devotion was paid by one of our own well known authors, Harriette Beecher Stowe, who after viewing Harvey’s famous painting, “The Covenanters’ Communion,” wrote as follows: “I saw” she says, “the Covenanters celebrating the Lord’s Supper, a picture I could not look at critically, on account of the tears which kept blinding my eyes. It represents a bleak hollow of the mountain-side, where a few trembling old men and women, a few young girls and children with one or two young men, are grouped together in that moment of hushed, prayerful repose which precedes the breaking of the Sacramental bread. There is something touching always, about that worn, weary look of rest and comfort with which a sick child lies down upon a mother’s bosom, and like this is the expression with which these hunted fugitives nestle themselves beneath the shadow of their Redeemer. Mothers who had seen their sons tortured, not accepting deliverance; wives who had seen the blood of their husbands poured out on their door-stones; children with no father but God, and bereaved old men, from whom every child had been rent—all gathering for comfort round the cross of a suffering Lord.” This is recorded here, that the descendants of John and Hugh MacMillan may never forget the spiritual rock from which they and their forefathers were hewn. John MacMillan undoubtedly had the spirit of the martyrs, though he was providentially spared from having to shed his blood for a cause for which he gladly would have died, had the necessity arisen. In the religious histories of Scotland, he is always listed with those who suffered and died during the days of persecution. His last recorded words were—- doubtless a quotation from the Psalms—“Yea, mine own God is He.” While he was not called upon to die for his faith, he was permitted to live for it, and this he did in a remarkable way. He was brought up in the Church of Scotland, and trained for its ministry, yet seeing the great need, and deeply believing the same things these harried people believed, he withdrew completely from the old established church, and became the minister of this group. John MacMillan was providentially aided in undertaking what undoubtedly became an arduous task, by being called to be the minister of the parish church at Balmaghie, though the call was not authorized by the Presbytery to which this Church belonged. 8
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