Andrew Alexander Bonar
1810-1892. Scottish preacher and author. Seventh son of a solicitor of excise in Edinburgh, he with his brothers John and Horatius* made a famous trio of ministers. His great friend was R.M. McCheyne,* whose memoir he wrote, regarded widely as a Christian classic. They both belonged to the Non-Intrusion movement which led to the Disruption* of 1843, and also to a revival movement which culminated in the Kilsyth Revival of 1838-39. Greatly concerned with the evangelization of the Jews, he and McCheyne were members of a “Mission of Inquiry” to Palestine in 1839. After short ministries in Jedburgh and Edinburgh, he was ordained at Collace, Perthshire, and remained there after the Disruption, preaching in a tent until a Free Church was built. In 1856 he started a new Free Church at Finnieston, Glasgow, exercising a fine ministry till his death. Among his writings, his edition of Rutherford's Letters and his own Diary have become devotional classics.