The Times/1899/Obituary/William Garden Blaikie

The, D.D., LL.D., late professor of homiletics and pastoral theology in the Free Church New College, Edinburgh, died yesterday morning at North Berwick, where for some time past he had been suffering from severe illness. Born in 1820, the son of Mr. James Blaikie, at one time Lord Provost of Aberdeen, he was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and University, and graduated M.A. after a promising career as a student at the age of 17 years. In 1842 he was ordained to the charge of Drumblade, but in 1843, when the Disruption took place, he left the Church of Scotland, and finally settled in a charge at Pilrig, Edinburgh, where for 24 years he faithfully discharged the duties of a minister and busied himself with the welfare of a large working-class population around his church, delivering lectures to working men on whch he afterwards based is "Better Days for Working People," now in its 80th thousand, and instituting many schemes of social reform. In 1868 he received his professorship. which he held till 1897. In 1892, the year preceding the jubilee of the Free Church, Professor Blaikie was fittingly chosen as Moderator of the General Assembly, and from 1888 to 1892 he acted as president of the Pan-Presbyterian Alliance. During his long service in the Free Church he acted in many capacities. He was a member of several committees, including the Continental, the Temperance, the Church Extension, and the Home Missions Committees, and he edited for a number of year the Free Church Magazine, the North British Review, the Sunday Magazine, and the Catholic Presbyterian. Among the best known of his works, of which there is a long list, is his "Personal Life of David Livingstone." At a recent University function at Aberdeen it was stated that Dr. Blaikie was the oldest living graduate of the University.