Robert Rainy

Robert Rainy (1 January 1826 – 22 December 1906), was a Scottish Presbyterian divine. Rainy Hall in New College, Edinburgh (the Divinity faculty at Edinburgh University) is named after him.

Life

He was born on New Year's Day 1826 at 28 Montrose Street in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of Dr. Harry Rainy LLD (1792–1876) a surgeon who later served as professor of forensic medicine in the University of Glasgow, and his wife Barbara Gordon (1793–1854). The family lived at 28 Montrose Street. One of his uncles was George Rainy, the noted slave plantation owner and personality involved in the Highland Clearances.

Robert initially studied medicine at Glasgow University to follow his father's career. However, his interests turned to the church, which had been the path of his grandfather, Rev George Rainy (1734–1810) of Sutherland, in northern Scotland. He was caught by the evangelical fervour of the Disruption of 1843, and moved to Edinburgh to train as Free Church minister at New College.

He was ordained by the Free Church at Huntly in Aberdeenshire in 1851 and then in 1854 moved to the Free High Church in Edinburgh (occupying the north-east section of New College). In 1862 he was elected professor of church history in the same college. In 1874 he was made principal of the college in succession to Robert Candlish, and was subsequently known as Principal Rainy. At this time he lived at 8 Rosebery Crescent in Edinburgh's West End.

He had come to the front as a champion of the Liberal Party in the Union controversy within the Free Church, and in combating Dean Stanley's Broad Church views in the interests of Scotch evangelicism.