Andrew, D.D., an eminent divine of the Church of Scotland, was born 11th July 1779, in the parish of Sanquhar, Dumfriesshire, of which his father, Dr John Thomson, was then minister. Early in his teens he entered the University of Edinburgh, where he went through the usual literary and theological course of study. The most distinguished professors in the university then were Dalzell, Playfair, and Dugald Stewart; and among its students were Henry Grey, Robert Laidlaw, John Leyden, Thomas Brown, Francis Horner, Henry Cockburn, and Henry Brougham; the most illustrious of whom has recently, on assuming the headship of their Alma Mater, recalled with regret the name of Andrew Thomson. In 1802, the presbytery of Kelso licensed him as a preacher, and shortly after ordained him minister of Sprouston in Roxburghshire, where he laboured for six years with diligence and acceptance as a country pastor. Soon after his settlement here, he married Miss Carmichael, by whom he had ten children, seven of them surviving him. A wider sphere of usefulness was opened up to Mr Thomson by his translation to the East Church of Perth, from which he was removed, in 1810, to that of New Greyfriars in Edinburgh. At that time the Moderate party was all-powerful in the Church and the Tories in the State; and even then, Thomson had declared himself a supporter of the Evangelical party, Andrew, and a Whig in his political principles. These were days, too, when Whig and Tory meant something more than they do now—when, indeed, a Whig was considered little better than a Jacobin. Hence his appointment to a city church met with the most vehement opposition; and would probably never have been carried had not the Town Council been actuated by extraneous motives. But, as Lord Cockburn says,

"It was necessary to fill the churches for the sake of the rent, and churches could only be filled by putting in ministers for whom congregations would pay. This business principle operated seriously in Edinburgh, where the magistrates had laid out large sums in building and repairing kirk. This brought Andrew Thomson into this city, which was the opening of his career. His Whig reputation was so odious, that it seemed at one time as if civic beggary would be preferred to it; and most vehemently was his entrance into our untroubled fold opposed. But at length, after as much plotting as if it had been for the popedom, he got in; and in a few years rewarded his electors by drawing about £1800 a year for them."

Once established in a metropolitan pulpit, Thomson did not fail to make his influence most powerfully felt; and it was an influence for good. Soon after his appointment, while his eloquence in the pulpit was conciliating the attention and esteem of the most educated classes, and powerfully enforcing the great truths of Christianity, he, along with some clerical friends, set on foot the Christian Instructor, a monthly magazine, intended to promote the views of the Evangelical party and the cause of sound theology. Of this magazine he was not only the editor, but the author of a large proportion of its contents. He also engaged in other literary labours, and contributed several important articles to the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia. In 1814, the new and handsome church of St George's having been completed, in what was then the extreme west end of the city, he was appointed by the Town Council to that charge, which he held till his death. Here, in the midst of all his more public labours, Thomson discharged most zealously and assiduously the duties of a parish minister, caring for the welfare of his flock in all respects, and doing his utmost for their intellectual, moral, and religious improvement. Perceiving the deficiency of means of education in the parish, he formed and carried out the plan of erecting a day-school within its bounds. Not only did he raise the necessary funds for this purpose, but he willingly undertook the drudgery of preparing school-books even for the most elementary classes; and, when necessary, himself taught in the school. The experiment proved eminently successful. Indeed it may be said to have introduced a new era in Scottish education; and many of her present advantages in this respect Edinburgh owes to Andrew Thomson. Many of his pupils have themselves become teachers of no mean ability and success; and his school-books are at this day, if the least ambitious, not the least read of his writings. It was not to be expected that a man in such a prominent position, so opposed to the prevailing party, and of such a vehement and uncompromising spirit, could escape the obloquy and misrepresentation of opponents; and a remarkable instance of this occurred in 1817, on the occasion of the death of the Princess Charlotte. In the universal grief caused by that sad event, the churches were in many places opened for Divine Service on the day of the funeral. Mr Thomson, along with many others, strongly objected to this as a dangerous innovation on the Presbyterian worship; and St George's, alone of the city churches, remained closed on that day. A torrent of abuse was poured on the head of the minister who had presumed to have conscientious objections to what his brethren scrupled not to do; and the outcry was hardly quelled by the audacious preacher's appropriate sermon on the next Sab- bath, and by a pamphlet in his defence by Dr Mc'Crie, the biographer of Knox and Melville. With him Mr Thomson had become acquainted shortly after his settlement in Edinburgh; and a cordial friendship subsisted between them, interrupted only by death. In 1820, the ruling party in the church, stung by the frequent attacks of the Christian Instructor, introduced a motion of censure in the General Assembly, which was carried, but only by a majority of one. The Evangelical party were gradually gaining ground, though still forming a minority in the Church Courts. The great question of the day was about Pluralities, or the holding of other offices, generally professorships, along with the ministry; a practice defended by the Moderates, but opposed in every case by the Evangelicals.

The last great debate on the subject was in the Assembly of 1824, on the case of Principal Macfarlane of Glasgow, when the eloquence of Dr Chalmers at the bar, and of Dr Thomson in the house, had to yield to the force of numbers. But the matter that occupied most of Dr Thomson's public labours in the later years of his life was the celebrated Apocrypha controversy. This discussion, now well-nigh forgotten, was occasioned by the British and Foreign Bible Society circulating on the continent copies of the Bible with the Apocryphal books annexed or intermixed. The first who publicly opposed this practice was Mr R. Haldane in 1824; and it was not till 1826 that Dr Thomson entered the discussion by preparing the "second statement" of the Edinburgh Bible Society, of which he was secretary. Certainly this controversy, into which Dr Thomson entered with all his heart, was carried on in what seems now an extremely vehement and bitter style; but perhaps it is not more remarkable for these characteristics than were most of the discussions of that day. On both sides there were doubtless ranged good and sincere men; and on both sides, as none better knew than Dr Thomson, the heat of debate elicited hasty and intemperate invectives; but there can be little doubt that the cause which Thomson advocated, and which ultimately triumphed, was that of truth and uprightness. During the continuance of this long and voluminous contest, Dr Thomson took some part in the discussions occasioned by the opinions of Edward Irving and his friends; and published a series of sermons on The Doctrine of Universal Pardon. His attention was also about this time directed to the subject of West India slavery, and his last public effort was in behalf of emancipation. At a public meeting on the subject, held in October 1830, after Jeffrey had delivered a speech advocating gradual emancipation, Dr Thomson rose, and deprecating all half measures, demanded the immediate abolition of slavery. His sudden and vehement appeal produced such an effect, that the meeting was divided, and broke up in confusion; but at one held soon after, the course he recommended was approved, and a petition to that effect was subsequently signed by 22,000 persons. On the morning of the last day of his life, 9th February 1831, Dr Thomson rose in his usual health; and after baptising a child, left his house to pay some parochial visits. Thereafter he attended a meeting of presbytery, and gave his usual attention to the business in hand. He returned home with a friend, from whom he parted at his own door in Melville Street. While standing there for a moment, he turned round as if to say something, and suddenly fell down insensible. Medical aid was summoned, but in vain: thus suddenly and thus calmly his spirit had fled. The solemn and unexpected event produced an unprecedented impression in Edinburgh and throughout Scotland. He was buried on the 15th of February, near his friend and father in the church Sir Henry Moncreiff, in St Cuthbert's churchyard; 2000 mourners followed his remains to the grave, and 10,000 spectators beheld the sad procession. So passed from among men a man who did a great work in his age, and left his mark on the succeeding one. It is impossible within the limits of this notice to delineate his character: its great features, as visible to the public, may be gathered from his deeds; an echo of his eloquence may be caught from his writings; but the man himself cannot be better portrayed than by two who knew him intimately. Dr Mc'Crie says:

"Dr Thomson was by constitution a reformer; he felt a strong sympathy with those great men who, in a former age, won renown by assailing the hydra of error, and of civil and religious tyranny; and his character partook of theirs. In particular, he bore no inconsiderable resemblance to Luther, both in excellencies and defects; his Leonine nobleness and potency, his masculine eloquence, his facetiousness and pleasantry, the fondness which he showed for the fascinating charms of music, and the irritability and vehemence which he occasionally exhibited, to which some will add the necessity which this imposed on him to make retractions,—which, while they threw a partial shade over his fame, taught his admirers the needful lesson, that he was a man subject to like passions and infirmities with others. But the fact is, though hitherto known to few, and the time has now come for revealing it, that some of these passions which were most objectionable, and exposed him to the greatest obloquy, were neither composed by Dr Thomson, nor seen by him, until they were published to the world; and that in one instance, which has given rise to the most unsparing abuse, he paid the expenses of a prosecution, and submitted to make a public apology, for an offence of which he was as innocent as the child unborn, rather than give up the name of the friend who was morally responsible for the deed,—an example of generous self-devotion which has few parallels."

And Dr Chalmers says:

"To myself he was at all times a joyous, hearty, gallant, honourable, and out-and-out trustworthy friend; while in harmony with a former observation, there were beautifully projected on this broad and general groundwork some of friendliness, kindness, and most considerate delicacies. By far the most declared and distinguishable feature in his character was a dauntless and direct and right-forward honesty, that needed no disguise for itself, and was impatient of ought like dissimulation or disguise in other men. There were within a heart and a hilarity in his companionship, that everywhere carried its own welcome along with it; and there were none who moved with greater acceptance, or yielded a greater ascendant, over so wide a circle of living society."

Assuredly he was a man whom posterity should not willingly let die; and if he is now less remembered than he deserved, it is only "caret quia vate sacro."

His principal works are:—Sermons on Infidelity, 1821; Lectures on portions of the Psalms, 1826; Lectures on Select portions of Scripture, 2d edition, 1828; Sermons on various subjects, 2d edition, 1830; Sermons on Universal Pardon, 1830; Sermons and Sacramental Addresses (published posthumously, with a memoir prefixed), 1831.

(J. S. C.)

Thomson, Anthony Todd, a medical writer and practitioner of considerable celebrity, was born in Edinburgh on the 7th of January 1778, and was educated at the High School there with Brougham, Jeffrey, Cockburn, and other notable men of the day. He studied medicine, and became a member of the once famous Speculative Society in 1798. Having graduated next year, he went to London, and commenced practice in Sloane Street, Chelsea. The first literary work of this singularly industrious individual was his Conspicuous Pharmacopoeia, 1810. In 1811 he published The London Dispensatory, and in 1821 his Lectures on Botany. The Conspicuous and the Dispensatory have already gone through very many editions. He was appointed Professor of Materia Medica to the London University in 1828, and to the chair of Medical Jurisprudence in 1832. During the latter year he published his Elements of Materia Medica, and gave his lectures on medical jurisprudence to the Lancet in 1836-37. The health of Dr Thomson began to give way in 1848, and he fell a victim to bronchitis on the 3d of July 1849. One of his last works was his Domestic Management of the Sick. Room; and his book on Diseases of the Skin, with which he was occupied at his death, has since been given to the world, accompanied by a memoir of the author by Dr Parkes. The wife of Dr A. T. Thomson has likewise contributed pretty largely to historical biography.