His father was a small landowner and his mother a pious Presbyterian, who dedicated her son to the Church of Scotland ministry from an early age.

He grew up in nearby Largs and was educated at the school there and at the University of Glasgow, where he excelled, winning many prizes and graduating as a Master of Arts in 1820.

Lang found the Presbyterian Scots in New South Wales to be a small minority, dominated by an Anglican administration and outnumbered by Irish Roman Catholics.

There was no Presbyterian church in the colony and he commenced building one before he had applied to the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Thomas Brisbane, to provide public funds for it.

Lang visited Britain during 1824–25, where he successfully lobbied the Secretary for the Colonies, Lord Bathurst, to recognise the legal status of the Church of Scotland to the extent that he was allowed a stipend of £300 per annum (current equivalent: £31,100).

During this visit, he was made a Doctor of Divinity by Glasgow University and recruited the John McGarvie for ministry at Portland Head.

Lang resisted the claim to exclusive state recognition and support by the Church of England involved in the establishment of the Clergy and School Lands Corporation in 1826.

Lang's views on the Church of England were evident when he published his opinions in "On the Character and Influence of the Present European Population of New Zealand, as Regards the Aborigines" in four Letters To the Right Hon.

He made a second visit to Britain in 1830–31 and recruited several teachers, as well as acquiring a library and equipment for a school he was to call the Australian College.

He was not appointed and in anger stated that St Andrew's College was "conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity and certain to become a notorious failure".

While he was absent in Britain 1839–41, until it ceased in 1840, Rev William McIntyre edited the paper and it reported impartially on matters then agitating the Presbyterian Church.

Examination of his sermon manuscripts indicate they were orthodox by the standard of the Westminster Confession of Faith as adhered to by the Church of Scotland.

He strongly opposed Caroline Chisholm's campaign to sponsor the immigration of single Irish Catholic women to Australia.

But, as Bridges states: "Lang considered opposition to harmful errors of Catholicism part of his duty as a minister but he consistently championed the cause of Irish and Catholic civil liberties and deprecated any incitement to Protestant-Catholic or Anglo-Celtic disturbances."

Despite his bitter anti-Catholicism, his political ideas won him wide support among the Irish Catholic population, who shared his dislike of English and Anglican dominance.

In return, he supported Home Rule for Ireland – partly because he thought this would reduce the Irish Catholic influence in British government.

The Presbytery of New South Wales (which then included what is now Victoria and Queensland) was formed on 14 December 1832, despite the intemperate habits of two of the ministers, and the opposition of John McGarvie, who had turned out to be a Scottish Moderate.

As James Forbes put it, 'week after week he poured forth vollies of abuse against the Presbytery, unequalled for satanic bitterness and vulgar scurrility, by the worst of the London Sunday papers.'

Rather, she rejects intolerance or persecution as methods of advancing the kingdom of God, and recognises the individual's liberty of conscience and the right of private judgement.

When he was censured for allowing to preach in Scot's Church a Congregational minister who had been rejected by the Synod, he reacted negatively.

In an extraordinary blast of invective, and alluding to the narrative of Joshua 6:20ff, he said that the Australian church could not prosper until she renounced with indignant scorn the Babylonish garment of an infidel establishment of religion and abandoned the wedge of gold that corrupted all who touched it.

At length he consented to remain when the bulk of the 500 adults in his congregation agreed to sever all connection with the Synod and with the State.

He and two other ministers set up the Synod of New South Wales (the second of this name) on 3 April 1850, although the minutes term it The Australian Presbyterian Church.

[12] In 1843 Lang was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Council as one of five representatives of the Electoral district of Port Phillip, holding his seat until 1847.

In 1851, in any case, he was unable to take his seat in Parliament, since he was heavily in debt from his various failed migration schemes and was being pressed by creditors.

He was sued for debt, and when he attacked his creditors in the press he was prosecuted for libel, and sentenced to a 100-pound fine and four months imprisonment in Parramatta Gaol.

He was imprisoned again in 1855, when his son George, manager of the Ballarat branch of the Bank of New South Wales, was convicted of embezzlement.

These ideas reflected both the Presbyterian ideal of congregational self-government (despite the fact that in church affairs he was an autocrat) and his Scottish nationalist dislike of English and Anglican supremacy.

[16] Despite their eccentricity, Lang's works were influential in promoting Australia, but his practical schemes for immigration were usually fiascos owing to his lack of business sense.

As well, the wave of radicalism in Britain and Australia of the mid-19th century soon passed and was succeeded by an era of enthusiasm for the British Empire.