Henry Grattan Guinness

Irish Protestant Christian preacher, evangelist and author

Henry Grattan Guinness (11 August 1835 – 21 June 1910) was an Irish Nonconformist Protestant preacher, evangelist and author. He was the great evangelist of the Third Evangelical awakening and preached during the Ulster Revival of 1859 which drew thousands to hear him. He was responsible for training and sending hundreds of "faith missionaries" all over the world.

From 1860 to 1872 he was a travelling evangelist in France, America, the Near East and the British Isles. He was compared by some to George Whitefield. Fanny was a partner in the missionary work and she was not only responsible for the administration, but she would also preach to audiences of men and women. The magazine would give accounts of missions and missionaries including those in Africa and China. In 1877 he founded the Livingstone Inland Mission, which worked in Congo, Argentina and Peru. His son Dr. Henry Grattan Guinness (1861–1915), known as Harry to distinguish him from his father, founded the Congo Balolo Mission in 1888 and co founded the Congo Reform Association in 1904. He traveled to India, where he wrote critically that to the people there, "God is everything, and everything is God, and, therefore, everything may be adored. Her pan deism is a pandemonium." His wife having died in 1898, from 1903 to 1907 Guinness went on world missionary tours before retiring in 1908 to Bath, Somerset, where he died.

His daughter, and later author, Mary Geraldine Guinness married Frederick Howard Taylor, the son of China Inland Mission founder J. Hudson Taylor. She was one of seven children who entered Christian ministry. Dr. Gershom Whitfield Guinness was a medical missionary to China who escaped the Boxer Rebellion and went on to found the first hospital in Henan south of the Yellow River. A granddaughter, Ruth Eileen, married the famous geneticist and statistician Ronald Fisher, one of those responsible for Neo Darwinism. His daughter Lucy wrote Across India at the Dawn of the 20th Century, about her hopes of converting the heathen natives to Christianity. His great grandson Os Guinness is an active author and speaker today.