W/E wish our readers to transport themselves to the eastern border country of Scotland, and to try to realize its condition in the first half of last century.People are apt to take their views of that district from Sir Walter Scott, who passed the most interesting portion of his boyhood there, and picking up the dim traditions of the past ere they were finally lost, and tingeing them with the romantic hues of his own imagination, has presented to us such a picture as a man of the nineteenth century, in love with chivalry, would be {110} likely to furnish of the ages of border strife.But the truth is, Sir Walter has given us only one side of the Scottish character; he never thoroughly sympathized with the more earnest features of the national mind, and he did not appreciate the attempts which were made in the seventeenth century to deliver the country from violence and superstition, and to Promote education and a scriptural religion.The people of the eighteenth century had such traditions of the earlier ages as to be glad that the days of the border raids had passed away.At the time we wish to sketch, two classes of people were to be found in the district.There were landed prorietors, disposed to allow no opposition to their not very generous or enlightened will, but who were already catching the taste for improving the land, which has made Berwickshire one of the most advanced agricultural districts in the three kingdoms.Under them were small farmers and their servants, with the ignorance and much of the rudeness of the previous ages, and not yet awakened to independent thought and action.Between them there was scarcely any middle class, except the parish ministers, who, in the early part of the century, if not highly cultivated, were zealous preachers of the doctrines of grace, and actively seeking to raise their people to church-going habits and a decent morality; and who, at a later date, as patrons began to assert their legal rights, and colleges adopted the new philosophy, became the most vehement opponents of the evangelical party: so that, in the days of Carlyle, the Synod of Merse and Teviotdale turned the vote against popular rights, and the ministers of it, coming to the General Assembly, rushed to the theatre to hear Mrs.Siddons when she happened to be in Edinburgh.
Believing that there was nothing suited to them in such a religion, the common people set up in the towns and large villages seceding congregations, which drew towards them the more earnest of the inhabitants.Out of one of these congregations sprang Thomas M'Crie, who has given us the other phase of the Scottish character.
At the beginning of the century, the most remarkable man in the district was undoubtedly Thomas Boston.Born at Dunse in the previous century, he remembered his going, when a boy, to the prison of his native place to keep his father company when lie was incarcerated for resisting the imposition of Prelacy.All his life he is most sedulous and consistent in discountenancing the system of church patronage, which is being steadily introduced.Settled as a minister first in Simprin, and then in Ettrick, he is consumingly earnest in visiting once a year, in catechising twice a year, and in preaching on Sabbath-day and week-day to, an ignorant and careless people just rising out of barbarism.But he contrived to retain a literary taste amidst his active parochial employments.With a difficulty in getting books, and rejoicing so when a good one came in his way, he was able, by his own independent study, to develop views in regard to the importance of Hebrew points which were far in advance of those attained in his time by any British scholar.Endowed with a clear, logical mind, he has, in his " Fourfold State " and " Covenant of Grace,"given us perhaps the best exposition we have of the old Scotch theology in its excellencies,-- some would add, in its exclusiveness.Living and breathing in the doctrine of free grace, he seized with avidity and valued excessively the " Marrow of Modern Divinity," {111} which he found in the cottage of one of his people, and he vigorously opposed the moral or legal preaching which was fast coming in with the new literature and philosophy.Singularly single-minded, earnest, and fervent in his piety, this man becomes a favorite and a power, first in his district, and, in the end, by his theological works all over Scotland.In reading his Memoirs, we observe that lie was painfully careful in watching his moods of mind, often referring to spiritual interposition what arose from wretched health; and that he was ever looking on events occurring in God's providence as <signs> indicating that he should pursue a particular line of conduct.It needed a philosophy -- we regret that it should have been an infidel one which did the work -- to correct these errors of a narrow theology.
