Early Years in Scotland
CARRONSHORE is a straggling village near the Firth of Forth. Over a hundred years ago it was little more than a hamlet, consisting chiefly of low, red-tiled cottages in which outdoor workers and farm laborers lived.
We will take a peep inside one of these humble dwellings, where a happy circle of children sit around the fireside. There are seven of them; five boys and two girls, all busy knitting, while the mother sits under the old-fashioned oil lamp, reading aloud to them a thrilling story of the devotion and suffering of the Moravian missionaries in Greenland. That godly mother has a yearning desire to see one at least of her “boys” in the service of the Lord, bearing the glad tidings of salvation to the heathen, which in these days, alas! received but little attention from those who bore the Christian name.
“Robbie," a bright-eyed boy of six, sat eagerly listening to the strange, but true story, and in his heart he wished that his life might be spent in such a noble service. But Robbie Moffat had yet to learn that he needed Christ as a personal Savior ere he could serve Him. It must have been about this time that he went to the parish school, where "Willy Mitchell," the old schoolmaster, made him so familiar with the cane that he "plunked," and, when found out, although only ten years old, ran off to sea. There, he had several narrow escapes from drowning, and was glad to get back to the humble home at Carronshore. At the age of eleven he went with his brother to school, in Falkirk, where he was more anxious to learn, and picked up a little geography and astronomy. At fourteen Robert was apprenticed to a gardener at Polmont, named John Robertson, in whose employment he tasted the first experiences of a hard life. The apprentice lads had to rise at four o'clock in the cold winter mornings and go out to dig. So intense was the cold sometimes that they had to knock their knuckles against the handles of their spades to inspire some feeling into them. Yet in these days Robert managed to attend an evening class, where he learned Latin and mensuration, and on other evenings he picked up some useful knowledge in the country smithy, and also acquired the art of playing the violin, which in after years was a cheer to himself, and an attraction to the natives, amid the deserts and kraals of South Africa. Although he was yet a stranger to grace and to salvation, these early years were watched over by a God who loved him, and was preparing him even then, although he knew it not, for the path and the service to which in after years he was called. After his
apprenticeship was finished, Robert moved across the Forth into Fife, where he served the Earl of Moray at Donibristle, near Aberdour. Here he had a narrow escape from drowning in seeking to rescue a companion who had gone beyond his depth while bathing. By these, and other means, God was beginning to turn the gardener lad's thoughts to the world beyond, and to show him his need of a Savior.