A merchant and philanthropist, Henderson established himself in business in partnership with his brother Robert. He was greatly affected by a steamboat accident in 1842 in which his brother and his servant were drowned while landing at Henderson's home of Park, in Renfrewshire. Thereafter, he devoted himself to good works, regularly giving away upwards of £30,000 annually.
From 1847 he was involved with the United Presbyterian Church, especially in their overseas work. His faith embraced other denominations, through the Evangelical Alliance and the National Bible Society of Scotland. He was a strict Sabbatarian and a supporter Christian literature and libraries.
He died on 1 May 1867.
THE story of the life of John Henderson of Park might be effectively told as one among a multitude of illustrations which the history of Glasgow furnishes of how diligence in business can raise men from comparative obscurity to positions of wealth and influence. He came in his youth from Borrowstounness, where he was born in 1782, and joined his elder brother Robert, who had migrated to the city a few years earlier. From small beginnings, and by dint of patient toil, prudent forethought, and wise economy, the firm of R. & J. Henderson gradually attained a foremost place, and ere the brothers had passed middle life they were justly reputed to be men of large property.
But John Henderson is honoured not chiefly as a successful merchant, but rather as a distinguished representative of the large-hearted benevolence for which the city of his adoption is happily distinguished, no less than for its commercial enterprise. Being naturally of a kindly disposition, and having been early brought under the influence of Christian principle, the habit of giving grew with his growing wealth. But in the year 1842 an appalling accident at once deepened his sense of self-consecration and increased his means of doing good. In company with his brother, his minister (Dr. King, of Greyfriars' Church), and a servant, he was landing from a river steamer opposite his recently-acquired residence of Park, in Renfrewshire, when the boat conveying the party to the shore was upset. Dr. King and he hardly escaped with their lives, while his brother and the servant were drowned. The terrible experience made a deep impression on both the survivors; and from that day Mr. Henderson, who was his brother's heir, seemed to feel that his great possessions were only his to be used for the good of his fellow-men. Thenceforward it was no small part of his daily and nightly work to weigh the claims of the various objects in behalf of which appeals were made to his benevolence, and to devise methods of quietly reaching those whose needs were not the less urgent that they shrank from making them known. It is the testimony of his most intimate friends that it was the merest tithe of Mr. Henderson's benefactions that were publicly spoken of; even the recipients of his gifts often tried in vain to discover the hand from which the timely help had come. For many years before his death his annual givings amounted to thirty or forty thousand pounds.
There were various Christian and philanthropic movements with which Mr. Henderson's name became specially identified. He was the friend alike of Home and Foreign Missions. The rapid development of the grace of liberality in his own United Presbyterian Church from the year 1847, when the union between the Secession and Relief Churches took place, was largely due to his influence and example. Every scheme of the Church, whether for encouraging scholarship in her students, for promoting the comfort of her ministers, for reaching the masses in the great cities, or for taking advantage of favourable openings for establishing missions abroad, found in Mr. Henderson its most generous supporter.
But while loyal to the Church of his fathers he was utterly free from sectarianism, and made it a part of his life's work to advance the cause of Christian union. He was one of the original projectors of the Evangelical Alliance. That the tolerant spirit which the Alliance represented was with Mr. Henderson a reality, was attested by the fact that when mainly through his liberality a church was built in which he worshipped with his neighbours of the village of Inchinnan, he at once consented that it should be connected with the Free Church rather than with the United Presbyterian because he found that the majority of the people belonged to the former communion.
Through the meetings of the Evangelical Alliance, which embraced the struggling Protestant Churches of the Continent, Mr. Henderson was led to take a deep interest in these Churches. His house was always open to their deputies, and he often in turn visited them in their synods and assemblies. He gave largely to help them in their work, and to increase the scanty livings of their pastors. His name, pronounced with ever-varying accent, was familiar as a household word in Holland and Belgium, in France and Germany, in Switzerland and Italy. When tidings came of any interesting movement in which liberty of thought was asserting itself against spiritual tyranny, deputations went at his expense to investigate and report, and if they brought back a favourable verdict large subsidies were sent to help the weak in their conflict with the strong. Many a foreign student was educated at his cost in our universities and halls, and thus an enduring link has been established between the Scottish Churches and their feebler sisters on the Continent.
One of Mr. Henderson's latest and most noteworthy achievements in the interests of Christian unity was his successful effort to bring together the various sectional associations that were seeking to promote the circulation of the Holy Scriptures into one great National Bible Society of Scotland. The prosperity of that Society is the best monument to its enlightened founder; it attests the forethought and practical wisdom of the scheme he projected. His heart would have been gladdened could he have known in how many languages the Society now prints the sacred words he loved so well, and into how many lands its colporteurs now carry them.
Another object which was dear to Mr. Henderson was the maintenance of the Sabbath as a day of rest. He strenuously resisted every threatened encroachment, especially in connection with the development of the railway system. He specially sought, by the institution of prizes for essays and otherwise, to enlighten the working classes as to the value of the Sabbath, and to arouse them to defend it. In this, as in every other object he sought to further, Mr. Henderson was a great believer in the power of books. He was unwearied in his efforts to help ministers in their work by furnishing their libraries with volumes he deemed of peculiar value, and when he would advance a cause, such as Christian union, which had not then produced a literature, he would employ the ablest men he could find to write on the subject, publish their essays, and scatter them broadcast over the country. He has been known to spend £100 in book postage in a single week.
Mr. Henderson attained a good old age. The quiet evening of his days was spent in devising liberal things with the sympathy and aid of his like-minded wife. He died on the 1st of May, 1867, in his eighty-fifth year. It is unquestionable that in the proverbial liberality of Glasgow, which never fails to respond to any worthy call, we can trace the influence of his unostentatious example.
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