COPLAND, JAMES (1837-1902) was born at Edinburgh and educated at the High School and University. He graduated M.A. in 1854, and Ph.D. at Heidelberg in 1858. He had meanwhile been attending the Theological Hall of the United Presbyterian Church and was licensed to preach in 1858. Intending to go to China as a medical missionary, he proceeded to Aberdeen University, where he graduated M.D. in 1864.

Then he came to New Zealand as surgeon in the E. P. Bouverie, was received by the presbytery of Dunedin, and in 1865 called to the pastoral charge of Lawrence, where he spent six years. He was the first settled minister on the Otago goldfields and besides his ecclesiastical duties he gave medical attention where necessary. In Lawrence he started in 1869 a church paper, The Evangelist (merged in The Presbyterian 1874). In 1871 Copland was called to North Dunedin, then just organised. There he spent 10 years, resigning in 1881 to practise medicine at Dunedin and from 1888 at Gore. He was a member of the Gore borough council and once mayor, and did duty also on the Gore school committee, the Southland education board and the charitable aid board. He was clerk of the Mataura presbytery from its inception, convenor of the Bible in schools committee and of the missions committee. Besides lecturing on social and religious topics he gave some of the earliest lectures in New Zealand on socialism. In the late seventies he published pamphlets on the doctrines of the French and German socialists. In 1874 he published in Edinburgh The Testimony Attested, and in 1885 The Origin and Spiritual Nature of Man (a rebuttal of Darwinian evolution). He wrote a great deal to the press.

Copland married, first, Miss Anderson, daughter of a city missionary, and, second, a daughter of Dr Gillies, Dunedin. He died on 9 Nov 1902.

Cycl. N.Z., iv; Ross; Don; Chisholm; Fulton (P); Evening Star and Otago Daily Times, 10 Nov 1902.

Reference: Volume 1, page 105

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