OBERT LORIMER, LL.D., was born at Kirkconnel, in Dumfriesshire, on 11th May 1765. He received his university education at Glasgow, and after passing through the usual literary and theological curriculum, he was licensed to preach the Gospel by the Presbytery of Abernethy in September 1792. On 1st March, in the following year, he was appointed to the Chaplaincy of the Southern Regiment of Fencibles, commanded at that time by James, Earl of Hopetoun, and a few months later he was ordained by the Presbytery of Penpont In 1795 he had his degree from the University of Glasgow, and, in February 1796, he received simultaneously the presentation to the First Charge of the parish of Haddington from the Earl of Hopetoun, and to the parish of Smailholm, in the Presbytery of Lauder, from George Baillie, Esq. of Jerviswoode. After due consideration he decided to accept the former, and, on the 16th June, he was inducted as successor to Dr George Barclay, During forty-seven years he faithfully discharged all the duties pertaining to the oversight of so important a parish, and when at the Disruption he was required to choose whether to remain in the benefice he had held so long, or to go out into the wilderness, he did not hesitate to remain true to his convictions, and chose the latter course. He then became colleague in the pastorate of St John's Church, Haddington, the duties of which he fulfilled to the day of his death.
When Dr Lorimer went to Haddington, there were only two ministers within the bounds of that large Presbytery who were decidedly Evangelical, but he lived to see the cause to which he was attached predominate as much in East Lothian as in other parts of the country, and to both local and national changes he contributed his own part by his able, evangelical, and acceptable ministry. When the contest between the Church and the State reached its critical point, and the Convocation of ministers adhering to the Evangelical cause in the Church of Scotland, met in November 1842, Dr Lorimer was chosen to preside over the deliberations. The Convocation continued its sittings for nearly a week. Two series of Resolutions were adopted. In the second series, after stating
"That the assumption by the Civil Courts of authority in matters spiritual, and especially in the ordination, admission, or deposition of ministers, and the other proceedings there set forth, is in violation of the law establishing the Church, which was made unalterable by the Act of Security and Treaty of Union," and recognising " that it is not the duty of the Church, as a kingdom not of this world, which has not, and cannot have, any power of the sword, or any secular dominion whatever, to plead her title, thus acquired and secured, to the temporal benefits of the Establishment, in opposition to the supreme power of the State, except in the way of remonstrance, protest, and serious warning," it is declared, " that it is the duty of the ministers now assembled, and of all who adhere to their views, to make a solemn representation to Her Majesty's Government, and to both Houses of Parliament, selling forth the imminent and extreme peril of the Establishment, the inestimable benefits it confers upon the country, and the pain and reluctance with which they are forced to contemplate the possibility of the Church's separation, for conscience sake, from the State - respectfully calling upon the rulers of this nation to maintain the Constitution of the kingdom inviolate, and to uphold a pure establishment of religion in the land; and, finally, intimating that, as the endowments of the Church are undoubtedly at the disposal of the supreme power of the State, with whom it rests either to continue to the Church her possession of them, free from any limitation of her spiritual jurisdiction and freedom, or withdraw them altogether, so it must be the duty of the Church, and, consequently, in dependence on the grace of God, it is the determination of the brethren now assembled - if no measure such as they have declared to be indispensable be granted - to tender the resignation of those civil advantages which they can no longer hold in consistency with the free and full exercise of their spiritual functions, and to cast themselves on such provision as God in His providence may afford; maintaining still uncompromised the principle of a right scriptural connection between the Church and State, and solemnly entering their protest against the judgments of which they complain."
On completing the fiftieth year of his ministry in Haddington, all classes of men united in shewing their high esteem for him by inviting him to a public dinner, which was presided over by his valued friend and co-presbyter, Dr Makellar.
After a very short illness, Dr Lorimer died on 9th November 1848, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. He had preached on the preceding Lord's day from the text, " Enoch walked with God ;" and was engaged in preparing for the following Lord's day a discourse on that passage in Job, "All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come," shewing that his mind was fully occupied with the contemplation of that heavenly rest for which he longed. He was buried in the Parish Churchyard, in the presence of a large concourse of persons, who had assembled out of respect to his memory.
His valuable library, on the collection of which he bestowed much time and thought, he bequeathed to the Free Church College, Edinburgh. As his old friend Archibald Constable said, there was "less trash" in it than in any library he had ever examined.
In his home life, Dr Lorimer was singularly happy, the influence of the manse for good being felt throughout the parish. In 1801 he was married to Elizabeth, eldest daughter of John Gordon, Esq. of Balmoor. Writer to the Signet, by whom he had two daughters and four sons. The second son was the Rev. John Gordon Lorimer, D.D., who, first in Torryburn, and then in the parish of St David's, Glasgow, contended for the same Evangelical principles upheld by his father. At the Disruption he became minister of Free St David's Church, and, along with Dr Robert Buchanan and Dr James Gibson, did no mean service by his writings and by his preaching in upholding and strengthening the cause of the Free Church in the West. By his constant correspondence with the Churches abroad, he did what lay in his power to awaken their sympathy with the Free Church movement. He died suddenly on 9th October 1868.
In estimating the services of Dr Lorimer to the cause of religion, it must be borne in mind that the greater portion of his ministry preceded the Disruption, and it would be an error to measure the labours of him, and others like him, by the same standard that is applied to the great leaders of the movement. The Church cannot but admire and honour the able band of men whom God raised up during the "Ten Years' Conflict"; at the same time, she must not forget what is due to their predecessors, the Evangelical minority of the Church of Scotland. They were the pioneers of the Free Church, the harbingers of a better state of things. In many great movements it has seemed as if the heroic element was first developed, to be followed by a time of comparative calmness and tranquillity; but at the Disruption the evangelistic element had first leavened the whole lump, and the heroism was manifested at a later stage. From 1784 there was half-a-century of Evangelical preaching, which silently and gradually prepared the materials out of which the Free Church was to arise. Whilst, therefore, all due praise is to be given to the leaders who achieved the triumph, it is for the honour of the Church to remember that the whole movement sprang from the pious and fruitful ministry of the Evangelical minority. Among the honourable band who formed it, - such as Innes, Balfour, Davidson, Campbell, Colquhoun, Moncreiff, and Thomson, - Dr Lorimer held a high place fifty years before the Disruption.
A. P. L.
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