Researching James Inglis

Inglis was born in Scotland and immigrated to the United States in 1848, settling in Michigan. In Adrian, Michigan he was converted to the Baptist faith, and shortly after that became pastor of the First Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan. In 1854 he began to publish Waymarks in the Wilderness. In this publication he admitted to drawing on the teaching of John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren in advocating the secret coming of Jesus Christ and the rapture. This is called dispensationalism, but the name is misleading, because it is the secret coming and the removal for a time of the faithful, and not the view that there are different dispensations of the gospel, that distinguishes it from other forms of premillennialism.

Inglis would later move to Saint Louis, Missouri and eventually New York City and would continue to publish Waymarks in the Wilderness sporadically until his death.

Inglis was the son of Rev. Robert Inglis, M.A., by his marriage with Helen Brand, was born at Edzell, Forfarshire, Scotland, and educated at University of Edinburgh. He visited New Zealand in 1864, went to India at the end of 1866, and to Australia after extensive travel and work in India and the East, in search of health. At the end of 1877 he saw considerable official service in India; was Famine Commissioner in Bhangulpore in 1875, and Executive Commissioner for the Government of India to the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880–81.

Having settled in New South Wales, he was returned to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for New England in 1885, and was Minister of Public Instruction in the Parkes ministry (1887–1889) from January 1887 to January 1889.