CHAPTER 2

HOME AND CHURCH

INTO THIS NORTHEAST ENVIRONMENT, then, I was born in 1910. At the time of my birth my father, Peter Fyvie Bruce,18 had been actively engaged as an evangelist for over ten years. He himself was a native of Aberdeenshire (‘born twice in the parish of Ellon’, as I have heard him say), the seventh in a family of twelve children. At the age of sixteen he experienced an evangelical conversion after a period of spiritual concern. Even before that, according to his eldest sister, he showed a reverence for God, always (for example) saying grace before food, even when eating alone.

According to a short autobiographical article which he contributed in June 1949 to the now defunct gospel paperGood Tidings, while talking about the way of salvation with a companion who shared his concern on this matter, ‘I realized that the work of the Lord Jesus on the Cross was for me, and I said to my friend, “Man, I see it all, I’m saved!”’ When relating this in later years, he would say, ‘What did I see? Jesus on the cross for me.’ And this was the central note of his gospel witness to the end of his days—‘Jesus on the cross for me’.

At the time of his conversion he worked on a farm, as his father had done before him. He quickly found fellowship with a company of like-minded believers in the village of Newburgh, at the mouth of the Ythan, and became active in gospel testimony and Sunday School teaching. After a few years he found employment in Aberdeen and joined the St. Paul Street meeting in that city, continuing to give his spare time to gospel witness and Bible study, for which he had an unappeasable appetite. His period of formal education was brief; he left school before his twelfth birthday (although by that time he had begun the study of Latin, which was not an unusual thing in northeast parish schools in those days). But he was a natural scholar and student, who brought to his understanding of Scripture a finely balanced judgment, and I have never had to unlearn anything I learned from him.

When he was twenty-four years old, he was invited by an evangelist in the area (Francis Logg) to join him in a tent mission for some weeks in the summer. He asked for a fortnight to think over the proposition. Before the fortnight was completed, he had decided that, since he had saved a few pounds, he would be willing to spend them in the Lord’s service in this way. By the end of the season, he found he had more money than when he started, and decided that this too must be used in the Lord’s service. So, having obtained help from God, he continued in this work for fifty-six years until, in September 1955, he had a fatal heart attack while conducting a funeral service. Throughout his life he exemplified Charles Wesley’s lines,

‘Tis all my business here below
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