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History
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William Milligan, a son of the manse, was born in Edinburgh in 1821. He was educated in Edinburgh and Fife, where his father was later a minister, and at St. Andrews, graduating MA in 1839. He had supported himself by teaching while at university as his father's living was small. Though he intended to be a minister, he was still in post as a private tutor during the Disruption of 1843: he would in any case have sided with the established church. He was ordained to Cameron, Fife, in 1844, and after a spell in Germany for his health he was translated to Kinconquhar in 1850. With the publication of several essays on religious education and observance, he began to acquire a reputation for scholarship which he had manifested even at school, and in 1860 was appointed to the new chair of Biblical criticism in the new University of Aberdeen. Though he had friends in many branches of the church, he himself had strong views which aligned him with a slightly old-fashioned, rather high, broad church: he wrote copiously, was involved in revision of the English New Testament (his work on the Book of Revelations is particularly noted), and represented the Church of Scotland on visits overseas. A traditionalist, he was instrumental in setting up the Scottish Church Society in 1892, but died the following year just before his planned retirement.
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