210 OBITUARY NOTICE OF REV. THOMAS LEISHMAN 



hundred inhabitants are mainly engaged in the cultivation of 

 its fine farms, and there is little to stimulate one to study, 

 or mental activity. A less energetic man than Dr Leishman 

 would have been content to discharge his pastoral duties, and 

 pass his days in mental somnolence. He did not yield to 

 that temptation. He was essentially a student, an omnivorous 

 reader, and one who digested and remembered what he read. 

 While he took an intelligent interest in many subjects, the 

 natural bent of his mind was towards history, especially 

 ecclesiastical history. In this department he was an acknow- 

 ledged authority, and in the history of the Reformation, in 

 which he specialized, no man in Scotland possessed a larger 

 store of accurate information. He could move in that period 

 with the freedom of a contemporary. There was little in 

 regard to creeds or parties or the notable churchmen of the 

 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which he did not know. 

 Possessed of a large library he had at his command an 

 ample collection of the literature of that time, some of his 

 books being curious and rare, and his retentive memory 

 enabled him to master their contents. It was not surprising, 

 therefore, to those who knew him, that when the Chair of 

 Ecclesiastical History at Glasgow became vacant, in 1875, 

 his name should be found in the list of applicants. It 

 seemed to be the true sphere of work for him, in which his 

 accumulated fund of knowledge could be turned to best 

 account. He was not, however, successful in gaining the 

 Chair, for interest has a share with merit in deciding these 

 appointments ; but the University of Glasgow had four years 

 before marked its sense of his ability and scholarship by 

 bestowing on him the Degree of Doctor of Divinity, and 

 later still the Church of Scotland, in 1898, raised him to 

 the Moderator's chair of its General Assembly, the highest 

 honour it could confer upon him. 



Dr Leishman's works on Church History were neither 

 many nor voluminous. His modesty, though it was one of 

 the fine traits of his character, had the unfortunate effect of 

 preventing him from giving to the world much that would 

 have been valuable. In 1868, in conjunction with the Rev. 

 Dr Sprott of North Berwick, another member of the Club, 

 he published an edition of "The Book of Common Order of 



