DR. JAMES MACGREGOR.*

Frances Balfour. Illustrated. London : Hodder and Storiplden. Dap. net.] - arld'Co. ['is. 641. net.] '

LADY FRANCES BALFOUB has written the life of a great Presbyterian preacher, Dr. MacGregor of St. Cuthbert's. Boil'. in 1832, he lived till towards the end of the century, stud for over thirty years his preaching was the delight of thousands. One day an envious critic asked of an admirer what "MacGregor has ever done to be made a D.D. ? " " I cannot," he replied, " point to any big book that he has written, but I can say this much, that he has filled four empty churches, and if you can show me any other D.11. who has done the like, I will engage to name half-a-dozen who have emptied them:'

First in Paisley, then in Glasgow, latterly in. Edinburgh, he preached and preached, and though he never shortened his

sermons to suit the taste of the age, no congregation ever grew tired of hire. Even when his natural force abated he never spared himself. " Spoke with comfort for seventy-five minutes," he wrote in his diary not long before his death.

That preaching was the work in the world best worth doing he did honestly believe—" Believing as I do that preaching is God's instrumentality- for the saving of souls," we read.. In trouble or distress of mind he would preach to gain distraction as other men turn to other work. Here is his; own account, written when still a young man, of his first sight of his first slum pariah in Glasgow: "I am glad to say that on the testimony of my beadle, and on the

evidence of my own_eyes, I have got the wretchedest, foulest, immoratest= corner of Scotland, nay of Great Britain. It

is one mass of moral and physical filth." Truly a sight sufficient to discourage any man. But MacGregor was not discouraged. " That parish of mine," he writes, " is beyond all hope of reformation in the way of visits, so that I must give my time mainly to the best of all ministerial work—the duties of the pulpit."

Dr. MacGregor owed nothing of his extraordinary influence to his personal appearance ; he was almost deformed, and in youth sadly conscious that Nature had not favoured him. He was, however, incapable of bitterness, even before success, the surest perhaps of all sweeteners, had come to make him forget his handicap. Of his first experience of preaching in Glasgow be writes thus to the girl he was about to marry " Within a dingy church in the busy heart of a mighty city a congregation has met for worship. There is a slight murmur in the audience (sic) as a man of small dimensions mounts the pulpit steps. Can that he the unanimous choice of this people P whispers one stranger to another. All eyes are turned to the preacher with the pale face of a dirty yellow. The white bands tremble on his heart as with stentorian voice and lungs he gives out the psalm?!

The secret' of Dr. MacGregor's charm as an orator is not revealed in his biography. There is incontrovertible and arithmetical proof that he had this therm in the fact of the scores of thousands who listened to him during his strenuous life. Lady Frances Balfour quotes few sermons and too many :lettere, hut MaoGregor's sermons were, as he himself

said, written to be Peached, not published. "He is a live wire," said an Amerioan who had listeeect to his eloquence, and probably what he said Is the nearest one can get to an explanation. The 'preacher was absolutely sincere and possessed 'of intense personal magnetism. All we get from

thd book-which 'is too long, bat never dull for two paged: together—is an impression of an impulsive, able, righteous,. ' and humorous man, with the religious temperament, not. indifferent to praise, not even quite indifferent to menept Lady Frances Balfour tells ns that no Celt ever is. In justice to the book we must quote two or three excellent stories int illustration of MacGregor's humour.. The firstis wonderfully. characteristic of the Scottish poorer class. "A famous beadle of my church, who was keenly alive to the value of a shilling,: used to say of those who came to the church.for baptism, nut left without giving him the usual fee : 'Puir things ! better couldna be expected of them ; they dinna understand the natur' o' baptism ! ' " The second is perhaps an even better story.

"He stayed at Lambeth Palace, and from there ho went on Sunday morning to preach in the SootsKirk of the Crown. As he was setting forth, the Archbishop, who had often expressed, a wish:. that he could himself have listened for once to the chaiacteristia oratory which had now become famous, called to him from the to of the palace stairs, asking where he was going. The minister looked up and answered firmly, Where your Grace cannot come I '- 'Where is that?' demanded Archbishop Tait. `To Crown Court, Chureh.' The Archbishop turned him right and left, and, seeing" no attendant chaplains, leant over and, from a mouth guarded by his hand, he whispered low: 'I wish I were coming with you.' 'We draw the line at Archbishops,' and, without waiting for th% reward of such daring words, 'the wild ktacGregOr' fled from beyond the shadow of the Lollards' Tower."

But although he snubbed the Archbishop, MacGregor bad *; great sympathy for the Church of England, and was intensely

devoted he " establishment." .

" There is something,' he writes, 'in the service of the Church. of England, awanting in the balder and sterner servieb 4f &tit> Scottish kirks, which appeals to the educated instiuct of a refined.. and religious mind. We must not stupidly ignore/acts, and.tha fact is, explain it how we may, that, whenever a Scot -gets. acquainted with the English 'service he gets also attached to.lt",- and ever after prefers it to his own. In this way we have lb* irremediably and irrevocably the gentry of the land. tlf yottaast I live long enough I venture to predict that we shall witness ar widespread movement among all the educated classes for semethitig

like a liturgy and a richer service than our own." ,

His fear of the disestablishment of the Scottish Church found- expression in words which give voice to thoughts of many mem in England to-day.

" We hold it as a fundamental, essential, and everlasting' principle, that it is the right and duty of nations in their national. capacity to honour Almighty God. . . . There is no via media, no. resting-place between the conception of the State as sceptionancl the conception of the State as, in some form or other, allied with, religion and a Church,. which is simply religion embodied sad organized. However many turns you may take, and however much ingenuity you may expend, the Voluntary principle, carried. to its logical issue, leads straight up to this, that the State as a State knows no God and no religion, has no religious character and no religious responsibility."