Lee, Robert

Lee, Robert D.D., a noted Scotch Presbyterian divine, was born at Tweedmouth about 1796; was educated at St. Andrew's University, and became a minister of the Gospel. After occupying two other charges, he became, with Chalmers and others, minister of old Grayfriars, Edinburgh. He died in March, 1868, at Torquay, Devonshire. Dr. Robert Lee published a translation of the Thesis of Erastus (1844): — Prayers for Public Worships: — Handbook of Devotion: —Prayers for Family Worship: — The Bible, with New Marginal References; a work which brought upon him severe condemnation for Rationalistic tendency. It is, however, by no means to be inferred from this that Dr. Lee was not of the evangelical school; he fought the Socinians with the utmost exertion, and, as a Scotchman expressed it, "Dr. Lee emptied the Unitarian chapel" at Edinburgh. Dr. Lee was the leader in innovations and changes in the Church Establishment of Scotland. His views were ultra-liberal; and from the year 1858, when the innovations were complained of before the Low-Church courts, till the commencement of his last illness, he fought a great battle, as the Daily Review expresses it, for what he deemed a more liberal construction of the laws of the Church in the matter of public worship-in other words, publishing, using? defending written prayers-and by his own force of character, his ingenuity and power as a controversialist, and his influence over the younger ministers of the Church, he probably did more to carry forward the movement with which his name is identified than all the rest of his brethren who took part with him. SEE SCOTLAND, CHURCH OF. (J. H. W.)