James Inglis

James Inglis – 6th May 1813 ~ 1st June 1872, age 59.
Birth Place: Greenlaw, Berwickshire, Scotland.
Death Place: Newark, New Jersey, USA.
Burial: Elmwood Cemetery, Detroit, Michigan, USA.
Inscription: “An accurate and elegant scholar, an instructive and impressive preacher with singular simplicity and power he proclaimed the great doctrines of grace and the blessed hope of the glorious coming and Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ..”

Father: Rev. David Inglis – 6th March 1777 ~ 13th December 1842
Mother: Katharine Archibald – 1788 ~ 19th March 1833, age 45.
Wife: Eliza Foster – 1821 ~ 1st February 1896. Married in 1844.
Children: None.
Siblings:
Margaret Inglis (E. Anderson) – 10th September 1810 ~ 18th December 1847, age 37.
Archibald Inglis – 27th September 1815 ~ 1859, age 46.
Magdalene Inglis – 1816 ~ 4th June 1820, age 4.
Ann Inglis (D. Birrell) – 12th July 1817 ~ 7th August 1849, age 32.
Euphemia Inglis – 1st May 1819 ~ 20th May 1820, age 1.
Richard Inglis, M.D. (A. Lambie) – 28th October 1821 ~ 18th December 1874, age 53.
Rev. David Alexander Inglis (Meldrum & Gale) – 8th June 1824 ~ 15th Dec. 1877, age 53.

The well-known Rev. James Inglis was pastor of a large church [1st Baptist & Tabernacle Baptist] in Detroit. He was a graduate of Edinburgh University and Divinity School, was very learned—he was afterwards requested to act with the American New Testament. The Fundamentals Revision Committee—he was unusually eloquent, and he was having a most successful ministerial career. Indeed, he was the most popular preacher in Detroit, if not in Michigan, having large audiences on Sundays, with people seated in the aisles and upon the pulpit stairs of his church, and with his listeners hanging upon his words. One week-day, at this period, he sat in his study, preparing one of his sermons for the following Sunday, when a voice seemed to say to him: "James Inglis, whom are you preaching?" Mr. Inglis was startled, but he answered: "I am preaching good theology." But the Voice seemed to reply: "I did not ask you what you are preaching, but whom are you preaching?" [He] answered: "I am preaching the Gospel." But the Voice again replied: "I did not ask you what you are preaching; I asked you whom are you preaching?" Mr. Inglis sat silent and with bowed head for a long time before he again replied. When he did, he raised his head and said: "O God, I am preaching James Inglis!" And then he added: "Henceforth I will preach no one but Christ, and Him crucified!" Then [he] arose, opened the chest in his study which contained his eloquent sermons and deliberately put them one by one into the fire which was burning in his study stove. From that time on, he turned his back upon every temptation to be oratorical and popular, preached simply and expositionally, and gave himself in life and words, to set forth Jesus Christ before men. Later he became the editor of two widely read religious papers, and the teacher in the Scripture of such men as Dr. Brooks of St. Louis, Dr. Erdman of Philadelphia, Dr. Gordon of Boston, and Mr. Moody of Northfield. He died in 1872; but his name is still held in reverent and grateful remembrance by many of the most spiritual of God's saints in America and Europe. Mr. Inglis was by nature a man of proud and ambitious disposition; but it is manifest that it became true in his life that for him to live was Christ.
“The Fundamentals”