Born in Alva, Clackmannanshire, 9 May 1810, Eadie was educated locally, then in Glasgow, before being ordained in 1835 to minister at Cambridge Street church in Glasgow. He worked here for 28 years and built up a large congregation. In 1863, along with some of his congregation, he moved to Lansdowne Church, on the east bank of the Kelvin, where he ministered for the final 13 years of his life.
In 1843 he was elected in 1843 to the chair of Biblical Literature in the Hall of the Secession, later known as the United Presbyterian Church. This met annually in Edinburgh during August and September.
In 1839 he produced a condensed edition of Cruden's Concordance, and in 1848 published his Biblical Cyclopaedia. His series of commentaries to the Pauline epistles proved popular, as did his History of the English Bible.
JOHN EADIE was a native of Alva, a manufacturing village pleasantly situated at the foot of the Ochils, where he was born on the 9th of May, 1810. From the parish school, at which he received his earliest training, he passed to an academy in Tillicoultry, taught by the Rev. Archibald Browning, a man of marked individuality and an accomplished scholar who then combined the calling of teacher with that of Secession minister. At a pastoral visit to his mother's house Mr. Browning noted the boy's marvellous gifts of memory, and offered to carry on his education. The distance of three miles between the two villages was cheerfully traversed twice a day and on foot by the eager learner, who was accustomed, in the dark winter mornings, to carry a blazing tarred rope in one hand while in the other he held "Paradise Lost." The result of those readings by the way, was that, Macaulay-like, he could repeat the great epic from beginning to end.
In due course the young student entered Glasgow College, where he maintained his reputation for classical scholarship, narrowly missing the Blackstone gold medal for Latin, which was then the highest honour in that department. He received the earlier portion of his theological training in the same city, at the Divinity Hall of the Secession Church, taught by two distinguished Glasgow men of an earlier generation - Dr. John Dick, of Greyfriars, and Dr. John Mitchell, of Wellington Street. The later classes in his theological curriculum were attended in Edinburgh; and during the long recesses between the brief autumn sessions of the Hall he acted as an assistant to his former master at Tillicoultry. While doing his work in the school with a gentleness which was the more remarkable by contrast with the severity of Mr. Browning's discipline, he found time to establish for himself a reputation as a lecturer and public speaker in all the villages along the Hillfoots. He won special honour in his native Alva, where speeches he made and ovations he received, at the passing of the Reform Bill, are still remembered and spoken of by the older people. During this period he began his contributions to current theological literature, and already revealed in these his special sympathy with exegetical study.
He was licensed as a preacher in the year 1835, and in the course of the same year was called and ordained to be minister of Cambridge Street Church - the building of which marks an epoch alike in the history of Glasgow and of Scottish Dissent. The enterprise originated in the desire on the part of public-spirited citizens to provide for the religious wants of an outlying district of the rapidly-extending city, and, on the part of Dissenters, to illustrate the vitality of the voluntary principle which about that time they had been led to formulate in opposition to Dr. Chalmers' claim for increased endowments. The church stood on the boundary between one of the rising districts of the new west-end of Glasgow and the old village of Cowcaddens, which was being engirdled and swallowed up in the process of extension. It became a meeting-place for rich and poor, in connection with which well-to-do worshippers could find among their fellow-communicants abundant opportunity for the exercise of their Christian benevolence, and, within a stone's throw of their sanctuary, places where Home Mission work was urgently needed.
Here the young pastor (who so early as 1844 became Dr. Eadie, through conferment of the degree of LL.D. by his alma mater, followed by the degree of D.D. from St. Andrews in 1850) laboured faithfully for twenty-eight years, and built up a large congregation, the influence of which was powerfully felt in the necessitous districts in its neighbourhood. In the year 1863, the continued extension of Glasgow having transformed Cambridge Street into a central district, Dr. Eadie removed, with a portion of his congregation, to Lansdowne Church, which had been erected on the east bank of the Kelvin. There he ministered for thirteen years, again gathering a prosperous congregation, which, like his former charge, was a link between rich and poor, and carried on extensive and successful missions.
Eight years after his ordination Dr. Eadie was called to combine professorial with pastoral work. He was elected in 1843 to the chair of Biblical Literature in the Hall of the Secession, afterwards the United Presbyterian Church. The Hall met annually in Edinburgh, during the months of August and September, and the labour of teaching his classes came in place of the annual holiday, which hard-wrought city clergymen find so essential. Except for a few years at the first, he travelled to and from Edinburgh daily during the session, and did not even accept the relief from pulpit work to which he was entitled by the terms of his appointment, but preached to his own congregation every second Sunday. He had long desired to see the time when it would be possible for his Church to separate professors from their pastoral charges; but the change was not effected till he had become so well accustomed to double duty, and so much attached to his flock, that he only accepted an appointment in the reconstructed Hall on condition of being allowed still to remain a citizen of Glasgow and Minister of Lansdowne Church. He died just before the new arrangements came into operation.
His labours as a pastor and professor formed but a small part of the work which Dr. Eadie accomplished. His scholarly tastes and training led him very early to devote himself to the literature of his profession. He first came into notice as a contributor of articles on Biblical subjects to such reviews as the "Eclectic" and "North British." In 1839 he produced a condensed edition of "Cruden's Concordance," which still holds its place, and has attained a circulation of not less than a quarter of a million copies. In 1848 he published his "Biblical Cyclopaedia," which has also had an extensive sale. But the books on which his fame rests are his commentaries on St. Paul's Epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, and Thessalonians, which take their place by the side of similar works by Oxford and Cambridge scholars; and his "History of the English Bible," written in connection with his work as a member of the company of New Testament Revisers. Dr. Eadie did not live to see the publication of the revised version, but passed away in the midsummer of 1876.
Among the busy crowds of busy Glasgow there never was a harder worker than the genial divine, who yet bore no visible trace of the toil under the burden of which he sank before his time. He stood apart from the heats of controversy, and was loved and trusted by men of every creed. His fellow-citizens were proud of him as one whose name was known and honoured in quiet retreats of learning, far removed from the bustle of the commercial enterprise out of which the distinctive fame of their city has grown.
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