TheWayLIBRARY

Articles › God's Way of Peace

Who Was Horatius Bonar? Scottish Pastor and Hymn-Writer

BiographyHymns

Horatius Bonar was a Scottish minister and hymn-writer who lived from 1808 to 1889. He served for nearly thirty years as a pastor in the border town of Kelso, then for more than twenty years in Edinburgh. He's best known today for hymns like "I heard the voice of Jesus say" and "Here, O my Lord, I see Thee face to face." But he also wrote many books, above all God's Way of Peace, a short book that has helped anxious readers find rest in Christ for a century and a half.

Here's a fuller look at his life, what he taught, and which of his books to start with.

A family of ministers

Bonar was born in Edinburgh on December 19, 1808, one of eleven children. His father, James Bonar, was a lawyer in the government's excise service. The family had given ministers to the Church of Scotland for generations, and two of Horatius's brothers, John and Andrew, also became ministers. Andrew Bonar is remembered for his life of their friend Robert Murray M'Cheyne.

Horatius studied at the University of Edinburgh. His teacher in divinity was Thomas Chalmers, the great Scottish preacher, and his fellow students included M'Cheyne. Those friendships stayed with him all his life.

Hymns for children in Leith

After his studies, Bonar worked as a mission assistant in St John's parish in Leith, the port town next to Edinburgh. There he began writing hymns for the children in his Sunday classes, simple songs about Jesus they could learn and sing. It was the start of a lifetime of hymn-writing.

Kelso

In 1837 Bonar became minister of a new church in Kelso, in the Scottish Borders. He gave himself to visiting, preaching and writing. He wrote and edited a series of gospel leaflets known as the Kelso Tracts, which were read far beyond his own parish.

In 1843 came the Disruption, when hundreds of ministers left the Church of Scotland over the right of congregations to choose their own pastors, and formed the Free Church of Scotland. Bonar went with them. That same year he married Jane Lundie, a minister's daughter from Kelso. They had nine children, and five of them died young. Bonar's books of comfort, like The Night of Weeping, were written by a man who knew grief from the inside.

Hymns

Bonar wrote hymns all through his ministry, by some counts several hundred. His collection Hymns of Faith and Hope came out in three series between 1857 and 1866. The best known include:

The second coming

Bonar believed that Christ will come back in person before the thousand-year reign of Revelation 20. For a quarter of a century, from 1848 to 1873, he edited The Quarterly Journal of Prophecy. He wrote The Coming and Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ as a friendly but firm reply to David Brown, a fellow Free Church minister who held the opposite view. For Bonar, the hope of Christ's return wasn't a puzzle to solve. It was the morning that ends the believer's night, as he wrote in The Morning of Joy.

Edinburgh

In 1866 Bonar moved to Edinburgh to become minister of the Chalmers Memorial Church, named for his old teacher. He also edited The Christian Treasury, a popular magazine, for many years. In 1883 he was chosen Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church, its highest office. His wife died the next year. He died at home in Edinburgh on July 31, 1889, at eighty, and was buried in the Canongate Kirkyard.

What he taught

Bonar's message was simple: peace with God doesn't come from looking at yourself. It comes from believing what God has said about His Son. In God's Way of Peace he wrote to the troubled seeker:

The sinner's peace with God is not to come from his own character.

God's Way of Peace, chapter II, Man's Own Character No Ground of Peace

He knew how easily an anxious person turns even his seeking into a kind of saviour:

You are in earnest now; but I fear you are making your earnestness your Christ, and actually using it as a reason for not trusting Christ immediately.

God's Way of Peace, chapter IX, Believe Just Now

He held that holiness grows out of that peace, not the other way round. In God's Way of Holiness he warned against any teaching that moves the ground of peace from Christ to the believer's own progress:

The cross makes us whole; not all at once indeed, but it does the work effectually.

God's Way of Holiness, chapter V, The Cross and Its Power

And he asked a great deal of pastors. In Words to Winners of Souls he wrote:

Nearness to him, intimacy with him, assimilation to his character — these are the elements of a ministry of power.

Words to Winners of Souls, chapter II, The Minister's True Life and Walk

He also wrote the lives of friends and family who served Christ: his friend John Milne of Perth, and his son-in-law, G. Theophilus Dodds, who died in 1882 as an evangelist in France.

Why he's still read

Bonar is still read because he's kind to anxious people and plain about the gospel. He doesn't load the seeker with more to do. He points him to the cross and says, believe it now. Pastors still read Words to Winners of Souls to test their own hearts, and people who sing "I heard the voice of Jesus say" are singing the same message he preached.

Where to start

TheWay Library has eighteen of his books, all free to read. If you're new to him, start with God's Way of Peace. For a new Christian, try Follow the Lamb, a short book of counsel that ends with four of his hymns. If you're grieving, read The Night of Weeping. If you're a pastor, read Words to Winners of Souls.

Our guide to Horatius Bonar's books explains all eighteen, and our collection of Horatius Bonar quotes gathers his best lines. You'll find all his books on the Horatius Bonar author page.

Also in this article

More about God's Way of Peace