BLAIKIE, WILLIAM GARDEN Scottish divine, was born on Feb. 5 1820, at Aberdeen, and was one of the 474 ministers who signed the deed of demission and gave up their livings at the time of the Disruption. He was Free Church minister at Pilrig, between Edinburgh and Leith, from 1844 to 1868, when he became professor of apologetics and pastoral the ology at New college, Edinburgh. In 18 7 o he was one of two representatives chosen from the Free Church of Scotland to attend the united general assembly of the Presbyterian Churches of the United States. A prolonged visit to America, followed by a similar tour in Europe, fitted him to become the real founder of the Presbyterian Alliance. In 1892 he was elected to the chair manship of the general assembly, the last of the moderators who had entered the church before the disruption. In 1897 he resigned his professorship, and died on June I 1 1899.
Blaikie was an active and intelligent temperance reformer. He raised f i4,000 for the relief of the Waldensian churches. Among his works is After Fifty Years (1893), an account of the Disruption Movement in the form of letters of a grandfather.