Henry Craik (evangelist)

Henry Craik ( born August 8, 1805 in Prestonpans, East Lothian, Scotland, † January 22, 1866 in Bristol, England) was a Scottish Hebraist and free-church preacher.

Life

Craik was the third son of the priest and teacher William Craik († 1830) and his wife Lillie Paterson († 1848). He grew up in the village of Kennoway ( Fife ) and attended the Parochial School, where his father taught. From 1820 to 1825 he studied philosophy at the University of St Andrews ( with Thomas Chalmers ); In 1826 he spent a semester at the University of Edinburgh. In the same year he experienced through the influence of his fellow students John Urquhart a conversion.

1826-28 Craik worked as a private tutor in the family of Anthony Norris Groves dentist in Exeter; 1828-31, he held the same position at John Synge Teignmouth. In July 1829 he got here the aspiring missionary Georg Müller, with whom he henceforth shared a lifelong friendship.

In his spare time Craik preached often in Free Church chapels, as well as in the Baptist church in Shaldon ( Devonshire ), which appointed him in April 1831 Pastor. A year later, in May 1832 Craik and Müller took a professorship at the Gideon Chapel in Bristol on, but at his own request, not as a salaried pastors, but as a freelance " ministers of the Word " on a donation basis. In July, they also took over the vacant Bethesda Chapel in the center of Bristol. Meanwhile they had come with the ideas of the young Brethren movement in contact to which they largely aligned themselves; the first meeting on the type of Brethren movement took place at the Bethesda Chapel on August 13, 1832. That same year, the Municipality of John Nelson Darby was visited, but they - probably due to their Baptist understanding of baptism - to "narrow" place.

After Craik first wife Mary Anderson, whom he had married in the summer of 1831, had died on 1 February 1832, he went on 30 October 1832 a second marriage with Sarah Howland. They had at least eight children, four of whom died in infancy. Also Craik itself was life in poor health; In 1835 he became so ill that he had to take several months Relaxing outside Bristol. During this period he wrote, among others eleven " pastoral letters " ( Pastoral Letters ) to his congregation, which later appeared in book form.

1839 were Craik, Müller and some other officially appointed as elders of the church in Bristol ( a practice that was contrary to the ideas of Darby ). In April 1840, the Gideon Chapel was abandoned; The end of 1842 came as a new daughter church, the Salem Chapel added.

In 1848, Darby and his followers separated from the church in Bristol, because she refused to investigate certain teachings Benjamin Wills Newton on the Passion of Christ and condemn. Craik himself was accused in October 1848 by George Vicesimus Wigram, one of the most warlike friends Darby to teach similar mistakes in his Pastoral Letters as Newton (namely that Jesus was mortal). This foray Wigrams seems to have Darby but not supported.

1849 Craik was offered by the University of St Andrews for his theological and hebraistischen Publications honorary doctorate, but he refused. The same process was repeated a few years later.

In the summer of 1865 Craik ill from stomach cancer. He made another trip to his old home Scotland, but had to return to Bristol, where he died at the age of 60 years, after two months confinement to bed soon. On his deathbed, he still received a friendly letter Darby, in which he him, " although gemeindlich separated from him," wished God's blessing. At his death the communities of Bethesda and Salem together had about 1000 members.

Writings

• Principia Hebraica; or, at Easy Introduction to the Hebrew Language ( 1831 ² 1864)
• Improved Renderings Of Those Passages in the English Version of the New Testament Which are Capable of being more Correctly translated ( 1835 ² 1866)
• Pastoral Letters (1837, 1848 ², ³ 1863)
• An Amended Translation of the Epistle to the Hebrews (1847 )
• The Popery of Protestantism (1852 )
• The Hebrew Language. Its History and Characteristics, including improved renderings of select passages in our Authorized translation of the Old Testament ( 1860)
• On the revision of the English Bible ( 1860)
• The Distinguishing Characteristics and Essential Relationships of the leading Languages ​​of Asia and Europe (1860 )
• New Testament Church Order. Five Lectures (1863 )
• The Authority of Scripture Considered in relation to Christian Union. A Lecture (1863 )
• Letter Reply to Certain misrepresentations contained in " Essays and Reviews " (nd)
• Biblical Expositions, Lectures, Sketches of Sermons, & c. ( posthumously ed. Elfe by William Tayler, 1867)