Thomas M'Crie: VII: The Legacy.

Thomas M’Crie died in 1835, but his legacy is still with us. First of all there was the legacy of his home. His eldest son, also called Thomas, became a minister and followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming a historian and pastor of the same congregation! He wrote a biography of his father, a history of the Scottish Church, a volume called ‘The Annals of English Presbytery and ‘Memoirs of Sir Andrew Agnew’, as well as translating and editing an edition of the Provincial Letters of Blaise Pascal (my copy, obtained for the princely sum of a pound, rather worryingly contains a bookplate reading ‘Free Church Manse Library, Kirkaldy). The younger Thomas M’Crie was one of the majority of Original Secession (as M’Crie’s denomination was called) ministers to enter the Free Church of Scotland in a merger in 1852. Four years later he became Professor of Church History and Systematic Theology in the English Presbyterian College, then located in London (Now Westminster College, Cambridge).
A grandson of the elder Thomas M’Crie, C.G. M’Crie, was a Free Church minister in Ayr and joined the United Free Church in 1900. He wrote a volume on ‘The Confessions of The Church of Scotland’ (Chalmers lectures, 1906), but sadly from a rather liberal perspective. His other writings include ‘The Church of Scotland: Her Divisions and Re-unions and ‘The Public Worship of Presbyterian Scotland’ (Cunningham Lectures, 1892). He was the last M’Crie church historian.

But Thomas M’Crie’s greatest legacy remains the book which first made his name. Today, nearly two hundred years after it was first published, M’Crie’s Life of Knox remains in print, published by Free Presbyterian Publications, Glasgow. (ISBN 0 902506 05 6). His ‘Reformation in Spain’ is also in print, and both are available from the Tabernacle Bookshop, and from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom, Glasgow. Thousands still read M’Crie, and would agree with Professor John M. Simpson of Edinburgh University, that “Thomas M’Crie was one of the best historians Scotland has ever produced. He had unrivalled dilligence in sifting the records, the raw materials of history, when this was much harder than it is now. He had the literary gifts to bring his findings to life.” (Quoted in the Publishers’ Introduction to the Free Presbyterian edition). And his findings continue to live in the hands of his worldwide readership. But we must remember that all Thomas M’Crie’s abilities WERE gifts, and praise God for them, which is what M’Crie would surely want.

Sources
William Adamson, ‘The Religious Anecdotes of Scotland’ (Second Edition, London, Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1898)
Thomas M’Crie: ‘The Life of John Knox’ (Glasgow, Free Presbyterian Publications, 1991, ISBN 0 902506 05 6)
Thomas M’Crie: ‘The Life of John Knox’ (Edinburgh, William Blackwood and Sons, 1855)
Thomas M’Crie: ‘Vindication of the Covenanters’ (Edinburgh, William Whyte and Co., 1845)
Thomas M’Crie: ‘The Story of the Scottish Church’ (Glasgow, Free Presbyterian Publications, 1988. ISBN 0 902506 25 0)
Thomas M’Crie (translator): ‘The Provincial Letters of Blaise Pascal’ (Edinburgh, Johnstone and Hunter, 1851)
Charles G. M’Crie: ‘The Confessions of the Church of Scotland’ (Edinburgh, Macniven and Wallace, 1907)
Jabez Marrat, ‘Northern Lights: Pen and Pencil Sketches of Modern Scottish Worthies” (Third edition, London, T. Woolmer, 1885).