Biography
Robert Murray M'Cheyne was born on May 21, 1813, in Edinburgh, Scotland, the youngest of the children of Adam M'Cheyne, a lawyer who held the post of Writer to the Signet. The family was comfortable, respected and cultured, and the home was ordered by the habits of the Church of Scotland, though it was not marked by deep personal faith. Robert was a quick and cheerful boy. He entered the Edinburgh High School and then the University of Edinburgh at the age of fourteen. He won prizes for his poetry and for his speaking. He was fond of music and of company, and he was a good dancer. He was a young man who stood well in the world, and he gave little thought to the state of his soul.
The change began with a death. His eldest brother, David, a fine young man who had been a friend to him and who had come to a living faith in Christ, died in 1831. David's death shook the household. Robert looked at his own life and at the faith that his brother had held in the face of dying, and he saw that he did not have it. In the months that followed, he read the Bible with a new seriousness. He later said that the change came slowly, as the light of day comes into a room. He gave up the dancing and the shallow pleasures and turned to Christ for forgiveness. In 1831, at the age of eighteen, he began to prepare himself for the ministry, and he entered the Divinity Hall to study under Thomas Chalmers, the great leader of the evangelical party in the Church of Scotland.
At the Divinity Hall, he formed friendships that shaped his life. Among them was Andrew Bonar, who became his closest friend and later his biographer. The two men prayed together and shared a longing for the revival of the church. He was licensed to preach in 1835. He took up work as an assistant to the minister of Larbert and Dunipace, near Falkirk, where he learned the work of a pastor. He visited the sick and the poor. His health was already delicate, and he was often tired. On November 24, 1836, at the age of twenty-three, he was ordained as the minister of St. Peter's Church, in Dundee, a new parish in a district of weavers and mill workers. It was a hard and crowded place, where thousands of families lived in poverty, and most of them had no connection with the church.
He gave himself to the work with all that he had. He rose early to pray and to read the Scriptures, and he spent hours in prayer before he stood up to preach. He visited every household in his parish. He had a weekly prayer meeting, and he taught the children. He preached with simplicity and with tenderness. He spoke of the love of Christ and of the danger of sin, and he did not weary his hearers with learning. He was a man who looked his people in the eye and told them that they must be saved. He believed that a minister's holiness is the power of his ministry. He once wrote that his people's greatest need was his own personal holiness.
In 1838, his strength gave way, and his doctors told him to rest. In the next year, 1839, he was asked to join a mission of inquiry to Palestine, sent by the Church of Scotland to look into the condition of the Jewish people. His companions were Andrew Bonar, Alexander Black and Alexander Keith. They traveled through Egypt, the Holy Land and Syria. He was moved by the sight of the places where Jesus had walked, and he longed to see the Jews turn to their Messiah. While he was away, a young preacher, William Chalmers Burns, took his pulpit in Dundee. A revival began in St. Peter's. When M'Cheyne returned in November 1839, he found the church crowded and many of his people in distress about their souls. The revival continued for years, and hundreds were converted.
He was a man of many gifts. He wrote hymns and verse. His best-known hymn, Jehovah Tsidkenu, which means The Lord Our Righteousness, was written in 1834. He devised a plan for reading the Bible, which would take a reader through the Old Testament once and the New Testament and Psalms twice in a year. It has been used by countless believers. He wrote letters to his people, which were full of concern for their souls. He traveled as a preacher to other parts of Scotland and to the north of England. He had a deep love for the Jewish people and a burden for the unevangelized world.
He was also a man of weakness. His body could not keep pace with his spirit. He often said that he had been too hard on his body, and near the end, he regretted that he had treated it as a servant instead of a friend. He was lonely, and he never married. In the winter of 1843, typhus fever struck Dundee. He went among the sick, and he caught the fever. He died on March 25, 1843, at the age of twenty-nine. Thousands lined the streets for his funeral.
His friend Andrew Bonar wrote his Memoir and Remains, which was published in 1844. It became one of the most widely read Christian biographies of the century. Many young men read it and gave themselves to the ministry. His life shows what a short life, given wholly to God, can leave behind. He was a pastor whose holiness gave weight to his words, and his example still calls ministers to prayer.