THE SCOT OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
The Scot of the Eighteenth Century : his Religion and his Life. By John Watson, D.D. (Hodder and Stoughton. 7s. 6d.)—The late "Ian Maclaren "could always write in a genial and interesting way on anything and everything connected with Scotland. This posthumous volume is a proof of the fact, and of little else. There is little distinction of thought or of style in it, and yet the reader, at least if he be a Scotsman, will find in running through its pages many treasures old and new, especially old. It tells in ten chapters, which are emphatically of the "popular lecture" type, the old, if now not positively musty, stories of the Kirk and its discipline, the "Moderates," the "Evangelicals," the piety and the theology of eighteenth-century Scotland. It is, indeed, just such a book as an intelligent reader of Scott's novels, the books of "Jupiter" Carlyle, Mr. Henry Grey Graham, and other authorities ought to be able to produce without much trouble, There are plenty of "good stories," and, what is more important, of the good actions of good men. At the same time, Dr. Watson might have spared his readers a few passages relating, for example, to Allan Ramsay, David Hume, and above all the stale convivialities of such remarkable examples of the Scottish clergy as Dr. "Magnum Bonum." The best chapters in the book are those which deal with "The Scot with his Books" and "The Scot at Home," mainly because they are composed almost entirely of simple statements of fact. The spirit in which Dr. Watson writes is, however, unexceptionable, and may be gathered from such a sentence as this :—" It was a generous gift that England bestowed on Scotland in the Marrow of Divinity, and a worthy return which Scotland made to England in the Life of God and the Soul of Man." When one recalls what happened to such Scottish divines as sympathised with the "Marrow of Divinity," one can understand the progress which Scotland has made in theological toleration since the date of its publication.
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