Biography

Brown was born at Aberdeen Aug. 17, 1803 and died there July 3, 1897. He studied at the University of Aberdeen (M.A., 1821); was licensed 1826, and was assistant to Edward Irving in London 1830–32; was ordained minister of a country chapel six miles southwest of Banff 1836; he went with the Free Church 1843, and the same year became minister of St. James, Glasgow; was elected professor of apologetics, church history, and exegesis of the Gospels at the Free Church College, Aberdeen, 1857; elected principal 1876, and resigned his professorship 1887.

He was a director of the National Bible Society of Scotland, one of the founders of the Evangelical Alliance, was deeply interested in the Alliance of the Reformed Churches and a member of the third General Council at Belfast, 1888. He was an opponent of Robertson Smith in the controversy which resulted in the dismissal of the latter from Aberdeen, and as a member of the New Testament revision company took a highly conservative position. He was moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church in 1885.

Besides numerous contributions to the periodicals, he published Christ's Second Coming: Will it be Premillenial? (Edinburgh, 1846; 6th ed., 1867), a classic; Crushed Hopes Crowned in Death, a memorial of his son, Alexander Brown, of the Bengal civil service, d. Jan., 1860 (London, 1861); The Restoration of the Jews: the History, Principles, and Bearings of the Question (Edinburgh, 1861); Life of the late John Duncan (1872); The Apocalypse: its structure and primary predictions (London, 1891). He collaborated with R. Jamieson and A. R. Fausset in preparing the Commentary, Critical, Experimental, and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (6 vols., Glasgow, 1864–70), furnishing the portion devoted to the Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistle to the Romans; wrote the commentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians for Schaff's Popular Commentary on the New Testament (1882); and prepared the Epistle to the Romans for Dods and Whyte's Handbooks for Bible Classes (Edinburgh, 1883).