Horatius Bonar (; 19 December 1808 – 31 July 1889) was a Scottish churchman and poet is principally remembered as a prodigious hymnodist. Friends knew him as Horace Bonar. Licensed as a preacher, he did mission work in Leith for a time, and in November 1837 he settled at Kelso as minister of the new North Church founded in connection with Thomas Chalmers's scheme of church extension. He became exceedingly popular as a preacher, and was soon well known throughout Scotland.
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Life
He was the son of James Bonar (1758–1821), Solicitor of Excise for Scotland, and his wife Marjory Pyott Maitland. The family lived in the Broughton district of Edinburgh.
He came from a long line of ministers who served a total of 364 years in the Church of Scotland. One of eleven children, his brothers John James and Andrew Alexander were also ministers of the Free Church of Scotland. Horatius studied Divinity at University of Edinburgh and was ordained as a minister for the Church of Scotland in 1838 at the North Church in Kelso. In the Disruption of 1843 he left the established church and joined the Free Church of Scotland. In 1866 he moved to the newly built Chalmers Memorial Church in Edinburgh.
He married Jane Catherine Lundie in 1843 and five of their (nine) young children died in succession. Towards the end of their lives, one of their surviving daughters was left a widow with five small children and she returned to live with her parents.