Sketch of the Life of James Begg (1808-1883)
James Begg was born at New Monkland, Lanarkshire, on 31 October 1808. His father was an evangelical Church of Scotland minister. He attended New Monkland parish school, and then Glasgow University (1820-4). Thereafter he took the Divinity course at Edinburgh University under Thomas Chalmers. He was licensed by the Presbytery of Hamilton on 10 June 1829 and became assistant to James Buchanan at North Leith.
On 18 May 1830 he was ordained by the Presbytery of Dumfries to the charge of the newly erected Chapel of Ease in the suburb of Maxwelltown, and in December 1830 he became assistant minister at Lady Glenorchy’s Chapel in Edinburgh. In November 1831 he moved to the Middle Church at Paisley, and in January 1835 he returned to Edinburgh, this time as minister of the parish of Liberton where he remained until the Disruption. On 23 September 1835 he married Margaret Campbell by whom he had had five children, three of whom of whom survived infancy.
Begg quickly established himself as a right-hand man of Thomas Chalmers in the efforts to evangelize the industrial poor in Scotland, and also to resist the imposition of ministers on congregations under Patronage. In 1840 he was one of the ministers, along with Robert Murray M‘Cheyne, who preached in Strathbogie in defiance of the Court of Session interdict. At the Disruption in 1843 he joined the Free Church and was active in rallying support in England and in the Highlands. He became the minister of Newington Free Church, where he was to remain for the rest of his life. In 1845-6 he went to Canada and America, preaching before the United States Congress, and in 1847 he was awarded the degree of DD by Lafayette College, Pennsylvania. His first wife died in 1845, and in November 1846 he married Maria Faithfull (d. 1892) by whom he had six sons and a daughter.
In 1850 Begg was one of the founders of the Scottish Reformation Society, and for many years he was the editor of The Bulwark. In 1852 he published A Handbook of Popery which sold 150,000 copies in his lifetime and was regarded as a standard Protestant work. He was also the driving-force behind the setting up of the Protestant Institute of Scotland in the early 1860s. His opposition to Romanism continued all his life [see ‘James Begg and Sectarianism’].
In 1865 Begg was Moderator of the Free Church General Assembly. By this time he was deeply involved in the controversies that troubled the Free Church. He was one of the principal opponents of the proposed union with the United Presbyterian Church, editing The Watchword, the organ of the anti-unionist party, from 1866-73. He also strenuously but unsuccessfully resisted the introduction of hymns and musical instruments in public worship. Many of his numerous publications related to these controversies. At the same time, however, he was active in trying to improve the living conditions of the poor in Scotland, and also to improve the standard of national education [see ‘James Begg as a Philanthropist’].
He had a serious accident in 1865, and later in life he suffered from diabetes. He died at in Edinburgh, on 29 September 1883, and was buried in East Preston St cemetery. His funeral was attended his funeral by two thousand people.
