“I must stoop, and be content to follow the Lord in an untrodden path”, Thomas Boston wrote in his diary after one of his sorest trials. He describes this heartbreaking scene: “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. . . . When the nails were driving, I was moved for that I had not kissed [him] . . . and I would fain have caused draw the nail again, but because of one that was present, I restrained . . . myself.”
This was one of six babies that Boston had to bury and the second son to whom he had given the name Ebenezer. Boston chose the name “Ebenezer” for the first son because of the great personal significance he attached to the pillar of God’s help in his time of need (1 Sam 7:12). It marked God’s faithfulness to him and his expectations for the future. Yet this pillar on which he had rested hopes was removed as soon as it had been set up. When the first Ebenezer died, Boston wrote, “His death was exceeding afflicting to me, and matter of sharp exercise. To bury his name, was indeed harder than to bury his body.” He tells us that, after the death of Ebenezer, “my soul had often said to the Lord, ‘How will this loss be made up?’ And my prayer had still been that God would give me another pillar to set up.” But this second pillar had gone too.
This was not the only trial that Thomas Boston had to bear. He had married Katherine Brown, for whom he had the highest praise and devotion. She was “a woman of great worth, whom I passionately loved, and inwardly honoured; a stately, beautiful, and comely personage, truly pious, and fearing the Lord patient in our common tribulations, and under her personal distresses”. His wife Katherine was afflicted with a mental illness that may well have been something like schizophrenia. It confined her to bed in a little room that Boston referred to mournfully as the inner prison. It was often accompanied by fevers and physical illness and tempted to suicide: “That heavy trouble, which hath kept her all along since that time unto this day in extreme distress, her imagination being vitiated in a particular point; and that improved upon and wrought upon by the great adversary to her great disquietment; the which has been still accompanied with bodily infirmities and maladies, exceeding great and numerous. Nevertheless, in the complications of trials, the Lord hath been pleased, not only to make His mighty power appear in preserving her life, as a spark of fire in an ocean, but to make His grace in her shine forth more bright than before.”
Despite these glimpses of light there were sore spiritual trials for her. “For several of these years she hath been free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, remembered no more; being overwhelmed with bodily maladies, her spirits drunk up with terror by means of her imagination vitiated in a particular point, and harassed with Satan’s temptations plied against her at that disadvantage … so the Lord has at times given her remarkable visits in her prison and manifested his love to her soul.”
A very touching personal covenant that Katherine wrote is in a manuscript kept in New College Library: “I do this day solemnly covenant to give up myself to be the Lord’s and I do accept Christ upon His own terms and in all His offices”. She expressed trust in the “precious promises” even with respect to “all the disequalities of my lot in the world and my throughbearing in death”. “I do likewise in behalf of my yokefellow and four children”.
Boston had constant poor health himself. At one time, when he was in particular pain and discomfort, he records, “The springs of my comfort ran bitterness to me in my low condition; all created refuge failed, and I was solitary, and in great affliction”.
Although his sermons would be in every household after his death, he also had his trials as a minister. Initially the congregation frequently deserted or despised his preaching. At one time he said, “I am brought very low! The approaching Sabbath, that sometimes was my delight, is now a terror to me.”
The editor of Boston’s Memoirs remarks: “Inured to afflictions, as well personal as domestic, he bore them with that quiet submission, and unreluctant resignation, which a filial spirit can only inspire. Viewing them as originating from his heavenly Father, the habitual language of his heart was, ‘Shall I receive all good at the hand of God, and shall I not receive evil?'”
Boston’s submission to the sovereign providence of God was unshaken.
And all of this explains the well-known book that he wrote called, The Crook in the Lot. The subtitle of the book is, “The Sovereignty and Wisdom of God in the Afflictions of Men Displayed”.2
Rev Ian Hamilton’s foreword points out that lot means our “lot in life”. By crook, Boston means those unforeseen troubles (“thorns”) that afflict, unsettle, or disturb us in any way” (p viii). In Boston’s words, “The crook in the lot is adversity, continued for shorter or longer time” (p 6).
There are three different parts expounding three different Scripture passages. The first is Ecclesiastes 7:13: “Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which He hath made crooked?” Boston explains that: (1) whatsoever crook there is in one’s lot, it is of God’s making; (2) if God sees fit to mar, no one will be able to mend his lot; (3) to consider the crook in the lot as the work of God, or of His making, is a proper means to bring one to a Christian deportment under it.
Boston was speaking from personal experience when he says that “men oftentimes find their greatest cross where they expected their greatest comfort”. He exalts God and abases men in his explanation of these things. Afflictions increase humility by showing us what is in us. “The crook in your lot is the special trial God has chosen for you to take your measure by. It is God’s fire, by which He tries what metal men are made of: heaven’s touchstone for discovering true and counterfeit Christians.”
Boston shows how, “as to the crook in your lot, God has made it; and it must continue while He will have it so. Should you ply your utmost force to even it, or make it straight, your attempt will be vain: it will not change for all you can do. Only He who made it can mend it, or make it straight.”
“Wait on patiently till the hand that made it mend it (Ps 27:14). Do not give up the matter as hopeless, because you are not so soon relieved as you would wish: ‘but let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing’ (Jas 1:4). Leave the timing of the deliverance to the Lord; His time will at length, to conviction, appear the best, and it will not go beyond it. ‘I the Lord will hasten it in His time’ (Is 60:22). Waiting on Him you will not be disappointed: ‘For they shall not be ashamed that wait for Me’ (Is 49:23).”
The second passage considered is Proverbs 16:19: “Better it is to be of a humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud”. The key truth that Boston draws from this is: “There is a generation of lowly afflicted ones, having their spirit lowered and brought down to their lot, whose case, in that respect, is better than that of the proud getting their will, and carrying all to their mind.”
Lastly 1 Peter 5:6 is opened up: “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time”. The main points emphasised here are: (1) the bent of one’s heart in humbling circumstances should lie toward a suitable humbling of the spirit, as under God’s mighty hand placing us in them; (2) there is a due time, wherein those that now humble themselves under the mighty hand of God will certainly be lifted up.
“The whole life of a Christian is a praying, waiting life,” says Boston. “The humbling circumstances are ordinarily carried to the utmost point of hopelessness before the lifting up occurs.”
As Ian Hamilton expresses it, “The Crook in the Lot is pastoral medicine prepared in the laboratory of Boston’s own personal and ministerial sufferings”. Spiritual and outward afflictions abound in this life, and a book like this is constantly required for ourselves and to help others. It is extremely practical and experiential and highly recommended. Boston sums up the book so well in his final words: “Ye have heard much of the crook in the lot; the excellency of humbleness of spirit in a low lot, beyond pride of spirit, though joined with a high one. Ye have been called to humble yourselves in your humbling circumstances, and have been assured in that case of a lifting up. To conclude: we may assure ourselves, God will at length break in pieces the proud, be they ever so high; and He will triumphantly lift up the humble, be they ever so low.”
1The book under review is The Crook in the Lot: What to Believe When Our Lot in Life Is not Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Thomas Boston, published by The Banner of Truth, paperback, 168 pages, £5.00, available from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.
2The Banner of Truth edition is included in the Puritan Paperback series; the word Puritan is hardly applicable to Boston’s time period or ecclesiastical situation but the label is accorded to him by others also.