Part 15

After completing his studies as a Divinity student at Edinburgh--where he was a most distinguished student, and was universally regarded as a young man of excellent promise--Dr. Ker was licensed as a minister of the United Presbyterian Church. He was ordained in the year 1845, his first charge being in Alnwick, Northumberland, where he continued to minister until the year 1851. During the interval he received several calls from Glasgow and elsewhere. Twice he was called to preside over the United Presbyterian Church in East Campbell Street of this city. The first call he decidedly refused; but upon representations being made to him that the church was in anything but a satisfactory condition, so far as its pastorate was concerned--both Dr. Kidston and Dr. Brash, who then presided over it, being in infirm health and disqualified for the active discharge of ministerial duties--Dr. Ker, foreseeing no doubt that there was a large and ample field in Glasgow for the exercise of his energy and talents, at last agreed to accept the call. His ultimate consent was given, we believe, mainly through the importunity of the Rev. Dr. Taylor, who has for many years been his most attached and intimate friend. Dr. Taylor went to Alnwick with the view of seeing and arranging personally with Dr. Ker; and it is a notable fact that although Dr. Ker had determined to treat the second call as he had treated the first--by returning a distinct and unqualified refusal--Dr. Taylor's entreaties had the effect of inducing him to alter his decision. So far, indeed, had Dr. Ker's mind been made up that he had actually written a letter negativing the call, and the letter was on its way to Glasgow while Dr. Taylor was _en route_ to Alnwick, the two having thus crossed each other. We do not, however, believe that Dr. Ker has had any reason to regret his decision. The field that was open for his efforts in Glasgow was much more extensive if not more congenial than that presented by a remote country town like Alnwick, and Dr. Ker has been instrumental in raising up a congregation second to none in Glasgow as regards numbers and influence. Shortly after he removed to Glasgow an effort was made to secure a more eligible church for his large and increasing congregation, which was at length removed from East Campbell Street to Sidney Place. The new church cost upwards of L8000, and the opening services were conducted by Dr. Edmond and Dr. Cairns of Berwick, the respected pastor being himself absent at the time from ill health. At the present hour there are upwards of 800 members in connection with Sidney Place Church, and it is seldom indeed that the membership of a church covers so wide a radius, some coming four and six miles every Sunday.

During the first few years of his residence in Glasgow, and even prior to that date, Dr. Ker was most zealous and indefatigable in the promotion of every good word and work. No one was more frequently before the public during the years 1854-55-56 as the upholder of truth, as the advocate of justice, as the bitter and uncompromising foe of error and ignorance, as the alleviator of misery and distress. The amount of physical and mental work which he undertook during these years was more than any ordinary mortal could stand; but it was to him a labour of love, and he did not stay his hand until an enfeebled and broken-down constitution warned him that the laws of nature had been transgressed. Dryden has described Shaftesbury as

A fiery soul, which, working out its way, Fretted the puny body to decay, And o'er-informed the tenement of clay;

and it has all along been Dr. Ker's misfortune that his body would not bear the strain imposed upon it by his active and vigorous mind. As might be supposed, he was at this time a prominent speaker in the Church Courts, where his sage counsel and kindly disposition made him a favourite and a power. In 1857 he was requested by the Synod of his own Church to accept the office of Home Mission Secretary. The whole Synod stood up in token of their approval and esteem when the appointment was moved; and Dr. Andrew Thomson of Edinburgh, in supporting the nomination of Dr. Ker, remarked of him that "his very presence was a benediction." To the infinite disappointment of the Synod, however, Dr. Ker declined, for private and no doubt weighty reasons, to undertake the appointment. The choice of the Synod then fell on Dr. M'Gill, who continued to discharge the functions of Home Mission Secretary with zeal and efficiency until he was changed to the "Foreign Office." The result of too close attention to his ministerial duties led Dr. Ker into a dangerous illness, from which he suffered severely for a period of three years. During that time he visited many places both at home and abroad, travelling in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, and America. In the course of these journeys Dr. Ker cultivated his _penchant_ for antiquarian lore and old traditions. He also improved his very extensive knowledge of the Continental languages; and there are few men so thoroughly conversant with German, French, and Italian, who have not made these languages a special study. In addition to modern languages, however, Dr. Ker is a master of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.

At the time of the Irish revivals several years ago, Dr. Ker took a deep interest in the spiritual awakening, and he travelled over the country with the view of assisting its promotion, preaching very frequently every day in the week. Nothing is more remarkable in Dr. Ker's character than the immense power of mental and physical endurance he has displayed as a preacher. He has not unfrequently delivered four sermons or homilies in one Sunday, besides preaching more or less frequently during the week. These sermons are not thrown off on the spur of the moment. Every pulpit effort is thoughtfully and carefully prepared beforehand. His readiness to preach and assist in every good work has been largely taken advantage of by the numerous charitable and religious societies in Glasgow, which have, perhaps, rather ungenerously taxed his good nature and anxiety to make himself useful.

Although Dr. Ker has seldom been prominently before the public in connection with political or social agitations, he has all along taken an active part in the establishment and advancement of Sunday and day schools and missionary schemes. At the same time he has been ready to assist in any movement of a political kind that presented itself to his view as one worthy of support and encouragement. While he is always earnest and conscientious in his pulpit and platform labours, he can out-Spurgeon Spurgeon in his gift of pointing a moral, with an amusing illustration. His alternations between grave and gay are always in season; he takes good heed to Solomon's admonition that "there is a time for everything." But while he sometimes condescends to tickle the midriff of his hearers, consciously or unconsciously--for his quaint yet pungent remarks are not unfrequently the inspirations of the moment--he can afford to indulge his relish for humour without let or hindrance at a select party or by his own fireside. In either of these situations his solid and volatile qualities appear to vie with each other for the mastery. With quips and jokes, apposite and sparkling, he "is wont to set the table in a roar." Hence his society is much courted.

As a preacher, Dr. Ker has few if any superiors in Glasgow. His imagination is very fine and subtle, although not so exuberant and flowery as many other speakers who have an equally ready flow of language. He is apt in illustration, and he generally contrives to set forth his arguments in the most intelligible and convincing form; but he does not introduce illustrations for the mere sake of rhetorical effect. He rather makes every figure of speech to arise as it were by a natural sequence in the course of his reasoning, and few men have a greater facility for making "crooked paths straight, and rough places plain." The most abstruse and knotty points he makes so obvious and clear that his hearers are inclined to wonder why they did not think of them in that light before--giving to themselves, or to the merits of the question in hand, a credit that is only due to the preacher whose discernment has removed the lions of doubt and difficulty from the path of the reader or hearer. As a _litterateur_ his taste is highly cultivated, and his discriminating judgment enables him to compose sermons the diction of which is as beautiful as the argument is sound. By all who know him, and especially by his congregation, he is very much esteemed for his literary gifts and graces, and the public appreciation of his sermons is attested by the fact that a volume which he published several years since, has gone through eight large editions, the last edition having been issued only a few months ago. It is perhaps a pity that Dr. Ker has not been constrained to adopt Mr. Spurgeon's plan of publishing his sermons regularly as they are delivered. They would certainly form a serial literature that the people of Glasgow would not be slow to appreciate.

REV. DR. JOHN EADIE.

The Rev. Dr. Eadie was born in 1813, at Alva, in Stirlingshire, where his parents occupied a comparatively humble rank in life. After receiving the rudiments of his education at the school of Tillicoultry, in which he afterwards became assistant to the Rev. Mr. Browning, a man of uncommon ability both as a preacher and as a thinker, Dr. Eadie entered the University of Glasgow, where he pursued his studies on a more extended scale. From the University he went to the United Secession Divinity Hall, with the view of qualifying himself for a place in the ministry of that Church. At the University he was a most successful student, and distinguished himself more especially by his knowledge of Latin and Greek. This is all the more noteworthy when it is remembered that during his University career he had the private tuition of many students to undertake. Dr. Eadie's first charge was Cambridge Street U.P. Church. At the time he entered upon that charge he was only over 21 years' of age, and it is a fact worth recording that, within three months of being licensed, he was called to and bold enough to accept a city charge. Cambridge Street Church was built about nine months before Dr. Eadie became its pastor. Commencing with a membership of only 60, he raised his church during his pastorate of over 25 years to a membership of 1100, many of his adherents being the foremost men in connection with the U.P. body in Glasgow, of which the rev. gentleman himself soon became a distinguished ornament. Before leaving Cambridge Street to enter upon his new church in Great Western Road, Dr. Eadie, on his semi-jubilee, was presented by his congregation with a purse containing 300 guineas and a silver salver, and he then informed his congregation that "they had changed his wages five times, every change representing a substantial advance." Many of his West-End members found Cambridge Street too great a distance to come to worship on the Sabbath day, and Dr. Eadie removed with them to Lansdowne U.P. Church, where he has gathered a large and aristocratic congregation. We believe that Dr. Eadie is the only U.P. minister in Glasgow who has been the first pastor of two new churches, the only parallel case within our knowledge being that of Dr. M'Ewen, who first founded a new church at Helensburgh, and afterwards in Claremont Street, Glasgow. From the Great Western Road Dr. Eadie's church has a commanding appearance. It is built in accordance with the strictest Gothic principles, and has one of the finest spires in the city. Its cost was about L12,000, and of this sum upwards of L1200 was raised on the occasion of its opening.

In the month of May, 1843, Dr. Eadie was chosen Professor of Biblical Literature in the Divinity Hall of the U.P. Church. He delivered his first lecture in the month of August following. By his students the rev. gentleman is greatly esteemed and beloved, none the less so that he imposes upon them mental discipline of the strictest and most severe description. It is perhaps even more owing to his _entente cordiale_ with his students, than because of his eminence as a preacher and author, that Dr. Eadie has been so often selected to open new churches all over the country. Certain it is that no minister in the U.P. Church has been more frequently called into requisition for "special services" both at home and abroad. One of the last new churches he opened was in Dundee, when the collections taken on a single Sunday amounted to L1090. He also opened the church of Dr. Macfarlane, of London; and along with Dr. Alexander, of Edinburgh, he took part in the inauguration services of Springhill College, Birmingham. We may here mention the well-known fact that Dr. Eadie has been appointed to the Moderator's Chair in the U.P. Synod--the highest office in the power of the Church to confer; and, although he has never taken a very prominent part in the Church Courts, his speeches are invariably full of weighty matter and sound argument. He spoke strongly in the Synod for toleration as to the use of organs in public worship. In the negotiations for Union with the Free Church he has taken a peculiar interest. Although he has received calls from other churches, Dr. Eadie has steadfastly maintained his attachment to Glasgow. In the year 1846 he was twice called to Rose Street U.P. Church, Edinburgh--Dr. Finlayson's--but the call was met each time with a firm refusal.

Dr. Eadie first brought himself into prominent notice as an author by the publication of a manual of Cruden, intended for popular use, about the year 1841. This abridged concordance has had an enormous sale among all classes, both at home and abroad. Up to the year 1850 it had gone through no fewer than fourteen different editions, and we believe that the latest edition issued is either the twenty-first or the twenty-third. The preface to Dr. Eadie's "Cruden" was furnished by Dr. King, and is a masterly performance of its kind. It is worth while noticing that no other copy of "Cruden" is used or recognised by the Tract Society, who have at different times issued it on their own account. In 1848 Dr. Eadie published his Biblical Cyclopaedia, of which in 1868 twenty-four thousand copies had been sold, being upwards of one thousand every year. Of the merits of this work we need not here speak, as to all of our readers it must be known more or less familiarly. It is essentially what it professes to be--a dictionary of history, antiquities, geography, natural history, sacred analysis, biography, and Biblical literature generally, illustrative of the Old and New Testaments. He has also compiled from Henry and Scott a Bible which has gone through many editions, and has commanded a sale of not fewer than 60,000 or 70,000 copies. First published in folio form, it had been sold within seven years to the tune of 36,000 copies, and thousands of working men were enabled from the cheapness with which it was issued, to possess themselves of this Bible who might otherwise never have had a Family Bible in their houses. The first edition was issued in 1851, and in Sept., 1858, another and still larger edition was put through the press. Dr. Eadie published in 1856 a work entitled "An Analytical Concordance of the Holy Scriptures, or the Bible presented under distinct and classified heads and topics," published by Richard Griffin & Co., London. In 1862 he published an "Ecclesiastical Cyclopaedia of antiquities, architecture, controversies, denominations, doctrines, governments, heresies, history, liturgies, rights, monastic orders, and modern Judaism." As the biographer of the well-known and esteemed Dr. Kitto, Dr. Eadie has also achieved a considerable reputation. Collected from papers furnished by Dr. Kitto's personal friends, this biography is perhaps one of the best and most interesting in the English literature, and it deservedly met with a very large circulation. In a surprisingly short space of time it went through several editions, and even at the present day it is referred to and quoted as an authority on ecclesiastical matters of a particular kind. Dr. Kitto was one of the best Biblical scholars of his day. Like Dr. Eadie himself, he was possessed of an extraordinary memory, and highly cultivated lingual powers; and after he returned from the East he was frequently employed to do literary work for Mr. Charles Knight, for whom also Dr. Eadie contributed occasional papers. In short, the one man was eminently qualified, both by his acquirements, by his disposition, and by the exceptional facilities which he enjoyed, to become the biographer of the other, and Dr. Eadie has approached his task with such a spirit of love, and with so genuine and well-founded an esteem of the man whose Boswell he aspired to be, that the biography will rank in some respects almost equal with that of Dr. Johnson. Some years later, Dr. Eadie published through the Messrs. Oliphant, of Edinburgh, a series of lectures on the Bible for the young, which met with a very large sale. He has also written and published a well known work entitled "Divine Life," being a series of discourses, most of which were preached from time to time to his own congregation, and all of them breathing a spirit of true orthodoxy and Christian feeling. In 1859 he issued another book called "Paul the Preacher; or a popular and practical exposition of his discourses and speeches as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles," a work which is treated in the author's best style, and displays much evidence of high literary attainments. In addition to works already quoted, and comprising many years of arduous toil and research, Dr. Eadie has published a series of Commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul, commencing in 1853 with that of the Ephesians. This was followed in 1856 by his Commentary to the Colossians; in 1859 by his Commentary to the Phillipians; and in 1869 by his Commentary to the Galatians. Upon these Commentaries, and upon his popular handbooks to sacred literature, namely, his Cruden's Concordance, his Biblical Cyclopaedia, and his Ecclesiastical Cyclopaedia--Dr. Eadie's well-earned fame as a biblical scholar and author will securely last for generations. Next to the profound knowledge displayed in his works, we are struck with Dr. Eadie's surpassing fertility as a writer. Very few men, indeed, have published so many works within so short a compass of time; and it is a marked characteristic of all books bearing his sign-manual, that they are masterly both in style and in matter, that they have been well and carefully thought out, and that they display great learning and extraordinary research. We must not forget that while thus copiously contributing to ecclesiastical literature, Dr. Eadie gave unremitting attention to his pulpit duties. He never had a coadjutor or assistant, and he has occupied his own and other pulpits every Sunday since the date of his ordination. And even the long list we have enumerated does not complete Dr. Eadie's literary efforts, for we find him contributing now to Dr. Kitto's and Principal Fairbairn's Biblical Cyclopaedia (published by Blackie, Glasgow), then to the "North British Review," and again to the "Journal of Sacred Literature." Several of his works are now out of print, but all of them are of untold value in their way, and are highly esteemed by those best qualified to form a just estimate of their merits. Dr. Eadie is a member of the Committee for the Revision of the New Testament; a post which he holds conjointly with Professor Brown and Professor Milligan, of Aberdeen, the only other Presbyterian members of the New Testament Revision Committee who belong to Scotland. The Committee, we may here explain, commenced its sittings in June of 1870. Once a month it is accustomed to meet in the Jerusalem Chamber, Westminster Abbey--a room fraught with the most interesting historical recollections, for it was here that the Commissioners met who drew up the Scottish Confession of Faith, and here also the Lower House of Convocation is accustomed to hold its sittings. After deliberating for two years, the Committee have only as yet reached the end of Saint Luke's Gospel. The labour incumbent upon the Committee may be estimated to some extent by the fact that for four days in every month it sits, without any interval, from eleven o'clock forenoon till six o'clock in the evening.

Dr. Eadie's literary and scientific attainments have been recognised and rewarded by the degree of LL.D. from Glasgow University, while the University of St. Andrews has conferred upon him the degree of D.D. He is a member of several learned bodies, and is also chaplain of the 19th Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers.

MR. DANIEL MACNEE, R.S.A.