James Reed was born on December 8, 1834 in Boston, Massachussets, the son of Sampson Reed and Catharine (Clark) Reed. His father, a classmate of Thomas Worcester at Harvard, was one of the leading laymen of the church and his mother, a sister of Mrs. Thomas Worcester, was an early member of the church in an age when membership in it usually meant ostracism.
Reed was educated in the school conducted by the Boston New-Church Society, in the Boston Latin School, and at Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1855.
In the Boston Latin School and in college he was a classmate of Phillips Brooks, and after graduation from Harvard they served together on the Latin School faculty.
He was ordained to the ministry of the Church of the New Jerusalem in 1860 and served the Boston society for nearly sixty years: as assistant pastor from 1860 to 1868 and as pastor from 1868 to 1919, when he became pastor emeritus. He also served as general pastor of the Massachusetts Association from 1900 to 1921, and was general pastor emeritus from 1919 until his death.
In addition, he was president of the New-Church Theological School from 1894 to 1908, one of the editors of the New-Jerusalem Magazine from 1865 till its suspension in 1872, associate editor of the New-Church Review (1894 - 99) and member of its advisory board (1899 - 1921), and chairman of the Council of Ministers of the General Convention of the New Jerusalem in the United States of America from 1894 to 1908. He was the author of many books and pamphlets, of which the following are representative: Man and Woman, Equal but Unlike (1870); Swedenborg and the New Church (1880); and, with the Rev. H. Clinton Hay, three volumes: Earthly Problems in Heavenly Light (1905), Death and the Life Beyond (1906), and The Essential Needs of the Soul (1909).
He was also a regular contributor to New-Church periodicals. In addition to his services to his church, he served on the school board of the City of Boston from 1871 to 1875, and was president of the Massachusetts Home for Intemperate Women.
He died in Boston in the eighty-seventh year of his age.
Although Reed's thinking was clear and careful, the qualities which seem to have made the deepest impression on his associates were singleness of purpose, fidelity to his church, and consecration to the work of the ministry.
On December 19, 1858, Reed married Emily E. Ripley of Brookline. They had a son and two daughters.
