David Dickson the Younger

Rev David Dickson DD (1780–1842) was a Scottish presbyterian minister and writer.

He was born in 1780 at Libberton, Lanarkshire, the parish where his father Rev David Dickson (1753-1820) was minister. He was educated at the parish school of Bothkennar and afterwards at Edinburgh University. In 1801 he was accepted as a preacher in the Church of Scotland, and appointed early in 1802 to the Chapel of Ease at Kilmarnock. In May 1803 he was chosen junior minister of St. Cuthbert's Church, Edinburgh.

After the death of the Rev. Sir Henry Moncrieff in 1827 Dickson was made senior minister at St. Cuthbert's, a position he held till his death. In 1824 the University of Edinburgh conferred on him the degree of D.D. He had some reputation as a Hebrew scholar and his sermons were plain. He avoided mixing in the doctrinal disputes which culminated in the Disruption of 1843 of the Scottish church. On the occasion of Sir Walter Scott's funeral he was chosen to hold the service in the house at Abbotsford. He was secretary of the Scottish Missionary Society for many years.

David Dickson Memorial, St. Cuthbert's Church

Dickson died 28 July 1842, and was buried in St. Cuthbert's Church, where a monument was erected to his memory.

Dickson wrote articles in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia and in the Edinburgh Christian Instructor and other magazines. He published:

• The Influence of Learning on Religion, 1814.
• A small volume of sermons, 1818.
• Discourses, Doctrinal and Practical, a collection of his homilies, 1857.
• Five separate sermons (1806–31).

He edited:

• Memoir of Miss Woodbury, 1826;
• Rev. W. F. Ireland's sermons, 1829; and
• lectures and sermons by the Rev. George Bell Brand, 1841.

In 1808 Dickson married Janet, daughter of James Jobson of Dundee, by whom he had a family of three sons and three daughters.