Life

He was born at the manse of Careston

Careston

Careston is a hamlet in Angus, Scotland that is in the parish of the same name, 5 miles west of Brechin. The parish and hamlet supposedly took their name from a stone laid in commemoration of a Danish chieftain, called Caraldston. It has a castle and church, although the local primary school...

, near Brechin

Brechin

Brechin is a former royal burgh in Angus, Scotland. Traditionally Brechin is often described as a city because of its cathedral and its status as the seat of a pre-Reformation Roman Catholic diocese , but that status has not been officially recognised in the modern era...

, where his father, John Gillies, was minister. He took literary and divinity courses at university, and after a time as tutor in several families, he became minister of the College Church, Glasgow on 29 July 1742. In this charge he remained till his death fifty-four years after (29 March 1796). He preached three times every Sunday, delivered discourses in his church three times a week, published for some time a weekly paper, and visited and catechised his parish.

Works

Gillies is best known for Historical Collections relating to the Success of the Gospel, 2 vols. Glasgow, 1754; an appendix was added in 1761, and a supplement in 1786 which had a biography of Gillies by Dr. John Erskine prefixed. It was later updated by Horatius Bonar

Horatius Bonar

Horatius Bonar was a Scottish churchman and poet.-Life:The son of James Bonar, Solicitor of Excise for Scotland, he was born and educated in Edinburgh. He comes from a long line of ministers who have served a total of 364 years in the Church of Scotland...

. This work was an important contribution to the historiography of the First Great Awakening

First Great Awakening

The First Awakening was a Christian revitalization movement that swept Protestant Europe and British America, and especially the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American religion. It resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of personal...

. From a collection of 30 to 40 documented local religious revivals of the previous several decades, Gillies put together a narrative from both sides of the Atlantic, in a context starting at the first Pentecost

Pentecost

Pentecost is a prominent feast in the calendar of Ancient Israel celebrating the giving of the Law on Sinai, and also later in the Christian liturgical year commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Christ after the Resurrection of Jesus...

. Apart from Methodism

Methodism

Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...

 it dealt also with some groups in the Netherlands and Germany.

Another major work was Devotional Exercises on the New Testament, 2 vols. London, 1769. He published also:

• ‘Exhortations to the Inhabitants of the South Parish of Glasgow,’ 2 vols. Glasgow, 1750;
• ‘Life of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield
  George Whitefield
  George Whitefield , also known as George Whitfield, was an English Anglican priest who helped spread the Great Awakening in Britain, and especially in the British North American colonies. He was one of the founders of Methodism and of the evangelical movement generally...
  
  ,’ London, 1772;
• ‘Essays on the Prophecies relating to the Messiah,’ Edinburgh, 1773;
• ‘Hebrew Manual for the use of Students;’
• ‘Psalms of David,’ with notes, Glasgow, 1786; and
• John Milton
  John Milton
  John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
  
  's Paradise Lost
  Paradise Lost
  Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
  
  , illustrated by texts of scripture, London, 1778.

He wrote a life of John MacLaurin for MacLaurin's ‘Sermons and Essays,’ Glasgow, 1755.

Family

His first wife was Elizabeth (d. 1754), daughter of John MacLaurin, known as a preacher; and his second, Joanna (d. 1792), sister of Sir Michael Stewart of Blackhall

Blackhall, Edinburgh

Blackhall is a suburb in the north west of the Scottish capital city Edinburgh.Blackhall according to Stuart Harris in "The Place Names Of Edinburgh" states that the "Black" could derive either from the Anglican blaec or Scots blac meaning simply black, and the "Hall" ending is the Anglican "Halh"...

.