached three times in the Barony Church.

The Prince of Wales (with whom he sometimes stayed at Abergeldie) once put in a plea for short sermons. Said the Doctor, ‘I am a Thomas À Becket and resent the interference of the State’; and sure enough, at the first opportunity, he preached for three-quarters of an hour, only so well that His Royal Highness wished it had been longer. To show how much he was thought of at Court, it may be mentioned that one day he was at Inverness to meet the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia, the next (which was a Saturday) at Balmoral, and for half of the following week with Prince Alfred at Holyrood. But here is the crowning instance: ‘The Queen sat down to spin at a nice Scotch wheel, while I read Robert Burns to her, Tam o’ Shanter and A man’s a man for a’ that, her favourite.’

Her Majesty never forgot what Dr. Macleod had been to her in the time of her desolation, but extended her confidence, nor failed to take an interest in his personal cares. Some of the truest and most touching words ever written of Norman Macleod are from the pen of Queen Victoria.