Campbell

Campbell, GEORGE, divine, was born in 1719 at Aberdeen, and educated there at the grammar-school and Marischal College. Abandoning law for divinity, he was in 1748 ordained minister of Banchory Ternan, a parish 17 miles SW. of Aberdeen; in 1757 was called to that city, and in 1759 was appointed Principal of Marischal College. His first book was his famous Dissertation on Miracles (1762), in answer to Hume, a work which in its own day was greatly admired, and characterised as 'one of the most acute and convincing treatises that has ever appeared on the subject.' It was speedily translated into French, Dutch, and German. In 1771 Campbell was elected professor of Divinity in Marischal College. In 1776 he published his Philosophy of Rhetoric, in 1789 a Translation of the Gospels. He died 6th April 1796; and in 1800 appeared his Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, with a memoir by G. S. Keith prefixed.