Though only fourteen years of age, he earned from that day, by private teaching, as much as paid his class-fees, much to his parents' relief, for Elie was a "small living."

He wrote to his father that he was resolved to "remain in ... and lend any aid he could to those who are ready to unite in building up, on principles agreeable to the word of God, the old church of Scotland."

He worked hard, but his liberal politics and mild broad-church views were not congenial to many of his colleagues, and his amiability concealed from his students the real strength of his character.

His style, prolix at first, became pure and graceful, and in such works as those on the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ and on the Revelation of St. John he took a foremost place among British theologians.

Although in his earlier days his humanitarian feelings, and his enthusiasm for liberty and progress, had allied him with those who were then called broad churchmen, Milligan did not have at any period of his career the slightest sympathy with the disregard for doctrine which has sometimes marked the members of that school.

His doctrine of the church he gathered for himself from the Epistle to the Ephesians, on which he had contributed an important article to the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

His views on the importance of dogma and on the sacraments he learned, as he believed, from St. John, of whose writings he was a lifelong student and diligent expositor.

This development of his opinions in no way limited his width of sympathy, nor did it interfere with the friendly intercourse, ecclesiastical as well as social, that he had been wont to hold with nonconformists with Wesleyans like Dr. W. F. Moulton, or with independents like Principal Fairbairn.

In 1888 he went to Germany to inquire about technical education and continuation schools in that country; and the next year he visited Sweden to see the working of the Gottenburg licensing system.

[4] When on the eve of retiring from his chair at Aberdeen owing mainly to failing eyesight, Milligan was suddenly seized with illness which soon proved fatal.

[4] In 1878, appeared a volume on the Higher Education of Women; and the next year he contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica his important article on the Epistle to the Ephesians.

The Resurrection of our Lord and his Commentary on St. John (in conjunction with Dr. Moulton) (1882), his Commentary on the Revelation (1883), his Discussions on the Apocalypse (1883), his Baird Lectures on the Revelation of St. John (1886), Elijah (1887), The Resurrection of the Dead (1890), The Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood of our Lord, and his presidential address on the Aims of the Scottish Church Society (1892), were all productions of his ripened powers.