William Mackay

Mackay, William Paton. b. Montrose, Angus, Scotland, 13 May 1839; d. Portree, Scotland, 22 August 1885. Mackay was a physician, Presbyterian minister, and hymn writer. He received several degrees from the University of Edinburgh, culminating in an MD in 1867, writing his thesis on leprosy. His conversion and subsequent ministry began when he found his own Bible among the belongings of a dying patient. Years earlier, after leaving home at age seventeen, he sold his Bible, a gift from his mother, to survive. He served the Prospect Street Presbyterian Church, Hull, beginning in 1868, and married Mary Loughton Livingstone the same year. An account of his life in the Oban Times (29 August 1885),...