Campbell, George

CAMPBELL, GEORGE: Church of Scotland divine; b. at Aberdeen Dec. 25, 1719; d. there Apr. 6, 1796. He was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and began the study of law in Edinburgh, but changed to theology, which he pursued there and in Aberdeen; was ordained minister of Banchory Ternan (on the Dee, 20 m. from Aberdeen), 1748; became one of the ministers of Aberdeen, 1757; principal of Marischal College, 1759, professor of divinity, 1771; resigned on account of ill health, 1795. He was one of the founders in 1758 of a famous philosophical society of Aberdeen, which included among its members Thomas Reid, John Gregory, James Beattie, and other distinguished men. His publications were sermons and A Dissertation on Miracles, an answer to Hume's Essay (Edinburgh, 1762; 3d ed., with corrections and additions and correspondence between Hume and Campbell, 2 vols., 1797); The Philosophy of Rhetoric, long considered a standard work (2 vols., London, 1776; many subsequent editions); The Four Gospels, translated from the Greek, with preliminary dissertations and notes, critical and explanatory (2 vols., 1789). Posthumous publications were Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, with a brief Life by G. S. Keith (2 vols., London, 1800), and Lectures on Systematic Theology and on Pulpit Eloquence (1807). A collected edition of his Theological Works appeared in six volumes at London, 1840.