98 Obituary Notice. 



sophy, coiiiained his mature speculations, we find this 

 article reprinted and commented on. 



This is not the place to deal with Dr Macvicar's career 

 as a clergyman, further than to say that probably his 

 scientific tastes and attainments delayed for a time his 

 professional advancement. And this not merely because 

 he found congenial work elsewhere — for he was a gifted 

 and earnest preacher ; but also because during his early 

 manhood the ecclesiastical atmosphere of Scotland was hot 

 and stormy. A deeply religious man, his spirit was calmed 

 and strengthened by scientific pursuits ; and he felt little 

 disposed to engage on either side in that partisan warfare 

 which was to a great extent the road to ecclesiastical or 

 even (in the case of a clergyman) academical preferment. 

 His best contribution to the religious necessities of those 

 times was a treatise intended to be an Eirenikon, and 

 entitled The Catholic Spirit of True Eeligion. He gave 

 it to the Church, as he was about to sail to Ceylon in 1839, 

 as the ordained minister of the Scotch Cliurch there. 

 Keturning in 1852, he was inducted to Moffat in 1853, 

 where, amidst universal esteem and regret he has now 

 ended a long and beautiful life of faitliful service. 



He would doubtless have enhanced his scientific repu- 

 tation, and might have done more for some particular 

 department of knowledge, in these days of subdivision of 

 labour, if he had concentrated his energies on a narrower 

 field. But in that case he would, not unHkely, have been 

 a less complete man, and his life might have been less full 

 and happy. As it is, his aid to scientific progress was of 

 the nature of a general impulse. His theories, always 

 ingenious and beautiful, often show a remarkable power 

 of intuition. Some of his speculations have been super- 

 seded ; but in others he was in advance of Jiis time, 

 anticipating subsequent discovery and the recent course of 

 scientific thought. 



He married in 1840 Miss Jessie R. Macdonald of 

 Kinloch Moidart, a grand -daughter of Dr Eobertson the 

 historian, and is survived by her and by eight of their 

 children. Originally a member of the Wernerian Natural 

 History, he became one of our members at its amalgama- 

 tion with the Botanical Society. 



