HALDANE, JAMES ALEXANDER (1768–1851), Scottish divine, the younger son of Captain James Haldane of Airthrey House, Stirlingshire, was born at Dundee on the 14th of July 1768. Educated first at Dundee and afterwards at the high school and university of Edinburgh, at the age of seventeen he joined the “Duke of Montrose” East Indiaman as a midshipman. After four voyages to India he was nominated to the command of the “Melville Castle” in the summer of 1793; but having during a long and unexpected detention of his ship begun a careful study of the Bible, and also come under the evangelical influence of David Bogue of Gosport, one of the founders of the London Missionary Society, he abruptly resolved to quit the naval profession for a religious life, and returned to Scotland before his ship had sailed. About the year 1796 he became acquainted with the celebrated evangelical divine, Charles Simeon of Cambridge, in whose society he made several tours through Scotland, endeavouring by tract-distribution and other means to awaken others to some of that interest in religious subjects which he himself so strongly felt. In May 1797 he preached his first sermon, at Gilmerton near Edinburgh, with encouraging success. In the same year he established a non-sectarian organization for tract distribution and lay preaching called the “Society for the Propagation of the Gospel at Home.” During the next few years he made repeated missionary journeys, preaching wherever he could obtain hearers, and generally in the open air. Not originally disloyal to the Church of Scotland, he was gradually driven by the hostility of the Assembly and the exigencies of his position into separation. In 1799 he was ordained as pastor of a large Independent congregation in Edinburgh. This was the first congregational church known by that name in Scotland. In 1801 a permanent building replaced the circus in which the congregation had at first met. To this church he continued to minister gratuitously for more than fifty years. In 1808 he made public avowal of his conversion to Baptist views. As advancing years compelled him to withdraw from the more exhausting labours of itineracy and open-air preaching, he sought more and more to influence the discussion of current religious and theological questions by means of the press. He died on the 8th of February 1851.
His son, Daniel Rutherford Haldane (1824–1887), by his second wife, a daughter of Professor Daniel Rutherford, was a prominent Scottish physician, who became president of the Edinburgh College of Physicians.
Among J. A. Haldane’s numerous contributions to current theological discussions were: The Duty of Christian Forbearance in Regard to Points of Church Order (1811); Strictures on a Publication upon Primitive Christianity by Mr John Walker (1819); Refutation of Edward Irving’s Heretical Doctrines respecting the Person and Atonement of Jesus Christ. His Observations on Universal Pardon, &c., was a contribution to the controversy regarding the views of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen and Campbell of Row; Man’s Responsibility (1842) is a reply to Howard Hinton on the nature and extent of the Atonement. He also published: Journal of a Tour in the North; Early Instruction Commended (1801); Views of the Social Worship of the First Churches (1805); The Doctrine and Duty of Self-Examination (1806); The Doctrine of the Atonement (1845); Exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians (1848).
HALDANE, RICHARD BURDON (1856– ), British statesman
and philosopher, was the third son of Robert Haldane of
Cloanden, Perthshire, a writer to the signet, and nephew of
J. S. Burdon-Sanderson. He was a grand-nephew of the Scottish
divines J. A. and Robert Haldane. He was educated at Edinburgh
Academy and the universities of Edinburgh and Göttingen,
where he studied philosophy under Lotze. He took first-class
honours in philosophy at Edinburgh, and was Gray scholar and
Ferguson scholar in philosophy of the four Scottish Universities
(1876). He was called to the bar in 1879, and so early as 1890
became a queen’s counsel. In 1885 he entered parliament as
liberal member for Haddingtonshire, for which he was re-elected
continuously up to and including 1910. He was included in
1905 in Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman’s cabinet as secretary for
war, and was the author of the important scheme for the reorganization
of the British army, by which the militia and the
volunteer forces were replaced by a single territorial force.
Though always known as one of the ablest men of the Liberal
party and conspicuous during the Boer War of 1899–1902 as
a Liberal Imperialist, the choice of Mr Haldane for the task of
thinking out a new army organization on business lines had
struck many people as curious. Besides being a chancery
lawyer, he was more particularly a philosopher, conspicuous for
his knowledge of Hegelian metaphysics. But with German philosophy
he had also the German sense of thoroughness and system,
and his scheme, while it was much criticized, was recognized
as the best that could be done with a voluntary army. Mr
Haldane’s chief literary publications were: Life of Adam Smith
(1887); Education and Empire (1902); The Pathway to Reality
(1903). He also translated, jointly with J. Kemp, Schopenhauer’s
Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and
Idea, 3 vols., 1883–1886).
HALDANE, ROBERT (1764–1842), Scottish divine, elder
brother of J. A. Haldane (q.v.), was born in London on the
28th of February 1764. After attending classes in the Dundee
grammar school and in the high school and university of Edinburgh
in 1780, he joined H.M.S. “Monarch,” of which his uncle
Lord Duncan was at that time in command, and in the following
year was transferred to the “Foudroyant,” on board of which,
during the night engagement with the “Pegase,” he greatly
distinguished himself. Haldane was afterwards present at the
relief of Gibraltar, but at the peace of 1783 he finally left the
navy, and soon afterwards settled on his estate of Airthrey, near
Stirling. He put himself under the tuition of David Bogue of
Gosport and carried away deep impressions from his academy.
The earlier phases of the French Revolution excited his deepest
sympathy, a sympathy which induced him to avow his strong
disapproval of the war with France. As his over-sanguine visions
of a new order of things to be ushered in by political change
disappeared, he began to direct his thoughts to religious subjects.
Resolving to devote himself and his means wholly to the advancement
of Christianity, his first proposal for that end, made in
1796, was to organize a vast mission to Bengal, of which he was
to provide the entire expense; with this view the greater part
of his estate was sold, but the East India Company refused to
sanction the scheme, which therefore had to be abandoned.
In December 1797 he joined his brother and some others in the
formation of the “Society for the Propagation of the Gospel at
Home,” in building chapels or “tabernacles” for congregations,
in supporting missionaries, and in maintaining institutions for
the education of young men to carry on the work of evangelization.
He is said to have spent more than £70,000 in the course of
the following twelve years (1798–1810). He also initiated a
plan for evangelizing Africa by bringing over native children
to be trained as Christian teachers to their own countrymen.
In 1816 he visited the continent, and first at Geneva and afterwards
in Montauban (1817) he lectured and interviewed large
numbers of theological students with remarkable effect; among
them were Malan, Monod and Merle d’Aubigné. Returning to
Scotland in 1819, he lived partly on his estate of Auchengray
and partly in Edinburgh, and like his brother took an active part,
chiefly through the press, in many of the religious controversies
of the time. He died on the 12th of December 1842.
In 1816 he published a work on the Evidences and Authority of Divine Revelation, and in 1819 the substance of his theological prelections in a Commentaire sur l’Épître aux Romains. Among his later writings, besides numerous pamphlets on what was known as “the Apocrypha controversy,” are a treatise On the Inspiration of Scripture (1828), which has passed through many editions, and a later Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans (1835), which has been frequently reprinted, and has been translated into French and German.
See Memoirs of R. and J. A. Haldane, by Alexander Haldane (1852).
HALDEMAN, SAMUEL STEHMAN (1812–1880), American
naturalist and philologist, was born on the 12th of August 1812
at Locust Grove, Pa. He was educated at Dickinson College,
and in 1851 was appointed professor of the natural sciences in
the university of Pennsylvania. In 1855 he went to Delaware
College, where he filled the same position, but in 1869 he
returned to the university of Pennsylvania as professor of
