Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Mitchell, John Murray

by William Forbes Gray

MITCHELL, JOHN MURRAY (1815–1904), presbyterian missionary and orientalist, born in Aberdeen on 19 Aug. 1815, was fourth son in the family of five sons and three daughters of James Mitchell; burgess of Aberdeen, by his wife Margaret Gordon. Both parents were related to Patrick Copland [q. v.]. Three brothers, James (1808-1884), Gordon (1809-1893), Alexander (1822-1901), became ministers of the Church of Scotland. After attending the parish school of Kinneff, Kincardineshire, Mitchell in 1828 entered the grammar school of Aberdeen, where he was stongly influenced by the rector James Melvin [q. v.]. With the second highest bursary, gained by his Latin prose, he entered Marischal College, Aberdeen, at fourteen, and graduated M.A. with distinction in 1833. Deciding to enter the ministry of the Church of Scotland, he began his divinity course in that year, studying first at Aberdeen, where he won the lord rector's prize for an essay on 'The Septuagint and other Greek Versions of the Old Testament.' In 1837 the fame of Thomas Chalmers [q. v.] drew him to Edinburgh University, where he won a gold medal offered by Professor David Welsh [q. v.] for an essay on 'Eusebius as an Ecclesiastical Historian.' During the session 1837–8 he took charge of a class at Aberdeen grammar school, and among his scholars was James Augustus Grant [q. v. Suppl. I], the African traveller.

Mitchell was from youth interested in foreign missions and was deeply impressed by the labours of Alexander Duff [q. v.]. Ordained in 1838 and appointed by the foreign mission committee of the Church of Scotland to be a missionary to Bombay, he readily mastered the Marathi language and literature and became proficient in Sanskrit and the Parsi Zend. Among the Marathis he made many converts and gave an impulse to missionary work by originating the Bombay missionary conference. While at Bombay he made missionary tours annually throughout Central India. At the disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843, Mitchell, with his colleagues in India, joined the Free church and bore a leading part in organising the Free church mission. He succeeded in inaugurating a flourishing mission in the British cantonment at Poona, where Scottish missionaries had previously been forbidden, and began work among the Mangs and Mahars of Jalna and North Haidarabad. After a four years' visit to Scotland (1863-7), where he ministered at Broughty Ferry, he proceeded in 1867, at Dr. Duff's request, to Calcutta, and remained in Bengal for the next six years. Mainly through his efforts the 'Union Church,' an important European congregation, was formed at Simla, and he helped to found a mission to the Santals.

On returning home in 1873 he acted as secretary to the foreign mission committee of the Free church. In 1880, after attending the pan-presbyterian council at Philadelphia, he went by way of Japan and China to India, where he spent two years in lecturing and preaching. From 1888, when he retired from the mission field, until 1898 he was minister of the Scottish church at Nice. Here his friends included the Dutch novehst, Maarten Maartens, who wrote admiringly of Mitchell's 'pure and child-like heart' and of his 'noble aspirations and beliefs.'

Mitchell's closing years were devoted to literary work in Edinburgh. He had published 'Hinduism, Past and Present' (1885; 2nd edit. 1897), a capable introduction to the study of Indian religion. As Duff missionary lecturer in 1903 he gave an exhaustive course on 'The Great Religions of India,' which was posthumously published in 1905 with a prefatory note by his nephew. Dr. James Mitchell.

In December 1858 Mitchell was made hon. LL.D. of Marischal College and the university of Aberdeen. He died at his house in Edinburgh on 14 Nov. 1904, and was buried on 18 Nov. in the Dean cemetery, Edinburgh. On the sixtieth anniversary of his ordination as a missionary to India, his portrait, painted by W. E. Lockhart, R.S.A., was presented (May 1898) to the Free church, and now hangs in the general assembly hall of the United Free church in Edinburgh.

Besides several lectures, contributions to periodicals, and admirable metrical translations from classical and Indian poets, he published:

1. 'Letters to Indian Youth regarding the Evidences of the Christian Religion, with a Brief Examination of the Evidences of Hinduism, Parseeism and Mohammedanism' (Bombay 1850; 11th edit. 1894; trans, into several Indian languages).
2. 'The Conflict of Ancient Paganism and Christianity' (n.d.).
3. 'Memoir of Rev. Robert Nesbit, Missionary,' London 1858.
4. 'In Western India: Recollections of my Early Missionary Life,' Edinburgh 1899.

On 22 Dec. 1842 he married Maria Hay, daughter of the Rev. Alexander Flyter, minister of Alness, Rossshire. There were no children. Mitchell's wife, who died on 31 March 1907, was distinguished for her missionary zeal and literary ability. Many books by her had a large circulation; the chief of them were:

1. 'A Missionary's Wife among the Wild Tribes of South Bengal,' 1871.
2. 'In Southern India,' 1885.
3. 'Sixty Years Ago,' 1905.

[Scotsman, 16 Nov. 1904; Mitchell's writings; private information.]

W. F. G.