Wallace, John Aikman

Author

b Edinburgh 1802, d Trinity, nr Brechin, Midlothian (Angus) 1870. An ordained minister in the Ch of Scotland, serving at Hawick (Border), who left at the Disruption of 1843 for the Free Church along with Thos Chalmers, Horatius Bonar (qv) and hundreds of other clergy. He is now remembered mainly for his one enduring hymn originally contributed to the Scottish Christian Herald in 1839, and included in anthologies of Christian quotations, notably on prayer. His work features in English evangelical hymn-books rather than any recent Scottish ones; he achieves a brief note of 3 lines only in the Appendix (part 1) to Julian. A striking photographic portrait survives. (Translations by another J Wallace of some classic Lat hymns, published in 1874, are also noted in JJ’s Dictionary; and one other hymnal gives JAW’s name as ‘James C Wallace’, apparently in error. No.613.