Brown, James Baldwin

BROWN, JAMES BALDWIN: English Congregationalist; b. in London Aug. 19, 1820; d. there June 23, 1884. He studied at London University (B.A., 1839); studied law for two years and then studied theology at Highbury College; became minister of London Road Chapel, Derby, 1843; of Claylands Chapel, Clapham Road, London, 1846, and remained with this congregation till his death; a new church on Brixton Road (Brixton Independent Church) was occupied in 1870. He was distinguished for the breadth of his theological views and strongly opposed to Calvinism. He took an active interest in public movements such as the relief of the laboring classes during the Lancashire cotton famine. He favored the opening of the Crystal Palace on Sundays, and was a warm advocate of the admission of dissenters to the universities. He strenuously opposed the doctrine of conditional immortality as a deadly error. In 1878 he was chairman of the Congregational Union; at this time a movement to discover some common ground on which Christians of various ways of thinking might unite in independence of dogma and of the historic side of Christianity had made such progress as to call for repressive action on the part of the Union in the opinion of many; he strongly opposed such action, but was overruled and outvoted. His more important books were: The Divine Life in Man (London, 1859), which brought upon him a charge of heterodoxy; The Soul's Exodus and Pilgrimage (1862); The Divine Treatment of Sin (1864); The Home Life in the Light of its Divine Idea (1866); Idolatries, Old and New, their Cause and Cure (1867); The First Principles of Ecclesiastical Truth (1871); The Higher Life, its Reality, Experience, and Destiny (1874); The Doctrine of Annihilation in the Light of the Gospel of Love (1875); Home, its Relation to Man and Society (1883).

Bibliography: For his life consult Elizabeth B. Brown, J. Baldwin Brown Minister of Brixton Independent Church, London, 1884 (by his wife).