Rev Lachlan MacLeod

It was an unpleasant theatre for a Skyeman of fragile build, sweet smile, and the most gentle of natures.

Lachlan MacLeod was born at Ose, Dunvegan, in 1918. He was the youngest of 10 children and no doubt something of a pet. As a young man at sea he caught tuberculosis and at length surgeons had to remove a lung. Many did not expect him to see old age. He was brought through this to Christian hope, professing saving faith at a Glendale communion season in 1947.

In 1949, the convener of the relevant committee, the Rev William Grant, told the Synod: ''Mr Lachlan MacLeod was received as a student for the Ministry by the Western Presbytery last July. He has had much appreciated the tuition since September from Mr George Ross, schoolmaster, Lochcarron, and as a result he may be able to enter the university at an early date. Mr MacLeod's health suffered from years of war service in the Merchant Navy but, under the good hand of the Lord, he has made a satisfactory recovery and we sincerely hope that this will continue.''

Mr MacLeod took non-graduating university classes, and studied Divinity at Oban and Dingwall. (He survived another classmate, the late Rev Angus MacKay, by only three weeks.) Mr MacLeod was licensed to preach by the Western Presbytery on June 28, 1953, and was ordained and inducted on July 29 that year, to the pastoral charge of the Uig congregation in Lewis.

It was a scattered charge, far from Stornoway, with very bad roads, but here Mr MacLeod spent happy years - preaching almost entirely in Gaelic - and began a family. He married Jetta MacRae, of Lochcarron, who bore him seven children; their eldest son is the novelist, Ken MacLeod.

In 1964 Lachlan MacLeod first served as Moderator of Synod. On March 3, 1965, he was inducted to his new charge, Greenock, where there was a good Free Presbyterian congregation. Times changed, things declined, and Greenock is no longer a Highland town. ''Rev Lachie'' had his discouragements. That there are still Free Presbyterian services in Greenock is a tribute to their late pastor.

The Lord Mackay affair - when the then Lord Chancellor, an Edinburgh elder, was disciplined by the Southern Presbytery for attending Requiem Mass - caused Mr MacLeod great distress. Though no bigot, and fond of Mackay, he supported the decision. It fell to him to serve as Moderator at the fateful 1989 Synod.

As a party at the bar, he did not chair that particular debate; but he had to preside over the bewildering case of the Rev Alex Murray, a Sutherland minister whose position in the Church was in dispute following his 1988 suspension for asking a priest to pray at a council committee meeting. In the midst of canon-law argument, amid such ill-feeling, the Moderator of Synod rose, peered over his glasses, smiled enchantingly, and said: ''Now, where are we?'' Relieved, embarrassed laughter echoed in the hall, and thus the Skyeman defused the tension.

Mackay and Murray lost, and the Church split, with 14 ministers and several hundred adherents quitting to form the less-than-successful Associated Presbyterian Churches. The division left no congregation or family untouched and caused Mr MacLeod acute pain; but he was convinced the Church had followed the path of duty.

Mr MacLeod on occasion went abroad as a preaching deputy to congregations round the Commonwealth. In 1993, at the Church's great centenary rally, in Edinburgh, he read a warm paper on the history of the Free Presbyterian cause in Greenock. At the end of that year, he retired with Mrs MacLeod to Dingwall. He was granted a seat on the Northern Presbytery and, till the last months of his life, often preached.

To trials this man was no stranger; through them, he was perfected in the triumph of grace to glory. ''S gu'n thug e iad do'n chaladh sin, 's do'n phort bu mhiannach leo . . .'' Mr MacLeod is survived by his wife and their children and grandchildren.

John Macleod