“In full and glad surrender
He gave himself to Thee
Thine utterly, and only
And evermore to be.”
Alexander Mackay was blessed with a truly Christian parentage. He owed much to the life of a pious mother; he owed a great deal more to her death. It was during the sadness which surrounded her death that the future missionary sought Divine light and guidance, which afterward were the mainsprings of his inspiring life. Alexander Mackay, LL. D., was Free Church minister of the parish of Rhynie, and it was in this obscure Aberdeenshire village that the future engineer-missionary was born on the 13th October, 1849. It may be a mere coincidence, but it is significant, that the neighboring manses of Keig, Insch, Auchendoir, and Half Morton gave to the world such truly distinguished men as Prof. William Gray Elmslie, Dr. William Robertson Nicoll, and Dr. John Smith. The latter afterward became one of Mackay’s best friends, and one of his partners in pioneering the Nyanza Missionary Expedition.
Much might be written of Mackay’s boyhood, but we must be content with a reference sufficiently long to foreshadow his after-life. His boyhood was spent amid cultured and godly society. His father was a scientific student as well as a preacher, and he undertook his son’s education until he reached his fourteenth birthday, when increasing pastoral duties rendered it necessary to send, in 1864, young Alexander to the Aberdeen Grammar School.
Up to this point he had shown great intellectual capability. A love of books and an intense passion for mechanics appeared to run concurrently through his ever active brain. At seven years of age his text-books were the immortal “Paradise Lost,” “History of Modern Europe,” by Russell; “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Gibbon’s prodigious masterpiece; and “History of the Discovery of America,” by Robertson.
Men who were leaders of various branches of scientific thought met around the serious, but hospitable, table of his father, and the boy’s developing faculties were inspired by the discussions on various important questions which took place.
He was alike the pet and the anxious care of his mother. All her motherly yearning seemed to concentrate itself around the young, impulsive, bright, lovable boy. Daily, almost hourly, her prayers ascended for his welfare. Her great hope was that his life should be dedicated to the Master’s cause, the sacredness of which had been increased by the stainless life and the holy devotion of her husband. This hope she was never privileged to see fulfilled.
His love of books produced an almost natural revulsion, and for two years, or a little over, the passion for practical handicraft became the absorbing interest of his young life. Many and many a time he would walk out of his picturesque native village to the nearest railway station in the hope of seeing the engine stop for a few minutes before going further on its journey.
There is almost a tragic element intermingled with the death of the hero missionary’s mother. He was sixteen years of age when the end came, and was still a student at the Aberdeen Grammar School, preparing for the career of a professional teacher. He was the only member of the family absent from the death-bed. The death of his mother was the beginning of his spiritual life; it was the first thread woven into the strong cord which afterward drew him with a mighty impulse into the very heart of Africa.
Her last days and nights were spent in prayer for her boy, and when the end was approaching more rapidly than the messenger who could bring Alexander to her, she handed to a godly attendant her most precious souvenir, to be given to him when the last scene was over. It was her Bagster’s Bible, which had been presented to her as a wedding gift by her husband. To her it had been one of the dearest of mute companions, and she gave instructions that certain passages, especially applicable to the needs of her son, should be prominently marked, in the hope that they would flash conviction across his mind.
Her repeated prayers were abundantly answered; and if Christians can behold after death the things of time and sense (as some authorities aver), she would be more than abundantly satisfied with the nobility of purpose which was created within her son’s breast by her last prayerful injunction, “Search the Scriptures.”
The Bible was given to the youth just after the funeral. The injunction and the marked passages came to him like messages from Heaven, and they had an inestimable effect in bringing about a thorough conversion. His after life was marked by a devotional reverence and a fervent waiting upon God.