Nicoll, Sir William Robertson

Free Church of Scotland; b. at Lumsden (30 m. n. w. of Aberdeen), Aberdeenshire, Oct. 10, 1851. He was educated at the University of Aberdeen (M.A., 1870) and the Free Church College, Aberdeen, after which he was minister at Dufftown, Banffshire (1874-77), and Kelso, Roxburghshire (1877-85). In 1880 he became the editor of The Household Library of Exposition, and in 1885 of The Expositor, while since 1886 he has edited The Foreign Biblical Library, The Theological Educator, The Expositor’s Bible, The Expositor’s Greek Testament, The British Weekly, The Bookman, Woman at Home, The British Monthly, and other publications and series. In 1909 he was made a knight. Among his numerous publications special mention may be made of his Calls to Christ (London, 1877); Songs of Rest (2 series, Edinburgh and London, 1879-85); The Incarnate Saviour (Edinburgh 1881); The Lamb of God (1883); Key of the Grave (London, 1893); Ten-Minute Sermons (1894); Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century (in collaboration with T. J. Wise; 2 vols., 1895-96); The Return to the Cross (1897); The Church’s One Foundation: Christ and Recent Criticism (1901); Garden of Nuts: Mystical Expositions with an Essay on Christian Mysticism (1905); Lamp of Sacrifice (1906, sermons); Ian Maclaren: Life of the Rev. John Watson (1908); and My Father: an Aberdeenshire Minister, 1812-91 (1908).

Bibliography: J. F. Stoddart, W. Robertson Nicoll, Editor and Preacher, London, 1903.