where he preached that September Sunday, all but two hundred years
A Soliloquy on The Art of Man-Fishing
By Mr. THOMAS BOSTON, A.M.
PROBATIONER 1699
WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY Rev. D. D. F. MACDONALD, M.A.,
MINISTER OF SWINTON AND SIMPRIN
PAISLEY AND LONDON ALEXANDER GARDNER
Publisher to Her Majesty the Queen
INTRODUCTION.
Hard by the public road leading between Duns and Coldstream, at a sudden bend in its windings, and about four miles from the River Tweed, there is a ruin which marks an ancient place of worship. Along that same road leading from Duns, in the autumn of 1699, there came one Saturday a young man whose heart was palpitating with much anxiety as to the outcome of tomorrow's sermon and service. He was Mr. Thomas Boston, A.M., probationer of the Church of Scotland, and he was to preach for the parish of Simprin. He discharged the work, returned by the same road to Duns, and anxiously awaited the result. Much to his own surprise, and not altogether to his secret likings, the parish fell to him, and the Ordination took place on 21st September, 1699. Mr. Boston was then in his twenty-fourth year. The church where he preached that September Sunday, all but two hundred years ago, is to-day in ruins. It is little better than a foundation and a gable. A clump of trees rises in a straggled way out from among the graves lying around the little church. Their roots, interwoven, maintain a tight grip over the dust of many a Simprin generation. A score or more
of tombstones, during the silent flight of these long years, have made an effort to remain erect. Some have partially succeeded; but many, yielding to the persuasive touch of Time, have fallen flat — hidden by the long rank grass in summer, and appearing again in dreary winter when the grass is withered.
The little children from the farm-cottages — only a few paces off — play at hide-and-seek in this little God's acre, and every semblance of eeriness seemingly has vanished from their young hearts — perhaps because the snowdrops peep out with friendly faces in early spring to reassure them, and also because they have never, with wondering eyes, seen a funeral to the little churchyard of Simprin.
A melancholy kind of place this Simprin, but in certain lights and in certain moods of the devout visitor's mind, bathed in a beauty and glory not altogether due to what is merely seen and temporal.
Here in this little church there preached and laboured a man whom the devout in Scotland cannot surely ever forget. He had a gift, which he sedulously cultivated, hiding it under no bushel, and which in the mercy of God did more to fan the flame of true piety in Scotland than that of any other single minister in his generation. Here in this tiny edifice — and a hasty glance at its modest proportions convinces you it must indeed have been very small — the young minister held forth with almost apostolic fervour, preaching, expounding, lecturing, and praying with and for these Simprin ploughmen and their families. He was intensely earnest — earnest, with that fiery fervour that lifts the poorest sermon above criticism, the kind of zeal that makes us fear there is too little of it left among us since he died. He preached as if the angels were looking in on him and his little country congregation, and as if he actually expected to be carried home by them before another sermon day came round. He laboured on manfully in this place for seven years and eight months, trying to help them by making them all, old and young, learn their Bibles, the Catechism, and the corruption of their own hearts. The young minister strove his very best to keep those rough-mannered men of the Merse from going from bad to
worse: and, if ever there faithfully served a model minister in kirk or parish in Scotland, it was young Mr. Boston.
This Soliloquy was written when Mr. Boston was barely twenty-three years of age, and before Simprin and he had any favourable thoughts of each other. It is manifestly the work of a man who takes a very serious view of the office of the ministry. It is distinctly a great picture of the man of God, painted after the greatest of all masters. The young probationer — for he was not ordained when he wrote it — had a message to deliver, and here he tells himself how he ought to deliver it. In all probability it was never intended to be seen of other eyes than his own. But it is so much to the point, and so true for evermore, that it ought to be better known. In this belief we bring it to the light again, in the hope that its days of usefulness are not run because its gifted author is done with it.
The aims, character, labours, and rewards of a faithful ministry are here set forth explicitly and quaintly: and it is well that in these velvetshod days thoughtful people should read again this young probationer's address. After licence, and before he wrote it, he wandered up and down, looking for a parish where he might be allowed to stand by the cross and speak for God and the life to come. He was, as he pathetically tells us, in a "vagrant state" and "scared at" by men who held the right by patronage to supply vacancies. His preaching, as a rule, he says, was distasteful to these men, but generally acceptable to the common people. To work into the good graces of these great men — men who had "the stroke" — he must lower his pennon, and speak softer, and not hit either so straight or so hard. But he went back to his knees and to his Bible, and rose to preach as his Divine Commentator Christ told him and taught him. Thus was the young man in a grievous strait. Torn between a fervent desire that God should send him his parish and a fear lest, in looking for it, he should soil his soul, he was in much misery — misery of much the same kind as every young probationer in our own day must inevitably pass through if baptized with Mr. Boston's baptism. He wanted to be sure about the sincerity of his aims: and, in such a spirit
and serious pass in his life history, he sat down to write the "Soliloquy on the Art of Man-Fishing." But the exact occasion of his penning it can be given by none better than by himself, and here is what he says: —
"During the remaining time that I continued at Ferrytown, I wrote a Soliloquy on the Art of Man-Fishing which was never finished.
The occasion thereof was this — January 6, 1699, reading in secret, my heart was touched with Matt. 4:19, 'Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.'
"My soul cried out for accomplishing of that to me, and I was very desirous to know how I might follow Christ so as to become a fisher of men, and for my own instruction in that point I addressed myself to the consideration of it in that manner. And, indeed, it was much in my heart in these days, not to preach the wisdom of my own heart, or produce of my own gifts, but to depend on the Lord for light that I might, if I could have reached it, been able to say of every word 'Thus saith the Lord.'"
Eight months or thereby after he wrote the soliloquy we find him with faltering foot coming along the road from Duns to preach for this smallest and most meanly endowed of Scottish parishes. He was a tender-hearted, loveable man, wise, grave, industrious, studious, and, above all, in earnest: and the seed sown in little Simprin has sprung up to a great and glorious harvest, on the bounty of which not merely the parishioners of Simprin were spiritually nourished in their day, but a family much larger and far more widely scattered.
It only remains to be added that the Reader has before him, intact, the soliloquy as it left its devout young author's pen, but for one or two verbal alterations in accordance with modern taste.
Thus is it again sent out into the great world where that divinest of all human labours — the toilsome work of man-fishing — is being carried on. May it be blessed! May it make haste and speak a helpful
word in the ear of a worldly, wayward, giddy age, and good will surely come of it.
THE ART OF MAN-FISHING.
[For a pattern to every preacher of the Gospel]
Ah! Lord, who has believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? This day seems to be a day of darkness and gloominess; the glory is departed even to the threshold of the temple. We may call ordinances Ichabod; and name the faithful preachers of Scotland no more Naomi but Marah, for the Lord deals bitterly with them, in so much forsaking his ordinances as at this day. The Lord has forsaken them in a great measure, as to success attending their labours. They toil all the night; but little or nothing is caught: few or none can they find to come into the net. So that Jeremiah's exercise may be theirs, chap. 13:17, "If you will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride; and my eye shall weep sore, and run down with tears."
And you, O my soul, may make this your exercise, if you had a heart that could mourn either for yourself or others. Though indeed it is no great wonder that God does not countenance with much success the like of me, who (if I may or dare class myself among those who are faithful) am the meanest, the most unworthy of them all, not worthy to take his covenant in my mouth, who am a child in piety and the mystery of godliness, though not in years; who am a poor fool, having a weak heart and a shallow head; who might rather be learning of others than teaching them; who can but wade about the outer parts of that depth, into which others can enter far; who have so little love to Christ, and so little pure zeal for his glory; can say so little for the truth, and so little against error; who am altogether unworthy and insufficient for these things: no wonder, I say, God does not countenance me, when others, that are as tall cedars in the Lord's vineyard, do so little good, even others that are great men in the church for piety and learning. But yet seeing I am called out to preach