Helen Alexander was born at Linton in 1654, and from her youth up was an earnest Christian. She resolutely avowed her adherence to presbyterianism and ‘the covenant’ before the lordliest of the land. She ‘ministered’ dauntlessly to the fugitives. She stood by the friendless at the bars. She spent days and nights in prison with ‘the suffering remnant.’ She died in March 1729, aged 75.
[Dr. Simpson's Voice from the Desert, and his Traditions of the Covenanters.]
ALEXANDER, JOHN (d. 1743), presbyterian minister, was a native of Ulster, but connected with the Scottish noble family of the Alexanders, earls of Stirling. He was educated at Glasgow, and settled in England. Wilson identifies him with the John Alexander who was pupil of Isaac Noble and congregationalist minister at Gloucester 1712–18. It is certain that he was presbyterian minister at Stratford-on-Avon, where he educated students for the ministry. He afterwards removed to Dublin, where he was installed minister of Plunket Street presbyterian congregation in November 1730. He was moderator of the general synod of Ulster, 1734, and died 1 Nov. 1743. He was an excellent linguist and patristic scholar; he published ‘The Primitive Doctrine of Christ's Divinity … in an Essay on Irenæus …’ 1727. He left two sons, John and Benjamin: the former is noticed below; the latter, who died in 1768, was a doctor of medicine, and translated J. B. Morgagni's ‘De Sedibus’ (‘The Seats and Causes of Disease, investigated by Anatomy,’ 1769).
[Funeral Sermon by Rev. Robert Macmaster, 1743; Witherow's Historical and Literary Memorials of Presbyterianism in Ireland, 1st series, 1879; Wilson's MSS. at Dr. Williams's Library; Monthly Repos. 1816, p. 93.]
ALEXANDER, JOHN (1736–1765), commentator, born in Dublin 26 Jan. 1736, was the son of John Alexander, M.A., and Hannah, who died 5 Oct. 1768, aged 63. His mother was the daughter of Rev. John Higgs, of Evesham, who died in September 1728. He entered Daventry Academy in 1751, where he occupied the same room with Priestley; and the two, sensible of the linguistic deficiencies of Daventry [see Ashworth, Caleb], became hard students of Greek together. Alexander became one of the best Greek scholars of his time. He studied biblical criticism under Dr. George Benson in London. He became presbyterian minister of Longdon, twelve miles from Birmingham. He died suddenly on the night of Saturday, 28 Dec. 1765, just after finishing a sermon (afterwards published) on death. He contributed to ‘The Library,’ a magazine edited by Kippis (1761–2), essays of some humour on ‘Defence of Persecution,’ ‘Dulness,’ ‘Common Sense,’ ‘Misanthropy,’ ‘Present State of Wit in Britain,’ &c. Posthumously were published his ‘Paraphrase on 1 Cor. xv.’ and ‘Commentary on Rom. vi., vii., viii., with Sermon (Ecc. ix. 10),’ edited by Rev. John Palmer, 1766. A sermon of his appears in J. H. Bransby's ‘Sermons for the Use of Families,’ vol. i. 1808.
[Biog. Brit. (Kippis) ii. 207; Priestley's Autobiog. incorporated in Rutt's Memoirs and Correspondence of Priestley, 1831; Beale's Memorials of Old Meeting House, Birmingham, 1882, p. 38, app. 113; Christ. Reformer, 1852, p. 609.]
ALEXANDER, MICHAEL SOLOMON, D.D. (1799–1845), the first Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, was born of Jewish parents in May 1799 at Schönlanke, or Trzonka, a small manufacturing town in the grand-duchy of Posen. He was brought up from his infancy in the strictest principles of Talmudical Judaism, and at the age of sixteen became a teacher of the Talmud and of the German language among his brethren in Germany. In the year 1820 he repaired to London, and settled as private tutor in a country town. He soon began to study the New Testament in a polemical spirit; but the perusal, after more than four years' study, resulted in his conversion, and on Wednesday, 22 June 1825, he was baptised, in the presence of over a thousand people, at St. Andrew's Church, Plymouth, in which town he had settled as reader or officiating rabbi to the Jewish congregation, after one or two changes, including a residence at Norwich in the same capacity. Soon afterwards Alexander removed to Dublin, where he became a teacher of Hebrew, and was ordained by the archbishop of the diocese, Dr. William Magee, to a small charge in Dublin on 10 June 1827. On 8 July following he delivered his first discourse at the Episcopal Jews' Chapel, Palestine Place, London, with which he was afterwards to be long connected.
Alexander soon entered into engagements with the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, and in December 1827 received priest's orders from the Bishop of Kildare, and proceeded to Danzig, as his fixed station and head-quarters from which to evangelise the Jews of West Prussia and Posen. In May 1830 he returned to England, where for nearly twelve years he
