Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/434

 (1883). After his death was published 'Sermons and Lectures by the late Rev. Brooke Lambert, edited by Rev. Ronald Bayne; with a Memoir by J. E. G. de Montmorency.'

 LANG, JOHN MARSHALL (1834–1909), principal of the University of Aberdeen, born on 14 May 1834 at the manse of Glassford, Lanarkshire, was second son in a family of eleven children of Gavin Lang, minister of the parish, a 'small living' of 160l. a year. His mother, Agnes Roberton Marshall of Nielsland, granddaughter of a wealthy Lanarkshire laird, traced her descent to John Row [q. v.]; she proved an admirable housewife and exercised great influence on her children. Sir Robert Hamilton Lang, K.C.M.G., is Marshall Lang's surviving brother.

After a somewhat superficial education under private tutors at the manse, Lang spent a year at the High School of Glasgow, and then studied at Glasgow University under Professors William Ramsay [q. v.], Edmund Lushington [q. v. Suppl. I.] and Lord Kelvin [q. v. Suppl. II]. He was chiefly influenced by the professors of philosophy, William Fleming and Robert Buchanan [q. v.], but he did not graduate. Proceeding to the divinity hall, he was stimulated by some senior fellow-students, including John Caird [q. v. Suppl. I], A. K. H. Boyd [q. v. Suppl. I], and George Washington Sprott [q. v. Suppl. II], but it was only when he received licence that his capabilities became apparent. A brief assistantship at Dunoon sufficed to make him widely known as a preacher. At twenty-two he was called to the important charge of the East Parish of St. Nicholas, Aberdeen, where he was ordained on 26 June 1856. His ministry in Aberdeen, although it lasted only two years, formed an epoch in the religious life not only of the city but of the district. In the reform of church worship he took a forward step. He remarked, in a sermon, that if there was reason for the choir standing at praise, that reason was valid for the congregation also standing. The congregation stood for the next act of praise. He printed his sermon and it ran through three editions. The presbytery interfered, and notice was given for its next meeting of a motion censuring him and inhibiting the innovation. Dr. Robert Lee [q. v.] wrote from Edinburgh begging him to stand firm; but he feared obduracy might hurt the cause, and he cautiously obeyed the presbytery's direction to return to use and wont. If he could not be a protagonist in the movement, he proved again and again that he was a pioneer.

In 1858, owing to ill-health, Lang left Aberdeen for the country parish of Fyvie, Aberdeenshire, where he learned much of rural Scottish life and its needs. In Jan. 1865 he removed to Glasgow to a newly built church in the Anderston (or west end) district of the great parish of the Barony. There he formed a large congregation, and introduced with due caution the ritual improvements which he desired. In Anderston church the first organ actually used in the worship of the Church of Scotland was set up, and psalms were chanted in the prose version. When Glasgow was threatened with a visitation of cholera, Lang, aided by Alexander Neil Somerville [q. v.], of the Free church, and (Sir) William Tennant Gairdner [q, v. Suppl. II], pressed on the town council the adoption of sanitary measures which averted the plague. In 1868 he was transferred to the Edinburgh suburban parish of Morningside. In 1872 he, with Professor William Milligan [q. v. Suppl. I], was deputy from the Church of Scotland to the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America.

Next year Lang succeeded Norman Macleod [q. v.] at the Barony of Glasgow, where his incumbency lasted twenty-seven and a half years. He took from the outset a full share in the public life of Glasgow; for nine years he served on the school board; for twenty-seven years he was chaplain to the 1st Lanark volunteers; he acted on the commission for the housing of the poor, and was for many years chairman of the Glasgow Home Mission Union, an effort to unite all the churches in charitable work. His ministerial labours were unceasing. He began, what was then rare in Glasgow, services on Sunday evenings, which were crowded. He raised the hitherto unexampled sum of 28,000l. for the purpose of rebuilding his church. The new church was dedicated in 1889; it contained a chapel provided by his sister, Mrs. Cunliffe, in memory of her husband, which was adorned with the first fresco painting of our Lord that had been seen in the Church of 