Ian
Maclaren was a name to conjure with
in that day, forty years ago, when he died at the age of fifty-seven in an Iowa
town whither he had gone on lecture tour. For a decade his books had been among
the best sellers and Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush, his first, had topped
a million. A half dozen other titles in short story and fiction had only
enhanced his reputation. Scottish dialect often made them a bit difficult, but
they sold in spite of it, or was it partly because of it? Queen Victoria and
Mr. Gladstone had agreed on one thing at
least--the beauty of the "Bonnie Brier Bush."
Ian
Maclaren had become famous overnight. That was in the fall of 1894. On both
sides of the ocean his new book was having tremendous vogue. One printing after
another was
exhausted. "Tell us about the author," demanded the public, with repeated
insistence. "How is his name pronounced?" "Ian," said some;
"Ean," said others; and still others were sure that it ought to be
"Yan." (All proved to be right-depending upon whether one was English,
Scotch, or Gaelic.)
He
could not be long hidden. By Christmas it developed that Ian Maclaren was none
other than the Reverend John Watson, M.A., a Presbyterian minister in
Liverpool.
Biographical
details were avidly sought. He was forty-five. Though English born, he was a
thorough Scot. As a Free Church minister, his first charge had been in a highland
parish and in his stories he had skillfully adapted the setting and experiences
of his early ministry.
W.
Robertson Nicoll, the best informed literary critic in Britain ('twas he who
launched Barrie), had constrained Watson to write, after overhearing some of
his engaging reminiscences. Something like the interest created by Dickens in
an earlier day followed Maclaren's stories as they came out in quick
succession. Nicoll, who had been the death of many an aspiring author,
testifies that no adverse criticism of Watson's work appeared--only praise.
The
last chapter in this "wee bookie" is called "A Doctor of the Auld
School." It recounts the labours of William MacLure, the beloved physician
of the glen and adjacent districts, his fights with death and his final defeat.
Mr. Gladstone's judgment is thus recorded: "There has never been anything
finer than the sketch of that country doctor." Appearing in various
editions "Weelum MacLure" has become the classic symbol of the
unselfish devotion
of his profession.
"Drumtochty"
became famous along with its chronicler for he had peopled it with friends. The
passionate devotion of the people to their countryside endeared them to all
readers. The outward life of the Glen people was meagre and bare, a few events
such as the ploughing match, the school examination, and the Sacrament season made
up their year.
Maclaren
reveals the inner life in its richness; hidden from the uninitiated by the
crude setting. His creations live in our minds, they have character, are
individuals. There is Mrs. MacFayden, the sermon-taster, who keeps the heads of
the discourse in order by setting them in the orderly rows of teacups on her
pantry shelves; and gentle Marget Howe, mother of Geordie, the scholar; Domsie,
the schoolmaster, elated at his pupils' success and starving himself
to send a likely boy to the university; Drumsheugh, the richest man in the
Glen, and the life-long lover of Marget Howe, writing his check to pay the
great surgeon who comes to operate on the wife of a tenant farmer. Then there
is Burnbrae who sacrifices his farm rather
than betray his conscience and his Kirk; also Jamie Soutar, the gentle cynic
who covers kindness with his nippy tongue; or Doctor Davidson, the Auld Kirk
minister with
his courtly grace; and MacLure, the doctor who wins through the flood. These
are all real as life to us who drank at that fountain, fifty years ago, auld
acquaintance unforgot.
Watson
had gone into the ministry largely to please his mother but the problems he
found in his first parish nearly caused him to leave it. These difficulties
were not in his parishioners so much as in himself. For example, he could not
remember his sermons. On one occasion he completely forgot and retired to the
vestry in confusion, determined to quit and study law. An old elder came in,
told the young minister how much his people loved him, and suggested that in
the future he give out a psalm while he collected his thoughts. This kindness, Watson
afterward confessed, saved him to the Church.
A
dozen books on religious subjects were penned during the same years that
created his fiction. Twenty three books in all, every line written in the last
twelve years of his life! And all was the by-product of his ministerial activity
in a great city parish where he served for twenty-five years.
Three
times he visited America, lecturing and preaching, everywhere making friends.
He was strong and tall, broad-shouldered and with a high forehead; with a
slight Scottish accent to his words as they fell from his mobile lips. Throngs
crowded to hear him. Ninety engagements in seventy days! Is it any wonder he
fell victim to laryngitis and pneumonia? He died at Mount Pleasant, Iowa, in
May, 1907.
At
the time of his death, Dr. Watson was slated for the principalship of
Westminster College in Cambridge. He had a dozen theological and religious
books to his credit; some of them, like the Upper Room, the Potter's Wheel, and
Companions of the Sorrowful Way, grew out of addresses preparatory to
the Communion. As a sample of their deep spiritual quality, we quote from the
first: "If anyone receive Him into his soul, Jesus comes to have a
place of His own that has no parallel in life, and which has no proof save in
experience. We make Him the confidant of our secrets, but in the end He tells
us things about
ourselves we have not known. We turn to Him for help, but find that He has
promised what we were about to ask. We declare a good intention, only to
remember it was His suggestion. His presence is an irresistible condemnation of
wrongdoing, a perpetual inspiration to well-doing."
Dr.
Watson once told the writer that he thought his best work, and most useful, was
in The Potter's Wheel, and he wished that it might have had a larger
circulation. Here
the trials of faith, the perplexing providences are dealt with in an
understanding fashion by a pastor of long experience who knows life. Faith and common
sense have joined hands.
The
Mind of the Master represents Watson's most mature theological
thought. Jesus' major emphases are examined. Jesus as Supreme Teacher, devotion
to a Person, the
dynamic of religion, Jesus' teaching of Fatherhood as the final idea of
God--such aspects as these are examined and developed with the skill that comes
only with thinking through, and living through the Gospel, for one's self and
with one's congregation. Is such Christo-centric
theology out-moded? "I believe in the clean heart; I believe in the
service of love; I believe in the unworldly life; I believe in the Beatitudes;
I promise to trust God and follow Christ, to forgive my enemies, and to seek after
the righteousness of God."
In
his Yale lectures, The Cure of
Souls,1896, there is much autobiographical material, slightly
disguised. ("If the minister desires to give a personal experience he can
say 'one' or 'a certain man,' and if the people suspect the identity, it is no
matter. They have been delivered from the perpetual "I" which
devastates some men's utterances, and from whose monotonous boom you never
escape.")
A
warm evangelical, yet a moderate; a mystic, yet a realist; a scholar, and a
humanist! There are many in the ministry today who owe such wisdom as may guide
the exercise of the pastoral office to Ian Maclaren's other self, John Watson.
"All the sparkle and effervescence of
his nature never concealed the fact that he was a profoundly religious
man."
One
final quotation: "From His words let us learn to preach; from His example
let us learn to serve; in His communion let us find our strength, comfort,
peace, Whom not having seen we love, to Whom we shall one day render our
account."
- THE REV. JESSE HALSEY, D.D., Lane Professor of Pastoral
Theology and Liturgics, McCormick Theological Seminary in McCormick Speaking, Vol. IV, No. 5, February, 1951, pp. 3-6.
