1. His Younger Years
F R Daubney
Thomas Boston lived from 1676 to 1732; the Reformation had taken place 150 years before; the Killing Times of the Covenanters took place when he was a boy. The descendants of the Stuart kings were still hopeful of winning back the throne of the United Kingdom; the country was almost entirely rural, and transport and communication between one part and another was very poor. In the Church many held to a formal religion but there were some who, by the grace of God, lived lives of such outstanding holiness and evangelical fervour that they shine as stars in the firmament. One of these was Thomas Boston. Now, 300 years later, he remains an example to us of righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience and meekness (1 Tim 6:11).
Thomas Boston was born in 1676 in Duns, a town in the Scottish Borders, about 50 miles from Edinburgh. He was the youngest of seven children, six of whom survived to adulthood, which was unusual in those days. His mother was thought to be past childbearing age, and a family acquaintance described this late baby, Thomas, as a “God’s send”. This was to be proved true in more ways than one. In his Memoirs, Boston describes his father as an intelligent and pious man, and his mother as prudent and virtuous.
These were times of great religious and civil disturbance. The Stuart government endeavoured to impose Episcopalianism on a people who sought to follow Presbyterianism, and John Boston, Thomas’s father, was fined and imprisoned for refusing to attend Episcopal services. In later life Thomas wrote in his memoirs, “When I was a little boy, I lay in the prison of Dunse with him, to keep him company, the which I have often looked on as an earnest of what may be abiding me; but hitherto I have not had that trial”2.
When Thomas was sent to school, he was initially taught reading and spelling from the Song of Solomon and The Shorter Catechism. The schoolmistress was very fond of the gentle and attentive boy and would get him to read aloud to her. He in turn listened with wonder and delight to the numerous Bible stories she would tell him.
At eight years of age, Thomas began to attend the grammar school, where he proved to be a clever and hard-working student. He describes himself as of “a sober and harmless deportment and preserved from the common vices of children in towns”. However, he says he was “living without God in the world, unconcerned about the state of my soul”.
In 1687, King James VI and II gave Presbyterians the liberty to hold their own services in private houses and chapels. Very soon afterwards, the Presbyterians of the parish of Whitsome, four miles south-east of Duns, called Rev Henry Erskine, the father of the well-known Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine, to be their minister. Immediately John Boston and others from Duns started to attend the services and Thomas went with his father to hear the new minister. By his means, he says, “it pleased the Lord to awaken me, and bring me under exercise about my soul’s state; being then in the twelfth year of my age”.
There were two sermons in particular which touched him. One was from Matthew 3:7, “O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” and the second, “Behold the Lamb of God”, from John 1:29. “By these”, he says, “I was touched quickly after the first hearing, wherein I was like one amazed with some new and strange thing. Sure I am I was, in good earnest, concerned for a saving interest in Jesus Christ. My soul went out after Him, and the place of His feet was glorious in mine eyes.”
Many of the company travelling to and from Whitsome were men of deep religious experience and Christian knowledge, and Boston very much benefited from their conversation. He found it so edifying and cheering that he says he did not even feel tired as they walked to and fro in all weathers.
In 1869, when Thomas was 13, he left the grammar school, and he and his father both felt he should become a minister, but the Church of Scotland required all entrants into the ministry to undergo university training and, when John Boston looked into the cost of sending his son to university, he discovered it was beyond his means. He tried several ways of funding Thomas’s education at college but to no avail. At this point Thomas became discouraged and thought of going into a trade, but his father would not hear of it. Eventually the young Boston was employed in a notary’s office (probably as a kind of clerk) which he looked back on as a favourable providence. It taught him the discipline of working and, in addition, he acquired an orderly way of working and a style of writing papers which would prove to be useful to him in later years. Later, as a young minister, he was made Clerk to the Synod of Merse and Teviotdale, and one of the members, who was a judge, said he was the best clerk he had ever known in any court, civil or ecclesiastical.
He looked back on this period of his life as one in which he was tried with many disappointments, including the death of his mother, but in all his difficulties he was brought to lean upon the Lord. Two years later, when his father’s circumstances changed for the better, he was able to begin his university studies clear of any debt.
Boston enrolled in Edinburgh University in 1691, aged 15. He studied classical literature, philosophy and science but, other than that, very little has been recorded about his time there. He was constantly concerned about his father’s lack of money and lived so frugally that, in his second year, he became liable to fainting fits, which continued to trouble him for several years. Once, when he was at home in June 1693 and he took one of his fits, the family thought that he was likely to die. He was so careful about money that, by the time he graduated, the total cost for his four years’ tuition fees, college dues and maintenance amounted to only £11 sterling (£1220 in today’s money). Apart from his university classes he studied music so he could improve his singing of the psalms, and also shorthand so that he could write out his sermons, although in the end he found it “marred the frame of his spirit”.
In the summer of 1694 Boston received a bursary from the Presbytery of Duns to become a student of theology and, the following January, he returned to Edinburgh to the School of Divinity. He only remained for one session but speaks very highly of his professor of theology, who he describes as “the great Mr George Campbell”. At that time students who had taken one session of theology with credit were allowed to earn a living by teaching and to complete their studies under the supervision of their presbytery. Because of the ongoing financial difficulties, Boston decided to follow this course of action, though with a great deal of reluctance.
His first job was teaching in the parish school of Glencairn in Dumfriesshire, where he found the pupils and people of the area unsympathetic to religion. Even the minister, though he was kind to him, he found to be vain and “untender”. The minister would go to the local “alehouse” and take Boston with him, much against his inclination, on the pretext of speaking with an old gentleman. They would be provided with a mixture of warm ale and brandy, which Thomas refused to drink. All of this gave Boston much cause for prayer that he would be delivered from the evil influences around him. His prayers were answered when, shortly afterwards, he was invited to become tutor in a family in Clackmannan. He took up these duties in February 1696. His young pupil, Andrew Fletcher of Aberlady, was already attending grammar school, and Boston’s duties were light.
The lord and lady of the house were away for considerable periods of time after Boston arrived, and he felt responsible for the spiritual good of the family. He therefore kept family worship, catechised the servants and encouraged them to pray alone. He also warned them against sinful practices, and this was resented by some who felt he was overstepping his authority. He was learning, as he said, “in some measure what it was to have [the] charge of souls; and being naturally bashful, timorous and much subject to the fear of man, I attained, by what I met with there, some boldness and not regarding the persons of men when they were out of God’s way”. On the whole he found his time there to be “a thriving time for his soul”. He set time aside for fasting, prayer and self-examination.
He was now approaching the end of his period of theological training when students would present themselves to one of the presbyteries where they had lived, for trials and examinations, with a view to becoming a probationer. Boston, having become known for his piety and blossoming gifts, was invited for trial by several presbyteries. After much prayer he decided to enter on trials in the combined presbytery of Duns and Chirnside. This was in March 1697, when he was 21 years of age. After an exhaustive series of examinations, including essays in theology, and a sermon at Chirnside on John 1:16, “And of His fullness have all we received, and grace for grace”, he was licensed to preach the gospel as a probationer on June 15.
His preaching soon began to attract attention, and little wonder! It was preaching that only a man who knew his own heart could attain to. At first, he was very much a preacher of the law; he said himself that “he hoped to set fire to the devil’s nest”. However, a kindly older minister helped him by saying to him, “If you began preaching Christ, you would find it very pleasant”. From that day there was no lack of the loving call of Jesus in his preaching. “I have often” said Boston, “remembered that word of Mr Dysart as the first hint given me by the good hand of God towards the doctrine of the gospel”.
1The first part of a paper given at this year’s Theological Conference. In preparing this talk the writer relied heavily on Boston’s Memoirs (vol 12 of his Works, but it has also been printed separately), and on Andrew Thomson’s biography, Thomas Boston: His Life and Times.
2This was a reference to his future difficulties with the civil law concerning the Oath of Abjuration, which we shall come to later.