James Wood (encyclopaedist)

James Wood (12 October 1820 – 17 March 1901) was a Scottish writer, editor, and Free Church minister.

[1] Born in Leith, Wood studied at the University of Edinburgh and was ordained as a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, following the Disruption of 1843.

[1] His admiration for Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin may have contributed to his failure to secure the ministry of a congregation.

He had "no faith whatsoever" in the first group, "no true conception" of the second, and "a measure of sympathy" with the third, but added "…yet there are drawbacks which make it impossible for me to hail their movement with any warmth.

[5] In 1881, he published anonymously The Strait Gate and Other Discourses, with a Lecture on Thomas Carlyle, by a Scotch Preacher,[6][7] and in 1882 made the authorized translation of Auguste Barth's Religions of India.