Luke Heywood: The Soldier of Fort George
By Rev Thomas M Fraser
During the 18th century the parish of Resolis was blessed in the person of Hector MacPhail, one of the most eminently useful and diligent ministers that the Church of Christ has ever seen. To reach the parish of Resolis from the coast of Nairn, it was necessary in his day to cross on the ferry of Fort George to go over the peninsula of the Black Isle. After a journey of some eight or nine miles over an immense wilderness of the dreariest moorland lying along the entire back of the peninsula, the Church and manse of Resolis were reached.
Profligate
At the period of our story, Fort George was garrisoned by an English regiment, which partook of the usual profligate character of the British Army at that time. As the neighbouring town of Campbelltown is some distance from the Fort, wooden booths had been erected close to the water’s edge, immediately below the garrison, to serve as a meat market for the convenience of the military.
Having occasion one day to travel homewards by the route just described, Mr MacPhail was detained for some time at the Fort owing to the delay of the ferryboat, which had to be summoned over from the opposite side. While he Was waiting a soldier came into the market to buy some meat and asked the price of a quarter of mutton. The butcher names the sum. With a frightful oath, in which he pledged the everlasting salvation of his soul, the soldier refused to give the price, but, after a good deal of wrangling, agreed to the butcher’s terms and took up the meat to go away.
Conversation
All this while Mr. MacPhail, who was standing outside, overheard the conversation within, and shocked at the awful jeopardy in which the soldier had placed his soul, was watching for an opportunity of addressing him upon the imminent danger of his soul. No sooner had the man left the market than Mr MacPhail sought to engage him in conversation.
“A fine day, soldier.”
“A fine day, sir,” replied the man, touching his cap.
“Do you belong to the Fort?”
“Yes, sir, and a dull enough place it is; nothing but drill and the blues.”
“You are an Englishman, I see. What is your name?”
“Luke Heywood, your honour.”
“That seems a fine piece of mutton you have got.”
“So it is, sir; and cheap too.”
“What did you give for it, may I ask?” The soldier names the price.
“Oh! my friend,” replied Mr. MacPhail, “you have given more than that!”
Luke Heywood looked astonished. “No, sir, I gave no more. There’s the man I bought it from and he can tell you what it cost.”
“Pardon me, friend, you have given your immortal soul for it! You prayed that God might damn your soul if you gave the very price you have just named. And now what is to become of you?”
The ferryboat was announced as ready, and Mr. MacPhail stepped on board, while Luke Heywood walked off with his purchase, and entered the Fort. Throwing off his cap, he sat down upon a form in the barracks, and in a brief time his reflections turned upon his conversation with the stranger at the ferry. The gentleman’s parting words were still fresh in his memory,
“You have given your immortal soul for it, and now what is to become of you?”
“Really, the stranger is quite right. I have a soul, though I had almost forgotten it; I have pawned it for a piece of mutton, too. Well, I didn’t mean that, but I have done it; and now what is to become of me?”
The thought, even to a profligate, was anything but an agreeable one, so he tried to banish the occurrence from his memory. But it would not go; conscience was at work, and refused to still its voice. The words of the stranger were ringing in his ears like the death-knell of his soul.
“You have given your immortal soul for it, and now what is to become of you?”
In a perfect agony of terror he started from his seat, rushed bare headed from the Fort, and arrived all breathless at the ferry in quest of Mr. MacPhail.
“Where is the gentleman?” cried Luke to the butcher.
“What gentleman?” enquired the other.
“The gentleman in black, and with a white pony, who told me my soul was lost.”
“Oh, you mean Mr MacPhail. He is the minister at Resolis, and you will have to go far enough before you catch him, for he has crossed more than an hour ago.”
The ferryboat being about to make a passage across the water, Luke Heywood entered it, with the purpose of following the stranger with whose words he had been so painfully impressed.
Enquiring
Enquiring of the ferryman the route he must follow, Luke leapt from the boat as it touched the shore at the point of Fortrose and started afresh on his ardent pursuit. We know not the feelings of the agitated traveller as he rushed bare-headed through the town of Rosemarkie, or toiled all flushed and heated across the weary wilds of Maol-bhui. We have not been informed regarding the astonishment of the shepherd or the cottar as the excited soldier hastily enquired whether he had seen anything of a clergyman upon a white pony, which was all the description he could give. He arrived, however, towards evening at the manse of Resolis, and on demanding eagerly to see Mr. MacPhail, was at once admitted. Luke remained at Resolis all that night and the two following days, during which time he was closely closeted with the minister. Mr MacPhail’s study was not a confessional, albeit many a poor soul had gone thither to ask counsel of the man of God.
Varied
Numerous, however, and varied as were the spiritual cases on which this godly man had been consulted, it may be questioned whether he had ever been called to deal with an experience like Luke Heywood’s. His was no doubt a rare case, for into those two short days was condensed, the history which, with Mr. MacPhail, had himself experienced over a period of more than seven years. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is everyone that is born of the Spirit” (John3:8). How strikingly was this passage illustrated within the study at Resolis as the minister and soldier knelt together on the evening of the second day!
Both were extreme specimens of the two great modes of conversion – the gradual and the sudden. [Mr MacPhail] laboured for seven long and weary years under a ”horror of great darkness,” unable to appropriate as his own the Saviour of sinners; while he who kneels beside him, and weeps with joy unspeakable over a new-found peace with God, only two days ago was foremost in the ranks of profligacy, his curse the deepest and loudest, and his revelry the wildest amid the Scottish jollity of the canteen. Yet of him it can be said, just as certainly as of the other, that he is “born of the Spirit.”
Doubtless the gradual method of conversion is the Spirit’s more usual way; it is, if we may use the expression, more consistent with the structure of the human mind by degrees to the exercise of a mature faith, and to lead it through a course of careful, anxious, and all-absorbing enquiry to a realisation of a saving interest in the work of Christ, so that the progress from “grace in the blade” to “grace in the ear” may be very gradual and very slow. This, we repeat, is the Spirit’s usual way; and for our own part, we are far more disposed to trust the genuineness of the ordinary than of the extraordinary manifestations of a work of grace, insofar, at least, as this is to be judged by its symptoms.
The Spirit
But still it cannot be doubted, that there have been, and still are cases in which the omnipotent Spirit has dispersed with the employment of ordinary means, and, like the wind which “bloweth where it listeth,” does not always breathe in soft and balmy zephyrs, but anon, though seldom, bursts forth with the fierceness of the tornado to annihilate, with almost lightening suddenness, every obstacle that would arrest its tempestuous path. Even such is the unfettered agency of that free and sovereign Spirit who will not only have mercy on whom He will, but will also manifest His saving grace in whatever way He pleases.
Both the minister and the soldier were, as we have said, types of the two opposite methods of conversion; and as they knelt down to offer up their parting prayer, might not each have felt how true were the words of Paul who had himself been changed like Luke Heywood rather than like Mr. MacPhail: “There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit … And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all” (I Corinthians l2:4,6).
But we must leave Mr. MacPhail in the study of Resolis and go with Luke back to the garrison of Fort George. Happy if we can join him in the “new song,”
He took me from a fearful pit,
And from the miry clay,
And on a rock He set my feet,
establishing my way.
Psalm 40.2 (Metrical Version)
Love
Like the woman of Samaria, Luke Heywood now began to feel a love for the souls of others, and with David was ready to say to his comrades, “Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul” (Psalm 66:16). The Word was “as fire within his bones,” and he “could not but speak the things which he had seen and heard.” He accordingly began to hold small prayer meetings in the barracks, and to expound the Scriptures to his fellow-soldiers. By degrees, however, the godliness and zeal of the former profligate became known throughout the district. The people of God were amazed when they heard that he who had scoffed at them in times past now, like Paul, “preached the faith which once he destroyed; and they glorified God in him.”
Opposition
But matters could not long continue thus Without exciting the enmity and opposition of the ungodly. The captain of Luke’s company was particularly active in his opposition to these prayer meetings, and often threatened the godly soldier with the lash. Sending for him on one occasion, he told him he was going from the Fort that day, and added, with a tremendous oath, that if, on his return, he should hear that Luke had been holding any more of these conventicles, he would order so many lashes.
On hearing this, Luke was silent for a few minutes. Then, looking at his officer, he replied, “Sir, if you ever return alive, God never spoke by me” – an answer almost identical with that of the prophet Micaiah to Ahab (2 Chronicles 18.27). The issue proved that the Spirit was even then speaking by the lips of Luke. The captain and a brother officer Went to shoot in the neighbourhood of Culloden, and as the captain was crouched behind a hedge in the act of Watching the approach of some deer, his comrade mistaking him for large game, took a hasty aim at the moving object, and shot him dead on the spot.
Minister
The regiment was soon after ordered to England, and it was reported that Luke purchased a discharge from the army, and became an eminently useful minister. He ceased to be a soldier of King George that he might become a soldier of the Lord Jesus Christ. Can we not hear the echo of the Words, “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; who Was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief”? (I Timothy 1 vs. 12,13).
Adapted from an edition published by Presbyterian Heritage (NZ), PO Box 99-401 Newmarket, Auckland 1149 New Zealand.