Campbell, JOHN M'LEOD

Campbell, JOHN M'LEOD, a great Scottish theologian, born at Kilninver in Argyll, in 1800. Sent to Glasgow University at eleven, he was licensed to preach by the presbytery of Lorne in 1821, and was ordained minister of Row, near Helensburgh, in 1825. His views on the personal assurance of salvation, and on the universality of the atonement, soon brought upon him a charge of heresy, which led, after the process usual in the Scotch church, to his deposition by the General Assembly in 1831. Campbell bore this heavy trial with the most saintly charity and patience, refusing either to form a new sect or to attach himself to that of his devoted friend Edward Irving. For two years he laboured in the Highlands as an evangelist, and for six and twenty years, from 1833, preached quietly without remuneration to a regular congregation that gathered round him in Glasgow. When his health broke down he advised his people to attach themselves to the church of Norman Macleod. He spent the remainder of his life in retirement and in communion with such friends as Maurice, Erskine of Linlathen, Norman Macleod, and Bishop Ewing. In 1868 his university gave him the degree of D.D., and in 1871 a testimonial and address was presented to him by men of nearly every religious denomination in Scotland. From 1870 he lived at Roseneath, and here he died, 27th February 1872. The Church of Scotland dealt herself a deadly blow when she ejected from her ministry one of the most saintly and spiritual-minded of her sons, but her action made leisure for the writing of three of the most valuable of modern English theological books: Christ the Bread of Life (1851), The Nature of the Atonement (1856), and Thoughts on Revelation (1862). M'Leod Campbell was a profound and original religious thinker, and his writings show a rare union of candour, clearness, boldness, and depth, with a piety of singular sweetness and simplicity. The central thought of his theology is the fatherliness of God; and his vivid realisation of the present and abiding truth of this warmed his faith to a glow of sympathetic enthusiasm to which his writing owed all its charm and no little of its persuading power. Another favourite theme—the self-evidencing character of revelation—is demonstrated with quiet but incisive and masterly reasoning. See the article ATONEMENT; and consult the Memorials by his son (2 vols. 1877), and Canon Vaughan's paper in the Contemporary Review for June 1878.