GEORGE CAMPBELL, GAELIC SCHOOLMASTER, SCOURIE.
IN our notice last month of the late Mr. William Campbell, preacher, Wick, we made reference to his father, George Campbell, who finished his course in Scourie, Sutherlandshire. He died shortly after, and not before the Disruption of 1843, as stated in the above notice. He came out with the other witnessing worthies at the Disruption, but, while clear as to the duty, he discharged it (as we are told by his only surviving son, Mr. George Campbell) with heaviness of spirit, realising the great importance and value of a national Church. The following is the portrait of him given in a description of a pre-Disruption “Men’s Day” in Durness by the late Rev. Eric Findlater, of Lochearnhead, and quoted in Brown’s Annals of the Disruption:—
George Campbell, a Gaelic schoolmaster, and a native of Sutherlandshire, renews the discussion. He is a man about 60, dressed in a camlet cloak, and with a head of long steel-grey hair parted in the midst, and falling down in a mass behind. His features are well proportioned, and a quick intelligence courses over them, as the aurora borealis does across his native sky. He is one of nature’s orators; and so well toned was his voice, so harmonious his periods, and so graceful his action, that it was like music to the ear. But all this was sanctified; and as he discourseth of what the Lord hath done for his soul, they would be indifferent indeed who could do else than listen; and though in general he showed the harmlessness of the dove, there were occasions when he could testify that he had the spirit of the lion. . . . Our testimony to him would infer that he was a man who knew divinity not only experimentally but systematically.