William MCINTYRE

MCINTYRE, WILLIAM (b. Kilmonivaig, Inverness shire, Scotland, 6 March 1806; d. Sydney, NSW, 12 July 1870). Presbyterian minister.

McIntyre was leader of the Highlander community in NSW and as the principal founder and dominant figure in the Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia (PCEA) for all but a short period to his death one of the major figures in the early history of NSW Presbyterianism.

After being educated at the Kilmonivaig parochial school and the University of Glasgow (MA 1829) he taught for a time with his brother Allan McIntyre (q.v.) in McIntyre's School, Lauriston, Glasgow before heading a school at Tradeston, Glasgow which he claimed 'was the very first educational institution in that city'. Meanwhile he completed the Divinity course at Glasgow and was licensed by the Presbytery of Dunoon. In 1837 J D Lang (q.v.) was impressed by his preaching and recruited him for the ministry in NSW, where some of his cousins had settled. He arrived in Sydney in Dec 1837 as chaplain to 250 Highlanders on the Midlothian.

McIntyre joined Lang's Synod of NSW on 31 Jan 1838 and was appointed its professor of divinity on 27 Dec 1838. He was variously described as Lang's co-pastor or assistant and as his stand-in during an absence 1839-41. McIntyre was largely responsible for ending the Presbyterian schism with a merger to form the Synod of Australia in Oct 1840. He insisted on Lang's inclusion but turned against him in 1841 because of his espousal of voluntaryism, his egotism and his wilfulness and took a prominent part in securing his deposition by Synod in Oct 1842. As the only Gaelic preacher he had visited the Hunter regularly to minister to the Midlothian immigrants settled as a group on Andrew Lang's property at Largs and in 1841 accepted the bilingual charge of Maitland. In 1844 he acquired wealth, the means for considerable freedom of action in ecclesiastical matters, by marrying a cousin 17 years his senior.

Following the disruption of the Church of Scotland McIntyre took an uncompromising stand for the Free Church, founding The Voice in the Wilderness early in 1846 to propagate its principles. On 10 Oct 1846 he withdrew from the Synod of Australia, asserting that its connection with the Church of Scotland imported Erastianism into its testimony. With two other ministers he formed the PCEA, an independent Church in communion with the Free Church of Scotland. Through the influence of a rival he received a cool reception when he visited Scotland in 1854-55 to obtain ministers and succeeded only in recruiting two relatives. This strengthened his belief in the need to train a native ministry, resulting in his founding of Maitland High School and serving as unpaid principal 1855-61. McIntyre was inducted minister of St George's, Sydney without stipend on 20 Feb 1862 in succession to Macintosh Mackay who had left its depleted congregation with a crushing debt.

McIntyre opposed moves for a college affiliated with Sydney University for all Presbyterians and led opposition to the unions of 1864 and 1865 on the grounds that ministers of the Synod of Australia were Moderates and Erastians, that his ordination oath bound him to resist modernising trends within it, the inclusion of Lang and countenancing of voluntaryism. He led what was left of the PCEA until his death and edited The Testimony, 1865-70.

McIntyre’s commitment to Calvinist orthodoxy was total. He wrote much in defence of biblical principles and the doctrinal position of his Church and was the only NSW minister before union producing scholarly publications on theological topics. Everyone who knew him testified to his high intelligence, dedication and industry but it caused surprise or dismay that the reading, which was almost entirely theological, and thinking of so able a man was so narrow. This narrowness, his abrasive ephemeral writing and ruthlessness in disposing of ecclesiastical rivals made him unpopular in the general community. Advertisement of a lecture on 'The Heathenism of Popery, Proved and Illustrated' provoked the Maitland riot in 1860 in which one of his brothers was mortally injured. Troops were brought from Sydney to allow the postponed lecture to be given. McIntyre’s admirers see him as a man of monumental integrity but Lang and many of his PCEA colleagues to 1864 thought him devious, unprincipled and inordinately fond of power.

McIntyre’s writings include Is the Service of the Mass Idolatrous? Being a Candid Inquiry into the doctrine maintained on the subject by Bishop Polding (Sydney, 1838); Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew V-VII, in which it is attempted to unfold and present Our Lord's delineation and enforcement of personal righteousness in that discourse (Edinburgh, 1854); The Presbyterian College Question (Sydney, 1858); Narrative of the Disruption of the Presbyterian Church in New South Wales (West Maitland, 1859); The Heathenism of Popery, proved and illustrated (Maitland, 1860).

Kinross Papers, ANL; ADB 5; C Boer, 'An Early Clergyman of the Hunter: William McIntyre 18061870', JRAHS, 72, 2 (1986); B J Bridges, Ministers, Licentiates and Catechists of the Presbyterian Churches in New South Wales 1823-1865 (Melbourne, 1989)

BARRY BRIDGES