Horatius Bonar 1808-1880

It was characteristic of the humility of Horatius Bonar, author of such hymns as "Not what these hands have done," and "Not what I am, 0 Lord, but what Thou art," that he should request shortly before he died that no biography should be written, and it was perhaps a testimony to the esteem in which he was held, that all of his contemporaries respected his wishes. Apart from a brief memorial published after his death in 1889 and a volume entitled "Memories of Dr. Horatius Bonar" published in 1909, the only references to this gracious and godly man were to be found in books on other subjects, notably by his brother Andrew Bonar and by their friend and associate, Robert Murray M'Cheyne.

To mark the centenary of Bonar's death, A.W. Medley wrote a short account entitled "The Life of Horatius Bonar" in the Evangelical Library Bulletin, and St. Catherine's-Argyle Church in Edinburgh produced a booklet entitled "Horatius Bonar and his Hymns" by G.L. Gibbs. Indeed it is for the hymns he wrote that Bonar is still remembered since examples have been included in all the best hymn-books down to the present day, but hymns formed only a part of his work as a faithful servant of God.

Horatius was in fact one of eleven children, and of these an older brother, John James, and a younger, Andrew, also became ministers and were all closely involved, together with Thomas Chalmers, William C. Burns and Robert Murray M'Cheyne, in the important spiritual movements which affected many places in Scotland in the 1830s and 1840s. It was his awareness of the great blessings that God had brought to pass in his day that caused Bonar to write in 1843, "No one who passed through them would wish either to forget or under-estimate the privilege of having been one of the 'labourers' in the reaping of that blessed harvest." In his hymns, his books, his ministry and his whole life, Bonar's desire was to give God all the glory and praise so that "He must increase, but I must decrease." (John 3:30).

After studying divinity under Thomas Chalmers at Edinburgh University, Horatius was licensed to preach in 1833, and at first he was put in charge of mission work at St. John's parish in Leith. Four years later he was appointed to the church at Kelso and his first sermon there on the text, "And He said. unto them, this kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting", (Mark 9:29) was of great significance for his own ministry in the following years. The Spirit of God was mightily at work over widespread areas of Scotland and as Bonar recalled in 1843, "The tide of blessing which, from 1837, had been flowing without intermission, had not yet begun to ebb. Many were daily added to our living membership. The Church's true work went on happily in parts where it had already commenced; and it began in many places to which it had not yet reached. We look back on these months with thankful joy." Horatius regarded the Scottish Borders as a mission field ripe for evangelisation and at every village and even in individual farmhouses he held meetings to preach the gospel with great earnestness and authority. His labours were honoured and blessed abundantly by God, as his accounts to his fellow ministers show, "During this season there were all the marks of a work of God which we see in the account given of the preaching of the gospel by the apostles. The multitude was divided, families were divided; the people of God were knit together, they were filled with zeal and joy and heavenly-mindedness; they continued steadfast, and increased in doctrine and fellowship, being daily in church and in prayer-meetings; and numbers were constantly turning to the Lord."

In the controversy known as the "Great Disruption," Horatius stood firmly with the evangelical ministers and elders who left the Church of Scotland's General Assembly in May 1843 and formed the new Free Church of Scotland. By this time he had started to write hymns, some of which appeared in a collection he published in 1845, but typically, his compositions were not named. His gifts for expressing theological truths in fluent verse form are evident in all his best-
known hymns, but in addition he was also blessed with a deep understanding of doctrinal principles.

Examples of the hymns he composed on the fundamental doctrines include, "Glory be to God the Father".....on the Trinity. "0 Love of God, how strong and true".....on Redemption. "Light of the world," - "Rejoice and be glad" - "Done is the work" on the Person and Work of Christ. "Come Lord and tarry not," on His Second Coming, while the hymn "Blessed be God, our God!" conveys a sweeping survey of Justification and Sanctification.

Other hymns by Bonar contain a remarkable range of Christian instruction and experience, such as "Begin the day with God," - "I heard the voice of Jesus say," - "Beloved, let us love," - "Our life is hid with Christ," - "I hear the words of love," - "No blood, no altar now," and many others - and his hymn, "Here, 0 my Lord, I see Thee face to face" is frequently sung during Communion Services.

The theme which held a particularly, fond place in Bonar's heart was the exaltation of Christ and the abasement of human pride, and he continually gave expression to his thoughts in hymns such as, "Thy works, not mine, 0 Christ," - "Not what I am, 0 Lord, but what Thou art," - "All that I was, my sin, my guilt" and "Not what these hands have done" with its continuation hymn, "I bless the Christ of God", which is not so well-known, but which compares favourably with his finest compositions. Other examples of Bonar's hymns give an insight into his burden for the work of the gospel, and in this category "Fill Thou my life, 0 Lord my God," and "Go labour on; spend, and be spent" stand out as challenging calls to a life of holiness and Christian service.

It should be noted that while Bonar was producing this remarkable output of hymns, he had to endure a series of sorrowful experiences when five of his young children died in succession. He had married Jane Catherine Lundie in 1843 and the bereavements were a grievous trial to them which they bore with great Christian fortitude. Towards the end of their lives, one of their surviving daughters was left a widow with five small children and she returned to live with her parents. The gracious spirit of Horatius and his wife could be clearly seen from a letter to a friend in which he wrote, "God took five children from life some years ago, and He has given me other five to bring up for Him in my old age."

It was also worth recording that it was not only hymns that flowed from his pen. While ministering at Kelso, he began to write short tracts on the Christian faith and in all, he completed thirty-six titles which he used in his evangelisation work. His first book, entitled "The Night of Weeping" was published in 1845 and a year later he wrote "Truth and Error" as a forceful warning against the superficiality appearing in religious life at that time. Another book in 1851 entitled "Man : His Religion and His World" expressed his concern about the dangerous trend of diluting the gospel in an attempt to make it "pleasant" and "easier" to accept. He was well-aware of the pitfalls of shallow and superficial evangelism when he declared, "We think if we can but get men converted, it does not much matter how. Our whole anxiety is, not how shall we secure the glory of Jehovah, but how shall we multiply conversions?" To the end of his life he continued to sound warnings on the current tendencies which threatened the Christian church, and significantly one of the last books he wrote, "Our Ministry, How It Touches the Questions of the Age" in 1883, contained this perceptive observation, "Man is now thinking out a Bible for himself; framing a religion in harmony with the development of liberal thought; constructing a worship on the principles of taste and culture; shaping a God to suit the expanding aspirations of the age."

Just as he struggled valiantly to denounce error, Horatius was equally determined to contend for the truth. He was instrumental in republishing worthwhile books such as "Historical Collections of Accounts of Revival" by John Gillies, and he also served as the editor for "The Quarterly journal of Prophecy" from 1848 to 1873 - and for the "Christian Treasury" from 1859 to 1879. Finally he himself was the author of several valuable and informative biographies of ministers he had known, including "The Life of the Rev. John Milne of Perth" in 1869, - and in 1884 "The Life and Works of the Rev. G.T.Dodds", who had been married to Bonar's daughter and who had died in 1882 while serving as a missionary in France.

In all this activity, his pastoral work and preaching were never neglected and after almost twenty years labouring in the Scottish Borders at Kelso, Bonar moved back to Edinburgh in 1866 to be minister at the Chalmers Memorial Chapel (now renamed St. Catherine's Argyle Church). He continued his ministry for a further twenty years helping to arrange D.L. Moody's meetings in Edinburgh in 1873 and being appointed moderator of the Free Church ten years later. His health declined by 1887, but he was approaching the age of eighty when he preached in his church for the last time, and he died on 31 May 1889.

Of all the verses he composed for hymns and religious poems, perhaps the most appropriate one for his life and ministry was:

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