Transcript of introductory note:
“A pretentious book by a young man of schoolmaster mind, & habit of preacher seeking a living among dissenters, & striving to clear himself of all complicity with brethren, exclusives especially. He never possessed the spiritual mind, essential to a right appraisal, but had a glib tongue & boundless confidence in himself for the task he understood [?undertook]. He is without insight into the counsels & ways of God, & slides over the surface of revealed truth, talking of theology with much flippancy on doctrines of which he knows little or nothing. As he speaks [?of me, W.K.] with more respect than almost any other so called Exclusive, I have no personal motive for my severe notes on his opinions & misrepresentations & absured [sic] objects of laudation, or of the objects of his abuse, having known himself & his brothers etc. from their birth, & his father & mother from their childhood, on the friendliest terms. But I have a horror of his departure from the faith in the Holy Spirit’s presence & free action in the assembly & in testimony to Christ, His work & headship in heavenly glory, & in His Coming as the constant hope. In all this he is a retrograde enemy of God’s word; & it could surprise no discerning Christian that such a romance should owe most of its sale to the freethinking novelist Ian McLaren [MacLaren. Sc. John Watson (1850-1907]. [Novr. 1908] (initialled) W.K.