Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Lang, John Marshall
LANG, JOHN MARSHALL (1834–1909), principal of the University of Aberdeen, born on 14 May 1834 at the manse of Glassford, Lanarkshire, was second son in a family of eleven children of Gavin Lang, minister of the parish, a 'small living' of 160l. a year. His mother, Agnes Roberton Marshall of Nielsland, granddaughter of a wealthy Lanarkshire laird, traced her descent to John Row [q. v.]; she proved an admirable housewife and exercised great influence on her children. Sir Robert Hamilton Lang, K.C.M.G., is Marshall Lang's surviving brother.
After a somewhat superficial education under private tutors at the manse, Lang spent a year at the High School of Glasgow, and then studied at Glasgow University under Professors William Ramsay [q. v.], Edmund Lushington [q. v. Suppl. I.] and Lord Kelvin [q. v. Suppl. II]. He was chiefly influenced by the professors of philosophy, William Fleming and Robert Buchanan [q. v.], but he did not graduate. Proceeding to the divinity hall, he was stimulated by some senior fellow-students, including John Caird [q. v. Suppl. I], A. K. H. Boyd [q. v. Suppl. I], and George Washington Sprott [q. v. Suppl. II], but it was only when he received licence that his capabilities became apparent. A brief assistantship at Dunoon sufficed to make him widely known as a preacher. At twenty-two he was called to the important charge of the East Parish of St. Nicholas, Aberdeen, where he was ordained on 26 June 1856. His ministry in Aberdeen, although it lasted only two years, formed an epoch in the religious life not only of the city but of the district. In the reform of church worship he took a forward step. He remarked, in a sermon, that if there was reason for the choir standing at praise, that reason was valid for the congregation also standing. The congregation stood for the next act of praise. He printed his sermon and it ran through three editions. The presbytery interfered, and notice was given for its next meeting of a motion censuring him and inhibiting the innovation. Dr. Robert Lee [q. v.] wrote from Edinburgh begging him to stand firm; but he feared obduracy might hurt the cause, and he cautiously obeyed the presbytery's direction to return to use and wont. If he could not be a protagonist in the movement, he proved again and again that he was a pioneer.
In 1858, owing to ill-health, Lang left Aberdeen for the country parish of Fyvie, Aberdeenshire, where he learned much of rural Scottish life and its needs. In Jan. 1865 he removed to Glasgow to a newly built church in the Anderston (or west end) district of the great parish of the Barony. There he formed a large congregation, and introduced with due caution the ritual improvements which he desired. In Anderston church the first organ actually used in the worship of the Church of Scotland was set up, and psalms were chanted in the prose version. When Glasgow was threatened with a visitation of cholera, Lang, aided by Alexander Neil Somerville [q. v.], of the Free church, and (Sir) William Tennant Gairdner [q, v. Suppl. II], pressed on the town council the adoption of sanitary measures which averted the plague. In 1868 he was transferred to the Edinburgh suburban parish of Morningside. In 1872 he, with Professor William Milligan [q. v. Suppl. I], was deputy from the Church of Scotland to the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America.
Next year Lang succeeded Norman Macleod [q. v.] at the Barony of Glasgow, where his incumbency lasted twenty-seven and a half years. He took from the outset a full share in the public life of Glasgow; for nine years he served on the school board; for twenty-seven years he was chaplain to the 1st Lanark volunteers; he acted on the commission for the housing of the poor, and was for many years chairman of the Glasgow Home Mission Union, an effort to unite all the churches in charitable work. His ministerial labours were unceasing. He began, what was then rare in Glasgow, services on Sunday evenings, which were crowded. He raised the hitherto unexampled sum of 28,000l. for the purpose of rebuilding his church. The new church was dedicated in 1889; it contained a chapel provided by his sister, Mrs. Cunliffe, in memory of her husband, which was adorned with the first fresco painting of our Lord that had been seen in the Church of Scotland (Aberdeen Eccesiol. Soc. Trans.). There he instituted daily service, mostly taken by himself, and, in the church, services every day in Holy Week, and at Christmas.
At the same time he was prominent in the general assembly, where he became convener of its committee on correspondence with the foreign reformed churches. In that capacity he attended the assembly of the Moravian church at Klobuck in Hungary, and of the Danish church at Copenhagen. In 1887 he went to Australia to take the services in the Scots church, Melbourne, for four months, returning by way of San Francisco, Buffalo, and New York. He was made convenor in 1890 of the Assembly's commission to 'inquire into the religious condition of the people of Scotland.' The work occupied six years, and meant a personal visitation of almost all the parishes of Scotland. Lang's annual speech, as he gave in his reports, was the great event of successive general assemblies. In 1893 he was moderator of the general assembly.
Anxious to heal division in the church he actively promoted the Pan-Presbyterian Alliance; he attended and spoke at all its quadrennial conferences, from the first at Edinburgh in 1876 to that of which he was president at Washington in 1899. For the Philadelphia Conference (1 881) he wrote a 'Letter of Greeting,' which was translated into many languages. He joined in the conferences for Christian unity in Scotland initiated by Bishop George Wilkinson [q. v. Suppl. II] and in his company he addressed the general assembly of the United Free church.
In 1898, on the death of Sir William Geddes [q. v.], principal of Aberdeen University, Lang offered himself for the vacant office and was chosen by the Crown. He rapidly vindicated the appointment by tact and business capacity. The chief events of his principalship took place in Sept. 1906, when the (belated) quater-centenary of the university was celebrated, and King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra open^ the new buildings which his energy largely he]})ed to complete, at Marischal College. Lang was made C.V.O. in celebration of the occasion. He had received from Glasgow the degree of D.D. after his appointment to the Barony, and that of LL.D. in 1901. He was also an honorary member of the Imperial University of St. Petersburg, of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg, and of the Egyptian Institute (1906). He was Baird lecturer at Glasgow in 1901.
In Dec. 1908 his health began to fail. He died at Aberdeen on 2 May 1009. He was buried beside Bishop Patrick Forbes [q. v.] within the ruined transcript of Aberdeen Cathedral.
Lang married at Fyvie in 1859 Hannah Agnes, daughter of P. Hay Keith, D.D., minister of Hamilton. By her he had seven sons and a daughter. His third son, Cosmo Gordon Lang (b. 1864, and named after Lang's patron at Fyvie) became Archbishop of York in 1909.
Lang was author of several devotional volumes, including : 1. 'Heaven and Home, a Book for the Fireside,' 1880. 2. 'The Last Supper of Our Lord,' Edinburgh, 1881. 3. 'Ancient Religions of Central America,' Edinburgh, 1882. 4. 'Life: is it worth living ?' London, 1883. 5. 'The Anglican Church,' Edinburgh, 1884. 6. 'Homiletics on St. Luke's Gospel,' 1889. 7. 'Gideon, a Study Practical and Historical,' 1890. 8. 'The Expansion of the Christian Life ' (Duff Lectures), Edinburgh, 1897. 9. 'The Church and its Social Mission' (Baird Lectures), Edinburgh, 1902. A portrait by his friend and elder, Mr. E. R. Caltenis, hangs in the session-house of the Barony church. A bronze memorial medallion was unveiled on 9 Dec. 1911 in the same church.
[Memories of John Marshall Lang, by his widow, privately printed, Edinburgh, 1910; information from members of his family; The Renascence of Worship, by the Rev. John Kerr, Edinburgh, 1909; Reports of the Schemes of the Church of Scotland; personal knowledge.]