The Life of the Rev. James Morison, D.D. By William
Adamson, D.D. (Hodder and Stoughton. 7s. 6d.)—This is a painstaking and judicious, though rather too long and detailed, biography of a clergyman who will surely be accounted at once the gentlest and the most successful of Scotch " heretics." Prin- cipal Morison was not a very old man at the time of his death ; he was Mr. Gladstone's junior by seven years, and he died in 1893. Yet, the son of a Secession minister—the body to which he belonged having amalgamated with another of the Presby- terian Churches is now known as the United Presbyterian Church—he was deposed for " heresy " in 1841. The "heresy," which he had previously published in a tract that had been sup- pressed, but was republished without his permission, was his proclamation of the doctrine that " Christ died for the sins of the whole world," and not simply, as is held in ultra-Calvinistic circles, for the sins of the elect. The young minister's father was deposed for holding the same opinions as his son, and the latter, from the unexpected popularity of his opinions in Scotland, was almost forced to make an addition to the already innumerable sects of the country. This " communion " was ultimately styled "The Evangelical Union," but so completely was it identified with its founder that the sect was, until quite recently, when it was united with the Congregational Union of Scotland, known as the " Morisonians." Morison first made Kilmarnock—the scene of his deposition—the centre of his labours. But he ultimately removed to Glasgow, where he lived, became the head of a theological college started in connection with his Church, wrote several books expounding his comparatively benignant theology, and died, as we have seen, at the age of seventy-seven, long after his deposition had been forgotten. His enormous powers of work are testified to by an appendix containing his time- table for a day which ordinarily began at 3.50 a.m. Morison was of a type rare in Scotland, and had more affinity with Bishop Leighton than any other Northern theologian. Although he had strong opinions—in favour of total abstinence, for example—he did not thrust them on others. His biographer has done his work loyally and, on the whole, well. But he might have excluded from his book the "stale fervours " of the old " heresy " prosecutions.
Previous page
