Born at St Ninians, Stirling, on 16 August 1802, Buchanan was educated in Glasgow and Edinburgh and ordained to the parish of Gargunnock in 1826. He moved to Saltoun in East Lothian in 1829, and again to Glasgow's Tron Church in 1833.
He took an active interest in education in parish schools, eventually attending the meetings of the newly instigated school board. He campaigned for union among the dissenting churches, and of his few published works, the "Ten Years' Conflict" was the most valued.
In 1857 the Glasgow College Church was built for him, and in 1873 he travelled to Rome to take charge of a Free Church for the winter. Hopes that the climate would be kind were ruined by unusually bad weather, such that he caught a fever which led to his death on 31 March 1873. His body was brought home and placed in the Glasgow Necropolis.
FOR many years Dr. Robert Buchanan was one of the most prominent citizens of Glasgow, consulted largely as a sagacious man of affairs, not only by brethren of his own Church, but by all who took an interest in the moral welfare of the community. Others might have more brilliancy, more originality, more power to awaken enthusiasm, more understanding of the new ideas that were springing up in our modern world; but no one laboured more zealously for the well-being of the city, or could more shrewdly advise so as to give practical effect to any scheme either of ecclesiastical policy or of social benevolence. Of such schemes he may not have properly originated any, but he probably shaped more into working order than any other man in the town; for he was "great in council," courteous, persuasive, and clear-sighted, with a temper that never was ruffled, or at least never appeared to be ruffled, and with accurate business habits, which were naturally appreciated in a great commercial city. He knew men, and did not make too great demands on them, nor yet give them credit for anything very high; and if to this be added a fine, almost noble presence, and a certain bland stateliness of manner, it may be understood how such a man, being at the same time honourable and devout, should wield a larger influence than some others who had genius and wisdom instead of mere talent and practical shrewdness.
Born on the 16th August, 1802, at St. Ninians, near Stirling, where his father was a brewer and small farmer, he was educated partly in Glasgow University, and subsequently in Edinburgh where he studied theology. Ordained first to the Parish of Gargunnock in 1826, after three years he removed to Saltoun in East Lothian, and again in 1833 to the Tron Church, Glasgow, where the echoes of Chalmers' eloquence were still lingering in men's ears. He did not, of course, maintain the tradition of the orator's burning words; but he was a faithful and diligent worker, not without a certain correct and effective utterance, too, which passed for eloquence now that Chalmers and Irving were no longer there.
Very soon, therefore, he made his presence clearly felt, and the Church in Glasgow knew that it had got a leader capable of guiding it, if not in the highest, yet in solid and approved ways; for though never far ahead of the prevailing opinion, he was generally foremost among those who upheld it. The Education question was pressing, and he took an honourable part in trying to increase the efficiency of the parish schools, but at the same time he held to it that the schoolmaster should be subject to the Church, only having a right of appeal, like other ecclesiastical persons, from the presbytery to the General Assembly. It never struck him then that the man who taught reading and writing was not a Church official any more than the merchant who set his clerks to book-keeping. In those days they held the banner of the Church very high indeed, and he was not the man to lower it. When the Church Extension question arose, therefore, and out of it the Voluntary controversy, his brethren in the Establishment found one of their doughtiest champions in him.
In connection with this he had an interview once with the Duke of Wellington, and quotes with entirest approbation a saying of that veteran soldier and statesman. "Why," said he, speaking with great force, "I think old Popery was bad, very bad; but this Voluntaryism would be forty times worse. Independent of the religious interests of the people, which would be sacrificed, it would be impossible to govern society with such a system prevailing." That was the common opinion in the Church then, and instead of being in advance of it, Buchanan only held, a little more intelligently than some of his neighbours, that this terrible new idea was no better than a kind of atheism. He held much the same position in the Non-intrusion controversy of which he was yet to be the historian, and in one sense there could hardly have been a better, for he was right in the swim of it, and knew all its currents and eddies. It had its different phases, its new starting points; but though none of them arose with him, he kept well abreast of the movement in all its stages, and was even more trusted in the Free Church than he had been in the Established. As the older leaders dropt off, he came more and more to the front, till in the end he was looked to as the truest representative of the Church he had helped to create - the man of all others who knew its inner workings, and felt its spirit best.
Of course, he did not attain that position without doing much excellent service to it. His management of the financial scheme projected by Chalmers, if it showed none of the genius of its inventor, proved his solid business faculty, and also his adroitness in persuading Church courts. There was at one time a movement to substitute a "proportional dividend" for the "equal dividend" of the Sustentation Fund, some wise men thinking that the law of distribution should be fitted to stimulate the power of production, while an equal dividend is not. Buchanan resisted this, and gained the day, for he had behind him all those who wished to get as much as their neighbours, however little they gave. Yet in the end he got a rule established which, at least to some extent, carried out the principle which he had at first scouted as alike selfish and unworkable; for there was nothing more characteristic of him than this, that, in the long run, he was ready to modify his views as he got more light. In the same way his earlier opinions about Voluntaryism were gradually changed, and he came to be among the warmest supporters of a union between the Free Church and those whom he at one time denounced as guilty of a kind of national atheism. Those who never learn and never forget were not slow to assert that he was therefore a shifty politician and time-server, guided by no fixed principle, but only cleverly watching and adapting himself to every change of opinion. But that would be altogether to mistake his character. Like other able men, he was not unwilling to be taught by experience. He had eyes in his head to see the facts of the case, if not much before his neighbours, yet before it was too late, and he was not ashamed to be inconsistent with his former self in order that he might be in harmony with the fact, which was of far greater consequence. It would have prevented a good deal of abuse and misunderstanding if he had also had the frank courage to avow that he had changed his views, that he had been mistaken, and was now better informed. People would have loved him better, and trusted him no less, could he thus have repudiated that shallow kind of consistency which can only be maintained by refusing to learn from experience. But, like many others, he seemed to think that, if a Church leader acknowledged that he had once been mistaken, it would shake the confidence of those who followed his guidance, forgetting that such confidence is far more seriously injured by the faintest suspicion of insincerity.
He was not insincere. He was, on the contrary, quite as honest as those who go in for ecclesiastical controversy and polity ever apparently can be. The traditions of such a career seem to be too strong, however, even for the strong men who so often adopt it: and his hands were, at least, as clean and his heart as pure as those of any who have trodden that perilous way. Dr. Buchanan was a true man according to his lights and his mental habits; but he was not one who took the world into his confidence, and in consequence it often misunderstood him, and ascribed to unworthy motives what only proceeded from altered, but sincere convictions. Hence it was affirmed that his anxiety for union among the Dissenting Churches arose purely from a desire to overthrow the Establishment. Nothing but hatred of the latter seemed enough to explain his desire to join those whom he had denounced as little better than atheists - "forty times worse than Papists," as the old Duke said with his cordial approbation. This explanation of his conduct is as far from the truth as could be. He desired union among the Churches because he had come to see that needless division was alike sinful and wasteful, and he hoped that yet the day might come when all the broken fragments of our Presbyterianism should be gathered into one Church, which would be truly the most national of all the Churches of Christendom. Had he frankly acknowledged that he had been wrong when he judged his Voluntary brethren as he once did, and that he had seen reason to change his views on the subject of Church establishments altogether, his position would have been far more clear, and would have left no room for the insinuation that he sought to exalt the Free Church on the ruin of a sister, and for that end was content to be united with those whom he had spoken of so hardly.
We have dwelt chiefly on his more public career, and on his character as a Churchman who played a great part in the ecclesiastical affairs of his time and country. But after all, his life was chiefly devoted to the pastoral duties of the Tron, and afterwards of the College, Church, which was built for him in 1857. There he laboured most assiduously, and also fruitfully. In private life he was greatly esteemed, and his social qualities made him a welcome guest at the tables of his hospitable fellow-citizens. Not that his wit could brighten their evenings, or that he had any pretence to be a brilliant talker. But he was singularly suave and gracious in his manner, and he "had seen many cities and conversed with many men" of note, and when he chose to be communicative he had not a little to say which was full of interest. It was not in every circle, however, that he unfolded these treasures. For he had a certain "diplomatic reticence," as of one who had to manage affairs, that put a bridle on the tongue. There were times, however, when this silence was broken, and then he could make his society exceedingly pleasant.
Not exactly an eloquent preacher, never certainly a popular one, his words were still "weighty and well-chosen," and in all practical issues men looked to him for wise guidance. He did not enlarge the borders of theological inquiry, and added nothing to the sum of human thought on that head. But he did admirable work in the wynds, aided by a band of noble fellow-workers - probably more real Christian work there than was ever done subsequently - when it became a kind of fashion. In manner highly polished and refined, the roughs there did not like him the worse for that, and if he did not stir them with any trumpet-notes, his mild fluting perhaps went down as deep into their hearts. Anyhow, good work was done there, the fruits of which may still be seen.
In literature he can hardly be said to have made any distinctive mark, though he published "Clerical Furloughs," Sermons on Ecclesiastes," and the "Ten Years' Conflict," which last has an historical value as written by one of the actors in it, who might be a partisan, but had also a clear eye in his head. In such labours, parochial, philanthropic, and literary, as well as ecclesiastical, his latter days were spent with almost universal respect, till in 1873 he took charge for the winter of a Free Church in Rome, hoping to enjoy the well-earned change and to do some wholesome service to British and American people in the grand old capital of Christendom. The prospect of a winter in such a place filled him with youthful spirits, in spite of his threescore and ten years. It was, however, an unusually bad season, and he caught cold, was feverish, but did not think much was wrong with him; nor apparently did his family, for the Roman fever is very insidious. And so it came to pass that on Wednesday, the 31st of March, amid plans and hopes of going to Naples very soon, he fell on sleep. He was buried in the Necropolis of Glasgow, for it was felt that the city which had enjoyed his labours should also be honoured by all that remained of him. No man of his day had done more for Glasgow than he. In the outset of his ministry there he had laboured hard to enlarge and improve its educational machinery, and his closing years saw him regular and busy at the meetings of the new School Board, which had to reorganize the whole system of teaching. There were few of the many charities and benevolent institutions of the place which did not owe much to his wise counsel; and to the end of his days he did not spare himself if, in any way, he could be helpful to them. Ecclesiastic as he was, he was still more deeply concerned about the spiritual well-being of the people than about the success of any particular Church; and therefore all the Churches alike felt that the cause of religion had suffered a great loss - that a prince and a captain had fallen in Israel - when he was laid in the Necropolis of the city he had loved so well.
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