Robert Smith Candlish

He was born at 11 West Richmond Street[2] in Edinburgh, the son of James Candlish (originally McCandlish, 1759-1806),[3] a lecturer in medicine and friend of Robert Burns.

[9] He attracted the attention of his audience by his intellectual keenness, emotional fervour, spiritual insight, and power of dramatic representation of character and life.

His first Assembly speech, delivered in 1839, placed him among the leaders of the party that afterwards formed the Free Church, and his influence in bringing about the Disruption of 1843 was inferior only to that of Thomas Chalmers.

[11] Following the Disruption, Candlish was one of the Free Churchmen who spoke in England, explaining the reason why so many had left the Established Church.

[12] He was actively engaged at one time or other in nearly all the various schemes of the church, but particularly the education committee, of which he was convener from 1846 to 1863, and in the unsuccessful negotiations for union among the non-established Presbyterian denominations of Scotland, which were carried on during the years 1863–1873.

from Princeton, New Jersey, in 1841, was chosen by the Assembly of the Free Church to succeed Chalmers in the chair of divinity in the New College, Edinburgh.

After partially fulfilling the duties of the office for one session, he was led to resume the charge of St George's, the clergyman who had been chosen by the congregation as his successor having died before entering on his work.

[18] In 1862, he succeeded William Cunningham as principal of New College with the understanding that he should still retain his position as minister of St George's.

Further illustrations of these views were given in two works published about the same time as the lectures, one a treatise On the Sonship and Brotherhood of Believers, and the other an exposition of the first epistle of St John.