As it’s St Fillan’s 900th anniversary I’m looking at Rev. Rutherford’s children’s address, where he talks about the history of the church, this one is from 19th Feb ’67. Here he is talks about an old gravestone.
As we come up to the church we see two old tombstone against the wall of the church either side of the small pointed window. It has been there about 300 years and suffered the blast of the east and north wind and all but a few letters have been obliterated. Have you wondered what inscription it carried and whose tombstone it was? I can tell you the inscription.
How do I know that, it is because a small boy remembered what his father told him and he told Rev. Rutherford.
Here lies interned below this stone
a man of virtues rare
of justice probity and truth
with him few could compare.
Your virtues all in him combined
Each one outweighed the other
and in the place where ha did live
you’d scarce find such another.
Yet death which strikes at all alike
has vanquished him at last
his body in the dust has spent
His soul’s to glory past.
We live in a world where many things disappear and are lost with the winds of change. We may loose the message of Jesus taught us, “Love one another as I have loved you”.
It needs boys and girls with good memories who listen to what their parents, teachers and ministers tell them and for them to hand it on to others, if we don’t no one will know the story of Jesus.