Defoe describes the city of Glasgow, with its four principal streets meeting in a cruciform manner at a point, as being, in 1726, one of the cleanliest, most beautiful, and best built cities in Great Britain.On the street that ran toward the north stood the college, completed in 1656, with quadrangles, arcade, and spire, built after the style of Louis XIII.and Louis XIV.The population, when Hutcheson was a professor, might be upwards of twenty thousand.At the summit of the social scale were the foreign merchants engaged in the American trade, in which they carried out linen and brought back tobacco " the tobacco merchants, with their scarlet cloaks and gold-headed canes, and cocked hats, perched on powdered hair or wig, with dangling clubtie or pigtail." Next to them, but at a considerable distance, were the ordinary shopkeepers; and farther {63} down, the tradesmen and servants; while at the base were the Highlandmen, with their tartan jacket and kilts, driven from their native hills by starvation, and ready to perform the most servile work.All classes made a solemn religious profession; but Wodrow mourns over degenerate customs which wealth and luxury were introducing.The better citizens dined early in their own homes, without show; and many of them spent their evenings in social meetings at taverns, --a practice which gendered those drinking customs which, beginning with the upper classes about this time, went down to the peasant class in the days of Burns, and by the end of the century infected the whole of Scottish society, which has not yet recovered from the evil influence.But Hutcheson does not seem to have been much mixed up with the citizen life of Glasgow; we do not hear of his spending his evenings in the tavern, or being a member of any of the social clubs which began to spring up in Glasgow at this time.He had experience of the evil effects of the new habits (which were coming in with the new theology), in the lives of some of the Irish students who were committed to his care, and over whom he watched with the most friendly interest."The wretched turn their minds take is to the silly manliness of taverns." He satisfies himself with keeping personally free from the evil.He presses his friend Tom Drennan, from Belfast, to pay him a visit for a month or six weeks, and promises: "Robert Simson, with you and Charles Moor, would be wondrous happy till three in the morning; I would be with you from five to ten."His sphere was within the walls of the college; whence, how ever, his influence spread over the educated mind of the south west of Scotland and of Ulster, and over not a few of the Non-conformists in England.Carlyle tells us that he was believed by the students to be a Socinian.There is no evidence of this, nor of his expressing any positive opinion on any doctrinal subject.Even in his Sabbath evening lectures he kept to Grotius "De Veritate Christianae Religionis," and avoided, Leechman tells us, " the party tenets or scholastic system of modern ages." He seems to have maintained a friendly communication with the non-subscribing Presbyterian ministers in Ireland, some of whom (such as Abernethy and Leland, and Bruce and Boyce) were as accomplished men as any theologians {64} of their age, and of whom it may be said to their credit, that they suffered in their temporal interests rather than subscribe articles which they did not believe.In particular, Hutcheson carried on a very genial correspondence with the Rev.Thomas Drennan, a non-subscribing minister at Belfast. The ministers of this communion, more especially as they were often abandoned by the people when their views became known, were at times in very poor circumstances.On hearing this, Hutcheson writes to his friend (May 31, 1742) am concerned that in my prosperous circumstances I did not think of it sooner.If you have any little contributions made towards such as are more distressed than the rest, you may mark me as a subscriber for L5 <per annum>, and take the above ten pounds as my payment for two years past....I think it altogether proper you should not mention my name to your brethren, but conceal it.I am already called New Light here.I don't value it for myself, but I see it hurts some ministers who are most intimate with me.I have been these ten days in great hurry and perplexity, as I have for that time foreseen the death of our professor, who died last Wednesday, and some of my colleagues join me in laboring for Mr.Leechman to succeed.We are not yet certain of the event, but have good hopes.If he succeed, it will put a new face upon theology in Scotland."This was no doubt one of the ends for which Hutcheson lived and labored, "<to put a new face upon theology in Scotland>." Discouraging all doctrinal exposition, and all rousing appeals to the conscience, he would have the preachers recommend the Christian religion as embracing a pure morality, and holding out the hope of a blessed immortality; but meanwhile providing no pardon to the poor sinner anxious about the past, nor gracious aid to help him in his struggles to deliver himself from sin in the future.
