[2] Stevenson was born in Port Glasgow on 19 January 1765 the son of Thomas Macgill, a shipbuilder on the River Clyde.

[3] After acting as a private tutor to the Earl of Buchan, among others, he was licensed to preach by the Paisley presbytery in 1790, and in the following year was presented to the parish of Eastwood, Renfrewshire where he worked from 1791 to 1797.

[4] He also received an offer of the chair of civil history in the united colleges of St. Salvator and St. Leonard at St. Andrews, together with a small country living, but conscientious scruples prevented his accepting any plurality.

In 1790 he contributed the ‘Student's Dream’ anonymously to ‘Macnab's Collection,’ and in 1792 published a tract against the French revolution called ‘The Spirit of the Times.’ In 1797 he was translated to the Tron Church, Glasgow, and the ‘dearth’ which occurred soon afterwards gave abundant scope for his parochial energies.

He insisted upon further church accommodation, urging that lack of it encouraged the growth of dissent, and started an association for mutual instruction in literature and theology, before which he read a series of essays, afterwards published as ‘Letters addressed to a Young Clergyman,’ 1809.