Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/616

 semester at Tübingen University, studying under Beck and Weizsacker. In the autumn of 1874 he became assistant to the Rev. Dr. J. H. Wilson, Barclay church, Edinburgh. There he had misgivings as to his ministerial fitness, and thought of studying for the bar. Early in 1875 he was inducted minister of the Free church at Logiealmond, Perthshire ; his uncle, Hiram Watson, had been minister there from 1841 to 1853, leaving the Church of Scotland at the Disruption. In Logiealmond, the 'Drumtochty' of 'Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush,' Watson spent some three of his happiest years, making himself popular with the people and winning some repute as a preacher. In 1877 he became colleague and successor to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Miller of Free St. Matthew's church, Glasgow, a wealthy congregation and a centre of spiritual influence. His Glasgow ministry, which was less harmonious and successful than that at Logiealmond, lasted barely three years. The main work of Watson's life began in 1880, when he accepted an invitation to form a new presbyterian charge in the Sefton Park district of Liverpool. There he remained exactly twenty-five years, and established a congregation which for wealth, culture, and influence became one of the foremost in the Presbyterian Church of England. His attractive personality and public spirit drew to him all sorts and conditions of people. His preaching, while resting on a basis of broad evangelicalism, was essentially modern, catholic, oratorical, and cultured. Matthew Arnold [q. v. Suppl. I] on the day he died (15 April 1888) heard Watson preach at Sefton Park church, and remarked that he had rarely been so affected by any preacher ( Life, p. 130). Watson's congregation raised, while he was minister, nearly 150,000l., and erected a church whose elegance and size has earned for it the title of 'the presbyterian cathedral of England,' as well as two large branch churches and a social institute. Watson's influence on the civic life of the community was considerable, no fewer than six members of his congregation becoming lord mayors of Liverpool, while others were prominent in the city council. He took a leading part in the creation of the University of Liverpool, and had a seat on its council (1903-6).

In 1894 Watson achieved a new and a wider reputation. In that year he published, under the pseudonym of 'Ian Maclaren,' a number of sketches of Scottish rural life entitled ’Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush.' The book at once made Watson one of the most popular authors in Great Britain and America. 'Ian Maclaren' knew little of the novelist's art, but out of simple elements he produced pictures of Scots character which, if not wholly free from sentimentalism, are artistic delineations of the Scottish peasant's nobility of sentiment and religious emotion. Watson was aware of 'the reverse side of the shield' which George Douglas Brown [q. v. Suppl. II] apotheosised in ' The House with the Green Shutters,' but his interpretation was admirably effective. In Great Britain more than a quarter of a million copies have been sold ; in America the sale has amounted to about half a million, exclusive of an incomplete pirated edition which was circulated in large numbers at a low price. The work has also been translated into several European tongues, and has been popular in Germany. In 1895 there followed in the same vein 'The Days of Auld Langsyne,' hardly inferior in execution and popularity. There was some falling off in workmanship in 'Kate Carnegie and those Ministers' (1897), in spite of its geniality and easy command of the Scots vernacular. 'Afterwards, and Other Stories' (1898) shows the author's command of pathos ; 'Young Barbarians' (1901) is a delightful boy's book; 'His Majesty Baby and some Common People ' appeared in 1902 ; 'St. Jude's' (posthumously, 1907) contained sketches of Glasgow life. 'Graham of Claverhouse' (posthumously, 1908) was 'Ian Maclaren's' only serious attempt at novel writing, and proved a failure.

From 12 Oct. to 16 Dec. 1896 Watson, taking advantage of the popularity of his books, made his first American lecture tour under the management of Major J. B. Pond, and was welcomed with immense enthusiasm (, Eccentricities of Genius, p. 405). At Yale University he was made hon. D.D. after delivering there the Lyman Beecher lectures on preaching, which he published in the same year under the title of 'The Cure of Souls.' Watson repeated his success in a second American lecture tour, also under Pond's direction (19 Feb.-10 May 1899).

Meanwhile Watson had engaged, under his own name, in theological literature. In 1896 he issued 'The Mind of the Master,' an able interpretation of the person and teaching of Christ, which brought him in 1897 under a passing suspicion of heresy ( Life, p. 214).