The New Student's Reference Work/Watson, John

Wat′son, Rev. John (nom de plume Ian Maclaren), one of the
IAN MACLAREN most popular of the Scotch school of story-writers and a prominent figure in English religious life, was born of Scottish parents at Manningtree, Essex, Nov. 3, 1850, and educated at Edinburg University land at Tubingen. Ordained a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, he had his first important charge at Free St. Matthew's, Glasgow, and afterward was transferred to the Sefton Park Presbyterian Church, Liverpool. Till 1893 Dr. Watson was known as an able and popular preacher; but in that year he acquired greater distinction and a wider fame by a series of Scottish prose idyls, written for The British Weekly and afterwards published under the title of Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. This work won deserved praise for the fidelity with which he has portrayed humble and reverent Scottish life and scenes, and was deservedly dramatized. The volume was followed by The Days of Auld Lang Syne, Kate Carnegie, A Doctor of the Old School, Rabbi Saunderson and Afterwards and Other Stories. His religious writings embrace The Upper Room, The Mind of the Master, The Cure of Souls, The Homely Virtues, The Inspiration of Our Faith, The Potter's Wheel and Companions of the Sorrowful Way. In 1896 and again in 1899 he visited the United States on lecturing tours, and delivered the Lyman Beecher lectures at Yale University on practical theology. He also visited the United States in 1907, where he died at Mount Pleasant, Iowa, May 6.