Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/148

412 sight of. Dr. Macgill himself was sensible of these defects, and many years before his death employed himself in lopping off whatever he considered to be redundant in his lectures, and condensing whatever was too diffuse. But let it be remembered, also, that when he commenced he was groping his way along an untried path. Even his learned predecessor, Dr. Findlay, had laid out for himself a theological course of such vast range as an ordinary life would have been utterly insufficient to overtake; and thus, at the end of each four years' course, his pupils escaped with a few theological ideas that had been extended and ramified to the uttermost; a little segment, instead of a full body of divinity. But in the other duties of his professorship, where his own individuality was brought into full play, unfettered by forms and systems, Dr. Macgill was unrivalled. In his oral examinations of the class, he seemed to have an intuitive sagacity in entering at once into the character of each pupil, and discovering the kind of management which he most needed. In this case, it was most gratifying to witness with what gentleness, and yet with what tact, he repressed the over-bold and animated the diffident, stimulated the slothful and encouraged the career of the diligent and enterprising; while his bearing, which was in the highest degree that of a grave divine and accomplished scholar, adorned by the graces of a Christian gentleman, won the reverence, the confidence, and affection of his students. But it was not alone in the class-room that these qualities were exhibited in their fullest measure. His evenings were generally devoted to his students, of whom he was wont to have a number in rotation around the tea-table, so that at the end of the session none had been omitted; and while, at these conversaziones, he could unbend from the necessary formality of public duty, and encourage a flow of cheerful intercourse, it always tended more or less to the great object which he had most at heart—the formation of a learned, pious, and efficient ministry. Nor was this all. Few, indeed, can tell or even guess his cares, his labours, and his sacrifices in behalf of these his adopted children, whom once having known, he never ceased to remember and to care for, and for whose welfare his library, his purse, and his personal labours were opened with an everflowing liberality. These were the very qualities most needed by a professor of theology, and best fitted to influence the pupils under his training. Dr. Macgill, indeed, was neither a man of high genius nor commandiag eloquence; at the best he was nothing more than what might be called a third-rate mind—a man who, under different circumstances, might have passed through life unknown and unnoticed. But with a mind so balanced, and animated with such high and holy principles, he was enabled to acquire an ascendency and accomplish a work which first-rate intellects have often attempted in vain.

After having continued for several years exclusively devoted to the duties of the theological chair, Dr. Macgill suddenly found himself summoned to the arena of a church-court, and that, too, upon a question where the conflict would be at outrance. Hitherto he had been the enemy of ecclesiastical plurality, modified though it was in the Church of Scotland by the union of some professorship with the ministerial charge of a parish, instead of the care of two or more parishes vested in one person. And while some confined their hostility to the objection that the chair and the pulpit generally lay so far apart that the holder must be a non-resident, the objections of Macgill were founded upon higher principles. He knew that plurality was totally opposed to the laws and spirit of the Scottish Church; and he was too well aware of the important