The Witness of Moses to Christ - John Macleod
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John Macleod (1872-1948), was born of Free Church parentage in Fort William, Argyll. He was schooled in his home town, and – from the age of thirteen – at the Old Grammar School of Aberdeen, where he was Dux in his final year (1887). He studied classics with distinction at Aberdeen University 1887-90, graduating with first class honours at the age of just eighteen years. He then spent a year at New College, Edinburgh, studying divinity. There followed two years on the staff of the Nicolson Public School in Stornoway, Lewis, which enabled him to become fluent in Gaelic, of which he had had only a rudimentary knowledge.
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He resumed divinity in 1894 at the Belfast Theological College of the Irish Presbyterian Church, having meanwhile affiliated himself with the Free Presbyterian Church, for he was one of the Free Church students who sided with the Free Presbyterian secession after the passing of the Free Church Declaratory Act of 1892. Ever the brilliant student, Macleod’s final examinations at Belfast saw him take first place in Ecclesiastical History and Biblical Criticism.
Licensed by his Church’s Northern Presbytery in 1897, John Macleod’s first charge was Lochbroom, Ullapool, in Ross and Cromarty (1897-1901), where he met and married (April, 1898) Margaret Macleod Matheson, who would be his help-meet for thirty-four years. He was then called to Kames in Argyll, where he ministered for five years from the beginning of 1901.Towards the end of his time at Kames, Macleod was amongst those sent to Canada to minister to the churches there; the trip included some time in the United States, and a memorable visit to Princeton Seminary, where they met B. B. Warfield.
When the remnant Free Church of Scotland, after the union in 1900 between the United Presbyterians and the Free Church majority, repealed the Declaratory Act of 1892, Macleod and several colleagues felt it their duty to return to their old church, into which they were admitted in
