Macgill, Hamilton Montgomerie

Hamilton Montgomerie Macgill, Doctor of Divinity, was the youngest son of Thomas Macgill. He was born on March 10, 1807, at Catrine, Ayrshire. He pursued his higher education at the University of Glasgow, an institution that later honored him with the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1870. In 1837, he entered the ministry as the joint pastor of the Duke Street United Presbyterian Church in Glasgow. After three years, he transitioned to a new congregation in Montrose Street, moving there with a portion of his flock in 1840.

His role within the United Presbyterian Church expanded significantly over the following decades. He was appointed Home Mission Secretary in 1858, and ten years later, in 1868, he assumed the responsibilities of Foreign Mission Secretary. Macgill served actively as a member of the Hymnal Committee for the United Presbyterian Church between 1870 and 1876. During this period, he contributed six translations to the 1876 Presbyterian Hymnal, which included five translated from Latin and one translated from Greek. He passed away on June 3, 1880, in Paris, while traveling to the South of France in an effort to restore his failing health.

Macgill left a notable legacy in hymnology, particularly through his literary work titled Songs of the Christian Creed and Life, published in 1876. This volume compiled 101 pieces, consisting of seven translations from the Greek, sixty-eight from the Latin, and twenty-seven original English compositions translated into Latin verse. The collection provided the original Latin, Greek, and English texts alongside detailed biographical and critical commentary on the authors. Prior to this volume, twenty-two of his classical translations had been published in the church's Juvenile Missionary Magazine between 1866 and 1873.

His translations achieved high critical praise for their exceptional lyrical quality, elegance, and natural flow, which allowed them to read more like original English poetry than rigid translations. His skill in Latin composition was so precise that the acclaimed translator Sir Theodore Martin once mistook one of Macgill's original Latin renderings for an authentic medieval hymn. In a subsequent 1879 edition of his book, Macgill introduced several verbal revisions and expanded the collection to include two additional Latin renderings, one from Bohemian, one from Spanish, and a Latin translation of the well-known hymn "Art thou weary, art thou languid?" His translated hymns have since gained steadily increasing recognition and usage within church hymnals.