Life

Kelly was born in Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

 on 1 December 1801, received his education at Heriot's Hospital, and at an early age was converted by the preaching of Dr. Robert Gordon

Robert Gordon (minister)

The Rev. Dr Robert Gordon was a Scottish minister and writer. He was a prominent minister in the Disruption of the Free Church of Scotland from the Church of Scotland on18 May 1843.He was the inventor of a self-registering hygrometer.-Life:...

 of Edinburgh. He was for some time engaged in tuition in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and for four years later studied at the dissenting academy at Idle, West Yorkshire

Idle, West Yorkshire

The village of Idle and its outskirts make up a mainly residential suburban area in the city of Bradford, West Yorkshire, in England. The area is loosely bordered by the areas of Eccleshill, Wrose, Thackley and Greengates, in the north east of the city....

, which was later known as Airedale College.

In January 1827 he was sent to Liverpool to preach at Bethesda Chapel, and was ordained to the charge in September 1829. His career as a minister was very successful, and the new Crescent Chapel built for his growing congregation at Everton, Liverpool, was opened on 23 November 1837.

Kelly was for many years a director of the London Missionary Society

London Missionary Society

The London Missionary Society was a non-denominational missionary society formed in England in 1795 by evangelical Anglicans and Nonconformists, largely Congregationalist in outlook, with missions in the islands of the South Pacific and Africa...

, and took a warm interest in the Lancashire Independent College. He was chairman of the meeting of the Congregational Union of England and Wales in London in May 1851, and of the meeting held at Northampton in the following October.

He retired from the Crescent Chapel on 28 September 1873, and died at 18 Richmond Terrace, Liverpool, on 12 June 1876. He was buried in the necropolis on 15 June.

Works

Kelly was author of many addresses and single sermons, and of:

1. ‘The Voluntary Support of the Christian Ministry the Law of the New Testament,’ 1838.
2. ‘The Hindrances which Civil Establishments present to the Progress of genuine Religion,’ 1840.
3. ‘The Church Catechism considered in its Character and Tendency,’ 1843.
4. ‘Discourses on Holy Scripture,’ 1850.
5. ‘An Examination of the Explanation of the Rev. Samuel Davidson, relative to the Second Volume of the Tenth Edition of Horne's “Introduction,”’ 1857.