Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Leishman, Thomas
LEISHMAN, THOMAS (1825–1904), Scottish divine and liturgiologist, born at his father's manse on 7 May 1825, was the eldest son, in a family of thirteen children, of Matthew Leishman, D.D., minister of Govan, who was leader of the middle party in the secession controversy of 1843, and whose portrait was painted by John Graham-Gilbert [q. v.]. His mother was Jane Elizabeth Boog. A brother, William, was professor of midwifery in the university of Glasgow from 1868 to 1894. Ancestors on both sides led distinguished clerical careers, and family tradition claims collateral connection with Principal William Leishman of Glasgow University. After education at Govan, Thomas passed to Glasgow High School and Glasgow University, where graduating M.A. in 1843, he distinguished himself in classics, and acquired a love of books and sense of style. After the usual course at the Divinity Hall, he was licensed as a probationer by the presbytery of Glasgow on 7 Feb. 1847, and became assistant at Greenock. From 1852 to 1855 he served the parish of Collace, near Perth, and from 1855 till 1895 that of Linton, Teviotdale, in the presbytery of Kelso. Leishman, while effectively ministering to a rural district, soon became a leader in presbytery and synod. With a view to reviving the old order of public worship which had deteriorated (he thought) through borrowings from English dissent, he was among the first to join the Church Service Society (formed in 1865), and in 1866 he became a member of its editorial committee, where he worked hard, chiefly in collaboration with George Washington Sprott [q. V. Suppl. II]. In 1868 Sprott and Leishman published an annotated edition of 'The Book of Common Order,' commonly called Knox's Liturgy, and the 'Directory for the Public Worship of God agreed upon by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster,' which became a standard authority.
He proceeded D.D. from Glasgow University with a thesis on 'A Critical Account of the Various Theories of the Sacrament of Baptism' (Edinburgh, 1871). In 1875 he published a plea for the observance by the Church of Scotland of the five great Christian festivals, entitled: 'May the Kirk keep Pasche and Yule ?' 'Why not,' he answered, in the words of Knox, 'where superstition is removed.' Owing to broken health, the winter of 1876-7 was spent in Spain and in Egypt, and Leishman added to earlier studies in the continental reformed liturgies an investigation of the Mozarabic and Coptic service-books. A warm defender of the validity of presbyterian ordination he joined Sprott and others in a formal protest against the admission by the general assembly of 1882 of two congregational ministers to the status of ordained ministers. The precedent of 1882 was not acted on again. In 1892 Leishman helped William Milligan [q. v. Suppl. I] to found the Scottish Church Society in the interest of catholic doctrine as set forth in the ancient creeds and embodied in the standards of the Church of Scotland. He took an active part in the work of this society, contributing papers to its conferences, and three times (1895-6, 1902-3, and 1905-6) acting as its president. To a work in four volumes, 'The Church of Scotland Past and Present,' edited by Robert Herbert, and primarily intended as a contribution to church defence (1891), he contributed a valuable section on 'The Ritual of the Church of Scotland.' Leishman defined his ecclesiastical position in 'The Moulding of the Scottish Reformation' (Lee lecture for 1897); 'The Church of Scotland as she was, and as she is' (John Macleod Memorial lecture for 1903); in an address on 'The Vocation of the Church' at the Church of Scotland Congress, 1890, and in devout and practical lectures on pastoral theology which were delivered by appointment of the general assembly at the four Scottish universities, 1895-7, and are not yet published. He was moderator of the general assembly of 1898, where the archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Temple, pleaded the cause of temperance. The speeches of both Temple and Leishman on the occasion were published in a pamphlet.
Leishman's third son, James Fleming, was ordained to succeed him at Linton (7 March 1895), and thereupon Leishman removed to Edinburgh. There he died on 13 July 1904, and was buried at Linton. At Hoselaw, in a remote corner of the parish where Leishman used to conduct cottage services, a chapel was erected by public subscription to his memory in 1906 (Scot. Ecclesiological Soc. Trans, iii. 90). Leishman married, on Lady Day 1857, his cousin, Christina Balmanno Fleming, who died on 15 June 1868. Five sons and two daughters survived him.
Leishman, whose manners abounded in gentle dignity, was described by A. K. H. Boyd [q. v. Suppl. I] as 'the ideal country parson, learned, devout, peace-loving, pretty close to the first meridian of clergyman and gentleman.' A fine photograph hangs in the moderators' portrait gallery in the Assembly Hall, High Street, Edinburgh.
Besides the works mentioned, Leishman contributed to the Church Service Society's series of Scottish liturgies and orders of divine service, an edition with introduction and notes of the Westminster Directory (Edinburgh, 1901).
[Diaries and correspondence in possession of his son; personal knowledge; Border Mag. iii. 28; publications of the Scottish Church Society; Blackwood's Mag., Nov. 1897; New Liturgies of the Scottish Kirk; Funeral Sermon by Rev. Dr. Sprott.]