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Robertson, James (of Ellon), D.D.

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Robertson, James (Of Ellon), D.D.,

a minister of the Established Church, Scotland, was born in Pitsligo, a parish in the north of Aberdeenshire, in 1803. He graduated in due time at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and afterwards served as private tutor, as parish schoolmaster in his own parish, and eventually as head master of a hospital in Aberdeen for the education of boys. In 1832 he was appointed minister of the parish of Ellon, where he remained until 1843, caring for his parish with assiduity and thoroughness. In the great controversy in the Scottish Kirk he was an earnest and indefatigable "Moderate," opposed to the Veto Act and to Drs. Chalmers, Candlish, Cunningham, and the other Non-intrusionists. When these withdrew in the great secession of the Free Church, it was natural that Mr. Robertson should be designated to occupy some one of the posts they left empty. In 1843 - the year of the disruption - Dr. Robertson became professor of divinity and Church history in the University of Edinburgh. He was one of the central minds of the Established Church, and toiled indefatigably in a great endowment scheme — a kind of adaptation or revival of the Church — extension scheme of Dr. Chalmers. He died in Edinburgh, Dec. 2, 1860. He published pamphlets on The Moderate Side of the Scotch Church Controversy. See Allibone, Dict. of Brit. and Amer. Auth. s.v.; Charteris, Life of Robertson (Edinb. 1863, 8vo); The Reader, May 9, 1863.