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BOGUE, DAVID, the Father,
as he has been called, of the London Missionary Society, was born at
Hallydown in the Parish of Coldingham, Berwickshire, on the 18th February,
1750. His father, who farmed his own estate, was descended of a
respectable family which had been long settled in the county. His studies
are said to have been carried on at Dunse under the superintendence of the
distinguished Cruikshanks, not less remembered for the success of his
tuition, than for the severity of his discipline. He afterwards removed to
the university of Edinburgh, and studied moral philosophy under Adam
Ferguson, the well-known author of the "History of Civil
Society." After undergoing the usual course of study, and being
licensed as a preacher in connection with the church of Scotland, from
want, perhaps, of very flattering prospects in his native country, he
removed to London (1771), and was for some time employed in the humble,
but meritorious, capacity of usher in an academy at Edmonton, afterwards
at Hampstead, and finally with the Rev. Mr Smith of Camberwell, whom he
also assisted in the discharge of his ministerial duties both at
Camberwell and at Silver Street, London, where he held a lectureship, the
duties of which were at one time performed by the celebrated John Home.
The zeal with which Mr Bogue discharged his duties in both of these
capacities, contributed not less to the satisfaction of Mr Smith, than to
the increase of his own popularity. At length, on the resignation of the
minister of an independent chapel at Gosport, Mr Bogue was unanimously
chosen to fill the vacant charge. The duties of his new situation were
such as to require all the strength of judgment and uncompromising
inflexibility, tempered with Christian meekness, which entered so largely
into his character. The charge was one of great difficulty, and of
peculiar importance. The members of the congregation were divided among
themselves, and part of them had indeed withdrawn from the communion
altogether, during the ministry of his predecessor, and formed themselves
into a separate congregation, under a rival minister; but the exemplary
conduct of Mr Bogue, and his zeal in the discharge of his duties, were
such, that he had scarce occupied the pulpit twelve months when a re-union
was effected. His fame, as a solid and substantial scholar, and an
evangelical and indefatigable minister, now spread rapidly; and, early in
March 1780, he entered into the design of becoming tutor to an
establishment for directing the studies of young men destined for the
Christian ministry in connexion with the Independent communion. For the
ability with which this establishment was conducted, both now and when it
afterwards became a similar one for those destined for missionary labours,
his praise is indeed in all the churches. It was in this period, though
occupied with the details of what most men would have felt as a full
occupation of their time, that his ever-active mind turned its attention
to the formation of a grand missionary scheme, which afterwards resulted
in the London Missionary Society. The influence which the establishment of
this institution was calculated to have on the public mind was grand and
extensive, and the springing up of the British and Foreign Bible Society,
and the Religious Tract Society at short intervals, proves how much good
was effected by the impetus thus given by one master-mind. In the
establishment of both of these he likewise took an active part,
contributing to the latter body the first of a series of publications
which have been of great usefulness. In the year 1796, Mr Bogue was called
upon to show whether he, who had professed himself such a friend to
missionary enterprise, was sufficiently imbued with the spirit of the
gospel to enable him to forsake home and the comforts of civilized
society, to devote himself to its sacred cause. The call alluded to, was
made—and it was not made in vain—by Robert Haldane, Esq. of Airdrie,
who, to furnish funds for this grand enterprise, sold his estate. Their
design was, in connection with two other divines, who had recently left
the established church of Scotland, and become Independent ministers, to
preach the gospel to the natives of India, and likewise to form a seminary
for the instruction of fellow-labourers in the same field. The names of
the two other ministers who intended to join in this, perhaps the
noblest enterprise of Christian philanthropy of which our age can boast,
and which will ever reflect a lustre on the church with which it
originated, were the Rev. Greville Ewing of Glasgow, and the Rev. W. Innes
of Edinburgh. But the design was frustrated by the jealousy of the East
India Company, who refused their sanction to the undertaking—a most
fortunate circumstance, as it afterwards appeared, in as far as the
missionaries were individually concerned; for a massacre of Europeans took
place at the exact spot where it was intended the mission should have been
established, and from which these Christian labourers could scarcely have
hoped to escape. In 1815, Mr Bogue received the diploma of Doctor of
Divinity, from the Senatus acádemicus of Yale college, North America, but
such was the modesty of his character that he always bore this honour
meekly and unwillingly.
His zeal for the cause of
missions, to which he consecrated his life, continued to the last: he may
truly be said to have died in the cause. He annually made tours in
different parts of the country in behalf of the Missionary Society; and it
was on a journey of this kind, in which he had been requested to assist at
a meeting of the Sussex Auxiliary Society, that he took ill at the house
of the Rev. Mr Goulty of Brighton, and, in spite of the best
medical advice, departed this life in the morning of the 25th of October,
1825, after a short illness. The effect of this event upon the various
churches and religious bodies with which Dr Bogue was connected, was
great: no sooner did the intelligence reach London, than an extraordinary
meeting of the Missionary Society was called, (October 26,) in which
resolutions were passed expressive of its sense of the bereavement, and of
the benefits which the deceased had conferred upon the society, by the
active part he had taken in its projection and establishment, and
subsequently "by his prayers, his writings, his example, his
journeys, and, above all, by his direction and superintendence of the
missionary seminary at Gosport."
The only works of any
extent for which we are indebted to the pen of Dr Bogue, are, "An
Essay on the Divine Authority of the New Testament." "Discourses
on the Millennium," and a "History of Dissenters," which he
undertook in conjunction with his pupil and friend Dr Bennet. The first of
these he commenced at the request of the London Missionary Society, with
the purpose of its being appended to an edition of the New Testament,
which the society intended to circulate extensively in France. In
consideration of the wide diffusion of infidelity in that country, he
wisely directed his attention to the evidence required by this class of
individuals - addressing them always in the language of kindness and
persuasion, "convinced," as he characteristically remarks,
"that the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God,"—and
if usefulness be taken as a test of excellence this work is so in a very
high degree. No work of a religious character, if we except perhaps the
Pilgrim’s Progress, has been so popular and so widely circulated: it has
been translated into the French, Italian, German, and Spanish languages,
and has been widely circulated on the continent of Europe, where, under
the divine blessing, it has been eminently useful. In France, in
particular, and on the distant shores of America, its influence has been
felt in the convincing and converting of many to the cause of Christ. It
is, indeed, the most useful of all his works. The discourses on the
millennium are entirely practical and devotional, and though they want the
straining for effect, and the ingenious speculations with which some have
clothed this subject, and gained for themselves an ephemeral popularity
– for to all such trickery Dr Bogue had a thorough aversion – they
will be found strikingly to display the enlarged views and sterling good
sense of their venerable author.
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