The Rev. Dr. Eadie was born in 1813, at Alva, in Stirlingshire, where his parents occupied a comparatively humble rank in life. After receiving the rudiments of his education at the school of Tillicoultry, in which he afterwards became assistant to the Rev. Mr. Browning, a man of uncommon ability both as a preacher and as a thinker, Dr. Eadie entered the University of Glasgow, where he pursued his studies on a more extended scale. From the University he went to the United Secession Divinity Hall, with the view of qualifying himself for a place in the ministry of that Church. At the University he was a most successful student, and distinguished himself more especially by his knowledge of Latin and Greek. This is all the more noteworthy when it is remembered that during his University career he had the private tuition of many students to undertake. Dr. Eadie's first charge was Cambridge Street U.P. Church. At the time he entered upon that charge he was only over 21 years' of age, and it is a fact worth recording that, within three months of being licensed, he was called to and bold enough to accept a city charge. Cambridge Street Church was built about nine months before Dr. Eadie became its pastor. Commencing with a membership of only 60, he raised his church during his pastorate of over 25 years to a membership of 1100, many of his adherents being the foremost men in connection with the U.P. body in Glasgow, of which the rev. gentleman himself soon became a distinguished ornament. Before leaving Cambridge Street to enter upon his new church in Great Western Road, Dr. Eadie, on his semi-jubilee, was presented by his congregation with a purse containing 300 guineas and a silver salver, and he then informed his congregation that "they had changed his wages five times, every change representing a substantial advance." Many of his West-End members found Cambridge Street too great a distance to come to worship on the Sabbath day, and Dr. Eadie removed with them to Lansdowne U.P. Church, where he has gathered a large and aristocratic congregation. We believe that Dr. Eadie is the only U.P. minister in Glasgow who has been the first pastor of two new churches, the only parallel case within our knowledge being that of Dr. M'Ewen, who first founded a new church at Helensburgh, and afterwards in Claremont Street, Glasgow. From the Great Western Road Dr. Eadie's church has a commanding appearance. It is built in accordance with the strictest Gothic principles, and has one of the finest spires in the city. Its cost was about £12,000, and of this sum upwards of £1200 was raised on the occasion of its opening.

In the month of May, 1843, Dr. Eadie was chosen Professor of Biblical Literature in the Divinity Hall of the U.P. Church. He delivered his first lecture in the month of August following. By his students the rev. gentleman is greatly esteemed and beloved, none the less so that he imposes upon them mental discipline of the strictest and most severe description. It is perhaps even more owing to his entente cordiale with his students, than because of his eminence as a preacher and author, that Dr. Eadie has been so often selected to open new churches all over the country. Certain it is that no minister in the U.P. Church has been more frequently called into requisition for "special services" both at home and abroad. One of the last new churches he opened was in Dundee, when the collections taken on a single Sunday amounted to £1090. He also opened the church of Dr. Macfarlane, of London; and along with Dr. Alexander, of Edinburgh, he took part in the inauguration services of Springhill College, Birmingham. We may here mention the well-known fact that Dr. Eadie has been appointed to the Moderator's Chair in the U.P. Synod—the highest office in the power of the Church to confer; and, although he has never taken a very prominent part in the Church Courts, his speeches are invariably full of weighty matter and sound argument. He spoke strongly in the Synod for toleration as to the use of organs in public worship. In the negotiations for Union with the Free Church he has taken a peculiar interest. Although he has received calls from other churches, Dr. Eadie has steadfastly maintained his attachment to Glasgow. In the year 1846 he was twice called to Rose Street U.P. Church, Edinburgh—Dr. Finlayson's—but the call was met each time with a firm refusal.

Dr. Eadie first brought himself into prominent notice as an author by the publication of a manual of Cruden, intended for popular use, about the year 1841. This abridged concordance has had an enormous sale among all classes, both at home and abroad. Up to the year 1850 it had gone through no fewer than fourteen different editions, and we believe that the latest edition issued is either the twenty-first or the twenty-third. The preface to Dr. Eadie's "Cruden" was furnished by Dr. King, and is a masterly performance of its kind. It is worth while noticing that no other copy of "Cruden" is used or recognised by the Tract Society, who have at different times issued it on their own account. In 1848 Dr. Eadie published his Biblical CyclopÆdia, of which in 1868 twenty-four thousand copies had been sold, being upwards of one thousand every year. Of the merits of this work we need not here speak, as to all of our readers it must be known more or less familiarly. It is essentially what it professes to be—a dictionary of history, antiquities, geography, natural history, sacred analysis, biography, and Biblical literature generally, illustrative of the Old and New Testaments. He has also compiled from Henry and Scott a Bible which has gone through many editions, and has commanded a sale of not fewer than 60,000 or 70,000 copies. First published in folio form, it had been sold within seven years to the tune of 36,000 copies, and thousands of working men were enabled from the cheapness with which it was issued, to possess themselves of this Bible who might otherwise never have had a Family Bible in their houses. The first edition was issued in 1851, and in Sept., 1858, another and still larger edition was put through the press. Dr. Eadie published in 1856 a work entitled "An Analytical Concordance of the Holy Scriptures, or the Bible presented under distinct and classified heads and topics," published by Richard Griffin & Co., London. In 1862 he published an "Ecclesiastical CyclopÆdia of antiquities, architecture, controversies, denominations, doctrines, governments, heresies, history, liturgies, rights, monastic orders, and modern Judaism." As the biographer of the well-known and esteemed Dr. Kitto, Dr. Eadie has also achieved a considerable reputation. Collected from papers furnished by Dr. Kitto's personal friends, this biography is perhaps one of the best and most interesting in the English literature, and it deservedly met with a very large circulation. In a surprisingly short space of time it went through several editions, and even at the present day it is referred to and quoted as an authority on ecclesiastical matters of a particular kind. Dr. Kitto was one of the best Biblical scholars of his day. Like Dr. Eadie himself, he was possessed of an extraordinary memory, and highly cultivated lingual powers; and after he returned from the East he was frequently employed to do literary work for Mr. Charles Knight, for whom also Dr. Eadie contributed occasional papers. In short, the one man was eminently qualified, both by his acquirements, by his disposition, and by the exceptional facilities which he enjoyed, to become the biographer of the other, and Dr. Eadie has approached his task with such a spirit of love, and with so genuine and well-founded an esteem of the man whose Boswell he aspired to be, that the biography will rank in some respects almost equal with that of Dr. Johnson. Some years later, Dr. Eadie published through the Messrs. Oliphant, of Edinburgh, a series of lectures on the Bible for the young, which met with a very large sale. He has also written and published a well known work entitled "Divine Life," being a series of discourses, most of which were preached from time to time to his own congregation, and all of them breathing a spirit of true orthodoxy and Christian feeling. In 1859 he issued another book called "Paul the Preacher; or a popular and practical exposition of his discourses and speeches as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles," a work which is treated in the author's best style, and displays much evidence of high literary attainments. In addition to works already quoted, and comprising many years of arduous toil and research, Dr. Eadie has published a series of Commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul, commencing in 1853 with that of the Ephesians. This was followed in 1856 by his Commentary to the Colossians; in 1859 by his Commentary to the Phillipians; and in 1869 by his Commentary to the Galatians. Upon these Commentaries, and upon his popular handbooks to sacred literature, namely, his Cruden's Concordance, his Biblical CyclopÆdia, and his Ecclesiastical CyclopÆdia—Dr. Eadie's well-earned fame as a biblical scholar and author will securely last for generations. Next to the profound knowledge displayed in his works, we are struck with Dr. Eadie's surpassing fertility as a writer. Very few men, indeed, have published so many works within so short a compass of time; and it is a marked characteristic of all books bearing his sign-manual, that they are masterly both in style and in matter, that they have been well and carefully thought out, and that they display great learning and extraordinary research. We must not forget that while thus copiously contributing to ecclesiastical literature, Dr. Eadie gave unremitting attention to his pulpit duties. He never had a coadjutor or assistant, and he has occupied his own and other pulpits every Sunday since the date of his ordination. And even the long list we have enumerated does not complete Dr. Eadie's literary efforts, for we find him contributing now to Dr. Kitto's and Principal Fairbairn's Biblical CyclopÆdia (published by Blackie, Glasgow), then to the "North British Review," and again to the "Journal of Sacred Literature." Several of his works are now out of print, but all of them are of untold value in their way, and are highly esteemed by those best qualified to form a just estimate of their merits. Dr. Eadie is a member of the Committee for the Revision of the New Testament; a post which he holds conjointly with Professor Brown and Professor Milligan, of Aberdeen, the only other Presbyterian members of the New Testament Revision Committee who belong to Scotland. The Committee, we may here explain, commenced its sittings in June of 1870. Once a month it is accustomed to meet in the Jerusalem Chamber, Westminster Abbey—a room fraught with the most interesting historical recollections, for it was here that the Commissioners met who drew up the Scottish Confession of Faith, and here also the Lower House of Convocation is accustomed to hold its sittings. After deliberating for two years, the Committee have only as yet reached the end of Saint Luke's Gospel. The labour incumbent upon the Committee may be estimated to some extent by the fact that for four days in every month it sits, without any interval, from eleven o'clock forenoon till six o'clock in the evening.

Dr. Eadie's literary and scientific attainments have been recognised and rewarded by the degree of LL.D. from Glasgow University, while the University of St. Andrews has conferred upon him the degree of D.D. He is a member of several learned bodies, and is also chaplain of the 19th Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers.