THE above is the sub-title of one of the outstanding books in Scottish religious literature. Better known as the “Crook in the Lot,” its sub-title explains the subject matter of the treatise. Written by one of the masters in our Israel (Thomas Boston), it was a book that was highly valued by generations of godly men and women in the past, who derived instruction and comfort from its pages. It deals with matters that often cause perplexity and that are the common lot of men, for man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards. And as God’s people pass on their way, many of them are sorely perplexed at the dispensations of infinite wisdom. “Therefore his people return hither: and waters of a full cup are wrung out to them” (Psalm lxxiii. 10). In the “Crook in the Lot” their thoughts are turned to God’s ways of dealing with His inheritance and the unexpected and happy outgates He many times vouchsaves to them when all their ways seem hedged in. The new edition, published by the Sovereign Grace Union, 98 Camberwell Grove, London, S.E. 5, priced 2/6 (2/9 post free), will be gladly welcomed by those who are already familiar with the book, and for those who have not yet read it we have the greatest pleasure in recommending it to them. The author, Rev. Thomas Boston, Ettrick, was one of God’s honoured servants, whose labours the Lord abundantly blessed, and whose writings have been eagerly read by generations of the best of Scotland’s sons and daughters. The best known of his works, the “Fourfold State,” is one of the classics of our religious literature, and though the “Crook in the Lot” was not so widely read, yet it enjoyed a wide circle of readers deeply exercised in the weightiest matters that can engage the attention of man. In Dr Duncan’s incisive and happy characterisation—”Boston was a commonplace genius; remember, not a commonplace man, but a commonplace genius”—we have the intellectual side of this remarkable man summed up with the keen insight of one who himself was a genius of the first order. Possessed of intellectual gifts of a high order and a mind notable for its clearness and order, he had power in a remarkable degree to express his thoughts in language which here and there arrests the reader with its epigrammatic force. Boston, in common with Patrick Walker, had the gift of literary style which was recognised as worthy of being followed by one of the acknowledged stylists of modern English literature. But notable as his gifts were, it was his child-like piety that appealed to God’s people. A biographer says of him:—”All-pervading piety was his great characteristic; probably there never was a man who carried so uniformly and constantly into practice a belief in the Almighty’s close, incessant supervision of every act and fact in life. The reputation he left behind was immense.” What it was at one time in the South of Scotland may be gathered from the answer of the Peebles schoolboy to the question—”Who was the best man that ever lived?”—”Mr Boston, minister of Ettrick.”
In order that Boston might be a son of consolation, God made him pass through sore afflictions. His wife had long been afflicted mentally, and there are no more pathetic passages in his “Memoirs” than those recording his hopes and fears concerning her. In one passage, with sinking heart, he writes:—”Now we were with our broken ship, within sight of the shore. But behold in a little time after, the storm arose anew, and the ship was beat back into the main ocean, out of sight of land again.” He lost six of his children between 1701-1716, and what this meant to the tender-hearted father is known to Him alone who saw His servant’s tears and the sorrow of his heart. His tenderness may be gleaned from the following incident narrated in his “Memoirs”:—”When the child was laid in the coffin, his mother kissed his dust. I only lifted the cloth off his face, looked on it, and covered it again, in confidence of seeing that body rise a glorious body. When the nails were driving, I was moved, for I had not kissed that precious dust which I believe was united to Jesus Christ, as if I had despised it. I would fain have caused draw the nail again, but because of one that was present [his wife] I resented and violated myself.” As he turned his face to the setting sun, rich with the garnered experience of years of joy and sorrow, he preached a series of sermons on Affliction which were afterwards published under the title of the “Crook in the Lot.” The sermons were founded mainly upon the text—”Consider the work of the Lord; for who can make that straight which He hath made crooked?” He defines the “crook in the lot” as some one or other piece of adversity in our lot appointed by God. With the skill of a master he discusses such questions as how the crook came to be in man’s lot, the purpose that God had in allowing it to be in the lot of His people, the unwise efforts they may make to get rid of it, and God’s purpose that it shall remain until it has accomplished the end intended. God only can remove the crook in the lot, and “there will be no evening of it while God sees meet to continue it.” But heavy though the cross may be Boston turns his longing eyes and those of his hearers and readers to the future, and in answer to the question of those longing for the dawning of the day: “Watchman, what of the night?” he answers in the words of the Apostle: “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (II. Cor. iv. 17). And, finally, taking a longer look into the future, he says when the final deliverance will come, “We shall see it has come exactly in the due time; that it was well it was neither sooner nor later; for though heaven is always better than earth, and that it would be better for us absolutely speaking, to be in heaven than on earth, yet certainly there is a time wherein it is better for the honour of God and His service, that we be on the earth than in heaven.”
We have culled a number of striking paragraphs from the “Crook in the Lot,” which we hope to give in a future issue. Meantime we conclude with the following, in which the sovereignty of God in man’s lot is strikingly stated:—”God hath by an eternal decree, immovable as mountains of brass (Zech. vi. 1), appointed the whole of every one’s lot, the crooked parts thereof as well as the straight. By the same eternal decree, whereby the high and low parts of the earth, the mountains and the valleys, were appointed, are the heights and depths, the prosperity and adversity, in the lot of the inhabitants thereof determined; and they are brought about in time in a perfect agreeableness thereto.”