Biographies
4 authors
A young Dundee minister, a mill-boy explorer, a Glasgow-born preacher and a mill girl who became a missionary to Calabar. Scotland's writers carried the faith of the Kirk to pulpits and mission fields far from home.
David Livingstone (1813–1873) was a Scottish mill boy turned missionary-explorer of Africa who crossed the continent, exposed the East African slave trade as “the open sore of the world,” and died on his knees in what is now Zambia. Famous as an explorer, he counted almost no converts — and that honest tension is part of what makes his devotion so striking.
Robert Murray M’Cheyne (1813–1843) was the minister of St Peter’s, Dundee, remembered for his pursuit of personal holiness and tender pastoral care. He drew up a still-used Bible-reading calendar, joined the 1839 mission of inquiry to the Jews, and died of typhus at 29, mourned by a whole city.
Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) was a Scottish Baptist preacher who served Union Chapel, Manchester, for forty-five years — “the prince of expository preachers,” whose lifelong daily reading of the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures fed the sermons gathered in his Expositions of Holy Scripture.
Mary Slessor (1848–1915) was a Dundee mill girl who became a missionary to Calabar in what is now Nigeria. Living among the people and speaking their language, she fought the killing of twins, rescued and raised many children, and became a magistrate in the interior — remembered as “everybody’s mother.”
David Livingstone, the missionary explorer of central Africa, and Mary Slessor, who served for almost forty years in Calabar in what is now Nigeria, are the best known.
Robert Murray M'Cheyne was the minister of St Peter's, Dundee, who died in 1843 at the age of twenty-nine. He is remembered for his holy life, his letters and his Bible reading plan.
Yes. Alexander Maclaren was born in Glasgow and became a Baptist preacher, serving Union Chapel in Manchester for over forty years.