Memoirs of the Life, Time, and Writings of Thomas Boston of Ettrick

The desirableness of re-publishing so interesting a book as Boston’s “Memoirs,” is a thing which is self-evident. The advisability at this date of such a proposal may seem doubtful; but when the publisher had considered the facts of the case, he was encouraged to proceed.

Although, since Boston’s day, many books once famous have vanished in darkness, and many literary reputations have gone under, it is a strange but true circumstance that nothing that Boston wrote has yet become stale or unprofitable. His “Fourfold State,” and other works, existing for the most part in worn, second-hand form, are bullets that always find their billets, and a complete set of his works is a valuable book-selling as set. The truth is, a small but important section of the religious world there always is who hold Boston’s character and theology in veneration, and there is a wider public, not, it may be, in accord with his religious views, for whom, nevertheless, the man possesses a human and historic interest.

The volume of “Memoirs,” now re-published, is a book of varied interest. It has undergone publication three times already. The first issue was in the year 1776, and bears the imprint, W. Anderson, Bookseller, Stirling. The next issue was in 1805, imprint, J. Rennison, Berwick; and it was issued again in 1852, as the twelfth volume of the complete set of Boston’s works, published by George and Robert King, Aberdeen.

The original materials of the work are the two MSS., mentioned in the Author’s Address to his Children. By fusion of the two, the first editor, who was probably Boston’s son, the Rev. Thomas Boston, of the Relief Church, Oxnam, has made a continuous narrative. The book is a somewhat bulky one, 500 pages or thereby, but it is hoped the price is moderate. Some Notes and Appendices of no essential importance to present day readers, have been omitted. The frontispiece is from a steel plate supplied per favour of Messrs. Collins & Co., publishers, Glasgow, and is presumed to convey a correct likeness.

Glasgow, 6th May, 1899.

THE “Memoirs” now published are occupied, as the reader will see, mainly with matters of Boston’s spiritual history, though the salient facts of his outward life are also noted as they occur. In order, however, to clear the reader’s way, we here re-state, in brief detail, the main incidents of the author’s career. He was born in 1676, a year of trouble and persecution in Scotland. His father, a God-fearing Presbyterian, was a sufferer for conscience sake, and one of the boy’s early recollections is that of keeping him company while he was a prisoner, for non-conformity, in Dunse jail. In 1687 King James proclaimed his Toleration, and the silenced Presbyterian ministers recovered the liberty of speech. The Rev. Henry Erskine, father of the noted Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, held a meeting in Whitsome, four miles from Dunse. John Boston took his son Thomas to hear the good man, and there the boy, then only twelve years of age, received impressions which never left him. He heard sermons on John i. 29, “Behold the lamb of God,” and Matt, iii. 7, “O generation of vipers,” &c. “By these,” says he, “I judge God spake to me; however, I know I was touched quickly after the first hearing, wherein I was like one amazed with some new and strange thing. My lost state by nature, and my absolute need of Christ being thus discovered to me, I was set to pray in earnest.” Though we have no definite information, it seems it was not long before the seeker became a finder, and his pathway thenceforth was as the light that shines brighter and brighter to the perfect day. His feet being thus early turned to the path of God’s commandments he had no lapse into the ways of youthful sin and folly to deplore. Being of a quick intelligence and diligent at his book, he passed at the age of thirteen to the College in Edinburgh. Finishing his Arts Course with honour, he entered, in 1695, to the study of DiNanity. The first year he studied under Professor Campbell, “Great ‘Mv. Campbell,” as he calls him. The next two he studied under various Presbyteries, the while he taught pupils for a livelihood. He was first in Glencairn in Dumfriesshire, teaching the parish school there, then in Clackmannanshire as a private tutor to a son of Colonel Bruce of Kennet. On 15th June, 1697, when he was twenty-one years old, he was, by the Presbytery of Churnside, licensed to preach the Gospel. Several parishes had their eye on him as a desirable pastor, but the self-interest of patrons and other causes prolonged his probationership for over two years. He was settled in 1699 in Simprin, a small charge in Berwickshire, but, as it turned out, a happy and a successful one. “With joy,” says he, “I saw myself in Simprin as in my nest, under the covert of Christ’s wings.”

On 7th July, 1700, he was married, to Catherine Brown, an amiable and beautiful woman whose portrait he draws glowingly at page 149 of these “Memoirs.” In the seventh year of his settlement in Simprin he received a call to be Pastor of Ettrick. Believing he had the call of God to labour there, he went, though his inclination would have kept him still at Simprin. His painful and useful ministry at Ettrick extended over 25 years, from 1st May, 1707, to 20th May, 1732, the day of his death. Dying thus in his fifty-sixth year, Boston’s was a comparatively brief life, but it was a busy and fruitful one. It was filled with strenuous efibrts for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom in this world, and no less strenuous prayers and endeavours for the advancement of the same kingdom in his own soul. Much of his time and strength were spent in journeying and preaching to sacramental gatherings. In those times the one thing of common and commanding interest to all classes in Presbyterian Scotland was the public worship of God. The Kirk with the churchyard round it was the centre of the district, and on the sacramental occasion there was a flowing together of all the neighbouring parishes. A south country communion season, presided over by a great preacher like Boston might fitly recall the words of the prophet, “In those days the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all people shall flow unto it.” These sacramental gatherings, numbering many hundreds of people, no doubt gave occasion to some evils, of which the ribald pen of Robert Burns was not slow to write, but presided over by a grave and godly man like Boston, the

good doubtless much outweighed the evil. The reader of the twenty-first century, whose eye will find these lines is requested to note that at this date (10th May, 1899) such flocking of the Scottish people to the solemnities of Christian worship is wholly ceased, save in the Highlands and Islands where it still lingers. But instead thereof there is a tremendous flocking to all kinds of folly and dissipation. On 4th April, 1896, 60,000 people assembled at Glasgow to see a silly football match. This may serve for a sample of the temper of these times. Of the concourse of people to the Communion at Ettrick, and the hospitality and liberality of Boston’s congregation to the strangers on this occasion there is an interesting example on page 454 of this work.

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