Robert Smith Candlish

Robert Smith Candlish (March 23, 1806 – October 19, 1873) was a Scottish minister serving for many years in St. George's Free Church in Edinburgh's New Town.

He was born at Edinburgh, and spent his early years in Glasgow, where he graduated in 1823. During the years 1823–1826 he went through the prescribed course at the divinity hall, then presided over by Dr Stevenson MacGill. On leaving, he accompanied a pupil as private tutor to Eton College, where he stayed two years.

In 1829 Candlish entered upon his life's work, having been licensed to preach during the summer vacation of the previous year. After short assistant pastorates at St Andrews, Glasgow, and Bonhill, Dumbartonshire (now Dunbartonshire), he became assistant minister to Mr. Martin of St George's, Edinburgh. He attracted the attention of his audience by his intellectual keenness, emotional fervour, spiritual insight and power of dramatic representation of character and life. His theology was that of the Scottish Calvinistic school, and he gathered round him one of the largest congregations in the city.

In 1840 he was living at 9 Randolph Crescent in Edinburgh's West End, a huge terraced townhouse.

Candlish took an interest in ecclesiastical questions, and he soon became involved in the struggle which was then agitating Church of Scotland. His first Assembly speech, delivered in 1839, placed him among the leaders of the party that afterwards formed the Free Church, and his influence in bringing about the Disruption of 1843 was inferior only to that of Thomas Chalmers. He took his stand on two principles: the right of the people to choose their ministers, and the independence of the church in things spiritual. On his advice Hugh Miller was appointed editor of the Witness and Miller wrote much of the weekly copy.

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