In the bleak winter of 1666, as the rains were pouring down, 900 Christians, many of them tied hand to hand so that the stronger among them might urge on the weaker, reached the Pentland Hills, “cold-footed and wet-shod” to stay the night. In literature, the famous name linked with them is that of Robert Louis Stevenson (“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”) who lived in the Pentland Hills 200 years later. But in 1666, at Rullion Green, among these hills, 4000 well-fed dragoons and guards reached this haggard group of 900, who formed up, having promised, “never to break until He who brought them together should break them.” Waiting for the onslaught, they held hands and sung from Psalms 71 and 78, strengthening each other. “Brother, die well,” said one of the older men to the younger. “It is the last act of faith you will be ever able to do.”
Once in the morning, and twice in the afternoon, these 900 wearied countrymen beat off hard attacks of these dragoons sent by King Charles. In evening hours came again the scripture, “For Thy sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter”, and “thanks be to God, for in all of these things, we are more than conquerors through Him would loves us.”
Inevitably, these 900 saints were executed by the sword, the fist and foot. Their heads and right arms were sent to be put up on posts in surrounding towns as warnings from King Charles.
One of the prisoners of Pentland, who through physical weakness was not able to be with his friends at the time of the slaughter, was Hugh MacKail, a scholarly young minister of only 25 years of age. Many acknowledged that he was richly gifted of the Lord and very spiritual – to most, it was obvious that the power of God was apparent in him. His spirit was strong, but with a body ravaged by tuberculosis, coughing up ropes, he was very weak. Though not present at the Rullion Green massacre, he was not far away, and was easily captured. He appeared before a council but refused to speak a word. Convulsed with passion, the Earl of Rothes doomed the already dying field preacher to the bone and marrow mixing torture of “the Boot”.
Sir Walter Scott, though no champion of the Covenanters, certainly understood the significance of “the Boot” and its bestial torture. He writes, “the executioner enclosed the leg and knee within a tight iron case and placing a wedge of the same metal between the knee and the edge of the machine, took a mallet in hand waiting for further instructions. A so-called, ‘surgeon’ stood next to the prisoner and applied his finger on the subject’s wrist in order to regulate the torture according to the strength of the ‘patient’. With the judge’s nod, the executioner descended the hammer onto the wedge, forcing it between the knee and the iron boot, occasioning the most exquisite pain, as evident from the screams and the flush color upon their brow and cheeks.”
Hugh MacKail’s withered limb was placed within this hell-invented instrument and the brutal wedge was driven home eleven times until his leg was deemed too “pulpy” to continue further.
The next day, after a night of hellish agony, the Pilate-weak judge condemned him to die at the gallows of the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh, Scotland. The night before his execution, his doctor-cousin, Matthew MacKail visited him in his cell at 11:00, and in silence, just lay beside him, holding him close and giving him warmth. Doctor MacKail had gone to the “Church” for help, but the Judas of that Church said, “we can do nothing”.
At 5:00 the next morning, Hugh awakened his friend, John Wodrow, a Glasgow merchant covenanter who was to die beside him. “Get up John”, he said, smiling. “You and I do not look like men about to be hanged, seeing how we so long to die.”
At noon, awkwardly climbing each rung of the ladder to the amusement of the crowd, Hugh MacKail said, “Every step that I take is just one step closer to Heaven”. Standing at the top of the gallows, the black cloth sack was forced over his head but in defiance against this mock trial and execution, he lifted it and said to the crowd, “I no longer speak to men, but I speak to my Lord, with Whom I will never be broken off. Farewell my dear father and mother, relations, and all of my friends! Farewell, the world and its delights. Farewell meat and drink. Farewell the sun, moon and stars. Welcome my Father and God Almighty! Welcome my dear Jesus, Mediator of the New Covenant! Welcome blessed Spirit of Grace, God of all consolation! Welcome Glory! Welcome eternal life! Welcome death!”
The rope was then tightened around his sickly, skinny neck, while the crowd groaned dismally. And then was witnessed something unparalleled. Dr. Matthew MacHail stood beneath the gallows, and as his cousin kicked and writhed in pain, he clasped the helpless jerking legs together and clinging to them, pulled down on them with all of his weight that death might come easier and sooner. “And so, with Christ,” Matthew said many years later, “was Hugh, in Christ’s presence, with his boyish smile.“
Dr. Matthew MacKail missed his cousin until the end of his days, and in his deep mourning, wore his cousin-martyr’s own black cloth coat, which he had requested from the hangman on that terrible day.
How easy we have it today, yet the world continues to spiral down, down, down, and the ineffective Church along with it. When I became a Christian in 2006, perhaps I was naïve in thinking that the Church was to be a Light to the darkness of this world, and more than this, the stinging salt. Yet, I read the news every day, and all I see is a world descending into the darkest of the dark and without a peep from the Church. Occasionally, Foxnews has a short snippet with Franklin Graham (who wastes no time stressing the importance of repenting and asking Christ into our hearts) but aside from this, what is there? How can this be, in light of what genuine Christian men and women were willing to give up just a few hundred years ago? The Church today is complacent and terrified of preaching. You don’t think so? When was the last time you heard a single heart-wrenching sermon against abortion, homosexuality and all of this insane transgender confusion that our teens are going through? Is the Church going to stand up and be counted or not? Are we as Christians going to stand up and be counted like those 900 in 1666 or not?
Isn’t there just one man you can think of who is willing to be a Hugh MacKail today? I didn’t think so, and this is why this week’s Shiloh blog is so sad, yet important enough to try and stir things up a bit. Christ commissioned us to go into the world as light and as salt. If this is true, and if Christians agree with this, then why is the Church so silent? What is it going to take to get the Church to wake up and get engaged? It’s easy to die for Christ, because these are just sentimental words, but there are very few today, who are willing to LIVE for Christ. We know this is true because we continue to see this country spiral down further and further into the kind of decadence that has historically destroyed past civilizations: infanticide, open homosexuality, the worship of stars, to name a few. People simply do not learn from past experience and history. We always believe that our new generation knows better, yet this is arrogance that drowns us in the antiquity of past failures. So, where are our David’s? Our Joshua’s? Our Esther’s? Our families and our Churches? In all honesty, I’d actually like to know.
Your brother, Brett