EADIE, John (1810-1876), theologian and biblical critic, was born at Alva, in Stirlingshire, on the 9th May 1810. Having manifested unusual ability at school, he was sent to the university of Glasgow, where he passed through the usual curriculum in arts. Immediately afterwards he commenced to study for the ministry at the Divinity Hall of the Secession Church, a dissenting body which, on its union a few years later with the Relief Church, adopted the denomination United Presbyterian. In 1835 he was ordained to the pastoral charge of the Cambridge Street Secession church in Glasgow. Here he speedily attained a position of great eminence and usefulness, and for many years before the close of his life he was generally regarded * as the leading representative of his denomination in the city which has always been its stronghold. Though he had little claim to be called eloquent, and his style was often slovenly, he had many of the other qualities that secure the most useful and enduring kind of popularity. As a preacher he was distinguished by invariable good sense, frequent flashes of happy illustration, masculine piety, deep spiritual earnestness, breadth of sympathy both intellectual and emotional, and—most specifically of all—by the power he had in his expository discourses of conveying the best results of biblical criticism in an intelligible form to a general audience. Behind the carelessness and apparent indifference of his manner, it was not difficult to detect the quick sensibility and tender feeling which were eminently characteristic of the man. Though more than once invited to an important charge elsewhere, Dr Eadie refused to leave Glasgow, in which he found a sphere more exactly suited to his pastoral gifts than he could expect in any other place. In 1863 he ...removed with a portion of his congregation to a new and beautiful church at Lansdowne Crescent, where his influence continued unabated until his death.
From his student days Eadie bore a reputation for extensive, if not profound and accurate, scholarship, which he justified and increased during the earlier years of his ministry to such an extent that in 1843 the church to which he belonged appointed him professor of biblical literature and hermeneutics in its Divinity Hall. He held this appointment along with his ministerial charge till the close of his life, and discharged its duties with an efficiency that was universally acknowledged. While his scholarship was not minute or thorough, he was surpassed by few biblical commentators of his day in range of learning, and by still fewer in the soundness of judgment with which his learning was applied. As a critic he was acute and painstaking; as an interpreter he was eminently fair-minded. In the professor’s chair, as in the pulpit, his strength lay in the tact with which he selected the soundest results of biblical criticism, whether his own or that of others, and presented them in a clear and connected form, with a constant view to their practical bearing. If this last fact gave a nonacademic aspect to some portions of his lectures, it rendered them not less interesting and probably not less useful to his auditors. Eadie’s merits as a scholar were early acknowledged by the usual honorary university distinctions. He received the degree of LL.D, from Glasgow in 1844, and that of D.D. from St Andrews in 1850.
Busily engaged as he was in two distinct offices, either of which might well of itself have employed all his energies, Eadie nevertheless found time for an amount of work in a third sphere, of which the same thing might be said. His labours as an author would have been more than creditable to one who had no other occupation. Most of his works were connected with biblical criticism and interpretation, some of them being designed for popular use and others being more strictly scientific. To the former class belong the Biblical C yclopoedia, his edition of Cruden ’ s Concordance, his Early Oriental History, and his discourses on The Divine Love and on Paul the Preacher; to the latter belong his commentaries on the Greek tert of St Paul’s epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, and Galatians, published at intervals in four volumes, which take a high rank among exegetical works. His Life of Dr Kitto obtained a deserved popularity. His last work, the History of the English Bible (2 vols. 1876), will probably be the most enduring memorial of his ability as an author. Though not unimpeachable in point of arrangement and style, it contains a fuller and more accurate account of the subject than is to be found anywhere else, and almost every page bears marks of the life-long interest and loving research of the author. His almost unrivalled knowledge of the various English versions, as well as his ability as a critic and interpreter of the original, led to his being selected as one of the company for the revision of the authorized version of the New Testament, and in this capacity it is understood that he rendered excellent service. Dr Eadie died at Glasgow on the 3d June 1876.
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