Alexander Maclaren 02

His Life

Perhaps we are best to begin by considering who this preacher was who so endeared himself to the people of Manchester and a large reading public.

Glasgow

He was the youngest by five or six years of a family of six children and was born and educated in Glasgow, studying first at the High School and then, briefly, at the University. His parents, David Maclaren and Mary Wingate, were a great and positive influence on him. Maclaren senior, originally from Perth, was a business man and joint lay pastor of a Scotch Baptist church that had broken away from a Congregationalist church led by Ralph Wardlaw. Maclaren junior warmly recalled his father's preaching, which he said was “richly scriptural, expository and instructive and withal earnestly evangelistic.”

Alexander Maclaren (and by the way, although he would always sign his name McLaren, he preferred the form Maclaren when his name appeared in print) was apparently a fairly shy and solitary little boy but quite popular with his many siblings and cousins. He once said that he knew nothing of “dreary Sundays” as a boy, though he would attend two services and be drilled in Scripture memory in the evening by his father.

In 1836, the father went to Australia to take charge of an important business enterprise, leaving his family in Scotland. It was during his father's four year absence that Maclaren was converted. This happened chiefly through attending the Bible classes of a Congregational Minister called David Russell (later his brother-in-law). Maclaren was in his early teens and somewhere around the age of 12 or 13. On May 17, 1840, he was baptised by immersion by James Paterson, pastor of the Baptist church that he joined at that time.

London

By the time David Maclaren returned from Australia the family had moved to London, where he joined them. In those days Oxford and Cambridge were decidedly closed to nonconformists, of course, but in 1842, when he was still only 16, Maclaren entered Stepney College, a Baptist institution in the London area. For most of Maclaren's time at Stepney, the College was under the leadership of a Welshman called Dr Benjamin Davies, an eminent Hebrew scholar who went on to work in Canada. Maclaren was heavily influenced by Davies becoming an enthusiastic student not only of Hebrew but also of Greek, among other subjects. He sat his BA at the London University before he was 20, taking examinations for his arts degree and winning prizes in Hebrew and Greek. It soon became Maclaren’s habit to spend a half hour each in the Hebrew and Greek texts every morning as part of his devotions, something he continued to do in the years ahead. (He once warned theological students unless you become “competent students of the original ... you will be living to expound a book which you cannot read.” His sermons, while never flaunting his linguistic skills, often show a keen understanding of the language and grammar of the original languages. His favourite preachers were Thomas Binney and Henry Melville. Besides his collegiate studies, he read widely in literature, being especially fond of the English poets and dabbling himself in poetry writing. Carlyle, Scott, Thackeray and Browning were his favourite writers.

Maclaren, it appears, knew from his youth that he was called to preach and never considered any other vocation. Some were concerned that he was slightly aloof in manner and at first rather youthful, being even younger in appearance than he actually was. However, there were never any real objections. “I cannot ever recall any hesitation as to being a minister,” he said. “It just had to be.” When he preached his first sermon at the age of 17 he began a written log, recording the sermon number, location, text and date of each sermon. This he kept up throughout the years to come along with a record of the outlines he prepared to preach from. These he preserved and eventually arranged in biblical order.

Southampton

On graduating he commenced his first ministry at Portland Chapel, Southampton, having already served the congregation for three months. He preached his first sermon there November 16, 1845 and his ordination took place on June 28, 1846.

This first charge was a small, dying Baptist congregation that had got itself into financial difficulty. Only about 20 people were attending at a sanctuary that could seat 300! After a while the church steadied and then began to grow. Maclaren worked there for 12 years and developed a reputation as an attractive and powerful preacher. He later said, “I thank God for the early days of struggle and obscurity.”

Robert T Henry says that in those days

He often startled his hearers with his imaginative treatment of the texts and was regarded as sometimes novel, and always original. A fellow pastor in the same town, Rev Thomas Adkins, along with several denominational leaders, were not at all sure of McLaren's orthodoxy in those early years. Was the temptation to be novel so great that he was willing to sacrifice sound doctrine? While he believed and preached strongly on punishment for sin he lacked conviction concerning the eternal state of the lost and of eternal punishment. He also entertained some thoughts about the actual communion between the living and the dead. His lack of ministerial propriety, as they viewed it, did not sit well with the older pastors and leaders in the denomination. McLaren was not willing to wear the traditional ministerial dress in the pulpit and he refused to wear the traditional white tie. He also appeared to be quite careless about the colour of his clothes.

There were times after he had preached for 15 to 20 minutes when he would abruptly say, “I have no more to say!” He would then immediately sit down to the dismay of his people. Sometimes, in search of a precise word, he would stop for extremely long pauses. His people would become so uncomfortable that they felt he had broken down completely. One old Scottish lady in his congregation said that she wished to be in the pulpit with him so she could whisper the word for which he was groping "into the lad's lug".

This is probably the context for a statement attributed to Spurgeon by the Unitarian Alexander Gordon that Maclaren was “dangerous”.

Though he tried other avenues, even at Southampton Maclaren's main focus was on the preaching, and he prepared for this intensively. A keen observer of nature, he also delighted in walks on the Isle of Wight or in the New Forest, alone or with friends.

For most of his time in Southampton Maclaren was a single man but in 1856 he married his cousin Marion. They had four daughters and a son. Much later in life he gave this testimony “In 1856 Marion Maclaren became my wife. God allowed us to be together till 1884. Others could speak of her charm, her beauty, her gifts, and her goodness. Most of what she was to me is forever locked in my heart. But I would fain that it should be told that the best part of what I have been able to do all came and comes from her.”

Manchester

After much solicitation from other congregations, he eventually received and accepted an invitation to the pastorate of a church begun 16 years before - Union Chapel, Fallowfield, in Manchester, where he remained until his retirement. After 11 years there, a new 1500-seat auditorium was built and every seat was filled, morning and evening.

Many attempts were made to draw Maclaren away from Manchester, but he remained there despite his dislike of the climate and the workload his pastorate entailed, both of which he sometimes complained of. McLaren remained minister at Union Chapel until June 1903, in spite of bouts of ill health, the crushing blow of his wife's sudden death on 21 December 1884, and several tempting offers including (1885) a pressing invitation to be professor of Hebrew at his old college, by then Regent's Park College.

From 1882 he had assistants. The first was John G Raws, followed by J Edward Roberts (from 1890). In retirement he became pastor emeritus. During his 45 year tenure he became one of Manchester's leading citizens, the speaker of choice at public and religious gatherings, and until his wife's death a familiar figure at Hallé concerts. Always well informed about the state of trade, he was known widely as ‘McLaren of Manchester’.

In retirement Mclaren preached less often than he had hoped but revelled in the discipline of spending part of each day writing and preparing publications. In 1909, with the encroachments of suburbia threatening his tranquillity, he gave up his house in Fallowfield, Manchester, and presented his library to the Baptist college there.

After his regular holiday in his beloved highlands, he went to live in Edinburgh, where he died after some weeks' illness. Following a simple funeral at Union Chapel, his ashes were interred at Brooklands cemetery, near Manchester.

Unlike Spurgeon, Maclaren had only one real ministry – and that was preaching. He rarely travelled and started no schools or publications or magazines. The only responsibility he took beyond his own church was two terms as president of the Baptist Union (1875 and 1901). In 1888 he represented the English Baptist Union at the Victoria jubilee celebrations in Australia. In 1905 he was president of the Baptist World Congress, in London.

Late in life he became a governor of Owens College, then the Victoria University of Manchester 1900-1905, warmly supporting the pioneering ‘undenominational’ theology faculty introduced at the university in 1904 and serving on the faculty's advisory committee. His links to the Victoria University were cemented with the award of an honorary LittD in 1902. He also received honorary DDs from the universities of Edinburgh (1877) and Glasgow (1907). W Robertson Nicoll said Maclaren was without question “the most brilliant man, all round,” that he had ever known. His scholarship was impeccable. He read widely - from Augustine to the Quakers, as well as the great British poetry and novels.