Great Scot - The Scotch Family Magazine - Issue 149 December 2016 Great Scot - The Scotch Family magazine issue 149 | Page 8

Chaplain

REV DOUG CAMPBELL
SCHOOL CHAPLAIN

Rev Doug Campbell – School Chaplain

With geological hammer
and notebook

Born in 1802, in the small village of Cromarty in
the north of Scotland, Hugh Miller would become
one of the foremost scientists of his generation.
Miller’s path to scientific standing was by no
means straightforward nor was it inevitable. Miller
received his formal education at the local parish
school in the village, where it seems he was an
avid reader and would become a published poet.
As he was an orphan, he had to leave school at 17
which prevented him from enjoying a formal tertiary
education.
Miller began an apprenticeship as a
stonemason and worked in the local quarries.
However, from childhood he was a passionate
naturalist. Later, as he worked among the stone
and as he continued his explorations along the
Cromarty Firth coast, he was fascinated by the
geological formations he encountered.
By careful examination and reading voraciously
on the subjects, Miller tried to understand more
of the world in which he lived. He came up with
questions and wrestled to understand why things
were the way they were. It is said that wherever
Miler went he always took his geological hammer
and notebook. Having qualified a s an accountant
and while working in a local bank, Miller produced
a series of influential books on geology. His
writings were particularly insightful. The title of
his best known work, The Old Red Sandstone,
actually became a term to collectively describe
sedimentary rocks deposited as a result of the
Caledonian orogeny in the late Silurian, Devonian
and earliest part of the Carboniferous period.
Miller had other scientific interests to his bow.
He was also intrigued by fossils, and gathered a
huge private collection that is now stored in the
National Museum of Scotland. He was no mere
collector, as his discoveries were so significant that
he had one fossil fish named after him. Moreover,
he wrote on palaeontology with such freshness
and enthusiasm that others were captivated by his

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descriptions of these prehistoric fish. He seemed
to make these fossils come alive.
Boasting no academic credentials, Miller
is today considered one of Scotland’s premier
palaeontologists. And yet sadly he remains almost
completely unknown in his homeland.
Yet it was not science which propelled Miller
into the consciousness of the Scottish people in
the mid-nineteenth century. From 1840, Miller was
most famous as the editor of The Witness, a paper
produced by the evangelicals within the Church of
Scotland which wrestled with the main theological
and social issues of the day.
His editorials regularly criticised the contentious
issues of patronage, whereby the landlords
appointed the parish minister in a congregation,
sometimes against the will of the church members.
The evangelicals in the Church of Scotland saw
the practice as unbiblical, unconstitutional and
leading to an alienation between the people and
the church.
Miller was scathing of the practice and
adamant that change was needed. He was a
passionate and effective campaigner. Yet he was
also a visionary, and was clear in his belief that
ordinary people had the ability to make good
choices with regard to their ministers. After all,
Scotland’s greatest poet (Robbie Burns), greatest
inventor (James Watt) and greatest geologist/
palaeontologist were ordinary men with the ability
and the right to choose. By extension, Miller
argued cogently that women, too, had the right to
choose their minister. His logical arguments helped
convince the new denomination, the Free Church
of Scotland, to empower the women members of
the church.
Miller was a great scientist who was a
committed Christian. This ordinary man’s scientific
writings were ground-breaking and scientifically
important. His editorials in The Witness helped
convince many in Scotland to challenge the

ecclesiastical status quo and support the
Disruption in 1843, and the formation of the Free
Church of Scotland.
He saw no dichotomy between science and
faith. He wrote passionately about both with
reverence for the Creator and care for the creation.
He examined the fossils and the Scriptures
with the same care and dedication, and could
communicate as one common man to another.
At the recent opening of the Sir Zelman Cowen
Centre for Science, we were reminded that science
was an important part of Scotch’s life from its very
beginning. The Rev James Forbes requested an
accomplished teacher to teach science, and a
suitable building was constructed for the physical
sciences. Forbes, who was almost certainly
influenced by Miller’s theological writings, was also
convinced of the complementarity between the
Christian faith and science.
Miller continued the pattern that saw a
coherent synthesis between Bible and creed,
Genesis and geology and palaeontology and
preaching. It was in Jesus Christ, God made flesh,
that Miller’s geology and theology met and so he
followed his Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer.
I am sure that Hugh Miller would have loved
to be able to study in the wonderful setting of
the Sir Zelman Cowen Centre for Science. The
environment is conducive to first rate scientific
learning and research. Yet I like to think that Miller
would leave the Centre for Science enthused,
wander the banks of the Yarra armed with
notebook and hammer, and return with questions
and theories that would touch on the branches
of science and on other fields as well. May the
curious minds of Scotch blaze new scientific paths
and share their findings to the benefit of all.
RIGHT: PORTRAIT OF HUGH MILLER (SCOTTISH NATIONAL
GALLERY)

Great Scot Number 149 – December 2016

www.scotch.vic.edu.au Great Scot

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