MATHESON, GEORGE: Church of Scotland; b. in Glasgow Mar. 27, 1842; d. at North Berwick (19 m. e.s.e. of Edinburgh) Aug. 28, 1906. Although his eyesight gradually failed him until in his eighteenth year he had become blind, he finished his school and university course at Glasgow with high honors (B.A., 1861; M.A., 1862; B.D., 1866) and was licensed to preach in 1866. During the next year he was assistant to John Ross Macduff (q.v.) of the Sandyford Church, Glasgow; from 1868 till 1886 minister of Innellan.(35 m. down the Clyde from Glasgow); and from 1886 till his retirement in 1899 minister of St. Bernard's, Edinburgh. Being in easy circumstances he was always able to employ secretaries who read to him and wrote for him, and having an extraordinarily retentive memory and strong literary bent he produced many books which display much reflection and, considering his restrictions, no little learning. He was very broad-minded and saw good in creeds which he rejected. His preaching was of a high order. In consequence of his standing as preacher and author he was the recipient of many honors-D.D. of Edinburgh University, 1879; call to succeed John Gumming (q.v.) as pastor of Gown Court Church, London, 1880; Baird lecturer, 1881; preacher before the queen at Bahnoral Oct. 25, 1885; Gifford lecturer, 1899 (declined); fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1890; LL.D., Aberdeen, 1902. His books may be divided into three classes: first, those of a philosophical character: Aids to the Study of German Theology (Edinburgh, 1874; 3d ed., 1876), issued at first anonymously, a sympathetic study of German theology from .Kant to Dorner with a view to relieving it of the charge of "atheism"; Growth of the Spirit of Christianity from the First Century to the Dawn of the Lutheran Era (2 vols., 1877), in which he showed his reading in comparative religion, a favorite study, and his acceptance of Hegelian principles as guiding lines in the presentation of church history, but it is not a church history in the ordinary sense; Natural Elements of Revealed Theology (1881), his Baird lectures, in which he again utilized his attainments in comparative religion to commend Christianity; Can the old Faith Live with the New t or, the Problem of Evolution and Revelation (1885; 3d ed., 1889), an attempt to show that even if evolution be true, and he was non-committal on that point (though afterward he came to the conclusion that it was not true), belief in it is compatible with belief in Christian doctrines; he presented the same idea in more popular form in The Psalmist and the Scientist, or, Modern. Value of the Religious Sentiment (London, 1886; 3d ed., 1892); The Distinctive Messages of the Old Religions (1892; 2d ed., 1893), an attempt to state that for which each of these religions stood. The second class of books was those which are more directly

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and avowedly preachers' expositions: The Spiritual Development of St. Paul (1890; 4th ed., 1897), a study of the thirteen epistles of Paul, but not of the literature on them; The Lady Ecclesia, an Autobiography (1896; 2d ed., 1896), an allegory; Sidelights from Patmos (1897; 3d ed., 1903); Studies of the Portrait of Christ (2 vols., 1899-1900; vol. I., 10th ed., 1907, vol. II., 6th ed., 1907), a very interesting study of the life of Christ as an aid to faith and not as a contribution to scholarship, generally considered his best piece of work; The Representative Men of the Bible (2 series, 1902-03; first series, Adam to Job, 6th ed., 1907; second series, Ishmael to Daniel, 3d ed., 1907); The Representative Men of the New Testament (1905); and The Representative Women of the Bible (1906). But it is likely that he will be longer useful as author of a third class of books, the devotional, for these have had a very wide sale and reached many who were not attracted by his other books: My Aspirations (1882); Moments on the Mount (1884); Voices of the Spirit (1888); Searchings in the Silence (1895); Words by the Wayside (1896); Times of Retirement (1901); Leaves for Quiet Hours (1904); Rests by the River (1906); Messages of Hope (1908); Thoughts far Life's Journey (1908); and. Day unto Day (1908), prayers. He wrote also poetry: Sacred Songs (1890; 3d ed., 1904); and one hymn (not in this collection), "O Love that wilt not let me go," will be sung long after all his other compositions are forgotten. It was written at the Innellan manse in five minutes on the evening of June 6, 1882, and only changed in a single word, "trace" for "climbed" in the third stanza. But four other hymns which are in this colleotion have been incorporated into several hymn-books.

Bibliography: D. Macmillan, The Life of George Matheson, London, 1907.