CAMPBELL, George, D.D., a distinguished theologian and philosopher, was born at Aberdeen in December 1719. He was educated at the grammar school of that town; and being intended for the profession of the law, he was bound as an apprentice to a writer or clerk to the signet. The love of study, however, prevailed over all opposition. In 1741 he attended divinity lectures at Edinburgh before the term of his apprenticeship had expired, and soon afterwards he became a regular student in the university of Aberdeen, attending the lectures of Professor Lumsden in King's, and Professor Chalmers in Marischal College. In 1746 he was licensed to preach by the presbytery of Aberdeen. In 1748 he obtained the living of Banchory Ternan, in which situation he married, and was fortunate in possessing a lady remarkable for the sagacity of her understanding, the integrity of her heart, the general propriety of her conduct, and her skill in the management of domestic affairs. Mutual happiness was the consequence of this union, which was not terminated till her death in 1792. In 1757 he was translated to Aberdeen, to be one of the ministers of that town; and
in 1759 he was presented to the office of principal of Campbell Marischal College.
Mr Hume's Treatise on Miracles gave the new principal an opportunity of evincing that he was not unworthy of this office. He opposed it in a sermon preached before the provincial synod of Aberdeen in 1760, which he was requested to publish; but he preferred the form of a dissertation, and in that state sent the manuscript to Dr Blair, to be by him communicated to Mr Hume. Availing himself of the remarks of his friends, and of his opponent, he gave it to the world in 1763, with a dedication to Lord Bute; but however desirable the patronage of the minister might in other respects be, it proved of very little assistance in giving circulation, in the literary world, to an essay which, from the favourable impressions of Blair and Hume, was eagerly read and universally admired.
In 1771 he was elected professor of divinity in Marischal College, upon which he resigned his office as one of the ministers of Aberdeen; but as minister of Grayfriars, an office conjoined to the professorship about a century previous to this, he was obliged to preach once every Sunday in one of the established churches. Few persons seem to have entertained truer notions of the office of a teacher in an university than the new professor; and the plan he had in view, on entering upon his lectures, though expressed in rather too strong language, may be recommended to every one who undertakes a similar employment.
"The nature of my office," said he, in addressing his pupils, "has been much misunderstood. It is supposed that I am to teach you every thing connected with the study of divinity. I tell you honestly, that I am to teach you nothing. Ye are not school-boys. Ye are young men, who have finished your courses of philosophy, and ye are no longer to be treated as if ye were at school. Therefore, I repeat it, I am to teach you nothing; but, by the grace of God, I will assist you to teach yourselves every thing."
In 1771 he published his excellent sermon on the Spirit of the Gospel; and, in 1776, appeared his Philosophy of Rhetoric. In this latter year, also, he acquired the friendship of Dr Tucker, by a sermon, then much admired, and very generally read, on the Duty of Allegiance, in which he endeavoured to show that the British colonies in America had no right, either from reason or from Scripture, to throw off their allegiance; and employed those vulgar arguments which, as being purely political, and more especially adapted to the sentiments of the majority of that day, were very improper topics for the pulpit. In 1777 he chose a better subject for a discourse, which he published at the request of the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, and in which the success of the first publishers of the gospel is ably treated as a proof of its truth. In 1770, when many of his countrymen, led away by an excess of enthusiasm and fanaticism, were rushing headlong into the antichristian practice of persecution, he published a seasonable address to the people of Scotland, on the alarms which had been raised by the bill in favour of the Roman Catholics. In the same year, also, he published a sermon on the influence of religion on civil society. The last work which he lived to bring before the public was his translation of the Four Gospels, with preliminary dissertations and explanatory notes, of which it is unnecessary to say any thing further in this place than that it is worthy of his talents and character.
In 1795 he resigned his professorship; and soon afterwards he also resigned the principalship, on a pension of £300 a year being conferred on him by government. But this pension he possessed for a very short time; for on the 31st of March 1796 his last illness seized him, and on the next morning it was followed by a paroxysm of palsy,
which destroyed the power of speech, and under this deprivation he languished till his death. His funeral sermon was preached on the 17th of April by Dr Brown, who had succeeded him in the offices of principal and professor.