Alexander Stewart (minister)

He was elected to Free St George's, Edinburgh (as successor to Dr Candlish), but died before the induction, on 5 November 1847, of a fever.

Stewart's paternal aunt was a resident in Glasgow, so he came there, and was enrolled a student Glagow University.

It was well known by his contemporaries that Thomas Chalmers, after hearing him, was so impressed with his preaching, that he used every influence with him to gain his consent to be nominated as his successor in the church and parish of St John's, Glasgow, from which he was about, himself, to be removed to the Moral Philosophy Chair, St Andrews.

[2][4] On the death of Thomas Chalmers, Robert Smith Candlish was appointed to replace him at New College.

The congregation was summoned for 22 September, and with equal unanimity agreed to call Mr. Stewart to be their pastor.

He was of opinion that a great city congregation was not his proper sphere of labour; and he dreaded a severance from Cromarty.

He wrote to Alexander Beith, who had sought to aid St George's in obtaining his consent to come, — " I feel as if destitute of the faculties for dealing with men.

I ought to have been a monk in a cloister, dealing with books and systems; among living people I feel myself powerless as a child."

"[5] Yet he had resolved to accept the call, saying to friends who were discouraging him from facing a difficult position — "Will I not be more useful in Edinburgh, though I were to live there only three months, than if I remained in Cromarty three years indulging my own ease and feelings, while God forsook me because I forsook both Him and the call of duty.

A maternal aunt, the widow of a minister, became, after the death of her husband, an inmate, put in charge of the domestic affairs of the manse of Cromarty.