Fairbairn, ANDREW M.

Fairbairn, ANDREW M., a learned theologian, was born in Edinburgh in 1839, studied at the university there, and after the requisite theological training became pastor of an Evangelical Union church at Bathgate, from which he obtained leave of absence to pursue his studies in Germany. After his return he preached in Aberdeen until his able theological writings earned him in 1878 the principalship of the Airedale Congregational College at Bradford. In the same year he was made D.D. by his own university, and in 1881-83 he was Muir lecturer there on comparative religions. His brilliant and learned essays in the Contemporary Review early attracted attention, and his Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and History (1876), Studies in the Life of Christ (1880), Christianity in the First and Nineteenth Centuries (1883), The City of God (1883), Religion in History and in the Life of To-day (1844), The Place of Christ in Modern Theology (1893), and Catholicism, Roman and Anglican (1899). In 1888 he was appointed principal of Mansfield College, a Congregationalist college at Oxford.