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 BX 9225 .D4 A4 
 Denney, James, 1856-1917 
 Letters of Principal James 
 Denney to W. Robertson 
 
LETTERS OF 
 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 
 
WORKS BY THE REV. 
 SIR W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, LL.D. 
 
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4>in*~x. »S$rul5?6>* > 
 
 . — — / 
 
LETTERS OF 
 
 PRINCIPAL JAMKS DENNFY 
 
 TO 
 
 W. ROBERTSON NICOLL 
 
 1893-1917 
 
 v 
 
 - 
 
 JUL S S 1921 
 S/CAL St 
 
 / 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON LIMITED 
 LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE vii 
 
 APPRECIATION. By W. Robertson Nicoll . . xiii 
 
 MEMORIES OF A STUDENT. By Professor J. A. Robertson, 
 
 M.A.j Aberdeen ...... xxxi 
 
 LETTERS . . . . 1 
 
 INDEX ........ 265 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 This volume is not a biography of Principal 
 Denney. The field for that is still clear, and it is 
 to be hoped that it will be occupied. In the 
 meantime, and with the cordial concurrence of 
 his immediate relatives, I have ventured to put 
 together the following selection from his letters 
 to me during an intimate friendship which lasted 
 over a quarter of a century. 
 
 Our intercourse began when I invited him to 
 contribute translations to the Foreign Biblical 
 Library. Afterwards it made great progress. 
 Principal Denney wrote commentaries in the 
 Expositor's Bible and in the Expositor's Greek 
 Testament. We discussed together his other 
 books. He agreed to furnish regular contributions 
 to the British Weekly which I edited. These 
 were often leading articles, and many of them 
 were signed. Every week almost he sent me 
 some reviews of new books, and their remarkable 
 qualities of incisiveness and scholarship attracted 
 attention and admiration. In sending his contri- 
 butions he was very often good enough to enclose 
 
viii LETTERS OF PRINCIPAL DENNEY 
 
 a letter, and it is from these letters that I have 
 made up this book. It will be seen that they 
 deal with most of the controversies which dis- 
 turbed the world during these years. We were 
 not always of the same mind, but we never 
 differed in sympathy. The subjects touched 
 upon in this correspondence are such as the 
 Atonement ; the situation created by the action 
 of the House of Lords in the case of the United 
 Free Church of Scotland ; the unsuccessful 
 attempt made to establish a magazine for the 
 united Church ; the proposals of the Church 
 of Scotland for Presbyterian union ; Social 
 Reform ; Local Option and State Purchase ; 
 and, above all, the war. I have not kept more 
 than a fraction of his letters, but I trust that 
 what remains will be found stimulating and 
 characteristic. Very few omissions have been 
 made from the letters. There was never any 
 venom in Dr. Denney's pen, but he was both keen 
 and frank as a critic. In the Appreciation I have 
 partially reproduced an article I wrote on his 
 death, and have strengthened it with quotations 
 from the tribute paid by his colleague Professor 
 James Moffatt in the British Weekly. I ac- 
 knowledge with much gratitude the contribu- 
 tion made to this book by one of Dr. Denney's 
 
PREFATORY NOTE ix 
 
 most distinguished students, Professor J. A. 
 Robertson, of Aberdeen. I am deeply indebted 
 to Dr. Denney's intimate friend, the Rev. W. 
 R. Thomson, of Bellshill, for a very suggestive 
 letter, and I thankfully acknowledge the help 
 received from my colleagues Miss Jane Stoddart 
 and Sir Ernest Hodder- Williams ; also from 
 the volume of the Rev. T. H. Walker. 
 
 Hampstead, October 1920. 
 
APPRECIATION 
 By W. ROBERTSON NICOLL 
 
APPRECIATION 
 
 James Denney was born at Paisley on February 
 5, 1856. He was educated at first at the 
 Highlanders' Academy in Greenock, a large 
 school providing a thoroughly sound but plain 
 education at a low charge. The headmaster 
 in Denney's time was Mr. William Bowie, a 
 robust, red-haired resourceful man of middle 
 age. He maintained strict discipline and he 
 was a born teacher. James Denney became 
 a pupil teacher, and was from the first very 
 successful with the boys. He was tall and 
 slight, with a grave yet kindly expression, the 
 student and scholar written in every line of his 
 face. A startling contrast to Denney in that 
 old Academy was found in John Davidson, 
 the poet, who was a scholar and teacher at the 
 same time. Davidson was the son of an Evan- 
 gelical Union minister, and I remember a con- 
 versation in which he told me that his father 
 was a man of rare ability. 
 
 From school Mr. Denney passed to the 
 University of Glasgow. He matriculated as 
 an Arts student in November 1874, and took 
 an eminent position from the first. One of his 
 
xiv PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 
 
 colleagues, Dr. Clow, says that in the Latin 
 Class a stillness at once fell upon the students 
 as, in level tones and with perfect enunciation, 
 the listeners heard a translation as loyal to the 
 original as it was clean-edged and felicitous. 
 
 Mr. Denney was fortunate in his professors. 
 He won Edward Caird's coveted Gold Medal. 
 But he never accepted Caird's philosophy, and 
 though learned in the history of philosophy he 
 declined to tie himself to any system, holding 
 that one system gave way to another and that 
 Christianity was bound up with none of them. 
 His unreserved admiration was given to Professor 
 Jebb. To the biography of Professor Jebb 
 Dr. Denney contributed an appreciation. He 
 admitted that Jebb could not in any sense 
 fraternise with his pupils, the main interest of 
 most of them being too remote from his own, 
 yet he was most willing to help those who sought 
 his guidance in his own field. ' What impressed 
 the imperfectly prepared students, who had to 
 do any work for Mr. Jebb, was the precision and 
 finish of all his work for them. Most of us had 
 no idea of what translation could be — whether 
 from Greek into English or from English into 
 Greek. His renderings of Sophocles, which have 
 since become known to all the world, came on 
 us like a revelation. He not only did the thing, 
 but created an ideal for us by doing it.' Denney, 
 after leaving the University, assisted Jebb for 
 
APPRECIATION xv 
 
 some years in examination work, and was im- 
 pressed by the interest that the Cambridge 
 scholar took in the progress of his men. 
 
 Another professor with whom he came to 
 work was Professor Veitch, of the Logic Class. 
 Denney assisted him. A pupil at that time 
 says : ' What drew one's attention to this man 
 with the slender frame, the scholar's stoop, the 
 countenance " sicklied o'er with the pale cast 
 of thought," the intent look, the reticent manner, 
 the metallic tone of speech, was his character 
 rather than his career in Arts, brilliant as that 
 had been.' 
 
 James Denney's parents belonged to the Re- 
 formed Presbyterian Church. The little de- 
 nominations in Scotland have been fruitful in 
 giving us great Christian leaders. Denney passed 
 over to the Free Church, taking with him his 
 stern but warm piety, his appreciation of dog- 
 matic truth, and his hearty interest in the 
 Church of Christ. He proceeded in time to the 
 Free Church College, Glasgow, where students 
 were under the stimulating influence of A. B. 
 Bruce, J. S. Candlish, and T. M. Lindsay. 
 Perhaps it was Bruce who most influenced 
 Denney. Denney admired his work, and espe- 
 cially his Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels. 
 Denney had a period of what might be called 
 Broad Churchism, but when Bruce and his pupil 
 came to the fork in the road the master took 
 
 b 
 
xvi PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 
 
 one way and the scholar another. He was 
 reticent in describing his spiritual history, but 
 I believe that his wife, who gave him the truest 
 and most perfect companionship, led him into 
 a more pronounced evangelical creed. It was 
 she who induced him to read Spurgeon, whom 
 he had been inclined to despise. He became 
 an ardent admirer of the preacher and a very 
 careful and sympathetic student of his sermons. 
 It was Spurgeon perhaps as much as any one 
 who led him to the great decision of his life — 
 the decision to preach the Atoning Death of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ. This, as Dr. Moffatt 
 has said, was all in all to him. He spent and 
 was spent in making it everything to the 
 Church. 
 
 He went first, in 1886, to Broughty Ferry as 
 minister of the East Free Church. There he 
 wrote his Commentaries on the Epistles to the 
 Thessalonians and the Second Epistle to the 
 Corinthians, in the Expositor's Bible. His rela- 
 tions with the Church were so intimate through 
 all changes that one of his successors generously 
 declared that he was minister of the East 
 Church till the day of his death. In one of his 
 sermons he states his position with the utmost 
 clearness : — 
 
 1 In one way of it the Christian life always 
 begins with a great humiliation. Christ comes 
 to us as One without Whom we cannot take the 
 
APPRECIATION xvii 
 
 first step in the new way of life ; even to begin 
 it we must be infinitely and for ever indebted 
 to Him. How do we need to begin ? All we 
 sinful men need to begin with the forgiveness 
 of sins. Now when we think of it, when we 
 think of the forgiveness of sins, what are we to 
 say ? We cannot earn it, we cannot claim it, 
 we cannot take it for granted, we must go into 
 debt for it, and we must go into debt to Christ. 
 That is the very heart of the Gospel. Christ 
 brings the forgiveness of sins, and He brings it 
 at an unspeakable cost. Christ died for the 
 ungodly : "in Whom we have redemption 
 through His blood, even the forgiveness of our 
 trespasses, according to the riches of His grace." ' 
 
 He also delivered in America, and published 
 in 1895, his memorable Studies in Theology. 
 There followed his precious Commentary on the 
 Epistle to the Romans in the Expositor's Gieek 
 Testament— perhaps the very best piece of work 
 he ever accomplished — and his weighty volumes, 
 The Death of Christ and Jesus and the Gospel. 
 His book of sermons, The Way Everlasting, 
 presents his characteristic thoughts with marked 
 simplicity and power, and has taught many 
 ministers how the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 may be preached. 
 
 He was very happy as a pastor, but he found 
 his true place and legitimate sphere when he 
 was appointed a Professor in the United Free 
 
xviii PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 
 
 Church College, Glasgow. This was in 1897. 
 He was eminently fortunate in his surroundings. 
 No Divinity School of the world stood higher. 
 He had the warmest appreciation of his col- 
 leagues, and it was fully returned. The scholarly, 
 laborious, and courageous Professor Orr was a 
 close friend. The learned and accomplished 
 Principal, Dr. T. M. Lindsay, had a very special 
 place in his regard. Professor George Adam 
 Smith brought with him ' an intellectual and 
 moral stimulus of which he would speak some- 
 times with a singular note of intensity.' With 
 the students he was eminently successful. He 
 had all the qualities needed for a great religi- 
 ous teacher — profound pietjr, wide culture, and 
 scholarship which could not be gainsaid. It has 
 been well said that he was a living conscience 
 among his men. A favourite phrase of their 
 professor was ' Crowd in conscience.' And this 
 he did himself, for even more prominent than 
 his teaching was the high standard of duty and 
 responsibility he set up for those who would 
 be ministers of Jesus Christ. It is not easy to 
 induce theological students to be students in 
 earnest. But Denney could not endure a shirker, 
 and though he did not storm he could speak 
 in a stern, quiet way when anything displeased 
 him. Some of the students were in awe of him, 
 but his rich, generous personality conquered all. 
 His genial sympathies, his catholic taste in 
 
APPRECIATION xix 
 
 literature, proved the breadth of his nature. 
 Dr. Moffatt has told us of his intimate knowledge 
 of the eighteenth century. His lectures on 
 Johnson, Gibbon, and Burns were monographs 
 of a high order. He said to a friend that if 
 the historical plays of Shakespeare were lost he 
 could reproduce them from memory. He could 
 find a place for Byron. When a friend argued 
 that you must be under twenty to get a real 
 taste of Byron, ' Yes,' he said quickly, ' but 
 Byron has something for us even in the sixties ' — 
 though he humorously refused to disclose what 
 it was. He indulged himself in light reading, 
 and shortly before his death he was especially 
 caught by ' Q.'s ' fiction, reading with delight 
 Troy Town and The Delectable Duchy. Graver 
 studies went along with these, and he would 
 speak of what he had found in St. Bernard, 
 and of how much he had been disappointed in 
 Aquinas and the Puritans. 
 
 I have a certain mournful pride in thinking 
 that I did something to induce him to come 
 forward as an author. At that time his mind 
 was fully made up, his future was foreseen, he 
 was to preach the Cross of Christ — on the one 
 hand its power to save, and on the other its 
 sharpness and sternness, its imperious calls to 
 duty and self-denial. From this preaching of 
 the Cross he was never moved, but as time went 
 on he became more and more master of a style 
 
xx PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 
 
 which did justice to the great thoughts. In 
 fact, his Studies in Theology are perhaps the 
 freshest and brightest of his writings. It was 
 his deep conviction that want of style prevented 
 almost all Scottish theological books from reach- 
 ing the first rank. Indeed, he held that Macleod 
 Campbell's treatise on the Atonement was the 
 only classical theological book that came from 
 Scotland. Like Dale he drilled himself in Burke. 
 There was much in Denney that recalled Dale, 
 and the older man recognised with joy a true 
 fellow soldier. I do not say that Dr. Denney 
 rose into poetry or that his imagination was 
 highly developed. His wife used to say laugh- 
 ingly that there was not enough pathos in his 
 sermons. There was, however, a deep evan- 
 gelical warmth and tone. He learned to write 
 with self-command, a majestic sense of sim- 
 plicity and precision, a deliberate measure of 
 expression, a resolute limitation of general state- 
 ments by the severity of facts. This serious 
 clearness, this grasp of his own thoughts, is 
 most plainly seen in his chief book, Jesus and 
 the Gospel. What was said of a great preacher 
 may be said about Dr. Denney. His inmost 
 spirit was busy with the New Testament. He 
 preached New Testament doctrines as one who 
 lived in the presence of great subjects, subduing 
 him, restraining him, calling for self-recollection 
 and sober words. By dint of constant labour 
 
APPRECIATION xxi 
 
 he arrived at a style which was the perfection 
 of lucidity. 
 
 Dr. Denney loved controversy, and he was 
 one of the most formidable of fighters. It is 
 needless to say that he scorned personal dis- 
 putes and took no part in them. But he had 
 a profound contempt for sciolism. He was com- 
 pletely armed, a thorough scholar, in full com- 
 mand of all his weapons, with these weapons 
 always at their brightest. A keen logician, he 
 could detect and expose a fallacy with almost 
 supernatural quickness. He had great powers 
 of irony and sarcasm, but he was incapable of 
 striking a foul blow. His insight was hardly 
 ever at fault, and he could take the measure of 
 disputants. Dr. Denney was one of the most 
 modest of men, simple to a degree in his manner, 
 absolutely free from pretentiousness of any kind. 
 Sometimes he appeared to be aloof. Many men 
 feared him. But his nature was gentle. He 
 could think and speak with a readiness and 
 clearness and keenness to which few could 
 attain. For years he wrote none of his sermons, 
 but one might listen to him and fail to find a 
 sentence unfinished or a wrong word used. It 
 was in this way that he came to be the power he 
 was. In any assembly that might be gathered 
 he was, when he chose, the leader. Scotland, 
 happily, is still very rich in great preachers and 
 scholars and theologians, but I think they will 
 
xxii PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 
 
 be the foremost to admit that none of them is 
 quite on the same level as the master we mourn. 
 One of the most eminent leaders of the Church 
 of Scotland was known to say that the whole 
 decision with regard to Union lay with Dr. 
 Denney. If he supported Union it would carry. 
 If he opposed it, it could not be carried. 
 
 His chief sorrow was the death of his wife, 
 which took place some years before his own. 
 This made a great difference to Dr. Denney, 
 but the subject is too sacred to be written of. 
 Whatever he did was strengthened and com- 
 pleted by her constant watchfulness and aid, 
 and I have often thought that her death gave 
 him a better comprehension of the deeper 
 problems and tragedies of the heart. Not that 
 he was unsympathetic. He was the most 
 sympathetic of men, but he had much of the 
 Scottish reticence, and he did not wear his heart 
 on his sleeve. 
 
 An impressive testimony to the growing 
 esteem in which he was held was given by his 
 appointment, in 1914, to succeed Principal T. 
 M. Lindsay, who for forty years was identified 
 with the Glasgow College. When the General 
 Assembly met in 1915, it was found that the 
 Church was united as to this appointment. 
 Denney's name was the only one mentioned. 
 After his nomination had been proposed and 
 seconded, the whole Assembly rose to its feet 
 
APPRECIATION xxiii 
 
 when the newly elected Principal was introduced 
 to the House, escorted by his proposer and 
 seconder. It was a magnificent and moving 
 spectacle, which was only intensified by the 
 humble bearing of the man on whom was con- 
 ferred this spontaneous tribute. In a few brief 
 sentences he declared his willingness to accept 
 the appointment, making the characteristic re- 
 mark that the chief joy of such things is the 
 demonstration they give of the amount of good- 
 will there is in the world. Dr. Moffatt has told 
 us that what he said in his college, what he was, 
 mattered as little else did. 
 
 So the years went on, crowded with labours. 
 A warning came when he was attacked by 
 illness, and was confined for some months to his 
 room. He was allowed to see very few friends, 
 but he had his books, and it was hoped that 
 six months of total rest might restore him. 
 He was only sixty-one — comparatively young 
 as years are counted now. 
 
 He was taken away at a time when he had 
 reached the highest point of his influence. He 
 would have gone much higher if he had been 
 spared to us, through the sheer strength and 
 beauty and wisdom of his nature. He never 
 sought power. He was one of the most un- 
 worldly, unselfish, retiring of men, and was in a 
 manner forced to the front. In his own Church, 
 the United Free Church, he was the chief leader. 
 
xxiv PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 
 
 In his beloved city of Glasgow he had come to 
 be one of the most influential of public men. 
 All over the world he had his readers and 
 followers. That he was in many respects the 
 first man in Scotland was coming to be acknow- 
 ledged. It is my own deliberate opinion that 
 hardly any greater loss could have befallen 
 the Christian Church, for he seemed destined to 
 guide thought and action in the difficult years 
 to come as hardly any one could but himself. 
 
 There is no doubt that he sacrificed himself. 
 The zeal of God's house had eaten him up. 
 Not content with his work as student, professor, 
 and author, he undertook the charge of the 
 Central Fund of his Church, moved by a deep 
 sympathy with the needs of his brethren, and 
 to that noble cause he gave himself continually. 
 He was also preparing to deliver the Cunningham 
 Lectures, and had chosen for his subject the 
 Atonement. He preached incessantly, generally 
 twice every Sunday. Also he had been called 
 to leadership in great vital causes. His whole 
 soul was absorbed in the movement for Prohibi- 
 tion and in the resistance of State Purchase. 
 He slipped almost insensibly into a large share 
 of ecclesiastical work. His pen was always 
 ready. He gave us in the British Weekly such 
 help as no other man could, and over a period of 
 many years I never remember him refusing any 
 request. Thus he was continually spending 
 
APPRECIATION xxv 
 
 himself, and all of us seemed to take it for granted 
 that he was capable of any labour. Also he 
 thought so himself. But, alas ! we were all 
 wrong. 
 
 It is a hard task in writing of a friend who has 
 gone to analyse and reproduce for others, as a 
 picture, that of which we feel the reality and 
 perhaps do not care to feel more. Yet something 
 must be said somehow. To me he was the truest, 
 the warmest, and the tenderest of friends. Our 
 intimate association lasted unclouded for more 
 than twenty-five years. From his sick chamber 
 he found time to write to me. I take leave to 
 print a few lines from this letter : — 
 
 ' I am counting on the open air, which I have 
 not breathed for seven weeks or so, to set me up 
 again. I don't know what was wrong with me : 
 I just collapsed suddenly and completely like 
 the one hoss shay in O. W. Holmes, and I have 
 spent all these weeks in painfully gathering 
 myself in bits out of the debris. I am past the 
 point of despair now, but when I shall be able 
 to do any kind of work with body or brain I 
 cannot foresee. I have been a little astonished 
 at the people who condoled with me on having 
 to postpone the Cunningham Lectures : the 
 things I am sore at being unable to help are the 
 Temperance cause and the Central Fund.' 
 
 What we have lost in him we shall have to 
 discover in travelling what remains of the 
 
xxvi PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 
 
 journey. We cannot realise that this eager 
 tenderness, this high, self-possessed and furnished 
 intellect should have been taken from us. Every- 
 thing reminds us that at a moment when we most 
 needed such a mind we must look for it no more. 
 
 Dr. Moffatt recalls what Denney once said 
 about one of his favourites, Dr. Johnson. The 
 two were speaking of Boswell's paragraphs at 
 the end, and he remarked, ' The best thing said 
 about Johnson's loss was not said by Boswell.' 
 When asked what he meant he quoted Gerard 
 Hamilton's words : ' Johnson is dead. Let us 
 go to the next best — there is nobody ; no man 
 can be said to put you in mind of Johnson.' 
 
 ' To the last he was able usually to work. 
 His Greek Testament and notebooks were beside 
 his bed when I last saw him, and he was planning 
 new lectures, talking of theology, of Professor 
 Gwatkin's library, of Tertullian, even as he 
 gasped for breath.' 
 
 But it is all in vain that we try to tell how 
 much we miss him. Francis Thompson wrote : — 
 
 ' When a grown woman dies, 
 
 You know we think unceasingly 
 What things she said, how sweet, how wise, 
 And these do make our misery.' 
 
 It is not with mere misery that we think of Dr. 
 Denney. We are happy in the remembrance 
 of a man in whose presence we felt that God 
 and goodness could not be doubted. But the 
 
APPRECIATION xxvii 
 
 news of his death was a blow on the heart. 
 ' Alas ! my brother, very pleasant wast thou 
 unto me.' 
 
 I recall Dean Church's words about Hugh 
 James Rose. ' As far as could be seen at the 
 time, he was the most accomplished divine 
 and teacher in the English Church. He was 
 a really learned man. He had the intellect and 
 energy and literary skill to use his learning. 
 He was a man of singularly elevated and religious 
 character ; he had something of the eye and 
 temper of a statesman, and he had already 
 a high position. He was profoundly loyal to 
 the Church, and keenly interested in whatever 
 affected its condition and its fortunes.' 
 
MEMORIES OF A STUDENT 
 
 By the Rev. 
 Professor J. A. ^ROBERTSON, MA., Aberdeen 
 
MEMORIES OF A STUDENT 
 
 When Dr. Denney appeared one day as preacher 
 at King's College Chapel, Old Aberdeen, two 
 youths went to hear him, with anticipations 
 whetted ; and the first impression was one of 
 disappointment. There was nothing prophetic, 
 or even leonine, about the physical build of this 
 reputed defender of the Faith. His longish 
 face, with the dark, close-cropped hair and 
 beard, had the pallor of the student about it. 
 And when he began to speak, his thin, high- 
 pitched voice was not immediately magnetic. 
 But his language had an athletic and purposive 
 directness. It knew where it was going, and 
 made straight for the mark, taking every obstacle 
 on the way with the ease which only comes with 
 long discipline in thinking. He had not been 
 speaking long before we detected that the clear 
 note of the voice had in it the ring and clash as 
 of a bright, well-tempered sword. The riposte 
 was perfect — without any fumbling or faltering. 
 1 It is frequently said that Christianity is on 
 its trial to-day. That is precisely what it is 
 in the nature of Christianity to be. It is a 
 thing that is always on its trial in the world.' 
 
xxxii PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 
 
 And one felt that he himself was an embodiment 
 of the truth he spoke : a trained swordsman, 
 always on guard, always ready to do battle for 
 the cause that was his very life's-blood. The 
 incisive mind gripped and held : and a disciple 
 was won that day. 
 
 When I went to Glasgow to study under 
 him, the old spell was at once laid on the mind 
 by Denney the teacher. At first we reacted 
 against it somewhat. The minds of the class 
 were but half-disciplined, and eager with a 
 half-informed passion for liberty of thought, 
 which was really, I suppose, licence. We hardly 
 knew then that liberty had its perfect law, in 
 the world of thought as elsewhere. In the 
 minds of most of us there was a smattering of 
 the elusive idealism current in the universities. 
 And we felt the pull of a mind strenuously 
 shepherding us into a pathway which seemed 
 to us somewhat hedged in, and which for him 
 was the only pathway leading to ' reality,' his 
 favourite, or most characteristic word. How 
 often was theory or opinion tossed aside with 
 intellectual indignation as 6 unreal to the last 
 degree,' or some such word. 
 
 The qualities of his mind which impressed us 
 were a precision and exactness of scholarship 
 which could not tolerate looseness or short-cuts 
 or slovenliness ; a limpid clarity which glittered 
 like a mountain stream with a kind of fierce 
 
MEMORIES OF A STUDENT xxxiii 
 
 impatience of all tangled and confused think- 
 ing ; a sincerity, a feeling for truth, which was 
 ever scornful of mere futility or irrelevance or 
 trifling iinesse ; and a passionate intensity which 
 was contemptuous of superficiality or vague 
 imaginative sentiment. 
 
 The high, close-packed, shining temples, the 
 thin, mobile lips that never moved to utterance 
 but with the considered and significant word, 
 the speculative, almost Jewish, nose, the dark, 
 piercing eyes behind the close-poised spectacles, 
 the pallor of the face — all became transfigured 
 for us. They were symbolic of so much more 
 than the merely studious mind : symbolic of an 
 intellectual asceticism which had no use for the 
 beauty that was not also purposive, the emotion 
 which was not moral, or the fine which was not 
 also the true. Not — as I have said — that he 
 was not passionate : ' passionate scholarship ' 
 is a phrase which describes his work as well as 
 any. But all his passions seemed to be called 
 off from the pursuit of other ends in life, and 
 dedicated wholly to the service of the mind and 
 conscience, which in their turn were dedicated 
 wholly to his Master. 
 
 It was an exhilarating experience to watch 
 his relentless and inexorable logic remorselessly 
 pursuing some theory : probing, e.g., that per- 
 sistent tendency of the Teutonic mind to find 
 some hidden motive behind the artless naivete 
 
xxxiv PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 
 
 of an evangelist's words ; then finally, with one 
 last, pitiless thrust, leaving the man with his 
 theory, wriggling, a mere worm in the dust, 
 while the class gasped at the deftness of the 
 knock-out blow : ' And so this evangelist has 
 gone on deceiving the world all these centuries — 
 till Schmiedel found hi?n out ! ' 
 
 Behind it all one recognised the presence of 
 a profound and definite spiritual experience 
 which he himself had lived through. You often 
 hear men say of such a man : ' His life has been 
 hedged-in from the tragedy of the world ; he 
 has not felt, and has no sympathy with the 
 struggles and temptations of ordinary men.' It 
 is simply not true of Denney. His teaching 
 had the note of battle about it, because he him- 
 self had fought, and was ever fighting, for the 
 faith that was in him. He did experience the 
 struggles of other men, though his spoken word 
 was never introspective ; but to this battle, 
 which lies in the life of every man, there was 
 added the battle of a man who had been brought 
 up in a strict orthodoxy of religious outlook, 
 the spirit of which he had made his own in his 
 loyalty to truth, and the rigid and cramping 
 trammels of which he had fought through in 
 obedience to that same loyalty. That on the 
 one hand ; and on the other, one felt that he 
 had passed through the ordeal of a philosophic 
 speculation whose tendency was to obliterate or 
 
MEMORIES OF A STUDENT xxxv 
 
 blur moral and spiritual distinctions ; and he 
 answered the subtle temptation it offered, by 
 the demand that it should conform to the moral 
 realities of life, or perish. ' The difference be- 
 tween right and wrong is real and ultimate : 
 Christ died for the difference between right and 
 wrong.' 
 
 Above all, his experience of a sin-bearing God 
 agonising to reconcile the world in Christ was, 
 for him, the ultimate reality. And ever, when 
 he rose up from the battle of life, to meet God 
 undertaking for him thus in love, the thrill of 
 battle in his voice was changed to a lyrical 
 note — the thrill of adoration. The intense and 
 sometimes harsh note of a conscience aflame, in 
 the search for reality, became the intense note 
 of love aflame with redemption-gratitude. Most 
 of us could have said — quite reverently — after 
 the experience of his class : ' Thou hast enticed 
 (constrained) me, and I was constrained : thou 
 art stronger than I and hast prevailed.' It was 
 a great experience, written in red and inefface- 
 able letters in our lives. 
 
 One thing more — besides bequeathing some- 
 thing of his spirit of precision — he certainly did 
 for us : He made the New Testament the most 
 real of all books to us, the record not of a dream- 
 world apart from life, but of the highest human 
 experience. He led us into something of the 
 liberating greatness of that experience. ' The 
 
xxxvi PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 
 
 New Testament,' he was fond of saying, ' is the 
 most free-thinking book in the world.' And his 
 own mind was advancing into the greatness of 
 that freedom to the end. Some of his last — 
 posthumous — pronouncements fell startlingly into 
 some religious camps ; and the full effect of the 
 seeds of freedom he sowed has yet to be reaped. 
 
 Because his life was lived before us always at 
 this high-strung pitch, it was difficult for us 
 sometimes to approach him. We never did so 
 without much heart-searching beforehand as to 
 whether the thing that was perplexing us was 
 ' real.' And often, when men laid their ques- 
 tionings before him, they came away with a 
 feeling of awe, as if they had been standing at 
 the judgment seat of God. 
 
 But he was, nevertheless, intensely human. 
 Once, in an off-moment in his home, I remember 
 him saying with a whimsical, half-sigh that one 
 had to brace and key oneself up when one 
 opened one's Bible ; and one laid it down and 
 took up Punch, e.g., with a distinct and visible 
 relaxation that was not merely mental but 
 bodily. I am not sure now whether it was an 
 original word of the Professor's. I think I have 
 read something like it elsewhere. Is it in 
 Smetham's letters ? But even so, it was a re- 
 vealing word on his lips. One of the great 
 liberating thoughts which he constantly taught 
 is that ' Christ's Divinity was because of, not in 
 
MEMORIES OF A STUDENT xxxvii 
 
 spite of, His humanity.' And yet it would seem 
 that in one direction at least he did not permit 
 himself to find a full humanity in Jesus. He 
 was inclined to deny altogether the presence of 
 a note of humour in the sayings of the Master. 
 His high vocation, he thought, did not permit 
 of it. I remember once hearing the late J. P. 
 Struthers of Greenock (the only man of genius, 
 Denney confessed to a friend after his death, 
 he was ever intimately acquainted with) say 
 that he and his great friend always differed 
 on this question ; he was referring in particular 
 to the story of the Syrophcenician woman. But 
 surely Struthers was right. There is a lambent — 
 at times almost mordant — humour, widespread 
 in Jesus' words. Unless laughter were an attri- 
 bute of Deity, one would be inclined to weep 
 for God in His terrible burden-bearing. 
 
 But the Professor himself had quite a distinct 
 sense of humour. One remembers how, at a 
 party, when the question was propounded, — 
 If one were given a choice between the gifts of 
 beauty and goodness, which ought one to choose ? 
 Dr. Denney unhesitatingly voted for beauty. 
 Pressed for his reason, he said, ' because if one 
 didn't possess beauty it was impossible of achieve- 
 ment : but the way was always open for a man 
 to become good ! ' And this was told me lately 
 by an eyewitness : he was about to board a 
 train one day, when a lady friend beckoned him 
 
xxxviii PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 
 
 into the carriage beside her. ' But,' she said, 
 ' perhaps I am doing wrong, Doctor, in enticing 
 you away from your comfortable first-class 
 carriage. ' A pause and a smile. Then : ' I 
 never travel first-class ' — another pause while 
 the lips twitched quizzically — ' except on the 
 last train to Airdrie on a Saturday night ! ' 
 In public his humour usually took the form of 
 sarcasm, which I suppose is humour bent to 
 the purpose of moral or intellectual criticism. 
 I remember very vividly how, once, in the class, 
 he was warning us solemnly against the employ- 
 ment of sarcasm in the pulpit. ' " Sarcasm," 
 says Carlyle, " is the language of the devil." ' 
 A pause, while the lips hesitated, moving 
 with the burden of a momentarily suppressed 
 aside. Then he let it go : 'And one might 
 almost say it was Carlyle's mother tongue.' 
 The class laughed unrestrainedly ; subsided ; 
 then was swept by a second wave of merriment. 
 The Professor's own gravity collapsed — one of 
 the few times, almost the only time, he descended, 
 in the class, from the academic pedestal. He 
 laughed very self-consciously. It was a witty 
 stroke in itself ; but in the very act of con- 
 demning sarcasm, he had been detected perpetrat- 
 ing a sarcasm himself—' hoist,' by his own hand, 
 ' with his own petard.' 
 
 Yes, he had his very human side. But it 
 was no easy task for him to unbend. He had 
 
MEMORIES OF A STUDENT xxxix 
 
 no small change in his conversation, nothing of 
 the quality of the man whom Coleridge depicts 
 as ' given to paying his pounds in pennies.' 
 Yet he laboured at the task of winning his 
 students' confidence, of drawing them out and 
 getting them to talk of the things that interested 
 him. I remember my first invitation to his 
 home. In answer to his queries. I remember 
 telling him diffidently what an impression Sartor 
 Resartus had made on me, in the pre-university 
 days. ' I have been re-reading it lately,' he 
 said, c reading it aloud. And it 's a great book ! ' 
 It was easy to talk after that. But I remember 
 the sense of effort while we laboured to reach 
 common ground. So he always toiled — to be- 
 come all things to all men, often fingering awk- 
 wardly a lighted cigarette while he strove, for 
 he was no smoker. 
 
 Yet there was an air of serenity and love in 
 his home, which was very restful. The sweet 
 woman who was queen there understood him, 
 and could make him show his human side as no 
 one else could. ' James,' she would say, 4 I 
 think your preaching style has greatly improved 
 since you took to reading those French novels.' 
 And then would follow some delightful con- 
 fessions, and criticisms of the things he had read. 
 I can recall him, once, in the class, discussing 
 the usage of the terms ' subjective ' and 4 ob- 
 jective.' He was putting us on our guard against 
 
xl PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 
 
 the elusive way they seemed to change places. 
 And he quoted one of those ' French novels.' 
 It was the description of a man who had fallen 
 in love, and out of it again. He had met again 
 the former object of his affections. ' He looked 
 at her objectively, as a man does at the plate off 
 which he has just dined well.' 
 
 What a full mind he had of all the best in 
 literature ! Dr. Johnson was evidently his hero 
 among men of letters. We always became alert 
 when he began, ' as Dr. Johnson says.' And 
 how penetrating, wise, and just were the literary 
 criticisms which fell so easily from his lips. 
 
 His appearance on the platform or in the 
 Assembly was always memorable. One recalls 
 the passion of his earlier declarations against 
 Establishment. I heard him speak at a great 
 Conference in Inverness after the Lords' fateful 
 decision of 1904. He was blaming ' establish- 
 ment ' for nearly all the worst troubles in the 
 history of the Church. ' Even at the Disruption,' 
 he said, ' the Free Church had found difficulty 
 in shaking off the temper it engendered, when 
 she went out into the wilderness declaring she 
 was the Church of Scotland— Free. Dr. Chalmers 
 himself was not immune.' (Here a man in the 
 audience shouted, ' Question.') ' A gentleman 
 here says, " Question." Dr. Chalmers once 
 said he had been at a meeting where there 
 were voluntaries and common folk ' (other quota- 
 
MEMORIES OF A STUDENT xli 
 
 tions followed). * That,' added Dr. Denney, 
 vehemently rapping out his words, while the 
 interrupter cowered in silence, ' is nothing else 
 than the odious insolent temper of the establish- 
 ment principle.' 
 
 One recalls the passion with which in an 
 Assembly Union debate (to clear the air in which 
 he was often summoned by the House), he 
 called it ' an acrid poison.' Later, of course, 
 there was a change, in method of approach, 
 though not perhaps in principle. One of his 
 later day utterances I have never been able 
 quite to understand. Defending the Church of 
 Scotland's desire to maintain the historic con- 
 tinuity of the National Church, he fell foul of 
 a previous speaker, who had been distinguish- 
 ing between a de jure and a de facto establish- 
 ment. ' I would not,' he said, ' give an ounce 
 of history for a ton of theory.' Where, I have 
 often wondered since, does the nerve of history 
 lie ? Not surely, not often at least, in legal 
 enactments ; not in parchments laid up in the 
 archives of Westminster, but in the life of the 
 people of the land. Probably I had misunder- 
 stood him, for often I had heard him say — and 
 had drunk it in as the pure milk of the word — 
 that no Church is truly established which is not 
 established in the hearts and consciences of the 
 people of the land. The Professor would have 
 no establishment which involved either coercion 
 
xlii PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 
 
 of conscience in favour of a wrong policy, or 
 yet coercion of superstition in favour of a right. 
 
 He had grown to be the incarnation of the 
 conscience of Scotland in his later days. One 
 recalls how he went once with a deputation to the 
 Glasgow magistrates to plead for the removal 
 of licences in a certain district. He described 
 the situation in burning sentences, tense with 
 all the moral shame of it. ' Now who is re- 
 sponsible for this state of things ? ' The eyes 
 darted a searching glance from behind the 
 spectacles, as he made his characteristic pause. 
 Then the long finger shot out, raking the bench 
 of magistrates and making them squirm un- 
 comfortably in their seats. Slowly, emphatic- 
 ally, decisively, this modern Nathan said : ' You 
 gentlemen are responsible.' 
 
 Though his mind ' was like a star and dwelt 
 apart,' he also ' the lowliest duties on himself 
 did lay.' Every task that fell to his hands he 
 did thoroughly. To hear him speak on the 
 Central Fund was always a liberal education in 
 the high principles of Christian ecclesiastical 
 policy. It was in and for that cause he died. 
 The situation is bad enough in Scotland to-day — 
 through the war. One shudders to think what 
 it might have been but for his sacrifice. ' He 
 yet speaketh.' 
 
 He was the humblest and least assuming of 
 men. He had a great heart. One would not 
 
MEMORIES OF A STUDENT xliii 
 
 speak of inmost sanctities, save in a letter, 
 that the full impression of the beauty of his soul 
 might be felt. But I have been told that a 
 friend met him one day standing still in the street, 
 his head bare, and tears on his cheeks. He 
 said simply, it was there his beloved wife had 
 felt the first pangs of the illness from which 
 she died. All his public labour was the work 
 of a great heart ; but the last years of unsparing 
 activity were the spendings of a broken heart. 
 
LETTERS 
 
Broughty Ferry, 
 July 10, 1893. 
 
 I will send you something by Monday next for 
 the B. W. Somehow my sermons are so undis- 
 guisedly sermonic that they don't lend themselves 
 very readily to the purpose. 
 
 I am afraid I can't give you Corinthians for a 
 while yet. This year of the Expositor's Bible 
 came out so swimmingly that I thought I could 
 give my congregation a rest from Paul : so I 
 have not done anything for some months. How- 
 ever, I have finished all the difficult, at least the 
 most difficult, and especially all the dogmatic 
 part, and will have it done in good enough time 
 to appear in the next series if that suits you. 
 
 Who is Rashdall, who gives the Ritschlian 
 appreciation of Anselm and Abelard in the shape 
 of a Univ. Serm. in Expositor 1 I think that 
 line of interpretation has been taken as far as 
 it will go now, and has yielded all it can yield ; 
 and that it is time to rediscover the fact that the 
 Apostles in their doctrine of atonement were 
 dealing with something which never comes with- 
 in Rashdali's (nor Ritschl's) view — namely, God's 
 condemnation of sin as a terrifically real and 
 serious thing. It may seem irreverent to say 
 so, but the ' hochste einzigartige Heldenaufop- 
 
 A 
 
2 LETTERS OF 
 
 ferung ' theory of the atonement seems to me 
 simply to ignore the serious element in the 
 situation which the atonement is designed to 
 meet. A martyrdom in plain English, no matter 
 how holy and loving the martyr, is an irrelevance. 
 I believe all evangelists would agree in that. 
 There is a fascinating way of presenting Ahelard- 
 ism, but as a fisher-evangelist, a friend of mine, 
 once said to me, to preach it is like fishing with 
 a barbless hook : your bait is taken, but you don't 
 catch men. The man who said that has been 
 greatly blessed as an evangelist, and I lay great 
 stress on an experience which squares so exactly, 
 as I think, with both the experience and the 
 doctrine of St. Paul. 
 
 Broughty Ferry, 
 November 1, 1893. 
 
 When I read your proposal about ' Romans ' 
 I was both flattered and taken aback; I only 
 hope you have not offered it to me because all 
 the people of reputation have declined it. How 
 well or ill I could do it, it is not for me to 
 profess ; I think I could do it as sympathetic- 
 ally — I mean with as entire an appreciation of 
 the author — as any man, and I can promise at 
 all events to do it as well as I can. I feel as 
 you do that there is something uncanny in mort- 
 gaging the future at this rate, but not being 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 3 
 
 pagans we can do it, let us hope, and still be 
 humble. The money question I am content to 
 leave to you. Would you mind telling me who 
 the other contributors, or any of them, are to be ? 
 
 I hope to send Corinthians in about a month ; 
 I am going to America about the middle or end 
 of March, and would like to have finished the 
 proofs, etc., by that time. I suppose that will 
 be possible ? Of course I could send the bulk 
 of it immediately, if you wanted it, but I have 
 not yet written the Introduction, and cannot 
 conveniently do so for a week or two : could you 
 begin any other where ? I must have some 
 introduction this time apart from the exposition : 
 the questions are rather complicated which it 
 involves. 
 
 I don't think the Chicago lectures would do for 
 a book — so far as I can see them just now. There 
 are to be ten : the subjects left wholly to me. 
 What I mean to do, though the subject is syste- 
 matic theology, is not anything very systematic : 
 rather a review of the chief loci communes theo- 
 logici with reference to current ideas, especially 
 those of Ritschl, and also ideas not so current as 
 they should be, especially those of the Epistles 
 in the N. T. I will lecture on Christ's conscious- 
 ness of Himself, and on the apostolic doctrine of 
 Christ ; on Man and his condition in relation 
 to the work of Christ, and on the work of Christ 
 as related to the actual condition of man — there 
 
4 LETTERS OF 
 
 will be two lectures, I think, on the N. T. doctrine 
 of Reconciliation, and on defective approaches 
 to it, or substitutes for it ; then I mean to have 
 one on tne Church (the College is a Congregational 
 one), one (or two) on the Bible, or rather on the 
 word of God as a means of grace and as a spiritual 
 authority ; also I wish to say something on 
 Eschatology. Of course this is private, and open 
 to modification as I find the topics lend them- 
 selves to more or less elaboration as I go along. 
 But it will make me very busy till the winter 
 is over, when added to the ordinary work of a 
 Free Church minister. I shall be very grateful 
 for any suggestion that falls in at all with that 
 general idea of a course, or for any direction to 
 book or man that will help me. Fairbairn, of 
 course, I have read ; but with all his strenuous- 
 ness he does not leave on one the impression of 
 solidity. The constructive part of the book has 
 something breathless and positive about it, 
 which is not very convincing, and some queer 
 mistakes too, which both Lock and Candlish 
 have pointed out. I think far the most valuable 
 part of it is the bit immediately preceding the 
 constructive, the history of German philosophy 
 and theology in their relations to the Return to 
 Christ. 
 
 What bothers me a little about the Chicago 
 lectures is that I have no idea in the world, and 
 can get none, of what the men who are to hear 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 5 
 
 them already know. It is a considerable place, 
 in size at all events : the students are resident — 
 all theological— and last year there were 205. 
 It was Curtiss, their Prof, of Hebrew, a man who 
 had dealings with Delitzsch, who came here and 
 invited me over. 
 
 I have just looked at 's book, and think 
 
 it an odious sample of an odious kind of pro- 
 duction—at least the first half of it. It would 
 be a sin to advertise it on your front page by 
 making a leader on it : but his sociology may be 
 better than his theology. 
 
 I am going to be with Adam at Kelso on Sun- 
 day, and hope to enjoy it. 
 
 Broughty Ferry, 
 December 10, 1894. 
 
 Many thanks for your note. I would by no 
 means have a paper label on my book, though 
 I never imagined it could affect the circulation. 
 My objection is that it never sticks on. I leave 
 it to you to fix up in your wisdom, always 
 retaining the name Studies of Theology on the 
 back in the same type as in the covers you sent : 
 I liked it extremely : it was only my own name 
 which seemed obtrusive. 
 
 I don't know much about legalism, and don't 
 take to Law, except the Serious Call. I have 
 only read two others of his little books : when 
 
6 LETTERS OF 
 
 he lapses into human nature, as in the ' char- 
 acters,' I enjoy him ; otherwise his positiveness 
 and obstinate incapacity to understand other 
 people, and his endless argumentation about things 
 where logic has no hold, are purely repellent to 
 
 me. seems to reverence a man provided 
 
 he cannot understand him, but I never feel 
 inclined to be humble because a fellow-creature 
 contrives to be unintelligible. I think there are 
 just three ways of religion, Legalism, Evangeli- 
 calism, and Antinomianism : Evangelicals who 
 tamper with the New Testament doctrine of 
 atonement inevitably lapse into one or other of 
 the bad ways. Bruce 's hatred of legalism is un- 
 mistakable, but though his moral sense is the 
 very strength of him, I don't think he appreciates 
 sufficiently the need in his theology of this safe- 
 guard against avojAia. 
 
 Broughty Ferry, 
 July 29, 1895. 
 
 I enclose notices of two books I had from you 
 some time ago. Nothing has yet occurred to 
 me coherent enough to make one of your new 
 series out of ; I find my sermons fearfully 
 parochial, pastoral, and for the day. If there 
 is to be some homogeneity in the little volume, 
 I am afraid I must make a little course of 
 sermons on purpose, and I don't yet see the 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 7 
 
 subject. When I think I do, I will let you 
 know. 
 
 I congratulate you, in spite of the result of the 
 elections, on the place you have made for the 
 B. W. in the political as well as the religious world. 
 You are quite an authority in places where you 
 might hardly expect it, thanks to your candour 
 and principle, not to mention the other things 
 needful to command attention ; and if Liberals 
 appreciate your last leader (as many of them do) 
 we should show up much better in a few years. 
 We had a very hard fight here, and great feeling, 
 especially about the Church, but came out all 
 right. I have been much more disappointed 
 with the Scotch than with the English elections, 
 and many people, depressed by the immense 
 Toryism of England, are becoming much more 
 interested than they once were to have Home 
 Rule extended to Scotland. 
 
 The Established Church here make consider- 
 able use of the No-popery cry, and of the need of 
 the establishment and the teinds to secure the 
 Protestantism of the country ; it will be an inter- 
 esting light on the situation if the Tories go in 
 for supporting Catholic schools, whether from 
 rates or taxes. As a rule, the R. C. people who 
 support the Establishment, so far as I know them, 
 are constitutionally (physically, I mean) Tories 
 who contemn ' the mob ' and maintain every- 
 thing that is, on purely selfish principles. There 
 
8 LETTERS OF 
 
 are plenty of them, but the strength of the Church 
 is not in them at all, and I don't think it needs 
 much courage to disregard them. 
 
 I had a young fellow here from Chicago last 
 week, going to study two years in Germany. He 
 was amazed at the universal interest in the 
 elections — nothing else talked about in trains, 
 hotels, streets, by men and women. There was 
 nothing, he said, in America to compare with it 
 at a presidential election. Of course their voting 
 is all on one day, but even that does not seem 
 to produce any concentrated excitement. 
 
 Broughty Ferry, 
 March 11, 1897. 
 
 I wrote a letter, indeed I wrote two letters, 
 about Greece and tore them up. I don't know 
 why, but I could not at the time say what I 
 wanted. I agree entirely with the line you 
 take about the Eastern Question. To coerce 
 Greece would be an abominable crime. The 
 Greeks have done the only humane and heroic 
 thing which redeems the infamy of the last three 
 years, and to employ the resources of this country 
 to punish them for it is an idea not to be endured 
 for a moment. The Concert of Europe is not an 
 end in itself. It did nothing for the Armenians 
 — except veto every mode of interposition pro- 
 posed on their behalf. It did nothing for the 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 9 
 
 Cretans. It never would have done anything. 
 And to have it step in now, impotent for good, 
 but irresistible for evil, is too much. What is it 
 to us that for the sake of it we should be dragged 
 into such shameful courses ? The latest news 
 seems more hopeful, and if Lord Salisbury would 
 only stiffen his back, the danger of coercion would 
 disappear. The powers who want to coerce 
 don't count in the Mediterranean compared with 
 those who are against coercion in their hearts ; 
 and the idea of Britain, France, and Italy, that 
 have bought their own freedom at a price, com- 
 bining to do the vilest work of these despotic 
 empires, only needs to be stated to have its 
 monstrousness appear. 
 
 What a time you are having over the Education 
 Bill and the unprincipled Nonconformists. The 
 Parliamentary proceedings seem at this distance 
 simply scandalous, and though the interest in 
 Crete tends to lessen the attention paid to them 
 in this country, I am sure a great body of opinion 
 is gathering, intensely hostile to the Government. 
 Cameron's election in Glasgow by a majority of 
 120 instead of 1400 was as happy an omen for 
 sound Liberalism as there has been for a good 
 while. He was universally regarded as having 
 betrayed that very principle of Liberalism with 
 which he has been identified all his life for the 
 sake of the Irish vote, and if he won that vote, 
 it was evidently at the cost of what is a great 
 
10 LETTERS OF 
 
 deal more important. I was almost sorry he 
 was returned : a man who sells himself deserves 
 to be sold. 
 
 Have you any objection to tell me what you 
 didn't like in my review of Stopford Brooke's 
 O. T. Sermons ? I wrote one at your request 
 for the Bookman, corrected proof, and then one 
 by Darlow was printed. Of course I am not 
 disputing your right not to print mine : but I 
 would like to know whether it was the contents, 
 or manner, or length, or what, that made it 
 unsuitable. I must say the book did not leave 
 a pleasant impression on my mind. 
 
 We have lovely sunny mornings now, that 
 make one long for holidays : and clear day light 
 till half past six — the most blessed time of the 
 year. 
 
 [On Tuesday, May 25, 1897, the General Assembly 
 of the United Free Church elected the Rev. Dr. James 
 Denney Professor of Systematic and Pastoral Theology 
 in Glasgow Free Church College. Four hundred and 
 fifty-six members of Assembly cast their votes for 
 Dr. Denney, and seventy-six for the Rev. John 
 Macpherson. At the same time the Rev. Alexander 
 Martin, M.A., Morningside Church, Edinburgh, was 
 unanimously elected to the Chair of Apologetics in the 
 New College, Edinburgh. Dr. Denney succeeded the 
 late Professor Candlish, and Mr. Martin, Professor 
 Garden Blaikie. Dr. Martin is now the honoured 
 Principal of New College P Edinburgh.] 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 11 
 
 Broughty Ferry, 
 August 21, 1897. 
 
 Your article on Hall Caine was capital. A 
 man who is in such form ought not to get any 
 holidays, but I could feel curious to know how 
 Hall Caine would take it. Most authors take 
 themselves so seriously — even Baring Gould — that 
 in another land it might mean swords or pistols. 
 And it is evident from the reply you printed 
 that there are men to whom even Hall Caine is 
 a god. 
 
 I hope you are enjoying the heavenly weather 
 up north : I sit here a little like Giant Pope or 
 Giant Pagan, desiring to maul the happy pilgrims 
 who for the time have nothing to do. 
 
 21 Lynedoch Street, Glasgow, 
 January 15, 1898. 
 
 I was very willing to write the enclosed about 
 Forsyth, not because I have not enough to do 
 otherwise but because I liked his little book x 
 very much. When the first half of it appeared 
 in the B. W. I took the liberty of writing to him, 
 though I did not know him, to say how much 
 I appreciated it, and he made me a very friendly 
 reply. It is a book of real experience, a redis- 
 covery of the Gospel, worth as much as most of 
 
 1 The Holy Father and the Living Christ, by P. T. Forsyth, D.D. 
 (Hodder and Stoughton). 
 
12 LETTERS OF 
 
 the other little books put together. I hope it 
 will have a great circulation. 
 
 I almost wrote you at Christmas to remon- 
 strate with you for putting in a communication 
 about me from somebody in the class. I did not 
 like it, and if I knew who wrote it would not be 
 able to avoid having some prejudice against the 
 man. You may think that unjust or a sign of 
 incipient professorial demoralisation in me, but 
 so it is. Up till now, I have found the work not 
 impossible. The students have been very willing 
 to be friendly, and appreciative of anything one 
 has to give. Having two classes in one, which 
 make a roll of 50, 1 really don't know them very 
 well, but another year will be able to individualise 
 more, and so, I hope, be of more service. This 
 week I have begun the Pastl. Theol. class, and 
 have both till the end of the session. 
 
 Glasgow, 
 November 12, 1898. 
 
 I have written something about Dale's theo- 
 logy * — though it has limited itself, as you will 
 see, to two points — the atonement and Chris- 
 tian ethics. This ran over all the space, and 
 more, that an article usually fills; but if you 
 like, I will write another next week about the 
 
 1 The above-mentioned article on Dr. Dale's Life, by Professor 
 Denney, appeared in the British Weekly for November 17, 1898. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 13 
 
 Church and the Lord's Supper. 1 The book has 
 interested me exceedingly, but I should like 
 to read the essay in Ecclesia before I wrote 
 about the Supper, and that I have not yet been 
 able to do. Many thanks for your last letter 
 on the subject. I agree with all you say about 
 the Resurrection and the Lord's body, but I do 
 not see that that has really anything to do with 
 the Supper. I do not deny that there is mystery 
 in the presence of Christ; what I objected 
 to in Calvin, as in Luther and the Romanists, 
 was that they made an artificial and superfluous 
 mystery out of their own heads — a mystery at a 
 point where no mystery should be ; and this 
 still seems to me to be the case. Perhaps you 
 would not wish me, in these circumstances, to 
 commit myself needlessly on the subject : if so, 
 of course I shall not write anything. 
 
 21 Lynedoch Street, Glasgow, 
 June 11, 1900. 
 
 A friend of mine has written a book called 
 a History of Epic Poetry (Post Virgilian). 2 It 
 is published by Oliver and Boyd, of all people 
 to deal in such a commodity; and he tells me 
 
 1 Dr. Dale as a Churchman was published on December I of the 
 same year. 
 
 - A Hi.stury of Epic Poetry (Post Virgilian), by John Clark, M.A. 
 (Edinburgh : Oliver aud Boyd). 
 
14 LETTERS OF 
 
 that copies will be sent to the Bookman and 
 the B. W. for review. If you have no other 
 arrangement made, and it is not against your 
 principles to have a man's book reviewed by 
 his friend, I should willingly send you a short 
 notice of it for either. But as the book deals in 
 the Spanish and Portuguese epic, and in some 
 other things quite off my beat, it would no doubt 
 be possible to find a more competent hand. I 
 believe the work is thoroughly original, and done 
 throughout at first hand : though the writer has 
 only an assistant mastership in the High School 
 in Dundee, and writes badly, he is a genuine 
 scholar, and it would be a service done to a first 
 rate man if his book could be made visible. I 
 hardly expect that it will have many readers. 
 
 I hope you are feeling up to the mark again. 
 I gave your message to Grant at Nottingham, 
 whom I got to know there for the first time, and 
 took to extremely. 
 
 Your letter on the man who lately wrote on 
 Wesley interested me much, as I have been read- 
 ing Wesley lately. He deserved all you said 
 about his estimate of Wesley's style, but I feel 
 it easier to agree with you about his style than 
 about his character. The only man of whom 
 Wesley reminds me much intellectually is B. 
 Franklin. They have the same relentless prac- 
 ticability and effectiveness in their minds, and 
 something of the same kind of limitation. Frank- 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 15 
 
 lin went about and saw how badly done things 
 were in this material world, how the street lamps 
 smoked inside the glass so that no light came out, 
 etc. etc. ; and he not only saw this, but found 
 out how to mend it, and could put pressure on 
 people to get them to mend it too. Wesley did 
 the very same in the spiritual world. His genius 
 was purely practical in that sphere ; he did things, 
 and he got them done, and that was all. I don't 
 mean, of course, that that was not the greatest 
 of gifts, but it is only one gift, and the ever 
 present consciousness of infallibility which accom- 
 panies it strikes one as a very extraordinary 
 intellectual limitation, when its influence in 
 other directions is considered. Nothing amused 
 me more, e.g., than Wesley's criticisms on the 
 books he read. For distinctness and emphasis 
 it would be impossible to surpass them, and I 
 daresay a man who knew all the books could 
 make a very interesting article on Wesley as a 
 literary critic ; but the infallibility is out of 
 place there. It may seem impious to couple 
 Wesley, because of something in his mind, with 
 a Pharisaical old Sadducee like Franklin ; but 
 there is a decided intellectual affinity in them 
 somewhere. With all you say about Wesley 
 and Law I heartily agree. Chalmers got down 
 to the ground about that controversy when he 
 said, If God did not justify the wwgodly, what 
 could I dot 
 
16 LETTERS OF 
 
 [The Union Magazine, edited by Dr. Orr and Dr. 
 Denney, represented the United Free Church of 
 Scotland, and continued the good work done for so 
 many years by the United Presbyterian Magazine. 
 Among the contributors were representative men from 
 both Churches. The price of the Magazine was four- 
 pence, and afterwards sixpence, and the opening 
 number was full of attractive features. It is needless 
 to say, wrote Claudius Clear, ' that with men so able 
 as Dr. Orr and Dr. Denney, even the obiter dicta of the 
 Magazine are always interesting.] 
 
 21 Lynedoch Street, Glasgow, 
 January 4, 1901. 
 
 It was very obliging of you to give us such 
 a friendly and helpful notice as you have in 
 this week's B. W., 1 and I am most grateful for 
 it. I would have sent you a proof of your 
 article about Aberdeen College, but I knew 
 you were from home and looked over it 
 myself. We have arranged for some others on 
 what are meant to be the same lines, but as 
 everything depends on how they are written, I 
 am not without misgivings. It needs a skilful 
 and practised hand to do the thing in a style 
 which has any attraction, and that is rare. I 
 think all the reviews in this number were written 
 by Orr and myself, so that if there is any terrible 
 
 1 The Union Magazine was reviewed by Claudius Clear in his letter 
 of Jan. 3, 1901, 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 17 
 
 responsibility to bear in connection with them 
 its distribution is comparatively simple. But 
 do you think in such a case we should really 
 sign them ? It would be too monotonous. 
 
 What I feel most difficulty about is the extent 
 to which we should write in it ourselves. We 
 want to have all subjects of interest to the Church 
 discussed in it by competent people, but I dread 
 its degenerating into aimlessness unless some one 
 takes charge of it to a greater extent, and gives 
 it a purpose, if not a policy. If you have any 
 idea that would help us here I should consider it 
 thankfully. 
 
 I was interested to see you putting in a word 
 for Mansel in the British Monthly. I have always 
 felt like you about him, that so strong-headed a 
 man had a case, and was not to be easily dis- 
 missed from the field as he has been by philo- 
 sophers and theologians alike. He saw and felt 
 (what is the truth) that agnosticism is an element 
 in true religion, and a pervading element in it ; 
 where he erred was perhaps in exaggerating this 
 truth so as to give the impression that agnosticism 
 was really the principle of religion. But between 
 gnostic philosophers, like those who succeeded 
 him in Oxford, and agnostics who think that 
 their philosophy rivals or excludes religion, he 
 had hold of a piece of the truth, and will no doubt 
 get his due when all is done. 
 
 We have had our usual holiday here, such as 
 
 B 
 
18 LETTERS OF 
 
 can be had in a rainfall exceeding anything known 
 for 120 years : so at least they told us at Crieff, 
 where we were for a week. 
 
 21 Lynedoch Street, Glasgow, 
 January 11, 1901. 
 
 I am much in your debt for all your suggestions 
 about the Magazine and will try to act on them 
 and to get the other editor to do so also. I entirely 
 agree with you about the Topic, and I feel generally 
 that to have too many ' series ' of things going on, 
 and turning up in every number, must be fatal. 
 But I had no idea of doing a whole series myself ! 
 The paper on ' Anger ' I had in last number was 
 the first of a set to be done by different men, and 
 I only did the first because there was no other 
 at hand. Some good men have promised contri- 
 butions, and I hope we may be able to make it 
 readable, more or less. 
 
 I am sending with this the first half of a dis- 
 cussion of sin in Romans : I found that the whole 
 thing would be absurdly long for one article ; 
 and this, which deals with the conceptions of 
 sin and law, but leaves the experience of the 
 sinner under law and the questions raised in 
 connection with Chs. 5 and 7 to be dealt with 
 in another paper, has a certain unity in itself. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 19 
 
 The Union Magazine, 
 January 29, 1901. 
 
 If the old men in the Church die at the rate at 
 which they have done lately, we shall not want for 
 ' historic interest.' I think in the notices of such 
 this month there is one which is extraordinarily 
 well done, to be a suggestion of a man whose life 
 had no events of public interest. It is signed A. P., 
 and is by Mr. Philip of Invergowrie — on his pre- 
 decessor, Mr. Hunter. I knew the old gentleman, 
 whose son was an elder in my church, and can 
 certify its truth. 
 
 21 Lynedoch Street, Glasgow, 
 February 22, 1901. 
 
 Your two letters have such a lot of things in 
 them that I hardly know where to begin to 
 answer. 
 
 I have been thinking about Schmiedel, and 
 am not quite sure whether he ought to be treated 
 as a deadly enemy of the Christian faith (he 
 certainly throws it all away), or as an entirely 
 irresponsible person. The one sentence you quote 
 from him in the British Monthly, about the 
 Johannine question entering on a new phase 
 (the Simon Magus one), is only a specimen of 
 hundreds as good ; once you discount all that 
 follows upon the rejection of the supernatural 
 on principle, most of what remains in Schmiedel, 
 
20 LETTERS OF 
 
 in spite of an occasional acuteness, is infinitely 
 more absurd than ingenious. If it were worth 
 the trouble it would be very interesting to com- 
 pare his view of the Gospels with Abbott's : 
 except in their common rejection of the super- 
 natural, I question if they have much in common. 
 Anyhow, there is nothing I should like better to 
 hear than SchmiedePs opinion of Abbott's single, 
 double, and triple tradition, and so forth. The 
 publication of two such articles side by side is a 
 sign of extraordinary courage or of sheer despair. 
 I don't believe that the Christian religion — let 
 alone the Church — can live unless we can be sure 
 of (1) a real being of God in Christ ; (2) the 
 atoning death ; (3) the exaltation of Christ. 
 All these are embodied in the apostolic testimony 
 to Christ, and indeed are omnipresent in it ; but 
 I am not sure that they are all represented in 
 their full dimensions in the Gospels — i.e. I am 
 not sure that the Gospels represent the whole of 
 the apostolic testimony, and therefore I could not 
 think of basing Christianity on them alone, if 
 it is to have a documentary basis at all. It 
 needs the whole of the New Testament to show 
 what Christ is, and a man only deceives himself 
 when he goes behind Christianity, and exhibits 
 as the historical Jesus a figure which could never 
 have created Christianity at all. The ineffective- 
 ness of Schmiedel's Christ to do what the historical 
 Christ undeniably did proves that his is not the 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 21 
 
 historical Christ at all. For the public at large, 
 it is only in this general way the subject could be 
 considered : the arguments for and against the 
 Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel must 
 be left to experts. The only thing in connection 
 with the three essentials of Christianity men- 
 tioned above in which there is any ambiguity is 
 the first : the certainty of a real being or presence 
 of God in Christ does not, so far as apostolic 
 testimony allows us to judge, imply anything as 
 to the mode of the incarnation. The Gospels of 
 the infancy are in harmony with it, but it might 
 be held (and the sinlessness of Jesus too) in 
 independence of them. 
 
 21 Lynedoch Street, Glasgow, 
 March I, 1901. 
 
 Struthers has practically prohibited me from 
 saying anything about him, and has indicated his 
 reluctance (which I hope he will overcome) to 
 have the Watch 1 issued in London. He spoke in 
 the kindest possible way about your letter to him, 
 but regards being written about with the sensa- 
 tions of a whelk being wormed out of its shell on 
 a pin point. But there can be no harm in telling 
 what everybody knows — that he is a minister of the 
 Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland, not an 
 
 1 The Morning Watch, edited by the Rev. J, P. Struthers, of 
 Greenock. 
 
22 LETTERS OF 
 
 Original Seceder; that he preaches for anybody 
 who asks him, and gets only too much of it to do ; 
 that he is a good preacher, the most solemn and 
 the most tender you could imagine, as any one 
 could infer from the Watch ; and that his age 
 may be guessed (it is only so that I have any idea 
 of it) from the time when he was ordained — 
 which according to the Clerical Almanac was 
 1878. His congregation is not large, but his 
 church is full. 
 
 I was very much interested by all you told me 
 about Abbott. His analysis of the Gospels is as 
 utterly unscientific as anything could be, and I 
 don't think it is difficult to see that Schmiedel 
 thinks so. When I said it showed either great 
 courage or sheer despair to print both, what I 
 meant was that the utter inconsistency of the 
 two made the presentation of both, side by side, 
 either a sort of bravado, or a confession that the 
 editors ' gave up ' the synoptic problem. How- 
 ever, Schmiedel is the only one of the two who 
 needs to be taken seriously, and I have an idea 
 of writing something about him in the next 
 number of the Union Magazine. It is just 
 Strauss over again, but without a spark of the 
 wit or genius — a pedantic Strauss, who leaves 
 on the mind the impression of a man who has 
 learned to spell, but not to read — or who believes 
 that the life of Christ is in the letters of the 
 dictionary, and that it is merely a matter of 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 23 
 
 putting them properly together to produce the 
 force which has created Christianity. What the 
 responsibility of Black or Cheyne can be for it 
 I don't know ; but I should like to know what 
 Schmiedel conceives his own relation to Christi- 
 anity to be : and if he thinks it a ' clear case that 
 there is nothing in it,' why he should have been 
 asked to do this piece of work by men who must 
 be assumed to believe in the Christian religion. 
 
 In the circumstances you must not expect me 
 to write about him in the B. W. It is of course 
 an infinitely better place to write in than our 
 poor little Church paper, but I am reduced to 
 the necessity of doing it for the latter and could 
 only repeat myself — as I have had to do with 
 Moffatt. 
 
 21 Lynedoch Street, Glasgow, 
 January 9, 1902. 
 
 I ought to have acknowledged at once the 
 Church's One Foundation : it is very good of 
 you to send me the book. I am at the subject 
 all the time, and can therefore, I hope, appre- 
 ciate the seriousness of it; and, as you know, 
 I agree with you in everything in it which is 
 of real importance. What troubles me is not 
 how to blow the trumpet, or sound an alarm, 
 but how to teach in detail, and persuade people 
 who are alarmed not to close their minds in 
 
24 LETTERS OF 
 
 impatience, but to face the kind of questions 
 criticism raises, and to meet them with the com- 
 posure of intelligence, as well as the assurance of 
 faith. One tries to do it in teaching, and with 
 time and pains it can be done, but who will give 
 time and pains ? I hope we are not in for a time 
 of panic, or of apathy either, but may be brought 
 through the strait into a larger room. 
 
 What you said in a ' letter ' lately in the B. W. 
 about the ' interestedness ' of good editors was 
 what struck me most in turning over your other 
 book : it is so desperately easy to look at things, 
 and even people, without seeing them, or to get 
 valuable hints and be unconscious of them. I 
 am glad to see you are in the third edition already. 
 That, by the way, reminds me that some weeks 
 ago I saw in the Glasgow Herald an advertisement 
 of my Studies in the 5th edition, whereas I lifted 
 one in a shop the other day marked 6th edition, 
 completing 11th thousand, and dated 1899 — 
 which I suppose is correct. Your pious hope 
 that I will put the lectures on the Death of 
 Christ into The Expositor can hardly be fulfilled : 
 but I would like to revise them in the summer, 
 and have them published in autumn. There is 
 nothing in them but an exhibition of the New 
 Testament teaching ; but the centrality and 
 gravity and inevitableness and glory of it im- 
 pressed me more than ever, and I think it is 
 worth insisting on. The epistles deduce every- 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 25 
 
 thing Christian from it, theological and ethical ; 
 and there is no choice but to take it or 
 leave it. 
 
 I have been trying to get interesting historical 
 matter for the Union Magazine, but you see 
 with what success. Next month we are to have 
 an article on Dr. Aird of Criech by a man who 
 knew him well and got all his papers, but there 
 is not much in it. I have one promised also on 
 Mr. dimming of Melness, by a lady, which one 
 may hope will have a sense of what is inter- 
 esting in character. But no one, apparently, 
 can write who has not made a study of it ; and 
 the circle to which we can appeal for contributors 
 does not contain many who have. Most sermons 
 must be extempore compositions. 
 
 At Christmas we spent a week at St. Andrews, 
 and I did what I venture to say you have never 
 done in your life — spent the whole seven days 
 without once dipping a pen in ink. Neither did 
 I use a Swan fountain, but wrote no word to 
 enemy or friend. 
 
 Mrs. Denney is happy again in her restored 
 Watcfies, and joins me in wishing you a happy 
 new year. 
 
26 LETTERS OF 
 
 21 Lynedoch Street, Glasgow, 
 July 29, 1902. 
 
 I am posting along with this the MS. of which 
 we have spoken before. 1 It is in length, so 
 far as I can judge, almost exactly equal to 
 George Smith's Yale Lectures ; 2 and I should 
 like it printed in something like that fashion, 
 or like one of Dale's books. Instead of an 
 index, to which it does not readily lend itself, 
 I have put in a sort of outline of each chapter 
 in the contents, which will enable any one to 
 see the line of the thing and to find what he 
 wants if it is there. For a title, I should like 
 it called either ' The Death of Christ : its Place 
 and Interpretation in the New Testament ' ; or, 
 ' The Death of Christ in the New Testament : its 
 Place and Interpretation.' 
 
 I hope you can come to see us when you are 
 in Scotland. We go to Pitlochry on Friday, and 
 will be there till the end of August. Dr. Orr was 
 proposing the other day to try the Union Maga- 
 zine at 6d. ; if we do anything different with it, 
 I fancy it must rather be 3d. I should like to 
 hear your mind about it — not the price only, 
 but other things. I have a growing conviction 
 that editing must be made one's business if it 
 
 1 The Death of Christ, by Professor James Denney, D.D. (Hodder 
 and Stoughton, 1902). 
 
 2 Dr. George Adam Smith. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 27 
 
 is to come to anything, and that no one can do 
 it in the bygoing. Not that I ever indulged any 
 such delusion, but even a little experience has 
 made me proof against it if I had. 
 
 How the Nonconformists seem to want a man 
 of weight just now like Dale ! Fairbairn can 
 never be an Englishman, with all his ability, and 
 there could not be a more fatal drawback to any 
 one wishing to deal with an English question. 
 The political weakness seems to me to be that 
 while the High Church party has principles as 
 well as the Nonconformists, so that in this respect 
 they are equally matched, the Liberal party, 
 through which the Nonconformists have to act, 
 has at present no principles at all — I mean no 
 religious ones — and is therefore an ineffective 
 instrument. It does not naturally care for 
 spiritual religion as the Tory party naturally 
 cares for the Established Church, so that in the 
 field of action the Nonconformists have all the 
 advantages against them. I am afraid, unless it 
 comes as you suggest to fines and imprisonments 
 all over, they will just be trampled on. 
 
 I forgot to say that I had made up my 
 mind not to reprint the articles on Romans with 
 this. Partly because the subject has a complete- 
 ness in itself, partly because there is a slight 
 amount of repetition at one point, and partly 
 because I could not think what to call it. Practi- 
 cally I believe it will do more good as it is. 
 
28 LETTERS OF 
 
 21 Lynedoch Street, Glasgow, 
 October 16, 1902. 
 
 I want to ask a considerable favour from you. 
 Could you spare the most of a page of the Scotch 
 edition of the British Weekly to print the 
 enclosed — the address which I gave at the 
 opening of the College yesterday? I wrote it 
 for the present distress, and should like it to 
 be read by more people in the Church than 
 heard it, and you can give the only effective help, 
 if you think it worth while. If not, may I ask 
 you, in spite of all your rules, to let me have it 
 back? 
 
 We are watching here with the closest interest 
 your action on the Education Bill. If any man 
 is entitled to the credit of the national movement, 
 it is you, and one could only wish for Liberalism 
 a leader with any principle or backbone to take 
 the guidance of it, or responsibility for acting on 
 it. The other side are strong only because we 
 are weak ; and the only sign that they are a 
 little frightened is Chamberlain's visit to Birming- 
 ham, and Balfour's loss of temper. It is not like 
 the popular ideal of him to speak of ' deliberate 
 mendacity.' A few more bye-elections like 
 Sevenoaks and North Leeds would be very 
 opportune. 
 
 We have begun this session with 20 regular 
 students in the first year — two of them Ferguson 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 29 
 
 scholars. It is a mercy to have quality when 
 quantity fails. 
 
 21 Lynedoch Street, Glasgow, 
 February 19, 1903. 
 
 Your faith amazes me. These lectures are 
 like a cloud in front of me, but I cannot sit down 
 to think of them till the session is over, and 
 what will come out of it when I do I have 
 no idea. They might be what I should wish 
 to publish or wish to hide, but if they are 
 likely to do anybody any good, I will certainly 
 think of your assistance in circulating them. 
 Have you any idea of what ' the modern mind ' 
 is ? Is it the same as the Zeitgeist ? or is it 
 something with much more of truth and eter- 
 nity in it than that ? It strikes me that the 
 question about the relation of the modern mind 
 to the atonement is only one phase of the larger 
 question of the relation of reason to revelation, 
 or of human nature to God — a question on which 
 it is easier to say what seem profound philo- 
 sophical things than to say things which really 
 have power either to convince or persuade. 
 But it is no use talking vaguely before the 
 time. 
 
 I hope you had a good holiday and that 
 your letter in this week's B. W. is not urgently 
 autobiographical. Here we have had frightful 
 
30 LETTERS OF 
 
 weather, but begin to scent the spring, and feel 
 that we will not go under before it comes. 
 
 21 Lynedoch Street, Glasgow, 
 March 18, 1903. 
 
 Mr. Carroll, of St. John's Church here, an 
 old friend of mine, and a life-long student 
 of Dante, has written a book on the ' Inferno ' 1 
 which he would like to have published, and 
 asks me to write to you about it. Carroll 
 is one of the most gifted men I know, has been 
 much in Italy, knows Dante not through trans- 
 lations merely, nor commentators, but with an 
 intimacy which if it is not balanced by a strong 
 sense of proportion might qualify him to write a 
 book which only enthusiasts would read ; but 
 I believe he has the faculty to keep proportion, 
 and I should expect his book to be really valuable. 
 May he send it to you, and have your mind about 
 publishing it ? I don't know whether it is a line 
 which Hodder and Stoughton would wish to 
 cultivate — I fancy it is a precarious public to 
 count upon ; but if they should, I am sure Carroll 
 would be a creditable supporter. He has written 
 a few short papers for us in the Union Magazine, 
 but they are slight and give no idea of his power. 
 
 1 Dr. Carroll's work on the ' Inferno ' was published by Messrs. 
 Hodder and Stoughton, under the title Exiles of Eternity. The firm 
 also published his work on the ' Purgatorio/ Prisoners of Hope, 
 and on the ' Paradiso/ In Patria. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 31 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 June 12, 1903. 
 
 I have been immersed in the chaos of * flit- 
 ting,' or would have answered you sooner. 
 The three lectures I have to give at Aberdeen 
 are now finished, and I will send you them 
 when I have read them there. They are rather 
 long, severally, for Expositor articles, and too 
 short, collectively, to make even a very little 
 book on religion ; but if you think they would 
 be interesting or useful I should have no objec- 
 tion to their being printed. There is nothing in 
 them about ' the powers of evil ' — not that I do 
 not think there is anything to say, but I do not 
 think it is an aspect of the facts which the modern 
 mind finds very accessible. I read Nordau and 
 Merejowski : in the latter I was much interested, 
 though I cannot say much has remained in my 
 mind except the abstract contrast between 
 Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, which, like all such 
 abstract contrasts, is as false at least as it is true. 
 Merejowski is evidently, like Plato, a most poetic 
 philosopher, and one who could compete with 
 the dramatists on their own ground, but, as far 
 as he has a way of thinking of his own, I do not 
 see in the least how to bring Christianity into 
 contact with it. The one thing in him with 
 which I profoundly agreed, and which I had long 
 felt quite apart from him, is that the things or 
 
32 LETTERS OF 
 
 aspects of things which we call natural and 
 spiritual do not exist at all except in and through 
 each other. That truth, I am confident, is at the 
 bottom of the simplest statement of the atone- 
 ment — Christ died for our sins. If death was only 
 physical, and if sin and the divine reaction against 
 it were only moral, these words would have no 
 meaning. There must be a ' mystical union ' of 
 the natural and the spiritual in sin if this is the 
 condition of redemption from it. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 July 1, 1903. 
 
 With this you will get the three lectures I 
 gave in Aberdeen. There are, I should say, 
 24,000 (or thereby) words in them. This 
 might be enough to make a little book on 
 religion, if you thought it worth while to use 
 them so after publication in The Expositor : I 
 should rather like that those who bought the 
 Death of Christ should be able to have this also 
 in a convenient way, as it is partly of the nature 
 of a supplement — at one or two points an explana- 
 tion or defence — of what I have said there. 
 
 The School was quite a success, — a large 
 gathering and very hearty. Everybody, of course, 
 wanted opportunity for discussion, and the com- 
 mittee, when they try again, will have this in 
 mind ; but with only a few hours altogether, dis- 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 83 
 
 cussion is apt to be too engrossing, and the one 
 purpose such a gathering can serve — to bring 
 men who have been out of the way up to time — 
 might easily be defeated. I have a class in which 
 there is always opportunity for discussion, and 
 usually discussion as well ; but what you can do 
 with men whom you meet several times a week 
 may not be so profitable in a chance audience. 
 
 Smith 1 has had a very bad time, but is getting 
 better. He must walk softly, which he is not 
 used to, for a long time to come. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 November 18, 1903. 
 
 Miss Wallace, whom you know about, has 
 had a story printed in the Union Magazine 
 this year, which she wants to publish as a 
 book. She asked me to write to you about it, 
 and I could not refuse, though I told her it 
 could make no difference either to you or the 
 story. She calls it The Harvest of a Dream, 
 and seems to love it : if she sends it to you, you 
 will know to what I refer. 
 
 I hope you are keeping well this winter. As a 
 rule I have a Johnsonian indifference to atmo- 
 spheric conditions, but the endless rains of this 
 autumn came as near to making me melan- 
 choly as any weather I have ever known. Smith, 
 
 1 Dr. George Adam Smith. 
 C 
 
34 LETTERS OF 
 
 you will know, has sailed for India : his work 
 is divided between Eaton and Welch. He had 
 been dreadfully ill, and though he was up to his 
 old weight before he left he seemed strangely 
 pithless — for him. I sincerely hope the year off 
 may do him all the good he needs : we miss him 
 dreadfully at the hall. 
 
 Last month MacEwen in Edinburgh and I in 
 Glasgow gave notice of overtures to the Assembly 
 about the curriculum. What the Assembly will 
 do if the overtures go up I have no idea : to 
 appoint a Committee will likely be everything, 
 to begin with. What we both have in view — 
 don't laugh — is a substantial addition to the 
 length of the session. I have found out already 
 that there will be opposition to it in two at least 
 of the Colleges, if not three ; but nevertheless I 
 have hope that something may be achieved. 
 The universities are feeling the need of it too, and 
 may move at the same time. The one discourag- 
 ing thing is that every one who hears of the 
 session being lengthened immediately assumes 
 that the four years' curriculum must be reduced 
 to three. It may be difficult to stick to four 
 when the Established Church has three, and the 
 U.P.'s were accustomed to it, but the last year, 
 even though we make little use of it, does make 
 most men less unfit to be ministers. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 35 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 November 28, 1903. 
 
 It was very good of you to write me so long 
 a letter, and I am correspondingly grateful. 
 But you must not imagine that you could 
 harrow my soul by anything you say about 
 theological education. I question whether you 
 are as revolutionary about this as I am, and 
 I was very much interested to find that all the 
 points you touched on had in one way or another 
 been forced on my attention before. Last year, 
 at a meeting of the association of former students 
 connected with our College, I opened a discussion 
 on the training of ministers, and a few weeks ago 
 I gave an address on the same subject to the 
 students in the hall at Aberdeen — all the pro- 
 fessors except Johnstone being present. Iver- 
 ach compared it good-humouredly to Chamber- 
 lain's fiscal speeches — the work of a person who 
 is quite clear, quite sure that he is right, very 
 plausible, but entirely, hopelessly, and, if he 
 cannot be suppressed, fatally wrong. I went 
 generally on the line that what we want in 
 ministers is educated men and Christians, but 
 argued that the ways of being educated are now 
 so varied, compared with what they once were, 
 that our narrow compulsory system ought to be 
 revised and largely antiquated. A minister 
 ought to be a specialist in something, no doubt, 
 
36 LETTERS OF 
 
 but the something is not, or need not be, either 
 textual or historical criticism, on which we waste 
 a disproportionate amount of our time. We 
 could teach a great deal more that would fit men 
 to be ministers if we did not indulge the pretence 
 of teaching through Greek and Hebrew instead 
 of teaching in the mother tongue. You seem to 
 reserve your animosity for Hebrew : I am quite 
 prepared, if a man comes up with an M.A. degree 
 which does not include the subject, to extend it 
 to Greek. Of course I don't think either Greek 
 or Hebrew worthless, nor do I think the Church 
 should be without them, or fear that it will be : 
 but I do think it no better than a superstition to 
 believe that every man who is to preach the 
 Gospel and do pastoral work must affect to be 
 a student of Greek. In our present first year 
 there are men who have honours in chemistry, 
 zoology, mathematics and natural philosophy, 
 and we generally have some now who have 
 economics or history in their degree ; all these 
 are just as good instruments of culture as Greek 
 or Hebrew ; and as for finding the word of God 
 in Holy Scripture, and presenting it for the 
 edifying of the Church, the men who cannot do 
 that with the English Bible — which is all that 
 the Church itself has to depend upon — cannot do 
 it at all. I entirely agree with you about English 
 too, and spoke of it at Aberdeen. I have fort- 
 nightly papers written by my classes, and the 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 37 
 
 correction of them is as much teaching English 
 grammar and composition as anything else. It 
 is not always that they have no ideas, but there 
 is not one man in a score who can say what he 
 means. Partly from impotence and partly from 
 ambition, they are totally unable to put their 
 minds plainly on paper. But though all this is 
 sad truth, I do not hope for much more than an 
 extension of the session, and it may not be quite 
 easy to get even that. 
 
 About the Atonement, I have no desire nor 
 intention to say more at present, 1 but I will be 
 interested to hear what Peake says. To reduce 
 St. Paul to moral commonplace is very far from 
 my intention, but I must frankly say that be- 
 tween soaring above the intelligible and sinking 
 beneath it there does not seem to me to be much 
 to choose : and when a man maintains that there 
 is something which may be described as a 
 4 mystical union,' which transcends a moral 
 union, all I can say is that my mind does not 
 follow him. I cannot conceive anything which 
 transcends a moral union. There is a mystical 
 union, if you like, between a stone and God, but 
 the union of man and God transcends the mystical 
 and rises out of it, into the region of the intelligible 
 and moral. It does not seem to me to be clipping 
 or sweating the spiritual coinage to say this : on 
 
 1 Dr. Denney's work, The Atonement and the Modern Mind (Hodder 
 and Stoughton), was published iu 1903. 
 
38 LETTERS OF 
 
 the contrary, much of what appears (in St. Paul) 
 to favour the idea of a mystical as going beyond 
 a moral union is the language of passion, which 
 has a poetic and emotional truth — a kind of truth 
 which is necessary to religion — but which loses 
 its truth the moment it is turned into prose. It 
 is just like the language of passion in which the 
 sacramental bread and wine are called the body 
 and blood of Christ. No other language would 
 satisfy Christian feeling. Yet they are not the 
 body and blood of Christ, and a great deal that 
 is written about the mystical union seems to me 
 as unreal as transubstantiation. Probably there 
 will always be differences here due to differences 
 of temperament, some men having more need 
 than others for particular modes of expression. 
 
 I hope nothing may hinder you from writing 
 the series of papers you propose on the Atone- 
 ment and Modern Literature. Few people read 
 theology and everybody reads novels, and you 
 have the art of speaking both to the few and the 
 many. I used to be annoyed in Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes with his insistence on physiology in 
 morals, and should hardly think it so important 
 as you seem to do. But are you not wrong in 
 saying that he ' took up Darwin's conclusions as 
 showing that the area of responsibility is far more 
 contracted than the theologians imagined,' etc. ? 
 Holmes never had a word more to say than he 
 said in the Autocrat, and the Autocrat is a year 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 39 
 
 older than the Origin of Species. Personally, I 
 always feel that the ultimate effect of Darwinism 
 must be to enlarge indefinitely the area of re- 
 sponsibility, and in some ways the general con- 
 science is coming to recognise this too. When 
 we look back in the Darwinian light, our responsi- 
 bility seems less ; but when we look forward, if 
 we acknowledge responsibility at all, as every one 
 does, whatever his philosophy, then our responsi- 
 bility is enormously increased. Everything that 
 intensifies this feeling will work in the long run 
 to make the atonement credible, and I feel pretty 
 sure that the common conscience, while it may 
 be fully as ready as it once was to impute its 
 burdens to its ancestry, is more sensitive than it 
 was about transmitting them to posterity. When 
 you begin your articles you can count on an 
 interested public. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 January 5, 1904. 
 
 I am posting with this the article on Harnack 
 and Loisy. It is an interesting duel, and I wish 
 Harnack could find leisure to say something 
 more. He seems to me the better Christian of 
 the two, but they are both anxious to run a 
 very big concern on a quite inadequate capital. 
 
 I see what you mean about Mark Rutherford, 
 and agree ; but do you think it is true to say — 
 
40 LETTERS OF 
 
 4 this is the good in life which is in a manner 
 within the reach of all ' ? Sometimes one is 
 tempted to think that there is nothing which is 
 so little within people's reach as this deliverance 
 through love. What an immense number of 
 women there are in this country who never get 
 the chance of it, or any chance they can take, 
 and who when they get to about eight and twenty 
 begin to be a little bitter and irritable and gene- 
 rally sceptical about all things. What a number 
 of people, too, don't really get it even when they 
 marry — they get the music of the fiddle, as Ibsen 
 says, where there are always strings breaking 
 and needing to be mended, but not the thrilling 
 passionate music of the bell, which once cracked 
 (he seems to think it is mostly cracked) can 
 never be mended. It was partly with this in my 
 mind that I did not emphasise love in the De- 
 liverance. Resignation and doing good are open 
 doors to everybody in a sense in which love is 
 not. About Mark Rutherford's own history I 
 know nothing, and I was not attracted by his 
 interest in the incompatibilities, especially in 
 his later books. Clara Hopgood I thought 
 detestable. 
 
 The year is too new yet to have yielded any 
 news. We are living in a reign of interdicts and 
 responses which seem intended only to illustrate 
 the malignity and unscrupulousness of the ' Free ' 
 Church, and the imbecility of the law. When 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 41 
 
 we will see the end of it I cannot imagine. 
 Churches may be annexed to any extent to which 
 the minority please before Parliament can do 
 anything, and if they like to spend the capital 
 of the funds in their hands the minority may 
 keep them going for a while. I did not think 
 that such unprincipled and unscrupulous scoun- 
 drelism as is being deliberately planned and 
 practised every day was within the limits of 
 possibility in men who had Bibles and affected 
 an unusual reverence for them. It really looks 
 as if they thought the highness of their creed 
 could cover any depth of lowness in their con- 
 duct. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 February 10, 1904. 
 
 ... I am glad you feel the better of your 
 holiday, for your work in the B. W. is cut 
 out for you. There has not been such an 
 approach to political chaos in my memory, 
 and the levity of the responsible people in face 
 of Russian wars and education iniquities and 
 Chinese slavery and Protectionist bribing of the 
 people seriatim at the cost of swindling them en 
 masse is enough to make one despair. I heard 
 Campbell-Bannerman when he was here lately. 
 He was in remarkably good spirits, spoke wisely, 
 and wittily, and had a great reception : but 
 there was not enough of momentum in it. In- 
 
42 LETTERS OF 
 
 deed there was no momentum at all. He spoke 
 like a man who was happy in having an excellent 
 case, not like a man with a cause — it is the want 
 of such a man that is the ruin of Liberalism just 
 now. Positively I have had more hope of the 
 Duke of Devonshire than of any other man on 
 the scene. Can you offer me a job if the House 
 of Lords gives my salary to the true Free Church ? 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 February 19, 1904. 
 
 I cannot find words to express my sense of 
 the extraordinary kindness of your letter of 
 yesterday. It would never have occurred to 
 me to put labour or responsibility on anybody 
 else, least of all on any one so occupied as you 
 are, in connection with the collapse of the 
 Union Mag. At present I can only thank you, 
 as I do most heartity, for your interest in our 
 poor concerns : when I have seen Dr. Orr, and 
 talked it over with him, I will write again with 
 more particulars of the situation. But I ought 
 to thank your publishers too, even in this note ; 
 it is exceedingly generous of them to make the 
 offer which they do. My first feeling, or next 
 after the first, was, as I told you, one of relief. 
 I dislike as much as Swift or anybody to hear 
 men talking of how much they have to do ; but 
 I have to lecture twelve hours a week, spend as 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 43 
 
 much time on students' papers— not perhaps a 
 wise investment for me, but the only way in which 
 I can get work out of a lot of them— preach every 
 Sunday, and either do or refuse to do a crowd of 
 other things, besides the reading and writing 
 which are one's proper business ; and I frankly 
 say that the unfortunate and inevitable Magazine 
 sometimes came near being the last straw. You 
 know that the first thing in that kind of work 
 is speed, and I am not speedy in anything, and 
 apparently cannot acquire it. But I share 
 strongly your opinion that it is a pity to see the 
 Christian religion beaten out of the region in 
 which people generally lead their intellectual 
 life ; and adding to this the aversion of the 
 natural man to being beaten, my inclination 
 would be, if things should make it practicable, 
 to try again. What Dr. Orr may say I do not 
 know, but I should think he would be favourable. 
 His connection with the Magazine was older, and 
 his affection for it more sentimental than mine. 
 If it is to be suspended for a little while anyhow, 
 perhaps I might see you before anything further 
 has to be decided. 
 
 I have to be in Oxford some time in May in 
 connection with Welsh University Examinations ; 
 and could easily take a run to London when 
 there. 
 
44 LETTERS OF 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 March 16, 1904. 
 
 With this I send a paper apropos of Gardner 
 and Jiilicher, or rather of Gardner alone : 
 Jiilicher is a book one could only treat in detail. 
 It is heavy, I fear, but this reconstruction of 
 the New Testament has got to a point at 
 which what we want most is a statement of 
 first principles — such as might be evolved if 
 the Harnack and Loisy duel were fought out 
 to the end. The tacit presupposition of much 
 criticism is that Jesus was just another man ; 
 and the astonishing thing is that in the circum- 
 stances, with this one essential point fixed in 
 advance, people should imagine that there is 
 still anything particular in the New Testament 
 to talk about. What we want, along with a 
 consideration of first principles, is a statement of 
 the mind of Christ about Himself : I feel as sure 
 as I can be of anything that to this the Christian 
 religion will be driven back, and I am equally 
 sure that there it is impregnable, both ' histori- 
 cally ' and ' spiritually.' 
 
 We have not yet finished up the affairs of the 
 Union Magazine so as to be able to show you 
 exactly how it stood, but Dr. Orr, who is looking 
 after it, hopes to be able to do so soon. If I did 
 not tell you before, I ought to do so now, that he 
 appreciates as highly as I do your extraordinary 
 kindness in connection with it. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 45 
 
 I thought Carnegie Simpson did Dods very 
 well in the British Monthly. If he goes to 
 Canada I shall be sorry, as he is a near neighbour 
 here and a friend. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 May 28, 1904. 
 
 I have made up my mind with much regret 
 to decline your generous offer about restarting 
 the Union Magazine. The more I thought of 
 it, the more I appreciated your kindness, but 
 the more also I became convinced that the 
 work was not for me. You will think I will 
 not do anything better with the time I spent on 
 it, or any the more at all because I have so much 
 the less to do, but this is the conclusion to which 
 I have come. Dr. Orr, you may know, is very 
 anxious to continue, and unless you feel precluded 
 by the possibilities involved in the circular which 
 I enclose, I hope you can make the proposal to 
 him alone which you made to us jointly. About 
 this circular I have not been able to find out 
 much. I asked Erskine, the printer, about it, 
 and he said he was not at liberty to mention the 
 names which were behind it, but he alluded in- 
 advertently to MacEwen and Ross Taylor, though 
 Ross Taylor, he said, wished to remain in the 
 background. From these names I should be 
 disposed to infer that the new move is being 
 
46 LETTERS OF 
 
 engineered by people who do not agree with the 
 line Orr and I took upon public questions : but 
 I do not know for certain. In the course of next 
 week, the meeting to which the circular refers 
 will probably be held, and it will be apparent then 
 whether anything can be done to make a fresh 
 start on a three- penny basis. A paper like the 
 Young Man, with 46 pp. and 4 pp. of inset 
 advertisements, is Erskine's notion of what is 
 wanted ; as he has had the circulation of it for 
 twelve years he perhaps knows what people are 
 willing to pay. 
 
 The Natural Science Chair had a narrow squeak 
 for life — at least the regular professorship had. 
 Iverach spoke strongly for a full session of teach- 
 ing on the relations of science and religion in- 
 stead of the forty lectures we get at present, as 
 if the one fundamental fault of our system was 
 not that students get far too many lectures 
 already, and that in any rearrangements we make 
 the number must be diminished, not increased. 
 I have written an article on the training of a 
 minister for the next London Quarterly ; I should 
 expect you to agree with it as far as it goes. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 July 10, 1904. 
 
 ... It was very good of you to write as you 
 did again about the Union Magazine, and I 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 47 
 
 am more grateful than I can say ; but the more 
 I think of it the clearer it seems that it is not 
 a work to which I have any call. I would 
 gladly be a contributor on occasion, if it could 
 be undertaken by anybody else, but the regular 
 responsibility of it does not suit either my 
 faculties or my other engagements. It is with the 
 more regret I say this, that Dr. Orr's interest in 
 it is quite keen, and that there will no doubt 
 come occasions in our Church life when such a 
 mode of address would be particularly useful ; 
 but I hope you can believe that I have done my 
 best not to be selfish in deciding. I wish you 
 could find some younger and more fertile mind 
 and make the same generous offer to him. 
 
 Last week I was in Aberystwyth and heard 
 Silvester Home and Jones of Bournemouth. 
 They had an enthusiastic audience and made good 
 speeches. The Church evidently counts for far 
 more in Aberystwyth than in Glasgow. Who 
 could get a crowd here on a summer night to hear 
 about Free Church principles or any other 
 principles ? 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 July 12, 1904. 
 
 You must marvel at my infirmity of purpose, 
 and I need not try to explain it. I really did 
 not think, nor do I think yet, that this Magazine 
 
48 LETTERS OF 
 
 work is a thing I am meant for ; but I feel 
 what a good thing it might be, and what 
 decided me at the last moment to try again was 
 rather the feeling that I was keeping the light 
 from being quenched than that I could ever fan 
 it into a flame. Possibly if it is kept from going 
 out for a year or two some man may appear with 
 the gift and the will to tend it : if so, I will gladly 
 resign my place to him. 
 
 When I saw you, I forgot to speak about 
 advertisements, which used to be a good part of 
 the income : but I presume Hodder and Stoughton 
 will look after these, as well as all about paper, 
 printing, producing of pictures, etc. ; and that 
 our business — I mean Dr. Orr's and mine — will 
 be solely the providing of the literary matter, 
 and the photos, or whatever else the pictures are 
 to be taken from. The one dread I have about it, 
 apart from the labour, is that it is too small for 
 the money, that people will not give 6d. for it, 
 and that the publishers will lose by it ; and, though 
 you have said everything that kindness could say 
 to mitigate that apprehension, it comes back on 
 one's mind, and if it were to be realised would 
 certainly make one feel unhappy. However, I 
 am truly anxious to save the life of the thing, if 
 I can, and you will understand this, I hope, in 
 spite of vacillations. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 49 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 August 4, 1904. 
 
 With this I am sending some observations on 
 Hastie's book. 1 It is not a very good subject, 
 but it may give you an idler day in August, 
 and I am sure you want one. So do I. It is 
 curious how Hastie touches on a number of the 
 subjects which the House of Lords has made 
 so interesting, and in what I have said I have 
 referred principally to these. Hastie's death is 
 a great loss to the Established Church. 
 
 The sensation of the judgment is spreading as 
 the significance of it in detail comes home to 
 people's minds. Some, like Rainy, think its 
 seriousness cannot be exaggerated ; others, with 
 Sheriff Guthrie, do not see the need of putting so 
 grave a face upon it. Some settlement must be 
 made — so they say : and when matters come to 
 a point they may not be so bad after all. I 
 entirely agree with the strain in which you have 
 written about it, and I am quite sure that what- 
 ever happens there will be no thought of giving 
 up ' spiritual independence.' Whatever may be 
 thought of it in the House of Lords, it is the one 
 thing which everybody in the Church understands, 
 
 1 The Theology of the Reformed Church in its Fundamental Principles, 
 by Rev. Dr. Hastie, Professor of Divinity in Glasgow University. 
 The work was published after Dr. Hastie's death, with an introduction 
 by Professor Flint. Dr. Denney's article on it, entitled ' A State 
 Church Theologian,' appeared in the British Weekly of August 25, 
 1904. 
 
 D 
 
50 LETTERS OF 
 
 and I have not come across anybody who does 
 not see that when it is refused there is no longer 
 any such thing as a Church. What I dread most 
 is what I feel most — the temptation to indulge 
 one's temper, and to say what one feels about 
 representatives and supporters of the other side. 
 But I hope the magnitude of the crisis will help 
 everybody to behave worthily. What you say 
 about the parties agreeing to promote an Act of 
 Parliament will find very general support. We, 
 of course, have nothing to offer, and nothing to 
 negotiate upon — like a Free Trade government 
 dealing with tariff-walled nations ; but it will be 
 possible to get into relations with the appellants 
 somehow, and to see what they want to do or to 
 get. The people for whom I feel most are the 
 ministers and members in the Highlands who 
 adhered to the Union, and will have to lose their 
 churches and manses in consequence. The loss 
 of a great part of our bursary funds, too, might 
 be very embarrassing at the Hall, for many 
 students cannot do without them. Whether 
 Free Church Professors will have any salaries 
 left them, and if so what, remains to be seen : 
 meanwhile we have nothing. I believe what 
 would be felt more than anything as a kind of 
 insult within the injury would be the appropria- 
 tion of the Assembly Hall and the New College. 
 It must be tempting for the appellants to seal 
 their triumph visibly in some such way : but 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 51 
 
 perhaps Glasgow College would suit them better. 
 We are in some way entirely in their hands. As 
 for an Act of Parliament, I believe Balfour would 
 do anything reasonably within his power to 
 conciliate good will in Scotland : he needs all he 
 can get. And Balfour of Burleigh would help him, 
 knowing that any liberty legally secured to our 
 Church would also be legally secured for his : at 
 least he would feel that we could not decently 
 oppose its extension even to the Establishment. 
 But there may be a good while of suspense, and 
 the need of raising another £30,000 a year to carry 
 on the work which has hitherto depended on 
 endowments. 
 
 The Hotel, Abingtox, 
 Lanarkshire, September 9, 1904. 
 
 You may be away before this gets to London, 
 but I take the risk. You know I can only 
 welcome any suggestions about the Magazine, 
 and I am much indebted for those in your last 
 letter. The only thing in your letter which 
 doesn't quite commend itself is the suggestion 
 about Mark Rutherford. All his books make a 
 strong impression, but to me it is an intensely 
 disagreeable one, and I would rather forget 
 than digest it. No doubt that is cowardly and 
 immoral, but it is instinctive — which you may 
 say only makes it worse. If any one sent a good 
 
52 LETTERS OF 
 
 article I should willingly accept it, but I do not 
 feel moved to look for one, or to attempt one 
 myself. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 October 8, 1904. 
 
 Your letter was as much of an astonishment 
 to me as R. R. Simpson and Lawson's was to 
 you, and with all that you say about the latter 
 I cordially agree. I anticipated, as you know, 
 that people might find fault with us for using 
 the name of the Church, but I thought only of 
 irresponsible persons who might think it presum- 
 ing on our part, not of officials who would try 
 to prevent it as illegal. You must not include 
 me in the ranks of United Free officialdom : I 
 was never in my life a member of any standing 
 committee of Assembly, nor am I now, though 
 I have tried to do my duty by the Church as a full 
 private. If there are two men alive who have 
 worked harder and more disinterestedly for it 
 than you and Orr, I don't know them. 
 
 Our affairs at present look as black as can be, 
 except inside the Church. I do not believe there 
 is any prospect worth mentioning of discussion 
 in our congregations ; but when it comes to 
 negotiations with the other side, they have an 
 unassailable position in the Lords' decision, and 
 their only idea seems to be to use it unscrupu- 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 53 
 
 lously, no matter what becomes of the work of 
 the Church, to humiliate the majority and to 
 rob them. Isn't it queer to see a body which has 
 just been fastened by the law to the Revolution 
 Settlement recruiting the professors who are to 
 train its ministers from O.S. and R.P. sources, 
 whose raison d'etre was and is to denounce the 
 Revolution Settlement ? But compared with 
 other scandals, this is a scandal of a highly 
 respectable character. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 December 22, 1904. 
 
 Many thanks for your note. If I write another 
 book at all, I should like to write on a subject 
 which needs a big one, and it could certainly not 
 be done for next autumn. Lately I wrote a 
 paper on the Harnack and Loisy controversy 
 about the Essence of Christianity : if you cared 
 for that kind of thing for The Expositor — I 
 think myself it is interesting, though I daresay 
 it has gone off the boil for a little — I will send it. 
 But I should have to abridge it somewhat. 
 
 Ramsay's new book x has a lot of interesting 
 matter in it, mostly of the nature of preface 
 to Revelation, or rather to the New Testament, 
 and to early Christian history in general. On the 
 
 1 Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia, by Sir William M. Hamsay, 
 P.C.L., LL.D. 
 
54 LETTERS OF 
 
 epistles to the churches he has not any conclusive 
 addition to make to what recent expositors have 
 done. I have written something about it in the 
 Magazine, making the best of it, but hinting at 
 the fantastic side of his new thoughts — which he 
 himself admits. 
 
 I am glad to hear that you think the sale en- 
 couraging. Until the booksellers return at the 
 end of three months what they have not sold, I 
 do not feel at liberty to be sanguine about this : 
 Geddes is always sanguine, and requires to be 
 discounted. But it would be pleasant to think 
 that more people were taking it. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 April 11, 1905. 
 
 It occurred to me yesterday in sending you a 
 notice of Rosadi's Trial of Jesus, that I never 
 answered your last letter about the Commission. 
 The reason was that the Commissioners decided 
 at once not to hear the kind of evidence you and 
 others were prepared to give, and that of course 
 you knew at once. On what principle they 
 actually proceeded I could never make out, as 
 they heard or refused to hear about the intentions 
 of donors in the most capricious fashion. 
 
 I am going to America at the end of May, and 
 will be away all summer. The Magazine will be 
 mainly in Dr. Orr's hands for the time, but I will 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 55 
 
 arrange for as much as I can before leaving ; and 
 will be able to have some hand in it all the time. 
 We do not hear much of it, and I have an impres- 
 sion that it is not taking hold to any great extent, 
 though the things that are said of it are friendly 
 enough. We get very few books to review, fewer 
 than under the former conditions : why, I cannot 
 tell. This, of course, is the dull season, but I 
 hope we may get more in autumn. 
 
 Do you think there is any opening in English 
 for a book of selections from Kierkegaard ? I 
 do not ask as if I were intending to produce one 
 —I do not know Danish at all, but Dr. Grieve of 
 Greyfriars' here, the translator of Deissmann's 
 Bible Studies, and a really gifted man, knows 
 Kierkegaard well in his native tongue, and would 
 like to know whether there are prospects for such 
 a work. I believe it would consist for the most 
 part of selections from his diaries, of which there 
 are eight volumes in print. Amiel's journal is the 
 kind of model Dr. Grieve would have in view ; 
 but Kierkegaard is piquant and rebellious : not 
 apathetic and resigned. I once thought of doing 
 a translation (from the German) of his extra- 
 ordinary study of Abraham's sacrifice, and print- 
 ing it in the Magazine as a specimen ; and I may 
 do so yet. His more formal works do not seem 
 to me likely to have any vogue in this country. 
 They are as much eccentric as original, and with 
 sober minds a little paradox goes a long way. 
 
56 LETTERS OF 
 
 What a preposterous book Rosadi's Trial of 
 Jesus is ! It is difficult to understand a man 
 using such a subject as the vehicle for conveying 
 his opinions on all that is of present interest in 
 Italian politics ; but that is what he has done. 
 As for the translator, if he knows Italian he does 
 not know English, and his mangling of the ancient 
 languages is past belief. Dr. Emil Reich, how- 
 ever, is the absurdest of the three, and ought to 
 be put down. A man who knows himself to be 
 infallible might surely be at the expense of good 
 manners even in correcting fools, but this omni- 
 scient alien contrives to be as impertinent as he is 
 absurd. He should be deported, and asked to 
 apply his great mind to the relations of Hungary 
 to Germanic Austria. 
 
 I was truly sorry for you that the Brighton 
 election came just when it was most difficult for 
 you to get the good of it, but it doesn't matter. 
 Balfour is in to stay as long as the Septennial 
 Act will let him, and all we can do is to wonder 
 at the House of Commons which supports a man 
 who so ostentatiously despises it. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 October 4, 1905. 
 
 I only came back from America to-day, and 
 was horrified to see in the B. W. opinions of 
 mine about American preaching which I really 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 57 
 
 must disclaim. While I was on the other side 
 I heard very little preaching but my own ; and 
 B. has generalised from the impression I gave 
 him of one sermon I heard in ' the more cultured 
 part of the country.' There are people preaching 
 in America, I dare say, as there are plenty 
 preaching at home, to whom it does not seem 
 to have occurred that Jesus is the Lord, and 
 that the Christian religion is faith, and that 
 faith is some kind of utter dependence ; and 
 the impression that kind of thing makes on 
 one who can read the New Testament is very 
 disconcerting. But I never said or dreamt of 
 saying that that kind of thing was character- 
 istic of American preaching, nor could I possibly 
 have any right to think or say so. Do insert a 
 line to say that I disclaim any opinion about 
 American preaching, having only heard two or 
 three sermons during the four months I was in 
 the country. I would not mind what anybody 
 represented me as saying except that everybody 
 in America was so kind to me, and this looks like 
 speaking ill of them behind their backs — and 
 makes me feel mean. 
 
 I enjoyed Northfield very much, especially as 
 I was staying with Paul Moody, who attended my 
 class here a couple of years ago, and who made me 
 feel at home. Campbell Morgan was there, and I 
 heard him preach twice — once magnificently. 
 ... It will not be news to you that the B. W . 
 
58 LETTERS OF 
 
 has many interested readers both in the States 
 and in Canada ; we came across them all over. 
 We spent a fortnight before leaving for home in 
 Canada, and saw Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec. 
 They have done very well for Toronto in getting 
 Kennedy and Kilpatrick to go there, and they 
 have really a magnificent opening : I hope they 
 may prosper. I have not yet seen any one here 
 to know what our prospects are for the winter : 
 we certainly will not have the Canadian support 
 we had last year. 
 
 I hope you are well and fit for the winter's 
 work : it does not seem politically as if it were 
 going to be so short or so triumphant as some 
 people expected a few months ago. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 October 17, 1905. 
 
 Many thanks for the line you inserted about 
 my opinion of American preaching : I only hope 
 Bridgman will take note of it. 
 
 I have read Mackennal's life, 1 but except in a 
 few sentences here and there it did not much 
 interest me. The series of letters on which the 
 author lays such stress is good enough, but the 
 perplexities which it discusses are of the sort 
 
 1 By the Rev. Dugald Macfadyen (James Clarke and Co.). The 
 article to which Dr. Denney refers appeared as a signed leader in 
 British Weekly of November 2, 1905. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 59 
 
 which people generally digest in private. I have 
 written a paper, not in connection with anything 
 in the book, still less in America ; but apropos of 
 a remark of Dr. Mackennal that he did not care 
 much for the antithesis of objective and sub- 
 jective in discussing the atonement. No more 
 do I, and in fact what I have written is meant 
 to show that the words in question are not only 
 misleading but meaningless in any discourse 
 about Christ. Of course I don't use them in the 
 paper. 
 
 Our College opened to-day. Orr gave his 
 lecture — one which he printed lately in an Ameri- 
 can Baptist Review — on ' The Place of Christ in 
 Modern Thought.' Philosophers and historians 
 seem always to be at cross purposes somewhat 
 when they discuss this subject, but I never heard 
 Orr so impressive and eloquent. I have no idea 
 yet what kind of classes we may have, but we 
 had the best meeting of former students we have 
 had for a long time, and the air seemed to be 
 rather more vital than usual. 
 
 You will see that the commission is getting 
 under weigh, and I heard to-day from Howie that 
 the latest rumour is that the minority will get 
 either Aberdeen College or the Offices on the 
 Mound. As you know, there are many in the 
 Church, though more U.P.'s than F.C. men, who 
 would quite cheerfully see Aberdeen thus dis- 
 posed oi. But as such a settlement would be 
 
60 LETTERS OF 
 
 equally resented by Aberdeen and by the Wee 
 Frees, I should think it in the highest degree 
 improbable. 
 
 I agree with you about the God save the people 
 kind of hymn, and it may interest you to know 
 that the commonest subject of complaint in our 
 Churches, among old and young, men and women, 
 especially those of any education, is that we have 
 too few psalms in our praise and too many hymns. 
 For this, organs are to blame. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 November 8, 1905. 
 
 I send with this an article on Stevens. 1 There 
 is really just one mistake in the book, but it 
 is perpetrated a thousand times, and makes him 
 endlessly unjust to almost everybody he criti- 
 cises : that one I think I have sufficiently 
 pointed out. I don't think I ever read such a 
 water-logged sort of book ; it is really like one of 
 the old wooden ships that would neither founder 
 nor steer, and sometimes you feel as if there 
 was not a soul on board to tell you even where 
 they wanted to go. His incapacity for seeing 
 what earlier theologians were absorbed in when 
 they discussed the work of Christ is astound- 
 ing. It has evidently been given (I should say) 
 
 1 The Christian Doctrine of Salvation, by G. B. Stevens, Ph.D., 
 D.D., LL.D. (T. and T. Clark). 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 61 
 
 as lectures to a class ; it is chopped into bits all 
 of the same length no matter what the subject — 
 the length being determined by the time at his 
 disposal for lecturing purposes. The idea of his 
 heading the anarchists in theology, considering 
 his record, is too absurd. 
 
 Many thanks for the Day-book of Claudius 
 Clear. I envy you everything in it — the abund- 
 ance of matter, the ease or apparent ease of 
 writing, the memory, the relevance, the good 
 sense and good feeling — the whole thing, in short. 
 I hope it may be as popular as its predecessor. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 November 17, 1905. 
 
 Your reflections on professors interested me 
 as they always do, and when the match is set 
 to the gunpowder we will see what happens. 
 I hardly think the explosion will be very 
 alarming. If you add up the professors in 
 all the colleges, the number who have gone to 
 America or Australia in twenty years is not very 
 great ; and though I have no intention of cross- 
 ing the sea again, I don't suppose this kind of 
 sin excites much animosity in the church. The 
 root of all the evil is the length of the summer, 
 and the vis inertia? of men. I quite acknow- 
 ledge that the Church pays for all my time, and 
 I think, quite frankly, that it gets the whole 
 
62 LETTERS OF 
 
 of my strength ; but I would be quite glad if 
 what it expected from me were more clearly 
 denned. Here, in Glasgow, we all preach — all but 
 Lindsay, who has literally no breath ; and to 
 preach every Sunday all winter, even though you 
 only take one service, is a sensible addition to 
 your other work. There are 200 churches in 
 Glasgow Presbytery, and it is only by the most 
 dogged rudeness to your co- presbyters that you 
 are able to keep out of week-night engagements. 
 I don't know how they do it in England, but here 
 it is quite impossible for professors as a class to 
 have nothing to do in Church work ; you must 
 have to do with it, and let it pass as part of your 
 service, even though it is not favourable to writing 
 books or guiding thought. The only remorseful 
 reflection that Orr, Smith, or I can have under 
 this head is that we have probably written more 
 books than had much guidance for thought in 
 them. What did you mean when you wrote : 
 ' I think I wrote you that I was hoping to hear 
 of the progress of the book ? ' What book ? 
 I am not writing one, though there is one wanted 
 on the Gospels ; and I have foolishly undertaken 
 a number of articles both for Hastings and for 
 Jacobus (whom I liked better than any man I 
 met in America), that will take all my spare 
 time for a good while. Some of them are on the 
 Gospels — I mean on Gospel subjects— and I hope 
 will be useful to those who read dictionaries. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 63 
 
 What we really want here is a longer session, so 
 much longer that we must be at our proper work 
 most of the time ; and that we shall not get. It 
 may be lengthened by three weeks or a month, 
 but no more, and even that is doubtful. 
 
 Orr is reviewing Stevens in the Expository 
 Times. As he knows and likes him, he may be 
 more complimentary to him than I. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 December 22, 1905. 
 
 I am sorry I cannot do a leader for you 
 for January 4. It so happens that I have let 
 myself in for a lot of things just at the holiday 
 time, and will find it difficult to do this and to 
 get the day or two off which I need. 
 
 I congratulate you on your 1000th number, 
 and on the place the B. W. has attained. There 
 was a young fellow in here last night who envied 
 you the pontificate you exercised for such multi- 
 tudes of readers in religion, politics, and letters. 
 He put it in the disagreeable way of saying 
 that he could not think of anybody who would 
 be more missed than you, and told me he had 
 read The Iron Gate with avidity by the light of 
 the lamp on a country railway station. As his 
 appetites are not particularly spiritual, this is 
 an appreciation with which you have a right to 
 be pleased. 
 
64 LETTERS OF 
 
 One of the things which occupies a little of my 
 time at present is reading the proofs of Lindsay's 
 book on the Reformation which is coming out 
 in Clark's International Series. Lindsay is one 
 of the happy men who read a page at a time and 
 therefore cannot spell ; I am one of the poor 
 wretches who do their reading in the infant school 
 style, individualising vowels and consonants with 
 scrupulous care, and therefore useful as a cor- 
 rector of the press. I look forward to this when 
 I can lecture no more. Lindsay's book, if I am 
 any judge, is a really masterly piece of work, 
 and it pierces me to the heart that it should come 
 out in a series. There are to be two volumes, but 
 they should have been published as an inde- 
 pendent work ; it would have been far greater 
 glory both to Lindsay and the College, and the 
 book would have had a far better chance of 
 getting known as an authority. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 January 31, 1906. 
 
 I am glad you are going to have a rest, and 
 will send something for the B. W. in time 
 for the 15th. The election has dazed every- 
 body a little, and politics will be more inter- 
 esting than they have been for long when 
 Parliament meets. You must feel rewarded 
 for your efforts on the right side, and I hope 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 65 
 
 the issue will not have anything in it to 
 disappoint you. 
 
 It was very good of you to speak so cordially 
 of the U. F. C. Magazine at the beginning of the 
 month, and I fear it is not out of the need of it. 
 The advertisements, which used to bring in a 
 considerable sum, have practically vanished, and 
 Geddes who has this in charge says he has so much 
 other work to do for Hodder and Stoughton that 
 he has simply no time to give to this. If this is so, 
 it is a pity, or, as an old gardener once said to me 
 when I said it was a pity his strawberries had 
 been blighted in a thunderstorm, ' It 's waur 
 than a peety, it 's a loss.' Envying your pro- 
 spects of sunshine and profitable reading, in a 
 Christian and Pickwickian sense, I am, &c. 
 
 Broughty Ferry, 
 June 6, 1906. 
 
 I am truly sorry to refuse to help you just 
 now, but it is really impossible. My Communion 
 address at the Assembly would be of no use, and 
 this week is already congested with preaching 
 and lecturing. 
 
 The Assembly was humdrum on the whole. 
 I was not present at the Church and State dis- 
 cussion, as I had to leave that morning to be at 
 a meeting in Shrewsbury. The report in the 
 Scotsman gave me the impression that there is 
 
 E 
 
66 LETTERS OF 
 
 hardly more principle in our Assembly with 
 regard to disestablishment than there is in the 
 House of Commons with regard to religious 
 education. If people get what they want them- 
 selves, they seem to find it enormously easy to 
 forget others, especially if they are few. ' Why 
 shouldn't Presbyterians combine in Scotland 
 especially when their members would make 
 other Christians a negligible quantity ? ' The cer- 
 tainty that other Christians would be treated as 
 negligible greatly mitigates, I must confess, any 
 enthusiasm I might feel for further union. I 
 hope I believe in the mystical body, the body 
 which is constituted by the one Spirit ; but in 
 the visible reduction of this body to one legal 
 corporation — and that is what our ecclesiastical 
 unions produce — I believe less and less. Perhaps 
 it is because I know Congregationalism less that 
 I see or seem to see the truth in it but not its 
 drawbacks. Anyhow, the drawbacks of a Church 
 which has no external compulsion on it to be 
 just are so conspicuous that I don't crave for 
 more unions till we are all more conscientious 
 men. 
 
 Have you any feeling that people are getting 
 sick of the Education Bill, and that the Govern- 
 ment will suffer neither for the goodness nor the 
 badness but for the abhorred presence of the 
 thing ? The only thing the ' silent voter ' wants 
 is to hear no more about it, and if it were possible 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 67 
 
 that it should lead to an election in spring, I fear 
 it would be all up with the Liberal Government. 
 The poor Government are much to be pitied 
 when friends and foes conspire to prevent them 
 from acting on principle, and then unite to de- 
 nounce their unprincipled action. I am far from 
 thinking you are to be pitied, but I am truly 
 sorry that, after doing more than any other man 
 to get a Liberal majority on this very subject, you 
 should find your own principle of settlement the 
 only one which meanwhile is declined all round. 
 But the very impracticabilities of Clause 4 and 
 all such clauses promise you success at last. 
 
 Broughty Ferry, 
 July 2, 1906. 
 
 I am truly sorry to hear you have had so 
 bad a time, and would have sent you some- 
 thing better if I could. But I have been here 
 since the second week of April, and to add 
 the business and the pleasures of one's old congre- 
 gation for a whole summer to what had already 
 been undertaken in the shape of other work has 
 proved rather exhausting. My successor here, 
 Macgilvray, has a year's leave of absence — he has 
 been very ill — and I am on duty in his place till 
 the beginning of September. If I had only had 
 the church, it would have been delightful, but I 
 had a good deal of other work on hand when I 
 
68 LETTERS OF 
 
 was asked what help I could give here, and, though 
 you might not think it, I am really tired. How- 
 ever, as there is good news of Macgilvray, Mrs. 
 Denney and I are enjoying the strange experience 
 of resuming our old duties again and living in 
 our old house. 
 
 I have been intending for some time to write 
 
 to you about the Magazine : it does not seem to 
 
 be doing at all. The advertisements have quite 
 
 disappeared, and, as a large proportion of the 
 
 revenue came from them, it can only be carried 
 
 on at a heavy loss. At the Assembly too I heard 
 
 from Geddes, who acts for Messrs. H. and S. in 
 
 Edinburgh, that only 2300 were being printed, 
 
 and that he had no idea of how many were being 
 
 returned, as the returns were made to London. 
 
 This seems to me just about as unsatisfactory as 
 
 could be, and I really think it is worth while to 
 
 consider whether in the circumstances it should 
 
 be kept on. I know that neither Dr. Orr nor I 
 
 would have anything to say if it were decided to 
 
 discontinue it before the three years' experiment 
 
 which you proposed to give it. It does not seem 
 
 to meet any particular want in the Church, and it 
 
 is difficult in a periodical which only comes out 
 
 once in a month to keep up with the subjects of 
 
 passing interest which might perhaps attract 
 
 more readers. I have an impression too, though 
 
 I do not wish to suggest that any one is to blame, 
 
 that the disappearance of the advertisements is 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 69 
 
 part of the result of a general want of interest in 
 the commercial side of the business. But that 
 may be quite wrong : one could understand that 
 advertisers want a bigger circulation than the 
 Magazine can claim. I wish you would tell me 
 what you think about this, or what the publishers 
 think. 
 
 What a jungle the Education Bill is becoming. 
 If the House of Lords mangle it past recognition, 
 do you suppose the present House of Commons 
 would venture on the logical alternative sup- 
 ported by you and Chamberlain ? The more 
 intricate the jungle, the clearer and more tempt- 
 ing the way out. 
 
 Broughty Ferry, 
 July 26, 1906. 
 
 Many thanks for your letter. Should I write 
 formally now to Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton 
 about stopping the Magazine ? or is it enough 
 that you have seen them about it ? 
 
 I have read the letters on the Sermon on the 
 Mount with interest, and might write an article 
 if it did not need to be a learned one. 1 I have 
 not read Lyttelton's book, and as it is a big book 
 I do not want to read it just now ; but if one 
 could do anything relevant out of his own head 
 I might try. When would you want it ? 
 
 As for ' my book ' and the ' solemn silence ' 
 
 1 These letters appeared in the British Weekly of July. 
 
70 LETTERS OF 
 
 over it, I fear the silence must be maintained. 
 I do want to write something on the subject you 
 mentioned, and I even intend and hope to. But 
 it will be a little while yet till I get started, and 
 even after that I may get stuck. There is an old 
 Canon in Consuelo, who says it is much nicer to 
 talk about a book you are going to write than to 
 hear other people talking about a book you have 
 written ; but it is not this that makes me slow. I 
 have a superstitious feeling that if I talk about 
 anything I will never do it at all. No doubt that 
 damages in some way or other the things one does, 
 but I cannot get over the feeling that there is 
 something in it. 
 
 I hope there is nothing in what the specialist 
 told you about your lungs. No men work more in 
 the dark than doctors, and cures seem to be due 
 either to nature or to faith — not to art. I have 
 read most of Moliere lately, and had some 
 happy times with his reflections on physicians. 
 The one thing I envy in what you have recently 
 betrayed of your prospects is the chance of talking 
 over a play of Shakespeare weekly with a com- 
 petent person. I should like to hear your con- 
 verse, and once in a while perhaps join in. 
 
 Broughty Ferry, 
 August 7, 1906. 
 
 Many thanks for your letter. I have written 
 to Hodder and Stoughton, and, as Dr. Orr had 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 71 
 
 already heard from them, I assume this is the 
 end of the Magazine. I had told Dr. Orr what 
 you said about the editing, so that there is no 
 necessity for your writing ; but as his heart has 
 really been engaged in the business not only while 
 I have been his associate, but much longer, I am 
 sure it would be grateful to him. 
 
 I am sending with this the article on the 
 Sermon on the Mount, 1 and am glad you have a 
 moralist like Dods and a critic like Moffatt to 
 tackle it. But I am sure it was meant to defy the 
 mind, which is a great part of the art of preaching, 
 and that therefore nothing said by any or by all 
 of us can either be or seem satisfying. It would 
 be a great point gained if people would only con- 
 sider that it was a sermon, and was preached, not 
 an act which was passed. But these italics horrify 
 me and I am sure you, so I will leave it here. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 September 15, 1906. 
 
 I am writing to ask a favour from you. On 
 Tuesday I have to give the opening lecture at 
 the Baptist College in Bristol, and if any one 
 sends you a paragraph about it for the B. W. 
 will you give directions to have it left out. The 
 
 1 Dr. Denney's article on 'The Literal Interpretation of the 
 Sermon on the Mount' appeared in the liritish Weekly of August 23, 
 1U0G. 
 
72 LETTERS OF 
 
 reason I ask this is that I am going to give 
 the same lecture at the opening of our own 
 College next month, and if the heads of it 
 appeared in the B. W. I should be given away. 
 Are you going to the University celebrations at 
 Aberdeen ? or do your notorious opinions about 
 professors debar you from such functions ? A 
 little of the kind of thing they are arranging will 
 go a long way with most people. 
 
 The papers on the Sermon on the Mount seem 
 to have provided lots of men with a text, but the 
 general impression is that we are not further on. 
 I had a letter of twelve pages from a Christian 
 Socialist, accusing Dods and me of making 
 conscience a higher authority than Christ. This 
 is a ticklish point, but I answered him as dis- 
 creetly as I could. Moffatt's article was the one 
 I was most curious to see, and the one which did 
 interest me most : it struck me as mighty clever, 
 but so impalpable that only another man as 
 clever as the writer would see all that was in it. 
 He greatly relieved me also by writing two columns 
 more than I did, for I was shocked to see that 
 I had done one more than Dods. I expect we 
 shall have him this winter at the Hall to deliver 
 the Bruce lectures — the date, however, is not 
 fixed. 
 
 Everybody here is sick of waiting for the Com- 
 mission, and particularly disgusted that no settle- 
 ment has yet been made about the New College. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 78 
 
 The general impression, right or wrong, is that 
 the fact of having the law on their side will eventu- 
 ally count to the Free Church for much more 
 than it should ; especially if any inference can 
 be drawn from the attitude of the sub-commis- 
 sioners. I only hope now that we may not lose 
 our College as the price of saving the Edinburgh 
 one, but this is an idea with which people's 
 minds ought not to be familiarised. 
 
 Ballater, 
 October 2, 1906. 
 
 I was sorry I did not have an opportunity 
 of speaking to you at Aberdeen. Except at the 
 banquet, I never so much as saw you, and 
 though that, as it happened, was very much of 
 a conversazione, we were hardly within convers- 
 ing distance. I hope such a week of stand- 
 ing and smiling and speech-making may not 
 take a year from the old Chancellor's life. On 
 the whole, it was a much more imposing and suc- 
 cessful function than the 450th anniversary of 
 Glasgow, which was celebrated a few years ago. 
 
 I have thought over your proposal about the 
 B. W., and concluded to give it a trial. To be 
 quite candid, I have no such fertility of mind 
 as can be depended on to produce interesting 
 matter regularly — I don't need to tell you that ; 
 but between books and other things I dare say 
 
74 LETTERS OF 
 
 I might relieve you once a month, and it is a 
 pleasure to me to think that you have been 
 willing to ask me. If the circulation declines, 
 the remedy is obvious. The only condition I 
 wish to make is that you don't ask for anything 
 before November. The address I mean to give 
 in Glasgow would not make an article as it stands ; 
 it is far too long, for one thing ; but I dare say 
 I could get one out of it. 
 
 We have been staying here for a fortnight, but 
 leave at the end of the week, though I will not be 
 in Glasgow till the 12th. However, the Glasgow 
 address will always find me. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 November 12, 1906. 
 
 The judgment was a great relief to us all : 
 and though our College will lose at least £25,000, 
 we neither lose our buildings nor our library, and 
 I quite agree with you that the Church is equal 
 to the situation. If the Free Church had evicted 
 us instead of the New College, I don't believe we 
 should ever have got back ; but they were too 
 anxious to wave the flag on the citadel, and now 
 Providence has got the better of them. The 
 
 audacity of , who says in their Monthly 
 
 that £100,000 will give their professors ' a living 
 wage,' but leave hardly anything for bursaries 
 for their poor students would be sublime if it 
 was not ridiculous. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 75 
 
 Many thanks in particular for your own book. 
 Do stick meanwhile to the outside ; I like the title 
 and I like the cover : Mrs. Denney thought the 
 cover ' humdrum,' but she was not in a happy 
 humour at the time. I am going to read the 
 preaching of Hall and Foster first, and then go 
 through the rest again. Smith told me the 
 other day he had heard some one at Mansfield 
 preach a long and dull sermon on, ' Shall not the 
 Judge of all the earth do right ? ' Do you remem- 
 ber Carlyle's indignation over hearing Hall preach 
 once with his characteristic eloquence on ' God 
 that cannot lie ' ? Things about preaching — 
 not anecdotes only — interest me more than usually 
 at present, as owing to Hislop's death I have two 
 hours a week to take on Pastoral Theology. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 December 8, 1906. 
 
 I am posting with this an article on Oman. 1 
 He delivered these lectures in our College here, 
 and I thought them exceedingly good. I think 
 so still, though the exposition of his ideas is 
 sometimes cumbered a little by unnecessary in- 
 formation, and sometimes by indifference and a 
 kind of inarticulateness in himself. For those 
 who can digest this kind of matter, however, it 
 
 1 The Problems of Faith and Freedom in the La.it Two Centuries, by 
 John Oman, D. Ph. Leader appeared December 13, 1J)06. 
 
76 LETTERS OF 
 
 is a very appetising book, and the more you 
 know of the people he writes about, the more 
 highly you think of it. 
 
 I am glad you like my articles in the Diction- 
 ary. 1 I rather grudged myself the time I spent 
 on them. Ramsay is always interesting, but I 
 happen to be one of the unfortunate people whom 
 he does not persuade, and if I were you I would 
 not lean too hard on him even though he has 
 taken his holidays in Iconium. He has got the 
 length now of referring to people who identify 
 the council of Acts xv. and the events of Gal. ii. 
 as a species of historical curiosities on whom no 
 more words are to be wasted ; but there must be 
 many people who have investigated this as 
 laboriously and patiently as he, and to whom it 
 is as certain as mathematics that this identifica- 
 tion is correct. Harnack's book is certainly good 
 reading for those who have resisted what had 
 become a ' tradition ' of criticism ; it is even 
 amusing to see how Harnack raps everybody on 
 the knuckles for saying what he himself would 
 have said if he had written not very long ago ; 
 but Ramsay does not possess the art of sup- 
 pressing the personal equation so perfectly that 
 he should read Lucas der Arzt for the sake of 
 studying Harnack rather than Luke. 
 
 Did I tell you that this next week Moffatt is 
 coming to deliver his Bruce Lectures at the hall ? 
 
 1 Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels (T. and T. Clark). 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 77 
 
 The subject is St. Paul's Teaching on the Holy 
 Spirit. He is to be staying with us from Monday 
 till Thursday, and I hope to get better acquainted 
 with him. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 January 17, 1907. 
 
 I am sorry you are not yet feeling up to the 
 mark, and will try to send something in time 
 for next week. But you seem quite vigorous, 
 and Providence is very good in providing you 
 with subjects. In spite of agreeing with what 
 you say about students and principals, we re- 
 joice in a principal of phenomenal popularity 
 in the college and great influence in the Church, 
 who never preaches now : for better or worse 
 the rest of us are only too much in evidence in 
 that way. Our hall will not be like the same 
 place if Smith * goes to the University. None of 
 us would grudge his promotion, and he could do 
 a great deal to Christianise an institution which 
 is sure to become more and more influential, but 
 we should miss him more than words could tell. 
 I hope Carnegie Simpson will get Rainy's life to 
 write : he is immensely interested in it, and would 
 do it well. 
 
 1 Dr. George Adam Smith, now Principal of Aberdeen University. 
 
78 LETTERS OF 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 January 19, 1907. 
 
 I enclose what was once a sermon : it has 
 not suffered transformation quite so well as I 
 expected, but it is the best I can do to-day. 
 Would you care to have an article on Creed 
 Revision, apropos of Mr. Templeton's book? 
 Some time ago Wallace 1 of the Herald asked 
 me to do one of the series appearing there 
 weekly, but I declined. Partly my mind was 
 not clear about what could be attempted, and 
 partly I felt that the Church could not think of 
 two things at once, and for some time to come 
 must be engrossed with other matters. But there 
 are aspects of the subject that are worth stating, 
 in view of what is in people's minds, and it might 
 turn out interesting. 
 
 The number of people who would like to be 
 Principal of Glasgow University is astonishing : 
 among those with whom I have any communica- 
 tion the betting is in favour of Jones. I should 
 say Smith comes next. The newspapers seem 
 to favour breaking the clerical tradition : but 
 what they want is an ' administrator,' and they 
 seem to take it for granted that they cannot get 
 this in a minister. I know them both very well, 
 and have no doubt that Smith would be a far 
 better man of business than Jones. He is be- 
 
 1 Dr. William Wallace. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 79 
 
 sides a far more thoroughly educated man, 
 except in philosophy. Both would be immensely 
 popular with the students, and command far 
 greater interest in the community than has for 
 long attached to the post. I hope your influenza 
 is as good as over. My wife has had three months 
 bronchitis, with influenza in the middle of it, 
 which is pretty bad : but I remain unsympa- 
 thetically well. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 January 29, 1907. 
 
 I was glad to hear you were going off to the 
 Riviera, although the proper place seems to be 
 Iceland. On Sunday, and therefore on Monday, 
 I was in Edinburgh, and you know what a 
 Princes Street hurricane is ; I never saw such 
 weather, and I hope you may not see it in the 
 South. 
 
 The article on Campbell seemed to me pretty 
 decisive, and I don't know what more can be 
 said. It is really not worth while to elucidate 
 any man's improvisations on God and the uni- 
 verse. Setting conscience aside, as James Mozley 
 said, there are no two easier subjects to talk 
 about ; and pantheism just means setting con- 
 science aside. I do not believe there is any way 
 to argue against it except by insisting that con- 
 science cannot be set aside — that it persists in 
 
80 LETTERS OF 
 
 spite of all the systems which have explained it 
 away, and that a man knows quite well he is a 
 scoundrel when he applies solvents to it. Nothing 
 ever impressed me so much, as an argument for 
 theism, as the first verse of the 139th Psalm. 
 A man is incapable of judging anything if he does 
 not feel that it expresses the most real experience 
 of which human nature is capable. Thou hast 
 searched me, and known me — and if he does not 
 feel that the thou is just as real and as personal 
 as the me. Only God can prove His being and 
 His personality and His character to man, and He 
 proves all three, in the first instance, by experi- 
 ences like this. 
 
 I believe I once quoted in The Expositor a thing 
 quoted by Sainte-Beuve in his Port Royal about 
 pantheism, which also impressed me much. It 
 was repeated to him, if I remember, by a friend 
 from a letter (no names were given), and was to 
 the effect that Christ has two great enemies, the 
 God Priapus and the God Pan ; and while you 
 can finally vanquish the former, you can never 
 quite get rid of the latter. The fascination there 
 is in the idea of a unity in which all differences 
 are lost must depend on some truth which the 
 mind hungers for ; but it is not easy to state it 
 in the right way. The answer in the Shorter 
 Catechism to the question ' What are the decrees 
 of God ? ' is one attempt to exhibit the truth, and 
 might be called an attempt to combine pantheism 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 81 
 
 with the personality of God. If the truth in tins 
 is questioned in the interests of morality, one is 
 very apt to make man as independent as God, as 
 if this were the only basis on which he could be 
 regarded as responsible for his conduct. How to 
 secure the intellectual formula which shall do 
 justice at once to man's freedom and responsi- 
 bility, and at the same time to his absolute 
 dependence on God, is perhaps an insoluble pro- 
 blem ; but the latter truth, the one with panthe- 
 istic affinities, must have its due as well as the 
 other. Goethe's airy saying about being a poly- 
 theist for artistic reasons, a pantheist as man of 
 science, and a theist as a moral being, is a very 
 good way of revealing the difficulties, but does 
 not point at all to their solution. I often feel 
 that Pantheism is akin to religions which make 
 time and its contents unreal — like Brahmanism 
 or Neo-platonism ; and in that respect at the 
 antipodes of Christianity, in which history is the 
 scene of divine works which have eternal meaning 
 and value. The pantheistic temperament always 
 feels strongly the relativity of all our knowledge 
 and ideas, and indeed of all that ordinary minds 
 call real, and it is characteristic of it in all those 
 who know what it really means that Christ, like 
 all historical persons, is brought under this law. 
 He also pays tribute to His time. His person can 
 have no absolute significance. There is no truth 
 in Him which abides, and no work done by Him 
 
 F 
 
82 LETTERS OF 
 
 which never loses its value. It is when it comes 
 to be applied in this way that I am afraid of it, 
 and I do not know any way to fight it but by 
 appealing to Jesus Himself — especially to every- 
 thing in Him which betrays or declares His sense 
 of the absolute significance of His person and work, 
 and especially also to the tremendous things He 
 says about final judgment. Let a man be never 
 so pantheistic, these things pierce to the dividing 
 asunder of soul and spirit, and establish the great 
 distinction at the vital point at which pantheism 
 would fain have it annulled. But all this is 
 commonplace, and I hope the opening of Parlia- 
 ment will relegate the New Theology to its proper 
 place and spare the world the trouble of trying 
 to understand a man who probably does not 
 understand himself. 
 
 I hear no more about the Principalship, 1 but I 
 have an impression that Smith's chances are 
 improving. The Government, and at least Lloyd 
 George, want Jones in Wales, and that is in 
 Smith's favour. There is quite a strong citizen 
 interest also on his behalf. . . . 
 
 I was in St. George's on Sunday, where there 
 was great joy over Whyte's withdrawal of his 
 resignation. They seem likely to call Kelman, 
 and he seems likely to go. Yet they are con- 
 scious it will not continue their tradition. 
 
 1 Of Glasgow University. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 83 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 March 5, 1907. 
 
 Many thanks for your kind letter, and for 
 Lodge's book. I am rather interested in it as 
 a whole than in the details, and will write 
 something for next week. The book, I should 
 think, is sure to be read eagerly by a great 
 many people, and it probably represents a great 
 quantity of mind in the Church, which has 
 not been at the trouble of making its thoughts 
 clear to itself. I wish it could be believed that 
 all who are not of us were as thoroughly in 
 sympathy with Christian ideas. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 March 9, 1907. 
 
 Here is what I have written about Lodge. 1 
 I once met him here and heard his lecture, and 
 I like him very much. But though the spirit 
 of his book is admirable, I cannot think this 
 is the voice which is to lead many out of the 
 wilderness. I have sometimes been tempted to 
 say to my class that there are not many 
 qualifications for preaching the Gospel of less 
 value than second-class honours in philosophy, 
 but after reading this catechism I begin to 
 
 1 Sir Oliver Lodge published about thi6 time a little book entitled, 
 The Substance of Faith allied with Science: a Catechism for Parents and 
 Teachers. A leading article on it appeared in the British Weekly for 
 April 11, 1907. 
 
84 LETTERS OF 
 
 be doubtful. It seems to me incredibly in- 
 coherent in all it says about sin, and to have no 
 power to discern things that differ. However, 
 I have not gone into details about it : it is diffi- 
 cult to do this when all the main questions are 
 raised within a few pages. The great want of 
 the book is any notion of epistemology. He 
 talks as if to know how far it is from here to the 
 Trongate or the moon, or to know that Lycidas 
 is a fine poem, or to know that Cromwell was a 
 heroic character, or to know that falsehood is a 
 sin, or to know God, were all identical operations 
 of the mind, and it leads to endless confusion. 
 But I hope many people will read it, for I don't 
 think it can do anybody harm, and there are no 
 doubt those whom it will help. 
 
 I hope you are feeling better of your holiday. 
 You have returned to this endless winter, I 
 suppose ; here it is snowing as unconcernedly as 
 if it were January. But I infer you are in good 
 spirits from the story of the Socialist at the end 
 of your letter in the B. W. It is the most com- 
 forting story I have heard for a long time. 
 
 Possibly you are right in what you say about 
 the views of Hegel and Cousin on God and Nature. 
 The worst of it is that you cannot pin a pantheist 
 down to anything. I suppose even Spinoza 
 might have said that God ( = natura naturans) was, 
 and was more than, nature ( = natura naturata) ; 
 but it is just like saying that six (singly) is other, 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 85 
 
 and therefore in some sense more, than half a 
 dozen (=6 collectively). Lodge says at one place 
 that God is ' a mode of regarding the universe,' 
 at another that He is 4 a part of the universe,' and 
 at a third that He is c a guiding and loving Father 
 in whom all things consist.' It would be diffi- 
 cult to be fair or unfair if one tried to criticise 
 this. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 March 23, 1907. 
 
 Here is the other article. It was practically 
 finished when I got your letter this morning, 
 and though I have not appended any defini- 
 tions, I hope it may serve your purpose well 
 enough. I constantly felt in reading the 
 book 1 that it was only a popular example of 
 that Hegelianising of Christianity that was once 
 so popular in Germany and is now extinct. In 
 one way it can be represented as a systematic 
 debasement of the Christian currency : every 
 Christian term is used, but in a sense determined 
 not by Christianity but by the philosophy : words 
 like atonement, reconciliation, etc., being especi- 
 ally open to abuse. But though series of parallel 
 definitions are an effective way of exhibiting this, 
 the only thing certain about the definitions you 
 give of your adversaries' terms is that they will 
 
 1 The Xew Theology, by the Rev. R. J. Campbell, M.A. (Leader in 
 British Weekly, March 28, 1907-) 
 
86 LETTERS OF 
 
 dispute them ; and without putting it exactly 
 like this, I think what I have said will help 
 even the simpler sort of intelligent reader to take 
 up his proper attitude to the whole affair. I 
 once thought of adding a paragraph about the 
 Church and the Labour Movement, but decided 
 not to. The article is already longer than usual, 
 and I am not sure whether my criticism of this 
 bit of Campbell would coincide with yours. Both 
 intellectually and morally it seems to me as un- 
 sound as anything in the book. 
 
 What astonishes me much is how people with 
 Bibles in their hands, and the great way of 
 psalmists, prophets and apostles in thinking of 
 these things before their eyes, can stand the 
 puerility and the moral offensiveness of much of 
 the New Theology. I have great faith that the 
 Bible way of looking at everything human and 
 divine will win in the long run, because it is the 
 big way ; and all uncorrupted minds succumb 
 to that eventually. It is half-educated sophists 
 who write New Theologies, deceiving and being 
 deceived. You probably infer from this that I 
 am glad to have done with them. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 April 1, 1907. 
 
 I was glad to see you meant to discuss 
 the practical situation created by The New 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 87 
 
 Theology. For my own part, I cannot think 
 it will be a serious situation very long. What 
 strikes me most in looking back on the book is 
 its extraordinary triviality compared with Scrip- 
 ture, and this is sure to be felt. I never preach 
 to any kind of audience, in the poorest mission 
 district, as I did last night, or in a well-off con- 
 gregation, without feeling that the Church has the 
 Bible in its heart far more than it gets credit for ; 
 and a Church with this innate appreciation for 
 Scripture will no more take the New Theology 
 for Gospel than a man who knows Shakespeare 
 and Milton by heart will take Davidson and 
 Kipling for the greatest of poets. And to men- 
 tion Davidson and Kipling is to put it too favour- 
 ably for Campbell. However, there must be 
 something to say 4 for the present distress,' and 
 I hope you may be guided to the right word. 
 
 I enclose short notices of two books you sent 
 lately — one good of its kind, the other of a kind 
 in which I find it impossible to get any joy. By 
 all one can hear of it, Australia seems to be 
 about the most godless place under heaven. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 April 7, 1907. 
 
 I have rewritten and considerably expanded 
 the last paragraph of the article on Lodge. 
 In reality, I don't think I disagree with you, 
 
88 LETTERS OF 
 
 but on looking again at what I had said I 
 became conscious of the missing links, and I 
 think I have been able to supply them. In 
 speaking of the grounds of faith in immortality 
 it is necessary to remember that such faith did 
 not originate with the resurrection of Jesus, 
 however powerfully the resurrection reassured 
 it : it was practically universal among the Jews 
 of our Lord's time, and its roots in the experience 
 of the Jewish Church will, I am very confident, 
 be its roots always. To ask a proof of immor- 
 tality which shall be independent of such experi- 
 ences is like asking that Jesus should have mani- 
 fested Himself not only to Mary and the Apostles, 
 but to Pilate and Caiaphas — or to the Areopagus, 
 perhaps, if we want a parallel to the Psychical 
 Research people. 
 
 Do you know who wrote the ' Easter Sunday 
 Reflections,' signed H. B. in this week's Nation, 
 and the review of Dinsmore's book on Atonement 
 in Literature and Life ? 
 
 Most people will agree with what you say about 
 theological colleges making believers uncomfort- 
 able, but I am not sure that burning is the cure. 
 I fancy it must be establishing a more intimate 
 connection between them and the life and work 
 of the Church, and this makes me doubt whether 
 yon were right in giving such a cordial welcome 
 to W. P. Paterson's proposals. The general 
 tendency of these, however limited or qualified, 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 89 
 
 would be to make the divinity halls less part of the 
 Church — less under its influence and control, less 
 animated by its faith, life, and interests — and more 
 part of the universities. Any one who knows the 
 university attitude to Christianity in this country 
 knows what that means. Our whole situation is 
 terribly serious, and will become more so, but as 
 far as I see light in it, it is in the direction of the 
 Church taking more interest in its divinity schools, 
 seeing that they are used for its purposes, the 
 training of its members for its ministry, and not 
 for ends which are academic or scientific, perhaps, 
 but not the ends for which the Church exists. 
 There will have to be a great internal eclair- 
 cissement before there can be the effective co- 
 operation which is so desirable of the Church's 
 faith and the College's science in the training of 
 men for the Christian ministry. The Nation 
 mentions this week that the students in the Pro- 
 testant faculties of theology in the German 
 universities have fallen since 1871 from over 
 4000 to 2300, while the population of the Empire 
 has risen, I should think, in almost the reverse 
 proportion ; and we are more nearly in the same 
 case than some people think. There were more 
 students — a great many more — in our Glasgow 
 College when I entered in 1879 than there are now ; 
 yet then it was a Free Church College only, and 
 now it represents the United Church. It is not 
 the College itself which is to blame for this ; it 
 
90 LETTERS OF 
 
 is the university and the general intellectual 
 currents of the time. If there is no supernatural 
 in any proper sense of the term — if even Jesus is 
 only one more whose work could have been done 
 by others had not He appeared — then there is 
 no supernatural life in the world, and no room for 
 an institution to guard or express it, and for an 
 order of men whose vocation it is specially to 
 represent it. The Church, if there is a Church 
 at all, is not an institution in any sense, but the 
 new moral and social order ; an official ministry 
 is so far from being essential to it that it is a con- 
 tradiction in terms of the true Christian idea. 
 This is the state of mind we have to confront 
 without becoming Catholics or legalists in religion. 
 That the Catholics and legalists will gain in the 
 coming crisis — I mean, get some gains — is probably 
 inevitable ; but if we could get all the faith there 
 is in the Church to apply itself intelligently to 
 the situation I should not despair. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 April 13, 1907. 
 
 I hope you are too pessimistic about pan- 
 theism and morality. I always think it is men's 
 excuses for their conduct that vary from age 
 to age, not their conduct itself. Our passions, 
 Montaigne says, are more constant than our 
 reason, which is ' flexible a tout ' ; if men are 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 91 
 
 going to be immoral they will be so, and if they 
 have not pantheism as a plea they will have 
 something else — or do without. This sounds as 
 fatalistic as if I were a pantheist, but I do not 
 mean to speak of it lightly. Somebody says that 
 of all men of genius who ever lived Pascal was 
 the least of a pantheist, and I have always felt 
 this was just another way of saying he was the 
 most of a Christian. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 April 25, 1907. 
 
 The secretary of the Office-bearers' Union of 
 our Church in Dundee has asked me to write to 
 you and support an application of his that you 
 should lecture to them, or give the opening 
 address at their first meeting in autumn. If 
 you can do this, I need not say how much 
 it would be appreciated. You would get 
 a very good audience — some cranks in it, no 
 doubt, but many of the most loyal and devoted 
 members of our Church. I have done myself 
 what they are asking you to do, and I do not 
 think it would be wasting time, like addressing 
 a Synod. 
 
 I have read Du Bose, and will write something 
 about him, though there is nothing in his book 
 that was not in his Soteriology of the New Testa- 
 ment, which I think I must have reviewed for 
 
92 LETTERS OF 
 
 you some fifteen years ago. The combination 
 of effervescence and logic, or rather of efferves- 
 cence and what is meant to be but is not logic, is 
 not very attractive to me. But it is delightful in 
 these times to meet a man who can write about 
 St. Paul with enthusiasm, who believes that the 
 apostle had a Gospel, and who rejoices himself to 
 preach the same. 
 
 On the 15th of May I am going abroad for five 
 weeks : I will be back on June 22nd. I don't 
 want to do anything in the way of writing during 
 that time, so if you have anything I could do 
 for you before I start, you might let me know. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 April 28, 1907. 
 
 I post with this a short article on Du Bose's 
 book. 1 The spirit and intention of it are 
 very good, but his main idea is an exploded 
 and antiquated one which only a mind that 
 has lost its natural simplicity could stick to 
 for so long. I have confined any criticism of 
 the book to this central point, and have tried 
 to be generous as well as just to him. I can 
 hardly think that Sanday will accept his con- 
 ception of the person and work of Christ without 
 qualification, and, if he does not, there is nothing 
 
 1 The Gospel according to St. Paul, by William Porcher du Bose, 
 M.A. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 93 
 
 else in the book to talk about. I forgive him 
 much for his ardour for St. Paul. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 May 10, 1907. 
 
 I enclose an article on Adams Brown's 
 book. It is a very good book in a way, 
 well meaning and free from objectionable quali- 
 ties, mental or moral, but with a queer want 
 of intellectual backbone about it. This, with 
 what I sent on Du Bose, will ease your passage, 
 I hope, over the next six weeks. We leave here 
 on Wednesday first. 
 
 Watson's death is a terrible shock to all his 
 friends, 1 and, though I only once exchanged words 
 with him, I can understand from your article and 
 otherwise how much he must be missed. His 
 appointment at once to the Principalship at 
 Cambridge and to the presidency of the Free 
 Church Council would have given him new oppor- 
 tunities of proving the extraordinary variety 
 and force of his gifts, and outsiders would have 
 been eager to learn whether he could do anything 
 to force English Free Churchmen into a homo- 
 geneous and effective force, political or religious. 
 To judge by the way things are drifting in Parlia- 
 ment, a great deal of the fight for freedom is yet 
 to come, or rather will have to be done over again. 
 
 1 Dr. John Watson passed away in America in May 1907. 
 
94 LETTERS OF 
 
 Campbell-Bannerman's words are strong, but the 
 outcome as yet is not exhilarating. 
 
 Many thanks for the paragraph in your Claudius 
 Clear letter about the people who write for books 
 for bazaars, and who demand your favourite 
 quotation and a shilling. The demand always 
 paralyses me, and I have generally compromised 
 by sending the shilling alone. I have never 
 written my name on a book, but the man with 
 whom I deal here must think me quite a devoted 
 admirer of my own works. It gives me a shudder 
 to think that he has paid 4s. 6d. for what may 
 quite likely go at the end of the bazaar in the 
 sixpenny or the twopenny box. If we had only 
 the courage to strike ! 
 
 I saw Carnegie Simpson's pamphlet in MS. and 
 thought it exceedingly well done. It will serve 
 a good purpose if it damps down a lot of the 
 futile talk about union that is going on chiefly 
 among people who don't care a penny for any 
 religion or Church in the world, and others whose 
 interest is obvious. Personally I have far more 
 sympathy with Congregationalism than I think 
 you have, or many Presbyterians ; and I cannot 
 get up the smallest enthusiasm over uniting all 
 the Presbyterians and even all the Christians 
 in Scotland in one vast legal corporation. The 
 evils incident to the existence of such a corpora- 
 tion would be as vast as its benefits, or I am much 
 mistaken ; and I cannot think it was anything of 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 95 
 
 this kind that our Lord had in view when he 
 prayed that his disciples might be all one. What 
 we want for a while, anyhow, is not union, but 
 unity of spirit, and peace. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 October 8, 1907. 
 
 I was glad to hear from you again, and to 
 know you had enjoyed your holiday and had 
 good prospects for the winter. We had a very 
 pleasant time too, though we have been in 
 Glasgow since the 23rd of June, which is 
 a mistake. We were not in Germany but in 
 Venice and Switzerland, and for better or worse 
 I have no idea of the currents of thought there. 
 But I will send you an article in ten days or so, 
 if not on Christus Futurits, 1 which I have not 
 been able to look at, on something else. 
 
 Your suggestion about The Expositor bothers 
 me more. I have spent most of my time this 
 summer working at something which is connected 
 with your proposal, but in such a way that I am 
 rather hindered than helped so far as acceding 
 to your suggestion is concerned. What I have 
 in mind is like this. The Christian religion is 
 what it is, and what it has been all through its 
 history, in virtue of the place which Jesus holds 
 in it ; and the one question which really exer- 
 
 1 Christus Futurus, by the author of Pro Christo et Eccleaia. 
 
96 LETTERS OF 
 
 cises men's minds at the present time is whether 
 the place which the Church has given Him is one 
 which He Himself claimed : in other words, 
 whether there is a historical basis adequate to 
 support the spiritual phenomenon of Christianity. 
 I have done all the first part of it, showing what 
 the place assigned to Jesus in Christian faith has 
 always been : I have also done, what is an 
 essential part of the scheme, a statement of the 
 evidence for the Resurrection, in what seems to me 
 the proper form — in all, I dare say, 50 or 55,000 
 words ; but the part answering to your question 
 — What we know about Jesus — I have not yet 
 done. If nothing comes to hinder me, I count 
 on doing it next summer, and having it ready for 
 Christmas of 1908 ; but I could not undertake 
 a series of articles on it at the same time. Per- 
 haps you remember my once saying that I had 
 a superstition — the opposite of your superstition 
 — about mentioning things I only intended to 
 do ; I would hardly have done it now except to 
 let you see that the particular suggestion you 
 made is a rather impracticable one at the moment. 
 Let us hope it will do no harm. I could more 
 easily give you an occasional expository paper, 
 but not a series. The last Expositor struck me as 
 particularly good, especially Mackintosh's paper, 
 but I don't know whether criticism like Bacon's 
 or mysticism like Macintyre's would soonest 
 make me hang myself. It is a particular kind of 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 97 
 
 * mentalite,' as Loisy says, which is represented 
 in the Fourth Gospel, but lunacy is no kind of 
 mentalite at all. If the Gospel consists of conun- 
 drums, which no one so much as guessed were 
 conundrums till Bacon arose, the author deserved 
 all the kinds of martyrdom that befell him. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 November 6, 1907. 
 
 With this I am posting a paper for The 
 Expositor. The subject may seem threadbare, 
 but I feel as if I had got the hang of it in a 
 more morally intelligible way than some who 
 have discussed it ; and if criticism, as you say, 
 and not exposition, is popular at the present 
 time, why, there is a little criticism in it too. 
 
 Forsyth's book x interested me very much, but 
 the peculiarity of his style is such that only 
 people who agree with him strongly are likely to 
 read him through. It is immensely clever at 
 some points at which it is not enough to be clever. 
 It is like hitting Goliath between the eyes with 
 a pebble which does not sink into his skull, but 
 only makes him see clearer. When I went out 
 last Thursday morning and saw the contents bill 
 of the B. W. blazing across the street — ' Dr. 
 Forsyth replies to Dr. Denney ' — it gave me quite 
 a turn, for I was quite unconscious of having 
 
 1 Positive Preaching and Modern Mind, by Rev. Principal Forsyth, 
 D.D. (1U07.) 
 
98 LETTERS OF 
 
 said anything that called for reply. However, 
 when I saw his letter I was relieved, and I have 
 since had a very friendly communication from 
 him. I hope his book will sell and be read, for 
 it is needed, and, though some people will not be 
 convinced, it should do a lot of good. 
 
 The article I wrote on Jesus and Paul was 
 prompted by one of these Volksbilcher which are 
 having such a circulation just now. It is by 
 Julicher, and to be written by a professor of 
 theology who prepared men for the ministry of 
 the Christian Church is the most barefaced piece 
 of paganism I have seen for many a day. It is 
 called ' Paulus u. Jesus.' 
 
 The Principal, who has been off duty for a 
 fortnight, expects to be back on Monday. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 November 7, 1907. 
 
 I wrote at the same time to you and 
 Forsyth, and in both cases the letters crossed. 
 It did not occur to me in writing on his book 
 to say anything of the single sentence in 
 which he refers to the bodily resurrection. I 
 entirely agree with you that no relief is given by 
 denying the bodily resurrection to any difficulty 
 about the supernatural by any one who accepts 
 real communications between a Saviour who 
 survived death and His disciples, and that, short 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 99 
 
 of such real communication, the Christianity of 
 the New Testament has not a leg to stand on. 
 But all this about evading the bodily resurrec- 
 tion is part of the widely diffused desire to get a 
 religion free from historical uncertainty, and not 
 dependent at any point on any testimony except 
 the testimonium internum Spiritus Sancti. There 
 is a good side to that ; there is no saving faith 
 but that which is spirit born and spirit attested, 
 and people have the feeling that you cannot 
 claim the witness of the spirit for any given story 
 of the appearance of Jesus. What they do not 
 seem to feel is that the whole phenomenon of 
 Jesus (if one may use such an expression) crucified 
 and risen, and seen and understood as it was seen 
 and understood by the apostles, is attested by 
 the spirit ; and that in this large sense there is an 
 inward witness to the outward historical facts. 
 If this were not so, I do not see how Christianity 
 could survive. There are writers in plenty who 
 do not seem to have the faintest perception of 
 what the N. T. religion is, and of course such 
 considerations are nothing to them. What do 
 you think of this from Schmiedel ? ' The inmost 
 religious good which I possess would not be in- 
 jured at all if I had to admit the conviction to- 
 day that Jesus never lived— as a historical in- 
 quirer, however, I can only say that of this I see 
 no prospect.' What has a man who can say that 
 in common with the man who says, ' The life 
 
100 LETTERS OF 
 
 that I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the 
 Son of God ' ? How it is to be cured I do not see, 
 but the number of people who are on the slope 
 that ends here, and who suppose that they are 
 Christians while it is all the same to them if 
 Christ had never lived, is appalling. I have got 
 rather weary of reading the kind of thing which 
 Lake has done, as there is no new evidence and 
 no new point of view for appreciating the old, 
 but I will examine his book, and send a notice of 
 it soon. The merit of Forsyth is that he returns 
 to his N. T., — I delivered unto you first of all that 
 Christ died for our sins. I am as sure as I am of 
 anything that people that stick at that will sooner 
 or later come where Schmiedel has come, and I 
 could forgive some rash obiter dicta to a man with 
 whom I am so heartily at one on the main 
 question. He says ' the treatise ' is not for him, 
 but if I were near him I would urge him to give 
 up the policy of pinpricks and go in for a pitched 
 battle. If there were few to fight with him there 
 would be plenty to cheer. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 November 14, 1907. 
 
 I enclose one or two reviews, including one, 
 a little longer than so short a book usually gets, 
 on Lake on the Resurrection. 1 We have enough 
 
 1 The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, by 
 Rev. Professor Kirsopp Lake. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 101 
 
 and to spare of the kind of man who splits the 
 world into two unrelated sections called histori- 
 cal and spiritual, but mostly they do not quite 
 realise what they are doing. The odd thing in 
 Lake is that he has some perception of it, yet 
 does not seem to mind. ' To think that he 
 should know what he is, and be that he is ' — it 
 is a spectacle, if not for men and angels, for philo- 
 sophers and Christians to wonder at. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 November 29, 1907. 
 
 I will do something on Garvie 1 for next week. 
 I am glad you had another subject to propose, 
 for I was terribly disappointed with Illingworth. 
 He always seemed to me the ablest of the Lux 
 Mundi men, and I have read all his works with 
 profit, but this book on the Trinity 2 is obscu- 
 rantist and irrelevant to an incredible degree. 
 I have written as polite a notice of it as I could, 
 but it is impossible to praise anything in it which 
 is related to the subject. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 December 16, 1907. 
 
 The best thing I could do with this article 
 was to omit the references to Demonology and 
 
 1 Studies in the Inner Life of Jesus, by Rev. Principal Alfred E. 
 Garvie, D.D. 
 
 2 The Doctrine of the Trinity A)io/oyetieu//i/ considered, by Rev. J. R. 
 Illingworth, D.D. 
 
102 LETTERS OF 
 
 the Second Advent, and to replace them by a 
 shorter paragraph on the general subject of our 
 Lord's knowledge. I am very sensible of the 
 difficulties connected with both subjects, and 
 perhaps do not estimate them quite as you do. 
 I have thought of all the things you say before 
 as well as since your writing them, and am 
 prepared to leave more room for agnosticism. 
 The only thing that makes me hesitate in the 
 least to give up Demonology is not the authority 
 of Jesus, which I cannot use exactly as you 
 seem to do, but the fact that I have known a 
 saintly person, pure, affectionate and charitable 
 in a signal degree, on being deprived of reason 
 become in every respect the opposite — foul, 
 malignant, and unspeakably restless and miser- 
 able. The unknown quantity in this is bad 
 enough to be the devil or his angels. The Second 
 Advent is far more important, but it is not only 
 true as you say that the Epistles are pervaded by 
 the glow of it, but that in the form in which the 
 writers of the Epistles expected it, it has never 
 been fulfilled. There was an error of some sort 
 or at some point in their hope. I do not like to 
 say that our Lord was responsible for it, though 
 I do not doubt that the hope in general is to be 
 referred to Him. Is it not possible that words 
 like those in Matthew and Luke — From hence- 
 forth ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the 
 right hand of power and coming on the clouds of 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 103 
 
 heaven — suggest a continuous rather than an 
 instantaneous advent, something to which the 
 experience of Pentecost rather than of the Last 
 Day are the key ? Of course there are the sayings 
 on the other hand about the lightning flashing 
 in an instant from East to West : but that is 
 just the difficulty — there are two sorts of sayings 
 referring to the same thing, and there is the com- 
 mentary of experience to throw into the scale, 
 for the one and against the other. It is rather 
 curious that half the readers of the N. T. should 
 cling to the Second Advent in order to maintain 
 the authority of Jesus, while the other half is 
 asserting and emphasising the very same apoca- 
 lyptic passages with a view to undermining His 
 authority. There is something here to be cleared 
 up, and I thought Sanday's point — that apoca- 
 lyptic language is used by Jesus in other connec- 
 tions, not literally, but in a symbolical sense — an 
 interesting one and worth mention. However, I 
 have no desire to disturb any one's hope, and I 
 think you will find what I have written unobjec- 
 tionable, and perhaps not quite pointless. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 December 31, 1907. 
 
 I am very sorry you are laid up again ; I 
 hope it will not be a severe attack. When you 
 wired, I had gone to Blairgowrie to the funeral 
 
104 LETTERS OF 
 
 of an old class fellow, Osborne of Dundee ; 
 and in the congested state of the lines I did 
 not get home, nor your message, till near 
 midnight on Saturday. Yesterday I had to 
 preach. I mention all this that you may see I 
 have no qualification for writing about Rainy 
 except that I have not influenza. If I had had 
 a little longer, I dare say it would have been a 
 little shorter, but you can remedy that and 
 anything else in it as you please. Excuse the 
 haste of this as I am just going out to the post. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 January 13, 1908. 
 
 It was very kind of you to write to me as 
 you did, and I ought to have acknowledged 
 it sooner. 1 But you can understand. We had 
 been married for more than twenty-one years, 
 and in all that time I never had a thought of 
 which my wife was not part, and I hardly know 
 yet what has befallen me. I have no doubt you 
 are right in bidding me work, and I am sure 
 nothing could grieve her more than if I were to 
 be faithless for her sake to any of the persons or 
 causes in which we used to take responsibility 
 together. But it came so suddenly that I was 
 stunned for a while, and though I did what had 
 to be done it was in a kind of dream. Happily 
 I am not alone just now, having my wife's sister 
 
 1 Mrs. Denney died in January 1908. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 105 
 
 with me, a sister of whom we were both very 
 fond, and with whom I can speak of her as freely 
 and as intimately as I wish. I cannot be suffi- 
 ciently grateful that she was with her when she 
 was taken ill. They had been shopping together 
 on the Saturday afternoon, and literally the last 
 thing my dear wife did in this world was to order 
 a set of books as a Christmas present for me. It 
 was rather expensive, but she said to her sister 
 as they left the shop she was so glad she had got 
 it, for she knew the surprise it would be to me 
 and the pleasure I would get out of it. They 
 were crossing from the bookseller's to the subway 
 to come home when she was stricken with a 
 violent pain in the head and sickness. A girl 
 passing fetched a cab, and when she came home 
 she could walk upstairs. The doctor thought it 
 was a violent attack of influenza, and, when we 
 told him we had meant to go to Moffat at the 
 end of the week, assured us there would be no 
 difficulty about that. She was very prostrate 
 for three days, but quite clear in her mind 
 and, except for the headache, which continued, 
 quite cheerful. In point of fact, it was a slight 
 haemorrhage on the brain, which recurred in a 
 severer form at ten on Wednesday night. She 
 became unconscious immediately, and in three 
 hours was dead. We did not know she was 
 dying, and said no good-bye. Yet the last word 
 I had said to her was adieu, and she waved her 
 
106 LETTERS OF 
 
 hand feebly, and gave me the look she always did 
 when I went out to my work. It seemed as 
 though I never could work any more without it, 
 and yet I feel now as though I never shall be 
 without it, and I must resolve even for her 
 sake not to be faithless, but believing, and do 
 what I can. You will forgive me for telling you 
 all this : though you never saw much of my wife, 
 you have been so constant a friend to me that I 
 am sure you will understand. 
 
 I was very much interested in all you wrote 
 about your father, and could have wished to 
 know him. His love for the classics and espe- 
 cially for Horace attracted me. An evangeli- 
 cal Christian who appreciates Horace deserves 
 Horace's Omne tulit punctum better than any 
 kind of man I know. Once in the Union Magazine 
 I wrote a line or two about your Letters on Life 
 with just this allusion to Horace in it, but I was 
 not aware that your appreciation of the Horatian 
 as well as the Pauline view of life was inherited. 
 When they are separated, in ordinary mortals, 
 Paulinism is feverish and Horace insipid ; but 
 it does me good to think of a solitary scholar who 
 got the full good of both. 
 
 I am sending with this an article on Gore's 
 book. 1 It is a hurried book, and with no kind 
 of unity, yet here and there it has interesting 
 
 1 The New Theology and the Old Religion, by Charles Gore, D. D., 
 D.C. L. , at that time Bishop of Birmingham. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 107 
 
 points. There is something picturesque in the 
 meeting in one city of two such worthy repre- 
 sentatives of the scientific and the Christian in- 
 telligence of our time as he and Sir Oliver Lodge : 
 it should make the negotiations or the contro- 
 versies of science and theology worth following 
 in their neighbourhood. But it is the more a 
 pity that reference has to be made to Campbell 
 and the New Theology. He is not on the level 
 of dignity and manners which belongs to the 
 Bishop and the Principal of the University. 
 Perhaps you may not agree with what I have said 
 about Gore's ideas of i massing ' the opinion of 
 the artisans in the Church. It strikes me there 
 is a lot of unsound talking about this, and, what 
 is worse, a lot of unconscious patronage. My 
 father was a working man, and while no man 
 could have been freer from any kind of self- 
 assertion, I am certain it would have seemed very 
 queer to him to be regarded in the Church as 
 belonging to a particular class which had to be 
 recognised in some particular way. With all 
 our faults, the self-respecting working man can 
 keep his self-respect, and be at home in our 
 Church as completely, I believe, as in the apos- 
 tolic age. I had rich merchants, secretaries of 
 financial companies, schoolmasters, shopkeepers, 
 tradesmen, and coachmen in my session, and we 
 were as true a brotherhood in Christ as a minister 
 could wish to have part in. There is no need that 
 
108 LETTERS OF 
 
 a different degree of education should separate 
 men, and I am quite certain that decent working 
 people are proud to think their minister is a 
 thoroughly equipped man, and like him the better 
 and not the worse for it. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 February 4, 1908. 
 
 I am sending with this the article for The 
 Expositor on ' The Cup of the Lord and the Cup 
 of Demons.' If you want or need to curtail 
 it any, the easiest way would be to omit the 
 last two pages, beginning at ' The lesson of this 
 passage,' on p. 14. But I hope you need not, 
 as it is not over the usual length, I think, and 
 I am interested in the lesson. 
 
 I am curious to know what you cannot assimi- 
 late in my article on ' Preaching Christ.' It is 
 so long since I wrote it now that I have only a 
 general recollection of it, but I hope you agree in 
 the main. I rather regretted giving it to Hastings, 
 for there are some things in it I want to put into 
 the book I have in mind, but I daresay he may 
 not object to this. Judging by your review and 
 by some conversation I had with Dr. Orr, who is 
 reviewing it for the Scottish Review, the new volume 
 seems miscellaneous and inconsistent in a high 
 degree. Dr. Orr says there are eleven or twelve 
 places in it where the census under Cyrenius is 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 109 
 
 fully discussed, the same evidence adduced, and 
 all sorts of incompatible conclusions announced. 
 
 I have had a week to-day of living here abso- 
 lutely alone, except for people coming in, of which 
 I have had enough. There is nothing to do but 
 work, and every inducement except the one which 
 once made every other needless. 
 
 I hope you and all your house are well. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 March 17, 1908. 
 
 Many thanks for your letter and your kind 
 thoughts of me. I think I understand Calvin's 
 saying, and am happy, I am sure, in having at 
 least one person who loved my wife so truly 
 that I can speak of her almost as unreservedly 
 as I think. Smith, too, has been the kindest 
 and truest of friends ; he really knew and 
 appreciated her, and the notice he wrote of her 
 for you was grateful to her sisters as to me. 
 These bright spring days I have seemed to miss 
 her more than ever : she had the keenest delight 
 in all the sights and sound of spring, and the 
 blackbirds in the park in the morning literally 
 infected her with their own exhilaration. It is 
 another life to hear them alone. I hope you are 
 better than when you wrote. We have had 
 much influenza and other illness here too, yet 
 the winter was not severe. 
 
110 LETTERS OF 
 
 I have been reading Loisy, and will write 
 something about him soon. As bad luck would 
 have it, I had spent 24s. on him myself and 
 sampled him freely before your copy came. Shall 
 I return it, or present it in your name to the 
 Library, which is sore smitten by the Wee Frees ? 
 If you happen to have his book on the Encyclical, 
 I should be glad to have a look at that. There is 
 an interesting letter on it in the Spectator this 
 week by a R.C., and though the writer (and 
 Loisy too) disown all philosophy and Apriorismus, 
 I feel sure it is the philosophy of this whole 
 business — its preliminary assumptions and its 
 view of Christianity as a whole — which needs to 
 be considered. There is no use in dividing the 
 Gospel into 140 paragraphs, and criticising them 
 on the principle that no chain is stronger than 
 its weakest link. This metaphorical argument is 
 sufficiently countered by changing the metaphor, 
 and saying that the statue as a whole carries 
 conviction though you may be puzzled by a chip. 
 What strikes me on the whole about Loisy is 
 that there is no continuity, on his showing, 
 between Jesus and the Christian religion. He did 
 not originate it either directly or indirectly. 
 He lived and died under an illusion or delusion 
 which L. does not hesitate to call naif and absurde, 
 and it was not out of any revelation made in 
 him or by him, or out of any great conviction he 
 held, but apparently in getting the better (in- 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 111 
 
 consistently enough) of his naive absurdities 
 that the Christian religion made its way in the 
 world. The Gospel — that is, the religion of 
 Jesus — was a dream ; but it died ; and only 
 when it died was Christianity born. I don't 
 wonder the Pope excommunicated him, but only 
 that he left it to the Pope to do. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 March 28, 1908. 
 
 I have written something on Loisy, 1 and send 
 it with this. The only remarkable thing about 
 his book is its appearance in the Church of 
 Rome. The air of ' preternatural suspicion ' in 
 which he criticises everything in the Gospels is 
 remarkable too, and sometimes one remembers 
 gratefully the saying, 'Whoso speaketh a word 
 against the Son of Man it shall be forgiven 
 him.' I never had any difficulty about the clause 
 in our confession that calls the Pope Antichrist, 
 but in this present case I am quite on the side 
 of the Church. If the members of the Church 
 read this book and believed it, there would not 
 be two or three left in the world to meet in the 
 name of Jesus. Still, the human mind is capable 
 of the queerest inconsistencies and perversities, 
 
 1 A signed article by Professor Denney on M. Loisy's work on the 
 Synoptic Gospels appeared in the liriti.sk Weekly of April i), 1908. 
 The title is "Taking away the Lord.' 
 
112 LETTERS OF 
 
 and except for impenitent vice of some kind one 
 always has misgivings about excommunication. 
 
 I have been reading your articles on Socialism 
 with great interest. 1 It is not a subject on which 
 I have any scientific opinions, but I cannot say 
 I could make out any ground for distinguishing 
 between property which would and would not, 
 or could or could not, be socialised. It seems to 
 me that all the property I have is of one kind. 
 If I lend my savings to the Corporation of Glasgow 
 and they put them into the Tramway system, 
 they have no more right to the dividends they 
 promised to pay me on them than they would 
 have to my plate and spoons, suppose I had 
 invested them thus, or to my old wines or first 
 folio Shakespeares if I had bestowed them so. 
 Property is that with which a man can do pretty 
 much as he will, and if property ceases too in 
 capital, the only quite certain result (I should say) 
 is that capital itself will soon cease. If indivi- 
 duals don't save, Society will not, and capital will 
 presently disappear. Probably your studies will 
 make this seem nonsensical to you, but so it 
 strikes me. I am not afraid of Socialism, though 
 foolish experiments may be made by a combina- 
 tion of the benevolent and the bad, but when it 
 comes to the point, the people who have anything 
 will astonish the people who want just to take it 
 from them. Winston Churchill in a speech he 
 
 1 The New Socialism : an Impartial Inquiry, by Jane T. Stoddart, 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 113 
 
 once made here in Glasgow indicated very 
 sagaciously the point at which the seemingly 
 swift and irresistible growth of Socialism would 
 meet a check. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 April 3, 1908. 
 
 I am going for a fortnight to Moffat on 
 Monday with my brother and sister : if you 
 want to send me a proof of the article on 
 Loisy, please have it addressed c/o Henderson, 
 Mayfield, Moffat. After the 20th, I shall be at 
 home again. 
 
 Enclosed you will find the article for Expositor 
 on * Coming by water and blood.' I did it now, 
 partly because I had the chance, partly because 
 it touches on the sacraments, as the one I did 
 last month also does, and it might be as well not 
 to have them too far apart. But if you think 
 differently it will do for a later number. 
 
 It is difficult here to follow the Bp. of St. 
 Asaph and Mr. McKenna, or to know whether 
 there are personalities as well as principles influ- 
 encing different members of the Government, as 
 is freely asserted. Your earnest appeal has all 
 the logic and all the facts on its side, but it is a 
 desperate business to have to do with men who 
 pride themselves on not being logical, and shut 
 their eyes to facts. I have more hope of the 
 
 H 
 
114 LETTERS OF 
 
 Government on Temperance than on Education, 
 for they have a better chance of a fair fight. 
 If it only continues furious enough it may put 
 education into the background, and the number 
 of people who are getting sick of attempts to 
 satisfy all the Churches by compromises, which 
 ex hypothesi must fully satisfy none, will make 
 this all the easier. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 May 7, 1908. 
 
 I will be very glad to write something on 
 Smith, 1 especially when I may let the archaeology 
 alone. It is not in my line in the least. He 
 showed me the New Testament sheets of his 
 book, and, like you, I was much impressed 
 by the part about Christ, and in particular by 
 Smith's sense of the difference between Christ's 
 way of speaking and that of the prophets. Of 
 course a man who cannot see this is stone blind 
 in the Bible, but it delighted me to see how 
 deeply Smith had been impressed by it, and I 
 twice spoke about it in my class last session. I 
 am basing much on it in the book I am trying to 
 write, as justifying the whole attitude of N. T. 
 faith to Jesus. 
 
 I finished Adam's 2 book last night, but cannot 
 
 1 The reference is to ' ! 'r George Adam Smith's work on Jerusalem. 
 (Leader in British Week of May 28, 1908.) 
 
 2 The Religious Teache s of Greece, by James Adam ; edited, with a 
 Memoir, by his wife. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 115 
 
 write anything about it till next week. Some 
 of it seems to me extraordinarily good, but I 
 know what you mean when you call it disappoint- 
 ing. What ought to have been the best and 
 weightiest bits in it are not so, and with all the 
 zest and fervour there is a certain want of com- 
 posure and weight. He seems to have known 
 rather little, too, outside of his historical beat : 
 his only Christian teachers are Hastings' Dic- 
 tionary and Matthew Arnold. But in a race 
 such as his life seems to have been against death 
 and time, the imperfections rather call for com- 
 passion than comment, and I don't know in 
 English nearly so useful a book of its kind. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 May 22, 1908. 
 
 I might have sent the enclosed last night 
 and saved you the trouble of wiring. The book 
 is a really admirable companion to the Old 
 Testament, and though not every part of it 
 can be equally interesting to every one, it is 
 a remarkable proof of the manysidedness of 
 Smith's own interest that he has done every 
 part of it with such thoroughness. The book 
 I am trying to write is really an elaboration of 
 ,.the argument in his chapter on 'The Temple 
 and the Lord.' I have got on a good way, and 
 
116 LETTERS OF 
 
 though there are a lot of interruptions ahead I 
 hope to have it finished by the beginning of the 
 session. 
 
 About your proposed Aids to Faith I have no 
 suggestions meanwhile. I have seen a number 
 of the German series to which you refer, but do 
 not think them likely to be of much use here. 
 The paper and the type are unattractive, and in 
 some cases the style and temper are equally so. 
 There seems to be less of sweet reasonableness in 
 the Fatherland than in less scientific countries, 
 and I am quite sure you are right in aiming at 
 native rather than foreign productions. If the 
 other thing were once off my hands I would 
 gladly try once more to say in the briefest and 
 most persuasive way what I have to say about 
 the atonement and the forgiveness of sins, but 
 I cannot undertake it till then. The thing that 
 is wanted to keep people from lapsing into Uni- 
 tarianism — which has all the science and all the 
 philosophy in the universities on its side — is a 
 tract on the lines of that chapter of Smith's, 
 showing that the attitude of New Testament 
 Christianity to Jesus is justified and demanded 
 by Jesus' consciousness of Himself. This is to 
 be the burden of my book, but it might be con- 
 densed and brought to a practical issue in such 
 a series as you have in view. But I must do the 
 book first. Another thing wanted is a little book 
 on the sources for the life of Jesus. But I have 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 117 
 
 not had time to think round the field, and will 
 write you again when I have done so. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 Juhj 2, 1908. 
 
 I send with this a paper for The Expositor on 
 Jesus' estimate of John the Baptist : perhaps it 
 might better be called simply ' Jesus and John 
 the Baptist.' Also a notice of Du Bose's last 
 book which you sent me. 
 
 I am going to preach in Interlaken from 
 July 19 to August 16, and expect to leave here 
 this day week. What address I may have there 
 I cannot tell, but if you wish this paper in the 
 August Expositor the proof would either need to 
 be sent here before I leave, or forwarded there. 
 I expect to be there on the 17th, and I suppose 
 * Scotch Church ' would find me. 
 
 The heat here is tremendous, and I hope it 
 may be past the worst before I have to start. 
 Interlaken itself is a hot enough place without 
 any aggravations. 
 
 I have a note to-day from Hodder and Stoughton 
 wanting a description of my book to advertise 
 it in the colonies. What occurred to me as a 
 title, when Mr. Stoughton was here, was 'Jesus 
 and the Gospel,' but I am not just satisfied with 
 that. The idea I have is to show that the Gospel, 
 as the apostles preached and believed it, can be 
 
118 LETTERS OF 
 
 verified in the mind of Jesus. There is something 
 known to history and experience as Christianity 
 — something of which the New Testament is the 
 classical example — and I want to prove that those 
 who accept it are not false to Jesus, but true to 
 Him; or, in other words, that the historical 
 Jesus supports and not discredits the Gospel. 
 If you can think of anything better for a name it 
 will be a great obligation to let me know. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 October 9, 1908. 
 
 I enclose a short notice of Forsyth's book, 1 
 which I found very difficult to read. If this 
 is how one feels who is heartily at one with 
 the writer, how must it strike an unsympathetic 
 reader ? He has more true and important 
 things to say, in my opinion, than any one 
 at present writing on theology ; but if these 
 papers were preached, as most of them seem to 
 have been, I am sure most of the audiences, while 
 willing enough to take hold of them, must have 
 been sadly perplexed to find the handle. To con- 
 vince a man that he has an inadequate or false 
 view of the Gospel may do him good, or rather 
 must do so ; but to give him a strong impression 
 that you are contemptuous of his view of the 
 Gospel while you do not enable him convincingly 
 
 1 Missions in State and Church, by P. T. Forsyth, D.D. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 119 
 
 to apprehend the better one may have quite 
 opposite effects. But I do not like to say these 
 things about a man whom I like so much, and in 
 the few lines I have written I do not do more 
 than allude to them. 
 
 I was sorry to see from the B. W. a while ago 
 what a rainy holiday you had in Aberdeenshire. 
 We had a delightful month in Switzerland. My 
 sister-in-law came with me, and, though we 
 travelled little, we had such weather that I think 
 we were able to be in the open air an average of 
 eight or nine hours daily. I was very much the 
 better of it, and hope to get through the winter 
 well, though I have already promised to preach 
 once every Sunday except at the Christmas 
 holidays. . . . 
 
 We begin again at the hall on Wednesday. Orr 
 is to give the opening lecture, but he has not 
 yet announced his subject. Smith is on tour in 
 England, having a great time. If you have any 
 ideas on the tenure of the pastorate I should be 
 much your debtor for them, having been appointed 
 convener of a committee to report on this to the 
 Assembly. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 November 21, 1908. 
 
 I enclose one or two reviews. Ferrero's 
 book on Rome and Egypt x is one of the 
 
 1 The Gfreatneti and Decline of Rome, vol. iv. , 'Rome and Egypt,' 
 ]>v Guglielmo Kerrero, 
 
120 LETTERS OF 
 
 most vivid and interesting books I have ever 
 read ; I could not have believed it possible 
 that on such a well-worn bit of the field any 
 one should have made such a brilliant dis- 
 play. The other books are not much worth. 
 Warschauer's 1 is the abler of the two, though I 
 don't think he realises how much he has thrown 
 away, and how greatly he deceives himself by 
 verbal association about the worth of what he 
 keeps ; the other man, Nolloth, 2 has a fair 
 acquaintance with critical opinions on the 
 Gospels ; but though he writes of ' The Person of 
 our Lord and Recent Thought ' he has not so 
 much as begun to think. Judging by the 
 Claudius Clear letters your vitality has not been 
 impaired in the least by your visit to the North. 
 I hope you may keep it up through the winter. 
 Since you were here we have enrolled a few more 
 men at College, and for the first time for some 
 years have touched 100. I wish I could be con- 
 vinced that more men were entering the Church, 
 not the ministry : if we get members, the ministers 
 will be all right. 
 
 Glasgow, 15 Lilybank Gardens, 
 December 7, 1908. 
 
 Your letter was very reassuring and grate- 
 ful to me, and I am happy to think that the 
 
 1 Jesus: Seven Questions, by J. Warsehauer, D.Phil. 
 
 2 The Person of our Lord and Recent Thought, by Charles Frederick 
 Nolloth. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 121 
 
 argument of my book as a whole commands 
 your assent. This is really what I am interested 
 in, and though I am prepared to stand by criti- 
 cal details of various kinds, I am also prepared 
 to find that they do not convince every one. 
 As for your remark that you missed an unequi- 
 vocal statement that Jesus is God, I feel inclined 
 to say that such a statement seems unattractive 
 to me just because it is impossible to make it 
 unequivocal. It is not the true way to say a true 
 thing. I think I have made it plain that for me 
 to worship Jesus as God is worshipped, to trust 
 Him as God is trusted, to owe to Him what we can 
 owe to God alone, is the essence of Christianity : 
 I have said in so many words that no one means 
 what a Christian means by ' God ' unless he in- 
 cludes in that all that a Christian means by 
 ' Father, Son and Spirit.' This I hold to be the 
 Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, but I dread 
 ways of putting it which do nothing but challenge 
 contradiction. ' Jesus is God ' seems to me one 
 of these provocative ways, and therefore I avoid 
 it. It has the same objectionableness in my 
 mind as calling Mary the mother of God. The 
 N. T. says debs r\v 6 \6yos, but it does not say 
 6 koyos tjv 6 deos, and it is this last which 
 is really suggested to the English mind by Jesus 
 is God. Last week the Rev. Dawson Walker, 
 D.D., theological tutor at Durham, sent me a 
 penny book on the Trinity he has written for 
 
122 LETTERS OF 
 
 Church of England young men. He takes this 
 (as I think) mistaken line : ' Jesus Himself 
 claimed to be God,' etc. I can only say that the 
 wrong things it suggests seem to me so completely 
 to outbalance the right that we can well afford 
 to dispense with it. 
 
 About the Creed, I did not make in my mind 
 any distinction between members of the Church 
 and officebearers in it. On general grounds I 
 think the less distinction there is made between 
 the members of Christ and their obligations, 
 theological or moral, the better ; though it is 
 arguable, no doubt, that once there is an organised 
 Church those who represent it officially should be 
 more completely than others in harmony with 
 the average theological opinion. Nevertheless, I 
 am inclined to think that the dangers of legalism 
 here are greater than those of liberty. 
 
 About reviewing it in the B. W. I have really 
 no useful suggestion. I should value your own 
 mind upon it, to say the least, as much as that 
 of any of the men you mention ; and apart from 
 some ' critical ' questions in the second book, it is 
 not specially ' expert ' qualifications that are 
 required for its appreciation. I should rather 
 know how it appealed to the average educated 
 members of the United Free Church than to 
 Moffatt or Forsyth — and especially to those who 
 are under forty. I sent Moffatt one, and he has 
 promised me his serious thoughts later. The 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 123 
 
 only other name which occurred to me was that 
 of Cairns in Aberdeen. It is a line in which he is 
 interested, but whether he would write the kind 
 of thing you require I do not know. I don't 
 wish you to do it against your will, or if you feel 
 it irksome or think it in any way inexpedient ; 
 but I should rather you did it than anybody else. 
 It is quite possible that Forsyth or Moffatt may 
 do it elsewhere. 
 
 I was delighted to hear you were beginning 
 your literary history and on such a scale. Six 
 volumes of 150,000 words stagger the ordinary 
 idle worker, and I can only say Made virtute 
 esto. Though I have several times spoken of 
 Chalmers, I have no essay on him at all : only 
 a distinct impression that he is our greatest man 
 since Knox, and greater than all his works. He 
 had the greatness of the nation in him as well as 
 that of the Church, and it is an immense gain 
 to a Churchman when he has such an interest in 
 the State as keeps his ethics from becoming 
 ecclesiastically narrow in range. If I can be of 
 the least service to you at any point I shall be 
 delighted. I will write soon about Church and 
 Kingdom, but my class is waiting. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 December 12, 1908. 
 
 It was very kind of you to write to me 
 
 again, and I really do not think there is any 
 
124 LETTERS OF 
 
 difference between us. When you say that 
 you do from your heart believe that God was 
 manifest in the flesh, I am sure I can say the 
 same. I have often said in teaching that if a 
 man does not worship Christ I do not care what 
 he thinks of Him — he does not see what is there ; 
 and I have missed the mark completely in what 
 I have written if I have not made it clear that all 
 men should honour the Son even as they honour 
 the Father. Probably the aversion I have to 
 such an expression as Jesus is God is linguistic 
 as much as theological. We are so thoroughly 
 monotheistic now that the word God, to put it 
 pedantically, has ceased to be an appellative and 
 become a proper noun : it identifies the being to 
 whom it is applied so that it can be used as the 
 subject of a sentence ; but it does not unfold 
 the nature of that being so that it could be used 
 as the predicate in a sentence. In Greek, and 
 in the first century, it was quite different. You 
 could say then 6 'I^a-ovs Oeos icmv. But the 
 English equivalent of that is not Jesus is God 
 (with a capital G), but, I say it as a believer in 
 His true deity, Jesus is god (with a small g — not 
 a god, but a being in whom is the nature which 
 belongs to the one God). I have no objection at 
 all to Parker's formula, Jesus is God the Son, 
 because ' the Son ' introduces the very qualification 
 of God which makes it possible to apply it to Jesus. 
 In the same way I have no hesitation in saying 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 125 
 
 Jesus was God manifest in the flesh, because 
 * manifest in the flesh,' serves the same purpose. 
 It is because God is to all intents a proper noun 
 with us, which, if it is used as a predicate at all, 
 must make an equation with the subject (Jesus 
 is God being the same thing as Jesus=God), that 
 it seems not only to me, but I am sure to 
 most people, an unnatural way of declaring their 
 faith in Christ as Immanuel — God with us. Jesus 
 is man as well as God, in some way therefore both 
 less and more than God ; and consequently a 
 form of proposition which in our idiom suggests 
 inevitably the precise equivalence of Jesus and 
 God does some kind of injustice to the truth. 
 Forgive me for being so expository on this, but 
 I don't want you to think that I have other than 
 the highest thoughts of our Lord and Saviour. 
 I wrote my book for nothing so much as to assert 
 for Him, in a way which would perhaps appeal to 
 some people afresh, the name which is above 
 every name : there is nothing I say more fer- 
 vently than To Him be glory for ever. 
 
 I am sorry I don't know much of the English 
 history to which you refer. Fairbairn's appendix 
 to Dorner is very appreciative of Doddridge, and 
 I don't want to think ill of the man who wrote 
 ' When I survey the wondrous cross.' About 
 Watts he mentions some writings of his later 
 years which not only his orthodox executors, but 
 Lardner, who was a Unitarian, thought unfit 
 
126 LETTERS OF 
 
 for publication ; Fairbairn apparently believes 
 that his mind had given way ; and that his 
 Unitarian views are the incoherent scribblings 
 of his dotage. This is surely not the posthumous 
 work to which you refer ? I will try to acquaint 
 myself better with the story, but I confess I find 
 the kind of thing very irksome. The very idea 
 of historical interpretation was either lost or had 
 never been properly discovered when Clarke and 
 Waterland controverted one another, or Priestley 
 and Horsley : I do not feel when I read in them 
 that one is right and the other wrong, but that 
 we have sailed into other latitudes, and that the 
 whole relation of the mind — I mean the believing 
 Christian mind, loyal to Christ — to questions of 
 this kind is different. Our whole conception of 
 revelation and of scripture has changed. No 
 doctrine is for us merely a question of exegesis, 
 and though I think most heresies would have been 
 nipped in the bud if men had been able to parse, 
 we must take the mind as it is, and speak to it 
 for Christ as we can. I have no opinion of whether 
 I have done well, but I am sure I meant well. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 January 9, 1909. 
 
 I cannot thank you enough for your far 
 
 too generous appreciation of my book. 1 It 
 
 1 A leader on Dr. Denney's work, Jesus and the Gospel: Chris- 
 tianity Justified in the Mind of Jesus, appeared in the British Weekly 
 of January 7, 1909. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 127 
 
 is very good of you to do it yourself, and to 
 make so much of it, and I assure you when you 
 point out the places at which you differ from 
 me I will give the most careful consideration to 
 all you say. It was a particular pleasure to me — 
 to refer to a minor point — that in speaking of the 
 style you could say ' no lingering.' It is a good 
 big answer to two questions, and I was not 
 without apprehensions on this very matter. 
 
 The Church and the Kingdom don't clear up, 
 somehow ; not that I have no ideas, but I have 
 not seen or hit on a programme. The Church 
 is suffering in all Protestant countries at the 
 present time from the persistent disparagement 
 of it by preachers : we have run it down as if 
 it had no real relation to living Christianity, and 
 the lesson has been only too well learnt. It is 
 no part of the average Protestant creed any longer 
 to say I believe the holy Catholic Church. This, 
 at least, is the theological aspect of the situation : 
 no doubt there are many others. In Germany 
 the Roman Catholics, I believe, are gaining at 
 the expense of the Protestants, and it is small 
 consolation to say as Wernle does, that it gains 
 those who were Romanists anyhow. In this 
 brilliant writer's last book — Einfiihrung in das 
 theologische Studium — there is incidentally a 
 great deal of interesting light on religion in 
 Germany. 
 
 What can become of a Church whose ministers 
 
128 LETTERS OF 
 
 are trained by a man who writes that ' Jesus never 
 made the slightest claim to sinlessness, much less 
 to Godhead, and that as He is depicted in the 
 oldest sources He would have positively shuddered 
 at the idea that men should honour Him as they 
 honour the Father.' In another place he writes, 
 speaking of the displacement of Christianity in 
 education, etc., ' Eine Menge studierenden Theo- 
 logen sind aufgewachsen ohne die Anschauung 
 christlicher Personen und ihres Glaubenslebens ; 
 sie wissen tatsachlich nicht was christlicher 
 Glaube ist.' Yet they have to keep the Church 
 alive ! 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 January 30, 1909. 
 
 Here is an article such as I have been able 
 to do for next week. 1 As you will see from 
 the last sentence, I can do one or two more, 
 if you think this line is of any use ; I 
 fancy the next one would have more flow in it. 
 I hope your influenza has gone : you must have 
 overdone yourself in Edinburgh. My sister-in- 
 law heard you preach, and was much edified by 
 the combination of skill and caution with which 
 you manipulated your first pair of spectacles. 
 
 Let me thank you again most heartily for all 
 
 1 c Criticising the Church ' (British Weekly, signed leader of 
 February 4, 1909). 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 129 
 
 you have done for my book : I am sure your 
 articles will do good. About the conclusion, I 
 had some misgivings while writing it, in the 
 sense that I thought some people might read it 
 without reading anything that went before, and 
 those misgivings, by what comes occasionally to 
 my hearing, are to some extent being verified. I 
 am truly sorry for this, for I did not set out with 
 the conclusion in my mind, nor with any inten- 
 tion at all except to answer the two questions : 
 and apart from its relation to the premises I put 
 no importance on the conclusion. I am glad 
 that you like the body of the book upon reflection. 
 If it is not sound, then I have studied the New 
 Testament all my life in vain ; and in face of the 
 audacious and irresponsible writing about Jesus 
 which at present has such a circulation, I felt 
 bound to do what I could for what is to me the 
 foundation. I feel inclined to say when always 
 another and another book comes out by somebody 
 who can see everything in the Gospels but Jesus, 
 * From henceforth let no man trouble me ' : I have 
 done with this kind of cleverness. By the way, 
 where is Robertson Smith's article on the Place 
 of Theology, etc. ? I blush to say I have never 
 read it. 
 
 Your proposal about a Harmony does not 
 appeal to me. I always use one in my junior 
 class, and it is indispensable for a certain kind 
 of study, but there is no thoroughly satisfactory 
 
130 LETTERS OF 
 
 way of making one, and there are plenty, such 
 as they are. For some years I used Teschen- 
 dorf's ; these last two years I have used Huck's ; 
 and I have also worked, and got some of my class 
 to do so, with Wright's. The English one, by 
 Stevens and Burton, which Hodder and Stoughton 
 published two or three years ago, is also very 
 serviceable. Besides, before I print anything 
 else I am going to work a lot more on the Epistles 
 and rewrite all my lectures on Paul. I have 
 given them for three sessions now, and found out 
 what is the matter with them. I am going to 
 Canada in April, but all the time I can command 
 next summer I mean to spend on this. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 February 6, 1909. 
 
 As I am not sure whether you have got 
 away or not, I am sending this to Hampstead. 
 It will do some other time if it is not wanted 
 now. I hope you are in the sun somewhere. 
 I read your letter with painful interest, 
 especially your Monday in Edinburgh. When 
 I was a minister one of the things I felt most 
 constantly was the amount of sorrow there 
 is of every description under apparently placid 
 surfaces often; and I many a time regret that 
 the kind of situation I now have tends to put 
 this out of mind, and wish I had a congregation 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 131 
 
 again — not that I have any morbid interest in 
 pains or griefs, but just not to be so far away from 
 what is too terribly real to so many. Here, when 
 I am not in College, I sometimes spend 24 hours 
 without exchanging a word except with the girl 
 who brings in my dinner, and as I am not one 
 of the men who can work at reading or writing 
 without end, the loneliness is long. 
 
 Our whole College affairs just now are in con- 
 fusion. With this £92,000 going to the Free 
 Church, and the exhaustion of the Emergency 
 Fund, I do not know what they will do. Cer- 
 tainly they cannot give us another professor in- 
 stead of Hislop, and when they fill up the vacancy 
 in Edinburgh they must at once reduce the salaries 
 all round. I wonder that they have continued 
 to pay us at the old figure all these years. We 
 have bought the College Church, and are taking it 
 into the College in a way that will add greatly to 
 our convenience and comfort, but will cost from 
 beginning to end about £14,000. Of this £7000 
 has been raised, and the financial board are 
 appealing to friends of the College for the rest. 
 When it comes to the point, I fancy the Edin- 
 burgh vacancies will solve themselves. 
 
 I forgot to say that in your criticism of my 
 book I felt the force of what you said about my 
 not making more use of the ' mystical ' element 
 in Paul's teaching — his consciousness of a present 
 relation to Christ unparalleled by any relation to 
 
132 LETTERS OF 
 
 a human spirit living or departed : it was brought 
 to my mind again by Mackintosh's article in 
 The Expositor, which I liked. Apropos of your 
 dissent from my remarks on the risen Saviour 
 eating, I had a long letter from a lady of eighty, 
 a life-long student of the Bible, as she told me. 
 Since she was sixteen she had studied it daily, 
 comparing Scripture with Scripture according to 
 the excellent method taught her by the late Dr. 
 Muir of St. Stephen's, Edinburgh. She entirely 
 agrees with you, and argued the likeliness of our 
 Lord's ' taking nourishment,' as she repeatedly 
 called it ; but she wound up with a piece of the 
 most audacious criticism I have ever seen. 
 
 In St. John 20 17 she says, ' I prefer (!) reading 
 Touch me instead of Touch me not — as in Luke, 
 Handle me, etc' Isn't that good for eighty ? 
 It shows how ' the wild living intellect of men ' 
 will have its way. In this paper on the Church 
 I have also kept off 'the body of Christ,' but I 
 will bring it in later if you wish me to do more. 
 There is no possibility of a book in them. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 February 13, 1909. 
 
 I enclose another article on the Church * 
 which I think you will agree with in the main. 
 
 1 ' The Church and the Gospel/ leading- article in the British Weekly 
 of February 25, 1909. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 133 
 
 I can do one or two more, but not next week. 
 It happens to be peculiarly occupied with 
 other things, but you will have Parliament 
 to keep you going. I hope your influenza has 
 quite departed : the weather here has been 
 intensely cold — colder than any time all winter. 
 
 Canon Hensley Henson sent me the other day 
 a copy of The Churchman, with an article in it 
 in which he refers to my book. He agrees with 
 the things in it, apparently, with which you don't 
 agree, but he grieved me to the heart by de- 
 scribing me as an 4 eminent Scotch Divine.' It 
 sounded appallingly extinct in my ears, as if the 
 seal of oblivion had been set on my poor pro- 
 duction almost before it had had time to see the 
 light. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 March 17, 1909. 
 
 It was extremely kind of you to wire to 
 me about the review in the Times, and also 
 to give it the publicity you did in the B. W. 
 (That is a compliment to the Times which I 
 did not intend when I began the sentence.) 
 It was friendly, and I presume will advertise the 
 book in another circle, but it did not strike me as 
 the work of one who had anything to overcome 
 in accepting the argument. It seemed to me a 
 typically Anglican utterance — the traditional 
 Anglican, too, not the kind which will henceforth 
 
134 LETTERS OF 
 
 be trained at Cambridge under Burkitt. Never- 
 theless I am glad it has been well spoken of even 
 by a man who writes ' United Free ' in inverted 
 commas. 
 
 I am sending with this a longish review of vol. v. 
 of Ferrero's Rome. 1 When you sent me vol. iv., 
 it was the first I had seen of the book, and I was 
 extremely taken with it, so much so that I 
 immediately bought all that had appeared of it 
 in Italian. The consequence is that I have found 
 it necessary to point out some provoking ways of 
 the translator. Ferrero is an unusually pictur- 
 esque writer, and abounds in comparisons which 
 don't always suit English taste ; but this trans- 
 lator, by regularly leaving them out, quite takes 
 the colour away from his author. The examples 
 I have given are not the worst, and I could give 
 literally dozens besides. Partly it is because 
 they are morally or aesthetically disagreeable 
 that he omits them ; but in nine cases out of ten 
 it is just because they are difficult to translate. 
 I presume there will be no more of it for a while, 
 as the translator has overtaken the author and 
 the author has gone to America to lecture for 
 Roosevelt. 
 
 I hope the keen weather has not been bad for 
 you. We had two days of west wind here which 
 were heavenly, but most of the last fortnight has 
 
 1 Vol. v. of Ferrero's book, The Greatness and Decline of Rome, was 
 translated by tbe Rev. H. J. Chaytor, M.A. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 135 
 
 been bitterly cold. I hope it may mitigate 
 before I sail on April 9. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 March 30, 1909. 
 
 Many thanks for your letters. I read what 
 you said of Dods with the greatest interest 
 and sympathy, and share your feelings as you 
 look back on his constant friendship. He 
 was always the most generous of men. The 
 very first thing I wrote in the B. W. was a 
 review of his book on 1st Corinthians, and I 
 remember he wrote me from somewhere abroad 
 such a kind note about it. I don't wonder at 
 his decision about his MSS. Of course if the 
 editing had been left to you, it would have been 
 all right : but there is a great difference — at 
 least with me — between a MS. from which I can 
 lecture and preach, and one which I could send 
 to the printer : and we have had recent enough 
 examples of what can be done in the way of 
 injustice to the departed. I always have the 
 feeling, too, that in the kind of matter with which 
 he would deal, the public are not interested unless 
 the author is alive to stand by his opinion. On 
 Sunday I was in Edinburgh and heard of him : 
 so far as I could learn he seemed to be again in 
 a less critical condition. 
 
 Oddly enough, I had read last week both your 
 
136 LETTERS OF 
 
 Gilfillan volume and Dr. Scott's book on the 
 Epistles. Thank you for the copy of Gilfillan. 
 I first read Paradise Lost in his series, and I 
 remember his introduction almost as well as the 
 solemn soaring sentence with which the poem 
 opens. What a full-blooded creature he must 
 have been. When I went to Broughty Ferry 
 I was introduced to his wife, and remember her 
 as a typical Scotch woman — massive head, plain 
 spoken, sagacious and kind. The ' new poets ' 
 were a terrible lot, and it is difficult to keep from 
 laughing sometimes at Gilfillan's enthusiasm and 
 ideas of what is poetical and sometimes at his 
 paternal or avuncular criticisms of them. 
 
 On Macaulay and Burke he shows real insight, 
 though it seemed curious to me that he never 
 mentions any of Burke's finest work, and magni- 
 fies the Letters on a Regicide Peace, etc., which 
 could very well be forgotten. Your own intro- 
 duction made me hope your History is under 
 way : it would be worth while dropping some 
 other things to secure it while so big a thing is 
 within your power. I hope to send another 
 article — perhaps two — before I go, which will be 
 some day next week. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 April 8, 1909. 
 
 I go to Liverpool to-day and sail to-morrow 
 
 for Halifax. I am sorry that in the crowd of 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 137 
 
 other things I have not been able to do any 
 more articles : but perhaps at Vancouver I 
 may have more time for recollection. At 
 present I feel very distrustful of the organised 
 action of the Churches to promote legislation 
 even for Christian ends, or ends which can be 
 represented as Christian, and perhaps if I said 
 all I thought you might think it out of keeping 
 with a journal of Christian and social progress. 
 The multiplication of laws and the deterioration 
 of character to a large extent keep pace with 
 each other, and I believe it is one of the lessons 
 the Church needs to learn that it can help society 
 best by minding its own business, and letting 
 the Legislature mind its. There is a whole crowd 
 of ministers going in for ' social ' reform, mainly 
 because they have no Gospel ; and because, like 
 a certain class of politicians, they think this is 
 the way to secure a following. How to say this 
 without throwing cold water on Christian zeal 
 for improving the conditions in which people 
 live, or without seeming to be heartless or in- 
 different to the wrongs of the poor, may be 
 difficult ; but it is just as needful to say Put not 
 your trust in Parliament as Put not your trust 
 in princes. I am quite Johnsonian about all 
 this kind of thing, and perhaps feel more like 
 the eighteenth century than the twentieth. 
 
 I am sending Findlay's book on 1st John to 
 David Smith, as I have not been able to do more 
 
138 LETTERS OF 
 
 than glance at it. It is every way an attractive 
 book, but there is an excess almost of application 
 and edification in it. Law's book has less of 
 that, and, though some ministers will find less in 
 it, most students will go through it with greater 
 avidity. 
 
 I expect to be home by August 6, at the latest ; 
 till then, any communication would reach me 
 at Westminster Hall, Vancouver, B.C. 
 
 I hope you may have a good summer : it 
 seems to have set in at last. 
 
 Laggan, Alberta, 
 July 18, 1909. 
 
 I have had a bad conscience about these 
 articles on the Church ever since I left home, 
 and now that I have got another off my mind, 
 I am not sure that it is much relieved. But 
 here it is anyhow. In Vancouver I was kept 
 quite busy, between lecturing and preaching, 
 but had on the whole a very good time. The 
 Presbyterian Church there seems strong and 
 active. The growth of the city is phenomenal, 
 and the Church to a certain extent expands with 
 it without an effort — a situation in which it is 
 easy for men to become the victims of illusion. 
 I was astonished at the size both of the churches 
 and the congregations. The general methods of 
 action, of course, affect church work also, and 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 139 
 
 occasionally one was tempted to think that a 
 church, in its determination to be practical and 
 to deal with things as they are was giving itself 
 to everything but the word of God and prayer. 
 But the Church people, like all people here, are 
 hopeful — and how much that means ! 
 
 In British Columbia there is an immense 
 amount of natural happiness due to the climate, 
 the fertility of the soil, the certain but undefined 
 chances of getting on, and so forth. The one 
 thing about which people are really serious is the 
 Japanese. They don't care a pin for the German 
 Navy, and will never tax themselves a penny to 
 build British dreadnoughts ; but the peaceful 
 penetration of their country by the Orient makes 
 them cold at the heart. The Japanese already 
 monopolise the fisheries on the Fraser River, and 
 are rapidly engrossing the labour, at least of the 
 valuable timber trade, and they do not know how 
 to resist them. While I was in Vancouver two 
 Japanese cruisers visited the harbour, and it 
 was curious to see the kind of courtesy the town 
 extended to the officers — a mixture of deference 
 and reluctance which could hardly have been 
 mistaken by those to whom it was offered. The 
 Canadians are intensely self-conscious about their 
 nationality, and many of them have the absurdest 
 ideas of their importance in the Empire, but they 
 are deeply concerned about China and Japan. 
 They know that they have no cruisers of their 
 
140 LETTERS OF 
 
 own, and the power of Japan on the Pacific is a 
 menace from which they cannot escape for a 
 moment. The unknown possibilities of it are 
 the one thing, so far as I can see, which sober 
 the imagination of this youthful race. 
 
 Although I have met with every sort of kind- 
 ness here, Canada as a whole does not attract 
 or exhilarate me, and I should not like to make it 
 my home. I dare not say so aloud, but that is 
 how I feel. I am no imperialist patriot, and one 
 of the things in the B. W. I can never quite under- 
 stand is its attitude to Rosebery ; but I love the 
 poor Sparta I was born in better than the greatest 
 of dominions, and I would rather be miserable in 
 Glasgow than happy in Toronto or Vancouver. 
 It cannot be news to you that the British Weekly 
 is as readily and as regularly to be had in Van- 
 couver as in Glasgow, and that a large number of 
 Canadian and American ministers read it regu- 
 larly. I knew this before, in a manner, but had 
 not realised it, nor how very wide the circulation 
 was. Armstrong sent me a lot of American 
 reviews of my book, almost all of which quoted 
 from your articles. Although I say it who should 
 not, the quotations were almost the only intelli- 
 gent things the reviews contained. I never saw 
 such stuff. I do not say so because they were 
 unfriendly ; on the contrary, they were meant to 
 be commendatory and even laudatory in the 
 extreme ; but three-fourths of them were written 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 141 
 
 by people who had not the glimmering of an idea 
 of what the book was about, and who evidently 
 were total strangers to the situation to which it 
 is addressed. If this represents the average 
 intelligence of American Christianity it is omin- 
 ous ; I am certain the poorest country newspaper 
 in Scotland could command infinitely more com- 
 petent hands for reviewing this kind of matter 
 than seem to be at the disposal of the organs of 
 considerable denominations in the States. Arm- 
 strong, however, was very well pleased with them 
 from the publisher's point of view, and has re- 
 printed the book, so that one ought to be grate- 
 ful : if the buyers read it, they will get better 
 value for their money — different value, anyhow, 
 than the reviewers would lead them to expect. 
 I have been staying here for a day or two, and go 
 on to Toronto on Tuesday, where I have to preach 
 on the 25th. On the 30th I sail from Quebec to 
 Liverpool. I never was away alone for months 
 before, and I do not think I will ever be again. 
 I hope you have had a good summer, and have 
 a good holiday in view. Some time ago you 
 wrote about the things people read, or did not 
 read, in hotels ; there are about 300 people in 
 this hotel just now, and no visible indications 
 that they read anything. This is not yet a 
 reading country. Books are dear and inacces- 
 sible ; ministers' libraries positively startling. 
 I have seen several in which there was literally 
 
142 LETTERS OF 
 
 nothing but dead matter. The intelligence of 
 the country is certainly mobilised, but it is 
 exclusively given up to commercial and practical 
 ends. They are alert to everything but man's 
 chief end. I have read none but old books, and, 
 though there is something valetudinarian in the 
 confession, I have not pined for new. One of 
 your correspondents lately mentioned that 
 George Meredith thought the xxivth Iliad the 
 finest poetry in the world, and having just read 
 through the Iliad again I assent with all my 
 heart. But why should a man who saw that 
 the finest poetry in the world was pure gold, as 
 it were transparent glass, have been content to 
 leave so much of his own poetry no better than 
 conundrums ? I felt never so much before the 
 dramatic as well as the epic value of Homer : the 
 truth with which Hecuba, Andromache, and 
 Helen are marked off against each other as they 
 mourn over Hector, is as wonderful as anything 
 in Shakespeare. This reminds me that another 
 book I have turned over is Wilhelm Meister. 
 But I cannot get on with it. The instinct for 
 reflection became a disease in Goethe. He culti- 
 vated it till he was bound to have thoughts about 
 everything and to write them down, whether the 
 Muse had inspired them or not, with the result 
 that he is responsible for a greater quantity of 
 sound platitudes than any great genius I know. 
 I am sure that to anybody but Schumann he must 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 143 
 
 often have been an insufferable bore. And as 
 for all the profound reflections on the dramatic 
 art in Wilhelm Meister, I had a thousand times 
 rather study the Vincent Crummleses, and am only 
 sorry I didn't put Nicholas Nickleby into my bag 
 instead of Meister. But these are hardly Sunday 
 thoughts, and I am going to preach to-night to 
 as many of the guests here as will sacrifice their 
 after-dinner nap to listen to the Gospel. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 September 30, 1909. 
 
 I was horrified the other day to lift the 
 kind letter in which you welcomed me home, 
 and to see that it was dated August 2. It 
 did not seem so long ago, and I would have 
 answered it sooner if I could have found it in 
 my heart to write anything about Canada. But 
 it would not have added to the happiness of any- 
 body in Canada, not to say my own, if I had done 
 so : though I had a happy enough time there 
 and met with nothing but kindness. 
 
 What you said about Smith perturbed me very 
 much : and we are still in suspense. On Sunday 
 I was with Moffatt in my old church, and he 
 reported on what was said to be the authority of 
 Balfour of Burleigh that the offer of the Principal- 
 ship had now been sent to Smith. If this is so, 
 he will no doubt be lost to us. Though the 
 
144 LETTERS OF 
 
 College and the city will both miss him more 
 than I could tell, I think he ought to go. He has 
 always been a loyal member of the United Free 
 Church, and the place is one where such a man is 
 needed and could do a great deal for the faith. 
 But no possible successor could ever make up for 
 him to me, and though I will be truly glad to see 
 him put in so important a position I will be more 
 unmitigatedly sorry to think of the College with- 
 out him. 
 
 I saw you had some letters about the article 
 on the Church and Legislation : the one by a 
 Quaker, the second week after, struck me as 
 particularly good. The others seemed rather to 
 show how such an article is needed. I had quite 
 a lot of letters about it too — more than about 
 any casual thing I ever wrote. Most of them 
 were evidently from evangelical old Tory gentle- 
 men, who adore your religion and abhor your 
 politics, and I felt bound in common honesty to 
 point out to some of them that what I wrote 
 about was not the B. W. and Legislation, but the 
 Church and Legislation, and that in point of 
 fact I was on your side in politics as well as in 
 religion, and only meant that while politics had 
 a place of their own the Church was not that 
 place. The most reasonable appreciative letter 
 I had was from Dr. Robertson, the Moderator 
 of the Established Assembly. He said he wrote 
 because he knew I would be much attacked, and 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 145 
 
 wished me to know that there were people who 
 agreed. 
 
 I am sending four reviews with this : Bowne's 
 Studies in Christianity x will be a seductive and 
 impressive book to many, but he seems to me 
 almost always just to stop short of what is most 
 vital in the New Testament conception of Christi- 
 anity. There is a lot of this kind of thing among 
 Canadian Methodists, and I cannot be reconciled 
 to it. I like lucidity as much as any one, but I 
 like still better the sense of magnitude and even 
 of immensity in a man dealing with revealed 
 religion. Fog is abominable, but it is not so 
 abominable as a man who thinks he has taken the 
 measure of the breadth and length and depth 
 and height, and that he knows all round what 
 passes knowledge. The other books are hardly 
 of any importance, and I was astonished to find 
 two columns in the Spectator on Lady Mabel 
 Lindsay's Anni Domini. 
 
 Carnegie Simpson spoke to me some time ago, 
 in connection with a letter from you, about 
 reviewing Rainy's life, and I said to him I would 
 write an article on it if you asked me. But I was 
 delighted to hear from him that you are going to 
 do it yourself. It will not suffer from not being 
 attacked enough. I do not know whether any 
 one could have Boswellised Rainy ; I only met 
 him in private once, and his observations on 
 
 1 Studies in Christianity, by Borden Parker Bowne (Constable). 
 
 K 
 
146 LETTERS OF 
 
 things were interesting : though one could not 
 speak of his ' copiousness of communication.' 
 Your article on Rosebery's Lichfield address was 
 interesting to me, and would have been even more 
 so if you had been severer on his want of appre- 
 ciation for his subject. The only thing in which 
 I don't agree with you (or with Johnson) is in the 
 appreciation of the Ramblers. There is hardly 
 one of them, no doubt, in which there is not a 
 good sentence with the sap of experience in it, 
 but they are leaden and wooden on the whole. 
 The title of the Great Moralist was really earned 
 by the author of the Lives of the Poets, which are 
 a genuine criticism of life even more than of 
 literature ; and win much of their interest in this 
 way. I read the Ramblers as Rosebery says he 
 did Rasselas, but I will not read them any more, 
 whereas I hope to read in the Lives often. Did I 
 tell you that a notice of my Johnson lecture in 
 Vancouver spelt his name with a t, and mine 
 without ane? Now could I write a column about 
 a country in which such things are possible ? 
 
 Do you think there is enough in the six articles 
 I have written to make even a very little book on 
 religion ? I had an idea of writing another on 
 the Church and Education, but though we have 
 a great duty there which is not being done, and 
 for the neglect of which we are suffering under 
 new theologians and what not, the subject is so 
 complicated practically, that I don't know 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 147 
 
 whether anything sufficiently definite could be 
 said. It is getting to be quite an anxious ques- 
 tion in foreign as well as home work, and is deeply 
 exercising missionaries in China as well as in 
 India and Japan. I hope you will keep well this 
 winter to fight the battle of liberty : the taxes 
 will be unpopular when they come to be paid, 
 but the Budget is all right. 
 
 15 Lilyjbank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 November 12, 1909. 
 
 Allow me to say again, more deliberately, 
 what a pleasure it was to see your name in 
 the King's Birthday List. All your friends here 
 rejoice in it, and if honours go by public 
 service there must be few indeed whose title 
 to them can compare with yours. Stet fortuna 
 domus, as the pious iEneas says — unless my 
 memory fails me. I hope you and all your house 
 may long be happy in the enjoyment of this one. 
 
 We are terribly put out by the loss of Smith ; 
 for some days I felt positively disabled by it. 
 You can imagine what kind of colleague he is, 
 and especially what he has been to me. We arc 
 of the same age, and though all four of us are on 
 the friendliest terms, he and I were able to 
 fraternise more completely with each other than 
 with our seniors. He is not only the most genial 
 of men, but what by no means always goes with 
 
148 LETTERS OF 
 
 geniality, the most truly unselfish ; he always 
 took with the utmost readiness not only his own 
 share, but far more than his own share of the 
 common work. I don't think I ever missed my 
 wife more than the first few days after I knew 
 he was going. I could not get away from it, and 
 had nobody who could feel how much it meant. 
 Nevertheless, I think he did right to go, as I told 
 him beforehand, and though the far shining light 
 of our College has departed we will hope for 
 compensation elsewhere. 
 
 I had turned over the Hibbert Journal supple- 
 ment before you sent it, and enclose an article on 
 it. I never read such a production : the Plain 
 of Shinar would have been a home of rest and a 
 seat of light and leading in comparison with it. 
 What struck me most in many of the papers was 
 their conceit. It is like walking through a mad- 
 house where everybody that talks talks about 
 himself ; and though there are obiter dicta of 
 comparative sanity, the whole thing is as mad as 
 Legion. R. J. Campbell, I think, is the very 
 worst, and if something does not happen to him 
 I should be really concerned about his future. 
 Jones's article is really a review of the conclusion 
 of my book : he wrote to me about it himself 
 before it appeared. To me personally he is more 
 than courteous, but I have put in a paragraph 
 about him because he is far the most influential 
 university teacher in Scotland, all our students 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 149 
 
 are strongly impressed by him, and a good many 
 who ought to be our students are diverted from 
 the Church — and as I am convinced from the 
 Gospel — by his influence. I swithered once 
 whether I should do the article, partly because I 
 was asked to contribute to the volume both by 
 the editor and by Jones, who is one of the board, 
 and partly because my name figures conspicu- 
 ously in one of the really readable papers in it, 
 but one may as well speak as think when he is in 
 dead earnest. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 December 11, 1909. 
 
 The book of which I enclose a notice * is 
 one of the best of the kind which I have seen 
 for a long time. I do not know the author 
 at all, except that he is a parish minister in 
 Kirkcudbright somewhere : I have an impres- 
 sion that this is a kind of work in which 
 more ministers are interested in the Established 
 Church than in ours. I have been inclined to 
 complain lately that we get plenty of philosophers 
 but too few men who can parse ; but if we got 
 the genuine article, like this, I should complain 
 no more. 
 
 1 The Principles of Religious Development , l>v George Galloway, 
 M.A., D.Ph. 
 
150 LETTERS OF 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 January 5, 1910. 
 
 Here are notices of the last two books you 
 sent me. Ramsay and Miss Bell 1 are rather 
 beyond me : I cannot form any estimate of the 
 work of all these photographs for the history of 
 architecture. But I cannot resist the impression 
 that they have baked a huge cake with very 
 little meal. As for Hawkins, 2 his book is the 
 best of its kind, and I only wish for the sake 
 of students it were half the present price. 
 
 You will be pleased to see how well the Central 
 Fund has come out. No less than £38,000 was 
 received in December, and there is more than 
 enough to pay the dividend of £160 to each 
 minister. Besides, we start fair for 1910, instead 
 of with a debit balance of £9000, so that we ought 
 to have an easy year compared with last. Every- 
 body is grateful and encouraged, and all we want 
 now is for those who were throwing stones at each 
 other in a panic because they thought they were 
 going to lose through each other's failure to do 
 what was right by the Fund, to leave off recrimina- 
 tions and attend to the common good. There 
 will be troubles within five years over town 
 ministers who once depended in part on the 
 Sustentation Fund, but who are now compelled 
 
 1 The Thousand and One Churches, by Sir William Ramsay, D.C. L., 
 and Gertrude Bell. 
 
 2 Horce Synopticce, by the Rev. Sir John C. Hawkins, Bart. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 151 
 
 to be self-supporting if they get any supplement, 
 as they must, if they are to live at all ; but 
 sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Much 
 may happen within the five years for which their 
 personal interests are secured. 
 
 I have not written anything about the election, 
 not because I am not on the Liberal side, but 
 because I have no business to, nor anything par- 
 ticular to say. I hope to hear Churchill next 
 Wednesday, whose address to the Dundee electors 
 is the only thing of intellectual quality the elec- 
 tion has yet produced. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, 
 January 29, 1910. 
 
 I have had a letter from one of our ministers, 
 Mr. Muir of Rothesay, about a book he has 
 written on the history of the relations of 
 Christianity to Labour. He asks me to speak 
 of it to you, as he would like to have it 
 published by Hodder and Stoughton. I have 
 not seen the book, which extends to about 
 85,000 words, he says : but I have known Muir 
 since we were in College together — he was a year 
 or two behind me — and think him an unusually 
 able man. He was convener for a while of the 
 Assembly's Temperance Committee, and had 
 some legal experience before he became a minister ; 
 he is a B.L. as well as a B.D. There will not be 
 
152 LETTERS OF 
 
 anything unreal in his book, I am sure : he is a 
 hard-headed man, and as a minister in a great 
 variety of charges — Muthil, Glasgow, Blair- 
 gowrie, and Rothesay — he has seen all kinds of 
 labour, and all kinds of relations between it and 
 the Church. I know this will not make any 
 difference to you or to Hodder and Stoughton, 
 and that the book will be judged on its merits, 
 but I should anticipate that its merits would be 
 quite distinct. 
 
 I am glad to see you keep up your spirits about 
 the election, and I am sure the Liberals who have 
 been returned will be of the same mind. The 
 only chance they have of life is to make no terms 
 with the Tories. The mortification of the Tories 
 over the Scotch elections is indescribable. 
 
 An interesting thing in that book of Monte- 
 fiore's x is the proof it gives that the Church is full 
 of Jews — people whose attitude to Jesus shows 
 that they are at the O. T. not the N. T. stage of 
 religion. The hundred and third Psalm is all 
 they want, and they take it without misgivings, 
 but the 8th chapter of Romans is only an em- 
 barrassment. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 March 28, 1910. 
 
 Here is a notice of Schweitzer's book, which 
 
 I hardly thought would have been translated. 
 
 1 The Synoptic Gospels, edited by C. G. Montefiore. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 153 
 
 It is one of the most extraordinary books 
 I ever read, but not nearly so important as 
 the author thinks. Indeed the more I read 
 in this line the more I feel the incomparable 
 superiority of Strauss in sceptical power to 
 any of his successors ; most of them live 
 on crumbs that have fallen from his table. 
 Both Sanday and Burkitt have made a great 
 to do about his book, and as the translation is 
 really masterly, it is certain to be much read. 
 It is a curious phenomenon to see extreme 
 scepticism about the history of Jesus driving 
 men to appeal to St. Paul on the one side, and to 
 the Catholic Church on the other, especially 
 when the Catholic Church rejects the appeal as 
 emphatically as I have no doubt St. Paul also 
 would have done. 
 
 I am leaving to-morrow morning for Rome, and 
 hope to be mostly there till the end of April ; by 
 May 12 I must be back here. Perhaps you may 
 get the general election over in my absence : it 
 does not feel well for the Liberals at present. If 
 Asquith is to be coerced by the Irish, and that in 
 the interest of the whisky people who pay them, 
 a great many earnest Liberals will not take the 
 trouble to walk to the poll. The one moral of 
 all that has happened is that there must not be 
 any more equivocation in high places. I hope 
 you may keep fit for the fight ; it is certain to 
 give you work when you find out when it is. 
 
154 LETTERS OF 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 May 27, 1910. 
 
 I enclose a notice of Sanday's book, 1 which 
 I found here when I came home. It was an 
 evil hour for Sanday when he took Moberly 
 and Du Bose for philosophers, and now that 
 he has gone in for William James and 
 Myers he is past praying for. I am sorry I 
 cannot think his book likely to be of use, for he 
 has been very polite to me in it. 
 
 I had a very good holiday in Italy, most of 
 it in Rome. Pagan Rome impressed me much 
 more than Christian — at least much more favour- 
 ably. The pagans were not saints, but they were 
 not habitually engaged in doing infamous things 
 in holy names, and it gives them an honesty and 
 dignity even in their badness to which most of 
 the popes can make no pretence. I cannot 
 understand how people who go to Rome can 
 ever go over to the Romish Church. The whole 
 thing rests so palpably on lies from top to bottom 
 that it could have no effect on me but to make 
 me a more determined Protestant than ever. 
 I saw almost all the ministers in the Presbytery 
 of Italy. A lot of them are wanting successors, 
 ' young, vigorous men who will give their lives 
 to the work,' but I must say I should hesitate to 
 recommend any of these continental stations as 
 his life work to a young and vigorous man. We 
 
 1 Christologies , Ancient and Modern, by William Sanday, D.D. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 155 
 
 want all our youth and vigour for more clamant 
 needs. 
 
 I never spent six weeks from home during which 
 so many of my own friends died. There was some 
 one every week — the last being Scott of Arbroath, 
 the first man who asked me to preach for him when 
 I was ordained in Broughty Ferry. We had been 
 friends ever since, and on the first Sunday of this 
 year I preached for him. He died just as my 
 wife did, only more suddenly. 
 
 Yesterday afternoon I heard Rosebery speak 
 of the King x at the University Council. It was 
 interesting because he knew him, but not other- 
 wise remarkable. The greatest charm about 
 Rosebery's speaking is his voice : he has without 
 apparent effort the right quantity and quality 
 of it for any purpose. I have never heard him 
 eloquent, except in a literary sense — never in a 
 flame of fire, as I once heard Gladstone de- 
 nouncing the Cyprus Convention. I hope you 
 keep well and have your literary history in view. 
 Do you expect mc to read Frazer's book through 
 before I review it ? I sympathise with Johnson : 
 ' One set of savages is very like another.' 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, \Y\, 
 May no, 1910. 
 
 I was out of town on Saturday, and did 
 not get your telegram till it was too late to 
 
 1 King Edward vu. died in May 1!)1<>. 
 
156 LETTERS OF 
 
 answer till this morning. If I had not written 
 such a long review of Sanday, I should have 
 done an article on him, but I hope the enclosed 
 may not be irrelevant. They will be giving 
 in the Conference Reports at the Assembly 
 as I write ; but I don't think it compro- 
 mises the future of the proceedings for me to 
 say what is here said. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 June 13, 1910. 
 
 You must not count on my writing anything 
 about the Conference. I can only be there 
 for part of two or three days, and my 
 conscience smites me when I remember that 
 some months ago I promised to speak at it. 
 Whether it will interest the world outside I 
 cannot tell : I have an impression that a great 
 deal of what is called ' interest ' in the Church is 
 artificial, and that when it comes to the point 
 of doing anything it is exceedingly difficult to get 
 it done. The Protestant Church has perhaps 
 taught too exclusively the duty of consecrating 
 to God the life we are born into, and left too little 
 room for the truth that in this present evil world 
 there must be great renunciations as well if there 
 are to be great Christian careers. There is in- 
 finitely more talking about missions among 
 young people than there used to be, much more 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 157 
 
 knowledge too, and more of what are supposed 
 to be ideas ; but though the student volunteer 
 movement has fostered this, I question if it has 
 increased by an atom the kind of enthusiasm 
 which has the sense of duty in it, and which will 
 materialise as self - denial. I hope I am not 
 unkind to any one in saying this ; unhappily 
 I think there is reason. 
 
 Your article on Vaughan * interested me very 
 much, but though I appreciate his evangelical (?) 
 poverty, I can't help saying of such men, Do not 
 I hate them, O Lord, that hate Thee ? It is not 
 evangelical poverty when a man buys even with 
 all his money the power to enslave his fellow-men 
 and to lord it over their faith. I had just as 
 soon be Dives in the parable : the misrepresen- 
 tation of Christianity and defamation of Jesus 
 are not a whit worse or better in the one than 
 in the other. 
 
 15 Lii.ybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 July 1, 1910. 
 
 I am posting with this a long review of Bacon 
 on John." It is not an article, though it is 
 as long as one, and perhaps it is not suitable 
 to have a revic out of proportion to others, 
 though a shorter one would have to be too 
 
 1 Thr Life of Cardinal Vaughan, by J. <i. Snead-Cox. 
 
 2 The Fourth Gospel in Research und Debate, by B. W. Bacon, D.D. 
 
158 LETTERS OF 
 
 general. The book taken altogether is both 
 brilliant and wrong-headed : it would be a fine 
 book to go through, a chapter at a time, in a 
 seminary : but the idea of offering it to the lay 
 public to initiate it into the debate is astounding. 
 The only conclusion to which the lay mind could 
 come — and it would come to it promptly and 
 decidedly — would be that, if ' John ' is anything 
 like what Bacon thinks, the less we trouble our- 
 selves about him the better. I would like to 
 know whether Bacon really holds any conception 
 of Christ's person which entitles Him to a place 
 in Christian faith at all. 
 
 The criticisms of Scott in your letter this week 
 were interesting. The Fortunes of Nigel was the 
 first of the novels I read, and I quite sympathise 
 with the readers in the Aberdeen library. I think 
 it the best of those which are not the very best. 
 Of all the opinions, the one I can least share is 
 Barrie's on Ivanhoe. But for Rebecca, Ivanhoe 
 is a story for boys ; at least that was my im- 
 pression when I read it last. Though I belong 
 to this quarter, and think Di Vernon and Bailie 
 Nicol Jarvie both perfect, I am not sure that if I 
 could only get one Waverley it would be Rob Roy. 
 And for the Fair Maid of Perth I can get up no 
 admiration at all. Was it not Dean Stanley who 
 admired Kenilworth so highly ? I seem to have 
 a lingering recollection of this sort. He had an 
 enthusiasm for Scott altogether. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 159 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 July 16, 1910. 
 
 I had to write something about Frazer and 
 get it off my mind, but I will send you an 
 article next week. I hope you will get a good 
 holiday at Lumsden : we have had summer 
 here for some days such as I have not seen 
 since I was a boy, but it is chillier again 
 yesterday and to-day. Aberdeenshire is not a 
 place for sunless weather. Some weeks ago I 
 preached there, and had a motor ride in the 
 afternoon on Saturday; the wind blowing through 
 a thin cloth cap was as cold as ice on one's skull. 
 But I need not talk to you about Aberdeen. 
 
 Dr. Ketler has made a hit in getting Ramsay, 
 but I am not sure that Ramsay will be at home 
 in Grove City. It is not the least like Oxford or 
 Aberdeen. It will hold its aspiring head all 
 the higher after being visited by so famous a man, 
 but it is all on Ramsay's side already, so far as 
 the New Testament is concerned, and therefore 
 may not learn so much from him as from some 
 one whom it might be tempted to contradict. I 
 remember hearing him speak without MS. in the 
 summer school at Aberdeen, and he was not very 
 expert at it. But he was taking it very easily 
 indeed. 
 
 I have no book in my mind at present, but am 
 concerned about next winter's work at the hall. 
 There are few indications of men giving them- 
 
160 LETTERS OF 
 
 selves heartily to New Testament or other 
 studies, and I wish I knew how to excite a deeper 
 and more conscientious interest in them. We will 
 have David Smith giving his Bruce Lectures this 
 winter. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 July 21, 1910. 
 
 I enclose an article on the lines of the address 
 I gave to the ministers, and will do another, 
 but not (as at present disposed) on Self- 
 Sacrifice next week. At least not on that 
 alone. I have lately come across two interesting 
 criticisms of Protestantism by Catholics, out of 
 which I think I could do an article. One is by 
 Gratry, and is in short that Protestantism is 
 Christianity without sacrifice — no renunciations, 
 no mortifications, no good works. I could say 
 all I wanted under this head. The other is 
 by Brunetiere, who makes it his charge against 
 Protestantism that it has ' intellectualised ' 
 Christianity, and in doing so has robbed the 
 babes of their inheritance in it, and handed it 
 over to the wise and prudent. Between the two 
 there is enough to consider, perhaps to admit as 
 well as to answer, as will make an article. It is a 
 pity, for the purpose, that they are both dead. 
 
 I see you are very non-committal about 
 Woman's Suffrage. This is one of the things on 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 161 
 
 which I have a prejudice stronger than all reason, 
 but quite convinced of its own rationality, and 
 all the more so that philosophers like Balfour and 
 Haldane take the lead on the other side. In 
 spite of the majority for the second reading, I 
 cannot think that most of the present electors 
 have ever given it a serious thought, and when 
 they do begin to think of it seriously I hope they 
 will give their thoughtless representatives a piece 
 of their minds — and the misguided women too. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 July 29, 1910. 
 
 I enclose another article. I had difficulty in 
 getting a name for it, and if a better one occurs 
 to you it will be a favour if you put it on. It 
 is really on the subject you proposed ; it did 
 not turn out feasible to combine it with Brune- 
 tiere's criticism of Protestantism — or Calvinism, 
 at least — for intellectualising Christianity. But 
 both his remarks and Gratry's impressed me at 
 the time. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 October 3, 1910. 
 
 I have written something on Eschatology in 
 the Gospels, without much reference to von 
 Dobschutz in particular. 1 His book strikes me 
 as very good, conscientious and thorough, and 
 
 1 The Eschatoloyu of thr Gospels, by Ernest von DobsdnutZj D.I). 
 
 L 
 
162 LETTERS OF 
 
 well balanced. Most of the recent books are 
 half-cracked. He has not been very fortunate 
 in his translator ; there are a good many 
 blunders, evidently, though the sense can be 
 made out fairly enough. 
 
 I am going to London on Thursday, and must 
 leave again on Saturday, as I have to preach in 
 Birkenhead on Sunday. If you are in town I 
 hope to see you. The lecture I am giving to 
 Forsyth has to be published, but I don't know 
 whether they have any say in the matter. If not, 
 perhaps it would do for an article in The 
 Expositor. 
 
 What do you want done about the Expositor's 
 Greek Testament ? I don't like to say that only 
 the bits done by members of our Church — Dods, 
 Smith, and Moffatt — are well done, but that is 
 what I think. Moffatt's Revelation is by far the 
 best — he had the best chance ; but Dods' Hebrews 
 also seems to me about the most valuable thing 
 Dods has given us — exceedingly thorough and 
 interesting. Smith I like better than I anti- 
 cipated, and I am sure ministers will find his 
 commentary very interesting. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 October 15, 1910. 
 
 Here is a notice of the Expositor's Greek 
 Testament, so long that if you think it is too 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 163 
 
 hard on anybody you can easily leave a bit out. 
 I don't think it is, and have been as neutral 
 about Hart and Oesterley as possible. Why it 
 should be so difficult to get good expositors of 
 Peter and James I don't know ; but that they are 
 still to seek is certain. 
 
 I hope you had a good holiday at Hindhead, 
 and have come back fit for work. There was a 
 capital attendance at my lecture, and when I 
 have overhauled it a little I will send it up. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 October 22, 1910. 
 
 I enclose with this the lecture on Immortality * 
 I gave for Forsyth. It is rather longer than I 
 thought, and will contain about 9500 or possibly 
 even 10,000 words. As it is much too long for 
 an Expositor article, I suppose you will do what 
 can be done to space it out into a little book. 
 
 Thanks for sending me the letter about Escha- 
 tology. I am going to write Mr. Carter this 
 afternoon. I had a communication which 
 touched me much more from a woman of seventy, 
 a member of the Church of Scotland for fifty-four 
 years, who holds Dr. Bonar's views about the 
 Advent, and who was not so much puzzled as 
 grieved. I would have written to her if I could, 
 but the letter was anonymous, and gave no 
 address. 
 
 ' The Drew Lecture for 1910. 
 
164 LETTERS OF 
 
 We have got a pretty good start at the College, 
 I think ; though we have more first year students 
 of our own than we had last year, our total 
 will not be quite so high. The number from 
 abroad is smaller. I heard Haldane lecture to 
 the New College Theological Society on Tuesday. 
 He read the signs of the times in a Hegelian 
 dialect of incredible abstractness which left most 
 of his hearers in dumb bewilderment ; if he had 
 said what he thought in plain words, as he could 
 easily have done if he had not been afraid to 
 reveal his mind in that place, it would have 
 caused not bewilderment but consternation. It 
 was interesting, but not as impressive as I hoped. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 October 28, 1910. 
 
 Many thanks for your letter. I am quite 
 content that you should do as you think best 
 about the lecture ; it never occurred to me that 
 such small beer would need to be ' travelled,' but 
 I have no doubt you are right. 
 
 You did with the review of the Expositor's 
 Greek Testament what I expected, and possibly 
 what was best. It would not have helped any one 
 to understand Peter or James to be told that Hart 
 and Oesterley did not understand them — or at 
 least that I thought so. I can understand afar 
 off — if one may use Bible words in exactly the 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 165 
 
 opposite of the Bible sense — your relief in seeing 
 the last of it. What you say of the Established 
 Church people and the Conference interests me 
 much because I cannot make them out at all, 
 and have the feeling that the Conference members 
 do not represent the Church at all. The ordinary 
 parish minister feels that his strength is to sit 
 still, and that if he has only the sense to do so 
 all the natural forces which determine the gravita- 
 tion of human beings will tell in his favour, filling 
 his church and emptying the rest. Accordingly 
 he is determined to sit still, and confident that 
 if his position is affected in the slightest by any 
 proposal of the Committee, he can dispose of the 
 Committee without trouble. Since College began 
 I find it difficult to attend ; it is impossible to 
 give up one's class twice a month for the kind of 
 discussions we have had. Yet I am loth to lose 
 contact with it. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 November 5, 1910. 
 
 I enclose brief notices of Forsyth * and Garvic. 2 
 I liked Forsyth more than ever, not because he 
 was more lucid or consecutive, but because he 
 really strikes sparks from his own anvil. 
 
 I was very much interested in your Chalmers, 
 especially Part 2. Did you happen to notice the 
 
 1 The Work of Christ, by P. T. Forsyth, D.D. 
 
 2 The Christian Certainty, by A. E. Garvie, D.D. 
 
166 LETTERS OF 
 
 anti-union outbreak at last meeting of the Church 
 of Scotland Presbytery in Dundee ? Edinburgh 
 and Glasgow overload the Conference, and though 
 I hope this kind of ' Moderate ' malignity is not 
 predominant, there is certainly a great deal of 
 it in the ordinary parish minister. If one could 
 judge by the Conference, the endowment diffi- 
 culty might be settled easily enough, in view of 
 the present difficulty we have in raising money 
 for Church purposes : people generally, what- 
 ever their abstract principles or preferences 
 might be, feel that it would be silly to divert 
 from such purposes £300,000 a year which comes 
 in without doing anybody any harm. But what 
 the Church of Scotland people seem to find very 
 hard to get into their minds is what is now an 
 instinct in most of our people : that they would 
 not (as you put it for Chalmers) even ask the 
 State to recognise Non-intrusion. The two 
 Churches seemed to have flowed since '43 in such 
 entirely separate channels that their unconscious 
 attitudes, on things like this, are for the moment 
 unintelligible and incredible to each other. But 
 there will be some pronouncements by May. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 December 14, 1910. 
 
 I enclose one or two short notices of books 
 I have had for a while : those that are in my 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 167 
 
 line are not very important. I was sorry I 
 could not think of anything for The Expositor, 
 but between the College, the Church, and the 
 City I am getting to be so hustled here that 
 I can hardly think of anything at all. If any- 
 thing comes in my way which I can make useful 
 it will be a pleasure to send it ; but I have 
 no distinct vision of a book — only a distant 
 yearning towards one — from which chapters could 
 be taken. 
 
 Some time ago I saw you speak of a Basker- 
 ville Greek Testament as a thing you might con- 
 ceivably covet. I tried to get one for October 10, 
 but failed : will you accept the one I am posting 
 with this, and my belated congratulations and 
 heartiest good wishes along with it ? I have often 
 had an uncomfortable feeling that I was con- 
 tinually getting proofs of your friendship without 
 indicating that there was anything corresponding 
 on my side : of course I don't mean that this 
 book puts that right, but only that it is a pleasure 
 to me to think that it may give pleasure to you. 
 
 I saw Smith on Sunday night — looking very 
 tired, I thought. Milligan was there also, who 
 is evidently going to make a revolution in N. T. 
 teaching at the University. It is a mercy to 
 think that the O. T. and the New will both be 
 effectively taught, whatever becomes of Dogmatic 
 or Church History. What we want most among 
 our students is still scholars. Philosophers used 
 
168 LETTERS OF 
 
 to be our botheration, now it is economists, but 
 they have all souls above parsing, 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 December 23, 1910. 
 
 I don't much like reviewing my colleagues, 
 but I send with this a notice of Orr's work. 1 
 It has all the materials requisite for making a 
 book and a good one, and he has also all the 
 requisite powers : but there is something that 
 ' crowds and hurries and precipitates ' his utter- 
 ance without making it in the least like the 
 nightingale's song. It is rather like the extem- 
 pore speech of a well-equipped Parliamentary 
 candidate who interrupts every sentence to 
 give a slap — often an effective and resounding 
 one — to some audacious person who has inter- 
 rupted him. But I wish he had taken a little 
 longer, and left a more comfortable impression 
 of having an easy rather than an excited mastery 
 of the situation. 
 
 I have just read Dods's letters, and agree with 
 you heartily in your admiration of the man. 
 What struck me most in them were the few 
 sentences about Rainy. Dods had evidently 
 read him accurately from the first, and his char- 
 acter was not appreciably modified to the last. 
 His pride, his c profanity ' — by which I suppose 
 
 1 Sin as a Problem of To-day, by James Orr, D.D. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 169 
 
 he means that he was at bottom a humanist and 
 in no internal bondage to any form of Christian 
 religion — his scientific quality of intelligence, all 
 the things, in short, which impressed me in him 
 when he was old, were evidently conspicuous from 
 the first. I am not sure that I should rate the 
 letters generally as high as you do. For one 
 thing, they seem to me to have a certain scarcity 
 of ideas. In preaching, Dods had in a higher 
 degree than any man I ever knew the power 
 which is most to be coveted by a preacher — that 
 of making the obvious impressive ; but though 
 this is invaluable in ' practical ' literature, if one 
 may use such an expression, it is hardly enough 
 for a book which you read not to do you good, 
 but to give you pleasure. The position of a 
 probationer, too, without a call, is hardly wide 
 enough in its appeal to furnish the basis for a 
 classic. I was astonished to learn what I might 
 have known that Dods was ordained at thirty. 
 Why, I was thirty myself when I was ordained, 
 and so are plenty of respectable men whose names 
 never pass into proverbs. But to many in this 
 generation the book will be extraordinarily in- 
 teresting, and I hope it may be a great success. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 January 10, 1911. 
 
 I am much obliged to you for writing about 
 Dr. Dixon's Study of the Criminal, and have 
 
170 LETTERS OF 
 
 told him to send it direct to the publishers. 
 I want to ask your advice now on my own 
 account. Some time ago I had an idea of 
 printing my little book, The Atonement and the 
 Modern Mind, along with The Death of Christ. 
 The former is now out of print, of the latter there 
 are only about 200 on hand ; and Mr. Stoughton 
 has written to me about the idea of printing the 
 two as one volume — The Atonement and the 
 Modern Mind being simply appended as a sup- 
 plement to the other book. It could be published 
 at 7s. 6d., with a page like that of Jesus and the 
 Gospel, only not so widely spaced. What do 
 you think of this ? I am anxious that people 
 should read The Death of Christ, but while I 
 think some would take to it the more readily 
 because of the appendix, I know that many men 
 will buy a 6s. book who draw the line at a 7s. 6d. 
 one. I have the same kind of prejudice against 
 the combination as I would have against anything 
 which pretended to be new, and was not really 
 so, and I think I can say sincerely that I am quite 
 indifferent as to how it turns out financially ; 
 but if you could give me your mind on the idea 
 in general of printing the two books as one, I 
 should be much your debtor. 
 
 I will think about the Expositor's Bible Class 
 Text Books, and write again. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 171 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 January 21, 1911. 
 
 It was very good of you to give me the 
 benefit of your judgment so promptly, and it 
 has quite disposed of the difficulty I had about 
 Mr. Stoughton's plan. I did not like the idea 
 of offering in a new shape what was not sub- 
 stantially new ; but I will be delighted to revise 
 the whole — which will not imply any material 
 change — and to make the new book 6s. is exactly 
 what I should have wished. About the Ex- 
 positor's Bible Class Text Books I am not so 
 clear, except on the one point that I must not 
 undertake one. I have always thought that 
 the little volumes of Dr. Maclaren were just 
 about the tie plus ultra in this kind, and I don't 
 know how any one could improve on them. It 
 is certainly a drawback to most recent com- 
 mentaries that the study of criticism has appar- 
 ently blinded the commentators to the fact that 
 the books on which they are working are bits 
 of the Bible — that but for that fact they would 
 in all probability never have reached us — and 
 that the chief business of the commentator is 
 to elucidate their significance as vehicles of 
 revelation : nevertheless, I don't see very well 
 how a simple set of books, covering the whole 
 Bible, could be written with this in view. The 
 helps that are published annually for S. S. 
 
172 LETTERS OF 
 
 Teachers, and that will continue to be published, 
 must always be the first resort of those who 
 actually want this kind of help. For myself, I 
 feel that, if I am to get doing what I want to do, I 
 must not undertake any odd jobs like this. The 
 notes in the Homiletic Review were not exacting, 
 for the subjects were those on which I am lectur- 
 ing all the time, and the space to fill was small. 
 But I really want some day to write something 
 about St. Paul and his Gospel, and if I don't let 
 it accumulate in my mind I will not get on 
 at all. 
 
 I am sorrier than I can tell about Simpson 1 
 leaving us. I have seen a great deal of him, and 
 he has been growing every year in weight both 
 of mind and character. There is no one on our 
 side in these Conferences with the Church of 
 Scotland who can state our case as incisively and 
 impressively as he, and we are bound to miss 
 him dreadfully. We have been very intimate, 
 for many reasons, and I will miss him more than 
 anybody in the Presbytery. I do hope when he 
 goes that he will be able to concentrate his mind 
 on preaching, and make a spiritual impression 
 on his new place. He really knows what religion 
 is, and is capable of being a good stronghold for 
 it in an indifferent place. 
 
 1 The Rev. P. Carnegie Simpson, D.D., now Professor at West- 
 minster College, Cambridge. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 173 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 Februanj 3, 1911. 
 
 I am sending with this the article on Hob- 
 house. 1 He is too good for his company, and 
 if he only keeps on will make a very good Free 
 Churchman some day. 
 
 It is out of the question for me to do a book on 
 Matthew. It is literally the most difficult thing 
 in the world to do, and if I ever tried it I should 
 like it to be the best thing I ever did, not an 
 impromptu effort, as anything I could attempt 
 just now would be. The sermons don't seem so 
 incredible, and I have sometimes thought I had 
 a good title for a volume — Sermons on Texts. 
 I am very much dependent on my text, as a rule, 
 and have spent much pains in trying to get 
 students to treat their texts with proper respect, 
 and to give them an innings in their sermons 
 somewhere. 
 
 This is our fourth continuous day of dense fog, 
 and I am thankful to think of getting out of it 
 to-morrow : I am going to spend the week end 
 with Smith. I hope you may have sunshine in 
 the Riviera : here we cannot see from one street 
 lamp to the next. 
 
 1 The Church and the World in hire, <nul in History, by Walter 
 Hobhouse, M.A., Canon of Birmingham Cathedral. (Leader of 
 February 10, 1911.) 
 
174 LETTERS OF 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 March 15, 1911. 
 
 I did not send my Murtle Lecture because it was 
 not appropriate for The Expositor. It was too 
 much of a sermon, and though it could be carried 
 off by energetic delivery, I could have taken no 
 pleasure in seeing it printed. I am sending with 
 this a notice of the Oxford Studies on the Synoptic 
 Problem, 1 a really valuable and interesting book, 
 at least to students. The one thing I feel sure 
 of in the whole business is that the ' documen- 
 tary ' idea of sermons has been driven far too hard 
 and exclusively, and that there must be a far 
 ampler recognition of the fact that the Gospel 
 matter was widely known, and also freely repro- 
 duced, apart from documents, even by people 
 like Luke and Matthew, who certainly had docu- 
 ments at command. Oral tradition alone cannot 
 explain some of the phenomena, but there are 
 some which can be naturally explained by nothing 
 else. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 April 15, 1911. 
 
 I enclose two notices of books, and one of the 
 Ancient Literature ' sample ' of the Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica. The Encyclopaedia is a wonderful book, 
 
 1 Studies on the. Si/noptic Problem, by Members of tbe University of 
 Oxford, edited by VV. Sanday, D. D. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 175 
 
 and it is also being wonderfully advertised, but it 
 beats me to express any opinion about Babylonian, 
 Celtic, and Syriac literature. Monro's article on 
 Homer is worth any money, but it is the only 
 article in this sample for which I would have 
 given money. I was very much taken with 
 Macfadyen's book, 1 and think it one of the most 
 unfeignedly and earnestly religious books I have 
 read for long. The only thing I don't quite like 
 in it is a leaning he has to the psychical research 
 and subliminal consciousness people : but he 
 has enough of critical faculty to keep them from 
 doing him much harm. 
 
 I am to be in Broughty Ferry next Sunday for 
 Moffatt, and in the week after am preaching for 
 the Baptist Missionary Society at Bloomsbury. 
 I expect to be two days with Forsyth, and will 
 hope to see you if you are at home. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, \\\, 
 April 21, 1911. 
 
 The reason why I cannot give you the Murtle 
 Lecture for The Expositor is not that there were 
 suffragettes in it — no such thing : I was rather 
 proud of the bit about St. Paul and women — but 
 that the main part of it was about Propitiation, 
 and that I have used up in the sermon I am 
 
 1 Truth in Religion: Studies in the Nature oj Christian Certainty, by 
 Dugald Macfadyt'ii, MA. 
 
176 LETTERS OF 
 
 going to preach to the Baptists about Missions. 
 But when I come back I will try to think of 
 something else. 
 
 Many thanks for arranging about the lecture 
 on Immortality. I have just revised and sent 
 it back to Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton. To- 
 night I preach for Moffatt, and on Sunday dis- 
 pense the Communion in my old church. It is 
 exactly twenty-five years since I did so the first 
 time. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 May 5, 1911. 
 
 I enclose a notice of Moffatt which I think 
 does him justice, and should be understanded 
 of all who take interest in these things. I have 
 just glanced at the book on Miracles, 1 and will 
 write something on it if I can ; but except that 
 the man does not believe in miracles at all I 
 don't see very much in it. Your leaders on 
 the Church are very much to the point ; every- 
 thing is down in our Presbytery just now — mem- 
 bership, Bible Classes, Sunday Schools, all kinds 
 of societies. 
 
 Though it is my business to teach, the one 
 thing I covet is to be able to do the work of an 
 evangelist, and that at all events is the work that 
 needs to be done. 
 
 1 Miracles in the New Testament, by the Rev. J. M. Thompson. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 177 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 May 13, 1911. 
 
 After thinking over this book of Thompson's 
 I thought better of it, and enclose some reflec- 
 tions upon it. I might have headed it Ration- 
 alism in the Church of England, but it is not 
 exactly what ought to be called rationalism, 
 and the author's use of words which sound 
 orthodoxly, but cannot be meant so, is of quite 
 another school. Except for his position, it 
 is not really a book of any importance. His 
 critical knowledge is slender, and he depends 
 with no attempt at verification on wild men like 
 Bacon. But the people who don't believe in any 
 miracles don't disbelieve for the kind of reasons 
 alleged here, so that it is of less account if these 
 are inaccurately given. What struck me most 
 in the book was to find a man writing a volume 
 about Christianity in which no account was 
 anywhere taken either of sin or salvation. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 June 13, 1911. 
 
 One of our ministers, Reyburn of Kirkintilloch, 
 has written a book on Calvin, which he wishes 
 to publish, and asks me to speak of it to 
 you. He has shown me some chapters, and it 
 seems to me to be done with great thorough- 
 ness, and on a sufficiently ample scale. Shall 
 
 M 
 
178 LETTERS OF 
 
 I ask him to send it to you, or direct to 
 Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton ? He has it all 
 typewritten, so that it is easily read. 
 
 We are having a summer school here this 
 week, and had lectures this morning from Oman, 
 Milligan, and Cairns. To me, Oman's was much 
 the most interesting ; he has something very 
 original and penetrating in his mind when he 
 deals with the philosophical side of theology. In 
 Milligan's lecture on papyri there could not be 
 anything new, and Cairns on the reflex influence of 
 missions on theology was attractive rather than 
 stimulating. Our new hall did not seem to suit 
 him very well for speaking in : it holds about 
 400, and as there would be only 100 or so present, 
 there was a large surface of wood exposed — a bad 
 condition acoustically. I am going to give two 
 lectures on Criticism and the Parables — one on 
 the transmission, and one on the interpretation 
 of parables — at the end of the week ; if you like, 
 I will send them for The Expositor. 
 
 The Golden Bough has nearly killed me, and 
 though it is impossible not to admire Frazer's 
 learning and industry, it is impossible also not 
 to feel what unattractive things learning and 
 industry may be. He says he has never studied 
 Hegel, and gives some extracts supplied by a 
 friend ; but I could have reminded him for his 
 good of an obiter dictum of Hegel that ' learning 
 is the knowledge of things which have no value 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 179 
 
 except that others don't know them.' I hope 
 the endless summer suits you, and that you will 
 enjoy even the Coronation. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 June 27, 1911. 
 
 Here are the two papers on the Parables 
 — one on their transmission, the other on 
 their interpretation — for The Expositor, and 
 two reviews for the B. W . Carpenter's book * 
 leaves a curious impression on one's mind as 
 of a man asking every kind of question 
 about Jesus except the question which Jesus 
 asks. Like Wernle in his review of my book, he 
 seems to think it possible to be a thoroughly 
 good Christian and yet flatly refuse to take 
 Jesus at His own estimation. I confess this 
 is too remote from any comprehension of the 
 whole matter I can compass for me to argue very 
 directly with it. You may call Jesus Lord, and 
 be a Christian ; or refuse to do so, and not be a 
 Christian ; but it is absurd to think yourself a 
 Christian when your attitude to Jesus is that of 
 vigilant jealousy that He shall not invade your 
 freedom, nor come between you and God — 
 tempered with an admiration not free from pa- 
 tronage. This is what the philosophy of religion 
 brings some men to. 
 
 1 The Historical Jesus and the Theological Christ, by J. Estlin 
 Carpenter, D.D. 
 
180 LETTERS OF 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W.. 
 July 8, 1911. 
 
 Many thanks for Mrs. Gibson's books. I 
 only know enough of Syriac to spell out vari- 
 ous readings, and would not dream of exposing 
 myself in this region in The Expositor ; but 
 when I read the translation I will perhaps be 
 moved to write a few lines which could serve to 
 advertise it, and you could do with them as 
 you liked. I read your notes on Rosebery with 
 much appreciation. I have no hesitation in 
 agreeing with him on two main points — that 
 Vanity Fair is incomparably Thackeray's greatest 
 book, and that Esmond is odious. In the last 
 point I can appeal to my wife's opinion as even 
 more decided than my own. As for the greatest 
 novel in the language I should not like to give an 
 opinion. I have only read Clarissa and Tom 
 Jones once, and it is now a good while ago : but 
 as I have not felt compelled to read either of 
 them at least three times, I have that reason to 
 start with for preferring Vanity Fair. The most 
 widely read novel reader in my acquaintance, 
 and a very able person to boot, pronounces un- 
 hesitatingly for David Copper field. My sister-in- 
 law votes Laura a bore, and I confess, in spite 
 of her virtues, I have sometimes thought she could 
 be adduced as evidence that Lamb was right 
 when he said that any woman could marry any 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 181 
 
 man if she just made up her mind to — or some- 
 thing to that effect. About George Eliot I 
 sometimes agree with Dr. Maclaren and sometimes 
 with Lord Acton : she is only good — and then no 
 one can be better — when she is dramatic ; when 
 she is herself, she is like other preachers out of 
 pulpits. 
 
 Old Dr. Carslaw wants you to publish some kind 
 of book of prayers for him, and I am telling him 
 just to send it to Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton. 
 The prayers are not his own, but borrowed from 
 various sources from Augustine to Walsham How, 
 and the book would have about 19,000 words. 
 
 How many sermons are wanted for a volume ? 
 Mine, I should think, average about 4000 words — 
 an odd one, perhaps, 4500. There would be no 
 objection, I suppose, to putting in one or two the 
 substance of which has appeared at some time 
 or other in the B. W.I I find it irksome to write 
 them as I rarely read. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 July 31, 1911. 
 
 I enclose two reviews — one of a very live, and 
 the other of a very stodgy book. I never came 
 across anything of Osborn Taylor's before, but 
 it is first rate. 1 Plummer, on the other hand, is 
 
 1 A History of the Development of Thought and Emotion in the Middle 
 Ages, by Henry Osboru Taylor. 
 
182 LETTERS OF 
 
 stolid to the last degree : his book might have 
 been written fifty years ago, and is not as good 
 as Evans, Edwards, Findlay, or any of the 
 standard books we have. 
 
 Don't you think Ramsay on Moffatt has been 
 very scrappy and unedifying ? I don't see what 
 on earth Moffatt has to reply to. He has not 
 taken a single historical problem in the book 
 and shown in detail where and how Moffatt 
 has gone wrong ; and as for his talking down to 
 him and lecturing him, while a Christian might 
 be tempted to retaliate, I suppose it is a tempta- 
 tion to be overcome. 
 
 The heat here is still oppressive, and I suppose 
 worse with you. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 August 19, 1911. 
 
 I was glad to hear what you thought about 
 Ramsay on Moffatt, and though I agree with a 
 great deal of it, I still think Ramsay made very 
 little of his three papers. I shall be astonished if 
 Moffatt answers, not because he will think them 
 unanswerable, but because there is nothing specific 
 in them which calls for a reply. Gregory in his 
 recent pamphlet says there are not more than five 
 men in the world who could undertake to produce 
 a critical text of the N. T. ; as he does not name 
 them, I don't know whether he includes Souter ; 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 183 
 
 Souter's own edition is certainly an exceedingly 
 valuable and useful book. The one thing I do 
 regret in the method of Moffatt's book is the 
 way in which it is overladen with opinions which 
 are of no consequence in the world, and the one 
 thing for which I value it is, that at every point, 
 whether you agree with him or not, it suggests 
 questions to the mind. It is not that everything 
 is in flux, though for him this is perhaps too much 
 the case, but that you become aware that there is 
 something further to be investigated and to be 
 learned on every point. I agree that as it stands 
 his books will not have the authority or the 
 permanence of Driver's, but I should never think 
 of comparing him to a wild man on a monoplane 
 like Bacon. 
 
 I sent an article on St. Paul and Women, but 
 I suppose the labour insurrection makes every 
 subject but one untimely. Mrs. Pankhurst was 
 at Largs last night arguing that the unrest 
 shows how necessary it is to have women taking 
 part in domestic legislation. Most people, I 
 should think, if they drew any inference from 
 public affairs at this moment, would draw them 
 in the opposite direction. However, my innocent 
 article has nothing to do with ' thae unfidel 
 suffragettes,' as Sara Handy calls them. 
 
 It gave me a little shock to see my sermons 
 advertised as Sermons on Texts — a title which 
 amused me a little as at once despairing and pro* 
 
184 LETTERS OF 
 
 vocative, but which was no fixture in my mind. 
 I have since had a notion to call them Bible 
 Commonplace, or The Ministry of the Word, or 
 something of that kind. What I meant to 
 suggest by the name was that they were sermons 
 in which the text did the preaching, and that 
 the one claim made for them was that they were 
 Biblical ; but I suppose I can call them anything 
 yet in spite of the advertisement. They will be 
 finished, anyhow, by the end of next week, and 
 I will get away for a holiday at last. We have 
 been in Glasgow all summer, and the heat has 
 been very trying. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 September 29, 1911. 
 
 I have just found the books to-night on re- 
 turning from Grantown, and will let you know 
 what I think of them in a day or two. I infer 
 from what you say that you don't want an 
 article on Wendland unless it can be cordially 
 appreciative. 
 
 Probably you know that Dr. Patrick of Winni- 
 peg has died. He and I have been friends for 
 thirty years, and I should like to send a short 
 notice of him to the British Weekly. He was 
 well known in our Church, but owing to super- 
 ficial peculiarities never valued as he should have 
 been. A more absolutely unselfish man never 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 185 
 
 breathed. I will post what I write on Sunday, 
 which will, I presume, be in good time. 
 
 I had a month in Grantown, and enjoyed it 
 exceedingly. What you said in one of your 
 letters about the keenness of the air where there 
 are no trees struck me in that region. I walked 
 one day with my sister-in-law from Tomintoul to 
 Grantown, and had the same sort of atmosphere 
 as you delight in (or boast of) on Donside. I 
 hope you are back fit for the winter. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 November 16, 1911. 
 
 I enclose a few more reviews. I liked Forsyth's 
 book * very much. It is wonderfully free from 
 his usual peculiarities ; and though a great deal 
 of it is written in a region in which I am in no 
 wise at home, it seems really full of ideas and in- 
 terest. Its tendency to great generalisations is 
 not congenial to me ; in fact I cannot help being 
 sceptical about them ; and there is a fair pro- 
 portion of things which you cannot say are untrue, 
 but are probably just as true as the opposite. On 
 p. 264 he ventures into Greek, and uses o-vyyvo-t? 
 as in contrast to avvOeai^ in a sense which is quite 
 impossible. That reminds me that I had a letter 
 from Margoliouih standing up for his ' greaves of 
 
 1 Christ on Parnassus : Lectures on Art, Ethic and Theology, l>y P. T. 
 Forsyth, 1>.1>. 
 
186 LETTERS OF 
 
 new wrought tin,' with an undertone as of one sug- 
 gesting that he did not expect to be understood 
 by or convince everybody : which I acknowledged 
 as well as I could. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 November 25, 1911. 
 
 As you will see, I have written a long notice 
 of Lake. 1 It is a really important book, and 
 in some essential points I think a thoroughly 
 misleading and pernicious one. I don't care a 
 straw whether the Galatians were ' north ' or 
 * south,' and the present adherence to Ramsay 
 is to a large extent as much a matter of fashion 
 as the size of ladies' hats ; but this reduction 
 of Christianity to one of many ' redemptive ' 
 religions which struggled for victory and sur- 
 vival in the early centuries, the most religious 
 period our race has ever known, and the 
 identification of the Christian sacraments with 
 pagan mysteries, which is partly the alleged 
 basis of this, and partly an inference from it, is 
 serious, and I have taken space to be explicit 
 about it. 
 
 I am sorry you are going in for the woman's 
 vote in politics. Manhood suffrage, on the basis 
 of universal military training — a vote to every 
 
 1 The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul: their Motive and Origin, by 
 Kirsopp Lake. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 187 
 
 person of twenty-five who had put in his drills — 
 is the panacea which commends itself to me. If 
 we had any more demonstrations like Mrs. P.'s 
 last, I should say, ' Do not hesitate to shoot ! ' 
 I admit this is a subject on which I can get few 
 to agree with me, and that my dear wife was, as 
 her sister is, altogether on the wrong side. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 December 8, 1911. 
 
 You have always been much more than gen- 
 erous to any writing of mine, but the way in 
 which you speak of my sermons * quite over- 
 whelms me. You must believe I am grateful, 
 and not for this only, though I do not know 
 how to do more than flatly say so. Though 
 I gave up the idea of calling them ' Sermons on 
 Texts,' I am glad you noticed that they are 
 textual ; I don't know how a minister gets on 
 at all who does not let the text preach. There 
 was one thing in your notice of Maclaren which 
 gave me a thrill of joy — the sentence about his 
 boots. Many and many a time when I have been 
 baffled by a sermon — or by something else — in the 
 forenoon, I have found no way out but to get up, 
 put off my slippers and put on my boots and a 
 coat, collar and tie in which I could go out ; it 
 usually had the effect of bringing my desultory 
 
 1 The Way Everlasting , Sermons by James Deiiney, D.D. 
 
188 LETTERS OF 
 
 faculties to the scratch. But I had no idea I was 
 in such distinguished company, though I remem- 
 ber Scott used to take an hour in the morning to 
 shave, dress, and put on his shoes, having an 
 energetic contempt for the dressing-gown and 
 slippers mode of life. Most people, in spite of 
 these high examples, will have a sneaking sym- 
 pathy with Descartes, who created the higher 
 mathematics while sipping brown soup under the 
 blankets in broad day. 
 
 Welch, who has been delivering the Kerr 
 Lectures in our hall on the religion of Israel under 
 the kingdom — the religion of the Genesis stories, 
 of Elijah, Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah — asked me to 
 introduce them to Hodder and Stoughton with 
 a view to getting them published. Perhaps you 
 will pass this on to them and let it count as an 
 introduction. I think them unusually good 
 lectures, perhaps with some crankiness, but 
 really powerful and stimulating, and very well 
 adapted to revive interest in the Old Testament, 
 which seems for a time to have flagged among 
 us. ' Under the Kingdom ' does not include 
 Jeremiah, but does include Deuteronomy : he 
 could not bring Jeremiah in within the limits he 
 set himself. 
 
 I see in the papers to-day the death of Charles 
 Thomson, who took the Hebrew Class here during 
 Smith's first year in Aberdeen : a most promising 
 life cut short. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 189 
 
 Warm congratulations on the semi- jubilee of 
 the B. W. It is the semi- jubilee of my ordination. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 December 16, 1911. 
 
 I have read with much interest your article 
 on Immortality, 1 and I think I agree with it 
 all. To say Christ would not have done and 
 suffered what He did for beings less than im- 
 mortal is probably the simplest and truest way 
 to bring His work into relation to the question 
 of immortality, but it assumes a certain view 
 of what He did and suffered. I should never 
 dream of being dogmatic about conditional 
 immortality ; it seems to me to have all the 
 marks of a half-way house about it, and I cannot 
 think it will ever be more than a flitting and 
 vanishing idea in this region. But from the 
 point of view taken by Dale, is it not arguable 
 that Christ might have done and suffered all He 
 did do and suffer for people who had the capacity 
 of immortality, but had forfeited it by sin, yet 
 were capable through Him of being restored to 
 it again ? If we speak of Jesus as acting on 
 motives, is not the motive of putting immor- 
 tality within the reach of mortal men, or blessed 
 immortality within the reach of lost men, one 
 
 1 ' Immortality in the Light of the Cross.' (Leading article in the 
 British Weekly of December 14, 1911.) 
 
190 LETTERS OF 
 
 on which we can interpret His life and death ? 
 What I feel is that it is unreal to separate life 
 and blessedness, or death and doom, and that 
 you seem to say that unless man was bound to 
 have for ever a being which is not determined 
 either way Christ's work is unintelligible. I don't 
 like to forbid a man to preach Christ who only 
 feels able to say that to men whose future apart 
 from Christ is 4 all unknown.' Christ came to 
 bring, at the cost of His cross and passion, life 
 and immortality. But as I can hardly think you 
 would forbid this either, it is possible I may not 
 have exactly seized your mind. The sermon on 
 immortality is one I must have written about 
 twenty years ago, and I never preached it but 
 once since. It does not preach well, but I thought 
 the substance of it would be instructive to some 
 when read, and accordingly I put it in. When I 
 left Broughty Ferry I burned nearly all my 
 sermons, and was horrified as I did so to see what 
 an amount of repetition there was in them ; I 
 have the same horror, only worse, when I look 
 over them in print. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 December 23, 1911. 
 
 I enclose with this a review of Ward's book. 1 It 
 
 1 The Realm of Ends ; or, Pluralism and Theism. Gifford Lectures, 
 by James Ward, Sc.D. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 191 
 
 is extraordinarily interesting for this kind of thing, 
 and keeps closer to reality than metaphysicians 
 usually do. But he has a curious way when he 
 encounters a difficulty, of saying, ' But first we 
 must ' — raise some other very remote question, 
 which is apt to put out a reader who finds it diffi- 
 cult enough to hold a single thread in such abstract 
 discussion. On the whole, however, it is decidedly 
 on the Christian side, and therefore a book to be 
 thankful for. I meant to have sent with this a 
 notice of De Witt Hyde's book on The Five Great 
 Philosophies of Life, 1 but I left it lying in a 
 shop in Edinburgh on Tuesday, and, though I sent 
 stamps at once to return it, there is no sign of it 
 yet. I had read about two-thirds of it, and 
 thought it excellent, a really happy specimen of 
 modernising and applying the ancients without 
 traducing them at all. 
 
 I hope you are going to have a rest at Christ- 
 mas ; we are going to Crieff on Tuesday for a 
 week : our holidays, you will have a malicious 
 joy in hearing, are longer than usual. Like 
 you, I have sometimes wondered at Dickens's 
 representation of nonconformity in people like 
 Stiggins, but I think I understand it apart from 
 any personal reason. All the novelists like 
 Dickens, Thackeray, and Fielding represent the 
 natural man and his goodness — that is, goodness 
 
 1 The Five <ireat Philosophies of Life, by William De Witt Hyde, 
 President of Bowdoiu College. 
 
192 LETTERS OF 
 
 in instinctive forms ; but all sorts of noncon- 
 formity stand for goodness in reflective forms — 
 that is, in forms which have a tendency to be 
 self-conscious, and, if they are not watched, 
 Pharisaic. Now self-consciousness and Phari- 
 saism are very odious to the natural man, whose 
 goodness must be impulsive and instinctive or 
 null, and hence he pitches into them whenever 
 he gets the chance, with or without provoca- 
 tion. 
 
 I was struck once by a remark of Birrell in 
 his life of F. Lockwood, to this effect : that Lock- 
 wood had not a particle of a nonconformist about 
 him ; he was born in the Church of England and 
 on the edge of Doncaster Racecourse, and saw 
 no reason why a man should not be equally at 
 home in both. That is the sort of man Dickens 
 understands, but a man who takes away these 
 congenial environments and gives nothing as 
 good in their place, he delights to represent as an 
 odious humbug. I think I sympathise with this 
 quite enough to understand it, and even to see 
 a certain justification for it ; but the novelists 
 should have had good nonconformists as well as 
 bad. I believe they would have had but for the 
 feeling that goodness must be spontaneous and 
 not a matter of ' principle ' at all. A character 
 that implies dissent implies comparison, and 
 comparison is odious. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 198 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 January 24, 1912. 
 
 It was very good of you to write me so long and 
 interesting a letter at Christmas. Immortality is 
 a vast subject, and in a sense identical with 
 Christianity ; the Gospel cannot be described at 
 all unless it is described as a victory over death as 
 well as sin. At least this is always how the N. T. 
 describes it, but I admit the great mass of people 
 even in our Churches agree on this point rather 
 with Mrs. Moncure Conway than with the Apostles. 
 But though this is natural, it is not spiritual ; the 
 inner man ought not to be exhausted with the 
 outer, but to be renewed day by day. In what 
 I said about reunion I rather reported what 
 seemed to me the historical fact than indicated 
 what should be. I was astonished to find so 
 little evidence in anything I had read that the 
 desire for reunion tended to produce faith in 
 immortality. Where such faith has originated, 
 of course, it is brought to bear in this direction, 
 but I found no proof to speak of that the desire 
 for reunion originated faith. But I may be quite 
 mistaken as to the fact from not having read in 
 the right direction. 
 
 I suppose you will have had a little book called 
 In Dickens Street sent you for review. I wish 
 you could do it yourself. The writer, W. R. 
 Thomson, is one of our ministers whom I know 
 very well. He is also one of the ablest men I 
 
 N 
 
194 LETTERS OF 
 
 have ever met, and I think this series of sketches 
 shows a quite extraordinary appreciation of 
 Dickens — a genius in fact for appreciation not 
 unworthy of Dickens' genius for creation. Al- 
 though they appear at the Centenary time there 
 is nothing ad hoc or pro re nata about them ; they 
 are thoroughly mature. Thomson, who used to 
 be in Caledonia Road Church here, went out to 
 South Africa for five years for the sake of his 
 boy's health, and is now settled in a little church 
 at Bellshill. But his shoulders are broad enough 
 to bear any burden. 
 
 I enclose reviews of two philosophical books. 
 Freeland Barbour's book pleased me very much. 1 
 It is a book of a sort that is really wanted, and it 
 would do good if it were read in Universities. 
 The other, the American book which I lost and 
 recovered, is also excellent in its way. It is full 
 of animal spirits as well as of intellectual vigour ; 
 the man's mental digestion is so good that he can 
 assimilate all kinds of nutriment and dispose 
 with buoyancy of Epicureans or Stoics or Platon- 
 ists or what you please. There is a noble Chris- 
 tian assurance about the whole thing too which it 
 does one good to meet ; only it is too dear at 
 6s. 6d. net. — too dear, I mean, for the size. 
 
 I hope you have had a holiday and are feeling 
 fit for the spring. Evidently it is going to be 
 turbulent, and the mere fact that so many people 
 
 1 A Philosophical Study of Christian Ethics, by G. F. Barbour, D.Ph. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 195 
 
 are thinking about the future of the Government 
 is a more convincing proof that its future is 
 risky than any arguments to the contrary will 
 outweigh. But good luck to them — except in 
 their Women's Votes business. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 March 11, 1912. 
 
 I enclose a few more reviews. One of the 
 books — Humphries on the Holy Spirit 1 — is very 
 good indeed. The London Theological Faculty 
 have not made a very auspicious start, and 
 their volume 2 will not bear comparison with 
 the Cambridge Biblical Studies. It does con- 
 tain some excellent papers, but some also 
 very poor. But what does it matter as long 
 as the strike lasts ? Does any one buy books 
 or read them just now ? With your last leader 
 I sympathised rather than entirely agreed. 
 Something seems to have gone to the heads of the 
 massed masses that persuades them they have 
 only to say they will have something to be able 
 to get it ; there does not seem to be any sense 
 that there is a nature of things which may dis- 
 appoint the most thoroughly organised and 
 disciplined self-will in the world. You seem to 
 
 1 The Holy Spirit in Faith and Experience, by Professor A. Lewis 
 Humphries, M.A. 
 
 - London Theological Studies, by Members of the Faculty of Theology 
 in the University of Loudon. 
 
196 LETTERS OF 
 
 think the repeal of the Trades Disputes Acts 
 impossible, but if it is not repealed it will have to 
 be circumvented somehow, for its practical effect 
 is to legalise every violence in a strike short of 
 murder. It simply suspends the law where there 
 is a trade dispute, and I don't believe any society 
 in the world can exist on that footing. Govern- 
 ment by soldiers is the worst government ever 
 invented, but it is better than none, and if it is 
 forced upon the nation by sheer lawlessness even 
 the lawless will have to accept it. But you may 
 think I am turning Tory or timorous if I write 
 like this, which I hope is not the case. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 March 29, 1912. 
 
 I enclose one or two more reviews : I have never 
 read so screamy a book as the Renascence of Faith. 1 
 The man should be sentenced to read nothing but 
 Horace for six months ; it is a pity so right-hearted 
 a person should be lost for want of knowledge and 
 of self-control. His language in places is simply 
 awful, yet he is a Presbyterian minister appa- 
 rently. 
 
 I am sorry to see you so severe on Asquith. As 
 far as I can make out, he is absolutely right both 
 about the strike and the Suffrage business, and 
 unless I am much mistaken the event will prove 
 
 1 The Renascence of Faith, by Richard Roberts. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 197 
 
 so. To have put figures into the Bill would have 
 been to admit that Parliament can fix wages, and 
 that it ought to do so ; but it can no more fix 
 wages than it can fix the amount of sunshine 
 there is to be next year, and I am thankful that 
 the House of Commons stood by him in forcing 
 this patent fact on the minority. It is a fact, 
 and to deny it just to save the face of the Miners' 
 Federation would have been a mistake in every 
 point of view. No doubt the fight for better 
 terms will be resumed whenever the miners 
 think they are prepared, but in the nature of 
 things it is an endless fight ; it is going on all 
 the time, and would go on all the same no matter 
 what figures were in a bill. The miners have 
 got a complete victory as it is — but one which 
 practically implies compulsory arbitration. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 April 6, 1912. 
 
 W. P. Paterson told me some time ago that 
 the Established Church was going to take a 
 momentous step, which meant literally taking 
 their life in their hand. They have done it, 
 and no mistake, in their newly published docu- 
 ment. It is just possible that they have 
 taken our life in their hand too. As far as I 
 can make out, it is a frank admission that the 
 Claim of Right was justified, and that the 
 
198 LETTERS OF 
 
 Free Church in 1843 chose the good part ; 
 and it is an offer to meet us still on that 
 basis. Whether it is anything more I am not 
 quite clear ; and in spite of the last sentence 
 I am not clear whether it forgoes privilege as 
 unambiguously as it proposes to seek (perhaps to 
 assert) liberty. But it creates a kind of responsi- 
 bility for all Christians in Scotland such as has 
 not been put on them in this region of duty for 
 a very long time. 
 
 Thanks for sending me Bury and Thumb : I 
 am sure to learn a lot from both. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 April 12, 1912. 
 
 I was on the point of writing you about the 
 Established Church proposals when your letter 
 came. Of their general character I think as you 
 do ; they go far beyond anything I could have 
 anticipated, and they put the Church of Scotland 
 in a very favourable position in the eyes of the 
 public. There is only one point in regard to which 
 I would anticipate very serious trouble. In § 2 
 on page 1 they say, ' In the Joint Report sub- 
 mitted to the Assembly of 1911 the view was 
 indicated that it would be difficult if not im- 
 practicable to secure concurrence in any attempt 
 to define special State relations in a modern 
 statute,' etc. This view was only indicated in the 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 199 
 
 Church of Scotland part of the Joint Report ; 
 and the inference drawn from it, that ' in this 
 connection legislation would probably have to 
 be limited to the recognition by Parliament of 
 the freedom which must be a condition of any 
 possible union, and the repeal in general terms 
 of all enactments in any way inconsistent there- 
 with,' would certainly not be accepted by a 
 considerable part of our Church. For what it 
 means is simply this : there may be and must be 
 legislation extending the Church's liberty, but 
 it can only be in such a form as leaves its politi- 
 cal status unaffected. This, I say, will not be 
 acceptable. The main causes that keep the 
 Churches apart are two. The first is that the 
 Church of Scotland does not possess something 
 which we think indispensable — spiritual liberty : 
 and the second is that the Church of Scotland 
 does possess something which we regard as im- 
 possible — political privilege. In these new pro- 
 posals there is a satisfactory dealing with the 
 first, but it is open to argument, to say the least, 
 that the second is ignored or rather is tacitly 
 reasserted. I asked W. P. Paterson before this 
 document was drafted if it was an invitation to 
 unite on the basis of the Claim of Right, and he 
 said, ' Perhaps that is not very far off it.' But 
 the Claim of Right was the claim of an Established 
 Church : and in this document also, while liberty 
 is to be attained, it is to be attained without 
 
200 LETTERS OF 
 
 compromising ' the claim of the United Church 
 to recognition by the State as national,' etc. 
 It must be very hard for those who have always 
 prided themselves on it to resign the prestige 
 of being the national establishment of religion, 
 but there are great numbers in our Church who 
 will never enter a Church which makes such a 
 claim. That was what was in my mind when I 
 spoke of the State, on State occasions, availing 
 itself of the reunited Presbyterian Church as 
 representative of the Christianity of the nation, 
 not as excluding other Churches from the Christi- 
 anity of Scotland ; and if the ' statutory dis- 
 claimer ' referred to in § 5, and the similar idea in 
 § 11, could have this character definitely impressed 
 upon them, I think for the average man the im- 
 pediment would be overcome. When Christi- 
 anity is represented on State occasions, as most 
 people think it should be, then it should be 
 represented in this country by the Presbyterian 
 Church. I have no feelings about the relations 
 of Church and State which make it difficult and 
 embarrassing for me to say this ; and if this 
 would content the other side, I venture to think 
 it would content most men on ours. 
 
 About the endowments I have never been 
 greatly interested. I would never lift a finger to 
 see them taken from the Church of Scotland even 
 if it remained in its present relation to the State. 
 I have often been amused at the inconsistent way 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 201 
 
 in which Established Church men talked about 
 them in the Committee ; in one breath they 
 would have it that they belonged to the Church, 
 not the State, and that for the State to touch them 
 was sacrilege ; in the next, they were the State's 
 gift to the Church, and the most important part 
 of the national recognition of religion. But the 
 Church has had them long, and is entitled to 
 count on them, and I have no doubt they are 
 used as honourably and as beneficially for the 
 country as if they were handed over to some 
 Government department to squander. If they 
 were commuted, and on the assumption that they 
 were Church and not State property — though 
 held on a peculiar title — handed over to the 
 Church to be used at its discretion, or at least 
 with the same freedom with which it uses the 
 rest of its property, I should have no objection 
 to make. But I am not so sure of the immense 
 gain, though the amount is £220,000 per annum, 
 and not, as you say, twice in your letter, perhaps 
 by a slip of your typist, £120,000. The Church 
 of Scotland has many congregations in Glasgow, 
 endowed to the extent of £120 per annum, whose 
 ministers can hardly get more than this, and who, 
 even when supplemented from the Small Livings, 
 are far worse off than our unendowed city 
 ministers, none of whom (if they make even the 
 pretence of doing Home Mission work) have less 
 than £275, including clearance for house rent. 
 
202 LETTERS OF 
 
 Carnegie Simpson seems to read the whole docu- 
 ment in a sinister sense, as an attempt to get us 
 all into an established and endowed national 
 Church, but I think he is for once like Voltaire, 
 who had a great gift of seeing the devil when he 
 was not there. Still, not only men like Barr and 
 J. A. Paterson and Benjamin Martin, but many 
 more, are deeply committed on the head of ' public 
 money,' and there are sure to be difficulties. 
 War with the Church of Scotland would be mad 
 and bad, but what of war within our own borders 
 —and me going to preach for the Central Fund in 
 U. P. churches both on Sunday first and the 
 Sunday following. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 May 2, 1912. 
 
 Herewith I send notices of Bury x and Thumb. 2 
 The last is a complete mistake : they have trans- 
 lated the wrong book. Thumb has an excellent 
 book on Greek in the Hellenistic age, most useful 
 to the large class of N. T. students, which has 
 philological interest ; but I don't believe there are 
 ten people in this country who want so severely 
 scientific a book on such a scale about a mere 
 4 vernacular ' which contains nothing worth 
 reading. It took fifteen years to sell the first 
 
 1 History of the Eastern Roman Empire, by Professor J. B. Bury. 
 
 2 Handbook of the Modern Greek Vernacular, by Professor Albert 
 Thumb of Strassburg. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 203 
 
 edition in Germany, and they will not sell the 
 translation in 150. 
 
 I suppose you have seen the confused outbreak 
 in Glasgow Presbytery about the memorandum. 
 I knew that Orr had strong feelings about 
 the memorandum, and if he expresses them in 
 the Assembly, they will command attention. 
 It is not only acrid extremists who scan the 
 method of uniting the Churches with a certain 
 suspicion, but men who are generously resolved 
 never to be members in a Church which claims 
 an exclusive privilege for itself, and men who 
 are obstinately resolved never to abate an inch 
 of their privilege. The Herald speaks to-day 
 about the great concessions the Church of Scot- 
 land has made : I felt inclined to write and ask 
 to have them enumerated. So far as I can make 
 out the memorandum, the ' statutory dis- 
 claimers ' suggested just amount to this : the 
 Church of Scotland disclaims pronouncing other 
 Christian denominations in Scotland to be no 
 parts of the Catholic Church of Christ, but it 
 still pronounces them to be no part of the national 
 Christianity of Scotland. This is the nerve of the 
 difficulty ; we are not going into any Church 
 which makes the people with whom we have 
 acted in Church and in public life Dissenters, and 
 the memorandum (unless it can be modified) leaves 
 this objectionable status unaffected. I will cer- 
 tainly be on the side of peace, but I will not be on 
 
204 LETTERS OF 
 
 the side of union unless more can be done than 
 has ever been suggested to meet just scruples on 
 this point. Yet I dread the consequences of 
 failure, and feel it would be a terrible condemna- 
 tion of the Churches if there were not wisdom 
 and goodness in them to carry through what 
 has gone so far. 
 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, 
 June 7, 1912. 
 
 I post with this an article for the B. W. 1 
 I hope you have had a good holiday at 
 Brighton. I am here on the way to Eisenach; 
 this place has always had an attraction for my 
 mind, but I never visited it before. It is 
 very thriving and intensely Catholic, yet the 
 lies of the Catholic Church are more gross 
 and palpable in everything connected with the 
 Cathedral than they are in Rome itself. I don't 
 wonder at the mercilessness of the post-Reforma- 
 tion religious wars : I think I can understand 
 how creatures so different as those who believe 
 what is identified with religion here and those 
 who don't should feel that their adversaries had 
 no right to be, and that earth would be well rid 
 of them. Yet the streets swarm with children, 
 and yesterday was a holiday, and they all seemed 
 as happy as possible. 
 
 1 ' God's Forgiveness and Ours.' (Leading articleof June 13, 1912.) 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 205 
 
 15 Ltlybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 September 4, 1912. 
 
 What a holiday you must have had ! I hope it 
 has the compensation that you will enjoy getting 
 back to work again. The book of which I en- 
 close a notice — the Christian View of the World * 
 — is rather a remarkable one in its way, but its 
 volubility is inconceivable. The flood of words 
 is like these Lammas floods — you want a cowl 
 to pull over your head and ears so as not to be 
 drenched and carried away by it. The more philo- 
 sophy one reads, the more indispensable a sceptical 
 strain appears to give either reality or interest to 
 men's thoughts. It is all very well for God to be 
 omniscient, but a man who affects omniscience 
 or anything akin to it, even in the name of God, 
 is tiresome. I am going to preach in Dundee on 
 the Sunday at the Parish Church to the British 
 Association — or any of them that will come ; and 
 have got the essential provision of a good text. 
 
 The Manse of Dundee, 
 September 9, 1912. 
 
 I am posting the sermon with this, 2 but 
 you may be under a misapprehension, from 
 what appeared in the papers, as to its relation 
 
 1 By Professor George John Blewett, Toronto. 
 
 - ' Christian Faith in God,' Dr. Denney's sermon preached at 
 Dundee, in connection with the meetings of the British Association. 
 This appeared as a leading article in the British Weekly of .September 
 12, 1912. 
 
206 LETTERS OF 
 
 to Schafer. In point of fact it was finished 
 some days before he spoke, and read exactly as 
 it is written, and had no reference to him what- 
 ever. By chance or providence there are a 
 few expressions in it which might be supposed 
 to apply to his address, and that must be 
 why the Herald says all the official preachers 
 dealt with the President's views on life. I 
 certainly did not, and in the circumstances would 
 hardly have thought it becoming to take my text 
 from Schafer rather than from the New Testa- 
 ment. I have since had his address, and think it 
 an astonishing illustration of how uneducated a 
 man may be who is nevertheless in the front 
 rank of a special science. It has shaken some of 
 my heretical ideas about the proper training for 
 ministers, and inclined me to the old belief that 
 some philosophical education is indispensable. 
 Schafer is unphilosophical almost to the extent 
 of being illiterate and in any generous sense 
 unintelligent. But this is not matter for a 
 sermon, and the matter of my sermon, as you 
 will see, is worlds away from this. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 October 4, 1912. 
 
 I enclose a notice of Frazer's last two vol- 
 umes : * I don't like either the mental or the 
 
 1 Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, by J. G. Frazer, D.C.L. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 207 
 
 spiritual quality of them any better as he goes 
 on, and I should like to see them reviewed by 
 a Christian Voltaire, if one could imagine such 
 a combination. The way in which the haziest 
 and most precarious hypothesis unconsciously 
 turns into fact, and in which the highest 
 things are insulted, not by being traced to 
 their roots in things lower, but identified with 
 the lowest to which they seem to present even 
 faint or remote analogies, is beyond belief unless 
 one reads the book through. The one truly 
 praiseworthy thing in it is the immense and in- 
 domitable industry with which he accumulates 
 everything relevant to his subject — not to speak 
 of great masses of matter the relevance of which 
 is to me entirely dubious. 
 
 We are getting under weigh here again. The 
 College opens on Wednesday, and yesterday we 
 had the first meeting for Conference with the 
 Established Church. There will be some very 
 tight places to get through before the union is 
 accomplished, as I hope it will be ; for I do not 
 think that many of the Church of Scotland people 
 realise yet to what they have been committed by 
 their own memorandum. Their action about 
 Welsh Disestablishment — in Presbyteries — shows 
 what their real feeling about a privileged Church 
 is, and, unless privilege is extinguished, any one 
 in our Church could defeat the Union. Orr, I 
 know, is very suspicious about this, and any 
 
208 LETTERS OF 
 
 word or action of his carries great weight. I am 
 sorry to say he is far from well. 
 
 I hope you are looking forward cheerfully to 
 the winter, and feeling fit. Though I have 
 lectured through 2 Corinthians in church, and 
 read it with a class, I had to look up the Con- 
 cordance for ' we are weak in him.' It is so good 
 a text that I almost grudge you the discovery of 
 it. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W„ 
 October 25, 1912. 
 
 Along with two or three notices of books, 
 of which the most interesting is Hensley Hen- 
 son's sermons, 1 I enclose the lecture I gave 
 at the opening of the hall, which perhaps might 
 suit The Expositor. It is at one or two points 
 rather direct in form for an essay ; but if 
 you consult at all for the general reader 
 (Christian) as well as for the professional public 
 who batten on Odes of Solomon, etc., you may 
 be able to give it a place. I have read Edwin 
 Drood to be able to appreciate your study, but 
 your reviewer in the B. W. has let out your 
 secret almost too completely. For a man who 
 reads Edwin Drood for the first time it will be 
 nearly impossible to get his mind outside of your 
 
 1 The Creed in the Pulpit, by the Rev. Hensley Henson, D.D , 
 Canon of Westminster (now Bishop of Durham). 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 209 
 
 solution. The story itself did not much impress 
 me ; very little of it, I should say, is Dickens at 
 his best, yet the best bits of it are as unmistakably 
 Dickens as the best (and the worst) of Milton are 
 indubitably his own. 
 
 The Home Rule Bill is going to make some 
 trouble in our Church. Glasgow Presbytery 
 refused to discuss a motion sympathising with 
 the Irish Protestants, and a number of leading 
 elders here are organising an attempt to get this 
 decision reversed. There is a curious likeness 
 between the Home Rule and the Church Union 
 situation. It looks as if Ulster might defeat the 
 one, and as if a resolute group of voluntaries 
 might defeat the other. Possibly affairs in Turkey 
 may soon absorb public interest so much that 
 nobody will have a thought to spare for either. 
 This is our first fog, which makes me hope you 
 keep well. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 November 10, 1912. 
 
 I enclose the reviews I had : I thought you 
 would be crowded out with this kind of matter 
 at present. Ruffini's book * is quite interest- 
 ing — as interesting as a book on religious liberty 
 can be by a man who has no convictions in 
 
 1 Re&igimu Liberty, by Professor Francesco Ruffini of Turin, with a 
 preface by J. B. Bury. 
 
210 LETTERS OF 
 
 religion, and to whom liberty means the right 
 not to be bothered about such things ; but 
 except as a repertory of facts it is not of much 
 use. Still I have written about it at some 
 length, for we are certain to hear more of it. 
 
 We are likely, I think, to come to real business 
 about the memorandum now. What you say 
 of the country in Aberdeenshire seems to be 
 pretty true everywhere, and is making an im- 
 pression on people's minds, and there are corre- 
 sponding facts in the towns — even in Glasgow, 
 which at the moment is on a springtide of pro- 
 sperity. I had no real idea, till I began to be 
 interested in the Central Fund, with what diffi- 
 culty many of our poorer churches get along. 
 I visited two this week with overdrafts on their 
 congregational account of £200 and £240 respec- 
 tively. They can no more raise £200 than they 
 can raise £200,000, and they are paying their 
 ministers by sinking continually deeper in the 
 bog. Apparently nobody can stop them, and 
 the banks give them money on the presumption 
 that the Church at large will pay rather than 
 allow a scandal. Judging by much that one sees 
 and hears, I doubt if this presumption is as good 
 a security as it once was. Anyhow, we have at 
 present more churches than can maintain them- 
 selves, and though consolidation always means 
 loss, it is the policy which seems to attract 
 meanwhile. The one non-hopeful sign in the 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 211 
 
 union negotiations is the tendency to sniff at 
 religious equality and to insist on a State recog- 
 nition which will secure political prestige. If 
 the Church of Scotland can learn to be Christian 
 on this point, I believe everything else would 
 be easy ; but if the article (Scotsman) on Ruffini's 
 book on the morning the Conference met was 
 inspired, as it is said to have been, there are storms 
 ahead. I hope you are the better for Brighton, 
 though how you can rest in a place where the 
 motors stand four deep on Sunday I cannot 
 imagine. Better even preach, as I have to do. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 November 21, 1912. 
 
 It was very good of you to send me your 
 book, 1 and I read it with great curiosity. 
 As I have not read any other solution of the 
 mystery, you may not think it of much con- 
 sequence that it seemed very convincing to 
 me, but it did. Of course it is useless to ask 
 how Dickens would have finished the story, 
 but I could imagine myself becoming more 
 excited about that than about the one point who 
 Datchery was, and what part he was to have in 
 the working out of the sequel. If I knew who 
 was going to write the next essay on the Odes of 
 Solomon, I would send him a copy. The only 
 
 1 The Mystery of Edwin Drood, by W. Robertson Nicoll. 
 
212 LETTERS OF 
 
 really convincing thing that has been done on 
 that is Bernard's Essay in the Journal of Theol. 
 Studies, and I am going to read no more (unless 
 by him) until I see some one thoroughly tackling 
 this. 
 
 I liked Macaulay's sermons very much, 1 but 
 how much because the man himself attracts and 
 impresses me greatly I really cannot tell. They 
 have the charm at least of being extremely like 
 their author. I could wish he had done some- 
 thing else than sermons, as he is thoroughly 
 capable of doing ; I know no one with more 
 power of thinking philosophically. They were ill 
 advised when they would not have him at St. 
 George's : he was the very man to maintain the 
 best traditions of their church. 
 
 I hope to see Forsyth here in a week or two : 
 he is coming to preach at the University. That 
 is a very unexhilarating function to come so far 
 from home for, but I hope he will get an audience. 
 No one almost gets students, but the Archbishop 
 of York got a crowd of the public. The Divorce 
 Commission here strengthened the hands of the 
 minority by asking too much : the majority 
 report will suit the ecclesiastical, perhaps the 
 Christian, party quite well. But the question is 
 fearfully difficult, once you admit a question 
 at all. 
 
 1 The Word of the Cross, by A. B. Macaulay, M.A. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 213 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 November 29, 1912. 
 
 The reviews of Deissmann 1 and Schweitzer 2 
 which I enclose were only possible for me this 
 week because I had studied both already 
 in the original. Deissmann is a man whose 
 airs (and reputation) immensely exceed his 
 merits, especially as a thinker, and Schweit- 
 zer's criticism of him is well deserved. The 
 audacity of Schweitzer carries you over every- 
 thing the first time, but there is as much cheek 
 as wit in his book — which is often the case with 
 people who deal in paradox. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 December 19, 1912. 
 
 The enclosed observations on the Seven of 
 Oxford 3 are perhaps too long for an article ; 
 if you think so, they will do as a long review. 
 The book as a whole does not much impress 
 me ; the man I liked best through the writing 
 was Temple, though there is a touch of don- 
 nishness and juvenility about them all. I have 
 not said anything about Peggotty and Little 
 Em'ly, though it is very funny. I remember in 
 
 1 St. Paul: a Study in Social and I'e/iyions History, by Adolf 
 Deissmann. 
 
 - Paul and his Interpreters : a Critical History, by Albert Scbweitzer. 
 
 3 Foundations. A leader on tins book, by Dr. Deuuey, appeared 
 in tbe British Weekly of December 24, 1912. 
 
214 LETTERS OF 
 
 reading Moberly's father's book being struck by 
 the same want of reference to Macleod Campbell, 
 though neither of them has an idea which does 
 not come from that source. But what they all 
 want is a really serious study of New Testament 
 exegesis. It is too ridiculous for men to write 
 about the Christian religion from a great Uni- 
 versity, when they really could not pass a good 
 examination on the apostolic texts. 
 
 We finished our classes to-day for the Christ- 
 mas holidays, and, like you, I am glad of the 
 break. We have just finished visiting all our 
 Presbytery in connection with the Central Fund, 
 and that too is a relief, as in the course of the visi- 
 tation I have gone to thirty-six congregations 
 myself. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 January 17, 1913. 
 
 I was pleased to see you cursing the people 
 who take or send children out of church when 
 the sermon comes on. The whole truth in this 
 business is that children like to be — and will 
 be — where their fathers and mothers are. If 
 this is recognised, there is no problem of 
 the children : but if it is not, the problem is 
 insoluble. I will tell you a story of Spurgeon, 
 not for your competition, though you can 
 tell it anonymously if you like. I once heard 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 215 
 
 him read the third chapter of Daniel, about the 
 burning fiery furnace, etc. He read it a little 
 pompously, all about the harp, sackbut, psaltery, 
 etc., down to v. 7 — ' the golden image that 
 Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.' Then he 
 made a little pause, and said with ironical em- 
 phasis on the last word, ' Church and State.' 
 Then he read on to the end where Nebuchad- 
 nezzar makes the contrary decree appointing the 
 fiery furnace for all who speak against the God 
 of the Hebrew children, and after another little 
 pause which created expectation, he said, ' Church 
 and State again — and wrong every time.' These 
 were the only comments he made in reading, but 
 he preached a powerful sermon on a text in the 
 same chapter which, like some other good things, 
 has disappeared in the Revised Version : ' Is it 
 true, O Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego,' etc., 
 will you stick to it in face of the burning fiery 
 furnace ? It was a series of illustrations of the 
 things that rise up and challenge men when they 
 have taken a stand for God. I heard him once 
 do a delightfully inconsistent thing in preaching. 
 His text was ' Return, return, O Shulamite.' 
 He said he did not know whether the voice was 
 that of Christ calling to a backsliding Church, or 
 that of the old companions of the Church calling 
 her away from Christ : but to be sure of getting 
 the truth, he preached on it quite earnestly first 
 in the one sense, and then in the other ! 
 
216 LETTERS OF 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 March 22, 1913. 
 
 I was extremely interested in your Mark 
 Rutherford number, and even more in your 
 letter than in the article. Nothing in his story 
 seems to explain adequately his antipathy 
 to evangelicalism ; it seems to me pretty much 
 another proof that literature is the work of 
 the natural man, and that nonconforming 
 self-conscious virtue is essentially repugnant 
 to it. Of course such virtue is very liable to 
 Pharisaism, and can be criticised by inspiration, 
 but it is much more frequently caricatured from 
 a lower level than corrected from a higher. No- 
 body seems to be good-humoured with it but 
 Shakespeare. What an extraordinary thing that 
 was you quoted from the^ Westminster Review 
 advertisement of his Spinoza. It is one of the 
 mysteries about him to me that he was fascinated 
 by Spinoza, though his other favourite Words- 
 worth is in many of his greatest passages — in all 
 his philosophy of nature — an unconscious Spino- 
 zist. We close next week, and I hope to send you 
 soon a notice of von Hugel on Eternal Life. 1 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 April 4, 1913. 
 
 I have sent you an article on von Hugel. 
 
 1 Eternal Life: a Study of its Implications and Applications, by 
 Baron Friedrich von Hugel. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 217 
 
 The book is not uninteresting, once you apply 
 your mind to it, but I doubt if it will make 
 much impression. The style in which it is 
 written is simply incredible ; it is in no 
 tongue of men or of angels, and yet there is 
 an occasional pungency and even felicity about 
 it that could only come from a very live mind. 
 Somehow I never can learn from a Roman 
 Catholic controversialist. They all have the 
 complacency of infallibility about them, no mat- 
 ter how humbly they submit what they have 
 written to the judgment of the Church ; they all 
 claim the right not only to say everything, but 
 everything else to the bargain, so that the total 
 impression left in one's mind is that of dealing 
 with a man whose one principle is Heads I win, 
 tails you lose. Able and independent as he is, 
 von Hugel in this respect is just like the rest. 
 I am going from home to-morrow morning for a 
 few days, so that if you want to print this for your 
 next issue I am afraid I cannot read a proof ; 
 but I have made any proper names in it quite 
 plain, so it does not matter. 
 
 Our Union negotiations are certainly at a very 
 critical, but I believe also a very hopeful stage. 
 Our one chance of getting safely through is to 
 leave off talking about words, and try whether 
 we cannot agree about things and duties. Orr 
 thinks those who are keen for union are trying 
 to square the circle, and does not seem to see that 
 
218 LETTERS OF 
 
 what he is trying to do is to circularise the square 
 — which is (I suppose) equally impossible. Pray 
 for the health of Henderson if you pray for the 
 peace of Jerusalem. Many thanks for what you 
 told me about the Antinomians. I always find 
 it very hard to believe there could have been 
 such beings. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 July 9, 1913. 
 
 I have had these books a long time, but after 
 the Assembly I had a holiday, and have only 
 been able to get them done since I came 
 back. There is nothing very new about any 
 of them. 
 
 You will be sorry to hear that Orr is very un- 
 well. After the Assembly he went to Germany 
 with two of his sons, one of them luckily a doctor, 
 and came back in a very alarming condition. I 
 saw him on Thursday last, when he had not had 
 his clothes off for a week : his heart affects his 
 breathing so that he cannot lie down nor get any 
 sufficient rest. I hope he will get safely over it 
 yet, but it is impossible not to be anxious. 
 
 The Society for Biblical Study which was here 
 lately does not seem to be a very serious affair. 
 I had Lake staying with me, and much as I dis- 
 like his opinions I took to the man very much. 
 He said my review in the British Weekly was the 
 only serious review his book had had : lots of 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 219 
 
 notices, mostly laudatory, but mostly also (he 
 said) by people who obviously knew nothing 
 about the matter. He has a new edition coming 
 out soon. Almost the best thing in the proceed- 
 ings was a paper read by Mr. George Smith of 
 Merchiston Castle School on teaching the Bible 
 in schools like his. It struck me as having all 
 kinds of good qualities. Charles, the apoca- 
 lyptic man, ended a paper on ' reinterpretation 
 and comprehension ' by a wildly irrelevant and 
 absurd defence of Church Establishments. I 
 should have liked to hear your friend Lathbury 
 upon it. As for our Church question, although I 
 have good hopes of it, I cannot but feel that all 
 our troubles are still ahead of us : I am aston- 
 ished to find how unenthusiastic and even sus- 
 picious great numbers of our best people are. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 September 7, 1913. 
 
 I enclose something about Dr. Orr, which 
 I hope will be in quantity and intention some- 
 thing like what you wish. I had a great 
 affection for him, and will miss him more than 
 I can say. He had been failing for a good 
 while, and especially for a year past was not 
 quite himself ; but he was a big man by the grace 
 of nature and of the Gospel too, and his removal 
 makes a great void. 
 
220 LETTERS OF 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 September 18, 1913. 
 
 I enclose notices of two books you sent me. 
 There is a kind of interest in both, but, 
 though both are modern, neither is up to 
 date. Kent's is an eminent example of a 
 man so full of his own mind that he sees little 
 in the Gospels but what he brings, and therefore 
 not only misses what is there, but finds 
 a great deal which isn't. In spite of its moral 
 earnestness, 1 cannot take it as a favourable 
 symptom of the influence of Yale on American 
 Christianity. 
 
 I am living just now in an atmosphere of con- 
 ferences about the Central Fund, designed to 
 impress people who are not very much interested 
 in the Christian religion. Though there is a great 
 deal of good will in the Church, there is not much 
 enthusiasm, and what there is is mainly congre- 
 gational. The necessity of the Church to the 
 maintenance of the Christian faith is not felt by 
 some, and the necessity of the Christian faith 
 itself is not strong conviction with others. We 
 are again going to have small classes at the Col- 
 lege, and if things do not take a turn we will soon 
 have neither men nor money. That union with 
 the Church of Scotland, though it seems to me a 
 clear duty to attempt it, will strengthen the 
 Church in the country, I do not see : what it 
 needs is to be spiritually strengthened, not 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 221 
 
 politically or financially, and meanwhile we seem 
 to have lost contact with the source of power. 
 I feel pretty sure also that we will have to make 
 great changes both in the way of finding and of 
 training ministers. Much of our work in the hall 
 is doubly irrelevant ; it is unsuitable for the men 
 we get, and it is no preparation for their work. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 September 22, 1913. 
 
 I am just starting for the train to attend 
 a Central Fund Committee in Edinburgh, but 
 take a moment to thank you for your letter 
 just received. Please amend the ' worthless 
 legend ' sentence at your discretion. I would 
 not have said it except that I felt provoked 
 by Kent's referring to this * priceless story ' 
 as the only thing of real historical value in the 
 Fourth Gospel. Ever since I read the amazing 
 page upon it in Ecce Homo, I have had my doubts 
 about it, and I am more than ever inclined to 
 think that Wellhausen is right in describing it as 
 c ganz apocryph.' But that is no reason for 
 hurting anybody's feelings about it, especially 
 the feelings of ' one of these little ones.' 
 
 I had two or three letters from people about 
 the reference I made to Moulton's views on the 
 Australian and New Zealand military training 
 — one from Mr. Ford, who was Chairman of the 
 
222 LETTERS OF 
 
 Congregational Union two years ago, enclosing 
 a cutting with what he thought a very convinc- 
 ing and I an extremely absurd letter from a 
 Melbourne minister about it. Most of the people 
 who go in for Norman Angell seem to overlook 
 the fact that Norman Angell himself expressly 
 declares that while the present mind of the world 
 is what it is he would not abate in the slightest 
 the present measures for the defence of the 
 nation against attack. 
 
 I cannot thank you enough for what you say 
 about the British Weekly and the Central Fund, 
 and I will write about it soon : your help will 
 be of the greatest value. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 October 4, 1913. 
 
 I enclose a few notices of books. The one 
 on the Preaching of Isla?n x I had written 
 before I got your note about the scale on 
 which you wished them done, but it is really 
 a standard book, and deserves more than the 
 space I have given it. I have compressed 
 the others as much as possible, but may do 
 better with practice, even though I never attain 
 to the vanishing point illustrated in your ' Short 
 Notices ' this week. I felt a little doubtful how 
 
 1 The Preaching of Islam: a History of the Propagation of the Muslim 
 Faith, by Professor T. W. Arnold, CLE. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 228 
 
 I should treat Winstanley. Here is a competent 
 enough book on an important subject, but it 
 could easily have been put into a third of its 
 bulk without losing a fact or an idea, and it 
 is execrably written — interminable sentences with 
 neither structure nor relief about them, and no 
 sense of proportion. It seems incredible that 
 any educated man should be capable of writing 
 so badly. 
 
 You know very much better than I how the 
 B. W. can help the Central Fund, and I know 
 your interest in it. Next Friday we are to have 
 a meeting in the Assembly Hall : if your Edin- 
 burgh correspondent could send you a good 
 report of that, I believe it would be useful. The 
 idea is to interest the younger men in the Church : 
 the enclosed cutting from the Record gives the 
 programme. Any time you wish to write, I will 
 be happy to get you the latest facts and figures. 
 I wish I knew exactly what you refer to when 
 you say that the management of the fund has 
 not been satisfactory for some years at least. It 
 has not been in existence quite five years, and the 
 superficial complexities due to the fact that it is 
 an amalgamation of two previously existing 
 systems, and not a brand new thing, have caused 
 an immense amount of misunderstanding and 
 prejudice, and occasionally a little friction ; but 
 as far as I can make out, it is getting to be under- 
 stood and accepted, and the tendency to shrink 
 
224 LETTERS OF 
 
 is unhappily not peculiar to it. it is common to 
 all our funds, and I fear to the Church itself. 
 This session we have only thirty-seven students 
 entering our three halls, and the reason men are 
 not becoming ministers — the glaring reason which 
 no one refers to — is that they are not becoming 
 members of the Church at all. I often feel when 
 I speak of the Central Fund like a man trying to 
 get a pot to boil by stirring it, when what is 
 really required is somebody to mend the fire. 
 However, it takes everybody and everything, and 
 I mean to do what I can in this job, and hope the 
 fire will be fed with fresh fuel. 
 
 I was very much interested in your letter on 
 Stead. I only once was in his company — in 
 Lindsay's — where he sprawled on a sofa and 
 talked of the Pope and the Czar, the German 
 Emperor and Chamberlain. That he should be 
 a good hater was what one would have expected, 
 but I was amazed at what you said of his vin- 
 dictiveness. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 October 31, 1913. 
 
 It was very good of you to give two columns 
 of the British Weekly to the Central Fund, 
 and I am sure it will do good. I agree entirely 
 about what you say about the Emergency 
 Fund, the Foreign Mission Fund, etc. ; the 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 225 
 
 one reason why the C. F. does not prosper is 
 because people are not interested in it. But there 
 are some matters of fact in the article about 
 which I believe there are misapprehensions. For 
 instance, when it is said that ' the generous appeal 
 of the Sustentation Fund as a fund for the sup- 
 port of religion in Scotland raised a generation 
 ago from the 300,000 members of the then Free 
 Church a sum only 28 per cent, less in amount 
 than that raised by the 500,000 members of the 
 United Free Church under the new regulations, 
 which secure by promise a certain minimum 
 payment to the fund,' the facts are exactly the 
 reverse of what is stated. It was the old regula- 
 tions of the Sustentation Fund that required 
 congregations to promise a minimum, whereas 
 under the new regulations of the Central Fund 
 there is no such requirement, and the calling of 
 ministers is sanctioned often in congregations 
 which make no promise, except that they will do 
 their best for the fund. Often, also, where a 
 minimum is indicated, it is understood to be 
 nominal. 
 
 For example, the Church in which I am a 
 member, put down £600, but has always given 
 from £870 to £900 ; and Kelvinside, after indi- 
 cating a minimum of £800, has regularly given 
 over £1200. Wellington, again, a U. P. congre- 
 gation giving about £1200, simply refuses to 
 promise anything at all. Congregations which 
 
 p 
 
226 LETTERS OF 
 
 require to be helped by the fund, are asked to 
 tell what they can give for themselves, which I 
 do not think is unreasonable, and it is not at all 
 in connection with them that the decline has 
 taken place. Personally, I have always argued 
 on the line of your article, and when the quin- 
 quennial revision was to take place two years ago 
 I got the Committee, instead of sending out 
 schedules to be filled up with definite promises 
 tending to stereotype congregational giving, to 
 make an intimation that we depended on all 
 congregations doing their best for the common 
 cause, and that meanwhile we would presume that 
 they would not fall short of the average givings 
 for the last three years. 
 
 I have an impression, though I admit it rests 
 as yet on rather vague grounds, that we are going 
 to improve ; but it may be more slowly than we 
 would like. I am not sure that your article is 
 right when it thinks we might succeed if we en- 
 listed the active and energetic sympathy of 
 women. The weakness in the whole business is 
 that it has not the sympathy of men. It is men 
 who have the money, and who could make up for 
 all we have lost ; but they are indifferent to the 
 Church even when they have not left it. There 
 are members of our Church in Glasgow who have 
 motor cars and steam yachts and give less to 
 the C. F. than their ministers do. The contrast 
 of Glasgow and Edinburgh has been in my mind 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 227 
 
 ever since I had anything to do with this business, 
 but I do not understand what your article says 
 about it. It has been practically what it is at 
 all times and under all regulations or absence of 
 regulations, and I can only explain it by suppos- 
 ing that Edinburgh, partly as the seat of the 
 Assembly and the headquarters of Church busi- 
 ness, has always been a churchier place than 
 Glasgow ; partly also because there is nothing in 
 Edinburgh like the United Evangelistic Associa- 
 tion here, which is mainly supported by members 
 of our Church, some of whom literally spend 
 thousands a year upon it, while they frankly say 
 they are not interested in the C. F. ; partly per- 
 haps because Edinburgh is more of a village than 
 Glasgow, and the Church has a relatively bigger 
 place in its interests. The last three paragraphs 
 of the article I agree with unreservedly : I have 
 tried to rub them in wherever I go. It is no use 
 badgering the poor congregations ; it is not con- 
 gregations at all which have to be dealt with, 
 but individuals. The individuals I find most 
 impracticable are well-off people who say there 
 are too many churches — that country ministers 
 have far too little to do, and don't do it — that 
 there is not £200 worth of work in a great many 
 parishes — and that if people who did their work 
 as these people do it were in our offices they would 
 not be there a week. I am not imagining these 
 things : they have all been said to me, and, though 
 
228 LETTERS OF 
 
 it is not easy to argue about them in public, they 
 are present in many people's minds. But I did 
 not mean to bore you when I began, but to thank 
 you sincerely, as I do, for your help. I am going 
 to-morrow to Dumfries to speak about it, and on 
 Friday to Aberdeen, and will try to find the right 
 way of putting the case to sympathetic and 
 indifferent souls alike. 
 
 I enclose two reviews. The Cambridge History 
 is a terrible book. It is like being shown through 
 the Co-operative Stores. There is everything in 
 it you want, and everything you don't want, and 
 an impression from which you cannot get away 
 that the whole thing comes short somehow of 
 being first class. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 November 18, 1913. 
 
 I ought to have written you long ago to 
 thank you for A Bookman's Letters, but put 
 off till I could send this notice of MacEwen's 
 history. The Letters are a truly delightful 
 book, and it was very good of you to send 
 me one. Unluckily for me, I am one of those 
 who have never learned to read — this book 
 of MacEwen's, though it interested me much, 
 took me an unconscionable time to get through ; 
 but I remember most of your letters, and the 
 interest does not diminish but revives when I 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 229 
 
 read them again. I don't know whether you 
 think it paradoxical to say so, but though I have 
 never learned to read like you and Moffatt, I am 
 really fond of reading, and have had, and still 
 have, immense pleasure in it. MacEwen's is 
 really a first-rate book, 1 and ought to be of great 
 value to our Church and country for a genera- 
 tion to come. It could not have the opulence 
 of Lindsay's Reformation, but it must be a new 
 light for almost every one, and if the second 
 volume is as good as the first, it will be a great 
 classic. There is no strikingly good writing in 
 it, certainly no purple patches ; but most of it is 
 admirably expressed, and there are occasional 
 felicities, especially of a quietly argumentative 
 kind. There is a very good reply to Andrew 
 Lang on Knox's lack of appreciation for things 
 in Romish religion — which in the Romish religion 
 of Knox's time were simply not there. We had 
 not a very good meeting for the Central Fund in 
 Aberdeen — at least the attendance was not very 
 good. But they said it was representative, and 
 Smith spoke with his accustomed glow. I am 
 a little hopeful in spite of the people who pour 
 cold water on everything and are sure that 
 everything you do will do more harm than good. 
 The last thing the professional mourners are 
 adding to their stock in trade is the assertion that 
 
 1 .4 History of the Church iri Scotland, l»y Rev. Professor A. R. 
 Mac E wen, D.D. 
 
230 LETTERS OF 
 
 there are no people with money left in our 
 Church ; they have all been driven out by our 
 politics ! 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 November 24, 1913. 
 
 I am very much interested in what you 
 told me of the surplus under the old Sustenta- 
 tion Fund ; I had suspected something of the 
 sort in isolated cases, but had no means of 
 knowing whether it was common. The shortest 
 way of putting the difference between the Sus- 
 tentation Fund and the Central Fund, is to 
 say that under the Central Fund all congrega- 
 tions in which the stipend amounts to £200 must 
 be self-sustaining, and do not share in any sur- 
 plus. If they pay their ministers up to £160 
 through the Fund — and they cannot pay them 
 more than that in this way — then they must send 
 at least £160 in. If they send less, they only get 
 back what they send ; in no circumstances are 
 they allowed to profit by the C. F. This is a 
 point on which I have found some difficulty in 
 getting people born and bred in the Sustentation 
 Fund to be as intelligent as could be desired ; but 
 it is the differentia of the new fund as opposed to 
 the old. It is just another way of putting it, 
 though not a very palatable way either to some 
 people, to say that the regulations under which 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 231 
 
 we work have turned the Sustentation Fund into 
 an Augmentation Fund. It does two things only : 
 
 (1) It raises to £160, not all congregations, but all 
 who cannot provide that sum for themselves ; 
 
 (2) It distributes any surplus over and above 
 what is required for this purpose, among Churches 
 where the stipend is under £200. The old Free 
 Church surplus was given according to merit ; 
 all churches shared in it in proportion to their 
 givings per member. The new C. F. surplus is 
 given according to need ; only churches under 
 £200 share in it, and the less they have otherwise 
 the bigger their share. If a church with £160 
 gets £10 of surplus, one with £180 gets £5, and 
 one with £190 gets £2, 10s. 
 
 I wish I could agree with you that we could 
 easily raise £100,000 for endowment. At this 
 moment I cannot think it practicable. Endow- 
 ment contemplates a situation which is com- 
 paratively stable, and most people, I think, are 
 impressed by the instability of our present 
 position — especially of our present relation to the 
 Church of Scotland. They want to know what 
 is to become of the existing endowments before 
 they furnish new ones. I am sure the C. F. 
 suffers from this, unreasonable as it may be ; but 
 I am equally sure, though I have nothing very 
 palpable to go upon, that interest in it is being 
 awakened, and I am not alarmed about the 
 immediate future. 
 
232 LETTERS OF 
 
 I am convinced that a great deal of the criticism 
 of the rules is simply due to the fact that the fund 
 has not been successful. If there were a revival 
 of religion and of liberality, and if we could pay 
 all our ministers £200 a year, the rules would be 
 good enough ; at least nobody would find fault 
 with them. I am learning to be mightily patient, 
 and to give the soft answer, which is by no means 
 natural to me, to all the perplexed souls who want 
 to understand elementary addition and subtrac- 
 tion. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 January 19, 1914. 
 
 I had hoped to send you some reviews sooner, 
 but I have been preoccupied somehow, and 
 only send this on Frazer now. 1 Surely no man 
 ever had a mind so full of facts and so void 
 of ideas. I am amused by a page in which 
 he makes much use of ' the acute and learned 
 Movers.' On the next page he quotes Robertson 
 Smith. I never saw Smith's writing but once, 
 in a letter Jebb showed me about something 
 in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, but there 
 he quoted the same work from which Frazer 
 quotes, and referred to the author as ' the muddle- 
 headed Movers.' I should like to know how 
 Moulton finds Frazer's acquaintance a liberal 
 
 1 The Scapegoat, by Dr. J. G. Frazer. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 233 
 
 education, but perhaps I have what Lord Morley 
 calls the intellectual fault of pugnacity. The 
 Central Fund is not to be so good as I expected, 
 though the congregations are up £2775. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 February 12, 1914. 
 
 I hope you have had a good holiday on the 
 Riviera. As you would see, I wrote a leader on 
 the subject of Kennedy's book, but more on Inge 
 than on him. Kennedy's is an excellent book, 
 but it is all detail, and, though I have read 
 it twice, I could not go into any detailed 
 criticism in the B. W, 1 But I hope it will 
 sell well, for of all subjects on which confident 
 nonsense is talked, commend me to the ancient 
 mysteries. This man whose book I enclose a 
 notice of is of no real importance, but the subject 
 is another of those on which a great deal is written 
 with terribly little sense of its religious conse- 
 quence, so I have given him rather more space 
 than I would otherwise have done. 
 
 I don't know whether any one will send you 
 any notice of my old friend and class fellow, A. D. 
 Grant, who fell down dead at his own door in 
 Greenock a fortnight ago. He was one of the 
 best men I ever knew, an example of Christian 
 
 1 St. Paul and (he Mystery Religions, by 1'rofessor H. A. A. 
 Kennedy, D.D. Dr. Denney'e article appeared in the British Weekly 
 of January 29, L914. 
 
234 LETTERS OF 
 
 goodness through and through, and at his funeral 
 — he had been in the same church in Greenock 
 about thirty years — the crowds lined the streets 
 as if it had been the funeral of a king. I have 
 not seen anything for long which showed so 
 clearly what a power a truly Christian minister is 
 who gives a lifetime to his work in one place. He 
 had very remarkable gifts of other kinds also — 
 knew English literature very well, and had read 
 a great deal in French. The three men with 
 whom I was most intimate in my year are all 
 gone now. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 March 14, 1914. 
 
 I am sending with this a notice of the last 
 two volumes of The Golden Bough, 1 and also 
 a few lines on a volume of sermons by 
 Campbell Moody, 2 which you did not send me, 
 but which were given me by his brother. 
 I knew Campbell Moody when he was a student 
 — indeed he succeeded me, though not imme- 
 diately, as missionary in St. John's Church here 
 — and after a year or two he went to Formosa. 
 He was there, I think, about fifteen years, and 
 was a most devoted missionary, but for the last 
 four years he has been in New Zealand — his 
 
 1 By Dr. J. G. Frazer. 
 
 2 Love's Long Campaign, by Rev. Campbell N. Moody, M.A. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 235 
 
 wife had a tendency to consumption, and the 
 soaking moist heat of Formosa was proving fatal 
 to her. 
 
 We are getting near the end of our session now, 
 and I am thankful, for I have found the Central 
 Fund a distracting and time-consuming business. 
 It is not so much that it adds to one's work, 
 for when you do one thing you are not doing 
 another, but somehow the feeling of responsibility 
 for them both, even if you are neglecting one, 
 becomes exhausting. However, I don't think 
 it will be so bad next year ; I have got the hang 
 of it now, and can both understand things more 
 quickly, and tell more quickly what is not worth 
 thinking about. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 March 25, 1914. 
 
 Here are a few lines about Shebbeare, 1 who has 
 tackled with some pedantry a business much too 
 big for him. 
 
 What a frightful mess the Government have 
 got into now ! Whoever is responsible seems to 
 have put them in the wrong every way the matter 
 can be looked at, and though the indignation in 
 the House of Commons against the action of the 
 army will no doubt be echoed outside, it may be 
 overborne by the feeling that people capable of 
 
 1 Religion in an Age of Ooubl, by the Rev. Charles Shebbeare, M.A. 
 
236 LETTERS OF 
 
 such wanton mismanagement of their own in- 
 terests are not fit to be trusted with the manage- 
 ment of the nation's. If the Parliament Act is 
 lost and everything else along with it, Churchill 
 and Lloyd George may be never so eloquent but 
 they will not be trusted again for a very long time. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 April 16, 1914. 
 
 I am beginning to be a little tired of seeing 
 the same straw thrashed so often over Galatia, 
 but as I am going to read Galatians with a 
 class next winter I will take Watkins' 1 book 
 as seriously as I can. The two books of 
 which I enclose notices are quite interesting, 
 but neither is of very high quality. Widgery 
 is evidently a young man in a hurry who 
 has much undigested reading floating about 
 in his brain, and is capable of the most appalling 
 mistakes in translating ; and Eucken 2 is what 
 he is in all his recent books — copious, impalpable, 
 and assured. His first big books were by far the 
 best ; the recent ones have been degenerating 
 into sermons by a superior person, and do not seem 
 to me very likely to impress either ordinary sinners 
 or serious thinkers. 
 
 1 St. Paul's Fight for Galatia, by Rev. C. H. Watkins, M.A. 
 
 2 Can we still be Christians? by Rudolf Eucken, translated by Lucy 
 Judge Gibson. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 237 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 April 20, 1914. 
 
 I have read this book of Watkins * with 
 much interest. His historical conclusions seem 
 to me on the whole quite sound, but he does 
 not sufficiently understand that the true reli- 
 gion must be uncompromising. He has a very 
 amusing footnote in which he seems to think 
 he has disposed of Paul's anathema by the 
 suggestion that it might possibly apply even to 
 ourselves — and as if none of us — people of quality 
 — could conceivably be damned ! To any one 
 who is familiar with J. Weiss it was superfluous 
 to name his teacher : Weiss is written all over 
 it. The ' methodical ' precision of it is absurd, 
 as indeed most exhibitions of the same kind are ; 
 it refreshed me lately to see Harnack denounce 
 them as pure waste of time. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 May 11, 1914. 
 
 I was glad to see you speak so plainly about the 
 4 provocative and wrecking ' minority report of 
 the Church of Scotland Committee. The hostile 
 party in the Church have forced the Committee to 
 send the constitution to their Presbyteries at the 
 same time at which it is sent to us, which puts us 
 in an impossible position. What can we do with 
 
 1 See ante. 
 
238 LETTERS OF 
 
 it, when the Church of Scotland Presbyteries may 
 throw it overboard ? I have not seen any of our 
 people yet, and do not know what Henderson has 
 in mind, but everything looks less favourable 
 than it did a year ago. Yet with more Christi- 
 anity in both Churches it should be impossible 
 to fail. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 June 27, 1914. 
 
 I put off reading this book of Alexander's 
 because the man, somehow, did not impress me 
 much when he lectured in our college, but I 
 must have done him an injustice then. It is 
 really an excellent book, full of knowledge and 
 of what is on the whole sound criticism ; and 
 though it is wanting in brightness, there are here 
 and there very good sentences in it. 
 
 I have been reading your articles on • The Dif- 
 ference Christ makes ' with much interest. The 
 hopeful thing in our present situation is that 
 everybody's conscience is on the same side as to 
 the end to be aimed at : where people differ is as 
 to the means. This is not a question which 
 conscience can settle, though people who are very 
 much in earnest about the end are apt to accuse 
 those who differ from them about the means, of 
 having no conscience. 
 
 Lloyd George's intention to benefit the poor is 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 239 
 
 unquestionable, but though I do not grudge my 
 share of the income tax, I think it is a fair ques- 
 tion whether the increase of the income tax and 
 the spending of it as it is spent does nothing but 
 benefit the poor. And there is always the further 
 trouble that when we claim justice for ourselves, 
 we act as judges in our own cause and almost 
 inevitably claim more. Just because democracy 
 is omnipotent, it would need to be composed of 
 unusually good men if it is to produce an un- 
 usually good and just Government. One of 
 the things that has never been out of my mind 
 since I went to Broughty Ferry and got £400 a 
 year, is that my father worked from six in the 
 morning till six at night, and often longer, from 
 the time he was twelve till he died at seventy-two, 
 never had a month's holiday in his life, and never 
 made a seventh or an eighth of my income, though 
 he was in every sense of the term as good a man 
 as I am. The distribution of the rewards of 
 labour between us was absurd, and I long to see 
 it corrected, but I have no conviction that the 
 minimum wage, and the right to work, and in 
 short any legislation that has yet been conceived, 
 is likely to do much in that direction. Nobody 
 in Glasgow now works for the Corporation for 
 less than 27s. a week ; but that wage is provided 
 by rates paid by people many of whom have far 
 Less. I suppose they feel their prospects im- 
 proved when any of their class benefit. 
 
240 LETTERS OF 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 July 25, 1914. 
 
 As it happens, I am going for my holidays 
 this year also about the middle of August, but 
 if you can tell me the dates for which the articles 
 are wanted, I will see that they are at the office 
 in good time. Indeed I could send them by 
 August 10, and August 17, and save you any 
 further trouble, as that would be soon enough 
 for the first two weeks of your absence. 
 
 The Central Fund is apt to fall into a state of 
 suspended animation this month and next, but 
 the unconsciousness, I think, is not quite so 
 profound as it has sometimes been. The associa- 
 tion had increased nearly £2000 at the end of 
 June — i.e. in six months — which is so far en- 
 couraging. If you have not seen the report, you 
 may be interested by the statement on p. 8. It 
 is contributions like your own additional £20 to 
 which we owed £19,775 in the last five years, and 
 every effort is being made — of course it has to be 
 made privately — to have these continued. Last 
 year they came to over £2700, and this year they 
 are already over £2000. At this moment we are 
 suffering somewhat from the political crisis. 
 Lee, or rather his Highland Convener Martin, 
 has found some of his ordinary supporters ex- 
 tremely crusty, and there is a donation of £1000, 
 which has been regularly given to the Central 
 Fund for years, at present in suspense for poli- 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 241 
 
 tical reasons, or, as I should say, for political 
 unreason. It is very good of you to be so faithful. 
 Talking of politics, I wish I could see half an 
 inch into the fog. When all parties to the Con- 
 ference admit that they can agree neither in 
 principle nor in detail as to what should be done, 
 the only inference is that somebody must be 
 coerced. You say it must not be Ulster — prob- 
 ably you would say also it cannot be the National- 
 ists : all that remains is that it must be the 
 Government and the Liberal party. They are 
 to be coerced into dropping Home Rule, appealing 
 to the country, and sacrificing the Parliament Act 
 and all its natural or possible fruits. I could not 
 imagine anything which would create a deeper 
 feeling of resentment and disgust in all who have 
 ever supported them. If the House of Lords 
 reject the Amending Bill, as they will no doubt do, 
 I see no course for the Government but to pass 
 the Home Rule Bill without it, and take the 
 responsibility of maintaining the King's Govern- 
 ment in Ireland meantime, whatever the c pro- 
 visional ' government may do. If they simply 
 cave in to the tempest of bad passions that has 
 disgraced Christianity in the north of Ireland for 
 two years past, they will never be forgiven. 
 Though Asquith made the worst mistake of his 
 career in passing that sentence about ' the cry of 
 civil war,' he is so much abler than anybody on 
 the opposite side that I still pin my faith to him, 
 
 Q 
 
242 LETTERS OF 
 
 and even if he should be beaten at last I should 
 not think it owing to the strength of the Opposi- 
 tion, but to some incurable perversity in the 
 nature of things. 
 
 I do condole with you on losing a friend and 
 helper of twenty years' standing : it must be 
 impossible almost to replace her. But 4 for this 
 cause shall a man, or a woman leave ' even what 
 one might think best worth keeping. I hope you 
 have had prevision of the event, and some one in 
 training. 
 
 P.S. — Have you seen Gwatkin's reply to Gore ? 
 That is the best thing which has appeared in this 
 controversy. I thought Jones in The Expositor 
 tedious and artificial. Souter's short notes at 
 the end struck me as the best thing in that 
 number. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 November 24, 1914. 
 
 I send you notices of these two books. It is 
 
 not so much that I dissent from all is 
 
 saying, but his way of delivering his mind seems 
 so fantastic and overstrained. No wonder men 
 have nervous breakdowns if they have to preach 
 in this unnatural high-falutin fashion all the 
 time. Why doesn't he sit down and speak the 
 word to them sometimes as Jesus did ? It is all 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 243 
 
 about Jesus, but nothing could be less like the 
 manner of the Gospels. 
 
 I don't know how you feel it — or rather I do — 
 but I cannot think of anything but one, and feel 
 it very hard to get any continuous work done 
 either by myself or by my class. Last night we 
 had the Annual Foreign Mission meeting in 
 Glasgow, which is usually the event of our Church 
 year. It was quite flat, and as much from the 
 state of mind in the audience as from the speeches. 
 Everybody was preoccupied. You felt that there 
 was nothing in the speeches that had accumulated 
 and represented any depth of thought or feeling ; 
 men had just raked up anything that was lying 
 about ; their interest was elsewhere. And yet 
 one wishes there was more interest elsewhere 
 than there is. I go with you heartily in every 
 word you have written about recruiting. I can't 
 make out some things at all, but I believe among 
 the working classes here there is a widely diffused 
 expectation that service will be made compulsory, 
 and willingness to accept that when it is declared 
 necessary as the just way of dealing with a national 
 crisis, and a reluctance to give up good wages (for 
 most men here are well employed) till the neces- 
 sity is made apparent by the compulsion. Why 
 the Government conceal the figures I cannot 
 imagine, but well as they have done in the main 
 I feel sure the nation is hungering for a little more 
 success than we have yet had, and that their 
 
244 LETTERS OF 
 
 popularity will suffer heavily if there is not a 
 decided change in Flanders soon. Yet what a 
 burden they bear. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 December 5, 1914. 
 
 Many thanks for your most interesting letter. 
 The new hand was unfamiliar to me, and as 
 a ' grave nature, led by custom and therefore 
 constant,' I could not help condoling with you 
 a little on the loss of your old secretary. As 
 it happened, I had read Macgregor's book 1 — 
 I have been lecturing this winter on Galatians 
 — and could write on it conveniently enough. 
 There is no particular relevance in it to the war, 
 though if any book was ever a stroke in a battle, 
 Galatians is. 
 
 I am sorry to say that the apprehension I had 
 about the arrest of the increase in the Central 
 Fund in October has been verified. The congre- 
 gations had gone up every month from the 
 beginning of the year till the increase had reached 
 £2692, but in November they have gone back 
 about £1600, and the increase from this source 
 is now only £1100. I have written something 
 explaining the facts, and have asked Lee, who is 
 
 1 Christian Freedom : the Baird Lecture for 1913, by Rev. W. M. 
 Macgregor, D.D. Dr. Denney's article on this work appeared in the 
 British Weekly of December 24, 1914. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 245 
 
 typing some copies of it, to send one to you on 
 Monday. I know your interest in the cause, and 
 if you could give a place to it, or the most neces- 
 sary part of it, in your Scotch edition, it would 
 render us a real service. I shall have to speak 
 of it in our Presbytery here on Tuesday, so that 
 it could appear naturally as news in your next 
 issue. 
 
 I hope you have good news from your son and 
 son-in-law at the front. People like me are 
 practically out of it, and can only feel how vain 
 what we call sympathy is. Dr. Reith read last 
 Sunday morning the names of seven young 
 fellows from our congregation who are now in the 
 fighting line — one his youngest son, John, who is 
 in Armentieres. It was almost too much for 
 him. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 March 8, 1915. 
 
 I know you are much in favour of the Govern- 
 ment taking some drastic action about the 
 use of liquor during the war. A memorial to 
 the Prime Minister is being promoted here 
 to stop the sale of distilled liquors in Scot- 
 land during the war, and is having extra- 
 ordinary support. Every one to whom it is 
 submitted seems willing to sign it — especially 
 employers of labour, irrespective of party con- 
 
246 LETTERS OF 
 
 nections. I don't believe it is too much to say 
 that if the country were polled it would be as 
 unanimously and enthusiastically in favour of 
 this measure as of the prosecution of the war 
 itself. If you can do anything — as I am sure you 
 can do much — to promote so good an object, you 
 will earn the gratitude of every one who loves his 
 country. I am sending with this a pamphlet by 
 one of our University men and by Frank Knight, 
 our minister (Dr. Reith's colleague) : they are 
 both very keen about it. There was some talk 
 of having Lloyd George here on a Sunday, but 
 I am not anxious for that. We don't want any 
 more speeches, nor assurances that the Govern- 
 ment will exercise its influence, etc., etc. ; the 
 only use of a Government is that in defiance of 
 all influence it can put into Act legal powers ; and 
 if it is not willing to do this and do it soon, our 
 Government is missing the day of its visitation. 
 I am sorry I have not been able to send you 
 anything for The Expositor, but without being 
 busier than usual, or at any rate without doing 
 more than usual, I have somehow been unusually 
 distracted. I will try some time soon. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 March 12, 1915. 
 
 I was delighted to read your pronounce- 
 ment on drinking and racing : it could not have 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 247 
 
 been more effectively done, nor put on more 
 unimpeachable ground, and I am sure all 
 right-minded people are grateful to you. What 
 is the matter with the Glasgow Herald in this 
 connection I cannot tell, but they are thirled 
 to the publicans somehow. The publicans are 
 organised too, in view of 1920, as they have never 
 been before ; and I believe they are in mortal 
 terror that if we saw what like this country was 
 for six months without whisky they would never 
 get a look in again. 
 
 We hear it said that Bonar Law is strongly 
 on the right side, but that Balfour is mightily 
 non-committal, and we know what to expect 
 from Younger. I have no hope of an agreed 
 measure, but I believe the Government is quite 
 strong enough to defy any interested oppo- 
 sition, if it had even a pennyworth of moral 
 courage. 
 
 Moffatt's chances for the Professorship seem 
 rising ; he had the best vote in our Presbytery, 
 and I believe Fairweather's supporters will in 
 the main give their second votes to him. But 
 it is very difficult to calculate. W T att had a start, 
 Lindsay's appreciation of him is known, and in 
 some quarters the Historical New Testament is 
 counted to its author for anything but righteous- 
 ness still. 
 
248 LETTERS OF 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 May 27, 1915. 
 
 Your telegram did me good, and if any- 
 thing could make one happy in such an 
 unhappy time it would be the discovery of 
 such an amount of unmerited goodwill as I 
 have experienced in the last few days. I need 
 not say that I was much more interested in 
 the election to the Church History Chair than in 
 my own, nor that Moffatt's appointment gave me 
 the liveliest pleasure. If only we could be sure 
 of having any students next year — or sure that 
 we ought to have any — we could think of the 
 future cheerfully. The neglected sins of the 
 nation are finding it out fearfully, and the Church 
 cannot escape. 
 
 MacEwen has made a most interesting Moder- 
 ator — a little professorial, with a touch of the 
 academic disciplinarian, and a disposition to take 
 part in the procession as well as to look on from 
 the window. But he did everything with all his 
 heart and strength and mind, and, though I don't 
 agree with all his opinions and always feel a kind 
 of instability in his mental action, he spoke in 
 both his opening and closing addresses with 
 unusual and unmistakable spiritual power, and 
 every one was greatly impressed. 
 
 One of the most promising phenomena of the 
 week was the appearance of Freeland Barbour 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 249 
 
 in the Union discussion. He spoke with real 
 distinction — intellectually I mean — and he has the 
 art of saying just enough to be impressive without 
 the fault, which preaching seems to induce, of 
 iterating and urging when the moment for im- 
 pressing is past. I don't know whether the 
 solemnity of the whole circumstances damped 
 the spirits of youth, but it seemed to me as if the 
 business was left even more than usual in the 
 hands of elderly men. I hope you keep well 
 through all the horrors of the time. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 July IS, 1915. 
 
 It seems an age since I had any communi- 
 cation with you, and my conscience smites 
 me that I have not been able to send you 
 anything for The Expositor. I don't know 
 whether other men are getting new light on 
 the New Testament at present, but I do not feel 
 as if I were. The interest of this commentary 
 of McNeile's, of which I enclose a rather long 
 notice, is not in anything new he has to say on 
 the interpretation of the evangelist ; it is in his 
 own state of mind, and in the fact that a man 
 whose attitude to the Gospels is what his un- 
 questionably is should be examining chaplain to 
 Gore. A family of six children in Greenock were 
 playing last week with a cartridge one of them 
 
250 LETTERS OF 
 
 had found, when it suddenly exploded, and blew 
 off their fingers, and bits of their faces, etc., etc. ; 
 this seems to me a parable of what will certainly 
 happen to those people who are so sure of the 
 Church and the Sacraments and the priesthood — 
 — ' those who drank,' says McNeile of the Last 
 Supper, ' were all priests ' — and who otherwise 
 treat the Gospels as Loisy or Schmiedel. The 
 difficulties of Modernism, of course, are not theirs 
 only, but they are peculiarly theirs, and they seem 
 peculiarly unconscious of them. It does not seem 
 to cross McNeile 's mind for a moment that the 
 very same method of study which is fatal to a 
 certain view of the worth of the Gospels is much 
 more immediately and unquestionably fatal to 
 his view of the doctrinal tradition of the Church. 
 You must have had a very trying time lately 
 in the political field. As far as one can judge, we 
 must be content for a while now if we meet with 
 no disaster, and hope that we are preparing for 
 victory. But what a nightmare the miners' 
 strike is. And what a fiasco even national 
 registration might prove if passive resistance on 
 the scale of the strike were all that was needed 
 to defeat it. But I am persuaded better things 
 of the nation, in spite of all the selfishness that 
 has reigned so widely and so long, and am glad 
 you think that on the whole things are better. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 251 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 September 19, 1915. 
 
 The two volumes of Clark's International 
 Theological Library which you sent me some 
 time ago are disappointing additions to that 
 series. I should have sent you a notice of 
 them earlier if I had been able to compel 
 myself to read them. They are in no sense 
 books, and can only be used through the index, 
 which is very good in the missionary one, but 
 very inadequate in the other. 
 
 What a frightful week this has been politically. 
 I was inclined to discount Lloyd George a little, 
 his native and poetic temperament making his 
 speech perhaps more telling than he knew ; but 
 I frankly confess that Churchill startled me. The 
 tale of failure all round was worse than I had 
 imagined. But Churchill also has a tempera- 
 ment, and I believe people in large numbers just 
 pin their faith to Kitchener and Joffre and the 
 nature of things, and don't believe that all 
 Europe can be overrun by the wild beasts of 
 Berlin. I fancy the Germans know quite well 
 all that the Government does not tell us, and 
 the one thing which commands my unequivocal 
 sympathy in the confusion is the demand for 
 fuller information. Things that are not told 
 will always be thought of outside as things too 
 bad to tell, or things that it is some one's interest 
 to hide. You may think it queer, but Balfour 
 
252 LETTERS OF 
 
 is one of the people in whom I have faith in the 
 present crisis, and I would give a great deal to 
 know what he really thinks about it. It is con- 
 ceivable that the state of war should become 
 chronic as well as universal, and that we should 
 see in the twentieth century a thirty years' war 
 as ruinous as that in the seventeenth ? I am 
 sure there is obstinacy enough for it all round if 
 nature supplied the other conditions. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 October 1, 1915. 
 
 I like Balfour's lectures * very much, though 
 they leave many questions unanswered and 
 have too many digressions. He did himself 
 no justice when he delivered them here, and 
 any other person who treated the public as 
 he did would have been left with a very 
 small audience. I cannot think very well 
 what effect they will produce on naturalistic 
 philosophers, but I am sure idealists will pooh- 
 pooh them as beside the mark. The sentences 
 I quote at the end from Hoffding are remarkable 
 parallels to much in Balfour, but Hoffding, 
 who calls his system c critical monism,' and who 
 raises many questions Balfour never looks at, 
 really occupies a quite different, and, as far as 
 
 1 Theism and Humanism, Gifford Lectures, by the Right Hou. A. J. 
 Balfour, M.P. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 253 
 
 I can judge, a much less Christian position. I 
 hope Balfour's book will sell well in spite of the 
 war, for it can do nothing but good. 
 
 It is a great pleasure to me to have Moffatt 
 near at hand : I seem to have more interests in 
 common with him than with any of my other 
 colleagues. But perhaps all of us feel that with 
 him, his interests are so various compared with 
 those of any of us. I heard him lecture last night 
 to the Office-Bearers' Union — excellent, and only 
 a little impalpable for those to whom some of 
 the ideas were unfamiliar. I am rather sorry 
 he is preaching twice every Sunday till April, 
 and hope he may stand it out : he is very 
 thin. 
 
 The victory in France is evidently costing 
 Scotland dear, but every one has been encouraged 
 by it. I hope you have good news from your 
 son-in-law : what a protracted trial it has been 
 for his wife, and for you all. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 November 28, 1915. 
 
 I am sending with this a notice of Mr. Allan's 
 book. 1 I hardly know him at all, and only 
 heard my people, who are still in Greenock, 
 speak appreciatively of him as a minister ; but 
 
 1 The lieuutiful Thing that has happened to our Hogs: Masaqrs in 
 'I .//■ Time, by Charles Allan, M.A, 
 
254 LETTERS OF 
 
 I had read his book before you sent it, and 
 think it is every way admirable. His taste is 
 not exactly mine in the matter of quotations, 
 though most that he makes are felicitous ; and 
 he does not, like many preachers, obtrude the 
 idea, when he quotes, of a new patch on an old 
 garment. I hope his book will do well, for I am 
 sure it will do good wherever it goes. 
 
 The new scale on which the war is being con- 
 ducted seems to me to have the double effect of 
 making people feel more anxious about it, and 
 more sensible that they cannot manage it, and 
 that it must be left to the management of those 
 who are officially responsible. I think we have 
 learned pretty well with what a discount official 
 statements of successes have to be read, and how 
 to discern between the lines when reverses are 
 being coloured or disguised ; but as far as I can 
 gather here, there is willingness to admit that 
 fallible beings will fail somewhere, and no willing- 
 ness to admit that those who are loudest in cen- 
 suring their failures would never have failed 
 themselves. Bonar Law's success in Asquith's 
 absence has naturally been popular in Glasgow ; 
 in Bagehot's sense of the term he is a very i repre- 
 sentative man,' and will in all probability have a 
 far stronger position when the Coalition is dis- 
 solved than he ever had before. I hope in spite 
 of the war your new books may do well. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 255 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 February 7, 1916. 
 
 I ought to have sent you this notice of 
 Mozley 1 some time ago, but though you are 
 not giving much space to reviews I hope you 
 can get a corner for it. He has the courage to 
 react against the pretentious oracular style 
 of thing with which Westcott and Moberly 
 hypnotised so many Anglicans, and he is not 
 imposed on by the Broad Church people like 
 J. M. Wilson, who have never discovered what 
 the Atonement is about, and would have written 
 the New Testament quite differently ; and I 
 think his book is likely to be useful to students 
 and to do good in the Church. Anyhow, it 
 reveals a good man. 
 
 Do you think anybody knows at present how 
 the war is going, or that anybody on our side 
 has any grasp or control of it ? The outside 
 mortal opens his paper daily, and it is the same 
 yesterday and to-day and to-morrow : never 
 anything decisive, and too often something that 
 has to be explained away. The plan of waiting 
 and nibbling may be the correct one, but it 
 becomes very trying to patience when there is 
 no unimpeachable evidence that the enemy is 
 suffering from attrition more than we, and to the 
 outside citizen there is at present none. It is 
 beginning to be felt as a humiliation that so far 
 
 1 The I Ooctrine of the Atonement, by J. K. Muz ley, M.A. 
 
256 LETTERS OF 
 
 there has been no initiative on our side ; we have 
 uniformly allowed the Germans to do something 
 or to try something, and then attempted to 
 frustrate their efforts, but all the originality seems 
 to be with them. And all the success on land 
 too ; for as the truth about Loos is more clearly 
 understood, it begins to appear as the most 
 tremendous failure in our military history. I 
 preach every Sunday just now in a different 
 church, and in every one there is a list of deaths 
 and casualties. There is no weakening of resolu- 
 tion, but a growing impatience to see our side 
 beginning to win. Since the Marne, a year past 
 in September, we have piled up losses and won 
 nothing. Are the Government too old ? 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 October 7, 1916. 
 
 You might write a Claudius Clear letter 
 on some things connected with autobiography. 
 Like you I have read Pepys twice, though 
 not in twelve months, and think it in the strict 
 sense of the term the most interesting book I 
 know. There is not a square inch of it that 
 has not interest, and it is as much a miracle in 
 its way as Othello. A man talking to himself 
 is interesting ; a man talking to God, like Augus- 
 tine in his Confessions, is interesting ; a man 
 talking about himself, like Bunyan in Grace 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 257 
 
 Abounding, but not thinking about himself, is 
 interesting; but a man both talking about him- 
 self and thinking about himself, like , bores 
 
 me horribly. 
 
 We begin our classes on Thursday, but, as far 
 as I can see, will have no first year. Only one 
 man sat the entrance examination. Yesterday 
 I had three Americans calling, anxious to know 
 about climate, Zeppelins, board, etc., before they 
 determined whether they would take a session 
 here, in Edinburgh, or in Cambridge. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 December 16, 1916. 
 
 I am sending you the enclosed at the request 
 of Forrest. He is disappointed that so little 
 notice has been taken of MacEwen, especially 
 perhaps by old Free Church people, and he 
 was particularly annoyed that when I spoke 
 of him in our Presbytery on the lines of the 
 enclosed, the Herald cut down its report of 
 the Presbytery so severely that MacEwen was 
 not even mentioned. I feel myself that it is 
 rather belated, and that the British Weekly has 
 not ignored him ; but if you could get it into the 
 Scottish part next week — in the report of our 
 Presbytery to which there is sure to be some 
 reference — it would please my warm-hearted 
 colleague, to whom I have become much attached. 
 
 R 
 
258 LETTERS OF 
 
 When one thinks of the political and military 
 events of the last fortnight, it is easy to under- 
 stand that the public interest will not easily be 
 diverted to news of this kind. 
 
 I hope, now that he is in the highest place, Lloyd 
 George will have the physique as well as the rarer 
 qualities it demands. Ever since he had that 
 long break over his voice, it has been easy to 
 have misgivings about his strength ; and though 
 the strain of the last months and years must have 
 been tremendous, I must say I felt anxious when 
 I heard of his beginning his new task, and such 
 a task, with an illness. As far as I can hear, he 
 seems to have universal good- will ; and if it was 
 inevitable to dispense with Asquith, it is obvious 
 on reflection that there was no way of dispensing 
 with him that would not hurt his feelings. A 
 widely diffused feeling that everybody in the 
 country was more deeply concerned about the 
 war than the Government was the real power 
 which upset the Asquith Cabinet, and any 
 Government which leads can count on support. 
 I hope you are keeping up to the mark yourself. 
 I have had an unusual amount of Central Fund 
 meetings and correspondence, and am thankful 
 the holidays are at hand to get a few clear days 
 to bestow on my Cunningham Lectures. 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 259 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 December 25, 1916. 
 
 I am doubly obliged to you for printing what 
 I said about MacEwen— it pleased his wife 
 and sister as well as Forrest — and for giving 
 space to the Central Fund. Yesterday was the 
 day when most of the churches were specially 
 contributing to it, but of course there is no 
 knowledge yet of how it has gone. I am hope- 
 ful, but prepared to be disappointed ; I suppose 
 you know that unbelieving frame of mind. There 
 is a great deal of sympathy, especially among 
 better-off people, and, after all one's pains, an 
 immense amount of unintelligence, indifference, 
 and suspicion : but on the whole, I expect we 
 shall sensibly improve. I know of two ministers, 
 both United Presbyterians, one of whom gave 
 £30 and the other £50, but it does not seem to 
 make the least impression on their congregations. 
 An active conscience about such things is com- 
 paratively rare. 
 
 We had our hopes raised here about Prohibition 
 lately, but I see the Board of Control have issued 
 a new set of their imbecile regulations about the 
 hours during which the public-houses may be 
 opened, and between that and the proroguing of 
 Parliament till February 7, it looks as if it might 
 be long enough ere anything was done. Person- 
 ally I am quite convinced that if we cannot get a 
 Government with the moral courage to suppress 
 
260 LETTERS OF 
 
 this evil in spite of the Amalgamated Society of 
 Engineers, or those who claim to speak for them, 
 we cannot get a Government which will win the 
 war. The present policy is a deliberate nursing 
 of inefficiency, and if anybody says that ineffi- 
 ciency is negligible he is a paid liar. I don't 
 want anything from the Control Board, but a 
 Government with the sense and the courage to 
 say, 'This must stop.' And it is not stopping 
 here — nothing like it. 
 
 15 Lily bank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 January 14, 1917. 
 
 This is a thing about which I feel very strongly, 
 and I have written as I feel. The lapse of the 
 Spectator and the Westminster fills me with dismay, 
 and I am truly glad you are sticking to your 
 guns. The need for prohibition is as urgent as 
 ever, and the futility of everything but pro- 
 hibition was demonstrated again, if any de- 
 monstration was needed, by the incredible scenes 
 in one of the best streets in Glasgow at the New 
 Year — long queues of women blocking the street 
 to get access to a public-house in which whisky 
 was said to be sold a little cheaper than elsewhere, 
 and that, too, day after day. It sickens me to 
 think of it, and the only thing I can imagine more 
 contemptible is the Pharisaic imbecility which 
 thinks that State purchase would cure it. But 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 261 
 
 this is the Sabbath day, and though I believe I 
 do well to be angry, I don't want to curse and 
 swear. 
 
 You are a little hard, I think, on the Churches 
 for doing nothing ; at least I know a good many 
 ministers who are doing what they can. I am 
 going to a prohibition meeting at Kilmarnock 
 on Friday, and to another in Bearsden next 
 Wednesday, and whatever the Government may 
 know or be ignorant of, there is no doubt that 
 Scotland is united and sound on the question. 
 
 George Smith is staying with me to-night : 
 I should have gone to hear him preach, but had 
 no other time to do the article. He looks well 
 and in good spirits. 
 
 15 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, W., 
 January 25, 1917. 
 
 I was truly sorry to hear you had been so 
 long ill, and so seriously. I hope your stay at 
 Bournemouth will do you good. The winter 
 has been terribly long and dreary here — not 
 so very cold but extraordinarily and persistently 
 wet — and I have not been out of Glasgow 
 since the first week of September either. I 
 like your idea that when you give me a fort- 
 night's notice I have a fortnight in which to 
 write an article : but I will do something all the 
 same. Perhaps not on Temperance this time : 
 
262 LETTERS OF 
 
 Lord Devonport, after a lot of trifling, has hit the 
 nail on the head in grasping the idea that it is a 
 case of Bread versus Beer, and though he has not 
 driven it in to the head, he may live to be obliged 
 to do so. I have an impression the Government 
 are getting scared about the dimensions of pur- 
 chase as they go past generalities and face the 
 details, and I do not think it would take much 
 to intimidate them out of it entirely — though the 
 granting of prohibition is another matter. But 
 the indirect intention of prohibition on the line 
 entered on by the Food Controller has advantages 
 of its own, even compared with a direct shutting 
 of the shops, and I am inclined to hope for most 
 from it. It is just treating the publican trade 
 as every other unnecessary — we don't even need 
 to say pernicious — trade is treated. 
 
 Garelochhead, 
 March 25, 1917. 
 
 I am sorry it is only now possible for me 
 to acknowledge your kind letter of the 3rd. 
 We came here on Thursday, and I am count- 
 ing on the open air, which I had not breathed 
 for seven weeks or so, to set me up again. 
 I don't know what was wrong with me : I 
 just collapsed suddenly and completely like 
 the one-hoss shay in O. W. Holmes, and I have 
 spent all these weeks in painfully gathering 
 
PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY 263 
 
 myself in bits out of the debris. I am past 
 the point of despair now, but when I shall 
 be able to do any kind of work with body or 
 brain I cannot foresee. I have been a little 
 astonished at the people who condoled with me 
 on having to postpone the Cunningham Lectures. 
 The things I am sore at being unable to help at 
 are the Temperance Cause and the Central Fund. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Acton, Lord, 181. 
 
 Adam, Prof. David, 5. 
 
 Adam, James, 114. 
 
 Aird, Dr., 25. 
 
 Allan, Charles, 253. 
 
 Angell, Norman, 222. 
 
 Anni Domini, 145. 
 
 Arnold, Prof. T. W., 222. 
 
 Asquith, Rt. Hon. H. H., 196, 
 
 254, 258. 
 Atonement and the Modern Mind, 
 
 The, 37, 170. 
 Atonement in Literature and Life, 
 
 The, Din6more's, 88. 
 Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 
 
 The, 38. 
 
 Bacon, Dr. B. W., 96, 97, 157- 
 
 158, 177, 183. 
 Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J., 28, 56, 
 
 161, 247. 
 
 of Burleigh, Lord, 51, 143. 
 
 Barbour, Dr. G. Freeland, I'J-i, 
 
 248. 
 Barr, Rev. James, 202. 
 Beautiful Thing that has happened 
 
 to our Boys, The, 253. 
 Bell, iMiss Gertrude, 150. 
 Bernard, Rt. Rev. Dr. J. H., 212. 
 Bible Studies, Deissmaun's, 55. 
 Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine, 192. 
 Black, Dr. J. S., 23. 
 Blaikie, Prof. Garden, 10. 
 Blewett, Prof. G. J., 205. 
 Bookman, The, 10, 14, 
 
 Bookman's Letters, A, 228. 
 Bowie, Mr. William, xiii. 
 Bowne, Borden Parker, 145. 
 British Monthly, 17, 19. 
 British Weekly, vii, viii, xxiv, 7, 
 
 II, 12, 14, 16, 23, 24, 28, 29, 
 41, 45, 49, 56, 67, 58, 63, 64, 
 69, 71, 72, 73, 83, 84, 85, 97, 
 
 III, 114, 119, 122, 126, 128, 
 132, 133, 135, 140, 144, 179, 
 181, 184, 189, 204, 208, 213, 
 218, 222, 223, 224, 233, 244, 
 257. 
 
 Brooke, Rev. Stopford, 10. 
 Brown, Prof. Adams, 93. 
 Bruce, Prof. A. B., xv, 6. 
 Brunetiere, F., 160, 161. 
 Burkitt, Prof. F. C, 134, 153. 
 Bury, Prof. J. B., 198, 202, 209. 
 
 Caine, Hall, 11. 
 
 Caird, Prof. Edward, xiv. 
 
 Cairns, Prof. D. S., 123, 178. 
 
 Cambridge History of English Litera- 
 ture, The, 228. 
 
 Campbell, Rev. R. J., 79, 85-86, 
 87, 107, 148. 
 
 Campbell- Bannerman, Rt. Hon. 
 Sir H., 41, 94. 
 
 Can we still he Christians? 236. 
 
 Candlish, Prof. J. S., xv, 4, 10. 
 
 Cardinal Vaughan, Life of , 157. 
 
 Carpenter, Dr. J. Estlin, 17!'. 
 
 Carroll, Dr. J. S., 30. 
 
 266 
 
266 LETTERS OF PRINCIPAL DENNEY 
 
 Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. Joseph, 
 
 28, 35, 69. 
 Cheyne, Dr. T. K., 23. 
 Christ on Parnassus, 185. 
 Christian Certainty, The, 165. 
 Christian Doctrine of Salvation, 
 
 The, 60. 
 Christian Freedom, 244. 
 Christian View of the World, The, 
 
 205. 
 Christologies , Ancient and Modern, 
 
 154. 
 Christus Futurus, 95. 
 Church and the World in Idea and 
 
 in History, The, 173. 
 Church's One Foundation, The, 
 
 23. 
 Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston, 
 
 112, 236, 251. 
 Churchman, The, 133. 
 Clarissa, 180. 
 Clark, John, 13. 
 'Claudius Clear/ 16, 61, 94, 120, 
 
 256. 
 Clow, Prof. W. M., xiv. 
 Conway, Mrs. Moncure, 193. 
 Corinthians, Commentary on Second 
 
 Epistle to the, xvi, 1, 3. 
 Creed in the Pulpit, The, 208. 
 Curtiss, Prof., 6. 
 
 Dale, Dr. R. W., xx, 12-13, 27, 
 
 189. 
 Bale, Dr. R. W., Life of 12. 
 Dale as a Churchman, Dr., 13. 
 Darlow, Rev. T. H., 10. 
 David Copperfield, 180. 
 Davidson, John, xiii, 87. 
 Day-book of Claudius Clear, The, 
 
 61. 
 Death of Christ, The, xvii, 26, 32, 
 
 170. 
 Deissmann, Prof. A., 56, 213. 
 Delectable Duchy, The, xix. 
 Delitzsch, Prof., 5. 
 
 Denney, Mrs., xxxix, 25, 68, 75, 
 104. 
 
 Devonport, Lord, 262. 
 
 Devonshire, Duke of, 42. 
 
 Dictionary, Hastings', 115. 
 
 Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, 
 76. 
 
 Dixon, Dr., 169. 
 
 Doctrine of the Atonement, The, 
 255. 
 
 Doctrine of the Trinity Apolo- 
 getically Considered, The, 101. 
 
 Dods, Dr. Marcus, 45, 71, 72, 
 135, 162, 168-169. 
 
 Dostoevsky, F., 31. 
 
 Driver, Dr. S. R., 183. 
 
 Du Bose, Dr. W. Porcher, 91, 92, 
 93, 117. 
 
 Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, The, 
 
 186. 
 Ecce Homo, 221. 
 Edwin Drood, 208. 
 Encyclopedia Britannica, 174. 
 Eschatology of the Gospels, The, 
 
 161. 
 Esmond, 180. 
 Eternal Life, Baron von Hugel's, 
 
 216. 
 Eucken, Prof. R., 236. 
 Exiles of Eternity, 30. 
 Expositor, 1, 24, 31, 32, 53, 80, 
 
 95, 96, 97, 108, 113, 117, 132, 
 
 162, 163, 167, 174, 175, 178, 
 
 179, 180, 208, 246, 249. 
 Expositor's Bible, vii, xvi, 1. 
 Expositor's Greek Testament, vii, 
 
 xvii, 162, 164. 
 Expository Times, 63. 
 
 Fair Maid of Perth, The, 158. 
 Fairbairn, Dr. A. M., 4, 27, 125, 
 
 126. 
 Fairweather, Dr., 247. 
 Ferrero, Guglielmo, 119, 134. 
 
INDEX 
 
 267 
 
 Findlay, Prof. G. G., 137, 182. 
 Five Great Philosophies of Life, 
 
 The, 191. 
 Flint, Prof., 49. 
 Ford, Gerard, 221. 
 Foreign Biblical Library, The, vii. 
 Forrest, Prof. D. W., 257, 259. 
 Forsyth, Dr. P. T., 11, 97, 98, 
 
 100, 118, 122, 123, 162, 163, 
 
 105, 175, 185, 212. 
 Fortunes of Nigel, The, 158. 
 Foundations, 213. 
 Fourth Gospel in Research and 
 
 Debate, The, 157. 
 Frazer, Sir J. G., 155, 159, 178, 
 
 206, 232, 234. 
 
 Galloway, Dr. George, 149. 
 Gardner, Percy, 44. 
 Garvie, Dr. A. E., 101,165. 
 George, Right Hon. D. Lloyd, 
 
 82,230, 238, 246, 251, 258. 
 Glasgow Herald, 203, 206, 247, 
 
 257. 
 Golden Bough, The, 178, 206, 234. 
 Gore, Bishop, 106-107, 242, 249. 
 Gtospel according to St. Paul, The, 
 
 92. 
 Gould, Rev. S. Baring, 11. 
 (•'race Abounding, 256-257. 
 Grant, Rev. A. D., 233. 
 Gratry, Pere, 160, 161. 
 Greatness and Decline of Rome, 
 
 The, 119, 134. 
 Gregory, Dr. C. R., 182. 
 Grieve, Dr., 55. 
 Guthrie, Lord, 49. 
 Gwatkin, Prof., xxvi, 242. 
 
 Haldane, Right Hon. Viscount, 
 
 161, 164. 
 Handbook oj the Modern Grrtk 
 
 Vernacular, 202. 
 Hamack, Prof., A., 39, 44, 53, 
 
 76, 237. 
 
 Hastie, Dr., 49. 
 
 Hastings, Dr. James, 62, 108. 
 
 Hawkins, Sir John C, 150. 
 
 Henderson, Principal, 238. 
 
 Henson, Dr. Hensley, 133, 208. 
 
 Hibbert Journal, 148. 
 
 Hislop, Professor, 75, 131. 
 
 Historical Evidence for the Resur- 
 rection of Jesus Christ, 100. 
 
 Historical Jesus, and the Theologi- 
 cal Christ, The, 179. 
 
 History of Epic Poetry, A, 13. 
 
 History of the Church in Scotland, 
 A, 229. 
 
 History of the Development of 
 Thought and Emotion in the 
 Middle Ages, 181. 
 
 History oj' the Eastern Roman 
 Empire, 202. 
 
 History of the Reformation, 64, 
 229. 
 
 Hobhouse, Canon, 173. 
 
 Hoffding, Prof. H., 252. 
 
 Holy Father and the Living Christ, 
 The, 11. 
 
 Holy Spirit m Faith and Expe- 
 rience, The, 195. 
 
 Homiletic Review, 172. 
 
 Horce Synoptica-, 150. 
 
 Home, Rev. C. Silvester, 47. 
 
 Howie, Dr. Robert, 59. 
 
 Humphries, Prof. A. Lewis, 
 195. 
 
 Hyde, William De Witt, 191. 
 
 Wad, The, 142. 
 
 Illingworth, Dr. J. R., 101. 
 
 In Dickens Street, 193. 
 
 In Patria, 30. 
 
 Ivanhoe, 158. 
 
 Iverach, Prof. James, 35. 
 
 Jebb, Prof., xiv, 232. 
 
 Jerusalem, 114. 
 
 Jesus: Seven (Questions, 120. 
 
268 LETTERS OF PRINCIPAL DENNEY 
 
 Jesus and the Gospel, xvii, xx, 
 
 126, 170. 
 Joffre, Marshal, 251. 
 Jones, Prof. Sir Henry, 78, 82, 
 
 148, 149. 
 
 Dr. J. D., 47. 
 
 Journal of Hellenic Studies, 232. 
 Journal oj Theological Studies, 
 
 212. 
 Jiilicher, Dr. A., 44, 98. 
 
 Kelman, Dr. John, 82. 
 
 Kenilworth, 158. 
 
 Kennedy, Prof. H. A. A., 58, 
 
 233. 
 Ketler, Dr., 159. 
 Kilpatrick, Prof., 58. 
 Kipling, Rudyard, 87- 
 Kitchener, Lord, 251. 
 Knight, Rev. Frank, 246. 
 
 Lake, Prof. Kirsopp, 100-101, 
 
 186, 218. 
 Lang, Andrew, 229. 
 Lathbury, D. G., 219. 
 Law, Right Hon. A. Bonar, 247, 
 
 254. 
 Lee, Rev. Alex., 240, 244. 
 Letters to the Seven Churches of 
 
 Asia, 53. 
 Lindsay, Lady Mabel, 145. 
 Principal T. M., xv, xviii, 
 
 xxii, 62, 64, 229, 247. 
 Lives of the Poets, 146. 
 Lock, Prof. Walter, 4. 
 Lockwood, Sir Frank, 192. 
 Lodge, Sir Oliver, 83-84, 85, 87, 
 
 107. 
 Loisy, Abbe, 39, 44, 53, 97, 110, 
 
 111, 113, 250. 
 London Quarterly Review, 46. 
 London Theological Studies, 195. 
 Love's Long Campaign, 234. 
 Lux Mundi, 101. 
 
 Macaulay, Prof. A. B., 212. 
 MacEwen, Prof. A. R., 34, 45, 
 
 228-229, 248, 257, 259. 
 Macfadven, Rev. Dugald, 58, 
 
 175. 
 Macgregor, Dr. W. M., 244. 
 M'Kenna, Right. Hon. R,, 113. 
 Mackennal, Dr., 58-59. 
 Mackintosh, Prof. H. R., 96, 
 
 132. 
 Maclaren, Dr., 171, 181, 187. 
 McNeile, Dr. A. N., 249, 250. 
 Macpherson, Rev. John, 10. 
 Mansel, Dean, 17. 
 Margoliouth, Prof., 185. 
 Martin, Dr. Alex., 10. 
 
 Rev. Benjamin, 202. 
 
 Milligan, Prof., 167, 178. 
 Miracles in the New Testament, 
 
 176, 177. 
 Missions in State and Church, 
 
 118. 
 Moffatt, Prof. James, xvi, xix, 
 
 xxiii, rxvi, 23, 71, 72, 76, 122, 
 
 123, 143, 162, 175, 176, 182, 
 
 183, 229, 247, 248, 253. 
 Montefiore, C. G., 152. 
 Moody, Rev. Campbell N., 234. 
 
 Paul, 57. 
 
 Morgan, Rev. G. Campbell, 57. 
 Morning Watch, 21-22, 25. 
 Moulton, Prof. J. H., 221. 
 Mozley, Rev. J. K., 255. 
 Muir, Dr., 132. 
 
 Rev. William, 151. 
 
 Myers, F. W. H., 154. 
 
 Mystery of Edwin Brood, The, 211. 
 
 New Socialism, The, 112. 
 New Theology, The, 85, 86-87. 
 New Theology and the Old Religion, 
 
 The, 106. 
 Nicholas Nichleby, 143. 
 Nolloth, C. F., 120. 
 Nordau, Max, 31. 
 
INDEX 
 
 269 
 
 Oman, Dr. John, 75, 178. 
 
 Origin of Species, The, 39. 
 
 Orr, Dr. James, xviii, 16, 2(5, 42- 
 43, 44, 45-46, 47, 48, 52, 54, 
 59, 62, 63, 68, 70-71, 108, 119, 
 168, 203, 207, 218, 219. 
 
 Othello, 256. 
 
 Pankhurst, Mrs., 183, 187. 
 
 Paterson, Prof. J. A., 202. 
 
 Prof. W. P., 88, 197, 199. 
 
 Patrick, Dr., 184. 
 
 Paul and his Interpreters, 213. 
 
 Peake, Prof. A. S., 37. 
 
 Person of our Lord and Recent 
 Thought, The, 120. 
 
 Philip, Rev. A., 19. 
 
 Philosophical Study of Christian 
 Ethics, A, 194. 
 
 Positive Preaching and Modern 
 Mind, 97. 
 
 Preaching of Islam , The, 222. 
 
 Principles of Religious Develop- 
 ment, The, 149. 
 
 Prisoners of Hope, 30. 
 
 Pro Christo et Ecclesia, 95. 
 
 Problems oj Faith and Freedom in 
 the Last Two Centuries, 75. 
 
 (J_uiller-C'ouch, Sir A., xix. 
 
 Rainy, Principal, 49, 77, 104, 145, 
 
 168. 
 Ramblers, The, 146. 
 R«msay, Sir William, 53, 76, 150, 
 
 159, 182. 
 Rashdall, Ur. H., 1. 
 Rasselas, 14(i. 
 Realm of Ends, The : or Pluralism 
 
 a) id Theism, 190. 
 Reich, Dr. Emil, 56. 
 Reith, Dr., 245, 2W. 
 Religion in an Age of Doubt, 235. 
 Religious Liberty, 209. 
 Religious Teachers of Greece, 114. 
 
 Renascence of Faith, The, 196. 
 
 Ritschl, A., 1, 3. 
 
 Rob Roy, 158. 
 
 Roherts, Richard, 196. 
 
 Romans, Commentary on Epistle to, 
 
 xvii, 2. 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, 134. 
 Rosebery, Lord, 140, 146, 155, 
 
 180. 
 Ruffini, Prof. Francesco, 209, 211. 
 
 St. Asaph, Bishop of, 113. 
 
 St. Paul: A Study in Social and 
 
 Religious History, 213. 
 St. Paul and the Mystery Religions, 
 
 233. 
 St. Paul's Fight for Galatia, 236. 
 Salisbury, Lord, 9. 
 Sanday, Dr. William, 92, 103, 
 
 153, 154, 156, 174. 
 Sartor Resartus, xxxix. 
 Scapegoat, The, 232. 
 Schiifer, Sir Edward A., 206. 
 Schmiedel, Dr. P. W., xxxiv, 19- 
 
 20, 22-23, 99, 100, 250. 
 Schweitzer, Dr. A., 152, 213. 
 Scott, Rev. J. M., 155. 
 Scotsman, The, (55, 211. 
 Scottish Review, 108. 
 Serious Call, Law's, 5. 
 Shebbeare, Rev. C, 235. 
 Simpson, Dr. P. Carnegie, 45, 77, 
 
 94, 145, 172, 202. 
 Sin as a Problem of To-day, 168. 
 Smith, Prof. David, 137, 160. 
 Sir George Adam, xviii, 26, 
 
 33, 34, 62, 75, 77, 78, 82, 109, 
 
 114, 115, 116, 119, 143, 147-148, 
 
 162, 167, 173, 188, 229, 261. 
 
 George, 219. 
 
 Snead-Cox, J. G., 157. 
 Soteriology of the New Testament, 
 
 91. 
 Souter, Prof. A., 182-183, 242. 
 Spectator, 110, 146, 260. 
 
270 LETTERS OF PRINCIPAL DENNEY 
 
 Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, 
 
 206. 
 Spurgeon, Rev. C. H., xvi, 214- 
 
 215. 
 Stead, W. T., 224. 
 Stevens, Dr. G. B., 60, 63. 
 Struthers, Rev. J. P., xxxvii, 21. 
 Studies in Christianity, Bowne's, 
 
 145. 
 Studies in the Inner Life of Jesus, 
 
 101. 
 Studies in Theology, xvii, xx, 5, 
 
 24. 
 Studies on the Synoptic Problem, 
 
 174. 
 Study of the Criminal, Dr. Dixon's, 
 
 169. 
 Substance of Faith allied with 
 
 Science, The, 83. 
 Synoptic Gospels, The, 152. 
 
 Taylor, Henry Osborn, 181. 
 
 Dr. Ross, 45. 
 
 Temple, Canon W., 213. 
 
 Theism and Humanism : Gifford 
 
 Lectures, 252. 
 Theology of the Reformed Church, 
 
 The, 4Q. 
 Thessalonians, Commentary »n 
 
 Epistles to the, xvi. 
 Thompson, Rev. J. M., 176, 177. 
 Thomson, Charles, 188. 
 
 Rev. W. R., 193-194. 
 
 Thousand and One Churches, The, 
 
 150. 
 Thumb, Prof. Albert, 198, 202. 
 Times, The, 133. 
 Tolstoy, Count, 31. 
 
 Trial of Jesus, Rosadi's, 64, 56. 
 Troy Town, xix. 
 Truth in Religion, 175. 
 
 Union Magazine, 16, 22, 25, 26, 
 33, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 51, 
 64, 55, 65, 68-69, 71, 106. 
 
 United Free Church Record, 223. 
 
 United Presbyterian Magazine, 16. 
 
 Vanity Fair, 180. 
 
 Veitch, Prof., xv. 
 
 von Dobschiitz, Dr. E., 161. 
 
 von Hiigel, Baron F., 216-217. 
 
 Walker, Rev. Dr. Dawson, 121. 
 Wallace, Dr. William, 78. 
 
 Miss, 33. 
 
 Ward, Dr. James, 190. 
 Warschauer, Dr. J., 120. 
 Watkins, Rev. C. H., 236, 237. 
 Watson, Dr. John, 93. 
 Watt, Prof., 247. 
 
 Way Everlasting, The, xvii, 187. 
 Weiss, J., 237. 
 Welch, Prof. A., 34, 188. 
 Wellhausen, Julius, 221. 
 Wernle, Paul, 127, 179. 
 
 Westminster Gazette, 260. 
 
 Review, 216. 
 
 Whyte, Dr. Alex. , 82. 
 
 Wilhelm Meister, 142-143. 
 Wilson, Dr. J. M., 255. 
 
 Word of the Cross, The, 212. 
 
 Work of Christ, The, 165. 
 
 York, Archbishop of, 212. 
 Younger, Sir George, 247. 
 
 Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. Constable Ltd. 
 at the Edinburgh University Press 
 
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