James Grindlay Small

James Grindlay Small was a Scottish Free Church minister, poet, and hymn writer. Born in Edinburgh on February 6, 1817, he was the son of George Small and Elizabeth Grindlay and was educated at Edinburgh High School and the University of Edinburgh. He studied divinity under Thomas Chalmers, one of the leading figures in nineteenth-century Scottish Presbyterianism, and followed Chalmers and others into the Free Church of Scotland at the Disruption of 1843.

Small was ordained in 1847 to the Free Church congregation at Bervie in Kincardineshire, where his long pastoral ministry formed the setting for much of his literary work. His publications ranged from poetry to devotional and revival writing. They included The Highlands, the Scottish Martyrs, and Other Poems, Songs of the Vineyard in Days of Gloom and Sadness, Hymns for Youthful Voices, and Psalms and Sacred Songs. These volumes show an interest in Scottish religious history, personal devotion, congregational song, and the spiritual formation of younger Christians.

His best-known hymn is “I've Found a Friend, O Such a Friend,” often subtitled or indexed as “Jesus, the Friend.” Standard hymnological authorities securely document it in Small's Psalms and Sacred Songs of 1866, while later sources also report an earlier 1863 appearance in the second series of The Revival Hymn Book. The hymn's language of Christ's prior love, saving self-gift, guidance, and inseparable fellowship gave it wide circulation beyond Scotland. In the later nineteenth century it was carried into revival hymnals and paired with tunes by Arthur Sullivan and George C. Stebbins. Small died at Renfrew on February 11, 1888.