James Buchanan (minister)

Prof Rev James Buchanan (1804–1870) was a Church of Scotland minister and theologian.

James Buchanan was born in Paisley on 14 April 1804 as the son of a wine merchant. After studies in Glasgow and Edinburgh, he was ordained minister of the Church of Scotland at Roslin in 1827 and received the parish of North Leith in 1828, where he attained great fame as a preacher. In 1829 he married Elizabeth, daughter of John Cochrane, a Glasgow merchant; they had a son and a daughter before her early death in May 1832. In 1836, he married Mary, daughter of John Morison, with whom he had a daughter. In 1840, Buchanan was called to St Giles's Church, Edinburgh, but joined the Free Church of Scotland following the Disruption of 1843, ministering at St Stephen's Free Church until 1845. In 1845, he was appointed professor of apologetics at the New College of the Free Church in Edinburgh, and succeeded Thomas Chalmers as professor of systematic theology in 1847, which he held until 1868.

He died on 19 April 1870 at 51 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh. He is buried in the north-east section of the Grange Cemetery.

• 1837, Comfort in Affliction
• 1840, Improvement of Affliction
• 1842, The Office and Work of the Holy Spirit''
• 1843, On the Tracts for the Times
• 1855, Studies in apologetics, Faith in God and atheism compared in their essential nature, theoretical grounds and practical influence
• 1857 Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws
• 1861, The ‘Essays and Reviews’ Examined
• 1864, Analogy Considered as a Guide to Truth and Applied as an Aid to Faith
• 1867 Doctrine Of Justification - An Outline of Its History in the Church and of Its Exposition from Scripture (1866 Cunningham lectures) [1]