The Rev. Dr. Robert Buchanan has many claims to be esteemed one of the "Pilgrim Fathers" of the Free Church of Scotland. He was one of the first to obey the injunction dictated by the Ten Years' Conflict, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate." Ready to abandon a Church that adopted principles, and practised a system, of which he could not approve, he was also in the front van of the handful to whose wisdom, prescience, and fostering care the Free Church owes its remarkably successful career. Of the many who took a more or less prominent part in the Disruption, Dr. Candlish, of Edinburgh, and Dr. Robert Buchanan, of Glasgow, are now the only two left who have been recognised from the outset as leaders in the great and memorable crisis. The Free Church has not within her pale, at the present moment, a man more generally esteemed, or more influential in all that relates to the discipline and welfare of the body, than he whose career and character we now propose briefly to sketch. The century was very young when Dr. Buchanan first saw the light at the quiet, rural village of Gargunnock, near Stirling. His father, who followed mercantile pursuits, was able to give Robert a good, sound education; and as he displayed, when little more than a child, a tendency for reasoning and disputation, it was resolved that he should be brought up for the ministry. After receiving the rudiments of his education at a country school, he entered the University of Glasgow as a divinity student. In 1827 he was ordained a minister of the Established Church of Scotland. His first charge was Saltoun, in East Lothian, where Principal Fairbairn, his friend and co-worker, subsequently ministered. From Saltoun Dr. Buchanan came to the Tron Church, Glasgow, in 1834, and he continued to labour in that congenial sphere until the year 1857, when, in consequence of circumstances to be afterwards stated, he entered upon the pastorate of the College Church, where he still continues to labour with much acceptance. After the Disruption, Dr. Buchanan, with other 474 ministers that were identified with the Establishment, formed what has since been known as the Free Church of Scotland. Leaving the Old Tron, he and his followers made use of the City Hall for a time, until the Free Tron Church, which was built specially for Dr. Buchanan's congregation, was completed. The means were not long awanting to provide a church for a minister so popular and so well-beloved, and hence the period of his ministry in the City Hall--that asylum of needy, distressed, and transitional congregations--was very short.