He received licence to preach the gospel from the presbytery of Lerwick 27 June 1821, and quit the 'Times' in the following year, when he was presented by Lord Dundas, and ordained 12 September 1822, to the parish of Dunrossness, in Shetland.

Mr. Barclay was the only one who retained his presence of mind; but he, 'deemed,' as Sir Henry Holland says, to be 'one of the best boatmen in Scotland, seized the tiller, and by his firmness and skill brought us into safety.'

Barclay had removed, September 1843, to Peterculter, Aberdeenshire, and in July of the following year accepted a call to Currie, south of Edinburgh, on the presentation of Sir James Gibson-Craig, bart., of Riccarton.

From the time of his appointment, however, to the principalship of the university of Glasgow, in succession to Dr. Duncan Macfarlane, to which he was admitted 13 Feb 1858, he devoted himself exclusively to the duties of that office.

For over twenty years, indeed, he was a sufferer from asthmatic bronchitis, and he found it necessary to spend a portion of each winter in Egypt, on the climate of which he wrote a long and valuable article for a medical journal.

Dr. Barclay was not eminent as a pulpit orator, but he was a sound and varied scholar, deeply read, not only in biblical learning, but in various branches of philology, and more particularly in the languages of northern Europe.

He contributed, however, a sermon on 'Charity the Characteristic of Christianity' to the first volume of the 'Church of Scotland Pulpit,' Edinburgh, 1845, and also published in 1857 his 'Speech against the Transmission of an Overture condemning the System of Government Education in India.’ Attribution: