Andrew Alexander Bonar (1810-92), the youngest brother of Horatius, was born in Edinburgh and educated at Edinburgh University. He was ordained at Collace, Perthshire in 1838, where he was minister in the Church of Scotland to the Disruption (1843) and in the Free Church until moving to Finnieston Free Church, Glasgow in 1856. He was Moderator of the Free Church Assembly in 1878. He visited Palestine with Robert Murray M’Cheyne in 1839, and was his friend’s biographer after his early death.
Several of Bonar’s books are published by the Trust, including his Commentary on Leviticus in the Geneva series, but he is perhaps best-known for the forementioned Memoir and Remains of R. M. M’Cheyne. Bonar was tireless in his evangelistic endeavours, and he epitomised the text in Hebrew above the entrance to his church in Glasgow: ‘He that winneth souls is wise’.