LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY Of 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN WEGO 
 
 
 (l|nrl*5 (S0toctrh Jftrift.
 
 u
 
 THE LIFE OF HENRY DRUMMOND
 
 THE LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE ADAM SMITH 
 
 WITH PORTRAIT 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DOUBLEDAY & McCLURE COMPANY 
 1898
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY 
 DOUBLEDAY & McCLURE COMPANY. 
 
 NortaontJ 
 J. 8. Cnihing fc Co. Berwick & Smith 
 Norwood Man. U.S.A.
 
 Co $ts JHotfjer
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IN the preparation of this volume I have received 
 generous help from many friends, who have placed 
 at my disposal their memories of Henry Drummond 
 and their collections of his letters; or who have 
 further assisted by their counsel on points of diffi- 
 culty, and by their careful revision of several of the 
 chapters. I am especially indebted to Mr. James 
 Drummond, who arranged his brother's papers and 
 furnished many details of information. 
 
 As to the letters which are quoted in the volume, 
 I have to explain that the names of those to whom 
 they were addressed have been given, for the most 
 part, only where this was rendered necessary by the 
 allusions which the letters contain. 
 
 In a life so crowded with interests and activities, 
 some facts have doubtless been overlooked. A few 
 of these, which appeared too late to be put in their 
 proper chapters, have been gathered together in an 
 Appendix. 
 
 In the quoted material the round marks of paren- 
 thesis and their contents belong to the original; 
 what is enclosed in square brackets has been added. 
 
 COILLEBHROCHAIN, PERTHSHIRE, 
 
 September, 1898.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 MM 
 
 AS WE KNEW HIM , . I 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 SCHOOL AND COLLEGE l8 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PREPARATION FOR THE MINISTRY 39 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE GREAT MISSION. 1873-1875 58 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 BACK TO COLLEGE 109 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 SCIENCE AND RELIGION . 1877-1883 129 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 DIARIES OF TRAVEL. I. THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS . . . .165 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 DIARIES OF TRAVEL. II. EAST CENTRAL AFRICA. . . . 190 
 
 be
 
 X CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PACK 
 
 THE FAME OF NATURAL LAW 228 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 EVOLUTION AND REVELATION 244 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 1884-1890 264 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE STUDENT MOVEMENT, 1884-1894 318 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE AMERICAN COLLEGES 1887 368 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 AUSTRALIA AND THE AUSTRALIAN COLLEGES 1890 . . . 386 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 DIARIES OF TRAVEL. III. THE NEW HEBRIDES .... 4O2 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 1891-1894 ... ... 439 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE ASCENT OF MAN 458 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 BOYS AND THE BOYS' BRIGADE 473
 
 CONTENTS XI 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE END 496 
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 ADDRESSES TO THE STUDENTS OF EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY IN JAN- 
 UARY, FEBRUARY, AND MARCH, 1890 503 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 ADDENDA 533 
 
 INDEX . 535
 
 ' . . . By a fine gentleman, I mean a man completely qualified as well 
 for the service and good, as for the ornament and delight, of society. 
 When I consider the frame of mind peculiar to a gentleman, I suppose it 
 graced with all the dignity and elevation of spirit that human nature is 
 capable of. To this I would have joined a clear understanding, a reason 
 free from prejudice, a steady judgment, and an extensive knowledge. 
 When I think of the heart of a gentleman, I imagine it firm and intrepid, 
 void of all inordinate passions, and full of tenderness, compassion, and 
 benevolence. When I view the fine gentleman with regard to his man- 
 ners, methinks I see him modest without bashfulness, frank and affable 
 without impertinence, obliging and complaisant without servility, cheerful 
 and in good humour without noise. These amiable qualities are not easily 
 obtained, neither are there many men that have a genius to excel this way. 
 A finished gentleman is perhaps the most uncommon of all the great 
 characters in life. Besides the natural endowments with which this dis- 
 tinguished man is to be born, he must run through a long series of educa- 
 tion. Before he makes his appearance and shines in the world, he must 
 be principled in religion, instructed in all the moral virtues, and led through 
 the whole course of the polite arts and sciences. He should be no stranger 
 to courts and to camps ; he must travel to open his mind, to enlarge his 
 views, to learn the policies and interests of foreign states as well as to 
 fashion and polish himself and to get clear of national prejudices, of which 
 every country has its share. To all these more essential improvements he 
 must not forget to add the fashionable ornaments of life, such as are the 
 languages and the bodily exercises most in vogue ; neither would I have 
 him think even dress itself beneath his notice.' 
 
 xiii
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 AS WE KNEW HIM 
 
 IT is now eighteen months since Henry Drummond 
 died time enough for the fading of those fond extrav- 
 agances into which fresh grief will weave a dead friend's 
 qualities. And yet, I suppose, there are hundreds of 
 men and women, who are still sure and will always 
 be sure that his was the most Christlike life they ever 
 knew. In that belief they are fortified not only by 
 the record of the great influence which God gave him 
 over men, for such is sometimes misleading; but by 
 the testimony of those who worked at his side while 
 he wielded it ; and by the evidence of the friends who 
 knew him longest and who were most intimately ac- 
 quainted with the growth of his character. 
 
 In his brief life we saw him pass through two of 
 the greatest trials to which character can be exposed. 
 We watched him, our fellow-student and not yet 
 twenty-three, surprised by a sudden and a fierce fame. 
 Crowds of men and women in all the great cities of 
 our land hung upon his lips, innumerable lives opened 
 their secrets to him, and made him aware of his power 
 over them. When his first book was published, he, 
 being then about thirty-three, found another world at 
 his feet ; the great of the land thronged him ; his 
 social opportunities were boundless ; and he was urged 
 by the chief statesman of our time to a political career. 
 This is the kind of trial which one has seen wither 
 some of the finest characters, and distract others from
 
 2 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 the simplicity and resolution of their youth. He 
 passed through it unscathed: it neither warped his 
 spirit nor turned him from his accepted vocation as a 
 teacher of religion. 
 
 Again, in the end of his life, he was plunged to the 
 opposite extreme. For two long years he not only 
 suffered weakness and excruciating pain, but what 
 must have been more trying to a spirit like his, 
 accustomed all his manhood to be giving, helping, 
 and leading, he became absolutely dependent upon 
 others. This also he bore unspoiled, and we who had 
 known him from the beginning found him at the end 
 the same humble, unselfish, and cheerful friend whom 
 we loved when we sat together on the benches at 
 college. 
 
 Perhaps the most conspicuous service which Henry 
 Drummond rendered to his generation was to show 
 them a Christianity which was perfectly natural. You 
 met him somewhere, a graceful, well-dressed gentle- 
 man, tall and lithe, with a swing in his walk and a 
 brightness on his face, who seemed to carry no cares, 
 and to know neither presumption nor timidity. You 
 spoke and found him keen for any of a hundred 
 interests. He fished, he shot, he skated as few can, 
 he played cricket ; he would go any distance to see 
 a fire or a football match. He had a new story, a 
 new puzzle, or a new joke every time he met you. 
 Was it on the street? He drew you to watch two 
 message boys meet, grin, knock each other's hats off, 
 lay down their baskets and enjoy a friendly chaffer of 
 marbles. Was it in the train ? He had dredged from 
 the bookstall every paper and magazine that was 
 new to him ; or he would read you a fresh tale of his 
 favourite, Bret Harte. ' Had you seen \htApostle of 
 the Tules ; or Frederic Harrison's article in the Nine-
 
 AS WE KNEW HIM 3 
 
 teenth Century on " Ruskin as a Master of English 
 Prose," or Q's Conspiracy aboard the Midas, or the 
 " Badminton " Cricket ? ' If it was a rainy afternoon 
 in a country house, he described a new game, and 
 in five minutes everybody was in the thick of it. 
 If it was a children's party, they clamoured for his 
 sleight-of-hand. He smoked, he played billiards ; 
 lounging in the sun, he could be the laziest man 
 you ever saw. 
 
 If you were alone with him, he was sure to find out 
 what interested you and listen by the hour. The keen 
 brown eyes got at your heart, and you felt you could 
 speak your best to them. Sometimes you would remem- 
 ber that he was Drummond the evangelist, Drummond 
 the author of books which measured their circulation by 
 scores of thousands. Yet there was no assumption of 
 superiority nor any ambition to gain influence noth- 
 ing but the interest of one healthy human being in 
 another. If the talk slipped among deeper things, he 
 was as untroubled and as unforced as before ; there was 
 never a glimpse of a phylactery nor a smudge of unc- 
 tion about his religion. He was one of the purest, 
 most unselfish, most reverent souls you ever knew, but 
 you would not have called him saint. The name 
 he went by among younger men was ' The Prince ' ; 
 there was a distinction and a radiance upon him that 
 compelled the title. 
 
 That he had ' a genius for friendship ' goes without 
 saying, for he was rich in the humility, the patience, 
 and the powers of trust which such a genius implies. 
 Yet his love had, too, the rarer and more strenuous 
 temper which requires ' the common aspiration,' is 
 jealous for a friend's growth, and has the nerve to 
 criticise. It is the measure of what he felt friendship 
 to be that he has defined religion in the terms of it..
 
 4 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 With such gifts, his friendship came to many men and 
 women women, to all of whom his chivalry and to 
 some his gratitude and admiration were among the 
 most beautiful features of his character. There was 
 but one thing, which any of his friends could have felt 
 as a want others respected it as the height and crown 
 of his friendship and that was this. 
 
 The longer you knew him, the fact which most 
 impressed you was that he seldom talked about him- 
 self, and no matter how deep the talk might go, never 
 about that inner self which for praise or for sympathy 
 is in many men so clamant, and in all more or less 
 perceptible. Through the radiance of his presence 
 and the familiarity of his talk there sometimes stole 
 out, upon those who were becoming his friends, the 
 sense of a great loneliness and silence behind, as when 
 you catch a snow-peak across the summer fragrance 
 and music of a Swiss meadow. For he always kept 
 silence concerning his own religious struggles. He 
 never asked even his most intimate friends for sym- 
 pathy nor seemed to carry any wound, however slight, 
 that needed their fingers for its healing. 
 
 Now many people, seeing his enjoyment of life and 
 apparent freedom from struggle, seeing also that 
 spontaneousness of virtue which distinguished him, 
 have judged that it was easy for the man to be good. 
 He appeared to have few cares in life and no sorrows ; 
 till near the end he never, except in Africa, suffered a 
 day's illness, and had certainly less drudgery than falls 
 to most men of his strength and gifts. So they were 
 apt to take his religion to be mere sunshine and the 
 effect of an unclouded sky. They classed him among 
 those who are born good, who are good in their blood. 
 
 We may admit that, by his birth, Henry Drummond 
 did inherit virtue. Few men who have done good in
 
 AS WE KNEW HIM 5 
 
 the world have not been born to the capacity for it. 
 It takes more than one generation to make a consum- 
 mate individual, and the life that leaps upon the world 
 like a cataract is often fed from some remote and 
 lonely tarn of which the world never hears the name. 
 Henry Drummond's forbears were men who lived a 
 clean and honest life in the open air, who thought 
 seriously, and had a conscience of service to the com- 
 munity. As he inherited from one of them his quick 
 eye for analogies between the physical and the spir- 
 itual laws of God, so it was his parents and grand- 
 parents who earned for him some at least of the ease 
 and winsomeness of his piety. 
 
 But such good fortune exempts no man from a share 
 of that discipline and temptation without which neither 
 character is achieved, nor influence over others. Our 
 friend knew nothing of poverty or of friendlessness ; 
 till his last illness he never suffered pain ; and death 
 did not enter his family till he was thirty-six. And, 
 as we have said, he was seldom overworked. Yet at 
 twenty-two he had laid upon him the responsibility 
 of one of the greatest religious movements of our time, 
 and when that was over there followed a period of 
 uncertainty about his future vocation of which he 
 wrote : ' I do not know what affliction is, but a strange 
 thought comes to me sometimes that " waiting " has 
 the same kind of effect upon one that affliction has.' 
 Nor can we believe that he was spared those fiercer 
 contests which every son of man has to endure upon 
 the battle-field of his own heart. No one who heard 
 his addresses upon Temptation and Sin can doubt that 
 he spoke them from experience. We shall find one 
 record, which he has left behind, of his sense of sin 
 and of the awful peril of character. 
 
 We must look, then, for the secret of his freedom
 
 6 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 from himself in other directions, and I think we find 
 it in two conspicuous features of his life and teaching. 
 
 The first of these was his absorbed interest in 
 others an interest natural to his unselfish temper, 
 but trained and fed by the opportunities of the great 
 mission of his youth, which made him the confidant 
 of so many hundreds of other lives. He had learned 
 the secret of St. Paul not to look upon his own 
 things, but also upon the things of others that sov- 
 ereign way of escape from the self-absorption and 
 panic which temptation so often breeds in the best of 
 characters. No man felt temptation more fiercely, or 
 from the pressure of it has sent up cries of keener 
 agony, than St. Paul, who buffeted his own body and 
 kept it under. But how did he rise above the despair ? 
 By remembering that temptation is common to man, 
 by throwing his heart upon the fight which men were 
 everywhere waging about him, and by forgetting his 
 own fears and temptations in interest and sympathy 
 for others. Such souls are engrossed spectators of 
 the drama of life ; they are purged by its pity, and 
 ennobled by the contemplation of its issues. But a 
 great sense of honour, too, is bred within them, as 
 they spring shoulder to shoulder with so many strug- 
 gling comrades a sense of honour that lifts them 
 free of the baser temptations and they are too inter- 
 ested in the fate of their fellows, and too busy with 
 the salvation of others, to brood or grow morbid about 
 themselves. Of such was our friend. 
 
 But Drummond had been taught another secret of 
 the Apostle. St. Paul everywhere links our life in 
 Christ to the great cosmic processes. For by Him 
 were all things created, that are in heaven, and that 
 are in earth, visible and invisible ; all things were cre- 
 ated by Him and for Him . . . and ye are complete
 
 AS WE KNEW HIM 7 
 
 in Him who is the head of every principle and potency. 
 To Henry Drummond Christianity was the crown of 
 the evolution of the whole universe. The drama 
 which absorbed him is upon a stage infinitely wider 
 than the moral life of man. The soul in its battle 
 against evil, in its service for Christ, is no accident 
 nor exception, thrown upon a world all hostile to its 
 feeble spirit. But the forces it represents are the 
 primal forces of the Universe ; the great laws which 
 modern science has unveiled sweeping through life 
 from the beginning work upon the side of the man 
 who seeks the things that are above. I think it is 
 in this belief, informed by a wide knowledge of sci- 
 ence, but still more indebted to an original vision of 
 nature, that, at least in part, we find the secret of the 
 serenity, the healthy objectiveness, and the courage 
 of Henry Drummond's faith. 
 
 It was certainly on such grounds that in the prime 
 of his teaching he sought to win the reason of men 
 for religion. This was always his first aim. He had 
 an ill-will one might say a horror at rousing the 
 emotions before he had secured the conviction of 
 the intellect. I do not mean that he was a logician, 
 for his logic witness the introduction to his first 
 book was often his weak point. But he always 
 began by the presentation of facts, by the unfolding 
 of laws, and trust in these and obedience to them was, 
 in his teaching, religion. He felt that they lay open 
 to the common sense and natural conscience of man. 
 Those were blind or fools who did not follow them. 
 Yet he never thought of these laws as impersonal, for 
 the greatest were love and the will that men should 
 be holy, and he spoke of their power and of their 
 tenderness as they who sing, Underneath are the 
 everlasting arms. He had an open vision of love
 
 8 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 wrought into the very foundation of the world ; all 
 along the evolution of life he saw that the will of 
 God was our sanctification. 
 
 In these two, then, his interest in other men and 
 his trust in the great laws of the universe, we find 
 the double secret of that detachment that distance 
 from self at which he always seemed to stand. 
 
 But we should greatly mistake the man and his 
 teaching if we did not perceive that the source and 
 the return of all his interest in men and of all his 
 trust in God was Jesus Christ. Of this his own 
 words are most eloquent : 
 
 ' The power to set the heart right, to renew the 
 springs of action, comes from Christ. The sense 
 of the infinite worth of the single soul, and the 
 recoverableness of a man at his worst, are the 
 gifts of Christ. 
 
 ' The freedom from guilt, the forgiveness of sins, 
 come from Christ's cross; the hope of immor- 
 tality springs from Christ's grave. Personal 
 conversion means for life a personal religion, a 
 personal trust in God, a personal debt to Christ, 
 a personal dedication to His cause. These, 
 brought about how you will, are supreme things 
 to aim at, supreme losses if they are missed.' 
 
 That was the conclusion of all his doctrine. There 
 was no word of Christ's more often upon his lips than 
 this : 'Abide in Me and I in you, for without Me ye 
 can do nothing' 
 
 The preceding paragraphs have passed impercep- 
 tibly from the man himself to his teaching. And this 
 is right, for with Henry Drummond the two were one. 
 So far as it be possible in any human being, in him
 
 AS WE KNEW HIM 9 
 
 they were without contradiction or discrepancy. He 
 never talked beyond his experience ; in action he 
 never seemed to fall behind his faith. Mr. Moody, 
 who has had as much opportunity as perhaps any man 
 of our generation in the study of character, especially 
 among religious people, has said : ' No words of mine 
 can better describe his life or character than those in 
 which he has presented to us The Greatest Thing 
 in the World. Some men take an occasional journey 
 into the thirteenth of First Corinthians, but Henry 
 Drummond was a man who lived there constantly, 
 appropriating its blessings and exemplifying its teach- 
 ings. As you read what he terms the analysis of 
 love, you find that all its ingredients were interwoven 
 into his daily life, making him one of the most lov- 
 able men I have ever known. Was it courtesy you 
 looked for, he was a perfect gentleman. Was it kind- 
 ness, he was always preferring another. Was it hu- 
 mility, he was simple and not courting favour. It could 
 be said of him truthfully, as it was said of the early 
 apostles, " that men took knowledge of him that he 
 had been with Jesus." Nor was this love and kindness 
 only shown to those who were close friends. His face 
 was an index to his inner life. It was genial and 
 kind, and made him, like his Master, a favourite with 
 children. . . . Never have I known a man who, in 
 my opinion, lived nearer the Master or sought to do 
 His will more fully.' * And again : ' No man has ever 
 been with me for any length of time that I did not 
 see something that was unlike Christ, and I often see 
 it in myself, but not in Henry Drummond. All the 
 time we were together he was a Christlike man and 
 often a rebuke to me.' 2 
 
 1 Record of Christian Work, May, 1897, p. 129. 
 * Letter to the Rev. James Stalker, D.D.
 
 IO HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 With this testimony let us take that of Sir Archi- 
 bald Geikie, D.C.L., F.R.S., the Director-General of the 
 Geological Survey of the United Kingdom. When he 
 became the first Professor of Geology in Edinburgh, 
 Drummond was his first student. They travelled to- 
 gether in Great Britain, and on a geological expedition 
 to the Rocky Mountains, 1 and in later years they 
 met at intervals. Sir Archibald had therefore every 
 opportunity of judging his friend's character, and this 
 is what he writes of him. It is in continuation of 
 some reminiscences which will be quoted later : 
 
 ' In later years, having resigned my Professorship 
 for an appointment in London, I met him much more 
 seldom. But he came to see me from time to time, 
 always the same gentle and kindly being. His success 
 never spoiled him in the very least degree. It was no 
 small matter to be able to preserve his simplicity and 
 frankness amidst so much that might have fostered 
 vanity and insincerity in a less noble nature than his. 
 I have never met with a man in whom transparent 
 integrity, high moral purpose, sweetness of disposi- 
 tion, and exuberant helpfulness were more happily 
 combined with wide culture, poetic imagination, and 
 scientific sympathies than they were in Henry Drum- 
 mond. Most deeply do I grieve over his early death.' 
 
 Now there was one portion of Christ's spirit and 
 Christ's burden which those who observed Henry 
 Drummond only in his cheerful intercourse with men, 
 upon the ways of the world, would perhaps deem it 
 impossible that he should have shared. His first re- 
 ligious ministry was neither of books, nor of public 
 speech. As we shall see, soon after he had read to 
 his fellow-students his paper on ' Spiritual Diagnosis,' 
 in which he blamed the lack of personal dealing as the 
 
 1 See below, chap. vii.
 
 AS WE KNEW HIM I I 
 
 great fault of the organised religion of his time, he was 
 drawn to work in the inquiry rooms of the Revival 
 of 1873-75. And in these he dealt, face to face, with 
 hundreds of men and women at the crises of their lives. 
 When that work was over, his experience, his fidelity, 
 and his sympathy continued to be about him, as it 
 were, the walls of a quiet and healing confessional, 
 into which wounded men and women crept from the 
 world, dared 
 
 ' To unlock the heart and let it speak ' 
 
 dared to tell him the worst about themselves. It is 
 safe to say that no man in our generation can have 
 heard confession more constantly than Drummond 
 did. And this responsibility about which he was ever 
 as silent as about his own inner struggles was a heavy 
 burden and a sore grief to him. If some of the letters 
 he received be specimens of the confidence poured 
 into his ears, we can understand him saying, as he 
 did to one friend: 'Such tales of woe I've heard in 
 Moody 's inquiry room that I have felt I must go and 
 change my very clothes after the contact ; ' or to an- 
 other, when he had come from talking privately with 
 some students : ' Oh, I am sick with the sins of these 
 men ! How can God bear it ! ' And yet it is surely 
 proof of the purity of the man and of the power of the 
 gospel he believed in that, thus knowing the human 
 heart, and bearing the full burden of men's sins, he 
 should nevertheless have believed (to use his own 
 words) ' in the recoverableness of a man at his worst,' 
 and have carried with him wherever he went the air 
 of health and of victory. 
 
 To such love and such experience there naturally 
 came an influence of the widest and most penetrating 
 kind. Very few men in our day can have touched the
 
 12 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 springs of so many lives. Like all his friends, I knew 
 that hundreds of men and women had gone to him, 
 and by him had been inspired with new hope of 
 their betterment and new faith in God. But even 
 then I was prepared neither for the quality nor for 
 the extent of influence which his correspondence re- 
 veals. First by his addresses and his conversation, 
 and then with the vastly increased range which his 
 books gave him, he attracted to himself the doubting 
 and the sinful hearts of his generation. It must be 
 left to the other chapters of this biography to illustrate 
 the breadth and variety of the power both of himself 
 and of his teaching. But here it may be affirmed with 
 all sobriety that his influence was like nothing so much 
 as the influence of one of the greater mediaeval saints 
 who yet worked in a smaller world than he and with 
 a language which travelled more slowly. Men and 
 women sought him who were of every rank of life and 
 of almost every nation under the sun. They turned 
 instinctively to him, not for counsel merely, but for 
 the good news of God and for the inspiration which 
 men seek only from the purest and most loving of 
 their kind. He was prophet and he was priest to 
 hosts of individuals. Upon the strength of his per- 
 sonality or (if they did not know him) of the spirit 
 of his writings, they accepted the weakest of his logic, 
 the most patent of his fallacies. They claimed from 
 him the solution of every problem. They brought 
 him alike their mental and their physical troubles. 
 Surest test of a man's love and holiness, they believed 
 in his prayers as a remedy for their diseases and a 
 sure mediation between their sinful souls and God. 
 It is with a certain hesitation that one asserts so much 
 as this, yet the evidence in his correspondence is in- 
 dubitable ; and as the members of some great Churches
 
 AS WE KNEW HIM 13 
 
 are taught to direct their prayers to the famous saints 
 of Christendom, so untaught and naturally, as we shall 
 see, more than one have since his death found them- 
 selves praying to Henry Drummond. 
 
 To write an adequate life of such a man is of course 
 an impossibility ; a friend has said it would be ' like 
 writing the history of a fragrance.' One can describe 
 and make assertions about his influence, but those can 
 hardly appreciate who did not know himself. Indeed, 
 this volume would never have been undertaken both 
 because of its difficulty, and because of what undoubt- 
 edly would have been his own wishes on the point 
 - had it not become clear to his relatives and friends 
 that the life of one who exercised a saving influence on 
 thousands of people all over the world would, in the 
 absence of an authorised biography, be attempted by 
 persons who, however feelingly they might write, could 
 convey only a fragmentary knowledge of their subject. 
 
 Nor can his biographer hope to satisfy his intimate 
 friends, men and women of all stages of religious expe- 
 rience, of many schools of thought, and of all ranks 
 and callings in life, to whom his sympathy and versa- 
 tility, as well as the pure liberty of his healthy spirit, 
 must necessarily have shown very different aspects 
 of his character and opinions. For such, all that a 
 biographer can do is to provide pegs, on which they 
 may hang, and perhaps render somewhat more stable 
 and balanced, their own private portraits of their 
 friend. 
 
 One thing is obvious. So much of Drummond's 
 best work was done, so to speak, ' in the confessional,' 
 upon many who are still alive, and some of whom are 
 well known to their fellow-countrymen, that it is impos- 
 sible to describe it except with a reserve which may
 
 14 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 appear to deprive the picture of life. But, although 
 among his papers material exists for narratives of sin, 
 and even of crime, of moral struggle, of conversion and 
 of Christian service, of the most thrilling interest, it is 
 the duty of his biographer to imitate his own reticence, 
 even at the risk of disguising the depth and the reality 
 of his influence. 
 
 But the biographer of Henry Drummond can at 
 least describe the influences which moulded him, trace 
 the growth of his character and the development of 
 his opinions, and give a record of the actual work he 
 did, and of the movements which he started or en- 
 forced. Among the first of these the religious move- 
 ment in Great Britain from 1873 to 1875 stands 
 supreme, and deserves the most thorough treatment. 
 The history of this has never been written. The 
 present generation do not know how large it was, and 
 with what results upon the life of our nation. As for 
 Drummond, it made him the man he was in his prime : 
 in his expertness in dealing with men, in his power as 
 a speaker, nay, even in some principles of his faith, he 
 is inexplicable without it. So a long chapter will be 
 devoted to the movement and to his share in it. 
 
 As to the growth or change of his opinions, that 
 also it is needful to trace in detail, not only that we 
 may do justice to himself, but because certain of the 
 lines of that growth follow some of the most interest- 
 ing religious and intellectual developments of our 
 time. Here was a young man trained in an evan- 
 gelical family, and in the school of the older orthodoxy, 
 who consecrated his youth to the service of Christ, 
 and never all his life lost his faith in Christ as his Lord 
 and Saviour, or in Christ's Divinity, or in the power of 
 His Atonement, but who grew away from many of the 
 doctrines which, when he was young, were still regarded
 
 AS WE KNEW HIM 15 
 
 by the Churches as equally well assured and indispen- 
 sable to the creed of a Christian : such as, for instance, 
 belief in the literal inspiration and equal divinity of 
 all parts of the Bible. In his later life Drummond so 
 explicitly avowed his adherence to an interpretation 
 of Scripture very different from this, that it is not 
 only right that the latter should be described in 
 his own words (hence the large extracts in chap. x. 
 of this volume), but that also the narrower positions 
 from which he started on his career should be set 
 plainly before us. For this reason I have recounted 
 some of the opinions of his student days with a greater 
 fulness than their intrinsic importance would warrant. 
 The story of his growth from them may be of use 
 to the many students whom the Biblical criticism of 
 our time has brought face to face with similar facts, 
 problems, and issues. 
 
 Parallel to this change in his views of Scripture and 
 contributory to it, is the very interesting growth of 
 the influence wrought upon his religious opinions by 
 physical science and that discovery of natural laws in 
 which his generation has been so active. But besides 
 these two developments there is a third, which is also 
 characteristic of our time. To Drummond, in his 
 youth, religion was an affair of the individual ; he was 
 impatient (if such a temper could, at any time, be im- 
 puted to him) with the new attempts in Scotland and 
 England to emphasise its social character. It is 
 true he never bated by one jot his insistence upon the 
 personal origin of all religion ; yet he so greatly 
 extended his sympathy and his experience, he so 
 developed the civic conscience, as to become one of 
 the principal exponents in our day of the social duties 
 of religion. Thus his career is typical of the influence 
 upon the older Christian orthodoxy of the three great
 
 1 6 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 intellectual movements of our time historical criti- 
 cism, physical science, and socialism (in the broad and 
 unsectarian meaning of that much-abused term). 
 
 Again, Henry Drummond was a traveller, with 
 keen powers of observation, a scientific training, and 
 a great sympathy with human life on its lowest levels 
 and outside edges. He visited the Far West of 
 America at a time when Indian wars were still com- 
 mon and the white man was represented only by 
 soldiers, hunters, and miners of gold. He visited 
 Central Africa at a time when the only white men 
 there were missionaries and a few traders, and of 
 that region he made practically the first detailed sci- 
 entific examination. He visited the New Hebrides, 
 when the effects of Christianity upon the savages of 
 these islands were beginning to be obvious; he bought 
 clubs and poisoned spears from men who were still 
 cannibals; he worshipped with those who had been 
 cannibals and were now members of his own church. 
 Of these travels it is only of the second that he has 
 published an account. Yet his notes of the others are 
 often as interesting and always as careful. I have 
 thought it right, therefore, to incorporate in this life 
 of him a transcription of these notes, and to supply 
 from his African diary so much of scientific or other 
 human interest as has not appeared in his Tropi- 
 cal Africa. It was in Africa that he made his only 
 original contributions to science, and in justice to these 
 it seems right to give, in greater detail than his mod- 
 esty allowed to appear in his volume, his observations 
 of the geology of the African continent. 
 
 Finally, Henry Drummond was a writer of books, 
 which brought him no little fame in the world. This 
 biography is written by one of a circle of life-long 
 friends, and with their affections upon its words; yet
 
 AS WE KNEW HIM I'J 
 
 it was among them that some of his books received 
 the most severe criticism, and therefore I have deemed 
 it not inconsistent with the spirit of the biography to 
 introduce an adverse judgment upon the substance of 
 one of his volumes. As to the style in which all are 
 written, if the saying be anywhere true that the style 
 is the man, it is true here. The even and limpid 
 pages of his books are the expression of his equable 
 and transparent temper. And as we have seen that 
 his character was the outcome of a genuine discipline, 
 so we shall find evidence that his style was the fruit of 
 hard labour and an unsparing will. 
 
 But all these talents and experiences were only parts 
 of a rare and radiant whole, of which any biography, 
 however fully it may record them, can with them all 
 offer only an imperfect reflection. So complete a life 
 happens but once in a generation. ' It is no very un- 
 common thing,' says the writer \vhose words are pre- 
 fixed to this chapter, 1 ' it is no very uncommon thing 
 in the world to meet with men of probity; there are 
 likewise a great many men of honour to be found. 
 Men of courage, men of sense, and men of letters are 
 frequent ; but a true fine gentleman is what one seldom 
 sees. He is properly a compound of the various good 
 qualities that embellish mankind. As the great poet 
 animates all the different parts of learning by the force 
 of his genius, and irradiates all the compass of his 
 knowledge by the lustre and brightness of his imagi- 
 nation, so all the great and solid perfections of life 
 appear in the finished gentleman, with a beautiful 
 gloss and varnish ; everything he says or does is ac- 
 companied with a manner, or rather a charm, that 
 draws the admiration and good-will of every beholder.' 
 
 1 Sir Richard Steele in the Guardian, No. 34.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 
 
 HENRY DRUMMOND came of a family resident for 
 some generations near the town of Stirling. His great- 
 grandfather was portioner of the lands of Benthead, 
 Bannockburn. His grandfather, William Drummond, 
 was a land surveyor and afterwards a nurseryman at 
 Coneypark. He appears to have been a man who 
 thought for himself on matters of religion. It was 
 among some notes of his, upon resemblances be- 
 tween the laws of nature and those of the spiritual 
 life, that his grandson, after the publication of Natural 
 Law in the Spiritual World, discovered a remarkable 
 anticipation of the main thesis of that volume. 1 
 William Drummond had eleven sons. Of these 
 Henry, who was the father of our Henry, became 
 head of the firm of William Drummond & Sons, seeds- 
 men and nurserymen at Stirling and Dublin. One of 
 his brothers and partners, David, resided at Dublin. 
 Another was Peter, who established the Agricultural 
 Museum in Stirling, and withdrew from the firm in 
 order to give his energies to the Stirling Tract Enter- 
 prise, of which he was the founder. 
 
 Mr. Henry Drummond, senior, was a man of great 
 worth. ' He was fifty years of age before he taught 
 in a Sabbath-school or opened his lips in public on 
 religion,' but from that time onwards he was in the 
 front of every good cause in Stirling. He was a 
 
 1 See p. 153. 
 18
 
 SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 19 
 
 Justice of the Peace, President of the Young Men's 
 Christian Association, chairman or director of most 
 of the philanthropic institutions of the town, and an 
 elder in the Free North Church, under the ministry 
 of the Rev. Dr. Beith. He founded, and for many 
 years conducted, a Sunday-school at Cambusbarron in 
 the neighbourhood of his home. ' He could play on 
 an audience of children as a man plays on an instru- 
 ment.' His discipline was strict, but he had his chil- 
 dren's confidence. By his contemporaries he was 
 implicitly trusted for his probity in business, his fast 
 friendship, and his sagacious counsel. To the end of 
 a long life his character remained fresh and winsome. 
 He died on January i, 1888. 
 
 Mr. Drummond married Miss Jane Blackwood of 
 Kilmarnock. She had a brother, James Blackwood, 
 of Gillsburn, whose attainments in science deserve 
 some notice here, partly for their own worth, and 
 partly because of their resemblance to the qualities 
 and pursuits of his distinguished nephew. ' While 
 still a youth he became proficient in chemistry and 
 geology, and constructed a camera obscura, micro- 
 scope, and telescope. Stands, tubes, and lenses were 
 all fashioned by himself. He was one of the earliest 
 makers of daguerreotypes in Scotland. In later years 
 he devoted himself to the study of petrology, the 
 science of the constituents of rocks, and became, next 
 to his friend, the late Professor Heddle of St. Andrews, 
 the chief authority on that subject in Scotland. How 
 many will remember an evening spent with him at 
 Gillsburn, when the grand microscope was brought 
 out and Mr. Blackwood showed slices of rock ground 
 till they were transparent. How instructive it was to 
 hear him explain " the perpetual motion slides," in 
 which there are cavities filled with fluid and tiny air
 
 2O HENRY DRUMMOND [1851-57 
 
 globules that move to vibrations in the earth so slight 
 that our senses cannot perceive them!' 1 Mr. Black- 
 wood was a genial and enthusiastic man, with the 
 power of inspiring young people both in the study 
 of science and in some forms of religious service. 
 Like his nephew he possessed the gift of mesmerism. 
 Henry, when he was young, met this uncle twice or 
 thrice every year, but was not directly influenced by 
 him. The striking resemblances, both of gifts and 
 interests, must be put down to heredity. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Drummond had four sons: James, 
 Henry, Frederick, who died young, and Patrick ; and 
 two daughters, Agnes and Jessie. Henry was born 
 in Stirling on August 17, 1851. His father's house 
 was then No. i Park Place, the house next to Glen- 
 elm, which afterwards became the family home, and 
 is still the residence of his mother. The houses stand 
 on the southern side of the King's Park and look 
 across to the Rock and Castle. The park was the 
 children's playground. James and Henry were sent 
 first to a ladies' school, and, when Henry was six or 
 seven, to the High School of Stirling, where he re- 
 mained till he was twelve. 
 
 At that time the High, or Grammar, Schools of 
 Scotland were of various quality. Those of the larger 
 towns received boys from nine to eleven, and sent 
 them to the university at sixteen or seventeen. They 
 gave a fair education in classics, English, history, 
 mathematics, and the rudiments of French and Ger- 
 man. Boys meant for business took a course of book- 
 keeping, but natural science was almost wholly ignored. 
 Some of the schools of the smaller towns competed 
 successfully with those of the larger in preparation 
 for the university; but others, taking boys at six or 
 
 1 Abridged from a notice of Mr. Blackwood by the Rev. D. Landsborough.
 
 JET. 1-6] SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 2 1 
 
 seven, dismissed them at twelve or thirteen to business 
 or to the more advanced schools, with a few exceptions 
 whom they prepared for college. There was no gen- 
 eral system. Till 1859 the universities had not an en- 
 trance examination in Arts, and afterwards one only 
 for the shortened curriculum of three, instead of four, 
 years. The quality of the school depended on the 
 character of the headmaster, and varied greatly from 
 place to place and from time to 'time. At the close 
 of the session, a university professor might be invited 
 to examine, sometimes orally, sometimes in writing, 
 but the examinations were often loose. 
 
 The school discipline did not extend beyond the 
 classes. Preparation was done at home, and a boy's 
 habits of study largely depended on his guardians. In 
 many a humble home in Scotland, after the day's work 
 was done, the tired parents, or an aunt or a big sister, 
 would bravely attack the Latin grammar, and carry 
 their boy through his daily preparation. When Scot- 
 land's debt to her parish and burgh schoolmasters is 
 being celebrated, I love to think of those even more 
 heroic sacrifices of the home. They were given with- 
 out parade or the feeling that there was anything big 
 about them; they were unknown to all but those for 
 whom they were performed, and even by them they 
 were often forgotten. 
 
 Nor in the early sixties was a boy's play organised 
 for him as it so largely is to-day. Yet there was little 
 danger of loafing. A day-school boy lives in no 
 vacuum ; at home, in the streets, and in the country 
 around there are a hundred healthy interests of which 
 boarding-schools know little. In Henry's time boys 
 had their rounders, ' Dully,' a rough cricket, and a 
 primitive football ; ' Cavey,' ' Scots and English,' 
 ' Thieves and Police,' ' Corners,' ' Bullyable', and other
 
 22 HENRY DRUMMOND [1858-63 
 
 running games ; sham fights and sieges, all hard and 
 healthy sports. The long Saturday, free from school 
 discipline, and often from the discipline of home, has 
 always made for good in the life of a Scottish boy. 
 It develops his independence, teaches him to plan his 
 time, and takes him upon long and healthy adventures. 
 Henry enjoyed his Saturday freedom even at the 
 boarding-school in Crieff, and on a visit there many 
 years afterwards, out of a grateful memory of what it 
 had been to himself, he impressed on the headmaster 
 its indispensableness to the character of the boys. 
 There was, let it be said again, practically no loafing. 
 Those who held aloof from sports were laughed or 
 pommelled into a share of them. ' G and A,' says 
 Drummond in a letter to his brother, ' are by no 
 means so spoony as formerly, but still at times they 
 try their old plans walks and so forth.' It was a 
 breezy, healthy life, and not the least part of its health 
 was the way the ' town's school ' brought all classes of 
 the ' town's bairns ' into rivalry, both of work and 
 play. Among Drummond's mates was a miner's son, 
 William Durham, who carried everything before him 
 at Stirling, and died at the close of a brilliant career 
 in Edinburgh University. He was the original of the 
 ' Lad of Pairts ' in the story by ' Ian Maclaren,' who 
 himself joined Stirling High School a few months 
 before Drummond left it for Crieff. Drummond also 
 remembered there the original of ' Bumbee Willie.' 
 
 The boys were made to write essays. They found 
 their way to the Macfarlane Free Library, and in that 
 dingy place hunted up their subjects in the few en- 
 cyclopaedias chiefly the Penny and the Britannica. 
 Their own reading was mainly in Ballantyne's stories 
 or Beadle's ' American Library ' of sixpenny books, 
 published monthly in orange covers Red Indian
 
 /Ex. 7-12] SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 23 
 
 tales, with white hunters for their heroes. About half 
 a dozen of the older boys formed a ' United Book 
 Club,' to which each contributed a weekly penny, and 
 a cousin with more pocket-money than the rest made 
 up the deficiencies. This bought periodicals like the 
 Boys Magazine and the Boys Journal, which, in those 
 days before rubber stamps were invented, were marked 
 ' U. B. C.' with a stamp carved out of 'caum.' 1 
 
 In school the English class was always opened with 
 prayer. Every Monday morning a verse of a Psalm 
 was repeated and a chapter read, and every Friday 
 morning a question was asked from the Catechism. 
 * We envied the Episcopalians their freedom from the 
 Catechism.' 
 
 Mr. Drummond did not send his children to a 
 Sabbath-school, but on Sunday they gathered to sing 
 hymns, and were catechised and formally addressed 
 by their father. They went twice to church. 
 
 ' Henry was more prominent in the playground 
 than in the class. 1 2 think of him most of all in the 
 English department. Under its distinguished teacher, 
 Mr. Young, 3 two objects received special attention, 
 reading aloud and grammar, analysis and composition. 
 Henry was a beautiful reader, and more than once 
 obtained the reading prize. I think the skill which 
 was then developed largely helped to make him the 
 speaker he subsequently became.' He was a rapid 
 learner, but volatile, careless of hours, and often late 
 for meals. Yet his family remember how through 
 his boyhood this was the most serious fault for which 
 he was ever rebuked. One of his hobbies was collect- 
 ing eggs. His sense of bargaining was always very 
 
 1 Soft slate or shale. 
 
 2 The Rev. John H. M'Culloch, now of North Leith. 
 
 8 ' Mr. Young was an old white-haired man with fine manners, who taught 
 English with much dignity and impressiveness.' REV. T. CRERAR.
 
 24 HENRY DRUMMOND [1858-63 
 
 strong, and his pockets were even fuller than those of 
 other boys with knives, pencils, and marbles. ' He 
 took a foremost place in the playground, where he was 
 ready for any game ; there he began that acquaintance 
 with his fellows, and that personal influence upon 
 them, which so distinguished his years of manhood.' 1 
 He took to cricket with enthusiasm, and some skill ; 
 both at Stirling and at Crieff he kept wickets for the 
 eleven. But fishing was his favourite sport his first 
 rod a bamboo cane with a string at the end of it. His 
 brother says : ' He was a better fisher than I, but when 
 I caught my first trout he was more jubilant than if it 
 had been his own.' Even as a boy he cast a very 
 pretty line. He could swim, but not well. On sum- 
 mer Saturdays, with other boys, he went far up a burn 
 among the hills behind his home, caught trout, lit a 
 fire, scraped some poached turnips with tinkers' scraps, 
 and bathed and cooked alternately the livelong day. 
 Around these high excursions lay one of the most 
 glorious landscapes even in Scotland the Rock 
 and its Castle, the links of Forth, Bannockburn, the 
 Ochils, and to the northwest, the first great Bens : 
 Lomond, Venue, Ledi, and Voirlich. He has not 
 written of what all this was to him, and you could 
 seldom have told from his conversation that he was a 
 4 Son of the Rock.' But after he had seen most of the 
 world, whenever he came back to Stirling he would 
 take his old walk round the Castle and say to his 
 brother, ' Man, there's no place like this no place 
 like Scotland ! ' 
 
 ' He was not more than averagely popular among 
 his contemporaries, and had hardly any intimate 
 friends, but bigger boys were fond of giving him 
 things, and he was a great favourite with men.' His 
 
 1 From reminiscences by Rev. J. H. M'Culloch.
 
 JET. 7-12] SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 25 
 
 interest in fishing was partly the cause of this. But 
 even in childhood he must have had some distinction 
 which caught an experienced eye, and there were occa- 
 sions on which he took the lead of other children and 
 impressed himself on older people, always, as witnesses 
 testify, without any self-consciousness. The Rev. 
 James Robertson, a famous preacher to children, was 
 holding a service for all the Sabbath-schools of the 
 town in Erskine United Presbyterian Church. ' The 
 Free North School was the last to arrive, and the 
 church being already crowded, one class was arranged 
 on the pulpit stairs, and Henry and two other boys 
 were taken into the pulpit itself. Mr. Robertson be- 
 gan his sermon by saying that the Bible is like a tree, 
 each book a branch, each chapter a twig, and each 
 verse a leaf. " My text is on the thirty-ninth branch, 
 the third twig, and the seventeenth leaf. Try and 
 find it for me." Almost immediately Henry slipped 
 from behind him and said, " Malachi third and seven- 
 teen." " Right, my boy; now take my place and read 
 it out." Then from the pulpit came the silvery voice : 
 " And they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of Hosts, in 
 that day when I make up My jewels" Mr. Robertson 
 laid his hand on the boy's head and said : " Well done. 
 I hope one day you will be a minister." ' 1 
 
 With this picture we may take another, which we 
 owe to the good fortune that John Watson came to 
 Stirling High School shortly before Henry left it for 
 Crieff: 
 
 ' It was in the King's Park more than thirty years ago that 
 I first saw Drummond, and on our first meeting he produced 
 the same effect upon me that he did all his after life. The 
 sun was going down behind Ben Lomond, in the happy 
 summer time, touching with gold the grey old castle, deepen- 
 
 1 From reminiscences by Mr. Fotheringham.
 
 26 HENRY DRUMMOND [1858-63 
 
 ing the green upon the belt of trees which fringed the east- 
 ern side of the park, and filling the park itself with soft, 
 mellow light. A cricket match between two schools had 
 been going on all day and was coming to an end, and I had 
 gone out to see the result, being a new arrival in Stirling 
 and full of curiosity. The two lads at the wickets were in 
 striking contrast one heavy, stockish, and determined, who 
 slogged powerfully and had scored well for his side ; the other 
 nimble, alert, graceful, who had a pretty but uncertain play. 
 The slogger was forcing the running in order to make up 
 a heavy leeway, and compelled his partner to run once 
 too often. "It's all right and you fellows are not to cry 
 shame," this was what he said as he joined his friends, 
 "Buchanan is playing A I, and that hit ought to have been 
 a four ; I messed the running." It was good form, of course, 
 and what any decent lad would want to say, but there was an 
 accent of gaiety and a certain air which was very taking. 
 Against that group of clumsy, unformed, awkward Scots 
 lads, this bright, straight, living figure stood out in relief, and 
 as he moved about the field my eyes followed him, and in my 
 boyish and dull mind I had a sense that he was a type by 
 himself, a visitor of finer breed than those among whom he 
 moved. By and by he mounted a friend's pony and galloped 
 along the racecourse in the park till one saw only a speck 
 of white in the sunlight, and still I watched in wonder and 
 fascination only a boy of thirteen or so, and dull till he 
 came back, in time to cheer the slogger who had pulled off 
 the match with three runs to spare and carried his bat. 
 
 ' "Well played, old chap," the pure, clear, joyous note rang 
 out on the evening air; "finest thing you've ever done," 
 while the strong-armed, heavy-faced slogger stood still and 
 looked at him in admiration, and made amends. "I say, 
 Drummond, it was my blame you were run out. ..." 
 Drummond was his name, and some one said " Henry." So 
 I first saw my friend. 
 
 ' What impressed me that pleasant evening in the days of 
 long ago I can now identify. It was the lad's distinction, an 
 inherent quality of appearance and manner of character and 
 soul which marked him and made him solitary.'
 
 JET. 7-12] SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 2J 
 
 When Henry was twelve, James and he were sent 
 to Morison's Academy at Crieff. They boarded with 
 the rector, Mr. Ogilvie, one of a band of able brothers 
 who have done noble service for education in Scotland. 
 After two years James entered his father's business, 
 but Henry stayed on to prepare for the university. 
 A series of letters to James and his parents record 
 the details of a very happy life. He begins German 
 and learns chess and whist. Mr. Ogilvie introduces 
 a weekly lecture on Natural Philosophy, and an air- 
 pump and electrical apparatus are purchased to the 
 excitement of the school. The football club gets its 
 first Rugby ball and proper goals. There is fishing 
 in the Turret, and skating on the loch of Ochtertyre. 
 The boys rehearse for theatricals ; Henry is to be a 
 lady. Christy ministrels are coming, but Henry has 
 seen from the Stirling paper that the troupe is not a 
 good one, and dissuades the rector from taking the 
 school to see them ! And so on. These letters are 
 charming, but their charm cannot be conveyed in quo- 
 tations. They are written with some promise of his 
 later style subject to frequent misspellings. There 
 is much shrewdness and humour in describing his 
 masters and schoolmates, an independent judgment, 
 which is adverse, of a tract sent him from home, a 
 touch of sarcasm when he has succeeded to his older 
 brother's topcoat and congratulates the latter on his 
 new one, a healthy power of chaff, a bit of boyish bru- 
 tality in reporting that ' J. has typhous (sic] fever; poor 
 fellow, it will weaken him sadly, but he needed some- 
 thing of that kind to tame him,' and just one touch of 
 priggishness. Throughout there beats a strong sym- 
 pathy with all at home, and a very pretty desire that 
 father, mother, brothers, and sisters should each have 
 some pleasure. The habit thus formed was retained.
 
 28 HENRY DRUMMOND [1863-66 
 
 Till the end Drummond almost never missed writing 
 his mother so that she should get a letter every 
 Saturday night. 
 
 I have presented these details of Henry Drum- 
 mond's early years, not because I deem them singular, 
 but because this natural boyhood, eagerly enjoyed, was 
 the secret of his life-long sympathy with boys, and of 
 his wonderful influence over them. To the end he 
 preserved the vivid memory, which only the pure in 
 heart preserve, of what he himself had been as a boy : 
 at what queer angles he had seen the world ; what 
 had interested and what had tempted him ; what he 
 had understood in the religion he was taught and 
 what he silently dropped. That religion was evan- 
 gelical Christianity of a doctrinal form, strict in its 
 adherence to a somewhat dry routine of preaching and 
 teaching, but not gloomy nor ascetic, for it forbade no 
 amusements, allowed the boys to lead an athletic life, 
 to play chess and whist, to learn dancing, and as they 
 grew older to go to dancing parties. The boys were 
 patriotic, as boys could not help being who lived under 
 Stirling Castle, and public-spirited, for Mr. Drum- 
 mond's large share in social movements interested and 
 did not weary his children. If the area of religious 
 experience was denominational, this involved no bitter- 
 ness, but merely an ignorance of the works of other 
 Churches, which, Henry once naively told me, was the 
 source to him afterwards of the most delightful sur- 
 prises at the great amount of good in the world. 
 
 From his home discipline Henry carried away a 
 neatness and punctuality that lasted all his days. His 
 schoolmates have emphasised the unselfishness of the 
 boy, and unselfishness was the note of his life to the 
 end. But the most beautiful thing which the letters 
 reveal is the full confidence between parents and chil-
 
 /Ex. 12-is] SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 29 
 
 dren, so that the latters' own powers of judgment were 
 fostered, and their humour had free play. It is a 
 healthy home where the old and the young folk have 
 the same jokes. 
 
 In July, 1866, Henry left Crieff with prizes for 
 Latin and English, and for an essay on ' War and 
 Peace.' In October, being fifteen years of age, very 
 small, and haunted by a fear that he would not grow, 
 he matriculated at Edinburgh University. During 
 the first session he lodged with two older students, 
 Crerar and Carmichael, who superintended his studies. 
 He was still the boy, and it is amusing to see how his 
 habits of chaffering and exchange were developed. 
 He haunted the auction rooms of Edinburgh, and 
 made bargains which would have been great if he had 
 had any use for the articles two guitars which he did 
 learn to play, 1 and other instruments which he did not 
 learn. He advertised his ' eggs in exchange for money 
 or a telescope,' and was pestered by a dealer 'with offers 
 of articles enough to fill a pawnshop.' He went to 
 look over the wall of Pitt Street Gymnasium and take 
 stock of the new velocipedes. ' I do not know what 
 to think of them. They are as light as a feather, and 
 look rather startling (' Did you see Punch 's cartoon, 
 " Riding upon Nawthin' ? ' "), and go at a great pace, but 
 appear to oscillate and waggle in what I should think 
 was a rather unpleasant manner. However, I daresay 
 the " By-Cyclones " were all greenhorns. It takes a 
 few lessons before you become expert, which is a great 
 blessing, as it would prevent everybody asking " to try 
 it " if any of us ever have one. The Parisian kind are 
 being advertised on all hands. I saw a genuine one, 
 
 i < What do you want with two? " we said in our proud seniority. " Oh, I can 
 sell one of them for the price of the two," which, however, he never did. He 
 got ribbon about the guitar, and pirouetted, twanging it right musically and 
 heartily.' REV. T. CRERAR.
 
 3O HENRY DRUMMOND [1866-67 
 
 a beauty, price 8. They have them dearer. An 
 Edinburgh firm, I believe, are making them much 
 cheaper and with an improved drag, a most inge- 
 nious and easily worked thing some say 2 los. 
 Sho! I cannot get at the truth. One could easily 
 make one if a pattern were given.' So he kept his 
 eyes open to everything that would interest his 
 brother at Stirling. He had, too, a pretty tact and 
 sympathy with the varied sorts of folk among whom 
 he was thrown for the next four years. He explains 
 why he cannot offend his fellow-lodgers by introducing 
 to the common table (at his father's suggestion and 
 expense) more than his proper share of dainties. He 
 appreciates his landladies, humorously describes their 
 babies to his mother, and gives a genial account of 
 the many characters which the pilgrim from lodging 
 to lodging constantly encounters. 1 
 
 In the first year of Arts at Edinburgh University 
 in those days there was much on which one looks 
 back now with considerable amusement. The stu- 
 dents were either boys or bearded men, fresh from 
 the plough and the workshop. In classics and mathe- 
 matics the junior classes were below the standard of 
 the senior forms in the High Schools. They worked 
 through several Latin and Greek authors, not the 
 most difficult, did a heap of prose exercises, and 
 learned several books of Euclid with a little algebra. 
 The freshmen carried large oak sticks to class, cut and 
 
 1 The Rev. T. Crerar sends the following reminiscence from Drummond's first 
 year in lodgings : ' Once the two older students (Carmichael and I) sampled too 
 well before he returned a lot of toffee that had been sent to him. He expressed no 
 sorrow, though toffee was sweet at that time, and the seniors felt remorse at the 
 result of their preying on his good nature. But a morning or two after he had his 
 revenge. He rushed into our room, saying, " Some one died of cholera in that 
 bed, perhaps in the very sheets you are. lying in." We rose in horror and dismay. 
 Then he pointed the ringer and retreated. The death had happened eight years 
 before ! The toffee was avenged.'
 
 Ml. 15-16] SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 3! 
 
 bludgeoned the desks, snowballed the traffic on the 
 South Bridge, and by general subscription in copper 
 paid their ringleaders' fines, both to the University and 
 the Police authorities. They formed a debating soci- 
 ety, the Philomathic, which the older societies scorned 
 as juvenile and as rustic and vulgar, nicknamed ' the 
 Pheelomawthic.' Its ambitions were not mean. Be- 
 sides the usual historical questions to which school- 
 boys devote themselves, it determined week by week 
 the rank of the great stars of literature and solved the 
 most abstruse economic problems ; but it was also 
 practical, reviewing once a year the policy of the Gov- 
 ernment. In Drummond's time it disposed of the Irish 
 Church, decided against the education of women, re- 
 formed the Game Laws, and drew up a new programme 
 of the Arts curriculum. But it grew most passionate 
 upon its own constitution and upon points of order. 
 Then its eloquence blew vast and was beaten into the 
 desks with the oak sticks. 
 
 Partly through a dislike of classics, Henry took an 
 erratic course through Arts. The first year, 1866-67, 
 he had Senior Humanity under Professor Sellar and 
 English with Professor Masson. The second year he 
 took Junior Greek with Professor Blackie, Logic and 
 Metaphysics with Professor Fraser, and Junior Mathe- 
 matics with Professor Kelland ; and the third year 
 Second Mathematics and Natural Philosophy with 
 Professor Tait. It was under Professor Tait that 
 Drummond first woke up to something more than 
 the performance of routine, and his notebooks have 
 full transcripts of the lectures with diagrams of the ex- 
 periments. Yet he only gained the fourteenth place in 
 a class of one hundred and fifty. In the spring of 1869 
 he passed the examination in mathematics and physics 
 for the degree of M.A. In his fourth session he took
 
 32 HENRY DRUMMOND [1867-70 
 
 Senior Greek, Senior Humanity for the second time, 
 and Moral Philosophy with Professor Calderwood. 
 His essays for the latter were on the ' Reliability of 
 Consciousness,' ' The Moral Faculty,' and ' The Dic- 
 tum of Comte : that causes are inacessible, we must 
 therefore substitute the Study of Laws.' They are 
 pretty good, but betray an amusing tendency to re- 
 vert to the subject of animal magnetism, with 
 which Drummond was beginning to be fascinated. 
 In April, 1870, he closed his Arts course by pass- 
 ing the degree examinations in Mental Philosophy. 
 ' I had never courage,' he wrote, ' to attempt the clas- 
 sical department of the M.A.' During his divinity 
 course he came back to the University for Botany, 
 Chemistry, Zoology, in which he took second place 
 with seventy-six per cent., and Geology, in which he 
 won the class medal. But, although he tried twice, 
 he failed to pass the first part of the Bachelor of 
 Science examination and left the University without a 
 degree. To one of his more successful friends he 
 wrote : ' J. W. addresses me " two-thirds M.A." I wish 
 the University was liberal enough to reward a martyr 
 like myself with its precious degree upon credit, and 
 I am almost inclined to petition the Senate to that 
 effect.' 
 
 Meanwhile Drummond had put himself under an- 
 other discipline, in which it is possible to see the 
 development of his later powers, chiefly his powers 
 of observation and his style of writing English. At 
 the beginning of his second session he attended a 
 meeting of the Philomathic Society and was proposed 
 as a member, against his will, he says, but neverthe- 
 less there and then he made his first speech, an 
 undergrown boy of sixteen with auburn hair, a bonny 
 fresh face, and keen eyes. His first essay, on ' Novels
 
 JEt. 16-19] SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 33 
 
 and Novel-reading,' followed in two months. ' It 
 was not an utter failure and the old hands praised it,' 
 he wrote to his mother, to whom alone of all his corre- 
 spondents he repeats any praise that he has heard of 
 himself. In 1868 some members of the Society 
 started, in monthly manuscript, ' The Philomathic, a 
 Literary Magazine conducted by a few of the Alumni 
 of Edinburgh University.' It lived for eight months. 
 Drummond was the editor, and contributed in Janu- 
 ary, 1869, an essay on ' Mesmerism and Animal Mag- 
 netism.' This is an enthusiastic defence of the sincerity 
 and usefulness of a movement then under much ridi- 
 cule. It asserts as indubitable the evidence of the 
 ability of one man's will to induce certain states in 
 others. ' How probable this is in a reasonable universe ! 
 The Creator cannot have isolated men from each other 
 nor shut each up in his own prison body. In the hu- 
 man body he has engrafted a life-giving, communi- 
 cable, and curative power ! . . . Mesmerism has been 
 proved to be a better anaesthetic than chloroform. . . . 
 With such serious and beneficial results its practice 
 for amusement ought to be seriously condemned. . . . 
 Mesmerism must prevail ; only in its infancy, it will 
 some day be recognised as Nature's universal cura- 
 tive agent,' and so forth. The usual pleas on be- 
 half of a process which had not (at least in this 
 country) obtained the attention from scientific authori- 
 ties which it has since gained are advanced with force 
 and clearness. But the interest of the paper lies in 
 the fact that Drummond himself had practised upon 
 others the power of mesmerism. 
 
 ' It was at that time,' writes the Rev. J. H. M'Culloch, ' that 
 he developed an aptitude for what was then known as 
 electro-biology. The student who shared rooms with me 
 proved a capital subject and Drummond could do anything he
 
 34 HENRY DRUMMOND [1867-70 
 
 liked with him without giving offence. Once I remember 
 being in the University reading-room when this student came 
 in, walked up to where I was sitting, and without a word took 
 his watch off the chain and handed it to me. I looked up 
 and saw at once what was what. I asked him what he had 
 been about, and he told me that Drummond had been prac- 
 tising on him. I told him that he should ask him for his watch, 
 and then when I found that he had no recollection of having 
 given it to me, I handed it back to him and told him that this 
 sort of thing should come to an end.' 
 
 Why Drummond gave up this practice I do not 
 exactly know. I have heard that it was because he 
 was once startled by the unforeseen length to which 
 his influence had gone upon another student, though 
 the latter at the time it was exercised was living at a 
 distance from him. So much for the paper on 'Animal 
 Magnetism.' Drummond also contributed to the de- 
 bates in the Philomathic, speaking against the Irish 
 Church and in favour of the education of women, the 
 latter on the grounds of the 'awful crime of leaving any 
 mind untrained and of the terribly unintellectual state 
 of the average girl of the period ! ' 
 
 He had begun to form a library and to read for him- 
 self. He bought some books at auctions. He has read, 
 he says, Channing's works, some of Ruskin's and of 
 Robertson's of Brighton, Lamb's Essays, Shenstone 
 and Cowley, Lowell and the American humourists. He 
 must have read largely in poetry, chiefly in Cowley, 
 Pope, Byron, and Lowell, for his papers of this time 
 have many unhackneyed quotations from all of these. 
 He had fallen under the spell of Ruskin. At the 
 election of Lord Rector of the University in 1868 he 
 canvassed for him, as against the political candidates, 
 Mr. Robert Lowe and Lord Advocate Moncrieff. 
 
 But the best proof of how rapidly Drummond was 
 educating himself in argument and style appears from
 
 yEx. 15-18] SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 35 
 
 two papers and a little bundle of notes for a third. 
 In 1870 he delivered his valedictory address as Presi- 
 dent of the Philomathic, and after expounding the 
 advantages of debate, contrasted the lecture, conver- 
 sation, and reading as a means of gaining knowledge. 
 * The lecture,' he says, ' is the best means. If it 
 has fallen into disrepute in our day, that is because 
 there are no good lecturers. The advantage of 
 public teaching lies in the sympathy which it creates. 
 A lecturer, however, should not be conversational. 
 He is as much out of place as a lecturing conversa- 
 tionalist.' ' The matter of a lecture is the pedantry of 
 conversation.' He passes on to reading : ' Books are 
 the great delusion of the present age. We find them 
 everywhere. Nature is mocked and put in the back- 
 ground.' ' A good book is as valuable as a good 
 friend, but he who has too many books, like him who 
 has too many friends, is sure to be led away by some 
 of them.' ' Most neglect the great end of reading. 
 The thing sought is not what you will get in an 
 author, but what the author will enable you to find in 
 yourself. Unreflective minds possess thoughts as 
 a jug does water, only by containing them ; if pebbles 
 be dropped in the water, if the thought of another 
 plunges in among our own, the contents brim over and 
 we discover in ourselves sentiments and ideas which, 
 apart from certain external conditions of development, 
 had never been formed, and the mind had been left in 
 perpetual slumber.' ' The great danger of reading is 
 superficiality. Many read far too much.' 
 
 The second of the papers mentioned above was one 
 of several sent about this time (1870, when he was not 
 nineteen) to the editors of magazines and returned by 
 them. This one was offered to CasseWs Magazine^ 
 It is entitled ' The Abuse of the Adjective.'
 
 36 HENRY DRUMMOND [1870 
 
 After a couple of pages against slang, 'by the introduction 
 of which our language is losing its solid, classic grandeur and 
 becoming enfeebled and diluted with a wretched levity,' he 
 goes on to speak of ' an internal enemy, a more subtle because 
 less apparent danger, the indiscriminate use of adjectives.' 
 'Adjectives have become cosmopolitan. Immensity, minute- 
 ness, rotundity, profundity, astronomy, gastronomy, emotions, 
 monkeys, feelings, frying-pans, mountains, mouse-traps, trees, 
 toothpicks, sunsets, and sewing-machines are all qualified in 
 turn by exactly the same set of adjectives. . . . Appropri- 
 ateness of meaning seems utterly lost sight of, and all are 
 used promiscuously, apparently with but one object, to add 
 strength to an otherwise insipid observation. In short, the 
 prevailing opinion and province of an adjective seems to be 
 "A big word, having no special significance of its own, 
 employed to give force and liveliness to a sentence consist- 
 ing otherwise of plain, common-sense words." That deli- 
 cacy of expression is sacrificed to elaboration, and exactness 
 of description to sonorousness, further appears from the 
 increased use of qualifying Adverbs, as well as from the fre- 
 quency with which the Superlative degree is employed. . . . 
 Not the least dangerous quality of this manner of expression 
 is its infectiousness. It runs through a community like an epi- 
 demic and its opponents take to it in self-defence. ... Mild 
 language does not do at all. Every man is a braggart. The 
 desire to say a strong thing has grown almost irresistible, and 
 truth becomes sacrificed to strength and impressibility (szc).' 
 'Those most addicted to the habit are Ladies. . . . Our 
 Ladies, in conversation at least, are no longer the Gentle 
 Sex. They have grown in their ideas masculine, and in their 
 expression of them barbarous. When the voice of Beauty 
 is heard it speaks in uncouth tones. But professional men, 
 who ought to be free of the habit, have also succumbed. 
 Some men have a notion that this manner of " piling on " the 
 adjective constitutes raciness. When the conversation is 
 flippant in se it is not so extremely objectionable. Truly, if 
 we talk nonsense, we ought to talk it well, i.e. well nonsensi- 
 cally. But what we complain of is that a deal of sense is in 
 the language of nonsense. . . . Language should be sub- 
 ordinate to thought, not thought to language. . . . Com-
 
 MT. 18] SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 37 
 
 monplace people are deluded by the habit. They mistake 
 the half-dozen really good thoughts which every fool pos- 
 sesses for the revelation of the hidden glory of a great mind. 
 But so far from serving any utilitarian purpose the habit of 
 multiplying adjectives really makes a sentence less impres- 
 sive than if simple words had been used. There is a natural 
 tendency to suspect insincerity whenever the language is 
 extraordinary enough to suggest strain or effort on the part 
 of the author.' The paper then illustrates from ballads, 
 children's stories, and the Bible the simplicity of the greatest 
 literature, and closes with the practical exhortation : ' If the 
 danger be pointed out, there is surely no reasonable individ- 
 ual who would not sacrifice any slight gratification it may 
 afford him for the sake of the issues at stake, the corruption 
 versus the preservation of the English language.' 
 
 The bundle of notes referred to were in' prepa- 
 ration for an article in the Stirling Observer upon 
 Alva Glen Drummond's earliest published writing. 
 They reveal a keen sense of beauty and an extra- 
 ordinary care in sketching natural facts. Every 
 boulder in the glen, every turn of the banks, every 
 twist and cascade in the burn, the geological forma- 
 tions, the colouring of the rocks, the fragrances of the 
 wood, the sounds of human industry that penetrate 
 to the furthest corners, the features of the sky-line, 
 the distant prospects, are all noted in a series of rapid 
 impressive clauses that succeed in making a stranger 
 to the scene feel as if he were viewing it. 1 
 
 I have quoted all this, not so much for its own sake, 
 though a deal of it is very clever, but because it shows 
 how diligently and how sanely Drummond prepared 
 the clear and brilliant style for which he afterwards 
 became famous. There is no evidence in any of his 
 
 1 There exists, too, a curious paper entitled 'Treason among the Tombs,' due to 
 a visit to Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, and the sight of monuments to Irishmen 
 shot or hung during the Fenian rebellion. He is shocked by the open defiance 
 of Great Britain which the inscriptions record, and makes a number of sound 
 remarks upon the problems of British government in Ireland.
 
 38 HENRY DRUMMOND [1870 
 
 essays at this time of an original capacity of thought ; 
 but there is abundant proof of unusually keen powers 
 of observation, of a fine and healthy taste in letters, 
 and of distinct powers of illustration and interpreta- 
 tion all of them exercised with a sanity and matu- 
 rity not less than remarkable from a boy of just 
 over eighteen years of age. ' One thing,' writes Mr. 
 M'Culloch, ' which struck me at college was the fash- 
 ion in which Drummond laid himself out in a quiet 
 way thoroughly to know how those around him looked 
 at things. He had the faculty of putting himself en 
 rapport with everybody. Everybody liked him, too, 
 because he was never inquisitorial. He gained the 
 confidence of others almost without their knowing it, 
 and they were glad they had been so frank with him. 
 This, too, became a characteristic in that larger world 
 where he ultimately found his vocation.' 
 
 During his University course Drummond had shot 
 up into a tall man, graceful when at rest, and moving 
 with a litheness and a spring that were all his own. 
 A fellow-student 1 thus remembers him : ' He often 
 stood in a thoughtful manner, or sauntered about the 
 northeast corner of the college quadrangle between 
 classes. He generally wore a tall hat, and had long 
 auburn hair. Though I fain would have spoken to 
 him, his ethereal appearance and great grace and 
 refinement seemed to forbid an approach to one who 
 appeared different from the majority of the students. 
 He was generally alone. Indeed, his apparent loneli- 
 ness first drew my attention to him. He seemed to 
 have no companions as the other students had, but 
 was only one of them, handsome, bright, and silent. 
 He struck me as one possessed by great thoughts, 
 which were polarising in his mind and giving a happy 
 expression to his face.' 
 
 1 Now Dr. H. M. Church of Edinburgh.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PREPARATION FOR THE MINISTRY 
 
 ' DURING his Arts curriculum Henry Drummond 
 formed no plans for his future, beyond some thought 
 of finding his way into the Divinity Hall of the Free 
 Church of Scotland.' 1 
 
 To this there was much to dispose him, and he had 
 already passed through some religious experience. 
 In his last illness he told Professor Simpson that 
 'when he was twelve he had a great work going 
 through Bonar's God's Way of Peace, but thinks it 
 did him harm.' While he was a student, he attended 
 some mission services at Cambusbarron. He was 
 profoundly impressed by the addresses he heard, and 
 soon after told his father that he wished to enter the 
 ministry. 2 In Edinburgh he shared his lodgings with 
 several divinity students ; and in Stirling he met 
 many ministers and evangelists, among them Dr. 
 Binnie of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, to 
 whose kindness in counsel he afterwards looked back 
 with gratitude. 
 
 The first notice of his intentions occurs in a 
 letter to a fellow-student of date April, 1870. 'Are 
 you not sorry to leave the University? I feel 
 it very much. Altho' I intend to enter the Church 
 Hall next winter, it is still a degeneracy to go 
 
 1 From recollections by the Rev. J. H. M'Culloch. 
 
 2 From recollections by Mr. Fotheringham. The Cambusbarron Mission was 
 in charge of the Rev. Alexander Macdonald, now of Ardclach; and the special 
 services were conducted by Mr. Stephen Burrows, now evangelist at Naples. 
 
 39
 
 40 HENRY DRUMMOND [1870 
 
 from an ancient University to a nameless college ! 
 Happily I shall still be a student. I have now to 
 commence the pleasant study of Hebrew, and have 
 the prospect of being plucked in that particular 
 branch at the F. C. Board Examination in July. For- 
 tunately I know the alphabet from the i igth Psalm ! ' 
 On May i5th he began Hebrew by himself, and soon 
 after made a literal translation of some of the Psalms. 
 On July 26th he passed the Board. 
 
 In the summer he had taken a tutorship in a fanrly 
 in Kincardineshire and he there spent his nineteenth 
 birthday his first from home. It cast him into a 
 train of serious reflection. 
 
 ' May I never be too hardened to let these annual 
 milestones sweep by unwept for! In looking 
 back on my past years I see nothing but an un- 
 broken change of Mercies. Few lives have been 
 as happy as mine. The rod of affliction may 
 conquer many, but if I am subdued at all I have 
 been "killed with kindness" unmerited, unre- 
 quited, unsolicited, unexampled kindness. " What 
 can I render unto God for all His gifts to me ? " 
 Alas ! I have rendered nothing, nothing but evil. 
 The only misery I have endured has been of my 
 own creation the confusion of face for my own 
 iniquity, the mournings for sins that were past, 
 and the consciousness of my own guilt before 
 God. For days I have felt ashamed to look up 
 to Him and too wicked to approach His foot- 
 stool. I believe I have discovered by my own 
 sad experience the true meaning and justice of 
 His attributes, " Longsuffering," " Plenteous in 
 Mercy," etc. O that these humiliating periods of 
 darkness were at an end ! I think I can honestly
 
 yET. 19] PREPARATION FOR THE MINISTRY 4! 
 
 say that the chief desire of my heart is to be rec- 
 onciled unto God and to feel the light of His 
 countenance always upon me. As honestly, I 
 think, I can say that God in His great goodness 
 has given me little care for the things of the 
 world. I have been enabled to see the extreme 
 littleness of the world in comparison with the 
 great Hereafter [so] that the temptations of the 
 former seem as nothing to the attractions of 
 the latter, and I cannot be too thankful that I 
 have been thus spared being whirled into the vor- 
 tex of the cares of this life and the deceitfulness 
 of riches. This may sound like vainglory, but I 
 am far too deep in the abyss of sin to deceive 
 myself in that respect. I say it not boastfully but 
 in fear and trembling, with deep humiliation that 
 all these mercies have made me little better than 
 if I had them not.' 
 
 This religious crisis happened to Drummond in the 
 form which we should have expected from his upbring- 
 ing. He had inherited a pure and healthy nature. He 
 had been kept from the grosser sins of youth and he was 
 always patient and unselfish. But with the religious 
 doctrines of Evangelicalism there had also come to 
 him a very sensitive moral temper. The Evangelical 
 movement had many defects, which in his younger 
 days Henry shared and which we shall see him un- 
 learning; but when, as in his case, sincerity was the 
 atmosphere of the home in which its doctrines were 
 taught, it succeeded in creating in the children a ten- 
 der and scrupulous conscience, and by urging them 
 to the consideration above all of their personal rela- 
 tion to a just and merciful God, it strongly developed 
 the sense, while they were still young, of their individ-
 
 42 HENRY DRUMMOND [1870 
 
 ual responsibility. To have felt the awful peril of 
 one's own character; to have wakened into the won- 
 der of God's patience with one's unworthy life ; to 
 have known in one's own experience the power of 
 man's soul to turn and repent these are the essen- 
 tials of religious experience and the indispensable 
 apprenticeship of a religious teacher. It is not 
 necessary that every man should violently break into 
 this sense of God's grace, out of the intoxication of 
 some vicious passion or from the weariness and de- 
 spair of a long habit of evil. Pure minds like Henry 
 Drummond's will feel as powerfully the accumulated 
 memories an avalanche of them loosened perhaps 
 by some gentle touch of a lifetime of God's com- 
 mon mercies and of His daily patience with their wil- 
 ful ways. For this is a wonder, of which every day 
 deepens the awe to their sensitive hearts. Once 
 when talking of ' sudden conversions ' I asked Drum- 
 mond whether he had passed through one. ' No,' he 
 said, after thinking for a little, ' I cannot say I did.' 1 
 ' But,' he added, ' I have seen too many ever to doubt 
 their reality.' 
 
 Drummond was thoroughly sane. With the deep 
 seriousness of his nature there mingled a strong 
 humour and an equally strong joy in sport, of which 
 his letters of this summer bear many signs. He had 
 a great deal of fishing, and with jubilation over his 
 first grilse he fills of his brief diary nearly as much as 
 he gives to the spiritual reflections I have quoted. In 
 October we have an instance of his fun. Before begin- 
 
 o 
 
 ning his divinity course he had to be examined by 
 the Presbytery of Stirling. This is a right which the 
 Presbyteries of the Church have jealously maintained 
 over the theological students within their bounds. 
 
 1 Compare Dr. Stalker's testimony below, p. 70.
 
 &r. 19] PREPARATION FOR THE MINISTRY 43 
 
 But, except in the matter of personal religion, the 
 students have always resented this superintendence; 
 and justly, for their competence in scholarship and 
 theology is so far secured by the General Assembly's 
 Examination Board. Hebrew unfortunately for 
 those who teach it is not regarded by the average 
 man as indispensable to the preacher, and the para- 
 digms of its grammar are especially irksome to men 
 who have already toiled through a university course. 
 In the beginning of October Drummond wrote a 
 friend: 'J. W. and I passed the Presbytery exam, 
 yesterday with much eclat. We took the precaution 
 beforehand to hide the Presbytery's Hebrew Bible 
 in the coal-scuttle; so we got no examination in 
 Hebrew.' 
 
 In November Drummond entered New College, 
 Edinburgh, the youngest of twenty-five or thirty stu- 
 dents who formed the First Year. The divinity course 
 of the Free Church of Scotland occupies four winter 
 sessions, and thus at New College there are always 
 some hundred regular students of the Church, besides 
 twenty or thirty others from America, Ireland, and 
 the Reformed Churches of the Continent of Europe. 
 Among a hundred men studying for the same profes- 
 sion there is bound to be closer fellowship than among 
 the far larger number of students and the more scat- 
 tered interests of the Arts course; and during Drum- 
 mond's time at New College this bond was further 
 strengthened by the institution of a common dinner- 
 table. Given a certain proportion of able men, the 
 atmosphere of the College was always genial and 
 stimulating. One remembers not only greater matu- 
 rity, but more buoyancy, more humour, and more 
 camaraderie than in the University. 
 
 When Drummond entered, Robertson Smith had
 
 44 HENRY DRUMMOND [1870 
 
 just left. Andrew Harper, now Professor of Hebrew 
 at Melbourne, and David Patrick (now editor of Cham- 
 bers s Encyclopedia) were in their third year. W. G. 
 Elmslie, afterwards Professor of Hebrew in the Pres- 
 byterian College of London, was in his second year, 
 and during Drummond's time Smith, Harper, and 
 Elmslie were in succession Dr. Davidson's assistants. 
 In his own year were James Stalker, John Watson, 
 and two other of his intimate friends : A. S. Paterson, 
 who died in 1875, at Uitenhage, in South Africa, 
 and John F. Ewing, who did such noble work in 
 Melbourne before his early death there in 1890. Two 
 years after Drummond there came up to the New 
 College Peter Thomson, of whose great abilities we 
 must speak later ; and D. M. Ross, the assistant to the 
 Professor of Logic in the University. The mutual 
 part of their education the students transacted chiefly 
 in the Theological Society, which met on Friday even- 
 ings. Drummond must have had some reputation as 
 a speaker, for, although the youngest man in College, 
 he was asked, in the absence of the student appointed, 
 to lead off the negative side of a debate, 'Ought the 
 government to provide for the teaching of the Bible 
 in schools ? ' He also spoke for the affirmative of the 
 debate, 'Ought the Church to introduce an order of 
 lay evangelists ? ' and in his letters home he makes 
 more of this speech than of the other. The College 
 Missionary Society met on Saturday mornings to hear 
 addresses, and to arrange the conduct of a college 
 mission in a district, then somewhere in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the Cowgaie. One of the students was 
 missionary-in-charge, and others helped him with the 
 meetings and taught in the Sabbath-school. In this 
 work Drummond took his share with great heart. 
 The families he visited were in Covenant Close.
 
 yx. 19] PREPARATION FOR THE MINISTRY 45 
 
 The First Year's classes were Junior Hebrew under 
 Dr. Davidson, Apologetics with Dr. Blaikie, Natural 
 Science with Dr. Duns, and a short course of lectures 
 on Evangelistic Theology from the famous Indian mis- 
 sionary, Dr. Duff. Dr. Duff, then in extreme old age, 
 had preserved much of the fire and volume of speech 
 which in their prime had swept through Scotland and 
 carried public opinion on Missions to the pitch of 
 enthusiasm. And still his reverend figure moved 
 through the college, an object of awe to young men 
 who knew nothing of his earlier triumphs. But the 
 six weeks allowed for his subject were all too few for 
 the scale on which he planned his lectures and for the 
 enormous mass of details that he threw into them. 
 He had two parallel courses, both magnificent torsos. 
 One, on the History of Missions, began with the 
 eternal decrees and broke off with the early Church. 
 Another, on Hindoo Theology, did not seem to our 
 bewildered minds even to arrive on the margin of 
 history. Little wonder that so rich and fiery a brain 
 blazed out in indignation upon the indifference of 
 young men who had neither the theological power 
 nor the apostolic fervour of their teacher. We could 
 not follow the incarnations of Vishnu, nor rouse our 
 interest in the patriarchs before Abraham. ' How 
 
 many gods have the Hindoos, Mr. ?' Dr. Duff 
 
 asked a luckless student of Drummond's year. The 
 student kicked Drummond, who sat next to him 
 and who whispered, ' I don't know, about twenty-five, 
 I think.' ' Twenty-five ! ' shouted the student, gaily. 
 
 ' Twenty-five, Mr. ! Twenty-five ! Twenty-five 
 
 million of millions ! ' There were not many of the" 
 Edinburgh students who gave themselves to foreign 
 missions. We sorely tried the great missionary's 
 heart. Nothing could have been kinder or more
 
 46 HENRY DRUMMOND [1870-71 
 
 unselfish than his treatment of us ; he was very zealous 
 to interest each man in India. Drummond snared the 
 common apathy. Besides, his mind was not of the 
 order that was carried away by romance or by the en- 
 thusiasm of others. He needed the touch with the 
 concrete, and this he got years afterwards on his 
 travels in Africa and the East, with the result that 
 among all testimonies to foreign missions in the last 
 half-century none are more thorough or more sincere 
 than his. 1 
 
 It was to Natural Science that Drummond chiefly 
 devoted himself at New College, and he easily carried 
 off the first prize. But his note-books proved that 
 he worked hard both at Hebrew and Apologetics. 
 Besides the grammar, Dr. Davidson then gave to the 
 First Year a few lectures introductory to the Higher 
 Criticism of the Pentateuch. It was by such lectures 
 that Dr. Davidson started in the early seventies the 
 great movement of Old Testament study which has 
 characterised Scottish theology during the last thirty 
 years. He did not then take his students beyond the 
 positions reached by Ewald ; but that was sufficient to 
 break up the mechanical ideas of inspiration which 
 then prevailed in the churches, while with the teacher's 
 own wonderful insight into the spiritual meaning of 
 Scripture it made the student's own use of his Bible 
 more rational and lively, and laid upon a sounder basis 
 the proof of a real revelation in the Old Testament. 
 Drummond took very full notes of Dr. Davidson's lec- 
 tures. In the class of Apologetics he chose for the 
 statutory homily which he had to deliver, ' The Six 
 Days of Creation,' a subject which combined his inter- 
 est in the Old Testament and his knowledge of Natural 
 
 1 Later than his course Dr. Carstairs Douglas pleaded with him to go to China, 
 and impressed him much, but nothing came of this.
 
 JET. 19-20] PREPARATION FOR THE MINISTRY 47 
 
 Science, while a year later he wrote for the class of Sys- 
 tematic Theology an essay on ' The Doctrine of Crea- 
 tion.' He treated this under two heads, the Creation of 
 Matter and the Creation of the World. Under the for- 
 mer he held the question of the Eternity of Matter to 
 be insoluble. Under the latter he put the question 
 whether the world as explained by Modern Science 
 was irreconcilable with the Scriptural statement of 
 Creation? Certain scientific schools undoubtedly 
 demand ' Matter without a Maker, Intelligence with 
 Law but no Liberty, and Life with Liberty but no 
 Responsibility.' The most glorious attribute of their 
 ' deity ' is physical necessity, and his highest prin- 
 ciple of action utilitarianism. But granted that Nat- 
 ural Selection and Evolution are facts, they are not 
 irreconcilable with the belief that God has created and 
 sustains the world. On the contrary 'this belief can 
 allow them a very prominent place,' but on the distinct 
 understanding that this place has been previously as- 
 signed them by God, and that they are under His super- 
 vision and care. Looked at from this point of view, the 
 principle of Natural Selection becomes a real and beau- 
 tiful acquisition to Natural Theology, and Mr. Darwin's 
 work on The Origin of Species may be regarded as per- 
 haps the most important contribution to the Literature 
 of Apologetics which the nineteenth century has pro- 
 duced. The same year Drummond delivered to some 
 Society an address upon Evolution. He affirmed the 
 principle of Development as an eternal principle, the 
 emphasis upon which 'has been the century's noblest 
 contribution to Theology'; but he criticised Darwin's 
 enunciation of it on three points: 'He ignores the 
 existence of a personal God, denies God's sovereignty, 
 and denies the existence of design in the Universe.' 
 These notes of college essays, juvenile and crude, are
 
 48 HENRY DRUMMOND [1870-73 
 
 of interest as the first steps of Drummond's mind 
 towards the work of his later years. 
 
 But at this stage Drummond did not see how to 
 apply the principle of development to the origins of 
 Scripture and the story of Revelation. In an essay 
 which he wrote for the class of Apologetics, he asks : 
 ' How can development explain the Bible ? The stages 
 of development are missing. There is an impas- 
 sable gulf between the Bible and the rest of Hebrew 
 literature. . . . The Old Testament is infinitely 
 above the religions of the peoples who surrounded 
 Israel.' It has ' no cumbrous ritual, doubtful morals, 
 nor mythical elements.' ' Theoretically its religion is 
 not only an anomaly to the Hebrew nature, but to 
 human nature.' The one sound element in this part 
 of his paper is the emphasis which he lays upon the 
 'inability of the Jew to reach unaided by Divine help 
 the highest doctrines of his religion, for in so many 
 cases those ran counter to even his best natural ideals 
 and expectations.' For all the rest Drummond as yet 
 stood upon the ground of the older orthodoxy, with 
 its doctrine of literal inspiration, and its blind belief 
 in the absolutely divine character of everything in the 
 Hebrew Scriptures. Blind indeed, else how could he, 
 or that older orthodoxy in general, have believed that 
 there are no links of development between the Old 
 Testament and the religions from the midst of which 
 it sprang, or that in the Old Testament itself there 
 are * no cumbrous ritual, doubtful morals, nor mythical 
 elements ' ? 
 
 This college essay is of interest to us, as indicating 
 the grounds on which Drummond stood during his 
 first great mission, but which he afterwards abandoned 
 for others, not less evangelical nor less capable of 
 defending a true revelation in Scripture, but more
 
 Af. 19-21] PREPARATION FOR THE MINISTRY 49 
 
 rational and more in accordance with the facts of 
 Scripture itself. At the very point at which a theo- 
 logical student is most disposed to be sceptical the 
 close of his first session in theology Drummond ac- 
 cepted orthodox Christianity, not after any passionate 
 struggle towards the contrary, nor with any strength 
 of original thought, but upon a full knowledge of the 
 issues, and after serious consideration. The absence 
 of all trace of revolt is characteristic. Drummond 
 never appears to have passed through a crisis of that 
 kind, or, if he did, it was of the mildest kind; and 
 when the symptoms appeared in younger men, he 
 treated them as temporary. He called them ' measles.' 
 And the effect is seen in all his teaching, as well as in 
 the limitation of his influence on certain classes of 
 minds. To Drummond the Christian experience of 
 faith was one not so much of struggle as of growth. 
 One is sometimes impatient with his beautiful way of 
 putting this. 1 But he expounded as he himself had 
 experienced. His temperament was the artistic, which 
 is sensitive to whatever is lovely and of good report, 
 and which does not struggle against what is hostile and 
 superfluous, but simply ignores it, as Drummond did 
 with certain doctrines upon which at first he laid such 
 emphasis. But he had the artistic temperament with 
 two additions a most unselfish consideration for the 
 beliefs and prejudices of older people, and a most 
 warm moral sense. ' I cannot conceive ' (he writes in 
 the last of the essays we have quoted) 'of such a thing 
 as the moderate punishment of sin, for " every sin 
 deserves God's wrath and curse to all eternity." ' This, 
 though in the words of the Catechism, was no mere 
 echo of the religious school in which he had been 
 brought up, but the cry of his own heart. Sin, wrong- 
 
 1 See farther on, Natural Law in the Spiritual World, in chap. iv.
 
 5O HENRY DRUMMOND [1873 
 
 doing, self-indulgence, were the only subjects upon 
 which, to the end of his life, we ever heard hot words 
 from him. 
 
 The sessions at New College, 1871-72 and 1872-73, 
 were occupied with the regular classes, Senior He- 
 brew, New Testament Exegesis, Systematic Theology, 
 and Church History. In March, 1872, Drummond 
 wrote a paper on ' The Person of Christ: His Divinity 
 sketched from Certain Aspects of Atonement.' He 
 continued to take part in the debates of the Theo- 
 logical Society, of which, in 1873, he was elected one 
 of the three Presidents, along with Stalker and Pater- 
 son. He also taught a class of boys in the Sabbath- 
 school of the College Mission. He was anxious to fill 
 up the long evenings with study, but found many dis- 
 tractions. His reading included Ruskin, George Eliot, 
 Carlyle, especially Sartor Resartus, much poetry, and 
 The Eclipse of Faith, in appreciation of which he came 
 to hard words with a fellow-student. In the summer 
 of 1871 he went to Ireland, and wrote the account of 
 political feeling referred to in the last chapter. He 
 had much fishing and a walking tour in the Highlands. 
 Everything is vividly described, and his letters are full 
 of humour. It was during these two sessions that he 
 took the Science classes at the University, to which 
 reference has been made. Professor Archibald Geikie 
 offered him a geological tutorship in November, 
 1872. 
 
 At the close of his third session, in April, 1873, 
 Drummond did what a number of Scottish divinity 
 students do every year went to a German university 
 for the summer semester. Their favourite resorts used 
 to be Berlin, where Dillmann and Dorner were ; Halle, 
 so long as Tholuck was alive ; Erlangen, while De- 
 litzsch and Hoffmann were there; Gottingen, both be-
 
 JT. 22] PREPARATION FOR THE MINISTRY 5 I 
 
 fore and after Ewald's death ; and Tubingen, where, 
 though Baur had died some years before, Beck was 
 still lecturing, and succeeding to a great measure of 
 Tholuck's influence, Weizsacker taught the New Tes- 
 tament, the great Sanscrit scholar, Roth, gave a course 
 on the ' General History of Religions,' and Wilhelm 
 Pressel, most learned and most genial of Pfarrers, 
 opened his Pfarrhaus at Wankheim to all Scottish 
 students and introduced them to the German lan- 
 guage and German theology. Drummond chose 
 Tubingen, and went there with John Ewing and 
 D. M. Ross. I do not know which classes he 
 attended. More important was the general life and 
 atmosphere of the place, and this he enjoyed to the 
 full. 
 
 Who does not that goes to Tubingen straight from 
 a Scottish winter ? The glory of the southern spring 
 and summer ; the first sight of vineyards and the first 
 tramp through a real forest ; the mediaeval castles and 
 churches, Urach and Lichtenstein, Hohenzollern and 
 Bebenhausen, the hospitality and ' gemiithlichkeit ' of 
 the Swabians ; the genuine piety, with other forms and 
 larger liberties than Scottish religion has allowed itself; 
 the social side of the students' life, their ' kneipes,' their 
 music, and their duels ; the first impressions of the 
 thoroughness of German scholarship, and of the depth 
 of German thinking ; the gradual mastery of the great 
 language, and the entrance upon the vast new literature 
 with all these it is not wonderful that so many of 
 us at Tubingen should have wakened for the first time 
 to what Nature is, and even found there, in a sense, 
 the second birth of our intellect. Henry saw a number 
 of duels, was welcomed by a Verein, took a long Whit- 
 suntide tramp through the Black Forest with three of 
 its members, and so haunted the Wankheim Pfarr-
 
 52 HENRY DRUMMOND [1873 
 
 haus and won the Pfarrer's heart, that when they met, 
 some years later, in Princes Street, Edinburgh, the 
 old gentleman rushed at him and kissed him on both 
 cheeks. Altogether, he made a great impression on 
 the Tubingen people, as he did everywhere, by his 
 sunniness and his sympathy ; and to some of us who 
 followed him three years after, it was enough of a 
 passport to the friendship of the men and women 
 most worth knowing in Tubingen, that we were 
 friends of ' Heinrich Droomond.' 
 
 To his Sisters 
 
 1 TUBINGEN, May 28. 
 
 ' You will hear that I am going my tour with three 
 German students. As they know little or no 
 English, I shall have great chances of picking up 
 the language, but I find that one has really to 
 rely almost entirely on home work, for it is per- 
 fectly astonishing how little one really learns by 
 conversation. You get into the trick of ringing 
 the changes on a few sentences and phrases, and 
 one is apt to think one knows far more than 
 one really does. I find it is no joke getting up 
 a language ; the myriad words and shades of 
 meaning are almost appalling. The accent in 
 Tubingen is a fearful dialect, which Berliners 
 cannot understand at all, at least when the peas- 
 ants speak. I have the satisfaction of picking up 
 Hoch-Deutsch, and quite steering clear of the 
 patois. I have got to know an authoress in 
 Tubingen, a very famous lady [probably Frau 
 Ottilie Wildermuth, authoress of the charming 
 Bilder aus Schwabenland~\, and she has invited 
 me to her house as often as I like to come to
 
 ,Er. 22] PREPARATION FOR THE MINISTRY 53 
 
 supper on Tuesday evenings. I shall not be 
 slow to avail myself of her kindness. 
 
 ' P.S. Hechingen. Thursday morning. En route 
 for Schwarzwald. Morning rather misty. Country 
 splendid.' 
 
 On his return from Germany, Drummond resolved 
 to postpone his fourth session at New College for a 
 year or two, in order to give himself to the study of 
 Natural Science, and to regular Mission work. He 
 retained, however, his position as President of the 
 Theological Society, and read an essay before it on 
 ' Spiritual Diagnosis.' He had, as yet, practically 
 no experience of religious work among adults ; yet the 
 essay enumerated the principles, and laid down the 
 methods upon which, beginning from this very month 
 onwards, he conducted all his wonderful ministry to 
 men. I did not know of the existence of the paper 
 till too late to quote it here ; but Dr. Stalker sends 
 me the following recollection, and I add some echoes 
 of it from the criticism, delivered at the time it was 
 read by Mr. Barnetson, now Free Church minister of 
 Roslin : 
 
 ' In the Theological Society, near the commence- 
 ment of the session 1873-74, he electrified us with 
 an essay on Spiritual Diagnosis, the thread of which 
 I still perfectly remember. He contrasted the clinical 
 work of a medical student with the total absence of 
 any direct dealing with men in a theological curricu- 
 lum, and maintained that a minister can do far more 
 good by "buttonholing" individuals, than by preaching 
 sermons. The essay was understood to be purely 
 speculative, and as yet there was no word in Edin- 
 burgh of Mr. Moody's coming; but, within a month,
 
 54 HENRY DRUMMOND [1873 
 
 Mr. Moody had arrived, and in his meetings Henry 
 was putting his speculations into practice.' 
 
 ' Gentlemen, the paper now read in your hearing is 
 a brilliant one in many respects. There is an earnest- 
 ness of purpose and a definiteness of aim, which are 
 manifest at the outset, and never flag throughout. He 
 is in hot haste to let us know what he means. After 
 emphasising our Lord's dealing with individuals, he 
 says : " We know well enough how to move the 
 masses, how to draw a crowd around us ... how to 
 flash and storm in passion, how to work in the appeal 
 at the right moment, how to play upon all the figures 
 of Rhetoric in succession, and how to throw in a calm, 
 when no one expects but every one wants it. Every 
 one knows this or can know it easily, but to draw 
 souls one by one and take from them the secret of 
 their lives, to talk them clear out of themselves, to 
 read them off like a page of print, to pervade them 
 with your own spiritual essence and make them trans- 
 parent, this is the spiritual diagnosis which is so 
 difficult to acquire and so hard to practise." "The 
 scientific treatment of the power of spiritual discern- 
 ment " is the , felt want which the paper expresses ; 
 this power exercised upon another for his good is 
 what the essayist understands by "spiritual diag- 
 nosis." The lack of such a science he laments, 
 and at the same time shows that there is a reason 
 in the nature of things why this should be. He 
 brings forward evidence from Solomon, Plato, Addi- 
 son, and other writers for the reality of the spirit- 
 ual life. To get the variety of its workings and 
 interworkings reduced to scientific classification is the 
 great task before pastoral theology, which, if achieved, 
 would supply the missing link between college training 
 and practical work. The variety of phenomena in the
 
 JET. 22] PREPARATION FOR THE MINISTRY 55 
 
 spiritual life he finds to be no bar to a spiritual science, 
 inasmuch as there are equally numberless phenomena 
 in the sciences of chemistry and biology. But there 
 is a difficulty in the nature of the facts to be dealt 
 with. The need for such a science he finds in seeking 
 to guide an awakened sinner to Christ. How to direct 
 such an one, how to note the changing experiences 
 and their precise import for this we have no educa- 
 tion. The mere skeleton of the soul's state at different 
 stages is all that many have to guide them in the deli- 
 cate task of ministering to a mind distressed, and it is 
 quite insufficient. The dangers arising from this want 
 of due acquaintance with the subject are next dealt 
 with, and a warning is deduced: " To avoid the Didac- 
 tic and practise the Attractive must be the rule." 
 The unsatisfactory basis on which spiritual diagnosis 
 rests is then adverted to " it rests at present upon 
 mere individual impression." It has no philosophic 
 basis, which is a matter of profound regret, since the 
 scientific method could be so easily applied to it. And 
 the paper concludes with an estimate of this power as 
 seen in the Puritans, whose humanity he reckons not 
 to have abounded with the milk of human kindness, 
 and also with an axiom for spiritual diagnosis : " Ten- 
 derness and courtesy are requisite to approach the 
 heart, without which the heart is approached only to 
 be shocked." ' 
 
 In these recollections two of Drummond's character- 
 istics are very evident, his sense of law and of defi- 
 nite order in all religious experience, and the insist- 
 ence upon tenderness and courtesy, of which qualities 
 he was himself one of the most perfect examples this 
 generation has seen, and it was these which gave him 
 his wonderful power over the individual. 
 
 The same week he started operations as missionary
 
 56 HENRY DRUMMOND [1873 
 
 in the Riego Street Mission of Free St. Cuthbert's 
 Church, then under the collegiate ministry of Sir 
 Henry Moncrieff, Bart., and Mr. Gavin Anderson. He 
 opened with this appointment the second of his brief 
 diaries, in which he records ' his first public appear- 
 ance, Mr. Anderson having asked him to take the 
 concluding prayer at the congregational prayer-meet- 
 ing. The first time I ever faced an audience, sensa- 
 tions not remarkable. When my turn came I trembled 
 on standing up considerably all through. Tremour 
 in voice. I should think not perceived ; mind kept per- 
 fectly clear and cool. Voice seemed not my own, but 
 a new voice. Have no possible idea how it sounded. 
 Prayer was simple and to the point. It was outlined 
 in thought during the afternoon a sentence or two 
 were written, but then not all remembered at the 
 time.' 
 
 ' I was more than satisfied with the result. Of 
 course there was nothing of my doing in it! Two 
 years before this he had found that he spoke much 
 more powerfully extempore than when he wrote 
 out his speeches beforehand, and this is confirmed 
 by his friend Mr. M'Culloch. But the experience 
 never betrayed him into laxity of preparation. For 
 his meetings in Riego Street, attended at first by 
 only a dozen people, he wrote out his prayers very 
 carefully, and prepared full notes for his addresses. 
 ' To-night held my first prayer-meeting. There were 
 ten women and two men present, all the right class. 
 Address what shall I say? I think it must have 
 been very poor, particularly as to the delivery. Was 
 not the least nervous, but did not know exactly where 
 to look. People listened attentively very. One 
 woman (like a servant) put me out rather by laugh- 
 ing, I suppose at the crudities of my attempt. It
 
 ,T. 22] PREPARATION FOR THE MINISTRY 57 
 
 certainly was crude. It closed with a bang, i.e. an 
 abrupt collapse ! ' 
 
 So the diary itself closes. The following week a 
 religious movement began in Edinburgh and spread 
 over the country, which caught up the stammering 
 evangelist to a higher platform and gave him his first 
 extraordinary influence and fame among men.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE GREAT MISSION. 1873-1875 
 
 TOWARDS the end of the summer of 1873, two 
 Americans landed at Liverpool with the purpose of 
 holding religious meetings in the large cities of Eng- 
 land. To quote their bills, one of them preached, 
 and the other sang, the Gospel. The singer was 
 the younger of the two, thirty-four years of age, with 
 a strong baritone voice, and he sang sitting at an 
 American organ, upon which he accompanied himself. 
 The one who preached was about thirty-seven, short, 
 thick-set, with a heavy jaw and a strong American 
 accent. Their names were American, with the usual 
 middle initial Dwight L. Moody, the preacher, and 
 Ira D. Sankey, the singer. 
 
 In their own country the men had already given 
 proofs of power, and their personal record was un- 
 stained. But they came to England with no fame 
 and hardly any credentials. Their methods were 
 strange and aggressive, the season of the year unsuita- 
 ble, and in their attempt upon Liverpool they failed. 
 They moved to York and found as little sympathy 
 there. So they went on to Newcastle and Sunder- 
 land, where at last, after a few weeks, large meetings 
 were gathered and thoroughly roused. Many men 
 and women, but especially men, were convinced of 
 sin, and professed faith in Jesus Christ as their 
 Saviour. The news spread across the country. 
 
 The Rev. John Kelman of Leith, who had heard 
 
 58
 
 Mr. 22] THE GREAT MISSION 59 
 
 of the work from his brother in Sunderland, visited 
 the meetings both there and at Newcastle. By what 
 he witnessed he was convinced of the real power of 
 the movement, and at the close of a service at Walker 
 he gave the evangelists an invitation to Scotland. 
 About the same time similar proposals reached them 
 from Mr. Hood Wilson of Edinburgh and from Dun- 
 dee. Mr. Kelman strongly advised them to begin in 
 Edinburgh, as from there the whole of Scotland could 
 be most easily reached. To this Mr. Moody agreed, 
 and Mr. Kelman returned to form a committee and 
 prepare the way. 1 For the next six weeks there were 
 daily gatherings for prayer, and on Sunday, the 23d 
 of November, the Edinburgh mission was opened with 
 a very crowded meeting in the Music Hall, at which Mr. 
 Moody was too ill to speak. The meeting on Monday 
 was in the Barclay Church, and Mr. Sankey's organ hav- 
 ing been broken, he did not sing. With these inauspi- 
 cious beginnings, the week-day meetings were at first 
 but fairly large. Only a few of the leading ministers 
 were present; many refused to intimate the mission, 
 and it was with difficulty that Mr. Sankey's harmonium 
 was admitted, even into some of the churches previously 
 granted for meetings. Every week, however, the tide 
 rose, and by Christmas began to flow in volume. On 
 New Year's Eve, a crowded watch-meeting was attended 
 not only by many ministers, but by a still larger num- 
 ber of the leading laymen of the town. Members 
 of all the Protestant denominations professed them- 
 selves quickened. The prejudices of those who for 
 years had resisted every attempt to introduce instru- 
 mental music into public worship were overcome, and 
 
 1 Mr. Kelman acted as secretary of the Edinburgh committee. Moody wrote 
 to Drummond some years afterwards: 'My love to Kelman; I never think of the 
 work in Edinburgh without thinking of him.'
 
 6O HENRY DRUMMOND [1873 
 
 they lustily sang with Mr. Sankey and his organ. 
 The most respected leaders of religion spoke from the 
 evangelist's platforms, helped in the inquiry rooms, 
 and instructed the young converts. Professor Cairns, 
 Professors Charteris and Calderwood of the University, 
 Professors Blaikie and Rainy of New College, Dr. An- 
 drew Thomson, Mr. Hood Wilson, and Dr. Horatius 
 Bonar; Dr. Andrew Bonar and Dr. Marshall Lang 
 from Glasgow ; Mr. George Cullen, Mr. M'Murtrie of 
 St. Bernard's and Mr. Wilson of Tolbooth, Mr. William 
 Arnot, Mr. James Robertson, Mr. John Morgan, Mr. 
 Whyte of Free St. George's, Mr. Knox Talon of the 
 Episcopal Church, Lord Polwarth, Sheriff Campbell, 
 Mr. James Balfour, Mr. William and Mr. David Dick- 
 son, Mr. Brown Douglas, Mr. David M'Laren, and a 
 number of lawyers, doctors, and merchants gave their 
 assistance. On all sides the fire spread. Hundreds of 
 converts were gathered from the careless and formal 
 members of the Church, as well as from among people 
 who never went to church. In contrast to most con- 
 gregations, the number of men at the meetings equalled 
 and sometimes exceeded that of the women. It was 
 possible to fill one church after another with young 
 men, and to see in each a hundred rise to confess that 
 they had been converted by God's Word. And the 
 work became a general subject of discussion, some- 
 times hostile, but always serious, among all classes of 
 society. 
 
 The secret of all this lay open. The evangelists 
 themselves were obviously men of sincerity and power. 
 They made mistakes. Mr. Moody said some rash 
 things, as a foreigner could not help doing, and many 
 crude ones, as an uneducated man must. While some 
 of his addresses were powerful, others were very poor. 
 But these faults soon sank from sight in the deep
 
 yEr. 22] THE GREAT MISSION 6 1 
 
 impression of a true zeal to win men for a better life, 
 and to pour fresh power into the routine of Christian 
 work. Men felt themselves in presence of a Power, 
 towards whom their obligations and opportunities were 
 not to be weakened by any defect in its human instru- 
 ments. And as time went on the sincerity and strength 
 of the latter became more apparent. The evangelists 
 were practical, they were sane, and they grew more 
 sane under the influence of the men who gathered to 
 their help. Mr. Moody suffered no fools, and every 
 symptom of the hysteria which often breaks out in 
 such movements was promptly suppressed. The 
 preaching won Scotsmen's hearts by its loyalty to the 
 Bible and its expository character. Next to Mr. 
 Moody 's passion for proclaiming the gospel was his 
 zeal for instruction. He believed in the Bible class, 
 and like some other recent movements in Scotland, 
 the revival of Bible classes and of the religious instruc- 
 tion of youth owes not a little to his example. But 
 his practical spirit reached farther. His gospel, which 
 had its centre in the Atonement, was the gospel of 
 an Incarnate Saviour: no mere voice, but hands and 
 feet, with heart and brains behind, to cleanse the cities 
 of their foulness, organise the helpless and neglected, 
 succour the fallen, and gather the friendless into fami- 
 lies. We have forgotten how often Mr. Moody en- 
 forced the civic duties of our faith. Yet read again 
 his addresses and articles of the time, and you will 
 believe that in the seventies there was no preacher 
 more civic or more practical among us. He re- 
 awakened in Scotland not a few echoes of Chalmers ; 
 and to read him again is to be filled with surprise 
 that in the country of Chalmers so few of Moody's 
 followers should have sustained the more liberal key- 
 notes which he struck for them! Again, Mr. Moody
 
 62 HENRY DRUMMOND [1873-74 
 
 was no schismatic: just because he was so practical he 
 was loyal to the churches. Hardly educated himself, 
 he emphasised the education of the ministry. He 
 never strove for applause by criticism of the average 
 clergyman, nor for laughter by jeers at him. He knew, 
 as some of his present successors do not seem wise 
 enough to know, that it is not your passing evangelist, 
 however brilliant, who reaches the drifting and sunken 
 of our cities, but the parish minister and city mission- 
 ary. But the chief features of the movement were its 
 prayerfulness and its ethical temper. Those who took 
 most part in it knew how it lived by prayer, earnest, 
 simple, and direct. The theology was stiff, some might 
 say mechanical, but it was never abstract. To use a 
 good old word, it was thoroughly experimental, and 
 busied with the actual life of men. 
 
 Over the town and neighbourhood a number of 
 meetings were addressed by ministers and elderly lay- 
 men of position in Edinburgh. It was after the evan- 
 gelists had been at work for some time, when their 
 gospel was well known, there were large numbers of 
 inquirers, and the emphasis of every speaker was very 
 properly laid upon 'decision for Christ.' In their natu- 
 ral anxiety to make this duty appear as simple as 
 possible, some of these speakers laboriously succeeded 
 in exhausting it of all reality, and shut up their hearers 
 to the baldest travesty of faith that was ever presented 
 to hungry men. A young man who had not heard 
 Moody, but who was awakened and anxious, listened 
 for several evenings to these speakers. He saw them 
 whittle away one after another of the essentials of 
 faith, and call him to a reception of salvation in which 
 there was neither conscience nor love, nor any awe. 
 In their extremity they likened the acceptance of 
 Christ to the taking of a five-pound note offered you
 
 jET. 22] THE GREAT MISSION 63 
 
 for nothing, or of a glass of water, or of an orange ! 
 The veil grew thinner and thinner between his eyes 
 and the mystery which was beyond, till at last, at the 
 touch of one of their grotesque parables, it tore, and 
 there was nothing behind. Religion turned out to be 
 a big confidence trick. In this feeling he attended a 
 meeting conducted by Mr. Moody himself. The crowd 
 was enormous. The sight of two thousand men, all 
 of them serious, most of them anxious, plunged him 
 into real life again. The words of the hymns he heard 
 were poor, and the music little better, but the mystical 
 power came back with them, and he found himself 
 worshipping. Mr. Moody began to speak with that 
 Yankee accent in which, except when it is boasting of 
 its country, you seldom fail to feel the edge of the real. 
 There was an occasional exaggeration, but some 
 humour fell and swept the address clean of every 
 appearance of unreality. Mr. Moody spoke of the 
 peril of life, of the ghastly hunger of the soul without 
 God, of conscience, and of guilt; then with passion 
 and with tenderness of God's love, and of the Saviour 
 Christ, who is among us to-day as surely as on the 
 shores of Galilee, or by the Pool of Bethesda. Hun- 
 dreds of men stood up in silent witness that they had 
 found salvation, and the young man knew what they 
 had found. He did not stay behind with them, but 
 he went away feeling that God was in the meeting, 
 very clear what Christ could save him from, and con- 
 scious that it was at the peril of his manhood if he 
 refused to follow Him. 
 
 The movement spread over Scotland. Messrs. 
 Moody and Sankey spent the spring of 1874 in Glas- 
 gow and other towns in the west. Everything hap- 
 pened that had happened in Edinburgh, but on a 
 larger scale. In Greenock, from three to four thousand
 
 64 HENRY DRUMMOND [1873-74 
 
 persons heard the gospel daily ; there were meetings 
 of two and three thousand every Sunday morning at 
 nine. In Glasgow, the Crystal Palace, as it was then 
 called, a building of glass, was crowded night after 
 night with five thousand people, and still many were 
 turned from the doors ; it was nine times filled in six 
 days. There would be from fifty to two hundred in- 
 quirers after every meeting. The body of the church 
 or hall would be occupied by groups of men and 
 women, all anxious, and many weeping, while ministers 
 and their friends spoke to them of Christ. Then those 
 who ' accepted Him ' would be asked to stand up, and 
 often all did so. The custom was to reserve every 
 Monday evening for a meeting of converts. At the 
 last one in Glasgow there were thirty-five hundred 
 present. From all parts of Scotland visitors attended 
 the meetings in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and deputa- 
 tions were sent from these centres over the country. 
 So, when the evangelists went to other towns, they 
 found their way prepared, and in some cases the 
 results were even more rapid than they had been in 
 either of the capitals. Stirling, Perth, Dundee, Aber- 
 deen, Inverness, and towns to the east and north of 
 it, Oban, Campbeltown, and Rothesay were all visited 
 during the summer and autumn of 1874. Nor did 
 the work diminish in a district when the evangelists 
 passed on. In Edinburgh it was said that the results 
 rather increased after their farewell meeting. The 
 converts were organised : twelve hundred, who gave 
 their names in Edinburgh, were visited every fortnight 
 for the next two years ! This careful supervision, 
 attempted also in other places, had the best effect on 
 the churches, in which the number of young commu- 
 nicants was largely increased. Ministers themselves 
 were quickened. Although some, it is true, were
 
 &T. 22] THE GREAT MISSION 65 
 
 tempted to become sensational and others to rely on 
 the Spirit, without seeking to deserve His aids by 
 their own study and prayer, preaching upon the whole 
 was stronger and more fresh than it had been, and 
 new heart was put into congregational routine. In 
 1874, Mr. M'Murtrie and this is but one among 
 many testimonies wrote that he had ' never known 
 so happy a winter as last, during the whole course of 
 his ministry.' Dr. Cairns wrote that ' the revival had 
 made very hopeful the whole future of the Bible class 
 in Scotland.' 
 
 But the power spread beyond the congregations, 
 and one of the most striking features of the movement 
 was the social and philanthropic work which it stimu- 
 lated. Like all religious revivals 1 this one had its 
 origin among the well-to-do classes, and at first offered 
 some ground for the sneers at bourgeois religion 
 which were cast upon it. But Mr. Moody, who had 
 the true imagination of the city, and the power to 
 bring up before others the vision of its wants, inspired 
 the Christians of Glasgow to attempt missions to the 
 criminal classes and the relief of the friendless. The 
 lodging-houses were visited and every haunt of va- 
 grants about the brick-kilns upon the South Side and 
 elsewhere. Temperance work was organised, and 
 although there were, as always in that work, very 
 many disappointments, a considerable number of poor 
 drunkards were befriended and reformed. A huge 
 tent was raised on the Green, and afterwards replaced 
 by a hall, which became the scene of a Sabbath morn- 
 ing breakfast to the poor, and the centre of a great deal of 
 other philanthropic activity. New interest was roused 
 in industrial schools, and on the advice of Sheriff Wat- 
 son, a veteran in this line of education, an industrial 
 
 1 Thorold Rogers, Lectures on the Economic Interpretation of History.
 
 66 HENRY DRUMMOND [1873-74 
 
 feeding school was established for ill-fed or ill-clad 
 children. At Saltcoats a house was bought and fur- 
 nished for orphans ; new impulses were given to the 
 Orphan Homes of Scotland, founded in 1871 by Mr. 
 Quarrier, who, with his fellow- workers among the poor 
 of Glasgow, had given inestimable assistance to Mr. 
 Moody 's mission. A boarding-house was opened in 
 Glasgow for young women. Mr. Moody gave great 
 attention to Young Men's Christian Associations, and 
 at the height of the movement secured very large sub- 
 scriptions for their foundation or expansion. He felt 
 strongly that they l had been conducted upon methods 
 which were either too vague or too narrow, and that 
 for their success * clear and liberal views were needed.' 
 He defined their aim to promote the spiritual in- 
 stincts and look after the temporal wants of young 
 men. Each ' ought to be a nursery of Christian char- 
 acter, a most efficient evangelistic agency, a centre of 
 social meeting, and a means of furthering the progress 
 of young men in the general pursuits of life.' But 
 along with 'liberality in your aims you must have 
 thoroughness in details. The spiritual must be dis- 
 tinctly dominant. Do not, however, put the associa- 
 tion in place of the Church; it is a handmaid of the 
 Church and a feeder of the Church. For every man 
 it must find some work,' and ' use every particle of 
 power in the young convert.' Again, we may express 
 the wish that the manly and liberal views of the evan- 
 gelist had been carried out by all the institutions 
 which he did so much to invigorate. 2 
 
 1 See a letter by him in Times of Blessing, vol. i. p. 4. 
 
 2 Another effect of the movement ought to be recorded in Edinburgh and at 
 other places, both in England and Scotland. Some Episcopalian ministers heartily 
 cooperated with the evangelists. But in this denomination more good appears 
 to have been done by special missions and conferences by their own clergy in the 
 wake of Messrs. Moody and Sankey. There were very successful missions in
 
 vET. 22] THE GREAT MISSION 67 
 
 How Henry Drummond was drawn into this great 
 movement I have not been able to trace with exact- 
 ness. Soon after he began his mission in Riego 
 Street 1 he asked a fellow-student if he had heard of 
 the two Americans who were evangelising at Newcas- 
 tle, and with the date of their arrival in Edinburgh the 
 diary of his own work stops short, as if he had been 
 suddenly carried off upon some larger stream. Two 
 New College men who had attended one of the early 
 gatherings in Edinburgh, and had stayed behind to 
 see the novel inquiry meetings, then exciting much 
 jealousy, were asked by Mr. Moody to assist, and 
 refused. When they returned to their lodging they 
 felt some shame at their inability to speak of their 
 Lord to anxious men who were seeking Him, and 
 after prayer together they resolved to offer themselves 
 for the work. To Drummond's own mind this sus- 
 pected feature of the movement must have appeared 
 its most promising element. Here was the very factor 
 which he had missed in the organisation of the Church, 
 and for which, only that month, he had been pleading 
 in his essay to the Theological Society. We can 
 understand how his keen mind watched the move- 
 ment, and in spite of this prejudice in its favour, found 
 at first not a little to repel him. He was curiously dif- 
 ferent from the two men with whom he was to become 
 so intimate a colleague, not in theology, nor in zeal 
 to win his fellow-men for Christ, but in those other 
 things that by the bitter irony of our life separate us 
 from each other far more cruelly than even the divisions 
 of religion do. His accent, his style, his tastes, were 
 at the other pole from those of the evangelists. His 
 
 Edinburgh, conducted by Mr. Pigou, vicar of Doncaster, and Father Benson ; in 
 Brighton, by Mr. Hay Aitken ; in Leeds, London, and elsewhere. 
 1 See pp. 55-56.
 
 68 HENRY DRUMMOND [1874 
 
 speech was quiet and restrained, an excited preacher 
 was always a wonder to him, he had a perilous 
 sense of humour, and I do not think that he ever 
 really cared for large public meetings. Nor did the 
 social possibilities of the movement attract him: at 
 this time he had not the civic conscience. But from 
 the first he felt Mr. Moody's sincerity, and the practical 
 wisdom of the new methods. The aim at the individ- 
 ual, the endeavour to rouse and secure him this was 
 what he had missed in ordinary church methods and 
 now found. The inquiry meetings bridged the gap 
 between preacher and hearer, and brought them 
 together, man to man, before God. On his side Mr. 
 Moody was feeling the need of a young man to take 
 charge of the meetings for young men, and it is a 
 tribute to his insight that he chose one whose style 
 and tastes were so different from his own. At first 
 Drummond was employed, like other students, only in 
 the inquiry room. 'Often he was to be seen going 
 home through the streets after a meeting with a man 
 in whose arm his own was linked. He wore round 
 his shoulders, or rather his head, a tartan plaid, green 
 and black, in which I always see him yet when I recall 
 those days. The figure was extremely picturesque. 
 
 'The next stage was that of addressing meetings, 
 which came about in this way. As the marvellous 
 work developed in Edinburgh, the news, of course, 
 flew in every direction ; and requests came pouring in 
 from all parts of the country for speakers to come and 
 describe it. These were dealt with, in the first place, 
 by the committee who had charge of Mr. Moody's 
 meetings, but as the students of New College had 
 gone into the movement nearly in a body, a few of us 
 shaped ourselves into an informal committee to receive 
 the applications and send out deputations. Of course
 
 y T . 22] THE GREAT MISSION 69 
 
 the descriptions of what was going on in Edinburgh 
 were combined with evangelistic addresses; and the 
 flame of revival burst out in one place after another 
 north, south, east, and west. 
 
 'This went on for months, and Drummond was in 
 the thick of it all the time. I still remember vividly 
 some of his deputation work. The sympathy of young 
 men had been very visible in Edinburgh, but it was in 
 Glasgow that the first very remarkable meeting for 
 this class was held, and the feature to which reference 
 has just been made was conspicuously stamped on the 
 movement. The meeting is still remembered in Glas- 
 gow, and in religious circles throughout Scotland, as 
 " the hundred-and-one night." It took place in Ewing 
 Place Congregational Church, which was filled with 
 young men. Mr. Moody had sent to Edinburgh for a 
 deputation of students, and Stewart, Miller (now of the 
 Bridge of Allan), Gordon (Vienna), Brown (Glasgow), 
 Henry, and I went. Mr. Moody did not speak at all 
 himself ; but Dr. Cairns of Berwick delivered a pow- 
 erful address on Immortality; then the students spoke 
 one after another; and Dr. H. J. Wilson wound up. 
 As the meeting proceeded, the spiritual power was 
 such as I have never experienced on any other occa- 
 sion; and when Mr. Moody, at the close, ordered the 
 front seats to be cleared, and invited those who 
 wished to be prayed for to occupy the vacant pews, a 
 hundred and one came forward. As the evangelist 
 pleaded, and that solemn stream began to gather from 
 every corner of the church, the sense of Divine power 
 became overwhelming, and I remember quite well 
 turning round on the platform and hiding my face in 
 my hands, unable to look on the scene any more. 
 Yet all was perfectly quiet, and the hundred and one 
 were men of intelligence and character, who were not
 
 7O HENRY DRUMMOND [1874 
 
 carried away with excitement, but moved by the force 
 of conviction. I do not remember anything remarka- 
 ble in Henry's speaking that night ; the address which 
 told most was, I think, that of Frank Gordon, whose 
 speaking was characterised by a wonderful pathos and 
 passion. When we six went back to the hotel, we sat 
 very late discussing the remarkable scene we had just 
 witnessed. Some one started the question whether it 
 is usual to remember the date and the incidents of 
 one's own conversion. At such a moment it was easy 
 to be confidential, and it turned out that we were 
 equally divided, three remembering the circumstances 
 in which their spiritual life began, and three not. 
 Henry was, I think, among the latter. Each of us 
 possesses an interleaved Testament, beautifully bound 
 in morocco, as a memorial of that night ; and each 
 book contains the signatures and mottoes of all six. 
 These Testaments were Henry's idea, and he pre- 
 sented them to the rest. His own copy went with 
 him through his subsequent evangelistic wanderings, 
 and was worn to rags. 
 
 ' On another occasion I remember that Henry and 
 I set off together to fulfil two engagements without 
 having decided to which place each was to go. We 
 talked the matter over as the train carried us up the 
 Highland line, but at last we tossed for it. I went 
 to Inverness and he, I think, to Nairn or Elgin. As 
 matters turned out, this decision was very important ; 
 for, where he went, there was such a blessing that he 
 felt called to devote himself more absolutely to the 
 work; and he used to speak of this occasion as one 
 of the turning-points by which his subsequent work 
 was determined.' Others remember that Mr. Moody 
 himself was in Elgin, and to Drummond's surprise 
 opened the door to him when he arrived there.
 
 vET. 22] THE GREAT MISSION 7 1 
 
 It was, in fact, because of what he heard or saw of 
 this work in Elgin that Mr. Moody sent Drummond 
 to Sunderland the first instance of his policy of 
 setting Drummond to continue the work among 
 young men at places which Mr. Sankey and he had 
 visited. Stewart either went with Drummond or 
 joined him a few days later, but 'the work immedi- 
 ately developed to such an extent that he telegraphed 
 for help. I l sent Ewing, 2 who up to that point had 
 kept out of the movement, but was instantly caught 
 by its spirit and soon proved one of the most power- 
 ful workers. In subsequent years we used to chaff 
 Ewing by telling with what fear and trembling I had 
 sent him, and how aghast Henry was when he heard 
 who was coming to be his coadjutor. Even at the 
 time, in spite of the solemnity of the supernatural 
 forces in the midst of which we felt ourselves, there 
 was a great deal of high spirits in our intercourse.' 
 The deputation went for three days and stayed a fort- 
 night, with still less hope of getting away, for the 
 work grew past all belief and spread to the neighbour- 
 ing towns. In answer to urgent invitations the three 
 young Scotsmen visited Newcastle, South Shields, 
 Bishop Auckland, Hartlepool, Morpeth, and Hexham. 
 Sunderland appears to have been fairly aroused by 
 the mission. The work began as elsewhere among 
 the middle classes, and spread to the working-men. 
 All denominations took part in it. Members of the 
 Society of Friends were among the hardest workers, 
 but all the Nonconformist ministers gave their help, 
 and the three young men found themselves at the 
 head of a large and influential organisation which 
 they had to superintend from day to day, besides con- 
 
 1 Rev. James Stalker. 
 
 2 Rev. John F. Ewing, afterwards of Toorak.
 
 72 HENRY DRUMMOND [1874 
 
 ducting the services and the meetings with inquirers. 
 It must have been a tremendous ordeal, both mental 
 and moral. Ewing used to speak of it as the greatest 
 month of his life. But there appears to have been no 
 excitement, and the large daily gatherings for prayer 
 were conducted with deep earnestness. The results 
 were very manifest: the after-meetings were large, 
 very many members of church-going families were 
 moved to a real decision to follow Christ, and num- 
 bers of young men, who had not been to any church 
 for months and years, professed themselves converted. 
 The tiny Young Men's Association rose to a member- 
 ship of four hundred, and a year or two afterwards the 
 work done among them was declared to be permanent 
 and still spreading. In the end a thousand persons in 
 Sunderland alone gave in their names as converts. 
 Parents were so stirred that arrangements were made 
 to extend the public services to children ; and in this 
 delicate work the propriety of which Drummond 
 afterwards questioned, believing with justice that reli- 
 gion comes to a child most naturally through its home, 
 some amount of real good was done, in spite of the 
 artificial and premature 'experiences' that such a 
 movement always forces. In his weekly letters to his 
 father and mother Drummond tells the following 
 
 story : 
 
 ' SUNDERLAND, April 24, 1874. 
 
 '. . . You see I am still here and do not know when 
 we are to get away. Requests are pouring in on 
 us from all quarters and the work is just as deep 
 as it could be. We have three meetings each 
 night, one exclusively for young men. Generally 
 there are about a hundred inquirers in all every 
 night, and as most of these come to the light before 
 leaving you may imagine the wonderful nature of
 
 JET. 22] THE GREAT MISSION 73 
 
 the work going on around us. We got Ewing to 
 help us yesterday, but my health is just as good 
 as ever. We are kept at it from morning till 
 night. Schools, infirmaries, poorhouses, etc., 
 have all to be addressed, and the work has got in 
 among several of the public institutions. Yester- 
 day we had an " all day " meeting for inquirers. 
 The young men's meetings have been a marvel- 
 lous success and have done an amount of good 
 which the countryside will feel the influence of 
 for generations. They are going out in bands 
 to work the neighbourhood, and as there is a 
 dense colliery population they may do a great 
 deal of good. I am living in a very quiet family, 
 and although you might think there is a deal of 
 excitement going on, I seem to be spared it all 
 and live as quietly as if I were at Killin. . . . 
 Next week we shall run in to Newcastle occasion- 
 ally to meetings there, but one of us will always 
 be left here.' 
 
 'HARTLEPOOL, May 6, 1874. 
 
 ' The people here have been very pressing for some 
 of us to run down and hold a couple of meetings, 
 and I made up my mind to comply while the 
 other two went to Newcastle, where I join them 
 to-morrow. The Sunderland work would take a 
 week even to sketch, and it seems to have reached 
 all classes and all ages. Among the schools it 
 seems to have broken out with force, and we could 
 spend another month among them with great profit. 
 On Sunday I had an enormous children's meeting 
 and a hundred and fifty remained to an after-meet- 
 ing. In the evening we had the Victoria Hall 
 crammed (with adults) and a very large number en- 
 tered the inquiry room at the close. On Monday
 
 74 HENRY DRUMMOND [1874 
 
 evening we had a farewell meeting with the young 
 converts. There was a large church full and it was 
 one of the happiest meetings I was ever at. The 
 general impression in Sunderland is that the work 
 is just beginning, and although we have left the 
 place, I expect we shall have to go back again. 
 To give you an idea of the work in Sunderland I 
 may say that upwards of three hundred names 
 were given in at the young meris meeting alone of 
 young men who had professed to have been con- 
 verted during the three weeks of the meetings. 
 One minister of a small chapel stated after the first 
 fortnight that forty had been converted already 
 out of his little flock. To me the whole matter 
 seems an unreal dream. It is impossible to real- 
 ise it. I suppose it was never meant we should. 
 Hartlepool is a little chilly after Sunderland. . . . 
 The whole countryside is ripe here, and I do not 
 really know when this English tour of ours is to 
 
 end.' 
 
 'SUNDERLAND, May 12, 1874. 
 
 ' I am leading a very wandering life. . . . Our 
 hands are very full here. We have applications 
 from all quarters to go to work. Our present 
 duty, however, is to stay in Sunderland. We 
 have given it a rest this week and are working 
 Newcastle and Bishop Auckland, but next week 
 we are to have a great week of meetings here for 
 all classes, and a special one each night for young 
 men only and probably another one for children. 
 The work among children has been most wonder- 
 ful, and we have visited Sabbath and Day Schools. 
 As you can guess, we started with but a very 
 meagre stock of material, and have got on won- 
 derfully. I should much like, however, to have a
 
 . 22] THE GREAT MISSION 75 
 
 few of those American Sabbath School Messengers, 
 as my stock of illustrations is worn absolutely 
 threadbare. If you come across anything nice 
 you might also send it, and A. might join in the 
 hunt. I am really anxious about this, and I hope 
 you will manage to send a few scraps before 
 many posts are passed. . . . On Monday we 
 had another converts' meeting a large church 
 full. The Sunday evening meeting has become 
 quite an institution in the town, and is having an 
 extraordinary influence on all classes. There are 
 always three thousand or four thousand present 
 and we have always a large prayer-meeting.' 
 
 ' HEXHAM, June 9, 1874. 
 
 ' I got here on Saturday evening after a good week 
 at Sunderland. We worked two meetings each 
 night, but the one was six miles off so that we 
 only had one each to attend to. The results were 
 most satisfactory. I think there would be about 
 a hundred in each place I cannot say exactly 
 converted, but under very deep impression. 
 One night I spent at Morpeth and had a very 
 nice meeting. On Sunday I had no less than 
 three meetings here, all very interesting. Thev 
 were just about to close the meetings which have 
 been going on for some weeks. They thought the 
 thing was getting played out, but they seem to 
 have taken a fresh start, and the meetings this 
 week have been the biggest they have ever had. 
 Half the audience last night were church peo- 
 ple. ... If the work had been bad I should 
 have been with you to-morrow, but I see now it 
 will not do to break off. You know every night 
 counts. As to my health, I think I am stronger
 
 76 HENRY DRUMMOND [1874 
 
 than ever. There could not be a more healthy 
 place than this, and I take the whole day in the 
 woods and hills. I am engaged all week at 
 Shields, but on Saturday I could get free for a 
 few days and we might have a ramble together.' 
 
 'SOUTH SHIELDS, June 26, 1874. 
 
 ' The work here has been steady. Results not like 
 Sunderland exactly, but I think we ought to be 
 very well satisfied. I am pressed to stay and will 
 probably be either here or in the neighbourhood.' 
 
 From another place, the same month. 
 
 ' . . . I had got thus far when a long interruption 
 occurred. The gentleman with whom I am living 
 opened up his whole past history to me a very 
 chequered one it has been and I think our visit 
 will be the means of doing him some good. I 
 could not stop his yarn, as I saw something per- 
 haps was to come of it. This is a specimen of 
 the kind of private work which we have to do in 
 every house we stay at, with scarcely an exception.' 
 
 Meetings of three and four thousand, daily addresses 
 to hundreds of young men, a constant confessional, 
 crowds of anxious inquirers, urgent invitations from 
 all quarters, the success of the work obviously de- 
 pendent upon his presence, ministers and leading lay- 
 men in many towns looking to him as their chief, the 
 sense (right or wrong) that the Christianity of the next 
 generation in these places might largely be determined 
 by the work he had charge of conceive of all this 
 falling to a man not quite twenty-three ! It might 
 well seem to him ' an unreal dream.' Yet there is abun- 
 dant evidence in his letters that he did not lose his
 
 JET. 22] THE GREAT MISSION 77 
 
 head nor suffer his natural spirit to be warped. He 
 kept his interest in the common affairs of home, 
 wrote about his younger brother's egg-collecting, and 
 looked forward as eagerly as any school-boy to a holiday 
 with his mother. From outside testimony, he seems 
 to have depreciated rather than exaggerated the results 
 of the work. He remained shrewd and sensible ; and 
 it was already noticed of him that, as in all his later 
 years, he never betrayed, either on or off the platform, 
 one secret of the many hundreds that must have been 
 confided to him by those who sought his counsel and 
 inspiration. The Sunderland Mission made Drum- 
 mond a man. He won from it not only the power of 
 organising and leading his fellow-men, but that insight 
 into character, that knowledge of life on its lowest as 
 on its highest levels, that power of interest in every 
 individual he met, which so brilliantly distinguished 
 him, and in later years made us who were his friends 
 feel as if his experience and his sympathy were 
 exhaustless. 
 
 When Messrs. Moody and Sankey closed their Scot- 
 tish Mission at Rothesay in the beginning of Septem- 
 ber, they passed over to Belfast, where they stayed for 
 five weeks. Here the same huge meetings, the same 
 large number of inquirers and of converts, followed 
 their work as in Scotland. When they moved to 
 Londonderry they sent for Drummond (who had spent 
 his holidays fishing and evangelising in Orkney and 
 Shetland) to continue the work in Belfast; and, with 
 his friend James Stalker, he began to address meetings 
 there about the 8th of October. When the mission 
 opened in Dublin he moved to Deny, and carried on 
 the work alone for some weeks. He had been at 
 home for part of the autumn, and his people had urged 
 him to resume his theological studies the next winter
 
 78 HENRY DRUMMOND [1874 
 
 session. In the following letter he gives evidence not 
 only of his resolution to abide by the mission so long 
 as it should need him, but of that clearness of percep- 
 tion as to what his own proper work was, and that 
 quiet power of overcoming all influence to the con- 
 trary, which was so marked a feature of his character. 
 
 'LONDONDERRY, Oct. 19, 1874. 
 
 ' . . . Just a few lines from the seat of war to tell 
 you how things are going on. The enemy is fall- 
 ing by hundreds. I think Derry beats any work 
 I have been in by a great deal. The first meeting 
 almost overwhelmed me. Moody was here for 
 four days, and, leaving on Thursday morning, sent 
 me to keep up the meetings. The place was first 
 roused thoroughly, and no more. When I came 
 I found the biggest church here filled to the last 
 seat. I think it was one of the most impressive 
 meetings I have seen. The inquiry meetings were 
 far bigger than any they had had amongst them 
 seventy young men. On Saturday we had a con- 
 verts' meeting. Last night another evangelistic 
 meeting ; the church crowded to the pulpit stairs 
 half an hour before the time. There were more 
 than three hundred anxious. Of course I cannot go 
 to Dublin for some time. I have just telegraphed 
 to Moody. I feel the responsibility of the work 
 here is very great. Being sent here by Moody, 
 and being the only worker, I have full swing of 
 the entire work. It is far too much for me, and I 
 am almost frightened when I think of it. One 
 very fine feature of the movement here is the hold 
 it has taken amongst the young men. I believe 
 there were one hundred and fifty (young men 
 alone) anxious last night, and about one hundred
 
 JEr. 22] THE GREAT MISSION 79 
 
 have already decided before that, and were at the 
 converts' meeting on Saturday. 
 ' I suppose I am fairly engaged now to follow Moody 
 all winter, and take his young men's meetings. I 
 cannot help thinking more and more every day 
 that this is the work God has planned for me this 
 session. Why I should have such a tremendous 
 privilege is the only mystery to me. I do not 
 believe there has ever been such an opportunity 
 for work in the history of the Church. Moody 
 says if the young men's meeting can be kept up 
 in every town, he believes there will be ten thou- 
 sand young men converted before the winter is 
 over. What a tremendous thought! In the light 
 of all this, I cannot help thinking, as I have said, 
 that the path I have chosen for the next months 
 is the path which God has lit up for me. I was 
 very uncomfortable when I was at home last 
 you all seemed so much against it, and I felt it 
 more than you think. But now I feel I must go 
 onward, the pointing of the Finger has grown 
 plainer and less unmistakable than ever. I feel 
 as if I dared not draw back. I wish you could 
 all see it too.' 
 
 To Dublin the evangelists went with some trepida- 
 tion. One correspondent warned them of failure in a 
 truly Hibernian style : ' I have seen so many of these 
 revivals, and they all end worse than they were before 
 they began ! ' Their first meeting in the Exhibition 
 Palace was reckoned at ten thousand ; and although for 
 some time after that the work went more slowly than 
 any since the Edinburgh Mission, it ultimately reached 
 even greater dimensions than the evangelists had yet 
 experienced. This increase was partly due to the
 
 8O HENRY DRUMMOND [1874 
 
 hearty cooperation, for the first time in the history 
 of the movement, of the Episcopalian clergy, while 
 the daily press chronicled the meetings with a fulness 
 never displayed elsewhere. ' Men of all the Church 
 parties attended the meetings. Three of the Bishops 
 have been at them ; and one of these, the Bishop of 
 Kilmore, has warmly commended " the wonderful work 
 in Dublin" while presiding over his Synod. The 
 Bishop of Derry at the reopening of York Minster 
 said that " in Scotland and Ireland a strong fervour 
 had been awakened, and hundreds and thousands had 
 been made earnest by a single voice singing the Gospel 
 of Jesus Christ." The Rev. Lord Plunket, while " not 
 personally relishing all the accompaniments of their 
 teaching," blessed God " for the good which is being 
 done by our American visitors," and rejoiced "that 
 Christ is being preached, and souls are being saved." 
 Many Roman Catholics frequented the meetings. Al- 
 though the evangelists were working for the first time 
 in a population the majority of which was Catholic, 
 they made so great an impression of the real good 
 they were doing that one Catholic newspaper, The 
 Nation, severely rebuked another for abusing them, 
 and bade them Godspeed. This impression could 
 never have been secured had Mr. Moody used contro- 
 versy or denunciation, but these he wisely avoided.' 1 
 
 There was unity among Christians. In the first 
 week of December a Convention was held, for which 
 the railway companies offered tickets from all parts 
 of Ireland. On the Tuesday an ' all day' meeting was 
 attended by fifteen thousand people in the Exhibition 
 Palace, and there were nearly one thousand ministers 
 present, in seats reserved for them. The topics chosen 
 
 1 The above details are from letters to The Times of Blessing in November, 
 1874, by Dr. Fleming Stevenson.
 
 JEr. 23] THE GREAT MISSION 8 1 
 
 were ' Praise and Thanksgiving,' ' How to reach the 
 Masses,' and ' How to fill Ireland with the Gospel.' 
 These were introduced by two Episcopalians and a 
 Presbyterian, and discussed by ministers of other com- 
 munions. Mr. Moody himself spoke on Sectarian- 
 ism. ' God had vouchsafed a blessed unity. Woe to 
 the unhappy person who should break it! Yet it 
 would be broken if there was proselytism. The cry 
 is, " Come out ! Come out from a sect ! " But where ? 
 Into another sect ! The spirit that is always prose- 
 lytising is from Satan. I say, Stay in. If you have 
 a minister that preaches Christ, stand by him. You 
 will get nothing but trouble and pride by leaving 
 him. There are people who consider that denouncing 
 churches and finding fault with ministers is "bearing 
 testimony." These people will " bear testimony " for 
 years, and that is all Christ gets from them. I warn 
 you, beware of trying to get people away from the folds 
 where they have been fed. The moment we begin to 
 lift up our little party or our Church, then the Spirit of 
 God seems to leave and there is no more conversion.' 
 Drummond came to Dublin for a meeting of men 
 on Sunday, November 8th. There were nearly three 
 thousand present, and at the close a large number of 
 inquirers. On December 3d Dr. Fleming Stevenson 
 writes : 
 
 ' For some time past another large meeting had been con- 
 ducted in the Metropolitan Hall at the same hour as the 
 evening inquiry meeting, and yet the attendance at both has 
 increased. It is exclusively for young men, and is conducted 
 by Mr. Henry Drummond, who was urgently entreated to 
 leave work of the same kind at Derry that he might come 
 up to this. At first it seemed harder to deal with them and 
 less impression was made than elsewhere ; but that is all past, 
 and probably there are nowhere more striking instances of 
 the grace of God.'
 
 82 HENRY DRUMMOND [1874 
 
 Drummond himself said at Manchester that during 
 four weeks of young men's meetings in Dublin from 
 ten to fifty were converted every night, that in one 
 business place alone there had been seventy-five con- 
 verts, and that altogether hundreds had sent in their 
 names as converts. To judge from the letters he 
 afterwards received from Dublin, these were mainly 
 artisans, shopmen, and clerks. Some of them were 
 quite uneducated ; the first result of their conversion 
 to Christ was usually a strong passion to learn to read. 
 One poor fellow who had taught himself in a few 
 months after his conversion writes : ' Since you left 
 Dublin I had had such a creatin [?] Happeytite long- 
 ing for the knowledge of the Holy Bible.' But this 
 is the only grotesque testimony out of many. 
 
 Messrs. Moody and Sankey opened their mission 
 in Manchester on a dark Sunday of drenching rain. 1 
 Yet they gathered a meeting of two thousand workers 
 at eight in the morning and two other meetings later 
 in the day, for which the Free Trade and Oxford halls 
 were required. They stayed in Manchester a month. 
 On New Year's Eve they began in Sheffield, on 
 January lyth in Birmingham, and on February 5th 
 in Liverpool. In all three towns the same features 
 marked their work as in Dublin, Belfast, Glasgow, 
 and Edinburgh : enormous meetings from the very 
 start, at first small, ultimately large, numbers of con- 
 verts, the quickening of church life, and a very wide- 
 spread interest among the general population. They 
 had gatherings of Christian workers at eight on Sunday 
 mornings, from two to four thousand in number. The 
 historic halls of the cities the Free Trade, the Bingley, 
 the Albert were crammed on Sunday evenings, and, 
 in spite of overflow meetings, the streets around were 
 
 1 November 29th.
 
 MT. 23] THE GREAT MISSION 83 
 
 filled in the rain and the darkness with crowds singing 
 hymns. In Liverpool a wooden hall was erected to 
 seat eight thousand. Though the Church of England 
 clergy generally refused to act on the executive com- 
 mittee, and in one or two places withdrew altogether 
 from the work because some of its prominent supporters 
 took part at the same time in Liberation meetings, a 
 group of them were always found on Mr. Moody 's plat- 
 form, and, in Sheffield and Liverpool especially, they 
 assisted with prayers and addresses. Practically all 
 the Nonconformist ministers gave help, at their head 
 MacLaren of Manchester and Dale of Birmingham. 
 
 Through all these cities Drummond followed the 
 evangelists with his meetings for young men, and 
 (except in Sheffield) with the usual breadth, depth, 
 and permanent results of his influence. The fol- 
 lowing extracts from his letters show this, as well as 
 the many anxieties which now began to try him. The 
 letters are mostly to his mother. 
 
 'MANCHESTER, Friday, Dec. ? 
 
 1 The work here is very fair, perhaps not so enthu- 
 siastic as in some places, but what can be done 
 in a fortnight with six hundred thousand people. 
 My department is not yet in full working order. 
 The young men have never been reached yet in 
 any numbers, but we shall make an extra effort 
 next week and try to get them moved. There is not 
 so much unity among the ministers as one would 
 like to see, and the Church party have had a feud 
 with the other ministers which cannot be broken 
 up in a day. The enclosed card is to be left by 
 Christian workers in every house in Manchester 
 before the New Year, a gigantic undertaking ! I 
 think it will do great good, not the actual card
 
 84 HENRY DRUMMOND [1874-75 
 
 exactly, but it will give the hundreds of workers 
 an introduction to thousands of people. I do not 
 expect to make many friends here. You know 
 when the work is not boiling hot, there is always 
 a good deal of jealousy of strangers arriving upon 
 the scene, and I daresay some of the ministers 
 who are only lukewarm would rather I had kept 
 
 myself to myself. Moody had , the evangelist 
 
 from , to help in the general work, and there 
 
 was such a row about it that he had to send him 
 away in three days ! However, I am in better 
 odour and will not get the sack whatever happens.' 
 
 'MANCHESTER, Dec. 31, 1874. 
 
 ' A Happy New Year my first from home. It seems 
 strange to be absent at this time, and I am sure 
 to have a fit of melancholies before to-morrow 
 finishes. . . . There was a great scene at the 
 station, all the bigwigs in Manchester down to 
 see Moody off. I shall have to hold the fort 
 here for some time yet. The prospects of work 
 are not very cheering, and unless they get better 
 in a week, I shall strike my tent and march for 
 headquarters at Sheffield. . . . The cold has been 
 intense. There has been so much ice that we have 
 got tired of skating ; and now there is not much 
 time for it.' 
 
 'MANCHESTER, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 1875. 
 
 'I never met a finer set of men the best Com- 
 mittee by far Moody ever had. . . . My work 
 here has been a little up-hill. The young men 
 have never been touched by Moody, and the 
 Y.M.C.A. has its hands full of district work 
 elsewhere and cannot work with us. I have had 
 to develop a new set of workers, and beat up a
 
 JET. 23] THE GREAT MISSION 85 
 
 new meeting. I am glad to say, the work is 
 steadily growing every night and I think it will 
 be a centre of real good immediately. However, 
 it will no sooner be up to working power, than 
 I shall have to leave for Sheffield. ... I was 
 offered a church (here) the other day a splendid 
 new Presbyterian church ! I need not say that I 
 have declined with thanks.' 
 
 < SHEFFIELD, Friday, January 8th. 
 
 'You will perceive from my changed address that 
 I am once more " stalking through the land " as 
 Daniel's band says. A telegram most unexpected 
 yesterday, at noon, from Moody brought me off in a 
 great hurry-scurry to Sheffield. I could not help 
 it. " Come to Sheffield at three to-day. I have a 
 great men's meeting for you to-night," so the 
 message ran, and of course I had just to leave 
 all and run too. I suppose it was for the best, 
 though I was real sorry to leave my little Man- 
 chester meeting, which hard labour had worked 
 up after much discouragement to a really good 
 work. It has been growing in interest and power 
 every night and was coming to be a great success 
 at last. However, I daresay I may be back to it 
 for a day or two next week. Of course, it is a 
 much smaller thing than the work here. On 
 Wednesday night I suppose my audience would 
 count about three hundred, while last night in 
 Sheffield it was about as many thousands. I have 
 rarely seen a better men's meeting, and to-night I 
 have another just the same. Moody has gone to 
 Manchester to-day to return to-morrow. I think 
 the work here is going to be splendid. All classes 
 are moved, from the Mayor to the beggar.'
 
 86 HENRY DRUMMOND [1875 
 
 'SHEFFIELD, January i2th. 
 
 ' Reginald Radcliffe came last night to help me with 
 the men's meeting. His method was as peculiar, 
 as it was successful. We went to the hall where 
 Moody was preaching, sang a hymn with the 
 crowd who could not get in, and then in- 
 vited them to adjourn from the street to the 
 Young Men's Hall. By eight o'clock we had 
 five or six hundred of an audience, mostly men. 
 When Radcliffe began he asked the Christians to 
 stand up while he addressed them. About half 
 the audience rose, and he gave them a most 
 earnest charge on the subject of personal holi- 
 ness for about ten minutes. He pleaded with 
 them to aim at more entire consecration and to 
 examine themselves to see what hindered them 
 from being filled with the Spirit. The effect 
 upon the unconverted who remained sitting was 
 wonderful. Then instead of asking the anxious 
 to retire to the hall below, as is usually done, 
 Radcliffe asked all the Christians to meet him 
 there for prayer for more holiness. I gave out 
 a hymn, while he and his party withdrew, and in 
 a few minutes was left alone with an audience of 
 two or three hundred unconverted people. Many 
 of them must have been under deep conviction. 
 I addressed them for fifteen minutes, and then 
 made a dedicatory prayer. A minister followed 
 in prayer, and then I asked all who had decided 
 for Christ to rise and leave. Somewhere about 
 fifty were left behind, and we then turned the 
 meeting into an inquiry meeting and spoke 
 personally to each of them. I had about a 
 dozen men in a corner and one after another 
 came to the light. All over the hall the same
 
 . 23] THE GREAT MISSION 87 
 
 thing was going on, and the result, so far as 
 the unconverted were concerned, was one of the 
 best inquiry meetings we have ever had, and so 
 far as the Christians were concerned, one of the 
 most delightful and memorable prayer meetings 
 of their lives.' 
 
 'QUEEN'S HOTEL, BIRMINGHAM, Friday, Jan. 29, 1875. 
 
 'A telegram this morning from Moody sent me off 
 here post-haste. I have just tea'd with him and 
 had a long talk over things. The work here has 
 been far greater than anywhere else far, far 
 greater. Of course I do not know very much 
 about it yet. I was quite prepared to leave this 
 morning, as I knew Moody 's ways and I knew I 
 must be in Birmingham before he left it, and that 
 is to-morrow morning. As usual I was sorry to 
 leave the last place, as the work had got into 
 splendid trim. The young men put out the bill 
 which I enclose, without my knowledge, and our 
 meeting was crowded till there was not standing 
 room and about fifty inquirers at the close. . . . 
 Moody is not at all the worse for this great work 
 here, speaking to fifteen thousand people every 
 night. These figures are not exaggerated. He 
 is very careful, and he says so himself. 
 Tell J. I was all over Rogers the cutler's ware- 
 house to-day in Sheffield. It is a magnificent 
 business. I saw one knife with one thousand 
 eight hundred and seventy-five blades quite 
 true. It is a great curiosity. They add a blade 
 every year. Yesterday I saw electroplating, so 
 you see I am picking up information ! '
 
 88 HENRY DRUMMOND [1875 
 
 < BIRMINGHAM, February, 1875. 
 
 ' Once more I am on the eve of a flitting. When 
 you get this I shall either be in Liverpool or on 
 the road to it. A telegram in the usual style from 
 Moody settled the arrangement last night. My 
 work here has not been so great as I should have 
 liked, but still I think a little real honest work 
 has been done. And I have great hopes of a 
 meeting last night with some of the leading 
 young men of the town resulting in permanent 
 work among young men. ... I am almost sorry 
 to leave this, as I have fallen into the houses of 
 such very nice people ; but of course that is not 
 my business, so I must be off. I have lived so 
 much at hotels lately that it is quite a pleasure 
 to catch a glimpse of home life again.' 
 
 'CoMPTON HOTEL, LIVERPOOL, Monday, Feb. 15, 1875. 
 
 ' " Liverpool." Well, the programme is running out, 
 you see, town by town. This is the last of the 
 provinces now ; and in another month we shall be 
 on the big campaign. I came here on Saturday 
 afternoon, and after dinner at the hotel was car- 
 ried off by one of the Committee on an explora- 
 tion expedition thro' the theatres, music halls, 
 concert rooms, and public buildings generally 
 to pick one out for our meeting. I think the 
 prospects are very good. Yesterday was a great 
 day here. Moody 's four services were splendid 
 hundreds of inquirers. In the evening I had a 
 theatre full of " overflows " to look after. This 
 morning there was a monster breakfast of gentle- 
 men interested in the movement, which went off 
 very well. I have fallen quite among friends 
 here Stewart, who worked with me in Sunder-
 
 /ET. 23] THE GREAT MISSION 89 
 
 land, and two college classmates, Eraser from 
 Alloa and M'Leod have churches near here. I 
 quite enjoyed meeting them, as they are about the 
 only " kent faces " I have seen for some time. . . . 
 I got a treat last night. Moody sat up alone with 
 me till near i o'clock telling me the story of his 
 life. He told me the whole thing. A reporter 
 might have made his fortune out of it ! ' 
 
 The mission of Messrs. Moody and Sankey to Liver- 
 pool produced greater results than they had achieved 
 in any other town. On the last day of their visit a 
 meeting was held for anxious inquirers who were 
 admitted by ticket. 
 
 ' Not less than five thousand presented tickets. Mr. 
 Moody's address was directed to the clearing away of 
 doubts and difficulties, and at its close he called upon all 
 who were willing to trust themselves to Christ there and 
 then to rise to their feet. With much manifest emotion a 
 vast multitude of persons, quite two-thirds of all who were 
 present, stood up. This was followed by an after meeting, 
 when some four hundred or five hundred awakened souls 
 were conversed with personally.' Another witness says of 
 this meeting : ' It was a time of solemn surrender : no 
 startling appeals had been listened to ; the noonday sun, and 
 not the glare of gaslight, shone into the building ; there was 
 nothing to excite any one; yet the close-pressed phalanx of 
 city merchants and ministers on the platform had a struggle 
 to repress emotion.' 'An equal number remained after the 
 women's meeting in the afternoon, but perhaps the most 
 remarkable meeting was that of the men in the evening. 
 The great hall was crammed with some twelve hundred. 
 Mr. Moody delivered the same sermon as to the women in 
 the afternoon. It is a fact worthy of notice that a very much 
 larger number of men seemed to be impressed than of women 
 in the afternoon. In the afternoon three hymns had to be 
 sung after the address, and repeated invitations given, before
 
 9O HENRY DRUMMOND [1875 
 
 the inquiry room was filled with women, whereas in the even- 
 ing no sooner was the address finished than the same room 
 was crowded with men before the first hymn was ended, 
 while hundreds more remained to seek and to find in the 
 large hall.' 
 
 Drummond's meetings with young men in the Cir- 
 cus are said to have been ' as much owned as Mr. 
 Moody's were.' For weeks he had ten or twelve 
 hundred every night. I can find only two of his own 
 letters about them, written after Moody left for Lon- 
 don. 
 
 'CoMPTON HOTEL, LIVERPOOL, March 19, 1875. 
 
 ' . . . Must still hold the fort here for a little. We 
 are getting up deputations all over the country. 
 Last night I was at a place fifteen miles off by sea 
 starting a young men's meeting, and I go back 
 there to-night and to-morrow. To-night I shall 
 hurry the meeting and take cab and ferry back to 
 Liverpool to my own meeting in the Circus at 
 nine, and the same to-morrow. . . . The people 
 here are very kind: I have got to know nearly 
 the whole religious public, and could be out to 
 breakfast, dinner, or tea every day, but I decline 
 all invitations. . . . This is the great race week 
 in Liverpool, and the town is swarming with all 
 manner of blackguards. [He had his pockets 
 picked by one.] . . . Moody is much encouraged 
 by London. To tell the truth, I am in no hurry 
 to get there. I daresay I shall have had enough 
 of it before the four months are out.' 
 
 ' LIVERPOOL [undated, about the 8th April] . 
 
 ' My last week in Liverpool. Moody was here 
 again and almost insisted upon my going with 
 him on Monday last, but the committee here
 
 JET. 23] THE GREAT MISSION 9 1 
 
 begged for another week, and I do not regret hav- 
 ing stayed on. We have had some real good work. 
 * We have still wonderful work here. I have a the- 
 atre full of young men to " farewell address " at 
 three, a circus full of working-men at four, another 
 theatre full of men and women at seven in Birk- 
 enhead, and the usual circus full of young men 
 again at nine. I shall never forget these young 
 men's meetings here. You have no idea of them. 
 We have never less than one thousand each 
 night, and that is full six weeks without a break. 
 There is not a man in the world that would not 
 envy such a congregation. One can do a year's 
 work in a month in times like these. I have no 
 doubt but that we shall turn out a number of 
 missionaries from among the young men here.' 
 
 ' The aspect of the Circus,' says a newspaper correspond- 
 ent, 'after the meeting was ended and many gone home, was 
 inexpressibly touching. There two men in fustian jackets 
 kneeling in prayer together. In one corner a dozen men 
 standing round an energetic speaker. In another two men 
 are anxiously debating what seems a question of life and 
 death. There are many groups throughout the hall intent 
 on matters of serious moment. There are tears flowing, but 
 hastily wiped away. There are rough lads in dress and man- 
 ner, whose looks make you regard them with a brother's 
 love ; and ever and anon the speakers and the spoken kneel 
 down in the sawdust or on the boards in prayer, and then, 
 with a wring of the hand and gratified look, they go home.' 
 
 The London Mission was begun on March i4th in 
 the Agricultural Hall, Islington, which was seated for 
 thirteen thousand persons, with standing room for a 
 thousand or two more. 1 The evening meeting for men 
 
 1 There were at first grave exaggerations of the number : it was said that there 
 were twenty-four thousand seats and twenty-five thousand persons present.
 
 92 HENRY DRUMMOND [1875 
 
 filled it to its utmost capacity, and during the following 
 week the gatherings varied from four to fourteen thou- 
 sand. One of them was addressed by Dr. R. W. Dale, 
 who afterwards published the very impressive account 
 which he gave of the work in Birmingham. On Sunday, 
 the 2ist, the meetings were nearly as large as on the 
 preceding Sunday. The noon prayer-meeting was 
 held in Exeter Hall. The Opera House, Haymarket, 
 was taken for West End meetings, the Victoria Thea- 
 tre in the Waterloo Road for the south side, and a 
 large wooden hall was built in the far east. With 
 scarcely an exception the daily press ' spoke of the 
 work in terms of respect, even of hopefulness ' ; and 
 the interest in it spread to all classes of society. 
 There is no doubt that an immense proportion of 
 those who attended the monster meetings were already 
 church members, and in so vast a population as Lon- 
 don, even so strong a movement could touch only the 
 fringes of the careless and the vicious masses. Yet even 
 these fringes amounted to much. There were as many 
 as two hundred anxious inquirers every night at the 
 Agricultural Hall ; many more whose hearts had been 
 touched went away without confessing it ; while nearly 
 every one of the tens of thousands of Christians who 
 heard the evangelists was quickened and stimulated. 
 The work spread rapidly. In a leading artiqle, the 
 Times of Good Friday declared that it was falling off. 
 On that evening, on Easter Sunday, and all the follow- 
 ing week the meetings were larger than ever. 
 
 Drummond came up to London about the close of 
 the first week in April.
 
 Mi. 23] THE GREAT MISSION 93 
 
 To John F. Ewing 
 
 'FRIDAY, April 23, 1875. 
 
 * If you knew how I am torn to pieces with work, 
 you would not abuse me. You are a good fellow 
 to write, and you deserve to be encouraged. I 
 like to hear from young ministers ! The last 
 I heard of you was that you were doing u a most 
 plucky thing." I am thoroughly glad of the line 
 you have gone into. 1 When I become a young 
 minister it is exactly what I shall do. 
 
 ' I wish I had time to tell you of myself. The 
 Liverpool work was very grand. London has 
 been a fair success only, I mean after Liverpool. 
 Many things were against work among the young 
 men, but still we have had a very real work. I 
 leave the N. meeting to take care of itself after 
 this week, and go " away down east," as Moody 
 would say. There we have pitched a tent to 
 hold a thousand young men, which we expect 
 to have crammed every night. After setting that 
 a-going, I think the next move will be to the 
 Haymarket Opera House, where I expect Stalker 
 and you will make your first appearance in a 
 London theatre, and I shall announce you before- 
 hand as two swells from the provinces ! Pardon 
 me for being in such a serious vein. I have been 
 writing Moody 's sermons all day ; you know they 
 are being published under my most distinguished 
 editorship.' 
 
 'LONDON, Saturday, April 24th. 
 
 'A sudden turn in the state of affairs yesterday has 
 banished me to the South of London, and I fear 
 
 1 Ewing had undertaken the formation of a new congregation in a working- 
 class district of Dundee.
 
 94 HENRY DRUMMOND [1875 
 
 it will be impossible for me to come to the station 
 on Tuesday, but I shall meet you at the Noon 
 meeting at the Opera House. The reason of my 
 going to the S. is because Stalker and you are 
 coming. Moody, the moment he heard of it, put 
 you both down for work there, and " the young 
 men from Edinburgh " are to have full swing of 
 the Victoria Theatre for the whole week. [He 
 reports on the arrival of others.] I am divided 
 equally between revival and arrival work.' 
 
 To His Father 
 
 'CANNON STREET HOTEL, LONDON, May n, 1875. 
 
 ' Everything is bright outside and inside, and I only 
 wish you were here to share in the enjoyment. 
 How would you like to see an acre of people? 
 That is exactly the size of the audience to which 
 Mr. Moody preaches every night in the East of 
 London. Here is Moody 's programme: Drive 
 three miles to Noon meeting ; lunch ; Bible read- 
 ing at 3.30 followed by inquiry meeting till at 
 least 5 ; then preaching in the Opera House 
 at 6.30; then very short inquiry meeting; then 
 drive five miles to East End to preach to twelve 
 thousand at 8.30; then inquiry meeting; then 
 drive five or six miles home. This is every day 
 this week and next a terrible strain, which, 
 however, he never seems to feel for a moment. 
 The work is coming out grandly now, and I 
 think the next two months will witness wonderful 
 results. It is deepening on every side, and even 
 " London " is beginning to be moved. Moody 
 says Sunday was the best day of his life.'
 
 /Ex. 23] THE GREAT MISSION 95 
 
 'CANNON STREET HOTEL, May 14, 1875. 
 
 'Your huge remittance came to me all right this 
 morning via James. I shall ride once more upon 
 a 'bus, and pay my way like a man and a Drum- 
 mond. 1 
 
 ' I expect to leave this on Wednesday night after 
 the meetings are over by the night mail, and as I 
 am so flush I should not wonder if Mr. Pullman 
 Sleeping Car should have the honour of conveying 
 me and my co-worker, Captain Moreton, R.N.' 
 
 He goes to a great convention in Liverpool, and 
 looks forward to another at Brighton, though he does 
 ' not at all approve of views held by some of the lead- 
 ing supporters.' ' We had a splendid young men's 
 meeting last night in London, the best we have had 
 there. It is growing every night. Moody takes it 
 to-morrow, and I shall be back for Saturday.' 
 
 To His Mother 
 
 1 LONDON, May 27, 1875. 
 
 'Your flowers made me just a little homesick, they 
 had such a country air about them. I declare I 
 had almost forgotten there were such things as 
 daisies. However, at latest next week, I shall 
 renew my acquaintance with fresh air. The 
 greatest event in my programme this week was 
 a large children's meeting in the Opera House. 
 I am to have another on Saturday along with Mr. 
 Sankey, and expect a great hubbub!' 
 
 1 Drummond appears to have refused during this mission all remuneration and 
 only sometimes to have taken all his expenses.
 
 96 HENRY DRUMMOND [1875 
 
 'HAYMARKET OPERA HOUSE, May (?). 
 
 'A large number of inquirers are just waiting from 
 the afternoon Bible reading, and I must give my 
 afternoon to them.' 
 
 To His Father 
 
 'CANNON STREET HOTEL, June 23, 1875. 
 
 'The 1 2th of July is Moody 's last day, I think. 
 He goes for a short tour after that, and his berth 
 is taken for the 4th of August by the National 
 liner Spain. The Eton affair makes much noise, 
 but will do great good, Moody thinks, in making 
 the higher circles show their colours on the gen- 
 eral question. He expects his friends, who are 
 very influential, will come out and show who they 
 are. The actual meeting at Eton was a great 
 success. Never believe a word the papers say 
 about the work. They are, almost without ex- 
 ception, always wrong. ... I am to have the 
 privilege of joining Moody (and three others) in 
 a series of Bible studies every morning for full 
 two hours. You must know how much I stand 
 in need of teaching, with so much preoccupation 
 and so much attempt to teach others. You will 
 approve this, for I think you must have been 
 frightened for me sometimes.' 
 
 In July he went to start a mission at Epsom. 
 
 ' CANNON STREET HOTEL, July 9. 
 
 * I had a grand meeting on Monday night at 9 P.M. 
 The district is terribly dead, so we had at first a 
 general meeting at 7.30, and then the men's meet- 
 ing [for which he had specially gone] at 9. The
 
 JET. 23] THE GREAT MISSION 97 
 
 latter was crammed away out into the street with 
 men, many of them jockeys and racing men, just 
 the kind to reach. It was a most interesting meet- 
 ing, and some thirty or forty remained anxious. 
 Next night there were one hundred in the inquiry 
 room, and the following night two hundred. I 
 have agreed to go down again on Saturday night. 
 It is a magnificent chance for work, and I look 
 forward to a hundred or two in the after meeting. 
 I believe I am to have the honour of being sent 
 home on a special engine after the meeting, some 
 of the gentlemen who are getting up the work 
 having an interest in the railway. A young man 
 who has been recently converted stood up in our 
 meeting the night before last, and told us he had 
 gambled away half a fortune before his conver- 
 sion, and kept five race horses. He is a splendid 
 young fellow, and a most genuine case. He has 
 been having meetings himself near his own house, 
 and has done a great deal of good. 
 ' The crowds now to hear Moody are terrific ; the 
 panic of the papers was of course exaggerated.' 
 
 Twenty-five years have passed since the American 
 evangelists began their mission to Great Britain. We 
 have seen how profoundly the churches were stirred, 
 and the crowds outside the churches ; the tens of thou- 
 sands who thronged the meetings ; the hundreds upon 
 hundreds who filled each inquiry room, professing 
 penitence, and, in the great majority of cases, new 
 faith in Jesus Christ and experience of His power to 
 make them better men. No one can doubt the enor- 
 mous power of the movement so long as it lasted. 
 What has it left behind? 
 
 Probably, as we have seen, there never was a move-
 
 98 HENRY DRUMMOND [1875 
 
 ment of the kind in which religious extravagance and 
 dissipation were more honestly discouraged. In the 
 leaders there was no want of the healthy discrimina- 
 tion and genial charity without which our religious 
 zeal so fatally develops into Pharisaism. The preach- 
 ing was Biblical and ethical. The doctrines were those 
 of Catholic Christianity. The salvation proclaimed 
 was, with some exceptions, salvation not from hell 
 but from sin. And the new faith and energy of the 
 converts was nearly everywhere guided into profitable 
 forms of activity, with effects upon character and ser- 
 vice that, as we shall presently see, have endured until 
 to-day. 
 
 To form, however, a just appreciation of the move- 
 ment, we must recall some things upon the other side. 
 We must remember the perils to which, in our civil- 
 isation, such enormous crowds of converts were im- 
 mediately exposed. While revivals rise and fall, the 
 influences of worldliness and of vice abide among us 
 with fresh and awful persistency. Many of the con- 
 verts, some even of the prominent workers, of the 
 great Mission, fell to that hereditary taint of drunk- 
 enness which infects our nation's blood ; others not 
 so cursed fell as low before our careless and cruel 
 drinking customs, although not all of these were 
 slain, but in the end many won the victory to which 
 the Mission first inspired them. We must remember, 
 too, that so vast and rapid a movement was bound to 
 suffer the defects of its qualities. Among the large 
 numbers who were certified as adhering to the Mission, 
 there was a proportion of the comfortable middle class, 
 who spent their leisure in running from meeting to 
 meeting, and who, from that day to this, act as if they 
 believed that such conventions were at once the high- 
 est duty and happiest privilege of religion. Their
 
 JET. 23] THE GREAT MISSION 99 
 
 excitement and the habits which it has formed have 
 not been beneficial to Christianity. Further, we cannot 
 help observing that the idealism of the movement, the 
 emphasis which it laid on general principles, and the 
 speed with which multitudes were roused to the con- 
 viction of these, conspired with the general excitement 
 to destroy, in a certain class of minds, all sense for facts, 
 and to corrupt their conscience for accuracy. This 
 is, perhaps, natural to every idealist movement, one 
 marks it in certain philosophies of the century, but 
 it appears to be the besetting temptation of a zealous 
 and sanguine evangelicalism. It was curiously real- 
 ised in the frequent exaggeration of the numbers re- 
 ported to have attended the various meetings. But 
 some of the forms which it assumed were more serious. 
 One was a temptation to ignore all religious expe- 
 rience which lay outside the definite theology of the 
 movement, and a stubborn refusal to recognise the 
 manifest fruits of God's Spirit apart from the formulas 
 and processes by which its converts had arrived at the 
 truth. And another form of this vice was the unwill- 
 ingness to see in Scripture any facts save such as 
 might be used to confirm a very narrow theory of in- 
 spiration, nor any teaching save the few lines of evan- 
 gelical doctrine and special providence upon which the 
 preaching of the movement mainly ran. Mr. Moody 
 himself was free from all these defects except that 
 of a narrow and unscriptural theory of inspiration. 
 But during the last twenty-five years they have all 
 developed in the circles whose religious life God used 
 him to quicken so powerfully ; and much of evangel- 
 icalism, both in its preaching and in its journalism, 
 has been beset by narrowness, inaccuracy, and the fear 
 to acknowledge some of the healthiest and divinest 
 movements of our time.
 
 IOO HENRY DRUMMOND [1874-75 
 
 But while all these defects have to be noted, how 
 much falls to the bright side of the reckoning! Every 
 one who shared in the movement or who has read its 
 history will admit without question those beneficial 
 effects which we have already noted, upon the mem- 
 bership and the ministry of all the Churches. This 
 Mission lifted thousands and tens of thousands of 
 persons already trained in religion to a more clear 
 and decided consciousness of their Christianity. It 
 baptized crowds in the Spirit of Jesus, and opened the 
 eyes of innumerable men and women to the reality of 
 the great facts of repentance and conversion, to the 
 possibility of self-control and of peace by God's Spirit. 
 We have admired the organisation of its converts. 
 The young men who came under its influence are 
 now in middle life, and to-day one can point to min- 
 isters in many churches, and to laymen in charge 
 of the municipal and social interests of almost every 
 town, who were first roused to faith and first enlisted 
 in the cause of God and of their fellow-men by the 
 evangelists of 1873-75. The Spirit of our God works 
 among us in many other ways than by * revivals' 
 and church services, and the evangelical movement 
 which Messrs. Moody and Sankey did so much to 
 reinforce has required every iota of the influence of 
 science to teach it tolerance, accuracy, and fearless- 
 ness of facts, and all the strength of the Socialist move- 
 ment to rewaken within it that sense of civic and 
 economic duty by which the older evangelicalism of 
 Wilberforce, Chalmers, and Shaftesbury was so nobly 
 distinguished. Among the men who have seen this, 
 and who have not only preserved their faith amid the 
 new distractions of our time, but to their faith have 
 added knowledge and patience, and the brotherly love 
 that means service of the commonweal, have been
 
 JET. 23] THE GREAT MISSION IOI 
 
 many very many converts of the two American 
 evangelists, whom God in His grace sent to our 
 shores twenty-five years ago. 
 
 We shall see in the rest of this biography how 
 Henry Drummond contributed to this wider evangeli- 
 calism of our day; meantime let us understand how he 
 helped the movement which did so much to inspire 
 it, and how the movement helped him. 
 
 From April, 1874, to July, 1875, he followed up 
 the work of the evangelists in the cities of Ireland 
 and England, and he laboured by their side in London. 
 His letters have made us familiar with the general 
 character of his work. The bulk of it was the prepa- 
 ration and delivery of addresses, and as he sometimes 
 spoke every night for weeks in the same hall his 
 material began to grow in quantity. During this 
 period he probably composed the first drafts of most 
 of the discourses for which in later years he became 
 famous. The discourses published after his death in 
 the volume entitled The Ideal Life were produced 
 either now or in the immediately subsequent years; 
 so also his great address on ' Seek ye first the King- 
 dom of God.' But he had also spoken on ' The Great- 
 est Thing in the World,' and ' The Changed Life.' 
 His preaching, therefore, ranged over all the great 
 doctrines and facts of Christianity: Sin and Salva- 
 tion, Penitence, The Atonement, Regeneration, Con- 
 version, Sanctification, The Power of the Spirit, 
 Christ's Teaching about Himself and about a Future 
 Life on all these, in contrast to the smaller list of 
 topics to which he limited himself in later years, he 
 preached again and again and with great detail. He 
 stuck close to the Bible. He used the incidents of 
 the Old Testament to enforce the teaching of the 
 New, just as older evangelists did. His theology was
 
 IO2 HENRY DRUMMOND [i8?4-75 
 
 practically that of the leaders of the movement, and 
 among crowds who were always more or less ready to 
 mark the slightest deflection from orthodoxy there 
 appears never to have arisen any suspicion of a dif- 
 ference between his teaching and the teaching of the 
 authorities. But his manner of presentation was 
 entirely his own, and in speaking to young men he 
 never forgot that he must put things differently from 
 the way in which things were put to their elders. 
 He acted on the principle, which he so often en- 
 forced, that 'a young man's religion could not be 
 the same as his grandmother's.' His style of speak- 
 ing was simple and clear; he kept to the concrete, and 
 already revealed his famous powers of illustration and 
 analogy. His manner was quiet and self-possessed. 
 He had the opportunity, so invaluable to the young 
 preacher, of giving the same addresses again and 
 again, so that he could sift and balance them; nor did 
 he ever yield to the temptation, which such an oppor- 
 tunity often brings with it, of relaxing his preparation, 
 but this was always hard and thorough. ' One thing 
 has impressed me more than anything I heard at the 
 [Agricultural] Hall, and that is the quiet yet deep 
 and sincere manner in which he always prays and 
 speaks at the Young 'Men's Meeting.' ' I thank God 
 for His goodness in sending you to tell the Gospel of 
 Christ in a manner so simple and loving that many 
 together with myself were brought to a saving know- 
 ledge of the truth.' 1 He had not a strong, nor in any 
 way a remarkable, voice, but he used it easily in the 
 largest meetings. There was no attempt at oratory, 
 nor any sign of strain ; and, besides the absence of all 
 ambition after personal effect, this was due to careful 
 preparation for each occasion and to that exquisite 
 
 1 From a man, a member of the Church of England.
 
 yEr. 23] THE GREAT MISSION 1 03 
 
 taste which the last few years of discipline in reading 
 and in writing had perfected. He grew, too, to be 
 very expert in managing meetings. What chances he 
 had ! Who could ever again fear or fail, that at twenty- 
 three had organised the meetings he had to organise 
 or had faced the crowds he had to face night after 
 night ! But his opportunities would have been noth- 
 ing without himself. Not experience only nor cool- 
 ness, but quick sympathy which does not always go 
 with coolness, rapid appreciation of other men's gifts 
 and the power of enlisting them, perfect courtesy, good 
 humour, and a strong dramatic interest, made him an 
 ideal chairman. There was the tall lithe figure, the 
 keen eyes, the unstrained voice, the imperturbable, 
 spirit, the purity and earnestness which were behind 
 all, the nameless radiance that surrounded him as of a 
 fresh spring morning but indeed it is his biogra- 
 pher's despair to explain to those who never felt it the 
 equal charm and force which came out from him. 
 
 In higher things, too, the movement must have re- 
 fined the character we found so perfect in after years. 
 Dr. Stalker, who shared so much of the work among 
 the young men, has written the following notes, which 
 illustrate both this and the other features of which we 
 have been speaking : 
 
 ' Your letter has made me recall that glorious time ; 
 but I find that while I remember the general impres- 
 sions most distinctly, I have not a very precise recol- 
 lection of details. 
 
 ' Perhaps the impression which oftenest recurs to 
 me is the absolute purity of motive which at that time 
 possessed us. Though suddenly thrust into unusual 
 prominence, we thought of nothing whatever but the 
 work itself. This produced a curious confidence, in 
 which there was not the least touch of self-conscious-
 
 IO4 HENRY DRUMMOND [1874-75 
 
 ness. The very largest meetings were in no wise 
 formidable, and if the highest in the land had been 
 present, we should only have been glad to have addi- 
 tional hearers for the message of salvation. If we had 
 little of the humility which thinks disparagingly of 
 self, we had what has always since then seemed to me 
 the better humility which forgets self altogether. In- 
 deed, at that time, we had many experiences which 
 have ever since made Christ intelligible; and the 
 Book of the Acts of the Apostles especially has a 
 meaning to those who have passed through such a 
 movement which it could scarcely, I should think, 
 have for any one else. 
 
 ' Henry retained this humility of self-forgetfulness 
 throughout life ; but at that time, when he was only 
 about three-and-twenty and very youthful looking, it 
 must have been curious to see him handling meetings 
 of thousands with the most perfect ease, though this 
 did not occur to any of us then. I was with him con- 
 ducting meetings scores of times, and from the first 
 he had the most perfect, effortless command of every 
 audience which I have ever seen in any speaker. It 
 was like mesmerism ; and I have often wondered 
 whether it actually had any connection with the mes- 
 meric powers which he occasionally exhibited for the 
 amusement of his friends. His speaking was never 
 loud nor excited ; there was never any straining 
 after profundity or picturesqueness or effect of any 
 kind ; but every person in the audience followed 
 the speaker from the first word to the last with- 
 out wandering for a moment. He never spoke of 
 his preparation, as other speakers do ; and to this 
 hour I am not quite certain whether or not he pre- 
 pared elaborately, but I should think he did. At all 
 events I know that his books were written with the
 
 JEx. 23] THE GREAT MISSION 1 05 
 
 thoroughness of a French stylist. I have heard his 
 young disciples trying, in evangelistic addresses, to re- 
 peat his stories ; and then one realised by contrast the 
 perfection of his way of telling them. He was not at 
 his best in addressing very large meetings, but in an 
 audience not exceeding five hundred his quiet voice 
 and simple manner found their natural range.' 
 
 But to associate Henry Drummond only with meet- 
 ings and addresses would be to misrepresent him. 
 Had he ever been carried away with the size and 
 success of these, had he ever been tempted to swerve 
 from his own principle that the individual was the 
 aim and object of religion, he must have been brought 
 back by one element of the meetings themselves. At 
 each of these there were handed up to the chairman a 
 large number of requests for prayer, which in nine 
 cases out of ten had to do with the darkness or the 
 tragedy of some individual life. Carefully preserved 
 among his documents are some scores of these anony- 
 mous scraps of paper, shabby, soiled, and often mis- 
 spelt, each of them the confession of a fallen soul, or 
 the sob of a broken heart, or the cry for warmth of a 
 cold and a starving one. From vice or servitude to 
 some besetting sin, from long doubt and vain struggle 
 to the light, from wrecked and dreary homes, or 
 wasted by love and fear that had battled for years 
 over the characters of those who were dearest to 
 them, they had crept to the meetings, and felt the 
 strength of the faith that was present, and cried to be 
 lifted upon it as their last chance. Drummond sought 
 out many of these, and was sought by many more. 
 He worked hard in the inquiry rooms, but shy men, 
 who would not stand up in a meeting, nor enter an 
 inquiry room, waited for him by the doors as he came 
 out, or waylaid him in the street, or wrote, asking him
 
 IO6 HENRY DRUMMOND [1874-75 
 
 for an interview. He took great trouble with every 
 one of them, as much trouble and interest as if each 
 was a large meeting. His sympathy, his leisure from 
 himself, his strength, won their confidence, as his per- 
 sonal charm on the platform had first stirred their 
 hope, and he thus became acquainted with the secrets 
 of hundreds of lives. Men felt he was not a voice 
 merely, but a friend, and on his arm they were 
 lifted up. 1 He was always hopeful about the most 
 hopeless, picked out some good points in the worst, 
 and sent a man away feeling that he was trusted once 
 more, not only by this friend, but by Christ, by God. 
 The affection which such treatment aroused was ex- 
 traordinary. I have seen numbers of letters, common- 
 place enough but for the intense love and gratitude 
 which they breathe, and which sometimes approaches 
 worship. It was such power as was possessed by 
 some of the greatest of the mediaeval saints and 
 he was not twenty-four. One man said to me only 
 the other day, ' Since Drummond died I have not 
 been able to help praying to him.' 
 
 He had a great love, too, for all odd and grotesque 
 characters. His patience with bores was his friends' 
 wonder to the end ; but he dearly liked to come across 
 the unconventional, the Bohemian, and the vagrant. 
 Showmen of all sorts were such a joy to him, and he 
 got on so well with them, that we used to nickname 
 him Barnum. A Spanish guitar-player, a laddie who 
 performed on the penny whistle, music-hall singers, a 
 cornet-player, a concertina-player he had a knack of 
 picking them out and giving them work to do in the 
 
 1 Mr. R. R. Simpson sends the following : 'At an inquiry meeting in the 
 Assembly Hall I spoke to a bright-looking young man and found that he had 
 decided for Christ. On my asking him what led him to decision, the striking 
 answer was, " It was the way Mr. Drummond laid his hand on my shoulder and 
 looked me in the face that led me to Christ." '
 
 JET. 23] THE GREAT MISSION 1 07 
 
 meetings. Nor was he often taken in. So great a 
 movement had, of course, among its adherents many of 
 sordid and worldly motives : some contemptible, some 
 very amusing. One good lady, who had never spoken 
 to him, wrote that she is 'sure he is her friend, wants 
 to introduce him to her eleven children and nineteen 
 grandchildren, and has asked them all to a one o'clock 
 dinner to-morrow to meet him : ' she is sure he will 
 not disappoint her. People who had lost heavily by 
 American railways passionately urge him to get Moody 
 and Sankey to undertake among their countrymen a 
 crusade for the recovery of their lost investments. Men 
 and women of the idle middle class and busy stock ex- 
 change brokers send him verses and tracts to publish. 
 There were countless appeals for employment; offers of 
 ' Christian lodgings ' for young men ; requests for ser- 
 mons for collections from clergymen whose churches 
 were in debt ; plaintive notes from flute-players to know 
 why their offers to give solos at the meetings have not 
 been attended to ; claims to be reimbursed for losses 
 caused by faithful adherence to the movement; re- 
 proaches from speakers and other workers that they 
 have never had one word of praise and so forth. 
 One of the kinds of appeal that gave him most trouble 
 was that from well-intentioned people who wanted him 
 to speak to their young relatives about their souls, when 
 these young relatives had no wish to be spoken to. On 
 the occasions when he could not escape such conversa- 
 tions, he would begin thus : ' I suppose you know this 
 is a put-up job,' or thus, ' What you are suffering from 
 is too much religion, isn't it?' His insight was mar- 
 vellous. In one of the London after meetings, he said 
 to a girl, ' You must give up reading James's Anxious 
 Inquirer' and she wondered how he guessed she was 
 reading it. A fortnight of the Testament set her
 
 IO8 HENRY DRUMMOND [1874-75 
 
 right. When he helped another, she said, ' It's not 
 so simple as that in James's Anxious Inquirer' l 
 
 A great deal of the work was very painful. He once 
 said, ' Such tales of woe I've heard in Moody's inquiry 
 room that I've felt I must go and change my very 
 clothes after the contact.' Thus at twenty-three he saw 
 life on all its sides, learned the secrets of countless char- 
 acters, and was trusted and hung upon by thousands 
 of his fellow-men. 
 
 Yet he stepped from it all unspoiled, and the next 
 session went quietly back to college. 
 
 1 From notes by Professor Simpson.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 BACK TO COLLEGE 
 
 HENRY DRUMMOND did not go back to college with- 
 out a struggle. Invitations to conduct missions poured 
 in upon him from all quarters. The leaders of the 
 work pleaded that the last two years had surely proved 
 his calling as an evangelist ; and on his part he shrank 
 from settling down as the minister of a congrega- 
 tion, with two sermons to prepare every week. But 
 his parents had renewed their pressure upon him, 
 and in letters, which he has kept, his wisest friends 
 warned him of the perils of the wandering evan- 
 gelist's life, the faults which it breeds in the best 
 of characters, and the hindrances which it sets to con- 
 scientious preparation and general intellectual growth. 
 Between these opposite influences he was still hesitat- 
 ing, when he went, in August, 1875, to spend a holi- 
 day with his friend Robert W. Barbour, at Bonskeid, 
 in Perthshire. Barbour had just finished a brilliant 
 course at Edinburgh University, nine class medals, 
 the prize poem, and a double first degree in Classics 
 and Philosophy, but had found time with it all for 
 work among young men in Moody and Sankey's mis- 
 sion. After his success at Edinburgh we who 
 followed him there believed that there was no distinc- 
 tion beyond his reach and with his political oppor- 
 tunities as the son of a large landowner, Barbour had 
 been urged to go to Oxford, with a view to entering 
 Parliament. But he resolved to give himself to the 
 
 109
 
 IIO HENRY DRUMMOND [1875 
 
 ministry of the Free Church, and was now intending 
 to enter New College in the following October. 
 Drummond and he discussed their future at some 
 length, and his mother, Mrs. George Freeland Bar- 
 hour, although fully aware of Drummond's powers as 
 an evangelist, lent her influence to persuade him to 
 complete his studies for the regular ministry. Drum- 
 mond described the result in a statement made to 
 Professor Simpson shortly before his death : 
 
 ' For a year and a half after Moody's visit (he said) 
 he was sure that he had found his vocation, till 
 one Sunday forenoon on the steps of Bonskeid he 
 had a long talk with Mrs. George Barbour, who 
 showed him how the evangelist's career was apt 
 to be a failure perhaps a few years of enthusi- 
 asm and blessing, then carelessness, no study, no 
 spiritual fruits; too often a sad collapse. That 
 sent him back to his last year at college.' 
 
 This is confirmed by the following letter to Robert 
 Barbour. The 'sore leg,' on which so much depended, 
 was a sprained ankle from a stumble over a stone on 
 the slopes between Fincastle and Bonskeid. 
 
 'GLEN ELM LODGE, STIRLING, Oct. 23, 1875. 
 
 ' MY DEAR BARBOUR, ... Very sorry to hear you 
 have been ill. You are much more to be pitied 
 than I, for I count my sore leg one of the best 
 things that ever happened to me. It was the 
 very thing I needed. I have got time to look at 
 all sorts of things, and have even made an attempt 
 to write a first sermon. Altho' the first sermon, 
 it was not the first, or the fiftieth, attempt, but 
 only differed from the others by being, if any-
 
 /ET. 24] BACK TO COLLEGE III 
 
 thing, a greater failure. I suppose I shall have 
 to do penance for this some day, but I don't 
 understand how men can knock together two 
 sermons a week as if they were rabbit hutches. 
 ' My main object in writing is to tell you that I have 
 decided to go to Edinburgh this winter. For the 
 last fortnight things have been growing clearer, 
 and my mind is now quite made up to go. I 
 hope I am doing the right thing. My horizon 
 was very dark when I was at Bonskeid, but I 
 know being there did me good. Besides, it is the 
 pleasantest recollection I have of this autumn ; so 
 I emphatically demur to your statement that it 
 was " unfortunate." ; 
 
 A year later, looking back to the same accident, he 
 writes again to Barbour: 
 
 ' I should rather like to make a pilgrimage to that 
 stone at Bonskeid. Sometimes I think I owe 
 more to it than I know. Perhaps if it had not 
 been for that stone I should not have been at 
 college this winter. " That stone ! " I wish it 
 had been anything else but a stone. A wheel- 
 barrow would almost have been as poetical.' 
 
 How strong the temptations were to continue as an 
 evangelist may be felt from the following letter which 
 Drummond received after he had begun the winter 
 session, but which was only one of many similar 
 appeals that reached him while his mind was still un- 
 certain. Mr. Moody had begun his American cam- 
 paign at Philadelphia in November.
 
 112 HENRY DRUMMOND [1875-76 
 
 Front Mr, Moody 
 
 ' PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 4, 1875. 
 
 ' MY DEAR DRUMMOND, The work among young men 
 in this country is growing splendidly. I am glad I went to 
 England to learn how to reach young men. Could you come 
 over and help us ? We want you much and will see that all 
 expenses are paid. I think you would get a few thousand 
 souls on these shores, if you should come. I miss you more 
 than I can tell. You do not know how much I want you 
 with me. Come if you possibly can. . . . Since I got your 
 letters I think of you and the College. May God bless you, 
 and make you thrive in His Kingdom, is my prayer. Yours 
 with a heart full of love, <D L MooDY/ 
 
 When Drummond came back to college, he found 
 his contemporaries gone from it, his juniors already in 
 the Fourth Year, which he entered, and a fresh set of 
 men in the years behind them. Some of the latter, 
 like Richard Cameron, Frank Gordon, and Robert 
 Barbour he knew : they had taken part in the great 
 Mission ; but the men who had shared with him the 
 first and most profound experiences of it were already 
 in the ministry ; and, while the College as a whole was 
 still under its glamour, and the students regarded him- 
 self with respect and admiration, their religious inter- 
 ests were far from being identified with its methods. 
 Among them were an unusual number of able men. 
 The ablest of all was Peter Thomson, the son of an 
 Aberdeenshire farm-grieve, who had graduated with 
 first-class honours at Aberdeen, and carried all before 
 him at New College. He was now President of the 
 Theological Society, and assistant to Professor David- 
 son. We who were entering the First Year had learned 
 from him any Hebrew we knew, and looked up to him 
 with great respect. His ability, kindliness, and weight
 
 /Ex. 24] BACK TO COLLEGE 113 
 
 of character formed the chief influence of that session. 
 Round him, in his own year, were a group of solid and 
 thoughtful men, among them George Steven, now 
 of Free St. Bernard's Church in Edinburgh, who 
 set the life of the College upon scholarly but strenu- 
 ously religious lines. The First Year contained the 
 phenomenal number of five men with first-class hon- 
 ours three of them with double firsts. There was a 
 strong intellectual rivalry. The debates in the Theo- 
 logical Society were vigorous and extremely interest- 
 ing. Thomson, who had already studied at Leipzig, 
 followed up Dr. Davidson's lectures, and brought be- 
 fore the meetings the facts which recent criticism had 
 laid bare in the Old Testament. But the chief inter- 
 est of the society was in Dogmatic Theology. A num- 
 ber of the members were strong in philosophy ; D. M. 
 Ross was assisting Professor Campbell Fraser at the 
 University, and Barbour and Sorley had just come 
 from it with first-class philosophical honours. Others 
 had been at German universities, and those who had 
 not were reading Dr. George Matheson's Introduction 
 to the Study of German Theology, which had just been 
 published. Thomson, who had left Aberdeen with 
 the very singular conviction that in Mill's philosophy, 
 as interpreted by Bain, he was furnished with a de- 
 fence for the Christian faith, had found this fail him, 
 and a great deal of his faith fail with it. 1 After 
 seeking in vain for another philosophy reconcil- 
 able with Christian doctrine, he was finding, and 
 leading others towards, a dogmatic based upon the 
 facts of religious experience. In this pursuit, the stu- 
 dents were helped by the lectures of Dr. Davidson, 
 who taught them Old Testament Theology, not as the 
 
 1 See his very interesting Memoirs, entitled A Scotch Student, by the Rev. 
 George Steven, M.A. Edinburgh, Macniven and Wallace, 2d ed., 1881.
 
 I 1 4 HENRY DRUMMOND [1875-76 
 
 dogmas of a church, but as the living experience of a 
 great people and its greatest individuals ; by the lec- 
 tures of Dr. Rainy upon Church History, with their 
 fascinating presentation of the personal religion of 
 the chief doctors of the Church ; and by the study of 
 Schleiermacher, for the reading of whose Der Christ- 
 liche Glaube a small club was formed. In the same 
 direction we found of value Muller's Doctrine of Sin, 
 Rothe's Dogma tik, with its priceless paragraphs upon 
 the religious roots of each dogma, and his essays, Zur 
 Dogmatik. The effect upon the debates in the Theo- 
 logical Society was that all the best men argued for 
 truths which they had lived upon, or had seen working 
 in the lives of others; it can be imagined how much 
 they were helped in this by their experience of the 
 Great Revival in which so many of them had taken 
 part. The practical and the theoretical thus devel- 
 oped in close cooperation, with inestimable benefit to 
 both. The strong intellectual activities of the College 
 were in the healthiest possible touch with real life. At 
 the same time the College was full of happy play, and 
 there was a good deal of joking. Two comic papers 
 were started by the Fourth Year and by the First: 
 The Patagonian Candle, a Missionary Record, and The 
 Soap and Towel, a parody upon Spurgeon's famous 
 title. The fun of these was more furious than witty. 
 
 Into this life Drummond slipped from his great 
 experiences very quietly. We younger men, who had 
 not been in the Moody movement, were a little afraid 
 of him and of the chance of his tackling us upon our 
 own religious life. But we found him unaggressive, 
 treating us as equals, willing to be our friend, entering 
 into our fun, and even contributing to our comic 
 papers. After dinner some of the students used to 
 gather in a coffee-house to drink coffee, and one of
 
 jET. 24] BACK TO COLLEGE I 1 5 
 
 my earliest visions of Drummond was as he stood up 
 with the rest in due solemnity to chant a nonsense 
 verse, which invariably accompanied this function. 
 Soon our feeling of his friendliness deepened to grati- 
 tude for his power of doing us good. It was a power 
 somewhat difficult to define, for it was exercised 
 almost imperceptibly. We felt that he was interested 
 in us, and his interest being without officiousness 
 won our confidence and made us frank with him. 
 We could tell him, as we could not tell others, the 
 worst about ourselves, the worst, and just as easily 
 also, the best, our ideals and ambitions, of which 
 men are often as ashamed to speak as they are about 
 their sins. To the latter he was never indulgent, or 
 aught but faithful with those who confessed to him. 
 But in every man he saw good, which the man himself 
 had either forgotten or was ignorant of. ' He and 
 Robert Barbour,' said a fellow-student, * were the only 
 two men I ever knew who helped you to feel that you 
 were stronger and your work better than you had 
 dared to believe.' His sunniness brought hope with 
 it to everybody about him ; and the air of distinction 
 which he carried was so manifestly an air of purity, 
 and not of pride, that it helped you to keep yourself 
 separate from what was base or trivial. 
 
 On his part Drummond laid himself out to learn 
 from the new men among whom he was thrown; and 
 in his constant humility he made no difference be- 
 tween those who were older and those who were 
 younger than himself. For philosophy he had never 
 any gift, and he often chaffed those who had. But 
 the effort of the leaders of the College to find a dog- 
 matic based on experience enlisted his sympathy, and 
 I think it was this year that he mastered Muller's 
 great work on Sin, which had ever afterwards some
 
 Il6 HENRY DRUMMOND [1875-76 
 
 influence on his thinking. He had a keen sense for 
 facts ; and the facts of Old Testament criticism, of 
 which he heard from Thomson and others, made a 
 deep impression on his mind. He did not yet throw 
 off the narrow theory of inspiration upon which he 
 had worked with the Bible, but all he learned prepared 
 him for further influence in the same direction, and 
 engaged his sympathies for the great movement which 
 was now rising in Scotland under the hands of Pro- 
 fessor Robertson Smith. 
 
 Drummond did not forget the duties of an evange- 
 list, nor fail to infect some of his fellow-students with 
 an enthusiasm for them. During the winter he en- 
 gaged the ' Gaiety ' Music Hall in Chambers Street 
 for a number of Sunday evenings, for meetings of men. 
 When he spoke the hall was full, and at the after- 
 meetings there were groups of inquirers. But he 
 took few of the addresses himself, and the speaking 
 was mostly by other students. The audience, chiefly 
 of students in arts and medicine, clerks and working- 
 men, must often have been puzzled, for one address was 
 entirely on the Kenotic Theory of the Humiliation of 
 our Lord, and in another, Spinoza was quoted three 
 times. One would like to know how Drummond 
 dealt with the criminals. Possibly he intended the 
 mission more for the speakers than their audience, 
 for his criticism of them was unsparing. 
 
 From these meetings came the name of the Gaiety 
 Club. It was founded at a small gathering invited by 
 Provost Swan of Kirkcaldy to his country-house near 
 Cupar, and was at first called, after this house, the 
 ' Springfield Club.' Besides Provost Swan, the orig- 
 inal members were James Stalker, then minister at 
 Kirkcaldy, James Brown of Tillicoultry, John F. 
 Ewing, of Dundee, John Watson of Logiealmond;
 
 yET. 24] BACK TO COLLEGE I I'J 
 
 and from New College, Drummond, D. M. Ross, 
 Frank Gordon, and Robert Barbour. Alexander 
 Skene, now of St. Kilda's, Melbourne, joined them a 
 little later, the present writer in 1883, and Dr. Hugh 
 Barbour upon his brother's death in 1891. An 
 arrangement was made to meet every spring from a 
 Monday to Saturday at some country inn ; and for 
 twenty-two years these annual gatherings have been 
 sustained without a break. Drummond attended every 
 one of them save three. At first some of the evenings 
 were set apart for criticism of each other's growth up- 
 wards or downwards during the year. But as time 
 went on this grew less formal, and the gathering 
 became simply one of close friends, members of the 
 same church, with very sacred memories of work and 
 study together in the service of Christ, and with com- 
 mon interests in literature and religion. Every man 
 discusses with the rest his own work planned or 
 achieved, and I do not think that there can be any- 
 where a group of friends who have more constantly 
 shared each other's aspirations, or who have more 
 benefited by each other's criticism. If one could be 
 more loyal than another it was Drummond. This 
 was the innermost circle among his countless friends ; 
 and for our part, while we look back with thankfulness 
 to the three lives of our fellowship that are now com- 
 pleted and have passed to God, Ewing's, Barbour's, and 
 Drummond's, it is our chief pride that Drummond was 
 one of us. 
 
 In April, 1876, Drummond finished his four years' 
 course of Divinity, and passed the second part of the 
 exit examination. 1 The ensuing summer he spent 
 
 1 In Church History (Puritanism), Systematic Theology (The Person of 
 Christ and Doctrine of the Church), and Biblical Theology. He made 636 
 marks out of 800.
 
 Il8 HENRY DRUMMOND [1876 
 
 partly on holiday and partly in short courses of evan- 
 gelistic work. He received several invitations from 
 ministers to become their assistant, and several others 
 to preach as a candidate for vacant charges, but he 
 declined them all, and though in the ordinary course 
 he should have taken license to preach, he was still so 
 uncertain of his future that he postponed this first 
 step towards the full orders of the Presbyterian 
 ministry. 
 
 The following letters were written by him during 
 the summer to Mr. and Mrs. James C. Stuart, 1 with 
 whom he had stayed in Manchester for six weeks in 
 1874. They are interesting for two features, which 
 he subsequently dropped, the use of conventional 
 religious phrases, and the underlining of portions of 
 the sentences. In the first, he tells how he walked from 
 Grasmere to Keswick and chose the hotel from which 
 he writes in order to meet a party of Oxford students. 
 He is sorry to have missed a good Sabbath at Man- 
 chester, but has ' found a mission here.' 
 
 'ATKINSON'S LAKE HOTEL, KESWICK, 
 Monday, Aug. 7, 1876. 
 
 ' I had some wonderful " leading " on Saturday 
 all the more that it was unexpected. It would 
 take too long to tell, but I had two distinct and 
 valuable opportunities of talking personally and 
 in detail about the " unsearchable riches." The 
 outline of the first case is something like this. 
 I started in the morning for Ullswater, missed a 
 seat on the two coaches, walked half-way, was 
 picked up by a private party, who offered me a 
 seat beside the driver. At first he was very quiet, 
 and after some time I noticed tears in his eyes. 
 
 1 Now of Grove House, Altrincham.
 
 Mf. 25] BACK TO COLLEGE I 1 9 
 
 I found he had just buried his wife. He was in 
 very deep distress. He was a good respectable 
 man, a teetotaler, but plainly did not know the 
 truth. I did not tell him much then, but I got 
 his address and mean to write him to-night. I 
 hope something will come of it ; the poor fellow 
 seemed very anxious. Another of the cases was 
 in coming down Helvellyn. I went to Ullswater, 
 dined, and started for Helvellyn alone about two. 
 It was a lovely afternoon and the view from the 
 top was marvellous. In coming down I met a 
 young fellow who was in great anxiety about a 
 companion whom he had lost on the mountain. 
 He had searched everywhere, night was coming 
 on, and he feared his friend had been seized with 
 a fit. He didn't know what to do, but the ques- 
 tion, "What do you think of praying?" led to a 
 long and earnest talk. He was a Swedenborgian, 
 but had practically no religion. ... I do not 
 know that any positive good was done ; I mean I 
 saw no immediate effect ; but we talked the whole 
 matter round very freely and plainly. I am afraid 
 these details will be uninteresting on paper, and 
 I will not trouble you with a third. For my own 
 part, I felt very grateful for them. 
 
 ' To-day to Grasmere Chapel. / got nothing. It 
 poured all afternoon. I read Tersteegen. 
 
 ' I have met one Moody party at each hotel. I am 
 glad to see the Christian world goes round too. 
 
 Religion is in a deplorable state in ; I quite 
 
 felt for it. I should have given something for 
 your " little river." The big sea is wonderfully 
 shallow sometimes. I suppose that is when we 
 are big ourselves. 
 
 'I go to Newcastle on Wednesday. Thanks for
 
 I2O HENRY DRUMMOND [1876 
 
 that brave text. It made me feel quite strong 
 to-day. I do not forget C.' 
 
 'STIRLING, Aug. 15, 1876. 
 
 * ... I enjoyed my last day at the Lakes exceedingly, 
 and was perfectly enchanted with Derwentwater. 
 I got a beautiful little canoe and spent the even- 
 ing on the Lake, and did not paddle home till it 
 was about dark. The tints on the hills and the 
 lights on the water and the quietness well, 
 everything was perfect. 
 
 ' The transition to Newcastle was abrupt. There 
 was a marriage and the inevitable meeting! 
 Young folk alone. I ran away to hear Henry 
 Moorhouse [the American evangelist]. He 
 wants me to go to America with him. 
 
 4 He said to me, " You must not let any person 
 gather manna for you you must go every day 
 and gather it for yourself." 
 
 ' I give you the beautiful text I got this morning : 
 " Now the Lord my God hath given me rest on 
 every side " (i Kings v. 4).' 
 
 'GLEN ELM, STIRLING, Sept. 21, 1876. 
 
 ' . . . Thank you very much for Pulsford; I like it 
 extremely. It has almost become part of myself 
 already, as I have it always by me. What I like 
 about it is its great reverence, not only for reli- 
 gion, but for everything and everybody. It seems 
 to be full of " points " besides. Excuse me also 
 remarking on the binding ; one likes to see one's 
 friends decently dressed. I used to wish your 
 Tersteegen was not quite so dilapidated ! I am 
 very glad you are at Brighton. ... B. is a place 
 of few, but very happy, memories to me. Firstly,
 
 JET. 25] BACK TO COLLEGE 121 
 
 it is associated with Frederick William Robert- 
 son, from whom I got a great deal of good ; and 
 secondly, with the Brighton convention, from 
 which I got no harm. The first thing I should 
 do if I were there again would be to visit Rob- 
 ertson's grave. He used to be one of my few 
 heroes. 
 
 * My life is still the same knotless thread that it used 
 to be. I have been trying to do a little here and 
 there, but personally I see no further than before. 
 And, do you know, a strange thought comes to 
 me sometimes that " waiting " has the same kind 
 of effect upon one that affliction has? I do not 
 know truly if this be so, for I do not know what 
 affliction is ; but I sometimes wonder whether or 
 not the effects may not to some small extent run 
 in the same lines. My freshest truth is still " the 
 will of God." May it always be so. It has been 
 a great help to many of my friends here.' 
 
 In September he was preaching and evangelising 
 in various parts of Scotland. He took a few Sundays 
 in the church in Ayr, and in answer to an invitation 
 from Bonskeid writes from Ayr as follows : 
 
 1 1 have had no opportunity of deserving a holiday. 
 My programme is full. ... I like Kenman ex- 
 ceedingly ; he came with me to G on Sunday, 
 
 and we tackled the beadle at the close of the 
 service. I really believe the man was converted. 
 At all events, he prayed. Did you ever hear of 
 a beadle praying? I am to be in Ayrshire till 
 Wednesday, and then I hope to be at the Glasgow 
 convention. The programme is rather clumsy, I 
 think. I am hacking my way through two old 
 sermons for Sabbath.'
 
 122 HENRY DRUMMOND [1876-77 
 
 In the end of the year he accepted an invitation 
 from Mr. Wilson of the Barclay Church to assist him 
 for some months. 
 
 '6, LONSDALE TERRACE, EDINBURGH, 
 Feb. i, 1877. 
 
 ' . . . Was I "forlorn" when I wrote last? I dare- 
 say I might have been, feeling the loneliness of a 
 new position. But that is past now, and I am in 
 full swing of work and very happy. Rather I 
 should say I am very interested. I do not feel 
 that I am in my life-work, however, but am cer- 
 tain it is a splendid and unique training for it, 
 and I am sure I shall thank God for it long after- 
 wards if I am spared. The work is very heavy, 
 but all very interesting and enjoyable. It includes 
 a sermon on Sabbath, a prayer-meeting address 
 on Wednesday, a children's meeting on Friday, 
 and an evangelistic meeting on Sabbath night. 
 This is the regular weekly programme, but the 
 unengaged nights are generally occupied with 
 meetings of some sort or private work with in- 
 quirers, of whom there are always one or two 
 somewhere. Indeed, this last is the best part of 
 it all, and there have been some deeply interesting 
 cases behind the scenes to keep the old fire from 
 quite burning out. 
 
 ' I have to make new sermons every Sabbath, 
 which take much time and study. ... I have 
 preached a regular series on the " Will of God," 
 and am going to write two or three more still. 
 It is a profound and marvellous subject. But I 
 do not think I am getting the people to take it 
 up. 1 ... I have had dreams of coming to Lon- 
 
 1 He rather bored his friends these months with his continual insistence on 
 this subject.
 
 ,T. 25] BACK TO COLLEGE 123 
 
 don, as I have a very urgent and warm corre- 
 spondence from Dr. Dykes just now to come and 
 be his assistant, but I cannot see anything more 
 than dreams in them in the meantime. . . . 
 'I am trying to live on the text I sent you at 
 Christmas, which seems to me to be one of the 
 most beautiful pieces of teaching in the whole 
 Testament. 1 I think I have got a little way in 
 to its meaning, and find it very wonderful . . .' 
 
 I think that it was at this time of his life that he 
 used to go down every night of the week to the Grass- 
 market and convoy a man home past the public-houses. 
 In March he again wrote that he could not come to 
 Bonskeid. 
 
 ' 6, LONSDALE TERRACE, Saturday. 
 
 'I must deny myself this and all other forms of 
 worldliness for at .least six weeks, unless the Bar- 
 clay steeple comes down in the interim, which is a 
 consummation devoutly to be wished. I feel like 
 a squirrel in a cage just now hinc ilia lach- 
 rymtz / ' 
 
 He had thrown himself into the Barclay work with 
 great diligence, not a little inspired by the feelings of 
 affection and admiration which he always felt towards 
 Mr. Wilson. The latter had gathered round him a 
 strong band of young men, and they and the inquirers 
 whom he constantly drew to him were Drummond's 
 chief joy in the work. But the congregational routine 
 was not, as the last letter shows, to his taste, and he 
 felt cramped. Most, if not all, of the discourses pub- 
 lished in the The Ideal Life were delivered from the 
 Barclay pulpit. His work there came to a close with 
 the end of April. 
 
 1 I Tim. i. 12 (?).
 
 124 HENRY DRUMMOND [1877 
 
 To Mrs. Stuart 
 
 'GLEN ELM, STIRLING, June 28, 1877. 
 
 ' My story is soon told. I stayed with Mr. Wilson 
 till ist May. Then he got so thoroughly well 
 that I saw I was no longer a necessity, and 
 struck my tent accordingly. I was a little tired, 
 as the work was not light, and I was glad to get a 
 chance and go knapsacking with Professor Geikie 
 for a little. A fortnight's mission in Kirkcaldy 
 followed, and then a week at the General Assem- 
 bly. Since then I have been studying at home 
 with an occasional flight into evangelism. 
 
 ' My future as usual is all in the clouds. Everything 
 is as dark as ever or shall I say as bright as 
 ever? Faith-colour would be the best word, only 
 I am not quite assured enough to use it.' 
 
 In June he went north to address a meeting of the 
 Pitlochrie Young Men's Association. There was a 
 cricket-match in one of the Bonskeid parks, in which 
 he took part, and when it was over and the visitors 
 gone, four of us were left together to spend the even- 
 ing, which closed in dark and rainy. With his usual 
 resource Drummond invented a game for us. ' They 
 play it in America,' he said, * with bowie-knives. Four 
 men are locked into a dark room, each in a corner, 
 and the survivor wins. We'll do without the knives ; 
 the door and the shutters shall be shut, each of us will 
 stand in a corner, and the first who gets on another 
 man's back will be the winner.' It was, I think, the 
 most exciting game I ever played. Nobody stirred 
 from his corner for twenty minutes. Then I heard a 
 scuffle between two of the others, felt my way to fling 
 myself on both of them, when Drummond pounced on
 
 ALT. 25] BACK TO COLLEGE 125 
 
 me, and we all rolled in a heap, he of course on the 
 top as he always was. 
 
 In July he went for a tour in Norway with Robert 
 Barbour, to whom he afterwards sent this letter, nota- 
 ble at least for its charming definition of a holiday: 
 
 'GLEN ELM LODGE, STIRLING, Aug. 21, 1877. 
 ' My programme since coming from Norway has 
 been very simple and very happy. I have scarcely 
 stirred from my den. I have studied some, and 
 read crowds of, books. The Ring and the Book I 
 have gone through with increasing interest, and 
 Hutton's Essays have filled me with admiration 
 for everybody except myself. I have just got 
 Shairp's new book, which I think will delight you, 
 if you have not seen it, The Poetic Interpretation 
 of Nature, my only other novelties being Puls- 
 ford's new volume of sermons and a book by 
 Enigmas of Lifes brother, A Layman s Legacy, 
 which is only mediocre. Norway did me a world 
 of good ; it was a clear month out of reading, 
 out of thinking, out of planning for the future, out 
 of responsibility for others. Not a shred of those 
 things followed me ; I forgot them all and I think 
 this is the true holiday to be one's simplest self, 
 forget the past, and ignore the future. This is 
 fearfully heathenish, and I sometimes had my 
 misgivings, but I think now it is right. I never 
 came back to work, to books, to Christianity, I 
 might almost say, with such a spring ; the world 
 seemed new born. The first sermon I heard was 
 heaven opened ; preaching myself was inspiration. 
 I should like to have your version when you 
 write ; or you can write a treatise if you like " On 
 the Philosophy of Holidays," which is a subject
 
 126 HENRY DRUMMOND [1877 
 
 quite worth thinking about, seeing that most men 
 in our line give at least one-twelfth of their year 
 to it. 
 
 ' I went in to the Commission ten days ago, mainly 
 to recover my ecclesiastical vocabulary. I had 
 really forgotten all the more important words, 
 also in theology, from pure disuse. . . . 
 
 'I am a missionary again sad relapse from an 
 assistant's airy height. A handful of colliers, in 
 a place near Polmont, were needing shepherding, 
 and I go down every Sabbath to preach twice to 
 them. It is most delightful work, and I would 
 not exchange it for anywhere.' 
 
 In spite of these bright intervals of holiday and 
 work, Drummond, still uncertain of his future, was not 
 happy. He afterwards called 1 this year ' the most mis- 
 erable time of his life, not seeing what definite work 
 he could do to earn his bread, and yet get time to 
 preach. When he came from Norway he went to 
 New College to see in the Calendar what subjects 
 were required for examination for license, though he 
 did not want to be licensed. He had been blamed 
 (he says), as if he had given up the ministry, but he 
 has never been a minister, nor wanted to be. At col- 
 lege he found some numbers of Nature that had been 
 accumulating for him, and then all his scientific studies 
 came back upon him. But he saw no use for his 
 Natures now that his college career was at an end ; 
 and as he went down the Mound he gave them to an 
 engine-driver, saying they were some journals he might 
 find interesting. In a day or two he noticed the death 
 of Mr. Keddie (lecturer on Natural Science in the 
 
 1 To Professor Simpson, with whom he had a long talk about his career a few 
 months before his death.
 
 JET. 26] BACK TO COLLEGE 127 
 
 Free Church College, Glasgow), and wrote to Principal 
 Douglas to ask if it was any use his applying for the 
 lectureship. Dr. Douglas encouraged him. He got 
 a very commendatory testimonial from Professor Archi- 
 bald Geikie, as well as some others, but he thinks 
 Geikie's got him the place.' On September i yth the 
 General Assembly's College Committee appointed him 
 to the lectureship for one session, and so he found 
 the work that ultimately formed the profession and 
 settled post after which he had been groping for two 
 years. 
 
 During these years of uncertainty and painful wait- 
 ing for the issue of his life, Drummond had been much 
 sustained by studying the teaching of the Bible upon 
 the Will of God. He had put the result in three ser- 
 mons which he preached from the Barclay pulpit, and 
 which now form the last of his volume, The Ideal Life, 
 'What is God's Will? "The Relation of the Will of 
 God to Sanctification,' and ' How to know the Will of 
 God.' But he has summarised the knowledge which 
 the study and experience of three years of waiting 
 brought him, in eight maxims, which he inscribed 
 upon the fly-leaf of his Bible. 
 
 To FIND OUT GOD'S WILL 
 
 1 . Pray. 
 
 2. Think. 
 
 3. Talk to wise people, but do not regard their 
 decision as final. 
 
 4. Beware of the bias of your own will, but do not 
 be too much afraid of it (God never unnecessarily 
 thwarts a man's nature and likings, and it is a mistake 
 to think that His will is in the line of the disa- 
 greeable). 
 
 5. Meantime do the next thing (for doing God's
 
 128 HENRY DRUMMOND [1878 
 
 will in small things is the best preparation for know- 
 ing it in great things). 
 
 6. When decision and action are necessary, go 
 ahead. 
 
 7. Never reconsider the decision when it is finally 
 acted upon ; and 
 
 8. You will probably not find out till afterwards, 
 perhaps long afterwards, that you have been led at all.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 1877-1883 
 
 THE presence in a divinity hall of a lectureship on 
 Natural Science is a phenomenon which requires some 
 explanation. In the case of the Free Church of Scot- 
 land it was not due, as has sometimes been supposed, 
 to the Roman policy of qualifying so inevitable an 
 influence as modern science by straining it through a 
 theological filter ; but it arose very reasonably out of 
 the condition of the Scottish universities in 1843, 
 when the Free Church separated from the State. 
 
 At that time the Arts chairs in the universities 
 were still under tests, and the Free Church felt herself 
 obliged to supply for her students not only a theologi- 
 cal curriculum, but a full Arts one as well. New Col- 
 lege, Edinburgh, at first included professorships or 
 lectureships in Classics, Mathematics, and Philosophy, 
 and these continued till the university tests were 
 abolished. 1 But in addition a chair of Natural Science 
 was founded, at the instigation of Sir David Brewster, 
 Hugh Miller, and others, who had strong feelings of 
 the need of it in training young men for the ministry. 2 
 These feelings were due to the healthy opinion that 
 Natural Science should be a factor in the Arts cur- 
 riculum, in which nevertheless no Scottish university 
 save that of Aberdeen had yet placed it. Other mem- 
 
 1 Two of the New College Professors, Macdougall and Campbell Fraser, after- 
 wards became the University Professors of Moral Philosophy and Logic. 
 8 See a speech by Principal Rainy in the General Assembly of 1884. 
 
 K 129
 
 I3O HENRY DRUMMOND [1878 
 
 bers of the Church, too, felt that science would so 
 largely enter into Christian apologetics, and into the 
 materials for preaching, as to justify a separate class 
 for its treatment. Consequently, when the other Arts 
 chairs in New College came to an end, that of Natural 
 Science was continued, first under Dr. Fleming, then 
 under Dr. Duns ; and a lectureship was established in 
 the second Free Church College at Glasgow. The 
 latter was held till 1877 by Mr. Keddie, F.R.S.E., and 
 on his death, as we have seen, Henry Drummond se- 
 cured the temporary appointment for session 1877-78. 
 The students in Glasgow College varied from sev- 
 enty to one hundred. Drummond lectured to the First 
 Year, from twelve to twenty-four in number. He had 
 no lines prescribed to him and chose to instruct the 
 students in the rudiments of geology and botany and 
 in the general methods of modern science. 1 The sal- 
 ary was 1 50 a year, the lectures four a week from the 
 beginning of November to the end of March. Their 
 preparation occupied the whole of his time, and I find 
 in existence no letters from him during this session and 
 no record of other work. The following was written 
 when the session closed : 
 
 'GLEN ELM LODGE, STIRLING, April 20, 1878. 
 
 ' . . . I am in the statu quo. Session ended well. 
 We wound up with four days' geologising in 
 Arran, and had a glorious time. Eleven men 
 mustered, the cream of the class, and we ham- 
 mered the Island almost to bits nothing left 
 but the hotel and a ledge of rock to smoke on ! ' 
 
 In May he had ten days more geologising, this time 
 among the Cairngorms and with Professor Geikie. 
 
 1 See further, p. 268.
 
 MT. 26] SCIENCE AND RELIGION I 3 1 
 
 In the end of the month he returned to Glasgow, to 
 attend the meetings of the General Assembly, the first 
 for many years held outside Edinburgh. The most 
 important business before this Assembly was the con- 
 sideration of the ' relevancy ' of the charge made 
 against Professor Robertson Smith before the Pres- 
 bytery of Aberdeen, of contravening by his articles in 
 the Encyclopaedia Britannica the doctrine of inspira- 
 tion in the Westminster Confession of Faith. The 
 question was narrowed to the Professor's statement of 
 the non-Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy. A mo- 
 tion by Sir Henry Moncrieff that such a statement 
 would, if proved, contravene the Confession, was car- 
 ried by a small majority over one by Principal Rainy, 
 that the charge was not relevant ; and the case was 
 sent back for proof to the Presbytery of Aberdeen. 
 But the moral victory was felt to lie with the Profess- 
 or's opinions, and as it turned out he was acquitted 
 by the Presbytery and, on a narrow majority of three, 
 by a subsequent Assembly. 1 At this stage of the 
 famous trial Drummond's own mind was not very 
 clear, but he was evidently impressed by the speeches 
 for the defence. 
 
 'ASSEMBLY HALL, Saturday [first Saturday of June], 1878. 
 
 'Mv DEAR MOTHER, . . . The Smith and Dods 
 cases are very well over, and every one is thankful 
 for the peace of the end. [Alas, it was not the 
 end !] The speaking of Smith, Rainy, and others 
 has been extraordinary, and has made the Assem- 
 bly very profitable. Last night I spent at an 
 evangelistic meeting in Grove Street with Willie 
 Ferguson and Mac Gill. I was with the same 
 party on Wednesday morning, having an open- 
 
 1 1880. See p. 141.
 
 132 HENRY DRUMMOND [1878 
 
 air meeting in a foundry during the breakfast 
 hour; so I have not been altogether useless.' 
 
 By this Assembly Drummond was appointed to 
 another session of the lectureship; but the summer 
 was free, and, eager for some religious work, he ac- 
 cepted an invitation to take charge of the Free Church 
 of Scotland's station at Malta, in the absence of the 
 chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Wisely. The following letters 
 are to his friends Ross and Barbour : 
 
 'VALLETTA, MALTA, July 4, 1878. 
 
 1 My DEAR Ross, This is the day of your ordination, 
 and I am not unmindful of you. My thoughts 
 are Dundeewards, and if good wishes can do you 
 any good in your new work you have them in 
 abundance from this far-off land. ... I am not 
 going to bother you with much of this tissue- 
 paper caligraphy, as I have little to say yet about 
 Malta that would interest you. Besides, with the 
 thermometer at 90 in the shade letter-writing is 
 far from being a luxury, especially as I have to 
 sally forth on a mosquito hunt between every 
 second sentence. I had a splendid tour here. It 
 began with a peep at the Paris Exhibition, then 
 with a run through Italy and Sardinia, and 
 wound up with a voyage to Africa, where I stayed 
 a week. 
 
 4 I have only been three days here. It is a splendid 
 place. If the heat allow it, I am sure I shall 
 enjoy the work greatly. The chief items are 
 three services on Sundays, one or two in the 
 camps through the week, and hospital visitation. 
 It will be pretty hard, but I am only to have two 
 months of it.
 
 T. 27] SCIENCE AND RELIGION 133 
 
 ' Now do write me a line and tell me " wie es sieht 
 in der Welt aus," to quote your famous Tubingen 
 phrase. I hope you have had a good start.' 
 
 ' REV. MR. WISELY'S, VALLETTA, MALTA, 
 July 4, 1878. 
 
 * LIEBER ROBERT, This time last year we were sing- 
 ing chorales on the North Sea. You no doubt 
 are singing them still in the North of Scotland. 
 I am killing mosquitoes in Malta. 
 
 ' . . . Malta seems a most interesting place, thoroughly 
 civilised, and inhabited by every nation on earth. 
 There is a magnificently equipped English library, 
 where I spend the morning before work begins, 
 and there are museums when one is tired of the 
 endless museum of the streets. I came here via 
 Paris, Marseilles, Italy, Sardinia, and Africa. In 
 Africa I spent a week. My headquarters were 
 Tunis, the second largest city in Africa. The 
 change to Oriental life was most interesting, in 
 fact, Tunis is the most interesting place I have 
 ever seen. Arabs, deserts, palms, and camels 
 are strange sights to a European, and I would 
 recommend every one who comes near the Medi- 
 terranean to give a few days to North Africa. I 
 was all alone, and it is out of the tourists' track, 
 so sometimes I felt rather eerie. One day I 
 spent among the ruins of ancient Carthage 
 profoundly interesting. . . . Yours most sin- 
 
 cere v HENRY DRUMMOND. 
 
 ' P.S. Paul was three months here ! ' 
 
 'GLEN ELM LODGE, STIRLING, Sept. 17, 1878. 
 
 4 LIEBER ROBERT, . . . I came home on Friday. 
 The chief event on the way was a sunrise from
 
 134 HENRY DRUMMOND [1878-79 
 
 Etna. Etna is only three thousand feet lower than 
 Mt. Blanc, so the climb was glorious and the view 
 from the crater a miracle of grandeur. After 
 Sicily, I did Naples, Pompeii, Herculaneum, 
 Vesuvius, the Island of Capri, Pozzuoli ; then 
 Rome, Florence, Milan, the Italian Lakes, and 
 home over the St. Gotthard Pass with Switzer- 
 land ; thence by Basle, Paris, and Calais.' 
 
 In September Drummond settled down again in 
 Glasgow. He was happy in his lectureship, and very 
 happy in his colleagues, with whom he was to work 
 for nineteen years on terms of the closest affection 
 and confidence. Principal Douglas, who was Pro- 
 fessor of Hebrew, Professor T. M. Lindsay, who had 
 the Church History Chair, Professor James Candlish, 
 who taught Systematic and Pastoral Theology, and 
 Professor A. B. Bruce, who had the Chairs of Apolo- 
 getics and the New Testament. Drummond's few 
 lectures gave him leisure for other work, and he had 
 not forgotten his calling as an evangelist. ' I want,' 
 he had written in April of this year, ' a quiet mission 
 somewhere, entry immediate and self-contained.' He 
 had attached himself to Renfield Free Church, under 
 the ministry of Dr. Marcus Dods, and was ordained 
 as an elder. The congregation had recently adopted 
 a mission station in Possilpark, and in April Dr. Dods 
 had offered the charge of it to Drummond, who en- 
 tered upon his duties when he returned from Malta. 
 Possilpark is a northern suburb of Glasgow. In 1878 
 its population was said to be about six thousand, mostly 
 working-class families settled in recently built houses. 
 They were nearly all well-to-do people, but in the 
 autumn of 1878 the City of Glasgow Bank failed and 
 cast hundreds of them out of work. It was a terrible
 
 yET. 27] SCIENCE AND RELIGION 135 
 
 winter; the social distress was aggravated by very 
 severe cold, and city missionaries, not in Glasgow 
 only but all over Scotland, passed through experiences 
 which they can never forget. The ordinary labours 
 of charity were increased tenfold ; investigations had 
 to be made into hundreds of new cases, and, owing to 
 the number of honest families thrown into a distress 
 to which they were absolutely new, the work required 
 extraordinary patience and tact. But the rewards 
 were great. The missionaries came into personal re- 
 lation with a large number of lives they would proba- 
 bly never have touched, and obtained abundant proofs 
 of the courage and honesty of the mass of Scottish 
 working-men. One missionary, who was given ^40 
 for distribution in his district, found that the most of 
 it would be accepted only in the form of loans, and 
 had not less than ^23 repaid to him when work grew 
 better in the course of the following year. 
 
 To Robert W. Barbour 
 
 'September 17, 1878. 
 
 ' On Sunday I was " introduced " to my new flock 
 in Glasgow by Dods, and I begin work there at 
 once. I have a splendid prospect for the winter 
 a district of six thousand people, none of them 
 lapsed as yet, no opposition, and many willing, 
 helping hands.' 
 
 To Mr. and Mrs. Stuart 
 
 ' POSSILPARK, GLASGOW, Nov. 22, 1878. 
 
 *. . . In the first place I have my college lectures, 
 which is enough for any man. Secondly, I have 
 now a church. On Sabbath I preach twice,
 
 136 HENRY DRUMMOND [1878-79 
 
 attend schools and classes. On Mondays I look 
 after a bank ; on Tuesdays I give a popular lect- 
 ure. On Wednesdays a mothers' meeting in the 
 afternoon, a lecture to children at seven, the con- 
 gregational prayer-meeting at eight. The other 
 two nights I visit the poor and the sick, or hold 
 meetings elsewhere. I am just starting now, 
 ten miles, for a meeting to-night. This is my 
 programme every week. In addition to all this, 
 I have had the horror of my examination for 
 license hanging over me from the hour I landed 
 
 from Malta.' 
 
 'PossiLPARK, March 21, 1879. 
 
 ' ... So you have been to America and seen Moody. 
 For myself I have had a long, quiet, busy winter. 
 My little church gets on bravely, though it has 
 been a dreadful winter in Glasgow. Thousands 
 have been really starving all winter, and out here 
 I have had to feed scores of families with the 
 meat that perisheth, and a scant seasoning only 
 of the other. We are past the worst now, I hope, 
 though the snow is still thick on the ground. 
 
 ' Although I have a church, I am not a minister yet. 
 Mrs. Grundy, I am glad to say, has not prevailed. 
 I am not ordained, nor have I any desire to be, 
 or prospect of being. My old desires and aims 
 are there still, unchanged. I have taken what we 
 call license, and which is often mistaken for ordi- 
 nation, but it is little more than a college certifi- 
 cate of a theological education. And my church 
 is a mere appendage to my college work to fill up 
 spare interest and time. By and by I give it up, 
 and plunge into evangelism. I shall retain my 
 college work it will be corrective without being 
 absorbing. I have had several calls this winter
 
 r. 28J SCIENCE AND RELIGION 137 
 
 to be ordained to churches in different places, but 
 have refused them all on this secret ground. No 
 one, however, can understand me. I am looked 
 upon as "queer." You will understand, however, 
 that I have not bowed down and worshipped 
 Mrs. G. If you ever write Mr. Moody, I wish 
 you would tell him that. He, too, thinks I have 
 fallen. 
 
 ' I am going to take my class down to the Island of 
 Arran for some days' geologising. . . .' 
 
 'PossiLFARK, GLASGOW, July 25, 1879. 
 
 ' . . . You wrote me on the eve of your departure to 
 America. It is now my turn. I start next Thurs- 
 day. I am to be away three months all the 
 time in the Far West. I am going with Professor 
 Geikie, whom you know. We are to geologise 
 in the Rocky Mountains. I suppose we shall be 
 camped out all the time, shooting, fishing, and 
 hammering, so we shall see nothing of the States. 
 I mean, of course, to make a great effort to run 
 off for a day or two with D. L. M., 1 but I shall 
 have to reserve civilised America for a future 
 occasion. 
 
 ' Now that I have introduced myself, I must recall 
 events since I wrote last. My life has been very 
 humdrum, toiling away in a mission district since 
 college closed last March. My college appoint- 
 ment was made permanent by my election to the 
 Chair 2 last Assembly, so that there is no fear of 
 my being a settled minister. I shall lecture five 
 months and be a vagrant, or a city, missionary 
 during the other seven. It is an odd life, but it 
 suits me.' 
 
 1 Mr. Moody. 3 Lectureship.
 
 138 HENRY DRUMMOND [1879-81 
 
 On the 3ist of July he sailed for America. The 
 account of his geological expedition to the Rocky 
 Mountains with Professor Geikie may be postponed 
 to a separate chapter. 
 
 On his return from the Rockies, Drummond found 
 himself at Boston, and in a curious dilemma. He had 
 five days before he sailed for home. He was in the 
 city of Lowell and Longfellow, Bryant, Emerson, 
 Channing, Agassiz, and Holmes ; and he had an in- 
 vitation to meet Longfellow and Holmes at dinner. 
 
 * Longfellow I had learned to love from my youth 
 up; Holmes, ever since the mystery of the three 
 Johns and the three Toms caught my school-boy 
 fancy years ago, has been to me a mouth and 
 wisdom. And naturally the attraction of these 
 names was a powerful inducement to me to spend 
 my last days in quiet worship at shrines so revered 
 and beloved. But some eight hundred miles off, 
 away by Lake Erie, were two men who were more 
 to me than philosopher or poet, and it only 
 required a moment's thought to convince me 
 that for me, at least, a visit to America would be 
 much more than incomplete without a visit to 
 Mr. Moody and Mr. Sankey. It was hard, I must 
 say, to give up Longfellow, but I am one of those 
 who think that the world is not dying for poets 
 so much as for preachers. I set off at once. . . . 
 Neither of the men seemed the least changed. 
 There they were before me, the same men : Mr. 
 Sankey down to the faultless set of his black 
 necktie, Mr. Moody to the chronic crush of his 
 collar. ... I can scarcely say I have much to 
 record that would be in itself news. For my own 
 part I am glad of this. We do not want anything
 
 /ET. 28-30] SCIENCE AND RELIGION 1 39 
 
 new in revivals. We want always the old factors 
 the living Spirit of God, the living Word of God, 
 the old Gospel. We want crowds coming to 
 hear crowds made up of the old elements; per- 
 ishing men and women finding their way to 
 prayer-meeting, Bible reading, and inquiry room. 
 These were all to be seen in Cleveland. It was 
 the same as in England and Scotland. I was 
 especially pleased to find that it was the same as 
 regards quietness. I had expected to find revival 
 work in America more exciting; but, although a 
 deep work was beginning, everything was calm. 
 There was movement, but no agitation ; there was 
 power in the meetings, but no frenzy. And the 
 secret of that probably lay here, that in the speaker 
 himself there was earnestness, but no bigotry, and 
 enthusiasm-, but no superstition.' l 
 
 No more signal proof could we have both of Drum- 
 mond's enthusiasm for the Gospel and of his loyalty to 
 old friends. Probably never in all his life did he feel 
 a greater wrench than this from Boston and the 
 chance of meeting the two poets ; probably never 
 greater happiness than when he burst in uninvited, 
 unannounced upon the astonished evangelists at 
 Cleveland. And yet, and yet, O Henry, why 
 didn't you dine with Longfellow and Holmes ? 
 
 From America Drummond returned to his third 
 winter as lecturer on Natural Science, and as mission- 
 ary in Possilpark. The years '80 and '81 passed away 
 in this double work, without incident and almost with- 
 out the break of a single holiday. 
 
 The case of Professor Robertson Smith was pro- 
 ceeding from one church court to another, with vary- 
 
 1 From a letter to The Christian, November, 1879.
 
 I4O HENRY DRUMMOND [1880-81 
 
 ing and ambiguous fortunes. No one knew how it 
 would end ; and indeed comparatively few were certain 
 on which side, at the end, they themselves would be 
 found. The truth is, it was not so much the trial of 
 one man which was proceeding, nor even the trial of 
 one set of opinions, as the education of the whole 
 Church in face of the facts which Biblical criticism 
 had recently presented to her. The Great Mission of 
 1873-75 had quickened, as we have seen, the practical 
 use of the Bible, and the Church was studying her 
 sacred books in the congregation and in the Bible class, 
 with a freshness and a thoroughness hardly seen before. 
 But now came the necessary complement to all that, 
 in the critical study of the Scriptures; and by those 
 who believe in God's providence of His Church, it has 
 always been a matter of praise that the revival of the 
 experimental study of the Scriptures in Scotland pre- 
 ceded that of the critical. Those who, with Professor 
 Robertson Smith, instigated the latter, were some of 
 the devoutest men in the Church, of whom it is right 
 to instance especially one of Drummond's own col- 
 leagues : the late Professor James Candlish, a teacher 
 of undoubted orthodoxy, a most spiritual preacher, a 
 finished scholar, and, in spite of his weak health and a 
 rare modesty, which made him the least aggressive 
 spirit in the movement, a man of courage and the 
 most perfect justice. These men believed that Christ's 
 promise of the Holy Spirit for the education of His 
 Church was being fulfilled, not less in the critical than 
 in the experimental use of the Bible ; they defended 
 criticism on the highest grounds of faith in God and 
 loyalty to Christ. But as in every other discipline of 
 the Church in new truth, so in this, pain and restless- 
 ness prevailed. Within, as without, the church courts 
 discussion ran high and hot for three years. The old
 
 JEr. 29-30] SCIENCE AND RELIGION 
 
 parties were broken up, and even groups of friends and 
 fellow-workers divided sharply under the new tests. 
 At first Drummond could not but share the general 
 uncertainty. Many of his dearest friends and leaders 
 were opposed to Professor Smith's views ; he himself 
 was not equipped with the knowledge of the original 
 languages of the Bible which could have enabled him 
 to form conclusions of his own. And in the letter he 
 wrote from the Glasgow Assembly, we have seen that 
 he looked for peace arising out of some compromise. 
 
 But Drummond's scientific training had given him 
 a sense for facts, an appreciation of evidence : while 
 his strong and cheerful faith in God saved him from 
 the confusion into which so complete a revolution in 
 his views of the methods of inspiration must otherwise 
 have cast him. The Assembly of 1880 decided by 
 a narrow majority in Professor Smith's favour, and 
 Drummond rejoiced at the decision. When new arti- 
 cles by the professor appeared in the Encyclopedia 
 Britannica, and led the Assembly's Commission of 
 the following October to suspend him once more from 
 his chair, Drummond refused to be satisfied with a 
 verdict which, while it saved the Church from a pro- 
 nouncement against the new views, prepared to sac- 
 rifice, for the peace of the Church, their foremost 
 representative ; and when it became apparent, next 
 spring, that the General Assembly would complete the 
 work of the Commission, and remove Professor Smith 
 from his chair, Drummond wrote in great sorrow : 1 
 
 ' We are all much dejected here by the suicidal pol- 
 icy of the majority in their recent determination 
 to lynch Smith. It will be a very serious blow to 
 the Church, and I fear nothing can avert it now.' 
 
 1 Glasgow, May 21, 1881.
 
 142 HENRY DRUMMOND [1881-82 
 
 He was right. Professor Robertson Smith was sac- 
 rificed ; but whatever may have been the motives of the 
 leaders of the majority, whether the general peace of 
 the Church, or the more subtle desire to save the 
 Church, by his suspension, from a condemnation of 
 the critical views, the latter result was secured, and 
 the Church was allowed to find room for methods of 
 research and for views of inspiration more free from 
 the errors of tradition, and more true to the facts of 
 Scripture itself. With these new views, Drummond, 
 though he took no share in developing them, was 
 henceforth in hearty sympathy. His religious teach- 
 ing was as much based upon the Bible as it had ever 
 been ; but in his own practical use of the Bible he 
 exercised a new discrimination, and he often said 
 that the critical movement had removed very many 
 difficulties in the Old Testament which once puzzled 
 him, and had set him free for the fuller apprecia- 
 tion of its divine contents. 
 
 Several years afterwards, speaking of the contest of 
 Science and Religion, he is reported to have said : 
 
 ' The contest is dying out. The new view of the 
 Bible has rendered further apologetics almost 
 superfluous. I have endeavoured to show that 
 in my articles on Creation. 1 No one now expects 
 science from the Bible. The literary form of 
 Genesis precludes the idea that it is science. 
 You might as well contrast Paradise Lost with 
 geology as the Book of Genesis. Mr. Huxley 
 might have been better employed than in laying 
 that poor old ghost. The more modern views 
 of the inspiration of the Bible have destroyed 
 the stock-in-trade of the platform infidel. Such 
 
 1 See below, chap. x.
 
 &T. 30] SCIENCE AND RELIGION 143 
 
 men are constructing difficulties which do not 
 exist, and they fight as those that beat the air.' 1 
 
 Drummond once asked me to help in the prepara- 
 tion of a popular tract on the Higher Criticism. A 
 rhetorical Bishop, a defender of the Mosaic origin of 
 the Pentateuch, had asked what the critics would 
 answer when in the next world Moses met them with 
 the challenge, ' How dared you say that I did not 
 write the Pentateuch ? ' I pointed out that, consider- 
 ing the absence of all claims of Mosaic authorship in 
 the Pentateuch itself, it was equally reasonable to put 
 the question in the very opposite form ; and Drum- 
 mond's proposal was to write the tract in the form of 
 a dream by the same Bishop, as though, being con- 
 veyed to heaven and meeting Moses, Moses should 
 ask him, ' How dared you say that I did write the 
 Pentateuch ? ' 
 
 But among all the influences which were bearing 
 on Drummond during these years, the strongest came 
 through his intercourse with Dr. Marcus Dods. In 
 the Possilpark Mission Dr. Dods was his ecclesiastical 
 superior, and they shared work in those practical 
 movements for which the religious life of Glasgow 
 is famous; while, in Dr. Dods' knowledge of litera- 
 ture and of the philosophical tendencies of our time, 
 the younger man found numerous opportunities of 
 repairing the defects in his own education. Years 
 afterwards Drummond said : ' I can claim Dr. Dods, 
 not only as a friend and elder brother, but as the 
 greatest influence in many directions that has ever 
 come across my life ; and that if I have done anything 
 in my poor way to help anybody else, it has been 
 
 1 From ' A Talk with Professor Drummond,' by Raymond Blathwayt, in Great 
 Thoughts, I think, about 1890.
 
 144 HENRY DRUMMOND [1881-82 
 
 largely owing to what he has done, and mainly by his 
 own grand character, to help me.' Among the ' many 
 directions ' in which this influence told were those of 
 Biblical criticism and the application of the hypothesis 
 of evolution to the interpretation of religion. 
 
 Most of the members of Drummond's Club had 
 married by 1881, and the experiment was tried of ask- 
 ing the wives to the annual reunion. This is the let- 
 ter that one of them got from Drummond shortly 
 afterwards. 
 
 To Mrs. Robert W. Barbour 
 
 ' POSSILPARK, GLASGOW, May 2ist, 1881. 
 
 1 . . . I am so glad you enjoyed Moffat. I must 
 confess I was afraid the ladies would find us a 
 very queer set of beings. We are so accustomed 
 to one another, that when we get together we drop 
 all the graver responsibilities, and become school- 
 boys once more. This, of course, is a great and a 
 natural joy to us, but I fancy you must often have 
 been bewildered at us. Moffat reminded me even 
 of an earlier stage than the school-boy this year. 
 You know the curious old memory of "going thro' 
 a wood when we were children," that was what 
 Moffat was to me: young, fresh, and buoyant, 
 " children going thro' a wood " ; yet I trust we will 
 never forget this memory, nor lose this spirit. . . .' 
 
 Early in 1882 Messrs. Moody and Sankey began a 
 new mission in Scotland, passed in the late summer 
 into Wales and the southwest of England, preached 
 in Paris for the most of October, and returned for the 
 winter to the cities they had already visited in Eng- 
 land and Ireland, and to a number of others in addi- 
 tion. The mission was not so powerful as that of
 
 JEx. 30] SCIENCE AND RELIGION 145 
 
 eight years before, but a good deal of real work was 
 done. 
 
 To Robert W. B arbour^ 
 
 ' POSSILPARK, GLASGOW, March 13, 1882. 
 
 * DEAR ROBERT, I wish you could spend a few 
 days in the Moody work. Stalker is coming on 
 Wednesday. The movement amongst men in the 
 East End has been the main feature, and I have 
 had some very wonderful cases. Brown and 
 Ewing are both over head and ears in it ; and for 
 the workers at least, it is quite as good as the last 
 revival. At the same time, the movement has not 
 seized the city as it did before, and the scarcity 
 of ministers at the meetings is marked. I have 
 got a few students to come to the inquiry room, 
 but the attitude of the college as a whole is 
 largely one of simple toleration. 
 
 ' I am afraid it will be impossible for me to come 
 up in April. I expect Moody in my own parish, 
 where I have long been expecting to see some 
 work. I must say I believe in personal dealing 
 more and more every day, and in the inadequacy 
 of mere preaching. The inquiry room this time, 
 as before, brings its terrible revelation of the vast 
 multitude of unregenerate church members. I 
 have dealt with several men of position who knew 
 the letter of Scripture as they knew their own 
 names, but who had no more idea of Free Grace 
 and a Personal Christ than a Hottentot.' 
 
 < POSSILPARK, GLASGOW, June 8th, 1882. 
 
 ' DEAR ROBERT, ... I now see things a little clearer, 
 but unfortunately I do not see Cults. Moody, too, 
 
 1 Then Free Church minister at Cults.
 
 146 HENRY DRUMMOND [1882 
 
 has made me promise to " hitch on to him," as 
 he calls it, for the summer, so that my arrange- 
 ments are very much taken out of my own hands. 
 My only reserve is a few weeks in July, which I 
 spend with Dods somewhere on the Continent. 
 
 ' I had Moody in my church last Sabbath one of 
 the most wonderful meetings I ever saw. A crowd 
 of my own members stood up at the close and 
 asked to be prayed for, and a number of other 
 inquirers waited to the second meeting. I have 
 been following up all week with nightly meetings. 
 
 ' On Tuesday night there was a special meeting for 
 reformed drunkards in the City Hall. They 
 were admitted by special ticket, received on 
 formal application and after cross-examination. 
 Over 800 sat down to tea, of all ages and ranks. 
 Mr. Moody presided, and a number afterwards 
 gave their testimony : all was most thrilling and 
 pathetic. 
 
 'Altogether the work has taken a powerful hold, and 
 immense numbers have been reached. I have 
 given up my church.' 
 
 The Possilpark Mission, in which Drummond had 
 been working hard for four years, had prospered. 
 There were nearly three hundred communicants, a 
 large Sabbath-school, a Young Men's Christian Associ- 
 ation, and various other agencies. A church had been 
 built, costing nearly ^4000, and it was free of debt. 
 The General Assembly of 1882 raised the mission 
 to the status of a full charge, and Drummond resigned 
 the missionaryship in order that an ordained minister 
 might be appointed. This set him free to work with 
 Mr. Moody through the rest of the summer, and in 
 October he came back to his college lectures.
 
 15x. 30] SCIENCE AND RELIGION 147 
 
 To Mrs, Stuart 
 'PossiLFARK, GLASGOW, December 2Oth, 1882. 
 
 { Of myself I have little to report. I am growing 
 older and, as you know, wickeder. I was with 
 Moody all summer in Scotland, Wales, and Eng- 
 land. I have been very busy, and have not had a 
 holiday for a year and a half. I have also been 
 writing a book, now in the press. When I add 
 that I am not married yet, and as far away from 
 it as ever, my year's autobiography is ended. 
 
 1 1 hope you will see something of Moody when he 
 is in your neighbourhood in the early year. My 
 admiration of him has increased a hundredfold. 
 I had no idea before of the moral size of the man, 
 and I think very few know what he really is.' 
 
 A month before his death Drummond said to one 
 of his doctors, ' Moody was the biggest human I ever 
 met.' 
 
 During the winter he worked hard at the book, re- 
 writing most of it, and joined Moody again for a little 
 when the session was over. 
 
 To Mrs. Stuart 
 'PossiLPARK, GLASGOW, March 3ist, 1883. 
 
 ' . . . The book will not be ready for two or three 
 weeks yet. I am going to Liverpool next week 
 to work for a short time with Moody. . . . Moody 
 has asked me to go to America with him, but I 
 do not think I shall be tempted. From your 
 letter I see you are afraid my book will not be 
 orthodox, but I hope you will not find this to be 
 the case. I am getting sounder and sounder ! '
 
 148 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 The book was the one which made him famous, 
 Natural Law in the Spiritual World. It was not his 
 greatest work. Its main argument rests upon a couple 
 of unproved, and, in the opinion of many, impossible 
 assumptions. And Drummond himself became dis- 
 contented with it. But because it made him famous, 
 and is still, with many, the chief cause of his reputa- 
 tion ; because of the enormous circulation it achieved, 
 the multitudes it helped, the wild hopes it raised, and 
 the bitter controversy, it is right that we should 
 form some clear idea of how this book began, and 
 what it aimed at effecting. Drummond has himself 
 described its origin. 
 
 ' For four years,' as he says in his Preface, he had 
 ' to address regularly two very different audiences 
 on two very different themes. On week days 
 I have lectured to a class of students on the 
 Natural Sciences, and on Sundays to an audience 
 consisting for the most part of working-men, on 
 subjects of a moral and religious character. I 
 cannot say that this collocation ever appeared as 
 a difficulty to myself, but to certain of my friends 
 it was more than a problem. It was solved to me, 
 however, at first by what then seemed the necessi- 
 ties of the case I must keep the two depart- 
 ments entirely by themselves. They lay at 
 opposite poles of thought ; and for a time I suc- 
 ceeded in keeping the Science and the Religion 
 shut off from one another in two separate com- 
 partments of my mind. But gradually the wall 
 of partition showed symptoms of giving way. 
 The two fountains of knowledge also slowly began 
 to overflow, and finally their waters met and 
 mingled. The great change was in the compart-
 
 Mr. 31] SCIENCE AND RELIGION 149 
 
 ment which held the Religion. It was not that 
 the well there was dried ; still less that the fer- 
 menting waters were washed away by the flood of 
 science. The actual contents remained the same. 
 But the crystals of former doctrine were dissolved; 
 and as they precipitated themselves once more in 
 definite forms, I observed that the Crystalline 
 System was also changed. New channels also 
 for outward expression opened, and some of the 
 old closed up ; and I found the truth running out 
 to my audience on the Sundays by the week-day 
 outlets. In other words, the subject-matter of 
 Religion had taken on the method of expression 
 of Science, and I discovered myself enunciating 
 Spiritual Law in the exact terms of Biology and 
 Physics.' 
 
 The simple style of this paragraph masks a consid- 
 erable vagueness of meaning, and one desires some 
 more explicit description of the state of his Science 
 and his Religion when he 'kept them shut off from 
 one another in two separate compartments of his 
 mind.' He cannot have intended this to be taken 
 literally. For, since coming to Glasgow, Drummond's 
 eyes had been opened to the great signs of evolution 
 within Scripture 1 itself. And, on the other side, he 
 was equally aware how Natural Science corroborates 
 the Scriptural assumption that behind the visible uni- 
 verse there is a creative mind. Although he had 
 judged Darwin's own teaching to be defective on this 
 point, 2 he thankfully acknowledged that Science in 
 general bore to it unmistakable and even lavish witness. 
 To his students he emphasised these mutual contribu- 
 
 1 We shall get his opinion on this later on, 
 
 2 See above, p. 47.
 
 I5O HENRY DRUMMOND [1877-83 
 
 tions of Religion and Science, and on the last day of 
 1878 he wrote to one who inquired of him what 
 Science had done to corroborate the teaching of Script- 
 ure upon the origin of life, as follows : 
 
 To Hugh Barbour 
 
 * I think it is quite clear that Science has gone as 
 far as she ever will on her side of the border. 
 And she has gone a wonderful length towards 
 us, as I am convinced. The old cry, " How far 
 Science has wandered away from God (Creator)," 
 will soon be entirely obsolete ; and " How near 
 Science has come to God " will be the watchword 
 of the most thoughtful and far-seeing. Instance 
 the argument of the "Unseen Universe" in 
 toto; instance Tyndall's article in the November 
 number of the Nineteenth Century; instance a 
 hundred passages in Huxley's Lay Sermons and 
 many other places. 
 
 'My Huxley is in Glasgow, or I would send you 
 reference to a quotation which would surprise 
 you if you have never seen it.' 1 He is describing 
 the development of an ovum. He watches the 
 process through a powerful microscope. " Strange 
 possibilities lie dormant in that semi-fluid globe. 
 Let a moderate supply of warmth reach its watery 
 cradle, and the plastic matter undergoes changes 
 so rapid, and yet so steady and purposelike in 
 their succession, that we can only compare them 
 to those operated by a skilled operator on a form- 
 less lump of clay." He sees, as it were, "a skilled 
 modeller" shaping the plastic mass with a trowel. 
 He sees "as if a delicate finger traced out the line 
 
 1 The reference is to Lay Sermons.
 
 JT. 26-31] SCIENCE AND RELIGION I 5 I 
 
 to be occupied by the spinal column, and moulded 
 the contour of the body, pinching up the head at 
 one end, the tail at the other, and fashioning flank 
 and limb into due salamandrine proportions in so 
 artistic a way that, after watching the process hour 
 by hour, one is almost involuntarily possessed by 
 the notion that some more subtle aid to vision 
 than an achromatic would show the hidden artist 
 with his plan before him, striving with skilful 
 manipulation to perfect his work." 1 The above 
 are Huxley's own words. That is to say that 
 the first biologist in Europe (according to Vir- 
 chow) when he comes to describe the develop- 
 ment of life can only do so in Terms of Creation. 
 This, of course, was just what we might have ex- 
 pected, but I find it very remarkable that our 
 anticipation should have been so literally fulfilled 
 and by such authority. The materialists have 
 never got credit for this most advanced stand- 
 point, and I think it cannot be too widely ex- 
 plained. Your desire evidently is to state all 
 that Science can with reference to the evolution 
 of living things. I do not see that they could 
 go one step further than Huxley in the passage 
 referred to; for the next step would be God.' 
 
 Drummond, therefore, was never troubled by any 
 fears that Science would contradict the fundamental 
 postulates of the Bible on the field of the natural uni- 
 verse on which Science worked; and he already rec- 
 ognised, within the historical origins of the Christian 
 religion, the same method of evolution at work as 
 Science had recently revealed in the growth of physical 
 
 1 In Drummond's letter the quotation, written from memory, is not given, of 
 course, so fully or accurately.
 
 152 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 life. What, then, did he mean by saying that he 'kept 
 Religion and Science shut off from one another in two 
 different compartments of his mind'? In these words 
 he was speaking of religion as the experience of the 
 individual conversion, regeneration, the growth of 
 character, the assurance of immortality the phenom- 
 ena, in short, with which he himself had been practi- 
 cally busied in hundreds of lives during the last ten 
 years. This set of facts, comprising the religious life 
 of the individual, was what he had kept in one com- 
 partment of his mind, while the other was filled with 
 the facts of physical life. By 'keeping them apart,' 
 he did not, of course, mean that the religious facts had 
 not their laws, as the physical had theirs, for Drum- 
 mond had never treated religion in the manner of cer- 
 tain preachers, as if it were utterly without the great 
 laws of life, a moral-less magic of arbitrary formulas, 
 expedients, and even dodges. But he meant that the 
 laws which are visible in the phenomena of the indi- 
 vidual's experience of religion were at first felt by him 
 to be different from, and without the slightest resem- 
 blance or relevance to, the laws which are visible in 
 the phenomena of physical life. But a teacher who 
 teaches in parallel lines two different subjects of human 
 knowledge cannot help, sooner or later, stating the one 
 in terms of the other; and this, of course, happened 
 in Drummond's case the more easily that teachers of 
 religion had from the very first perceived analogies or 
 resemblances between spiritual and physical phenom- 
 ena, and that some of the greatest of them had even 
 conceived of Nature as therefore sacramental the de- 
 signed mirror or symbol of religious truth. No one, 
 however, had proposed as yet to define these compari- 
 sons between the two sets of laws in more stringent 
 terms than those of analogy and sacrament. Drum-
 
 &T. 31] SCIENCE AND RELIGION 153 
 
 mond went farther, and with great boldness whether 
 rightly or wrongly we shall inquire afterwards as- 
 serted the two sets of laws to be identical. 
 
 Perhaps this is the best place at which to introduce 
 a very curious story concerning a similar suggestion 
 made by Drummond's grandfather, William Drum- 
 mond, who died in 1824. It is told by Henry's 
 brother-in-law, the Rev. Thomas Crerar : ' I was with 
 Henry after his father's death l in Glenelm, when we 
 found among his father's papers a note-book of his 
 father, the old William Drummond, in which he had 
 some reflections on religious matters. I think the old 
 man wrote, after noting some facts in the Spiritual 
 and the Natural Life : " Would it not be strange if it 
 turned out that the laws of Nature and of the Spirit- 
 ual World were the same ? " and Henry remarked to 
 me : "How strange ! That is just my idea as ex- 
 pressed in Natural Law. Can there be an inherited 
 idea as well as an inherited tendency?" or words to 
 that effect.' 
 
 Drummond, then, asserted that the laws governing 
 both spheres were identical. But he insisted that he 
 arrived at this position by the inductive method; that 
 first of all he awoke to the actual presence of certain 
 natural laws in one department after another of the 
 spiritual life regeneration, growth, degeneration, and 
 so forth. This he emphasised again and again. He 
 had not first supposed his theory, and then tried if the 
 facts would fit it; but he had first encountered the 
 facts, gradually recognised their significance, and then 
 deduced his general principle from them. His method, 
 in short, had been the a posteriori. But having thus 
 reached his conclusions, he had found for them 
 the corroboration of an a priori argument in the 
 
 1 January i, 1888.
 
 154 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 scientific principle of Continuity. Scientific writers 
 had recently emphasised the Continuity of Law in the 
 Physical Universe. Was it not probable, Drummond 
 asked, that this continuity should extend still farther, 
 and cover the spiritual world as well ? Drummond 
 thought that the affirmative reply to such a question 
 was obvious. 
 
 It is not within the province of a biographer to ex- 
 pound in detail, still less to criticise, the writings 
 of the man whose life he is portraying; yet, if for 
 nothing else than to point out the direction in which 
 Drummond who was far bigger than all his books 
 grew away from the positions which he so con- 
 fidently occupied in the first of them, it is necessary 
 that we should here indicate the two unproved and 
 most people will think impossible assumptions by 
 which he reached his famous conclusion of the opera- 
 tion of natural law in the spiritual life. In the first 
 place, Drummond's a priori argument from the prin- 
 ciple of Continuity was a huge petitio principii. It 
 does not necessarily, nor even probably, follow that 
 because laws have a certain continuity throughout 
 the physical universe they must also prevail in the 
 spiritual experience of man. Drummond maintains, 
 indeed, that the principle of Continuity is so well es- 
 tablished that the burden of the disproof of its exten- 
 sion to spiritual life remains with those who deny this. 
 Emphatically this is not true. The gulf is so great 
 between matter and mind, the respective contents of 
 the two spheres are so very different, that the burden 
 of proof in the question of a continuity of Law between 
 the two rather lies with him who maintains the affirm- 
 ative. Drummond has simply begged the question ; 
 and since, as he himself points out, laws are not inde- 
 pendent substances, but forms or conditions by which
 
 /Ex. 31] SCIENCE AND RELIGION 155 
 
 the actions of forces are invariably governed, the fact 
 that the forces of the spirit life are different from 
 those of the physical life makes the presupposition 
 very strong that, though the Lawgiver be the same, 
 the laws in the two spheres are equally different. 
 
 And this leads us to his other unproved assump- 
 tion ; that, namely, in the inductive portion of his 
 reasoning. In his belief that he had discovered some 
 laws of biology in the religious experience of the indi- 
 vidual, Drummond was apparently fascinated by the 
 use of the term life, to describe the phenomena in 
 both departments, without pausing to inquire whether 
 the two kinds of life had anything more than the 
 name in common with each other. Had he entered 
 upon this inquiry, he must have made it obvious (as 
 indeed it afterwards became to his own mind) that 
 spiritual life contained elements, and was realised in 
 conditions, so foreign to physical life, that the identity 
 of the laws governing the phenomena of both might 
 be reasonably regarded as an impossibility. This fun- 
 damental objection to his argument has been stated by 
 many of his critics, but by none better than by the 
 author of On ''Natural Law in the Spiritual World] 
 by ' a Brother of the Natural Man,' who, it is no harm 
 now to state, is the Rev. Professor Denney. He says, 1 
 ' We find that natural life comes from preexisting 
 natural life according, we must add, to a certain 
 law, a law of necessary physical determination ; and 
 we find that spiritual life comes from preexisting spir- 
 itual life according, we must add again, to another 
 law, a law of free moral determination in correspond- 
 ence with the idea of that life; and these two laws 
 are quite different. What is more, till we appreciate 
 the difference, we are not within sight of the spiritual 
 
 i p. 1.
 
 156 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 world. From this point of view, which also takes in 
 the whole complexity of the spiritual facts, we can see 
 the error and irrelevancy of much of Mr. Drummond's 
 preface and introduction.' And, it may be added, it is 
 from this point of view also that we can appreciate 
 the defects of the body of the book : the illustrations 
 of the working of natural laws in several departments 
 of the spiritual life. The want of the volume is the 
 want of regard for the moral character of religious 
 experience. The spiritual life which the various chap- 
 ters describe is one perilously near sheer passivity : in 
 its beginnings as independent of responsibility on the 
 part of those who receive it as their physical life is, 
 and in its continuance as destitute of the elements 
 of effort and struggle. Take the beautiful chapter on 
 Growth, one of the most justly admired in the book. 
 It inculcates the advice not to try to grow spiritually, 
 but to leave one's growth, first, to the power of the 
 Spirit, and, second, to the effect of a good environment. 
 And, in support of this advice, it quotes our Lord's call 
 to consider the lilies of the field how they grow : they 
 toil not neither do they spin. But Drummond forgot 
 that in this part of His discourse our Lord was speak- 
 ing, not of our spiritual struggles after character, and 
 perfect obedience to the Will of God, but of our 
 physical anxieties and labours for our daily bread. 
 Christ's own spiritual life was full of moral effort, yea, 
 to the pitch of agony; and so it has been with the 
 lives of all the greatest saints. This defect of the book 
 has another as its consequence. Drummond denies 
 that the man who 'by hard work and self-restraint 
 attains to a very high character' is really growing. 1 
 According to him, the unregenerate man is in the same 
 relation to the regenerate as the inorganic in the 
 
 1 Twenty-fourth edition, p. 131.
 
 fix. 31] SCIENCE AND RELIGION 157 
 
 physical world is to the organic, as a stone is to a plant. 
 And this leads him to a further assertion, which com- 
 pletely ignores the moral identity of the individual be- 
 fore and after conversion. ' The plant stretches down 
 to the dead world beneath it, touches its minerals and 
 gases with its mystery of life, and brings them up en- 
 nobled to the living sphere. The breath of God, blow- 
 ing where it listeth, touches with its mystery of life the 
 dead souls of men, bears them across the bridgeless 
 gulf between the natural and the spiritual, between 
 the spiritually inorganic and the spiritually organic, 
 endows them with its own high qualities, and devel- 
 ops within them those new and secret faculties by 
 which those who are born again are said to see the 
 Kingdom of God.' But the man before and after his 
 conversion is the same man, with a continuance of 
 consciousness and will which are certainly absent in 
 the other case. The identity or analogy breaks down 
 at the vital point. 1 In short, this omission of all regard 
 for the moral distinctions of the spiritual life is so fun- 
 damental, that its effects are seen almost everywhere 
 throughout the book. Drummond himself came to 
 recognise this. Some years afterwards, I think about 
 1890, he said: ' I would write the book differently if I 
 were to do it again. I should make less rigid applica- 
 tion of physical laws, and I should endeavour to be 
 more ethical ; and this I have stated in a new trans- 
 lation of the book in Germany.' Yes; but he did 
 not even then see that to introduce those ethical 
 elements which had been so conspicuously absent 
 from his volume would be to destroy its primary 
 argument that natural law still prevailed where those 
 elements predominate, for he immediately added : 
 
 1 This is finely put in On ' Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 1 by ' a Brother 
 of the Natural Man,' p. 35.
 
 158 HENRY DRUMMOND [1881-82 
 
 ' But it is still clear to me that the same laws govern 
 all worlds.' 
 
 The introduction, into which these fallacies mainly 
 enter, was not given by Drummond to his Possilpark 
 audiences of working-men, nor indeed was its thesis 
 formulated till after his work in Possilpark was closed. 
 It is a far more welcome task to turn to the great vir- 
 tues of the addresses themselves. Their analysis and 
 orderly arrangement of the facts of Christian experi- 
 ence ; their emphasis upon the government of the re- 
 ligious life by law; their exposure of formalism and 
 insincerity, conscious and unconscious, in the fashion- 
 able religion of the day; their revelation of life in 
 Christ; their enthusiasm; their powers of practical 
 counsel and of comfort ; and their atmosphere of 
 beauty and of peace, must have made these ad- 
 dresses to the hundreds who heard them, as afterwards 
 to the hundreds of thousands whom they reached in the 
 volume, an inspiration and a discipline of inestimable 
 value. But these aspects of the book we may postpone 
 till we come to treat of its wonderful reception by the 
 public; and here need only state that they have an 
 enduring value which not even the fallacies of the in- 
 troduction to them can wholly destroy. What Drum- 
 mond would have done with the volume had he lived 
 is quite uncertain. But a month or two before his 
 death, when he said that he wished it withdrawn from 
 circulation, a friend answered, ' Remember the reli- 
 gious good which it has done, and is still doing, to 
 multitudes who either never read the introduction, or 
 do not concern themselves with the philosophic ques- 
 tions it raises.' This friend might have added that 
 the effort of the book to reduce the phenomena of the 
 Christian life to reasonable processes under laws 
 whether or not these laws were what the volume
 
 ^T. 30] SCIENCE AND RELIGION 159 
 
 alleges them to be constitutes of itself a valuable 
 contribution to religion. 
 
 At the time he gave his ' talks to working-men,' as 
 he called them, Drummond had 'not intended to 
 make a book out of them.' But the editor of the Cler- 
 ical World, a London periodical no longer in exist- 
 ence, asked him for a contribution. 
 
 ' I had never published anything before, and it was 
 only after a second appeal that I resuscitated 
 some faded lectures, which once had voices for a 
 local public, but which with other "dried tongues " 
 had been long since packed away in a forgotten 
 drawer. These papers, which are now reprinted 
 almost as they stood in Natural Law, passed 
 through many vicissitudes, as I shall relate, be- 
 fore they became a book, but in connection with 
 this reference to their origin I may answer a ques- 
 tion. I am asked : Were these papers, or are such 
 papers, even with the addition of viva voce expla- 
 nations, not above the people ? I can only say I 
 did not find it so. My conviction, indeed, grows 
 stronger every day that the masses require and 
 deserve the very best work we have. The crime 
 of evangelism is laziness ; and the failure of the 
 average mission church to reach intelligent work- 
 ing-men rises from the indolent reiteration of 
 threadbare formulae by teachers, often competent 
 enough, who have not first learned to respect their 
 hearers.' 
 
 The papers were five in number: 'Degeneration,' 
 which was published on September 28, 1881 ; ' Biogen- 
 esis,' on November 30 ; ' Nature abhors a Vacuum,'
 
 I6O HENRY DRUMMOND [1882 
 
 founded largely on Paul's words, Be not drunk with 
 wine, but be filled with the Spirit (these did not ap- 
 pear in the volume) ; and two on ' Semi-Parasitisrn,' 
 which appeared in 1882. 
 
 ' Though printed almost verbatim as they now 
 stand, no one, I then thought, seems to have 
 read the papers in their fugitive form. Pres- 
 ently the journal which published them died, 
 leaving in my mind a lingering remorse at what 
 share I might have had in its untimely end. To 
 give continuity to the series, and as a title under 
 which to publish them, I had given the editor the 
 phrase " Natural Law in the Spiritual World." 
 At that time I had not thought much as to what 
 this title actually meant. The few laws which 
 formed the theme of the papers certainly seemed 
 common to both the natural and the spiritual 
 spheres ; but it did not occur to me to regard this 
 as a general principle. I mention this to show 
 that the principle came to me through its appli- 
 cations, not vice versa. ... I am well aware 
 that many see no such thread binding Nature 
 and Grace. Others not only see no thread, but 
 see no use in one. I can only say that for me 
 there is no alternative but to see it ; that I saw 
 it before I knew what it was, and that if this were 
 taken away much of the solidity of religion would 
 go with it. 
 
 ' Now, a thing that we cannot help seeing must 
 either be really there, or one's vision must have 
 some constitutional defect. To test this I wrote 
 out the rough sketch of the principle which now 
 forms the introduction to Natural Law and sub- 
 mitted it to a small club, which met for the dis-
 
 JET. 30] SCIENCE AND RELIGION l6l 
 
 cussion especially of theological subjects. 1 With 
 one dissenting voice, it was unanimously con- 
 demned. Some of the criticisms were just and 
 helpful, and others mercilessly severe. One 
 pleasantry I remember as especially discouraging, 
 for its source compelled me to treat it with respect. 
 The essay, said this candid friend, reminded him 
 of a pamphlet he had once picked up, entitled, 
 " Forty Reasons for the Identification of the 
 English People with the Lost Ten Tribes." 
 
 1 But for two things I should have received this 
 verdict as final, and abandoned my heresies for- 
 ever. The first was the one dissenting voice. 
 But for its encouragement at the outset, my book 
 had never been begun, and without its ceaseless 
 assistance afterwards, it would never have been 
 carried through. . . . The second was that I 
 remembered that the membership of the afore- 
 said club consisted almost exclusively of men 
 who worked from the philosophical, rather than 
 from the scientific, standpoint. My own point 
 of view being exclusively the latter, I imagined 
 that, in many particulars, we might have been 
 working at cross purposes. . . . 
 
 ' After this misadventure there remained in my 
 mind the desire to submit the essay, if only for 
 my own satisfaction, to a more public criticism. 
 About this time, also, I received a letter from an 
 orphanage 2 in England, asking permission to 
 
 1 Glasgow Theological Club, 'January 9, 1882, at 5 Ashton Terrace. Paper by 
 Mr. Drummond on " Natural Law in the Spiritual Sphere." ' 
 
 2 The request came from Mr. Newman, a member of the Society of Friends, in 
 the interest of a Home for Orphans at Leominster. The tract was entitled 
 ' Natural Law in the Spiritual World. Degeneration "If We Neglect" by 
 Henry Drummond, F.R.S.E., F.G.S., Leominster : printed at the Orphans' Print- 
 ing Press. Price, id. ; 6s. per IOO.' Drummond used to call Mr. Newman his 
 ' guiding star.'
 
 1 62 HENRY DRUMMOND [1882-83 
 
 republish as a booklet one of the papers which 
 had already appeared. The printing, I gathered, 
 was to be done by the orphans themselves, and 
 the proceeds were to go to the institution. What 
 the orphans could want with this paper, except 
 to practise printing long words on, I could not 
 imagine ; but, as they had no parents, I over- 
 looked the eccentricity and consented. Whether 
 the orphans had ever made anything by it, I 
 never knew; but presently letters dropped in 
 from unknown correspondents, telling me that in 
 another sense the paper had done some good. 
 This decided me at once. The world did not 
 need being made wiser, but if there was the chance 
 of helping any one a little practically, that was a 
 thing to be done. In a rash hour, therefore, I 
 addressed the introduction, along with some of 
 the " Natural Law " papers, to a leading London 
 publisher. In three weeks the manuscript, as I 
 wholly expected, came back "declined with 
 thanks." A slight change was made, and a 
 second application to another well-known London 
 house ; and again the document was returned with 
 the same mystic legend the gentlest yet most 
 inexorable of sentences inscribed upon its back. 
 To be served a second time with the Black Seal 
 of Literature was too much for me, and the 
 doomed sheets were returned to their pigeon- 
 holes and once more forgotten. I suppose most 
 men have a condemned cell in their escritoire. 
 For their consolation, let me tell them further 
 how at least one convicted felon escaped. 
 ' Time had gone, when one day, passing through 
 London on returning from a Continental tour, I 
 happened along Paternoster Row. I encountered
 
 . 31] SCIENCE AND RELIGION 163 
 
 Mr. M. H. Hodder of Messrs. Hodder and 
 Stoughton. In the course of conversation he 
 made a sudden reference to my ill-starred papers. 
 My guilty secret, alas, was known! By the treach- 
 ery of the other publishers, I was already the 
 laughing-stock of the Row the whole trade had 
 been warned against me. But I was wrong. 
 This most guileless and indulgent of publishers 
 knew nothing! He had seen the papers in their 
 earlier form, and was merely sounding their 
 abashed author with a view to a possible reprint. 
 I was honest enough, in the light of previous 
 tragedies, to commit neither him nor myself, but 
 promised to exhume the manuscript for his further 
 consideration. From this interview I learned 
 one lesson that the search for a publisher is a 
 mistake. The right way is to let the publisher 
 search for the author. 
 
 ' The next step was to hold a post mortem examina- 
 tion on my Rejected Addresses. I found mortal 
 wounds in one or two of the papers, but the few 
 which seemed most fit for resuscitation were for- 
 warded as a first instalment to the publisher. . . . 
 I would have given anything just then to have 
 gained time, for nearly half my remaining material 
 was useless. ... I set to work replacing the most 
 decayed of the papers with new ones, and these 
 were literally written, I believe, like most literary 
 work with the printer's demon waiting at my 
 elbow. The subjects were chosen as I went 
 along, and, as the printer was exasperatingly 
 punctual, they received the barest possible justice. 
 . . . Owing to the lengthened interval between 
 the writing of one paper and another, consistency 
 was almost impossible. I was careful in the
 
 164 HENRY DRUMMOND [1882-83 
 
 Preface to point out the unsystematic nature of 
 the book and the almost haphazard arrange- 
 ment of the papers ; in point of fact, it was little 
 more than the printer's necessity of paging ; but, 
 in spite of all protest, some of my critics have 
 wandered through these disjecta membra in search 
 of a philosophic or theological system, and have 
 come back laden with spoil of every description 
 to confound and discomfit the illogical author.' 
 
 But for a long time Drummond was out of reach 
 of his critics. 
 
 1 A few days after the publication of Natural Law 
 and before it had reached the booksellers' shelves, 
 I was steaming down the Red Sea en route for 
 the heart of Africa.'
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 DIARIES OF TRAVEL. I. THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS 
 
 The Yellowstone: Canyons, Geysers, Antelopes, and 
 
 Beavers 
 
 HENRY DRUMMOND made three expeditions to dis- 
 tant and at the time little known parts of the earth, 
 the first, in 1879, to the Rocky Mountains; the second, 
 in 1883-84, to Central Africa; and the third, in the 
 summer of 1891, to the New Hebrides. We may 
 take the first of these in this chapter. 
 
 The expedition to the Rocky Mountains was a 
 geological one, and Drummond joined it on the invi- 
 tation of Sir Archibald (then Professor) Geikie, who 
 sends the following reminiscences leading up to it: 
 
 ' My first acquaintance with Henry Drummond 
 began in the University of Edinburgh at the com- 
 mencement of the winter session of 1871-72. The 
 Chair of Geology and Mineralogy had then recently 
 been founded there by Sir Roderick Murchison, in 
 conjunction with the Crown, and at his request I had 
 been appointed Professor. At the end of my opening 
 lecture, the first student who came to my retiring 
 room to be enrolled as a member of the class was 
 Drummond. I well remember his frank, open face 
 and the gentle timidity of his manner as he gave in 
 his name. The instinctive impression of that first 
 interview was deepened by further intercourse with 
 him. During the session frequent excursions were 
 
 165
 
 1 66 HENRY DRUMMOND [1879 
 
 made to places of geological interest around Edin- 
 burgh, and these rambles afforded excellent oppor- 
 tunities for the teacher and the students to become 
 personally acquainted with each other. I soon recog- 
 nised the earnest enthusiasm and remarkable capacity 
 of the young man who had been the first to join me. 
 He was conspicuous by his zeal in the field, and he 
 took a good place in the periodical examinations, 
 finally coming out in the first class. At the end of 
 each session I used to take my students for a longer 
 excursion to some more distant part of Scotland, 
 where we spent ten days or so in constant field work. 
 The first of these most enjoyable trips was devoted to 
 the isle of Arran. Drummond was one of the party, 
 and I remember being struck with his feeling for the 
 beauty of natural scenery and the meditative look that 
 often marked his features when we sat down on some 
 rock or hillside to rest and enjoy the landscape. 
 
 ' In later years, though no longer in my class, he 
 used to come occasionally to the field excursions, and 
 I was delighted to have these opportunities of enjoy- 
 ing a closer acquaintance with him. He had entirely 
 won my affectionate regard, and I think he felt this 
 himself, for he often came to consult me as to his 
 career at college. In the year 1879 I planned an 
 expedition into Western North America for the pur- 
 pose more particularly of studying the volcanic phe- 
 nomena displayed on so wonderful a scale in that 
 region. Desiring a companion, I at once turned to 
 my favourite pupil, and found him willing to join me.' 
 
 The invitation was given in June, and Drummond 
 had a month for preparation. Letters to Professor 
 Geikie discuss their equipment, and the risks the 
 expedition might run from the unsettled condition of 
 the Indians in the Rocky Mountains:
 
 yET. 28] THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS 167 
 
 To Professor Geikie 
 
 * POSSILPARK, GLASGOW, July 3d, 1879. 
 
 ' . . . I see from Reuler's telegram of last night that 
 the Indians are at war among themselves on the 
 Canadian frontier. This will probably drain the 
 south of Montana, and leave the Yellowstone 
 clear. The reports in the Field lately have been 
 also more encouraging.' 
 
 Professor Geikie and Henry Drummond sailed for 
 America on the 3ist of July, and after a few pre- 
 liminary arrangements in the Eastern States, they 
 travelled straight to the Rocky Mountains. Drum- 
 mond used to speak of the great generosity of the 
 United States Government, which on the request of 
 Professor Hayden, then at the head of the Geological 
 Survey, provided these British geologists with an 
 escort of soldiers, their needful equipage and supplies, 
 and introductions to the various military posts in 
 Indian territory. 
 
 To His Mother 
 
 <FORT BRIDGER, ROCKY MOUNTAINS, Thursday, Aug. 21, 1879. 
 
 ' MY DEAR MOTHER, At last we are in the heart of 
 the mountains, and very comfortably quartered, 
 with a famous man in these parts, Judge Carter, 
 to whom Geikie had introductions. We make 
 his house our home for a couple of nights, and 
 go cruising among the mountains during the 
 day. Then we go off for a few days' camping, 
 and return here for a night next week on our 
 way further west, and north to the Yellowstone. 
 Judge Carter lives in a desert in an old fort
 
 1 68 HENRY DRUMMOND [1879 
 
 which was occupied until May the year before 
 last by a post of soldiery for protection against 
 the Indians. The Indians are quiet, and the fort 
 has been abandoned, but " the Judge " and his 
 cattlemen occupy it as a kind of farm and store. 
 The fort is simply a collection of huts of wood, 
 but everything is very comfortable. We shall be 
 fitted out with waggon, and riding horses, and 
 baggage animals for our camp by the Judge, 
 which will be a great saving both of trouble and 
 money. At present we are some seven thousand 
 feet above sea level, and the climate is simply 
 perfect. . . . 
 
 ' On Monday rather a curious thing happened. We 
 were at a place called Boulder, in Colorado, in a 
 new gold-mining district right up among the 
 mountains. As I was standing at the hotel door 
 a man came up, and in an excited way asked the 
 landlord if he knew where any minister lived, as 
 a miner had died ten miles off in a lonely canyon 
 (deep valley), and his mates had subscribed to 
 bury him, and had sent him in to try and find a 
 minister. He had already called on one, but he 
 was from home. I told him if he could not find 
 one anywhere he might come back to the hotel 
 for me and I would go. In an hour he returned 
 saying he had searched far and near, and could 
 find no one. I had my tweeds on, but ran to a 
 store, and fortunately found a white tie, which 
 gave one quite a sufficiently professional look for 
 the mountains. We drove ten miles in a two- 
 mule buggy through one of the most wonderful 
 glens I have ever seen. On reaching the mining 
 settlement I found the whole camp turned out. 
 It was the first death in the camp, and evidently
 
 JEr. 28] THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS 169 
 
 it was no common occasion to the gold-diggers. 
 Not a stroke of work had been done all day. All 
 were dressed in their best, and the whole popula- 
 tion of the district, men, women, and children, 
 were turned out to attend the funeral. We got 
 the coffin put in the buggy, and the whole party 
 proceeded up to a little chapel of wood, which 
 had been built for any occasional service. A har- 
 monium was there, and a choir of the miners' 
 daughters all ready to sing our hymns. I found 
 I was expected to make an "oration," as they 
 called it, and as the chapel was crammed to the 
 door I had one of the best audiences I have ever 
 seen in my life. The diggers are a very rough 
 lot kindly, brave, but wild and lawless and I 
 suppose few of them had ever been in that chapel 
 before. All were emigrants who had come to 
 seek their fortunes some from the far East, 
 some from Germany, some from England, and 
 two young fellows with whom I spoke were from 
 Glasgow. The man who had died was an Eng- 
 lishman. They listened with profound attention, 
 and when the service was over they slowly filed 
 past the open coffin, and took a last look at the 
 dead. At last all were gone but one, a genuine 
 rough specimen, who looked all round to see if we 
 were alone, then bowed his face in his hands, and 
 wept like a child. He was the dead man's mate. 
 ' The grave was far up the valley, as there was noth- 
 ing here but the solid granite. The procession 
 formed once more, and when we reached the spot 
 the miners begged for another service. This was 
 gladly granted, and I hope I did not lose so 
 golden an opportunity. It may be years before 
 there is another service in that camp, as it is one
 
 I7O HENRY DRUMMOND [1879 
 
 of the loneliest inhabited spots on earth. Before 
 I came home they gave me tea, and loaded me 
 with specimens of gold.' 
 
 On the 2d of September the friends left Fort Ellis 
 in Gallatin County, Montana, driving southwards, and 
 by the way shooting grouse and prairie-dogs and fish- 
 ing for trout. In the afternoon they entered the 
 Yellowstone Valley, 'an old lake basin with a canyon 
 at each end.' 
 
 DIARY 
 
 ' Long, low undulating line. " Moraines, if ever I 
 saw them ! " " Is that an erratic against the sky ? " 1 
 Porphyry boulders, granite, flint, fragments of chalced- 
 ony. The Lake Terraces. The Basalt Plateau, flat 
 tables. Caught a dozen trout, average half a pound, 
 in half an hour. Camped at Bottler's, just opposite 
 Emigrant Peak ; a hundred prospectors gulching for 
 gold and silver. 
 
 ' WEDNESDAY, Sept. 3d. Trout breakfast. Our 
 horses, old cavalry " condemned." Open valley. Passed 
 several "wailing" heaps of stones, made by Indian 
 squaws to the Great Spirit when any of their braves 
 died. " Nooned " at Canyon Creek, eleven miles from 
 Bottler's : 2 cold trout, tongue, and crackers. Fishing, 
 caught a two-and-a-half pounder, sluggish, not game. 
 Broke camp at two, entered second canyon. At mouth 
 on right magnificent glaciated gneiss (no granite in 
 canyon). Moraines of immense size. Yankee Jim 
 gave me a fine specimen of gold quartz from Bear 
 Rock Canyon, Yellowstone. Camp at 4.30. Deer 
 
 1 These words were the exclamation of his companion. The existence of 
 former glaciers in these valleys had not previously been observed. Note by Pro- 
 fessor Geikie. 
 
 2 He spells it Boetler's.
 
 JET. 28] THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS 
 
 hanging between willows. Meteor, camp talk, buffalo 
 robes. 
 
 'THURSDAY, Sept. 4th. Up at 5.30, washed, break- 
 fast at 6. Broke camp at 7.15. Rode along flank of 
 Cinnabar Mountain limestone mostly. At the south 
 end of the Devil's Slide upturned beds of limestones 
 and bands of red and cream-coloured marls, almost 
 vertical ; the walls of the slide composed of straight 
 planed walls of limestone, exactly parallel, soft layers 
 worn away but still quite distinct in part along the 
 west wall; firs scattered through the gap, morning 
 sun shining straight in and bringing out the vivid 
 colouring of the great bands of rock curving down 
 the mountain slope. Came to log shanty, store for 
 miners, got gold specimen from miner in next shanty ; 
 a ranch burned by Indians two years ago. Passed 
 waggon with magnificent head of elk, passed dead 
 rattlesnake. For two or three miles on this side of 
 junction of Yellowstone with Gardiner rivers magnifi- 
 cent moraine mounds and lovely little lake basin. 
 Struck across Gardiner River, long wearisome ride 
 over high mounds and ridge of landslides and mo- 
 raines, passed two or three moraine lakes. Suddenly, 
 without a minute's warning, half a mile off, [what 
 looked like] a gigantic glacier, glittering through the 
 pines. Camp on a rill, lunch. 
 
 ' EXAMINATION OF SPRINGS. First approach, exceed- 
 ing beauty and delicacy of fretwork, cascades above 
 cascades. The hot springs, basins all temperature; 
 the orifice, 140. Edge colours of leaf fronds and 
 seaweeds, white with orange veining ; sacrilege to 
 tread upon it. You look for notice-board in vain. 
 Pools of every conceivable shape and size, rim usu- 
 ally two to four inches cut out like coral. Each 
 basin a slight slope upwards, successive deposits
 
 172 HENRY DRUMMOND [1879 
 
 marked upon sides as if they were made of piles of 
 coins, framework of hills all around, dark pine forests 
 and grass. Rise on to a plateau, you are in an arctic 
 scene, everything is white like snow, the trees are 
 growing up through it here and there. Water where 
 it reaches the downmost lips is tasteless ; where it 
 bubbles up it strongly tastes of sulphuretted .hydrogen. 
 
 ' THE PULPITS. One place has fifty ; in shade cream- 
 coloured, in sunshine spotless white. Stalactites here 
 and there. Bottom of each pulpit covered with soft 
 tufts of most delicate moss. Whole ground sounds 
 hollow. 
 
 ' THE FOREST. A little farther on, the remains of a 
 burned forest. The springs have come down through 
 a wood and destroyed the trees. Now they stand up, 
 some erect, some half-prostrate, just as in the living 
 forest, but blanched, grey, dead, holding out thin, 
 gaunt, bare arms as if in protest. Here and there an 
 arbor vitce has survived and put on greenness once 
 more. 
 
 'THE CASCADES. Water falling over a hundred 
 little balconies. On either side these balconies are 
 as white as stucco. Where the cascades come down 
 the walls are dyed near the top a deep orange, almost 
 red, farther down a deep yellow, then saffron and 
 exquisite shades of pink, then cream, then white. 
 The water itself is milk-white, steaming at the top, 
 and pattering and splashing like the fountains in 
 gardens. This is at the top of the forest; the most 
 wonderful colouring is at the southwest corner, above 
 the petrified wood, and running through it. The 
 fountain basins here are as regular as if chiselled by 
 hand ; the colours are pink, salmon, dark and light 
 purple, white, cinnamon. 
 
 ' THE UPPER BASIN. The blue colour of the water
 
 yEx. 28] THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS 
 
 the photograph looking for a place to bathe 
 the cascades the variegated tables marble, ala- 
 baster, etc. 
 
 'FRIDAY, Sept. 5th. Seymour, the artist Yellow- 
 stone Kelly, Miles's scout, where the Indians killed. 
 Crossed Gardiner River rode up valley of east fork 
 of Gardiner River, like Black Forest scenery. After 
 an hour's ride we surmounted the plateau of basalt 
 (waterfall) at the head of the valley. Then for hours 
 wound over an undulating country, ridges and mounds, 
 covered with erratic blocks of granite. The ice action 
 quite remarkable, showing that the country has been 
 covered with ice and not simply a local glacier; 
 grand stream, with chalcedony, many agates ; elk- 
 heads and horns of deer and buffalo scattered every- 
 where. Then began descent through valleys of pine 
 and poplar ; camp waiting in a meadow, open pastures, 
 animals turned loose. Only 2.30 ; ramble after lunch ; 
 rocks, roses, squirrels. Jack went to look for an 
 antelope, failed. O that bacon! Dark at 7.30; bed 
 by 8.30. 
 
 ' SATURDAY, 6th. Awoke at five, thermometer in 
 tent 36 ; outside the ground was covered with frost, 
 ice in dishes and on creek, wash cold. 1 Bacon again ! 
 Tomatoes. The ceremony of packing. Three miles 
 to Lower Creek not time to visit the Fall. Struck 
 up the long ridge of Mount Washburne, over hillside 
 and forest ; long ride, seven hours in saddle. Andy's 
 shooting a prairie chicken. When riding three 
 paces behind him suddenly fired, . . . [?] our horses 
 into the air, a diabolical smell the skunk! Our 
 camp at end of long meadow in full view of Wash- 
 burne, the usual streamlet. 
 
 ' Visit to the Falls and Canyon ; the evening light 
 
 1 They were about six thousand feet above sea level.
 
 174 HENRY DRUMMOND [1879 
 
 the most favourable ; two things the colouring from 
 an aesthetic standpoint, the erosion from a geological. 
 The section at camp in stream : a devitrified obsidian 
 (pumiceous base, abundantly filled with currant-like 
 fragments of the original obsidian), resting on perlite 
 and covered by an obsidian tuff. The great in- 
 terest of the march lay in tracing the granite boul- 
 ders right up the flanks of Washburne. The ice 
 sheet must have been of enormous thickness, and not 
 merely local. The tracks of the glacier flow and wind 
 round the mountain, and are caught up again in the 
 long plateau traversed the day before along the east 
 fork of Gardiner River. 
 
 ' SABBATH, yth. Remained encamped all day, spent 
 the day wandering around the Canyon, the magnificent 
 timber like a gentleman's park for thousands of acres, 
 soft yellow glades, withered flowers, one herb like the 
 maidenhair, only with a thicker stem. The N. T. 
 
 ' The Squirrel ; Jack off hunting, Andy ditto ; the 
 cranes. Return to camp. " There's Jack," a minut- 
 est figure in the distance " Has he got anything? " 
 Nothing another week on bacon ! " Something 
 white? A crane? What a sack. What have you 
 got?" "Elk!" The unpacking the choice bits, 
 the supper ! 
 
 ' THE CANYON. 1 The most grand and memorable 
 spectacle of my life, the inconceivable beauty and 
 glory of the colouring; a colossal gorge zigzagging; 
 green, foaming, spraying, roaring river. The sides of 
 the gorge not clean-cut, but carved into alcoves, pin- 
 nacles, spires, of the most picturesque and fantastic 
 forms. The original colour of the rock is pure, daz- 
 zling white from river to crest, but little of the white 
 
 1 That is, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River at the south foot of 
 Mount Washburne.
 
 ^Ex. 28] THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS 175 
 
 is left save here and there a brilliant scar. The first 
 weathering is a pale lemon yellow, deepening into 
 saffron, sulphur, and through all the shades of yellow 
 into the deepest orange. Then another gradation is 
 the most tender rose-pink into vermilion and dark 
 blood-red. The tone of the whole is a rich cream 
 colour, deepening into russets and yellows and oranges 
 a kind of artificial sunlight. The distance tones 
 were first in the yellows, a faint spring green ; and the 
 usual purple, shading into the deepest blue of distance 
 as the canyon lost itself in the distant gloom, at 
 the foot of Mount Washburne. The Fall the lush 
 green at the cauldron, the purple mists, the roar, the 
 emerald green at the crests succeeded by dazzling 
 spray for three hundred and fifty feet. The lichen 
 colours, brown here and there. The dark green pines 
 mantling the whole, and straggling here and there in 
 single file right down to the water's edge. 
 
 * GEOLOGICAL. The rock is rhyolite a solid mass 
 of volcanic formation. Then the interest of the vast 
 erosion, first, of the stream; second, of the weather, 
 frost, and jointing along the sides. All through the 
 forest and on all the plateau around the great blocks 
 of granite and gneiss are records of the glacier age. 
 The three elements combine: fire, water, and ice. 
 
 'MONDAY, the 8th of September. Followed trail 
 through magnificently timbered country with parks, 
 glades, and streamlets, then across prairie country to 
 head of Alum Creek deposits, effluvium [from] 
 steaming springs, sulphur mountain, Solfataras. Trail 
 through timber again. Over the Divide. Down steep 
 forest-clad hill to the east fork of Madison River. 
 Fire Hole River. Through long swamp timber 
 again. Camp in glade by river-side. Seven hours in 
 saddle. Lunch, bathe, bear, theological discussion
 
 176 HENRY DRUMMOND [1879 
 
 with Jack. Geology, volcanic all day. Obsidian 
 blocks everywhere ; schistose obsidian. 
 
 ' TUESDAY, Sept. gth. Broke camp about 8.30, mag- 
 nificent ride through glade and forest, crossed Fire 
 Hole River several times : clean turf banks, meadow, 
 green and golden grass. Puff of steam here and there 
 through the forest, white patches of geyser deposit. 
 Lovely little basin by side of trail, green emerald 
 water. Then struck through fallen timber suddenly 
 the forest opened an immense glade encircled by 
 pine mountains, the further end covered with snow. 
 
 'OLD FAITHFUL. Notice his spurt at lunch, 1.21 
 P.M. Went up at the hour of next performance. 
 Precisely at the hour almost, 2.20, he gave a grunt 
 and then threw up a little water. Visitors rushed 
 back in alarm. Then at intervals, say at i J minutes, 
 he made another feint; then the feints became more 
 frequent, each succeeding better than the last. Finally 
 he ran up twenty or thirty feet and then, as if climbing 
 on the shoulders of this he ran up his column to the 
 full height. This began about 2.30, and the maximum 
 was reached about 2.31 ; it remained at this height, 
 say one minute, and then gradually lessened. The 
 eruption lasted till 2.36^ about 4^- minutes. Ap- 
 pearance in the distance a low flat mound appears 
 rugged as you approach it, then as you get near you 
 imagine it to be made of coral-madrepore. A little coral 
 island, on narrower inspection urns, pools, basins, 
 fantastic shapes, every conceivable design and colour, 
 pink, yellow, orange, umber. Many of the pools 
 contain water very pure a faint but perceptible 
 taste of sulphuretted hydrogen. One or two orifices 
 in the mound were steaming small caverns as large 
 as a coal-scuttle, some of them too hot to hold the 
 hand in. The " valleys " along the flank of the little
 
 MT. 28] THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS 177 
 
 island were made of tesselated pavement of imma- 
 ture [?] workmanship, like sections cut smooth from 
 brain coral. Some, nearly all, held little lakes from 
 the size of a walnut shell upwards, with pink bottoms. 
 Others had a little rivulet trickling down. At one 
 side quite a little stream wound down to the river a 
 hundred and fifty yards off. The bed of this rill was 
 covered with fragments of silicified wood. The ridges 
 were made of masses of pearls without the tesselated 
 look ; ruggedly smoothed lumps, bosses like botryoidal. 
 After the eruption the whole sides were running with 
 rills which sparkled in the sun gloriously, as they 
 trickled from basin to basin. 
 
 ' Sitting on the mound after making notes, a rhythmic 
 thud at one minute interval. Hot to the seat. The 
 orifice of the geyser a roughly oval hole, large enough 
 to let two tolerably stout men slip through. Noise 
 like a barn threshing-mill, giving occasional explosions, 
 water coming up but not over edge, cloud of steam, 
 sides lined with dark orange, slimy coating, with a pale 
 sulphurous colour round the margin. The moment 
 the lip was reached the beautiful madrepore formation 
 began. Two handkerchiefs and a hat recovered, my 
 handkerchief forfeited. 
 
 3.15 boil in tube. 
 
 3.20 spurted thick about 5 ft. in air, boiling and increasing. 
 
 3.21^- spurted thick about 5 ft. in air. 
 
 3.22^ spurted twice, once about 5 ft., once 3. 
 
 3.23 spurted once about 5 ft. 
 
 3.25 spurted once about 2 ft. 
 
 3.26 thick stream, 5 ft. 
 
 3.27 thick stream, 5 ft. 
 
 3.28 very thin shower, 4 ft. 
 
 3.29 shower, 12 ft. 
 3.29^ shower rising. 
 
 3.29! shower rose to full height and continued at this maximum, till
 
 178 HENRY DRUMMOND [1879 
 
 3.30! then dwindled but action brisk, till 
 
 3.35 the last half minute steam alone but in a thick mass. The 
 geyser steams always. 
 
 ' Old Faithful occupies a very prominent position on 
 a white sinter plateau raised above the valley and look- 
 ing down on all the other geysers. Three extinct 
 geysers surround it at fifty paces, and another lies to 
 the west the same distance, which was slowly steaming. 
 These four attendants are all perfectly symmetrical, of 
 the same size, and equidistant. 1 Vast pine-woods 
 encircle the whole geyser basin, and straggling islands 
 of timber are scattered through the whole undulating 
 valley. Here and there white colour of steam, now 
 one in full blast. 
 
 4.30 " there it goes " signs. 
 
 4.32 low spurt. 
 
 4.34 low spurt. 
 
 4.37 high. 
 4.37! higher. 
 
 4.38 up to max., lasts 4 minutes, very high. 
 
 5.39, date of next eruption, seen from Beehive 3^ 
 minutes. First water falls back into funnel after 
 that the temperature is so high that when pressure 
 is relieved it turns into steam [ ?]. Geysers damming 
 up river with sinter. Springs on both sides meeting. 
 The river banks simply show sections of geyserite. 
 Overlapping curves. Mounds raised by overflow from 
 the basin. Hyalite (or millerite ?) the usual (?) struct- 
 ure in Old Faithful. Took temperature of two springs, 
 ist, 185 F., 2d, 200 F. Boiling briskly. Appear- 
 ance an irregular tube, tawny, ugly throats. A third 
 with a thin crust of ice floating on the top, such was 
 the appearance. The water was very deep and of the 
 most perfect crystal, blue in shade green in sun. 2 
 
 1 Here follows a rough sketch. 2 With this a rough sketch.
 
 JE.T. 28] THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS I 79 
 
 ' Explored the Giantess, the Beehive, the Jokers [?]. 
 Played at stopping up a would-be geyser. Different 
 forms: mermaid grottos, ulcers, gashes, gaping 
 mouths with horrid yellow umber lips ; grunting, 
 snorting, hissing, bubbling, gurgling, spluttering. A 
 pink tube, six feet pink coral. Rugged coral sides, 
 like a cancer. 
 
 'WEDNESDAY, Sept. 10. Up at 6, wash in creek. 
 Elk and tomatoes. Old Faithful played at 6.26, a 
 very fine display, and again at 7.24 ; just saw him 
 finish, at 7.25 to .27; saw two minutes' play, not at 
 maximum. Examined the Castle, Vesuvius, the 
 Grotto, the Punch-bowl, the Cancer. Adjoining 
 this, a deep grotto, with dentate or serrate margin 
 orange fringe all around. At the side of this a blis- 
 tered crust about ten feet diameter, with five ragged 
 holes, lined with sulphur and black mineral [?], three 
 steaming, one little pond still, and fringed with deli- 
 cate lace [?] work. The fourth boiling, and splutter- 
 ing boiling water, and gurgling. One of these mouths 
 has raised, pouting lips. 1 
 
 ' Old Faithful played at 8.30 and 9.30 precisely. The 
 Castle in full blast, 9.15. 
 
 ' Collecting diatoms, heard shouting, two men holler- 
 ing ; great spluttering and tremendous clouds of steam. 
 Suddenly they ran down bank and struck across river 
 up to knees at least. " The Castle ! " Reached it 
 breathless, thinking it was as short in its period as Old 
 Faithful played on and on and on. Booming. Party 
 came here on Monday evening ; Castle has not spurted 
 since then. Hats in, thrown high in the air, hand- 
 kerchiefs, stones ; showered out. 2 
 
 1 Rough sketch given of ' a very perfect form of geyser, perfectly round, shallow 
 saucer, with an irregular funnel mouth boiling.' Three other larger sketches. 
 
 2 Sketch of ' outline of Castle against blue sky, the rainbow, the whole sides 
 running with steam.'
 
 l8o HENRY DRUMMOND [1879 
 
 ' After lunch walked on to examine the remaining 
 geysers : Fan, Grave, Sawmill, etc. Saw Sawmill in 
 action. Snow came on as we were emerging from the 
 basin. Walked to the half-way group. There over- 
 taken by pack train. Struck 1 camp in a bay of the 
 wood overlooking geyser basin (lower). Went off to 
 examine many lively geysers. 
 
 ' THE MUD GEYSER. The most comical thing in 
 nature ! On a summit of a pine grove grass and 
 wild flowers. You come to a low oval basin, marked 
 out by an undulating rim of some dazzling white ma- 
 terial. The one-half of the basin consists of a pink, 
 sun-cracked mud of the consistency of the finest 
 stucco not a flat surface, but a score of large mole- 
 hills, each made of concentric cones, the rings quite 
 well marked, and each terminating in a perfectly round 
 mouth, like a miniature crater. Here and there the 
 cone is inverted, leaving a round hole. One or two of 
 them are steaming faintly, and a dusting of sulphur is 
 sprinkled over one or two of them. One or two of the 
 craters are also smoking, hissing briskly. The major- 
 ity are stiff and cold. The pink colour is exceedingly 
 beautiful and delicate, very pale a mere tinge yet 
 quite decided in its tone. The other half of the pond 
 is altogether deposit. It consists of the purest white 
 mud, boiling as briskly as the viscous nature of the 
 material will permit. The spurts come up in little 
 domes, some only the size of a thimble-top, some a 
 walnut, a teacup, a sugar-bowl. They blow up like a 
 soap-bubble, quite suddenly, and burst in a tiny foun- 
 tain. The rings which they make in falling remain 
 fixed round each, so that each bubble has a number of 
 concentric circles surmounting it, giving a very pecul- 
 iar symmetrical pattern, which adorns the entire sur- 
 
 i Pitched?
 
 ^T. 28] THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS l8l 
 
 face of the geyser. * Sometimes, instead of one bubble 
 coming up like a cup, half a dozen little thimbles 
 dance up, each with its little rings around it. A 
 small island of solid mud stands to one side. This is 
 shaped like a small model of a mountain in stucco, 
 and the dancing bells all around it give a very curious 
 effect. 
 
 ' But the most peculiar thing is at the junction of the 
 solid pink with the white. The greatest heat is appar- 
 ently at the white end, and the pond is slowly becom- 
 ing solid. The mud near the junction is much thicker, 
 and the spurts in the thicker crust much more con- 
 strained ; the noise here is loudest, the motion slowest, 
 but the patterns infinitely more amusing. Here is 
 one circle of mud as big as a large dinner-plate ; a 
 ring or two, like a thick rope, surrounds it. These 
 ropy rims are so thick that the power below can 
 scarcely destroy them, and they remain constant for 
 several minutes at a time. The centre of the plate is 
 the great scene of action. At first there lies upon it 
 a little shape of jelly, like a custard just turned out of 
 its cup. Suddenly it is heaved up in the air. A 
 ragged mass of mud hangs in the air for a moment, 
 and then as suddenly another custard is lying on the 
 plate, just like the last. Another moment of pause, 
 the bottom of the plate is slowly knocked out once 
 more, the custard disappears, and this time a pear lies 
 on the plate. Then another custard, then two. Once 
 three came all at once. There was a whole basin of 
 these plates, all going through the same legerdemain 
 at once. This was going on in a small bay formed by 
 the hardened crust, standing two feet above the sur- 
 face. I was standing on this crust (I am now), within 
 an inch of the edge of the boiling custards, right in 
 
 1 Rough sketch.
 
 1 82 HENRY DRUMMOND [1879 
 
 the centre of the pond. One spurt of mud lit on my 
 hand from the next bay, where the most interesting 
 operation of all was going on. This bay was six feet 
 long by two and a half, yet it only contained four 
 spouters. The rest were all closed up. One of them 
 deceived me for a long time. I thought he was 
 stopped up, too, but he suddenly began to grunt and 
 throw up pellets of mud five feet in the air. One fel- 
 low was shut up, all but a hole the size of your finger. 
 He was a little dome of plastic mud, and every bubble 
 of steam made him heave an inch or two, so that he 
 was riding up and down like a ship at anchor, or a 
 buoy in a ground swell, all the time. The little orifice 
 was alternately being stopped up and blown out, and 
 the grunting he kept up was tragic to behold. The 
 colour of these last was the delicate pink which made 
 the sight a most beautiful one, and quite destroyed 
 one's notion of a mud geyser. A faint steam was 
 rising all the time. The sky was the most exquisite 
 blue, the snow-shower of the past hour having cleared 
 off the smoke from the burning forests, which filled 
 the air all the past week. 
 
 'The symmetry of the bubbles is the next most note- 
 worthy thing. The rings are perfectly formed and 
 rise like mounds. 1 The thickened spurts obviously 
 mark the declining energy of the spring. The mud 
 is thicker, the ebullition less brisk, and here and there 
 in the " bays " has already become quite stiff and im- 
 pervious to the passage of steam. One plate or cone 
 became silent and quite stopped up apparently while 
 I was standing by ; it was the one closest to the solid 
 mud behind, and was the next in natural course to 
 shut up. 
 
 'The white colour resembles molten porcelain or 
 
 1 A sketch.
 
 /Er. 28] THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS 183 
 
 china. The present circuit of the pond is about 150 
 (paces) yards, but it is evident that at the solid end 
 has once been much larger. The grassless part equals 
 150 yards. The independence of all the geysers 
 each on its own hook sometimes one boiling, three 
 feet off another perfectly quiet, next one another 
 roarer. 1 Jack assures me that in [?]'s time the whole 
 pond was like meerschaum. The last escort made 
 pipes, bowls, ornaments. Next morning they were 
 all cracked. 
 
 ' On the way back to camp shot a skunk ; immense 
 brushlike tail, slow motion ; only measure of defence 
 the smell. Small black head, glossy black fur; skin, 20 
 cents. Supper, mock-turtle soup, brandered elk steak, 
 bread, and tea. Andy cut down two trees for fire- 
 wood. Put one bodily on fire. Intense cold. The 
 wolf barking, the red squirrel cracking in the wood 
 below. 
 
 'THURSDAY, Sept. nth. Thermometer at 5.30, 
 outside tent, 19. Everything froze stiff. Breakfast 
 of elk, green corn, jam, coffee, hard tack, bread, and 
 more of Andy's stories. " It does a fellow good to get 
 out a string of oaths four or five miles long to be 
 continued on the next page." The plain before the 
 camp bounded by fine forest, volumes of steam coming 
 up everywhere around. The white puffs in the dis- 
 tant wood, the great clouds over the main geyser 
 group, the cold condensing the steam rapidly. Counted 
 fifty from the trail a few yards from camp. Soon 
 struck Madison River peculiarity of flow, no flood 
 mark, uniform banks of turf, like travelling through 
 Hyde Park heavily timbered. The Madison Canyon 
 very fine scenery, wide-timbered glen, splendid 
 crags here and there. Trail crosses river four or 
 
 1 Here a sketch-map of all these mud geysers.
 
 184 HENRY DRUMMOND [1879 
 
 five times. After passing through canyon crossed 
 and camped on meadowy bank by a small clump of 
 firs. Lunch. 
 
 4 At 3 or 3.30 went hunting antelope with Jack ; 
 struck through timber for a mile and a half, crossing 
 little prairie. Abundant sign everywhere. Sign of 
 antelope in timber is unique : " been down there ? " 
 Struck high prairie; soon sighted game; made fine 
 stalk behind clump of trees; Jack to fire, for camp 
 wanted meat : threw down hat, crawled on belly thirty 
 yards under bush and fallen timber; fired at doe on 
 the watch. Herd (unseen till now) all started and ran. 
 In one hundred and fifty yards the doe fell dead, after 
 running full speed all that distance. I got a long shot 
 with Andy's cavalry carbine at the retreating herd, 
 six, with one fine buck, but they were just disappear- 
 ing over the brow of a hill. Sighted game next by a 
 watercourse in glade one mile off. On nearing the 
 place crept up a slope and saw game two hundred 
 yards away. Hat off, down on belly; wormed through 
 the grass till within a hundred and fifty yards ; wind 
 blowing right from me to them. Fired. As usual, all 
 started. Jack ran to the right to catch them as they 
 ran back, I to where they would round the hill. Pres- 
 ently the magnificent buck dashed past at full speed 
 flying shot, must have missed. Fired at a doe coming 
 behind must have struck her originally, as, although 
 Jack fired at her, three bullets were in her when she 
 dropped. Jack had shot another through the fore legs, 
 which I killed with my revolver. During the retreat 
 Jack surprised a second herd and killed one more. 
 Total, four antelopes all does. 
 
 ' NOTE. The antelope is a prairie animal. Witness 
 in the first place its splendid speed. It is the fleetest 
 of all animals, and to see a herd of six or eight dash-
 
 Mi. 28] THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS 185 
 
 ing along the prairie is a sight to keep the keenest 
 sportsman from touching his trigger. Powers of 
 speed like the antelope's would be useless in Switzer- 
 land. Nevertheless, they do inhabit some districts 
 which are essentially timber lands, but they make 
 their home in the long grassy glades with which nearly 
 every forest in the West is studded, or in the small rich 
 prairies of rising ground, interspersed among the 
 woods. For another thing, their fur is altogether 
 inappropriate to forest life. If you put your ringers 
 into it and pull gently you can pull the whole hair out 
 by handfuls. A forest animal requires a fur which is 
 well rooted in the skin to resist the rough friction of 
 the trees, brush, and especially the sharp prongs and 
 spines of fallen timber. 
 
 'TENACITY OF LIFE. Jack's first shot entered at the 
 breast, and ploughed clean through the body, coming 
 out within an inch of the tail. The animal, however, 
 bounded off as if nothing unusual had happened ; ran 
 down hill at full speed along with its companions for 
 one hundred and fifty yards, and then dropped stone 
 dead. Another, which was shot through both legs, 
 hobbled along a considerable distance like a kangaroo, 
 using the hind legs and the breast, until I shot her 
 dead through the neck with my revolver. The effect 
 of the cry, " Hoo, hoo," in making them turn round 
 even when scared. On the plains they feed with 
 buffalo in countless herds. Their fur is almost use- 
 less, for the reason mentioned, but their skin is valu- 
 able for gloves, gauntlets, etc. The bucks are the 
 most difficult to stalk. They always manage to get 
 into a place in the herd where no stalk is possible. 
 
 'FRIDAY, Sept. i2th. Broke camp precisely at 
 eight. Ice outside tent, sponge inside frozen into a 
 boulder, but the night much warmer than the preced-
 
 1 86 HENRY DRUMMOND [1879 
 
 ing. Crossed the Madison, and followed through 
 woods and glades for several miles the general course 
 of the river, though often out of sight of its banks. 
 The trail lay over an ancient river-terrace (perfectly 
 well marked compare terraces on Madison between 
 Virginia City and Bozeman), which made the riding 
 easy. After leaving the river struck through timber 
 with prairies and abundant game, antelope, everywhere 
 for twelve miles, when we crossed a fork of the Madi- 
 son. The trail next led up the low Divide, across the 
 main chain of the Rocky Mountains through the 
 Tangee [?] Pass. The ascent is very gentle, and it is 
 almost inconceivable that this should represent the 
 Divide between the Atlantic [?] and Pacific waters. 
 On the Madison side of the water-shed we passed a 
 splendid beaver-dam, where the beavers are still work- 
 ing. Jack gave us the natural history of the beaver 
 as we crossed the pass. After a gentle descent of a 
 mile or two we left the so-called waggon-road and fol- 
 lowed the brook the source of Snake River down 
 to Henry's Lake. Camped about a couple of miles 
 from the lake by the creek's side, and just below a 
 very fine beaver-dam, which we had the opportunity to 
 examine. It is either now in use, or has been very re- 
 cently abandoned. Home by three o'clock, seven hours 
 in saddle. Lounging [?] Creek here is full of trout 
 at grasshopper season, but now apparently is empty. 
 On Henry's Lake a company of soldiers are encamped, 
 for protection from the Indians. A short stone's 
 throw from our camp I stumbled on a rough trench or 
 breastwork. Jack says it was thrown up in 1877 by 
 General Howard, who was encamped here several days 
 when chasing the Nez Perce Indians. They were only 
 one day ahead, and sent back a band who captured his 
 baggage-train. General Howard followed the Indians
 
 Mr. 28] THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS 187 
 
 right over our route, but they were not captured till 
 General Miles headed them in Clark's Fork (of Yel- 
 lowstone P). 1 Twenty-seven white soldiers were killed 
 during the short resistance, and some threescore Indian 
 braves the number captured was three hundred and 
 fifty. 
 
 ' We saw lodge poles frequently along the route, but 
 these probably belonged to a tribe of Bannock Indians 
 who were camped a few hundred yards from this spot 
 only this week. They had been up the Madison from 
 their reservation below Camas Prairie after antelope. 
 They are supposed to be friendly. We shall likely 
 overtake them to-morrow or next day. 
 
 ' Before dinner strolled up the creek to examine the 
 beaver-dam more thoroughly. The creek is of the 
 usual character, soft turf banks of uniform depth, a 
 few inches, and pebbly bottom. An even flow wets 
 even banks, like a shallow mill-lade. Breadth quite 
 within a very good running jump. We traced it up 
 from camp to the first dam. Poplar trees and willow 
 brush fringed the ground, and these had been cut 
 through and dammed across the stream. Pebbles and 
 mud had been baked down upon the whole. The 
 dam, therefore, was a sort of wicker work, with rough, 
 big base, and more compact top of interlacing willow, 
 mud, and stones, formed into a stiff, impervious em- 
 bankment. Along the sides of the streamlet the log 
 stumps were left standing about two to two and a half 
 feet from the ground, just gnawed off where the animal 
 could best reach with his teeth. This dam extended 
 far across the little valley beyond the bounds of the 
 stream a hundred [?] , and the result was the forma- 
 tion of a swamp of quite considerable size. Here 
 peat formed. The beaver, as a geological agent. 
 
 1 Or Clark's Fork, south of Flathead Lake.
 
 1 88 HENRY DRUMMOND [1879 
 
 The situation of the dam was admirably chosen. The 
 opening valley, opening out from the hills, a thin patch 
 of timber on either side to furnish the material for 
 building.' 
 
 Here the diary abruptly closes, though the expedi- 
 tion lasted for another fortnight. Sir Archibald Geikie 
 writes of it : 
 
 ' In this journey, thrown into closest contact with 
 him under the most varied conditions of travel, includ- 
 ing even sometimes hardship and risk, I learned to 
 appreciate more than ever the beauty of his character. 
 His singularly placid and equable temperament was 
 like a kind of perpetual sunshine. Nothing seemed 
 ever to discompose him or overshadow that winning 
 smile that used to fascinate the wild men among whom 
 we were thrown. And yet he was singularly impres- 
 sionable. The grandeur of the scenery through which 
 we passed appealed powerfully to his imagination, and 
 his eyes would flash with delight as each new land- 
 scape unfolded itself before us. 
 
 ' He looked on everything with the eye of a poet 
 first, and of a man of science afterwards. The human 
 interests appealed to him before he began to dissect 
 and compare and classify. But the marvellous interest 
 of the geological phenomena which unfolded them- 
 selves as we rode on through those primeval solitudes 
 roused his enthusiasm sometimes to the highest pitch. 
 
 ' Drummond's keen sense of humour was another 
 feature in his nature that came out vividly during that 
 memorable journey. How he would draw out our 
 attendants over the camp-fire at night, getting each 
 to cap the other's thrilling and incredible tales of 
 adventure ! I would sometimes watch him playing
 
 MT. 28] THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS 189 
 
 them as if they were the trout or salmon he was 
 so fond of alluring in the streams of his own coun- 
 try. And how he would laugh over their exagger- 
 ations, and suggest possible omissions and lapses of 
 memory ! ' 
 
 After their return to Scotland Drummond wrote a 
 very warm letter of thanks to his chief : 
 
 To Professor Archibald Geikie 
 
 'PossiLPARK, GLASGOW, Nov. 22, 1879. 
 
 '. . . For my part, I feel the Western expedition 
 has been a very solid gain, and I know it will be 
 helpful to me in very many ways all my life. The 
 short interval since coming home has been suffi- 
 cient to strike out of the picture all that was 
 merely incidental ; and now the perspective of 
 the whole begins to shape itself. The whole of 
 America impresses me now as a revelation a 
 revelation in civilisation, in politics, in human 
 nature ; and if not a revelation in geology, a con- 
 firmation, elevation, and consolidation, which is 
 more than equivalent. I feel the gain in every 
 department of my work. . . . 
 
 * For all your other kindnesses to me I cannot 
 attempt to thank you. I am sure I would find 
 it not only difficult, but impossible, to express 
 how much of all that I have enjoyed and learned 
 during these past months I have owed to you. 
 You will allow me at least this reference to it.'
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 DIARIES OF TRAVEL. II. EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 
 
 IN the year 1859 David Livingstone, invested with 
 the powers of a British consul, led a government ex- 
 pedition to the Zambezi. His instructions were ' to 
 extend our knowledge of the geography and of the 
 mineral and agricultural resources of Eastern and 
 Central Africa; to improve our acquaintance with 
 the inhabitants, and to endeavour to engage them 
 to apply themselves to industrial pursuits and to the 
 cultivation of their lands, with a view to the produc- 
 tion of raw material to be exported to England in 
 return for British manufactures.' It was hoped that 
 ' by encouraging the natives to occupy themselves in 
 the development of the resources of the country, a 
 considerable advance might be made towards the 
 extinction of the slave-trade.' Upon this expedition 
 Livingstone discovered Nyasa, an enormous fresh- 
 water lake some three hundred and fifty miles long by 
 fifteen to forty-four broad. It is surrounded by high 
 tablelands, fertile, and bearing a considerable popula- 
 tion, whose material and moral interests Livingstone 
 left as his last bequest to his countrymen. ' I have 
 opened the door,' he said ; ' I leave it to you to see 
 that no one closes it after me.' The task was taken 
 up by three British Churches. The Free Church of 
 Scotland, under the leadership of Dr. Stewart, founded 
 a station, which they named Livingstonia, 1 at the south 
 
 1 The United Presbyterian Church joins with the Free Church of Scotland in 
 the Livingstonia Mission, paying the salary of Dr. Laws, the head of the Mission. 
 
 190
 
 EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 
 
 end of the Lake ; but they afterwards transferred it 
 to Bandawe, about two hundred miles farther north. 
 The Established Church of Scotland founded a station 
 at Blantyre, in the Shire Highlands between the Lake 
 and the Zambezi. The Universities Mission of the 
 Church of England began work on the east of the 
 Lake. These missions did not confine themselves to 
 preaching, but among their agents are doctors and 
 nurses, male and female teachers, masons, carpenters, 
 and gardeners. About the same time a few British 
 traders began the cultivation of coffee and certain 
 cereals in the neighbourhood of Blantyre. But all 
 these settlements were hundreds of miles from the 
 coast ; and, in order to convey their supplies, as well 
 as to develop a commerce strong enough to supplant 
 the slave-trade which devastated the region, a carrying 
 agency was needed, with stations on the Zambezi, the 
 Shire, and the Lake. In 1878, therefore, the African 
 Lakes Company, or Corporation as it now is, was 
 formed by Glasgow gentlemen who were in sympathy 
 with the missions and with Livingstone's policy of 
 developing industries for the natives and keeping from 
 them spirits, gunpowder, and arms. The Company 
 was not started for gain ; or for gain only in the sense 
 that commercial soundness is the one solid basis on 
 which to build up an institution that is to permanently 
 benefit others. A large amount of private capital has 
 been expended by this Company; yet, during the years 
 of its noble enterprise, it has reinvested in Africa 
 all that it has earned there. In a short time it 
 founded twelve trading stations, manned by twenty- 
 five Europeans and many native agents. It ran a 
 
 Old Livingstonia, at the south end of the Lake, was by Cape Maclear. The name 
 has been transferred to the Livingstonia Training Institution at the head of the 
 Lake, near Mount Waller (p. 205), three thousand feet above the Lake.
 
 192 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 steamer up the Shire, and another upon Lake Nyasa. 
 It started a coffee plantation and other agricultural 
 works. ' For the first time on the large scale it taught 
 the natives the meaning and blessings of work. It 
 acted as a check upon the slave-trade, prevented inter- 
 tribal strife, helped to protect the missionaries in time 
 of war, and in short, modest as the scale was on which 
 it worked, and necessarily limited as were its oppor- 
 tunities, it was for years the sole administering hand 
 in this part of Africa.' 1 
 
 In 1883 Mr. James Stevenson, F.R.G.S., was chair- 
 man of the Company. It occurred to him that it 
 would be important to have a scientific examination 
 of the countries extending to Lake Tanganyika, and 
 this he thought Henry Drummond could carry out. 
 In June, Drummond went to Crieff to meet Mr. 
 Stevenson, and, leave of absence having been granted 
 to him by the College Committee, the plan of the ex- 
 pedition was arranged. 
 
 To Mr. and Mrs. Stuart 
 
 <GLEN ELM LODGE, June 16, 1883. 
 
 *. . . I am going off to Africa next Wednesday. 
 I am going right into the heart of the country to 
 make a scientific exploration of the Lake Nyasa 
 and Tanganyika region. I shall be away a long 
 time, probably a year or more. The whole scheme 
 has come upon me like an avalanche, and I am in 
 a whirl of preparation.' 
 
 He crossed the continent to Brindisi, and took 
 steamer to Alexandria, his travelling companion being 
 the Rev. James Bain, of the Free Church Livingstonia 
 
 1 Tropical Africa, p. 82.
 
 yEr. 31] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 1 93 
 
 Mission. They found traces of the bombardment on 
 every hand, and saw the battle-field of Tel-el-Kebir, 
 'still thick with cartridges; the desert all round is 
 streaked with the marks of gun-carriages as if our 
 cannon had rolled over them yesterday.' 
 
 To His Brother 
 
 <S.S. RAVENNA, RED SEA, July 2d, 1883. 
 
 ' I take a full course of sea-bathing, and hope to 
 land in Africa as strong as a lion. My beard 
 grows mightily, although I am a terrible object 
 to be in the cabin of a P. and O. mail. A lot of 
 Indian Government agriculturists are on board, 
 and I am getting terribly wise in tea, coffee, 
 cinchona, and spices. If my wisdom can be 
 transferred to practice, I really think the Lakes 
 Company may yet get back my expenses. We 
 reach Aden to-morrow. The Pole Star is sinking 
 fast, and in a day or two I shall sight the Southern 
 Cross.' 
 
 At Aden, Bain and Drummond were joined by Dr. 
 and Mrs. Scott, of the Livingstonia Mission, and 
 Messrs. Hedderwick and Henderson, of Blantyre. 
 They had a bad voyage to Zanzibar through the mon- 
 soon. Drummond crossed the equator in an ulster. At 
 Zanzibar he had his first sight of tropical vegetation, 
 and was fascinated with the spectacle of the bazaars. 
 On July 26, after a couple of days at Mo9ambique, 
 they reached Quilimane, in Portuguese East Africa. 
 Hospitably entertained there by Mr. and Mrs. Shearer, 
 of the Lakes Company, they started up the Qua-qua 
 in shallow boats ' a splendid week, like a continual 
 picnic, with gipsy breakfasts and teas by the river
 
 194 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 bank' to where a portage of five miles brought them 
 to the Zambezi and the Company's steamer. 
 
 From Quilimane Drummond kept a full journal and 
 also wrote regularly to his home. In Tropical Africa 
 he has given a charming sketch of his travels, of 
 the general nature of the region he crossed, and of 
 the geological discoveries which he made upon it. 
 Many of even the most finished sentences and para- 
 graphs of his volume have been printed just as they 
 stand in his daily notes. But his diary contains a 
 great deal of interesting matter which he did not 
 publish ; and besides giving this and a general out- 
 line of his journeys, I have felt it due to his memory 
 to state, a little more fully than he has allowed him- 
 self to do, the interesting and original observations he 
 made upon the structure of the African continent. 1 
 
 On the voyage up the Qua-qua, Drummond noticed 
 the ibises perching upon the trees 'which struck me 
 as a peculiarity in waders.' ' The only annoyance was 
 the mosquitoes, which were very numerous, but their 
 bark, I honestly confess for my part, I find worse than 
 their bite.' 
 
 'A geological feature of considerable interest was 
 observed about half a mile from Mogurrumba [about 
 fifty miles from the sea]. Since leaving Quilimane 
 we had seen nothing but mud, mud black, mud 
 grey, mud dry, mud wet, mud eroded, mud in slopes, 
 mud banks, mud channels everywhere mud, mud, 
 mud. But, in a high, clean-cut bank, where the river 
 curved and deepened, this monotony was broken by 
 a dark-coloured boss of what appeared to be rock. It 
 
 1 Tropical Africa was published in 1884. Since then many editions have been 
 sold of it; besides 5000 of a small volume of extracts, entitled Nyasaland. A 
 German translation, Inner- Afrika, appeared at Gotha in 1890; second edition, 
 1891. Translations into some other European languages have also been made, 
 but I have not seen them.
 
 Mr. 31] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 195 
 
 was but a few yards in breadth, rising out of the water 
 to a height of some six or eight feet, where it was 
 again lost in the universal enswathement of clay. 
 Had the clay been anything else, and had the place 
 been almost anywhere else but Africa, I should have 
 pronounced it a basalt dyke. But here this was out 
 of the question, and with some expectancy I watched 
 the natives pole towards the spot. A blow with the 
 hammer revealed, beneath the blackened crust, a dull 
 reddish rock, porous in texture, and considerably 
 decomposed. There was no doubt whatever as to 
 its nature. It was coral. Sponges were scattered 
 through it in considerable quantity, as well as other 
 organisms of smaller size. Possibly this may be the 
 old fringing reef of the continent. Nowhere else in 
 the Qua-qua have I seen or heard of any similar 
 exposure. Senor Nunes, the English consul at Quili- 
 mane, told me that coral reefs appeared in the Zambezi 
 delta at two places. Is there any relation between 
 these three, and any coincidence of general outline 
 between this ancient reef and the first inland belt of 
 raised country the first plateau? 
 
 'Aug. yth, 1883. Two or three miles above Shu- 
 panga 1 I noticed from the steamer two or three thin 
 strata of what appeared to be sandstone rising above 
 the water-line. We had followed the exposure only 
 for a few hundred yards when a fine flock of guinea- 
 fowl appeared at the water's edge, at which we fired, 
 and stopped the steamer to pick up the slain. I had 
 thus time to bring on board three specimens the 
 first a very fine grained sandstone; the second a red- 
 dish marly sandstone also very fine; and the third a 
 somewhat more highly siliceous sandstone of a brick 
 red colour through which were scattered small peb- 
 
 1 On the Zambezi.
 
 196 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 blets of quartz. These deposits were buried under 
 ten or fifteen feet of sandy alluvium. They are only 
 visible for a short distance, and if the river had been 
 two feet higher, would have been entirely concealed. 
 I kept a close look-out upon the banks all day, but 
 saw no trace of rock until the custom-house near the 
 mouth of the Shire was reached. Near there two or 
 three low conical hills make their appearance, a fine 
 artificial section being obtained immediately behind 
 the custom-house. It is a pure white quartz; not 
 quartzite, but vein-quartz apparently. Distinct traces 
 of a matrix are visible in the section in the shape of 
 small granitic or mica-schistose masses. 
 
 ' A low bar of rock seems to stretch across the Shire 
 at the very mouth, but only a few boulders near the 
 side were above water. It had the same appearance 
 as the last. 
 
 ' At the custom-house I had an opportunity of seeing 
 the geological structure of the low conical hills which 
 anticipate the rising ground of the continent. Behind 
 the rough shanty which serves as the custom-house a 
 fine section is cut in one of those hills. It seems to 
 consist almost entirely of a pure white ungranulated 
 quartz. Traces of a granitic or mica-schistose matrix 
 appear here and there, but the great mass is essen- 
 tially pure quartz. The next specimens were obtained 
 at Chinga-Chinga, where we anchored for the night. 
 I sent a couple of men to the hill on shore to bring 
 me specimens, which I found to be quartz of the same 
 kind as at the custom-house. The views all the way 
 up the river are very fine, the valley being richly 
 wooded, the trees rising up all the hills, and crossing 
 even the loftiest parts of Morambala. 
 
 'Aug. 8th, 1883. Our first stop was at the south 
 end of Morambala, 1 at the Company's " station " (a grass 
 
 1 On the Shire.
 
 Mi. 31] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 197 
 
 shanty) presided over by a native named " Sam." . . . 
 Great piles of wood for the steamer are arranged on 
 the bank opposite Sam's house, and an hour was spent 
 in loading. I spent the time with my gun and ham- 
 mer in a morning stroll, with a native as guide, through 
 a mile or two of the adjacent country. On every side 
 I found a rather poor granitic soil, with boulders of 
 granite scattered everywhere. It is a coarse grey 
 variety. 
 
 ' It was about two hours' steam from Sam's when the 
 natives signalled to stop for the projected visit to 
 the hot springs. We started in single file, headed by 
 two natives, one of whom carried a short sword with 
 which he assisted in clearing a path through the long 
 reeds lining the bank. We waded straight inland for 
 a few hundred yards through grass and reeds which 
 were often far over our heads, when we struck a small 
 footpath running parallel with the flank of Moram- 
 bala. This we followed through a country rich with 
 shrubs, trees, and wild flowers, for about a couple of 
 miles, when we reached the springs or spring, for there 
 is only one. (Our exact time was twenty-five minutes' 
 hard walking.) There is nothing of the geyser-like 
 character about this spring. It is a little spring of the 
 usual kind, bursting up among the granite pebbles, 
 and, but for its temperature and chemical composition, 
 might be the head-waters of a highland burn, or one 
 of those exquisite fountains which bubble up among 
 the granite hills of Arran. Steam was being given 
 off in small quantities, and a strong smell of sulphu- 
 retted hydrogen announced the presence of the min- 
 eral water at some little distance. Unfortunately, 
 neither of my thermometers registered over 150, so 
 that I dared not risk them in the water, which was 
 plainly considerably above that temperature. Proba-
 
 198 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 bly Livingstone's figure, 170 Fah., expresses the exact 
 truth. We found it impossible to hold a ringer in 
 the water for a single moment; but in a pool some 
 twenty yards beneath the opening of the spring we 
 enjoyed a very agreeable bath. . . . The taste reminds 
 one of some of the home mineral waters, such as 
 Bridge of Allan, the sulphurous taste not being dis- 
 agreeably strong. The position of the spring in 
 Ravenstein's map is decidedly too far north. It is 
 quite a mile or two from the end of Morambala. 
 Morambala is also incorrectly placed, its direction 
 being not due north and south, but to the west of 
 north. In the Portuguese map the position is exactly 
 right.' 
 
 The only other facts not mentioned in the volume, 
 which are recounted in the diary, are the tobacco 
 manufactured by Chipitula, the Shire chief 1 'capital 
 stuff, a fine, mild tobacco, if anything wanting in 
 strength, but extremely pleasant to those who prefer 
 the gentler varieties of the weed ; ' the female orna- 
 ment known as the pelele ring, 'a most hideous 
 fashion, especially in the older women, who wear it 
 of the largest possible size. 
 
 ' Conceive of a thick upper lip standing out from 
 the face like a shelf. Let into this is a metal or ivory 
 bone cup, its rim flush with the surface of the skin. 
 The cup lies with its open mouth turned upwards just 
 underneath the nose, and suggests a device for receiv- 
 ing the drip from that organ during a cold in the head. 
 In the case of one old hag the pelele was quite as 
 large as, and exactly resembled in appearance, the 
 brim of the lowest segment of a pocket telescope- 
 drinking-cup.' 
 
 On August 1 1 the party halted at the river-side, 
 
 1 Tropical Africa, p. 21.
 
 /Ex. 31] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 199 
 
 where for two seasons Chipitula's people have come 
 to manufacture salt. The natives tried to hide from 
 the white men the locality of the soil from which they 
 extracted the brine ; but a troop of women coming in 
 laden with the soil, and ' the natives, seeing the clue 
 to the mystery was in our hands, accepted the situa- 
 tion with great merriment, and a boy was despatched 
 to conduct us to the spot. 
 
 ' There are two characteristics of the natives. They 
 are full of secrets. Of the white man they stand in 
 constant awe, which in practical matters becomes sus- 
 picion, and makes them continually on their guard in 
 case he should take some advantage of them. Ac- 
 cordingly they always refuse to give him information 
 when the object for which the inquiries are asked is 
 not perfectly patent to them. In this case no amount 
 of explanation could have given them any satisfaction, 
 and it would have been impossible to drive the idea 
 out of their heads that we either wanted to make 
 salt ourselves or would work some charm upon it 
 which would spoil the supply for them for all time to 
 come. The second peculiarity is their fondness for 
 everything in the shape of a joke. The unexpected 
 procession of salt-bearers, whose whole appearance 
 showed that they had only travelled a short distance 
 at the very moment they were protesting the salt came 
 from far on the other side of the river, was plainly a 
 case of " caught," and like children they simply laughed 
 heartily all round. 
 
 'SUNDAY, Aug. i2th. On the Shire above Ka- 
 tunga's, the terminus of the steamer's voyage, and 
 beginning of the road of sixty-five miles up the Shire 
 cataracts. 
 
 ' The valley here is fine and rich, and heavy crops 
 might be expected. On reaching the edge of the val-
 
 2OO HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 ley the hills begin to rise at once, and one has a good 
 climb for the next three-quarters of an hour(?). The 
 rock is granite (grey) and gneiss, and a few yards from 
 the plain the geological eye is refreshed by the sight 
 of a good, honest whin dyke. It ran right up the hill, 
 about a yard wide, with the prismatic structure well 
 developed. I find this only the precursor of many 
 other dykes, some of considerable size, and the amount 
 of basalt strewn over the hills almost surprised me. It 
 seemed to have left its influence on the soil even more 
 than the granite in many places where the underlying 
 rock was undoubtedly granite. The stain of iron quite 
 colours the soil over all these hills. I should describe 
 these lower hills as consisting of granite and gneiss, 
 riddled with basalt dykes of the ordinary type. (This 
 applies to the entire section as far as Blantyre and 
 onward.) ' 
 
 On the 1 3th, in good health, none of them having 
 had the least touch of fever, the travellers reached 
 Mandala, a station of the Lakes Company, and were 
 welcomed by Mr. and Mrs. John Moir to their house, 
 ' the largest for some hundreds of miles on the one 
 side and some thousands of miles on the other. The 
 Blantyre mission is a mile off.' At Mandala, Drum- 
 mond had to wait a month, as the Lake Nyasa steamer 
 had just started for the north and could not return 
 within that time. He spent part of the interval in the 
 excursion to Lake Shirwa, or Chilwa, described in 
 the second chapter of his volume. 
 
 His companions were Messrs. Hedderwick and 
 Henderson of the Blantyre mission ; they had a small 
 caravan of ten porters, an interpreter, a boy cook, 
 and a youth whom Drummond constituted his body- 
 servant.
 
 JET. 32] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 2OI 
 
 To His Mother 
 
 ' Sept. 5th, 1883. 
 
 *. . . At Zomba on the Sabbath we had a service 
 for the natives the real Missionary Record 
 kind of thing; white men with Bibles under a 
 spreading tree, surrounded by a thick crowd of 
 naked natives. We sang hymns from a hymn-book 
 in the native tongue to Scotch psalm tunes, and 
 then spoke through an interpreter. Unfortunately 
 the service was brought to rather an abrupt con- 
 clusion. I had just finished speaking when a 
 tremendous shriek rose from the crowd, and the 
 congregation dispersed in a panic in every direc- 
 tion. A huge snake had fallen from the tree 
 right into the thick of them. A bombshell could 
 not have done its work faster, but no one was 
 hurt, and the beast disappeared like magic be- 
 neath some logs. The snakes rarely do harm, 
 and I have never heard of a serious case.' 
 
 From Mandala, on September loth, he wrote his 
 father in strong praise of the Blantyre Mission, 1 and 
 of the Company's treatment of the natives, and the 
 letter concludes thus : 
 
 4 Summer has well begun here, but I have never 
 felt the heat. I am thankful to say also that my 
 health is better than it has been for a long time, 
 and I have no doubt I shall be better every way 
 for this long and strange break. If all goes well 
 this expedition will be of life-long service to me 
 in my college work, and I hope also I may have 
 a voice some day in our Foreign Missionary Com- 
 mittee.' 
 
 1 Tropical Africa, p. 124.
 
 2O2 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 After some delay two hundred carriers were engaged 
 for the portage to the steamer, and on September 1 1 
 Drummond started with Dr. and Mrs. Scott and Mr. 
 Bain. The Lake and the voyage upon it are described 
 in the second chapter of Tropical Africa. But the 
 following are some extracts from his journal not in- 
 cluded there : 
 
 ' 1 2th Sept. Matope being honoured with a place 
 in the map, we expected to find a centre of some 
 importance. The reality is a few grass huts on the 
 river-flat. Its interest for us was centred in two slen- 
 der white poles rising above the largest of the huts 
 the Company's store which we rightly conjectured 
 to be the masts of the Ilala. We were welcomed 
 on board by Mr. Harkiss, and found lunch spread for 
 us inside the hut. The river looked tempting for a 
 bathe, but in the Shire generally the attentions of the 
 crocodiles are too assiduous to risk, and this place is 
 particularly infamous. The natives are afraid even to 
 stand near the water's edge, and the villagers have to 
 get all their supplies of water by scooping it up in 
 pumpkin ladles with a handle of bamboo cane some 
 eight feet long. I saw the tsetse fly here for the first 
 time. It is found on the Mandala road as far as the 
 Luangwa [?]. But for this we should have been helped 
 on our way by the Mandala donkeys, which dare not 
 venture in this direction more than a few miles from 
 Blantyre, though they go to Katunga's with impunity. 
 We went to sleep to-night amidst a perfect chorus of 
 hippopotami. Their heads were rising like buoys all 
 up and down the river the female a red buoy, the 
 male black. Shooting at these ironclads with any 
 ordinary rifle is simply a waste of ammunition. On 
 her last voyage some got between the Ilala and the
 
 /ET. 32] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 203 
 
 bank while moored close in shore, and at a few paces' 
 distance two bullets from an " Express " were sent into 
 parts that ought to have been vital, but the animal 
 waded coolly ashore and disappeared as if nothing had 
 happened. Their vocal performances are somewhat 
 stale by this time, and are by no means musical. First 
 the creature slowly heaves his square skull above 
 water and gives vent to a tremendous sniff, as if he 
 had just caught a severe cold in the head. This 
 seems to relieve his vocal organs of a considerable 
 quantity of water, and he straightway proceeds to fill 
 the vacancy with air. This he draws in with a series 
 of terrific grunts suggestive of a huge trombone 
 worked by a blast furnace, and sufficiently startling 
 when heard at close quarters. The performance con- 
 cludes by the creature raising himself bodily in the 
 water almost up to the middle, and this achieved he 
 sinks out of sight with a sudden plunge. 
 
 1 My beard is now of age, and I look very old and 
 important. 
 
 THURSDAY, i3th Sept. The Ilala was off by 
 ten, with thirty on board, all told. This included 
 our own party Dr. and Mrs. Scott, and Mr. Bain ; 
 seven boys from Bandawe who had been sent by Dr. 
 Laws to be vaccinated at Blantyre (the lymph at Ban- 
 dawe being exhausted and smallpox raging); seven 
 men who are to accompany me to Tanganyika; Jingo, 
 Chessiemaleera, Mrs. Scott's native maid, Mr. Har- 
 kiss, Mr. Wells, "Bandawe," the "steward," native 
 deck hands, stokers, etc. 
 
 'Two or three hours' steaming brought us to Pimbe, 
 where limestone is said to be found. It is being 
 tried just now at Mandala; and as I was anxious to 
 see it in situ, I got a native to take me to the place. 
 We struck across a flat at the back of the small
 
 2O4 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 village for half a mile, and then reached a low range 
 of hills running almost parallel to the river, and a 
 few miles in length. We skirted the base of these 
 for another half-mile and then crossed a small wood 
 ridge into a dry watercourse occupying a valley of 
 some little depth. Among the boulders of this dried 
 " burn " blocks of limestone were scattered in con- 
 siderable quantity. The surrounding rock was gneiss, 
 but the bed of limestone could not have been far off, 
 as the hills were of small size. I did not wish to 
 detain the steamer, or would certainly have followed 
 it up to the limestone. It is a dazzling white marble 
 with black mica in small spangles scattered through 
 it. In the bed of the stream I also found blocks of 
 fine basalt, and a good deal of quartz was lying all 
 over the hills. 
 
 ' 1 4th Sept. Towards the head of Lake Pomalombe 
 the hills approach on the east side. Large trees clothe 
 the flats along their bases, among them a number of 
 fan-palms, but few of any size. The few miles of 
 winding river between Lake Pomalombe and Nyasa 
 traverse a country of great beauty. The baobab, 
 tamarind, and fan-palm grow in profusion, and shelter 
 one or two of the largest villages I have yet seen in 
 Africa. One of the largest of these is M'Ponda's, 
 exquisitely situated among trees on the slope of the 
 west bank. A bold spur of red granite on the oppo- 
 site side runs to within half a mile of the water's edge. 
 Behind this are ranges of low hills, succeeding one 
 another in an unbroken line as far as the eye can 
 reach. A similar range rises in the distance behind 
 M'Ponda. As it stretches away northward the hills 
 increase into the mountains which mark the south- 
 west end of Lake Nyasa, and under a spur of which 
 nestles Livingstonia. We passed through this on a
 
 JEr. 32] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 2O5 
 
 fine afternoon, the cool breeze from the distant lake 
 tempering the heat and giving to the whole journey 
 the aspect of a tour among the English lakes. But 
 for the difference in the vegetation, palpable only at 
 close quarters, the sudden apparition of a hippopota- 
 mus crossing the steamer's bows, or the spectacle of 
 a naked savage fishing in his canoe, there is nothing 
 in the general surroundings of the upper Shire to 
 remind one that he is out of Europe. The villages, 
 however, are certainly unlike anything one has ever 
 seen before. There is one above M'Ponda's, occupy- 
 ing nearly half a mile of the river-bank. The huts 
 are huddled together for the most part without any 
 attempt at order, a few being reduced to something 
 like neatness by a high stockade, which gives in the 
 distance to the whole the appearance of an English 
 cottage with its garden. At close quarters, however, 
 the huts are more like the moss summer-houses one 
 finds in country seats than human habitations. They 
 are all of the same toadstool pattern, and miniature 
 toadstools are often built at the side to form barns. 
 Smaller toadstools still are built on high piles and 
 connected with the ground by rude ladders. These 
 are the fowl-houses, which have to be garrisoned in 
 this fashion for fear of leopards, wild-cats, hyenas, 
 and other beasts of prey. 
 
 ' 1 6th Sept. At ten native service in the school; 
 large turnout of natives and my men from Ilala. 
 Mr. Harkiss conducted, and gave an address. After 
 dinner we went to a native funeral. 1 The cortege had 
 come a couple of miles, and were waiting for the 
 white men under some trees. They consider it a 
 great honour to have white men present on such an 
 occasion, and have been used to it in the mission 
 
 1 Cf. Tropical Africa, p. 155.
 
 2O6 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 days. The body a native in his prime was merely 
 wrapped in calico (his own suit), and placed in two 
 palm-mats, formed into a litter with two rough 
 branches, and carried by four men. The burial-place 
 was the wood behind the station at the rise of the 
 hill. The funeral itself was interesting as a mixture 
 of the heathen and Christian mode of sepulture. Had 
 it been in the old days it would have been very dif- 
 ferent, but the whole of the tribes are gradually 
 "reverting to type." The grave was at least ten feet 
 deep by eight in length. Some sixty natives stood 
 round about, an equal number of women remaining in 
 the background about fifty yards off. Two long strips 
 of bark were laid across the grave a copy and 
 reminiscence of the ropes used by the English. These 
 ropes were held by four natives while the body was 
 slowly lowered. This was done with great decorum, 
 and up to this point the funeral might have been that 
 of an Englishman conducted by his countrymen. 
 But now commenced the heathen or native ceremonies. 
 First, the dead man's two knives were handed down 
 to the two men who stood beside the corpse in the 
 unfilled grave. These were placed beside the body. 
 His bow and arrows followed the bow with the bow- 
 string cut across with a knife, a most touching symbol. 
 Then, with some ceremony, his pipe, the long stem 
 covered with blue and white beads, was laid beside 
 his head. Next followed a large calabash cooking- 
 vessel, a smaller one with a handle used as a drinking- 
 cup, two baskets one large and one small. These 
 were arrayed about the body. About a foot above 
 the body a groove was cut in the earth all round, 
 and into this were then fitted a number of strong 
 sticks. These were then covered with leaves and 
 twigs, and all was ready for the soil to be thrown in.
 
 /Ex. 32] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 2OJ 
 
 The mounds of earth were slowly scraped in with the 
 small native hoes, assisted by a shovel borrowed from 
 the Mission. When all was finished two field baskets 
 were broken up with an axe and thrown upon the 
 grave. By this time I began to realise what all this 
 meant. It was the burial with the dead of all his 
 earthly possessions. This man probably owned not 
 another article in the world. I never realised so much 
 as here the absolute simplicity of the native life. Even 
 the unsmoked tobacco was to be laid over his ashes. 
 It was strewn near a small fire kindled under a tree, 
 but when we tried to find out the exact mode in which 
 it was to be disposed of the information was refused. 
 Chimlolo told us they would come back and finish 
 that part of the ceremony when we had gone. No 
 word was spoken by the natives of the nature of 
 a service. They were mostly grave, sober-looking 
 men in middle life, and the faces of some were 
 fine and intelligent. A white man's funeral in Scot- 
 land could scarcely have been attended by more intel- 
 ligent-looking men, and one could not help feeling 
 keenly for them in what they lacked. All the native 
 graves around had their pots and baskets over them 
 some had empty cases from the English all 
 holed. 
 
 ' Chimlolo, on this occasion, was dressed in his best 
 Sunday clothes, and nothing could illustrate better 
 the folly of encouraging the natives to don European 
 garments. He had on an ancient and discoloured 
 tweed coat over his naked body, a pair of rough pilot- 
 cloth trousers over his naked feet, and on his head a 
 faded green helmet, which bore the legend "3ist Lan- 
 arkshire Rifle Volunteers." Yesterday, with his fine 
 frame wrapped in his robes, he looked every inch a 
 chief. To-day he was a perfect object. He resembled
 
 2O8 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 nothing so much as the negro loafers who lounge 
 about the quays in the Southern States.' 
 
 On the i Qth September the Ilala reached Bandawe, 
 the central mission station of the Free Church of 
 Scotland. Drummond's visit and the communion 
 service in which he participated are described in 
 Tropical Africa} 
 
 To his Father 
 
 'KARONGA'S, N. END OF LAKE NYASA, 
 Sept. 28, 1883. 
 
 ' . . . We stayed at Bandawe from Thursday at mid- 
 night till Monday at midday. . . . Dr. Laws goes 
 home in a month. He has been seven years here 
 without a break, and much needs a holiday. . . . 
 The native service on Sunday was a grand sight. 
 Five or six hundred were present, all squatting 
 on the ground and listening with all their might. 
 I had the pleasure of talking to them a lot, Dr. 
 Laws translating. There was also a good Sunday- 
 school and an English service in the evening, 
 which I took. These were sad days for the 
 Mission, however. The steamer had gone round 
 to a bay twenty miles up the coast for repairs, and 
 came back on Saturday with the flag floating at 
 the half-mast. All knew that this meant death, 
 and a crowd gathered on the beach. It was too 
 stormy for a landing, and no boat or canoe could 
 venture out, so we waited in suspense. At length 
 a board was hoisted, on which the telescope was 
 at once focussed. In chalk we read the words, 
 " Mr. Stewart" The steamer had met some na- 
 tives coming down the Lake shore from here, 
 and they brought the news. Mr. Stewart's name 
 
 1 Page 148.
 
 . 32] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 2 09 
 
 you must have heard. He is a civil engineer, 
 and was at the head of the operatives on Mr. 
 James Stevenson's road from here to Tangan- 
 yika. He laid out Livingstonia, Blantyre, and 
 Bandawe, and has been a foremost figure in 
 mission work in Africa for several years. He is 
 a cousin of Dr. Stewart of Lovedale. On reach- 
 ing this place, we found the flag on the store also 
 half-mast, so we knew it was too true. He died 
 of a complaint contracted by a residence in India 
 jaundice. He lies near where I write, under 
 a huge baobab tree. He chose the spot himself 
 only six weeks before for the captain of the Ilala, 
 over whom he read the burial service, one other 
 white man only being present. One of the Com- 
 pany's men had to do the same service for him. 
 I was looking forward with great pleasure to 
 meeting him here. He has few relations living, 
 only a sister, Mrs. Vartan of Nazareth. 
 ' We were from Monday to Thursday in getting 
 here. This included a whole day on shore cut- 
 ting wood. The men are now busy unloading 
 our things, and I think I shall get under way 
 to-morrow. Bain may possibly wait here for a 
 fortnight yet, as things are not quite ready for 
 him at Mweni-wanda. But if he came, he would 
 only accompany me some fifty miles farther. He 
 is very well and in capital spirits. His manse 
 will be something to look forward to on his home- 
 ward march. My caravan is almost ready for 
 the start. I brought twenty men with me in the 
 steamer, and will not need many more. Some 
 were brought from Mandala, the rest from Ban- 
 dawe. Dr. Laws has given me one of his best 
 natives to act as captain over the men. "James"
 
 2IO HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 is a really trustworthy man, and I am very fort- 
 unate in having got him, though he knows no 
 English. He was one of three natives who sat 
 down to the Lord's Table with us on Sabbath 
 last at Bandawe. I have got a thoroughly good 
 tent and any quantity of provisions and calico 
 (money), and I think the journey will be most 
 enjoyable. After this is over, I shall track home- 
 wards as rapidly as possible.' 
 
 Drummond started from Karonga's on Septem- 
 ber 29, and began his tramp northwards across the 
 plateau towards Lake Tanganyika. He left white 
 men behind him. He had a caravan of twenty-eight 
 blacks, including his three faithfuls Jingo, Moolu, 
 and Seyid. Not one could speak a word of English. 
 ' They belonged to three different tribes, and spoke as 
 many languages ; the majority, however, know some- 
 thing of Chinyanja, the Lake language, of which I also 
 had learned a little, so we soon understood each other.' 
 Drummond has given, in Chapter V. of Tropical Africa, 
 some extracts from his diary on this journey, illustra- 
 tive of his general experiences. The following addi- 
 tions are taken, some from the same source, others 
 from his letters home. 
 
 After entering the fringe of hills, bordering the 
 higher lands as described on page 92 of Tropical 
 Africa, he took some geological notes. 
 
 'Sept. 29th. A herd of cows browsing along the 
 banks and the newly cut road give to this part quite a 
 homelike character. For about two miles the road 
 winds along with the stream through a richly wooded 
 valley. The mark of the pick is still fresh upon the 
 great rocks which flank the narrow glen, and here are
 
 Mi. 32] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 211 
 
 not only the best, but the only artificial, geological sec- 
 tions in Central Africa. The hills rise high above the 
 river on either side, and their structure is evident from 
 a hundred well engineered bits of the road as it cuts 
 room for itself alongside the river channel. A fine 
 study in metamorphic rocks. (Bits of mica-schist of 
 many varieties alternate with bands of quartzite ?) 
 These beds are all thin, seldom more than a few yards, 
 and are pitched at a very high angle, in several places 
 being all but vertical. Gneiss also gradually appears, 
 and the different rocks alternating repeatedly add con- 
 siderable variety to the section. Scarcely two of the 
 beds are alike. Here is a coarse schist (granite ?) 
 with plates of black mica three inches in length. Next 
 it a band of the most pellucid quartzite. A variegated 
 bed of waving gneiss follows, to be succeeded by a 
 schist (granite), in which the flakes of mica are so 
 small as only to be distinguishable by their mass. 
 (Others of the schists are strongly talcose ?) The 
 quartzites run through every shade from white to iron 
 brown, one very beautiful variety being a delicate 
 salmon pink. I describe these thus minutely, for in 
 another year or two the geologist may look for them 
 in vain, or only expose a fresh section with much labour. 
 All these varieties may be found within half a mile, 
 and probably a hundred yards might be found in which 
 the whole series was represented. 
 
 ' Sept. 3Oth. Rested all day, being Sabbath. Held 
 service in the morning with the men. They gathered 
 in front of my tent after breakfast, I sitting on a box 
 at the door. Gave out a hymn verse by verse, from 
 Dr. Laws's book, three or four joining in the singing 
 to the tune of " Scots wha hae " (!). I then read the 
 Lord's Prayer in Chinyanja, the natives repeating as 
 they have been taught at the Mission service. Then
 
 212 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 James gave a short address which I should have given 
 a great deal to have fully understood. We then sang 
 another hymn, " Come to the Saviour " ; I offered 
 prayer in English, and James closed with prayer in 
 Chinyanja, or rather Atonga. 
 
 ' This day month, August 3oth, Mr. James Stewart 
 died in this place a hundred yards, I believe, from 
 where I write. 
 
 ' WEDNESDAY, Oct. 3rd. After crossing the valley, 
 the path the road is not cut here yet struck over 
 a steep ridge of sedimentary rocks, coarse sandstones, 
 or fine conglomerates, with one or two beds of lime- 
 stone. We then descended into another long and 
 narrow valley in which lay the dry bed of a consider- 
 able stream. The path follows this for a mile, but 
 leaves it shortly after a stagnant pool is passed, the 
 road recommencing at this point. It is freshly made, 
 and winds up the hill in long sweeping curves. Fresh 
 exposures of purple, chocolate, and dark red sandstone 
 occur on the roadside. These evidently belong to 
 the same series as those in the opposite valley. They 
 are all inclined toward the earth at an angle of about 
 35. They soon give place to the old series of gneisses 
 and granites which occupy the country now as far as 
 Mweni-wanda, possibly as far as Tanganyika. These 
 granitised beds are exposed in all the burns (all dry), 
 which are numerous along the line of march. They 
 are all pitched at a very high angle all but vertical. 
 Quartz predominates apparently in the composition of 
 the granite, and the path is littered with quartz peb- 
 bles. In this respect the rocks probably differ from 
 the Blantyre beds, where there is an unusually large 
 proportion of black mica, which accounts for the 
 greater fertility of the latter district. From Mara- 
 moura to Kamera the country cannot be described as
 
 &r. 32] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 2 I 3 
 
 poor ; the soil is thin and strong, covered with trees of 
 a uniform height of about twenty feet, thinly planted, 
 with grass and underwood not luxuriant. Large trees 
 are absent. The general features of the country are 
 the same as far as the eye can reach on either side, 
 undulating hills of thin forest unvaried by any excep- 
 tionally distinctive features. The " billows " are all well 
 rounded, and present their long axis towards the lake 
 which receives their drainage.' 
 
 Under the same date occurs the following interest- 
 ing note upon African habits: 
 
 'After leaving the sandstones (a short distance) the 
 new road is left to the right, the men insisting on 
 striking across country, but in reality the road is only 
 made for a few hundred yards farther. I do not sup- 
 pose the roadway is constructed much farther, but at 
 any rate it proved a superfluity in this case. Mr. 
 Ross, one of the engineers at work on the road, told 
 me that his own men who had helped to make it, in 
 taking him to Karonga's (where I met him, the inci- 
 dent happened that very morning), left the road at 
 one point to cross a hill by the native path instead of 
 rounding it by the road. He recalled them at once, a 
 fine sense of loyalty to the undertaking, but on sight- 
 ing the point of re-convergence he was disgusted to 
 see the tail of his caravan defiling into the main road, 
 and now considerably in advance of him, although 
 they were formerly too far behind to hear the order. 
 These natives were all carrying heavy loads. Even 
 where they use the road they never vary their cus- 
 tom of walking in Indian file, so that a beaten path 
 exists in the centre of the road itself. The difference 
 between the English road and the native's path is 
 simply this the former, made with line and level, is 
 straight in detail but winding as a whole; the latter,
 
 214 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 made by naked feet and instinct, is winding in detail 
 but straight as a whole. The native strikes a bee- 
 line to his destination, but the exigencies of the case, 
 the avoidance of trees, logs, and large stones, cause it 
 to be irregular throughout.' 1 
 
 On the 3d and 4th of October Drummond noted 
 the almost entire absence of water from the country 
 through which he was passing, till he struck the main 
 stream, an enticing little river, and fine volume of 
 water. 'The path crosses it at some gneiss blocks. 
 I spent the rest of the day plashing and wading about 
 the river-bed. 
 
 ' Towards nightfall a small native caravan arrived at 
 the crossing and camped on the opposite bank. I 
 found it was a sub-chief under Mweni-wanda, whose 
 name is Wanimaver, travelling to the coast. The old 
 fellow came across to pay his respects to the white 
 man, accompanied by two or three of his counsellors. 
 A native carried a small stool, which he placed for 
 him in front of my tent. I did not know the natives 
 enjoyed this luxury, but probably the age of the chief 
 demanded it. He told me he was ill, and was on his 
 way to a medicine man at Karonga's village. I shared 
 my cocoa with him, and presented him with a little 
 salt and a needle. He seemed much awed all through 
 the interview. Next morning he was over by daylight 
 to wish me good-by. He seemed a simple, kindly, 
 childlike old man, quite the chief in appearance. 
 His sole garment was a maize-coloured and faded 
 drab loin cloth. His men, meantime, were up the 
 trees adjoining the river throwing down great branches, 
 with which they soon made him a very pretty bower 
 by the river's brink. The camp-fire twinkling through 
 this; the native music played before the tent a sere- 
 
 1 Cf. Tropical Africa, pp. 34-36.
 
 /Ex. 32] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 215 
 
 nade to the chief by three voices and some stringed 
 instrument ; the brawling river ; the young moon and 
 the bright starlight, made up a very pretty tableau 
 for my after-supper smoke on the grass by my own 
 camp-fire.' 
 
 On Friday, 5th, he arrived at Kamera, and on the 
 6th at Mweni-wanda's village, and Chirenje, 'a future 
 Free Church station.' There he paid his men, and 
 checked Mr. Bain's goods which arrived by another, 
 caravan. He stayed in the rough mission-house for a 
 week, shooting, collecting, talking with Mweni-wanda, 
 and entertaining Mr. Griffiths, of the London Mis- 
 sionary Society, on his way home from his station on 
 Lake Tanganyika. On Friday, the i2th, he started 
 again and travelled that and the next day by the 
 Stevenson road till it stopped at 1 8^ miles 'a fine 
 avenue through a level or gently undulating country.' 
 His camp was at Zockye's village. 'After a twenty- 
 mile tramp in the sun, this village, with its dirty water, 
 its shocking sanitary conditions, almost shadeless 
 stream, and staring crowds, was simple torture, and I 
 confess the reasons against enduring other forty days 
 of it by going on to Tanganyika seemed at that 
 moment most convincing.' Next day he moved on to 
 the camp beyond Chewakunda, where he spent the 
 week so beautifully described on pages 109 ff. of Trop- 
 ical Africa. In addition to the observations recorded 
 there he read a number of books, ' Howells's Undis- 
 covered Country, Old Mortality, Miss Edwards's 
 Modern Poets, and much of the Revised Version.' 
 'On Monday, ist, service as usual, James (Moolu) 
 very eloquent on " Lazarus." ' They started (as Trop- 
 ical Africa says, page 112) on the 22d and marched 
 northwest. 'This day the tropics have dried up my 
 stylograph.' The next part of the diary is in pencil.
 
 2l6 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 He stalked, shot at, and missed some fine hartbeest. 
 He was going to sit down, when, in the very place he 
 had chosen, he 
 
 ' Observed a curious patter among the leaves. It 
 was a puff adder. I drew my revolver and shot it, 
 but the brute slowly sank down the bank and lay 
 down, as I thought, to die, by the water. Some 
 hours after, when I sent for it, it was gone. A 
 day or two later my men were frightened to death 
 by finding it at the pool where they drew water for 
 the camp. It was still alive, but I finished it with 
 another shot. It was not very lengthy, but very 
 fat in the girth. The men said it was a python, 
 but I have my doubts, especially as they also said 
 its bite was certain death a fact which was quite 
 evident from the shape of the jaws. It had two 
 bags on the side of its head with poison enough 
 to kill a village.' 
 
 The journal for October 24 and 25 is fully given in 
 Tropical Africa. Till the 3oth they stayed (because 
 of the bearer wounded by the buffalo) in the same 
 'enchanting camp,' and then 'steered west and south- 
 west up a valley running into the Lejange, with steep 
 sides. The main rock is gneiss, but here and at the 
 former camp there are beds of mica schist, very hard 
 and compact for schists, however.' They crossed the 
 watershed of the range, descended a little, and camped 
 eight miles from their previous camp at about 4900 
 feet above the sea. On October 31 he sent back to 
 Mweni-wanda for a medicine chest and 'some books, 
 as my small box was read to death. Spent Monday 
 studying White Ants. There was much thunder, and 
 rain fell uninterruptedly from three to six, but as it 
 was not heavy my tent held out.'
 
 Mi. 32] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 217 
 
 But the rainy season had commenced and it was 
 time to turn. On the 24th of October he had written 
 home : 
 
 ' I started from the Lake with thirty-two men, most 
 of them from a distance, but I had to engage 
 some local men to take extra loads. I had the 
 universal fate of African travellers, for a number 
 deserted at the first hill. I got their places 
 filled, but gradually the local men dropped off, 
 and now I have only seventeen left. These 
 are all good men and true, but I have had to 
 leave many stores at a log cabin at Mweni-wanda. 
 The crippling of my caravan made me consider 
 seriously whether I ought to go the whole way 
 to Tanganyika, and you will perhaps be glad to 
 hear that I have decided to turn now. I am 
 within 130 or 140 miles of it, but the rainy season 
 is due immediately and I should catch it coming 
 back in all its fury. I have enjoyed such perfect 
 health that I do not think it is right to run un- 
 necessary risk. I could probably weather anything 
 in my tent, but my men would suffer severely. 
 They are not accustomed to this high country, 
 and already many of them have had fever. 
 Scarcely a day passes but I have to doctor some 
 of them. Besides this, the rest of the way is just 
 the same thing over again, and it would be dreary 
 work toiling all the way back over exactly the 
 same ground. All things considered, therefore, 
 I have resolved to wander slowly back to Nyasa 
 and make my way to Quilimane as the rain per- 
 mits. I may weather out the first plumps in the 
 aforesaid log cabin, which is to be Bain's manse 
 and where he will now be. Word will be sent there
 
 2l8 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 when the Ilala arrives at Karonga's to take me 
 down the Lake again.' 
 
 Besides, as he confessed afterwards, he was beginning 
 to feel lassitude and depression, the precursors of fever, 
 though he did npt yet know them as such. 
 
 On October 31 they moved to a deserted village and 
 felt safe from wild beasts behind its stockade. The 
 wounded man was still in evil plight. They remained 
 there till November 3, when a letter came from Mr. 
 Bain, with a postscript from Mr. Fred Moir (returning 
 from Tanganyika), that they would wait for Drummond 
 at Mweni-wanda. Carrying the wounded man in a litter 
 he reached Mweni-wanda on November 5 and stayed till 
 the J4th. ' Moir and Lieutenant Fully went off to 
 shoot elephants at Kimbashi. Much tempted to go 
 with them. The steamer went for their mails after 
 they had been five or six days in the field. They 
 sent eighteen tusks back, capital sport.' 
 
 On November 15 he started for the Lake and on the 
 1 8th camped fifteen miles from it beside Mr. Munro, the 
 engineer who was at work on the road, and Mr. Bain, 
 who like himself was waiting for the steamer. It was 
 here that he made his discovery of fossils he believes 
 ' the only fossils that had ever been found in Central 
 Africa.' They lay in ' thin beds of very fine light grey 
 sandstone and blue and grey shales, with an occasional 
 band of grey limestone but especially in the shale, 
 one layer being one mass of small Lamellibranckiata. 
 Though so numerous, these fossils are confined to a 
 single species of the Tellinidce, a family abundantly 
 represented in tropical seas at the present time and 
 dating back as far as the Oolite. Vegetable remains 
 are feebly represented by a few reeds and grasses.' 1 
 
 1 Tropical Africa, 'A Geological Sketch,' p. 192.
 
 JET. 32] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 2IQ 
 
 But here is his journal : 
 
 'MONDAY, Nov. igth. Terrific thunderstorm with 
 heavy rain broke out late last night. I awoke, lit a 
 candle, and sat watching for the first sign of leakage 
 in my tent. A trench had been dug all round, but 
 the slope of the road made a perfect torrent sweep 
 past, and I had to keep building up the banks. One 
 trench ran parallel with my bed, as the side of the tent 
 was tilted aside to meet the hill, so that I could see 
 from where I lay the brown torrent sweeping sticks, 
 leaves, and insects before it. The wind rose to a 
 hurricane, and I was afraid every moment I would 
 be unroofed and left to weather the storm in the 
 open. But my tent behaved bravely and the com- 
 bined elements failed to dislodge me. A few drops 
 only got through. Bain, who shared Munro's tent, 
 was less fortunate, in spite of his tent having a good 
 fly. The rain soon penetrated both fly and canvas 
 and flooded him out of bed at midnight. They were 
 in a terrible plight all night, and Bain was down with 
 fever in consequence a couple of days after. 
 
 ' On the Sunday morning, when sitting at breakfast 
 on the newly made road, I saw at my feet a small slab 
 of slate with markings which struck me at once as 
 familiar. I eagerly seized it, and saw before me a fos- 
 sil fish. I had marked this very spot on my way up 
 country as a place for a possible " find " in this direc- 
 tion, and I had planned to spend two or three days here 
 fossil-hunting on my way back. I had little idea that 
 so fine a section would be waiting me ; and the road- 
 cutting here was a most singular coincidence, as this 
 was the only mile of rock between Tanganyika and 
 the mouth of the Zambezi where I should have wished 
 such a thing, or where I would have expected to find 
 fossils. Monday, therefore, I devoted to a regular
 
 22O HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 fossil-hunt, but I am sorry to say with no very satisfac- 
 tory result as far as fish were concerned. I got sev- 
 eral teeth, however, innumerable fish-scales, and a great 
 number of shells, these last all belonging to a single 
 species. I set all the boys to work, and offered a knife 
 to whomsoever would bring me a fish, but although 
 several of them worked hard they all failed.' 
 
 The fossil fish remains were submitted to Dr. 
 Traquair of Edinburgh, whose identification of them 
 is given in full in Tropical Africa, pages 193-195. 
 He says of the largest : 
 
 '. . . Belonging to the order Ganoidei, this fish is with 
 equal certainty referable to the family Palceoniscidce, but its 
 genus is more a matter of doubt, owing to the fragmentary 
 nature of the specimen. Judging from the form and thickness 
 of the scales I should be inclined to refer it to Acrolepis, were it 
 not that the dorsal and anal fins seem so close to the tail, and so 
 nearly opposite each other ; here, however, it may be remarked 
 that the disturbed state of the scales affords room for the 
 possibility that the original relations of the parts may not be 
 perfectly preserved. I have, however, no doubt that, as a 
 species, it is new ; and as you have been the first to bring 
 fossil fishes from those regions of Central Africa, you will 
 perhaps allow me to name it Acrolepis (?) Drummondi. 
 
 ' No. 2 is a piece of cream-coloured limestone with numer- 
 ous minute, scattered rhombic, striated, ganoid scales, which 
 I cannot venture to name, though I believe them to be palaeo- 
 niscid. . . . Among these minuter relics is a scale of much 
 larger size, and clearly belonging to another fish. A little way 
 off is the impression of the attached surface of a similar scale, 
 and there are also two interspinous bones probably belonging 
 to the same fish. This is probably also a palaeoniscid scale, 
 which we may provisionally recognise as Acrolepis (?) Afri- 
 canus. . . . No. 5 is a piece of grey, micaceous shale, with 
 scales of yet a fourth species of palaeoniscid fish ; . . . the 
 outer surface not being properly displayed, renders it impos- 
 sible to give a sufficient diagnosis. No. 6 is a piece of the
 
 Mr. 32] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 221 
 
 same shale having the clavicle of a small palaeoniscid fish, 
 which it is, however, impossible to name.' 
 
 'These fossiliferous beds,' adds Drummond, 'seem to occupy 
 a comparatively limited area, and to have a very high dip in 
 a southeasterly direction. At the spot where my observations 
 were taken they did not extend over more than half a mile of 
 country, but it is possible that the formation may persist for a 
 long distance in other directions. Indeed, I traced it for 
 some miles in the direction in which, some fifty or sixty miles 
 off, lay the coal already described, 1 and to which it may possi- 
 bly be related.' 
 
 It was in the same camp, twelve miles north of Ka- 
 ronga's, that Drummond made a discovery of a very 
 different kind, and one of greater personal interest to 
 himself, the phenomenal success among his country- 
 men of his book on Natural Law, while he had been 
 wandering in these savage regions. 
 
 'THURSDAY, Nov. 22d. After I had gone to roost, 
 sometime about midnight I was aroused by talking in 
 Munro's tent. Could it be the arrival of natives with 
 the mails from the coast ? " Mails," came in response 
 to my shout ; and in a few moments a boy came in with 
 a huge packet of letters and papers. My lamp was lit 
 in a twinkling and I was for the next three hours de- 
 vouring the first news I had had from home for five 
 months. Letters from all the family twice over, as the 
 bag contained two months' despatches. Spectator with 
 critique enclosed which much surprised me. I had 
 almost forgotten about the book ! Sleep was hard after 
 so much interesting news, and it was early morning be- 
 fore I dropped over.' 
 
 On the 26th they marched for Karonga's, ' Bain very 
 weak with fever, so our progress was very slow.' After 
 three days at Karonga's they embarked on the Ilala 
 on the 29th, and coasted along till opposite the re- 
 
 1 Tropical Africa, pp. 187, 1 88.
 
 222 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883 
 
 ported coal-bed south of Mount Waller. ' Landed and 
 spent the afternoon among the coal. Stewart's descrip- 
 tion is accurate as regards the topography, but he is 
 wrong geologically.' The matter is fully discussed in 
 Tropical Africa, pages 188, 189, with the conclusion 
 that ' the Lake Nyasa coal, so far as opened up at 
 present, can scarcely be regarded as having any great 
 economical importance, although the geological inter- 
 est of such a mineral in this region is considerable.' 
 ' Probably,' he says in his journal, ' the coal is a mere 
 fragmentary portion thrown down by a " fault." ' 
 
 On November 30 he was at Deep Bay, where they 
 slept on shore through heavy rain that nearly put out 
 their carriers' fires. ' This was about midnight. It is 
 wonderful how they manage to keep hold on " motu " 
 (fire) under the most trying circumstances. The rain 
 was enough to quench anything, but they must have 
 kept some embers screened in their hands, which they 
 had carried to the hut and back.' 
 
 On December i (with a ton of ivory aboard) they 
 anchored at Bandawe, partook of the Lord's Supper at 
 the service next day (Sunday), and witnessed the bap- 
 tism of five native converts. Sailing down the Lake 
 with Dr. and Mrs. Laws on board, they reached Ma- 
 tope on December 8, and stayed there, waiting for car- 
 riers, till the 1 3th, 'killing time and catching fever.' 
 On the 1 4th they camped in rain at the first stream 
 to the south of Matope. 
 
 ' Dec. 1 5th. Off with the sun, walked hard till 10 
 o'clock, when we reached stream and took breakfast. 
 Then all started for Blantyre, still 10 or 12 miles off. 
 I was last to leave, as I felt lazy the same inertia 
 that I had so often felt up country, and which I now 
 knew to be incipient fever. Lay down, with Jingo and 
 another of my men with the N'tonga, a few hundred
 
 ^)T. 32] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 223 
 
 yards from the start, and rested quite two hours. 
 Meantime a thunderstorm was raging ahead, and the 
 rain threatened to reach us every moment. However, 
 we had not a drop; but I had not gone 500 yards 
 before the ground became quite wet, and we were soon 
 almost wading in the stream of muddy water which 
 rushed down the path. Rain itself we had none. 
 There might have been five or six miles of this, and 
 then, at the stream at Mulunga's village, the wet 
 ground as suddenly ceased. I learned afterwards that 
 Dr. Laws and the others had got over this rain-zone 
 before it came on, and escaped quite dry. We both 
 must have made a narrow escape. 
 
 ' Stopped at the burn to make a hasty cup of tea, 
 and had just finished when I saw Mr. Mac II wain 
 coming to meet me on one of the donkeys. I thanked 
 him with all my heart, and after he had a cup of tea 
 he walked by my side into Blantyre (four or five miles). 
 At B. I was welcomed by Messrs. Scott, Henderson, 
 Hedderwick, and all the staff, and, after a plate of soup 
 at the Manse, went on to Mandala. 
 
 'SUNDAY, Dec. i6th. Felt rather lazy about going 
 to church, but, as I wished to go, a donkey was placed 
 at my disposal, which I accepted. I felt unaccounta- 
 bly tired, but had no other symptom. In the evening 
 I did not go out, but, feeling rather knocked up, went 
 early to bed. Dr. Laws insisted that I had fever; and 
 when I took my temperature and found it read a degree 
 or two above the normal, 98.6, I was as much aston- 
 ished as disgusted. I took no medicine, but heaped 
 on clothes to induce perspiration, which came in an 
 hour or two and necessitated two or three changes of 
 pyjamas. I had no sickness, but slight oppression and 
 headache of a new variety, though not very severe. 
 Slept fairly.
 
 224 HENRY DRUMMOND [1884 
 
 ' MONDAY, Dec. i yth. My fever was short-lived, 
 though I kept my bed all day. I fancy I might have 
 been up. Was glad to get it over. There seems now 
 no doubt that I had a good deal of fever up country 
 without my knowing it. Certainly I can now account 
 better for the want of spirit, want of appetite, laziness, 
 weakness, and general limpness which I felt so often. 
 Indeed, for a month or six weeks, this was almost my 
 normal state. Yet, at the time, I did not realise the 
 extent of it, but set it down to sheer laziness. No 
 doubt my cinchonised condition helped me greatly. 
 
 'TUESDAY, Dec. i8th. Up even to breakfast, 
 though feeling a little weak and top-heavy. This 
 giddiness remained all day.' 
 
 There had been great illness at Blantyre while 
 Drummond was up country, and the only two white 
 children in the community had died. Drummond 
 stayed a whole month at Mandala, hospitably enter- 
 tained by Mr. and Mrs. John Moir, and with out ad vent- 
 ure or incident, save numerous cases of fever in the 
 little colony, and the arrival of the first consul ap- 
 pointed to the region, Captain Foote, R.N., and his 
 family. On January 15 Drummond started down 
 stream for Katunga's, where his journal closes. He 
 retraced his journey of some months before, descended 
 the Shire and Zambezi, crossed the portage, and came 
 down the Qua-qua in a boat with eight rowers to 
 Quilimane finding the country, because of the rains, 
 in a very different aspect from that he had seen on his 
 way up. 
 
 ' My faithful Jingo was with me to the last. I had 
 serious thoughts of taking him home, but at last reluc- 
 tantly resolved to leave him in Africa, as I felt sure he 
 would weary away from his own tribe. He was a most 
 useful servant, and every white person I met begged
 
 jEr. 32] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 225 
 
 me to hand him over to them when I left the country. 
 Black servants very soon get spoiled, but my boy was 
 awarded first prize by universal consent. He actually 
 belonged to me as long as I was in the country ; and if 
 I had wished to keep him, I should simply have had to 
 send a few yards of cloth to his chief. I was really 
 very sorry to part with poor Jingo, and he looked very 
 lugubrious over it likewise. He came on board with 
 me, carrying my umbrella as his last service, and I 
 took him round the great ship. He was utterly lost 
 and bewildered, and I should give a good deal to hear 
 his report to the natives up country of all the won- 
 ders he saw at Quilimane. It seems quite strange to 
 be afloat once more, and I am almost as bewildered as 
 poor Jingo ! ' 
 
 From Quilimane Drummond sailed in the Currie 
 liner Dunkeld to East London, which he reached 
 on the 2ist of February. In South Africa he visited 
 King Williamstown, Pirie, and Lovedale, the famous 
 mission-station under Dr. Stewart of the Free Church 
 of Scotland, where he stayed the first half of March, 
 Fort Beaufort, Grahamstown, Port Elizabeth, and 
 Uitenhage, the home of his old college friend Pater- 
 son, who died there in 1875. Cape Town was 'dirty, 
 windy, and city-like,' so he went to Wynberg ' out of 
 sight the loveliest place I have seen in South Africa ' 
 and spent a fortnight wandering about the base of 
 Table Mountain. There he heard of the death of the 
 Shire chief Chipitula, whom he had visited : shot in a 
 quarrel by an English trader, who was also killed. 
 ' This is a serious matter and may lead to further dis- 
 turbances, as the whites are all looked upon as one 
 tribe, and the next European who passes will have to 
 look out. I do not think the affair will be carried 
 farther owing to circumstances, but there is no saying.
 
 226 HENRY DRUMMOND [1883-84 
 
 Anyway I am glad to be now on the safe side of it. 
 It is a rough country up there, say the best for it.' On 
 the gth of April he sailed from Cape Town, and by 
 the end of the month was in England. 
 
 Central Africa left a deep mark upon Drummond. 
 He accomplished his mission and was able to give 
 to the African Lakes Company a valuable report on 
 the geology and resources of the great country which 
 they were administering. He added infinitely to his 
 knowledge of natural history, and did original work 
 by his discovery of fossils and by his observations 
 of the effect of white ants upon soil. 1 But it was 
 not along any of these lines that the country left its 
 chief influence upon him. He had entered Africa 
 in perfect health and at the best season ; with almost 
 boyish glee he had revelled in his journey of exciting 
 scenes and adventures as 'one continual picnic from 
 first to last.' Then he met the first European graves 
 Mrs. Livingstone's, Bishop Mackenzie's, the pathetic 
 cemetery at Old Livingstonia. 2 He saw the mission- 
 aries laid down with fever, some like his compan- 
 ion, the heroic Bain, suffering in solitude hundreds of 
 miles from another white man. The news of Stewart's 
 sudden death smote him at Bandawe. A white mother 
 died in childbirth every white birth in Central Africa 
 up to that time had cost a life and the only two Brit- 
 ish children in the land died while he was up country. 
 In short, Drummond saw all the cruel sacrifices, insepa- 
 rable from the first heroic assaults of Christianity upon 
 the heathendom of the Dark Continent. He saw, too, 
 the slave-trade in its most ghastly features, the cruel 
 Arab dealer, the tracks dotted with human bones, the 
 
 1 See Tropical Africa, Chapter VI., 'The White Ant: a Theory.' 
 3 Tropical Africa, pp. 15, 16, 22, 23, 41-45.'
 
 ,ET. 32] EAST CENTRAL AFRICA 22 7 
 
 stockades with human heads impaled on them. Then 
 came his own fits of lassitude and depression, attacks 
 of fever in his tent under the pitiless rain, and a 
 month of weakness and inertia. All this marked him 
 for life. When he returned to Scotland we noticed a 
 splash of grey hair upon his head. And although be- 
 yond this he seems to have suffered from his African 
 travel no other physical injury, there is little doubt that 
 his spirit was affected by all he had seen and suffered. 
 This is visible between his letters on arriving and 
 his letters on leaving the Continent. It coloured his 
 views on certain aspects of life and religion. Up till 
 
 1883 Drummond had never suffered personally, except 
 from the long trial of uncertainty with regard to his 
 vocation. He had never known loneliness. Death 
 had not come into his family, and hardly within his 
 sight. To a friend who had lost a little nephew in 
 1877 he had said, ' I cannot write on these things, for 
 I know little of their reality or awful mystery.' But in 
 Africa he learned to know. When on his work with 
 Moody he had almost fiercely resented the statement 
 of a speaker that suffering was inseparable from Chris- 
 tian service. But now he knew that it was so ; and I 
 do not think it is a fault of memory to say that from 
 
 1884 onwards there came upon his always pure and 
 sympathetic temper a certain tinge of sadness with 
 which we had not been able to associate him in pre- 
 vious years. Upon his return to Scotland he said to 
 a friend, ' I've been in an atmosphere of death all the 
 time.'
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE FAME OF NATURAL LAW 
 
 WHILE Drummond was in Central Africa his book 
 achieved a most amazing popularity. No one was 
 more amazed at it than himself. He had left Eng- 
 land within a week of its publication, in June, 1883, 
 and was beyond all news till the following November. 
 Then suddenly, one midnight, between Nyasa and 
 Tanganyika, a bundle of letters was thrust into his 
 tent. He jumped from bed, and, hastily lighting a 
 candle, fed his long famine of tidings from home. 
 Nothing had changed there except his own reputa- 
 tion. He read that his volume had passed immedi- 
 ately through a first and a second edition, that the 
 reviewers were carried away by it, and that in especial 
 the Spectator could recall ' no book of our time (with 
 the exception of Dr. Mozley's University Sermons] 
 which showed such a power of relating the moral and 
 practical truths of religion, so as to make them take 
 fresh hold of the mind and vividly impress the imagi- 
 nation.' This review enforced the already great popu- 
 larity of the volume; and, by the time Drummond 
 reached England in the following May, the popularity 
 had risen to fame. At the end of the eighth month 
 seven thousand copies had been sold, and the circu- 
 lation still went up by leaps and bounds. The more 
 important Reviews printed long articles upon Natural 
 Law. While some of them disputed both its theories 
 and conclusions, others considered it ' the most impor- 
 
 228
 
 THE FAME OF NATURAL LAW 2 29 
 
 tant contribution to the relations of science and religion 
 which the century had produced ; ' and all attributed 
 its extraordinary success ' to its undoubted merits, 
 the originality of its ideas and its style.' ' A pioneer 
 book ' ; ' full of the germs and seeds of things ' ; 'a 
 remarkable and important book, the theory which is 
 enounced may without exaggeration be termed a 
 discovery ' ; * the reader is stirred to the depths of his 
 spiritual nature ' ; ' an unspeakably fascinating volume,' 
 these are but a few drops of the almost weekly 
 showers of praise which were poured upon Natural 
 Law during the first year of its life. But not even such 
 praise can measure the extent of its vogue among the 
 people. The book was read almost everywhere. At 
 the end of the second year thirty thousand copies had 
 been sold ; at the end of the third, forty thousand ; at 
 the end of the fifth, sixty-nine thousand, and still the 
 numbers grew. To-day the sales have reached one 
 hundred and twenty-three thousand in Great Britain 
 alone. 
 
 About this rush of public favour one fact is conspic- 
 uous it was proportionally much greater in Eng- 
 land and in America than it was in Scotland. The 
 principle that a prophet has less honour in his own 
 country does not explain this, for no part of the Eng- 
 lish-speaking race exceeded in admiration for Drum- 
 mond his own countrymen, and especially his private 
 friends. But the hostile criticism, which the main 
 idea of the book had received from the Glasgow Club 
 to which it was first communicated, was repeated 
 nowhere more persistently than in Scotland, and by 
 none with greater conviction than by a few of the 
 author's closest companions. 
 
 The causes of the immediate popularity of Natural 
 Law are obvious. With the exception of a few pas-
 
 230 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 sages the book is beautifully written. But the clear 
 and simple style is charged with an enthusiasm and 
 carries a wealth of religious experience which capture 
 the heart, and tempt the thoughtful reader to become 
 indifferent to almost every prejudice which the intro- 
 duction has excited in his mind. A teacher who, with 
 such gifts, founds his teaching upon the facts of Chris- 
 tian experience, is always sure of a welcome ; and the 
 welcome will be the more cordial if he expounds these 
 facts, as not arbitrary, but subject to reason and law 
 
 and this apart altogether from the question whether 
 the laws he alleges be the true ones. When, besides, 
 he deals with the relations of science and religion, he 
 presents a subject that is not only of great intellectual 
 interest to most persons of education, but to many 
 thousands also is a topic of the most acute personal 
 significance. Among the letters which Drummond 
 received between 1883 and 1892 are a large number 
 from men and women of all degrees of culture, whose 
 faith, once strong, had been shattered by the new con- 
 victions of science, and who looked for the reconcilia- 
 tion of the claims of science with religion as they that 
 look for the morning. Science had proved the uni- 
 verse to be subject to exceptionless laws ; and the 
 form under which those persons had received religion 
 
 as if it were outside of reason and independent, if 
 not defiant, of law had collapsed beneath their im- 
 pressions of science. They were now not concerned 
 whether Drummond made out a case for the special 
 laws which he illustrated, nor whether his main thesis, 
 that physical law continues within the spiritual sphere, 
 had been proven. It was enough for them that they 
 encountered a teacher who expounded, defended, and 
 enforced their deepest religious experiences upon what 
 appeared to be the dominant intellectual methods of
 
 THE FAME OF NATURAL LAW 23! 
 
 their generation. There were also a number of scien- 
 tific men who had not passed through a definitely 
 Christian discipline, and who called themselves agnos- 
 tic, but who yearned to receive from the methods they 
 avowed gifts to the religious side of their nature, and 
 a number of these also felt that what they needed they 
 got from Drummond. Then, too, devout and poetic 
 souls who rejoice in Nature as the sacrament and 
 divine expression of spiritual truth, welcomed the book 
 as though it were a consummate interpretation of this. 
 And finally, there were crowds of commonplace men 
 and women who were touched by neither the poetic 
 nor the scientific spirit, but who were in need of the 
 pure comfort, the shrewd counsel, and the lofty ideals 
 in which the volume is rich, or who in their weariness 
 of the world rested simply in its pure light and peace. 
 
 Of all these classes, illustrations may be given from 
 the heap of letters which the author of Natural Law 
 received from every part of the world. To his biog- 
 rapher, who has gone through them, these letters have 
 brought an almost overwhelming impression of the 
 hunger of this generation for religion and the spiritual 
 life. Next to Drummond's experiences during the 
 Great Mission of 1873-75, this correspondence must 
 have helped to develop his wonderful expertness in 
 dealing with the men and women of his time in their 
 religious needs and aspirations. 
 
 The first letter we may take is one of scores of its 
 kind. The writer gives her name and address in a 
 town of New York State. The date is late, Decem- 
 ber 9, 1893, but Drummond had received many similar 
 tokens within a year of the publication of the book. 
 
 ' I know you are a grand good man, while I am 
 only a poor working-woman ; but if you would really 
 care to know, your book has comforted many a weary
 
 232 HENRY DPUMMOND 
 
 hour of my life. I have read it over and over again, 
 thoughtfully, and sometimes prayerfully, until I know 
 many of its pages by heart, and so can always have 
 them with me to make me better, more thoughtful of 
 my fellow-men, and more faithful to God. I thank 
 you for giving it to the world, for I may have it to 
 purify my heart and life. Your book is one of my 
 treasures, and has made me realise and believe the 
 most momentous truth that Christ must be in the 
 Christian, and created a longing in my own heart to 
 love Him more and serve Him better.' 
 
 Another wrote, echoing beautifully the expressions 
 of many: ' Your book has been a benediction to me; ' 
 and numbers traced to it their conversion from wild 
 and profligate lives, or from a careless and formal 
 Christianity. The late Mr. Campbell Finlayson, in 
 sending to Drummond his very able criticism of the 
 volume, added that it 'has interested and stimulated 
 the minds of many who, like myself, are unable to 
 accept some of its conclusions.' 
 
 But welcomes more specific than these were given 
 by authorities in the departments both of science and 
 religion. It was one Anglican divine who wrote the 
 article in the Spectator. Another said enthusiasti- 
 cally, ' it was the best book he had ever read upon 
 Christian experience.' Several men, well known for 
 their contributions to theology, congratulated Drum- 
 mond on having placed the argument for the spiritual 
 life upon a sound basis. One wrote thus in June, 
 1884: 
 
 ' I daresay from the seven thousand purchasers of 
 your book on Natural Law you have had more letters 
 than you care for, but I trust you will not allow this 
 to deprive me of the pleasure of saying how delighted 
 I have been with it. I feel that you have added
 
 THE FAME OF NATURAL LAW 233 
 
 enormously to the avenues of my own spiritual exist- 
 ence, and therefore I warmly thank you for it. I re- 
 gard the application of your method as most meanful 
 (sic\ and think your conclusions impregnable. You 
 have provided a splendid apparatus of additional 
 inductive probability to show the existence of a 
 spiritual world, which to those who are prepared to 
 accept it must be final. I am not sure, however, of 
 its effect upon those who start with the denial of its 
 existence.' 
 
 On the part of many men of science the book re- 
 ceived an immediate and a cordial welcome. A great 
 London physician said of it in March, 1884: 'One of 
 the best books I have ever read I have given away 
 six copies of it.' From this side take the following, 
 written in July, 1883, about a month after the book 
 was published, by one of the foremost authorities in 
 his own branch of science : 
 
 ' MY DEAR SIR, I have just been reading with 
 extreme interest your very able and suggestive book, 
 Natural Law in the Spiritual World, and cannot 
 refrain from writing you these few words of thanks 
 for the strengthening of my own convictions, which 
 you have given me. It is now many years since I felt 
 that Christianity is not in harmony with the Science 
 of Nature, and that to commend it to students of 
 Nature some other mode of presentment was re- 
 quired. Long pondering over the question in my 
 own case has led me through much difficulty and 
 doubt and pain to see the matter just as you see it, 
 and I can hardly say how glad I am to find these 
 notions, or rather convictions, so clearly and convin- 
 cingly set forth as they are in your work. I believe 
 your book will be of inestimable value to many a 
 troubled and distracted soul. Living as I did for
 
 234 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 many years a somewhat lonely life in the country, 
 practically cut off from personal converse with fellow- 
 workers, I yet was well aware that materialistic views 
 of life were rampant amongst biologists, but until 
 
 I came to to reside I was hardly prepared to 
 
 find materialism so victorious. And yet among the 
 many positivists with whom I have recently come in 
 contact, there is much doubt and restlessness. Their 
 religion of death and annihilation is not a religion of 
 peace. And I have been quite touched by the avidity 
 with which they will listen to any argument that seems 
 to open for them a possible means of escape from their 
 melancholy conclusion. One of my students, who 
 called for me last Sunday evening, told me, with the 
 tears in his eyes, that he would fain believe as his 
 mother taught him, but that his scientific training 
 would not let him. It is very sad to think how many 
 hearts are breaking how many souls are being 
 eclipsed all around one. But the dawn, I feel assured, 
 is breaking. I do not know any thoughtful Agnostic 
 who does not doubt his own conclusions, and who 
 would not readily escape them if he could. Such a 
 book as yours will appeal with great force to all such, 
 and it will give me the greatest pleasure to recom- 
 mend it to every thoughtful biologist I encounter.' 
 
 These typical letters, which represent the kind of 
 effect the book so suddenly produced, I give without 
 the names of the authors, for some of them are dead, 
 and some who live may no longer adhere to the opin- 
 ions they then expressed. It is remarkable, indeed, 
 how many, both on the evangelical and the scientific 
 sides of life, at first welcomed the book as a proof of 
 religion and a reconciliation of her claims with those 
 of science, but afterwards fell away from this opinion. 
 
 Besides the gratitude which a book wins from those
 
 THE FAME OF NATURAL LAW 235 
 
 whom it has helped in the hard struggle of head or 
 heart, there are two other standards by which its 
 power may be measured the serious criticism which 
 it calls forth from philosophic minds, and the fascina- 
 tion it creates upon all the restless race of faddists, 
 quacks, 'cranks,' and monomaniacs in general. Natu- 
 ral Law in the Spiritual World triumphantly passed 
 both of these tests. 
 
 To take the latter first I suppose Drummond had 
 more correspondence with theorists and with dreamers 
 than any other author of our generation. Their name 
 was legion. A number hailed him with eerie joy as a 
 fellow-spirit. They have been working, they write, f.or 
 years in the same direction ; they have reached the 
 same conclusions by 'electro-biology,' 'medical psy- 
 chology,' 'mind-healing,' 'Christian science,' 'interpre- 
 tation of prophecy,' and I know not what else, and 
 they are eager to point out defects and omissions in 
 Drummond's arguments which can be repaired only 
 by their peculiar methods. They are generally retired 
 army officers, doctors without practice, dreamy school- 
 mistresses, lonely squatters. Some are retired profli- 
 gates, into whose minds, swept empty of vice but also 
 destitute of principle, the devils of vanity, curiosity, 
 audacity, paradox, and unreason appear to have rushed 
 with riotous vigour. One extraordinary letter comes 
 from a man who describes himself as ' fifty-nine years 
 of age, converted at fifty-six from a life of sensuality,' 
 and now recovering health and social usefulness 
 through 'Christian Science,' to which he welcomes 
 Drummond as a powerful adherent. Some offer the 
 author an additional chapter in which his principle is 
 applied to the phenomena of reproduction. Others 
 tell him that he has sinned by forgetting the tri- 
 partite constitution of man, and disclose to him three
 
 236 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 analogies of life where he has discovered only two. 
 And, of course, there are more than one fortunately 
 far away in Australia and the Western States of 
 America who propose marriage to him. It is all a 
 curious chapter in the history of human delusions. 
 
 Of a different class are those who claim Drum- 
 mond's adhesion to their own denomination or partic- 
 ular heresy. It was very natural that Swedenborgians 
 should assert that many of his positions have been an- 
 ticipated in ' the divine correspondences ' of their mas- 
 ter; and no doubt they were right in pointing out 
 that the Swedenborg's method of working down from 
 the spiritual to the physical was preferable to Drum- 
 mond's of working up from the physical to the spirit- 
 ual. A similar claim with even more justice was 
 made by the disciples of James Hinton. It was 
 equally natural for those Christians who believe in 
 the theory of conditional immortality that short 
 cut through many mazes to read Natural Law as a 
 corroboration of their creed. Perhaps the greatest 
 number of letters which Drummond received upon 
 his volume came from such promoters of the applica- 
 tion to the future life of the doctrine of ' the survival 
 of the fittest.' Then the foes of * Bibliolatry,' as they 
 call it, congratulate him on having removed religion 
 from a Scriptural basis, though they ' look with suspi- 
 cion upon his employment of so many texts ' to illus- 
 trate his arguments. 
 
 The letters which criticise omissions in Natural 
 Law are not only proofs of the unreasonableness 
 of the writers, but form an impressive tribute to the 
 power of a volume which could evoke such colossal 
 expectations of what its author might have done, had 
 he willed, in meeting the intellectual demands of his 
 age. Many blame him for not settling all the great
 
 THE FAME OF NATURAL LAW 2 37 
 
 problems of religion and life. Upon a number of 
 these problems some letters dwell with an ignorance 
 and a hunger which pathetically reveal how much in- 
 tellectual starvation may linger in our midst within 
 sight and touch of the rich supplies that it desperately 
 supposes do not exist. A squatter, writing from ' the 
 lonely wilds of the Australian bush,' thanks Drum- 
 mond for ' a great intellectual treat,' but angrily asks 
 him, with pretty much the same petulance as a sav- 
 age beats his fetich or a mediaeval churchman used to 
 sulk at his saint, why he has not settled other diffi- 
 culties. Why has he not dealt with ' the atrocities of 
 the Old Testament,' l ' with the miracles of the New,' 
 ' with the virgin birth of Christ,' 'with the ultimate fate 
 of the heathen,' and so forth. The same questions 
 followed Drummond wherever he lectured during the 
 next ten years and were sent up on scraps of paper to 
 every platform on which he appeared. ' What is your 
 theory of the Atonement ? ' ' Can you explain it on 
 the principles of your volume?' ' What place do you 
 leave for free will ? ' ' Does man's immortality depend 
 on the gift of free grace?' 'Why were the Jews, on 
 your theory, specially selected by God ? ' ' Why was 
 Jesus Christ born a Jew?' Every kind of question, 
 soluble and insoluble, relevant and irrelevant to the 
 volume, was thrown at the head of the author. But 
 with some pertinence the questions on free will and 
 'conditional immortality ' far outnumber all the rest. 
 
 The many gleams of reasonable objections to Nat- 
 ural Law which these letters and questions reveal 
 were formulated with great ability, in a number of 
 serious articles and pamphlets, the long list of which, 
 though they are in the main hostile, bear unmistak- 
 able tribute to the impression made by the book en 
 
 1 See below, p. 400.
 
 238 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 the mind of our generation. Appended is a catalogue 
 of the greater number. 1 The most able and effective 
 are the treatises by Mr. Campbell Finlayson and 'a 
 Brother of the Natural Man.' I do not know who 
 wrote the article in the British Quarterly; that in 
 the Church Quarterly was, though generally hostile 
 to Drummond's logic, by Mr. Lyttleton, the author of 
 the previous article in the Spectator which had so 
 largely helped to lift the book into fame. 
 
 But, from the first, Natural Law encountered more 
 than criticism of this honest and able kind. No 
 volume of our time has provoked more bitter and pas- 
 sionate blame. It roused both the odium theologicum 
 and that which is scarcely less savage, the odium scien- 
 
 1 I. Biological Religion ; an essay in criticism of ' Natural Law in the Spiritual 
 World.' By T. Campbell Finlayson. London : Simpkin, Marshall, & Co. Bd. 2s. 
 
 2. On 'Natural Law in the Spiritual World'' ; by a Brother of the Natural 
 Man. Paisley: Gardner. Paper, is. 
 
 3. Drifting Away . Remarks on Professor Drummond's ' Natural Law in the 
 Spiritual World.' By the Hon. Philip Carteret Hill, D.C.L. London : Bemrose 
 & Sons, 6d. 
 
 4. 'Natural Law in the Spiritual World' Examined. By W. Woods Smyth. 
 London : Elliott Stock. Bd. is. 6d. 
 
 5. Remarks on a book entitled 'Natural Law in the Spiritual World.' Being 
 the Substance of Four Lectures given in London by Benjamin Wills Newton. 
 London : Houlston & Sons. Paper is. gd. 
 
 6. A Critical Analysis of Drummond's 'Natural Law in the Spiritual 
 World? With a Reply to some of its conclusions. By E. C. Larned. Chicago : 
 
 Janson, M'Clurg & Co. 
 
 7. Review of 'Natural Law in the Spiritual World? By J. B. Fry. 
 
 8. Drummond and Miracles. A Critique on 'Natural Law in the Spiritual 
 World.' Paisley: Gardner, is. 
 
 9. The Laws of Nature and the Laws of God. A Reply to Professor Drum- 
 mond by Samuel Cockburn, M.D., L.R.C.S.E. London: Swan Sonnenschein. 
 Bd. 3*. 6d. 
 
 10. Mr. Drummond's Book. With special references to Biogenesis. Shrews- 
 bury : Adnitt & Naunton. 6d. 
 
 11. Are Laws the Same in the Natural and Spiritual Worlds ? By A. C. 
 Denholm. Kilmarnock : Herald Office, zd. 
 
 12. Are the Natural and Spiritual Worlds One in Law? By George F. 
 Magoun, D.D., Iowa College. Reprinted from the Bibliotheca Sacra. 
 
 Besides articles in the Church Quarterly for January, 1884, and in the 
 British Quarterly.
 
 THE FAME OF NATURAL LAW 239 
 
 tificum. An ' Old Man,' signing himself ' Agnostic ' 
 and writing from the Athenaeum, flings in Drum- 
 mond's face the differences of doctrine among Chris- 
 tians, assails him with quotations from Schopenhauer, 
 and rails at him for daring to believe either in a revela- 
 tion, or a spiritual world, or a God. ' The whole thing 
 is an enigma beyond the grasp of the human intellect!' 
 On the religious side there arose a most extraordinary 
 irritation. Certain evangelicals caught at the state- 
 ment on page 30 of Natural Law, that it (religion) has 
 not yet been placed on that basis which would make 
 them (many of its positions) impregnable. They took 
 this as meaning that Drummond did not recognise 
 the authority of the Bible as the witness of God's most 
 gracious dealings with the race, whereas what he 
 meant by ' religion ' in the sentence they quoted was 
 not the teaching of the Bible, but the experiences of 
 the Christian believer. These, he felt, had been treated 
 in too loose a way ; he examined them as facts, and 
 attempted to explain the laws by which they are gov- 
 erned. Sheer misunderstanding of this provoked 
 many to virulent attacks upon him. They withdrew 
 from religious associations of which he was a member ; 
 they would not speak from the same platform; they 
 published pamphlets against him, and wrote him bitter 
 and contemptuous letters. They said, ' He founds 
 religion upon science, and to do so is to be an infidel.' 
 It was extraordinary how they succeeded in poisoning 
 against him the minds of a number of people with 
 whom he had shared the work of the Great Mission 
 of 1873-75. There were hot controversies in many 
 evangelistic committees as to whether he should be 
 asked to conferences and conventions ; and some 
 societies cancelled their invitations to him to lecture. 
 One religious paper, which had reported his work with
 
 240 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 Moody, and to which he had often contributed, not 
 only styled Natural Law a dangerous book, but gave 
 orders to its reporters at a large convention in America 
 not to take down anything that Henry Drummond 
 might say. His services as an evangelist, his character 
 and influence, the great amount of positive Christian 
 doctrine that he taught, were all ignored by these hot 
 hunters of a fancied heresy. They would have been 
 (from their own point of view) more profitably occu- 
 pied in proving it a fallacy. But this none of them 
 seemed to see. Drummond met all attacks upon him 
 with great good temper ; and where the assailants were 
 old comrades in religious work, or had any other right 
 to be answered and even in many cases where they 
 had no right to be answered at all he replied with 
 gentleness and courtesy. One never heard him say a 
 word against the most violent of his opponents. But 
 of his temper towards his critics there will be more 
 to say in connection with his later works. 
 
 A few lines may be added upon the vogue which 
 Natural Law in the Spiritual World enjoyed upon 
 the Continent of Europe. 
 
 Within a very short time after its publication in 
 England reviews of it appeared in religious and lit- 
 erary journals in France, Germany, and Scandinavia. 
 But the news of its religious value was more widely 
 scattered over these countries, as well as in Holland, 
 Italy, and Russia, by private correspondence. In a 
 year or two requests for permission to translate it were 
 received by Drummond from every land in Europe 
 except Turkey and Greece. There are two transla- 
 tions into German, 1 the earlier of which appeared in 
 1886. In 1885 the French edition was ready, and by 
 
 1 The first was published through the Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung of Leipzig, 
 Das Naturgesctz in der Geisteswelt, and had a large circulation; the other, by
 
 THE FAME OF NATURAL LAW 2d f l 
 
 1887 Danish, Dutch, and Swedish translations were 
 published. 
 
 The book appears to have excited the greatest 
 attention in Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia, if we 
 may judge both from the letters Drummond received, 
 and the number of pamphlets published, in the lan- 
 guage of these countries, both in defence of the book, 
 and in controversy with its main positions. It is 
 almost superfluous to give a resume of these letters 
 and pamphlets ; in substance they reflect the British 
 and American letters summarised above. They con- 
 tain the same fervent testimonies from individuals who 
 have been lifted to faith and a better life ; the same 
 inquiries from evangelical Christians as to Drum- 
 mond's attitude to the doctrines of Christianity; the 
 same bitter attacks upon his belief in evolution ; the 
 same solid discussions of his argument ; and the same 
 eerie ejaculations of sympathy and welcome from 
 persons who believe they have found in him a prophet 
 for their particular ' revelations,' and ' systems of 
 thought.' One Swede begs Drummond to tell him 
 how exactly the manifestations of new truth which 
 Natural Law contains were let down from heaven. 1 
 There are letters of gratitude and inquiry from sev- 
 eral of the Russian sects. Some sign themselves 
 4 disciples ' and ' devoted adherents.' In Germany, as 
 in England, though of course in less proportion, a 
 
 Velhagen Klasing of Berlin, reached by 1897 a circulation of 4000. It was done 
 by Miss Julie Sutler, to whom also was intrusted the German translation of 
 Drummond's Christmas addresses. 
 
 1 ' Do tell me if you have holy treasures lying by, containing sacred revelations 
 from the realms above ? You must have them, or you could not have written as 
 you have written. . . . You must, like Daniel and other great seers, have seen 
 visions; you must have been introduced, "whether in the body or in the spirit," 
 into the far regions of spiritual spheres. If I dare ask you these questions, it is 
 because I do not hesitate to tell you it has only been through such means that I 
 have formed my opinions, and only through some special grace that I believe you 
 could have come to such clearness.' There are nine pages of this.
 
 242 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 small literature appeared both of articles and pam- 
 phlets, and one symptom among many others a 
 new magazine, to which many good names were 
 attached, promised in its prospectus to give an 
 ' exakt-naturwissenschaftliche Seelenanalyse (nach Art 
 Drummond's).' The book does not appear to have 
 impressed any German authorities in Natural Science 
 in Germany as upon its first appearance it did impress 
 some such in England. But it received attention 
 from theologians ; and many capable writers discussed 
 it seriously and with respect. Their hostile criticism 
 was largely on the lines on which criticism had been 
 directed in Great Britain. It is summed up by 
 Dr. Otto Zockler a scholar and a thinker of repute 
 as well in this country as in his own in the follow- 
 ing words : 
 
 ' One may grant that the criticism of Drummond, which 
 has appeared in quite a considerable number of pamphlets 
 and articles, has given expression to much that is correct. 
 Such an acknowledgement, however, must not be all&wed to 
 mislead us into ignoring the high value of the healthy 
 stimulus which has proceeded from Drummond's writings. 
 If several English critics have complained of Drummond's 
 " evolutionist gospel " as scarcely different from ordinary 
 Darwinism, and as issuing in " Entwickelungsunglauben " 
 (development-infidelity) [sic], there is not only strong exag- 
 geration in such a complaint, but also disregard of the fact 
 that the Glasgow scholar has several times expressed him- 
 self especially in The Ascent of Man against the unlimited 
 validity of the Darwinian principle of the " Struggle for 
 Existence." And if one of the German critics Oberpastor 
 Dr. Joh. Liitkens, of Riga, in the brochure Henry Drummond's 
 Traktate gewurdigt in drei Brief en an eine Freundin l (which, 
 we may remark in passing, is one of the most solid we know) 
 has found fault with the Pelagian tendency of Drummond's 
 
 1 Riga, Hoerschelmann, 1891.
 
 THE FAME OF NATURAL LAW 243 
 
 ethic (das Pelagianisierende der Drummondschen Ethik), its 
 mitigation (Verflachung) of the conception of sin, and its dis- 
 regard of God's free pardoning grace in Christ, he does so 
 only by ignoring the profound manner in which the greater 1 
 work of the noble Scotsman speaks of the necessity of the 
 new birth. He forgets that the individual's utter inability to 
 deliver himself from the yoke of sin and of death is for 
 Drummond a fact of fundamental importance, and that, when 
 Drummond takes the field against the superficial and shallow 
 (am Peripherischen haftende) modes of thought of one-sided 
 modern moralists, he at the same time declares war against 
 Pelagianism.' 
 
 1 f.e. than his booklets.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 EVOLUTION AND REVELATION 
 
 MUCH of the hostile criticism of Natural Law which 
 has been described in the last chapter turned upon the 
 question of Drummond's attitude to the relations of 
 science and religion, and upon the view which he took 
 of the authority of the Bible. Upon those topics, he 
 published, soon after his return from Africa, three 
 articles, two in the Expositor for I885, 1 on the 'Con- 
 tribution of Science to Christianity,' and one in the 
 Nineteenth Century for February, 1886, on ' Mr. Glad- 
 stone and Genesis.' The growth of his opinions can- 
 not be sufficiently traced without some quotations 
 from these : 
 
 The former articles open with a beautiful introduction, 
 which describes the expansion, by modern science, of 'the 
 intellectual area of Christianity,' and the power of Chris- 
 tianity to assimilate new facts without either false hopes or 
 false fears. 
 
 ' It knows it can approve itself to science, but it has been 
 taken by surprise, and therefore begs time. It will honestly 
 look up its credentials and adjust itself, if necessary, to the 
 new relation. Now this is the position of theology at the 
 present moment. And theology proceeds by asking science 
 what it demands, and then borrows its instruments to carry 
 out the improvements. The loan of the instruments consti- 
 tutes the first great contribution of science to religion. What 
 are these instruments ? We shall name two the Scientific 
 Method and the Doctrine of Evolution. The first is the 
 
 1 Third Series, Vol. I. 
 244
 
 ,ET. 33] EVOLUTION AND REVELATION 245 
 
 instrument for the interpretation of nature ; the second is 
 given us as the method of nature itself. With the first of 
 these we shall deal formally; the second will present itself 
 in various shapes as we proceed.' 
 
 After stating that science has had no exclusive right to the 
 use of the scientific method, but that theologians have em- 
 ployed it again and again, Drummond says that the things 
 on which the method insists are chiefly two the value of 
 facts and the value of laws. 'On bare facts science from 
 first to last is based. Now if Christianity possesses anything, 
 it possesses facts. So long as the facts were presented to 
 the world Christianity spread with marvellous rapidity. But 
 there came a time when the facts were less exhibited to men 
 than the evidence for the facts. Theology, that is to say, 
 began to rest upon authority. . . . Then there came another 
 time when this authority appealed to the secular arm. It is 
 these intermediaries between the facts and the modern ob- 
 server that stumble science. It will look at facts, and facts 
 alone. The dangers, the weakness, the unpracticableness in 
 some cases of this method are well known. Nevertheless, it 
 is a right method. It is the method of all Reformation ; it 
 was the method of the Reformation. . . . 
 
 ' Now Christianity is learning from science to go back to its 
 facts, and it is going back to facts. Critics in every tongue 
 are engaged upon the facts; travellers in every land are 
 unveiling facts ; exegetes are at work upon the words, scholars 
 upon the manuscripts; sceptics, believing and unbelieving, 
 are eliminating the not-facts ; and the whole field is alive with 
 workers. And the point to mark is that these men are not 
 manipulating, but verifying, facts. 
 
 ' There is one portion of this field of facts, however, which 
 is still strangely neglected, and to which a scientific theology 
 may turn its next attention. The evidence for Christianity is 
 not the Evidences. The evidence for Christianity is a Chris- 
 tian. The unity of physics is the atom, of biology the cell, 
 of philosophy the man, of theology the Christian. The 
 natural man, his regeneration by the Holy Spirit, the spiritual 
 man and his relations to the world and to God, these are the 
 modern facts for a scientific theology. We may indeed talk
 
 246 HENRY DRUMMOND [1885 
 
 with science on its own terms about the creation of the world, 
 and the spirituality of nature, and the force behind nature, 
 and the unseen universe ; but our language is not less scien- 
 tific, not less justified by fact, when we speak of the work of 
 the risen Christ, and the contemporary activities of the Holy 
 Ghost, and the facts of regeneration, and the powers which 
 are freeing men from sin. There is a great experiment 
 which is repeated every day, the evidence for which is as 
 accessible as for any fact of science; its phenomena are 
 as palpable as any in nature ; its processes are as explicable, 
 or as inexplicable ; its purpose is as clear ; and yet science 
 has never been seriously asked to reckon with it, nor has 
 theology ever granted it the place its impressive reality de- 
 mands. One aim of a scientific theology will be to study 
 conversion and restore to Christianity the most powerful 
 witness. . . . 
 
 4 But not less essential, in the scientific method, than the 
 examination of facts, is the arrangement of them under laws. 
 And the work of modern science in this direction has resulted 
 in its grandest achievement the demonstration of the uni- 
 formity of nature. This doctrine must have an immediate 
 effect upon the entire system of theology. For one thing, 
 the contribution of the spiritual world to the uniformity of 
 nature has yet to be made. Not that the natural world is to 
 include the spiritual, but that a higher natural will be seen 
 to include both. . . . 
 
 ' There may be laws, or actings, in the spiritual world, which 
 it may seem to some impossible to include in such a scheme. 
 God is not, in theology, a Creator merely, but a father; and 
 according to the counsel of His own will He may act in 
 different cases in different ways. To which the reply is that 
 this also is law. It is the law of the Father, the law of the 
 paternal relation, the law of the free-will ; yet not an excep- 
 tional law, it is the law of all fathers, of all free-wills. 
 Besides, if in the private Christian life the child of God 
 finds dealings which are not reducible to law, grant even their 
 lawlessness if that be possible, that is a family matter, a rela- 
 tion of parent and child, similar to the earthly relation, and 
 scarcely the kind of case to be referred to science. Into
 
 J&i. 33] EVOLUTION AND REVELATION 247 
 
 ordinary family relations science rarely feels called to intrude ; 
 and it is obvious that in dealing with this class of cases in the 
 spiritual world, science is attempting a thing which in the 
 natural world it leaves alone. If ethics chooses to take up 
 these questions, it has more right to do so; but that there 
 should be a reserve in the spiritual world for God acting tow- 
 ards His children in a way past finding out is what would be 
 expected from the mere analogies of the family. . . . 
 
 ' The relations of the spiritual man, however, are not all, or 
 nearly all, in this department. There are whole classes of 
 facts in the outer provinces which have yet to be examined 
 and arranged under appropriate laws. The intellectual gain 
 to Christianity of such a process will be obvious. But there 
 is also a practical gain to the religious experience of not less 
 moment. Science is nothing if not practical, and the scientific 
 method has little for Christianity after all if it is not to exalt 
 and enrich the lives of its followers. It is worth while, there- 
 fore, taking a single example of its practical value. 
 
 'The sense of lawlessness which pervades the spiritual 
 world at present reacts in many subtle and injurious ways 
 upon the personal experience of Christians. They gather the 
 idea that things are managed differently there from any- 
 where else less strictly, less consistently ; that blessings or 
 punishments are dispensed arbitrarily ; and that everything 
 is ordered rather by a Divine discretion than by a system 
 of fixed principle. In this higher atmosphere ordinary 
 sequences are not to be looked for cause and effect are 
 suspended or superseded. Accordingly, to descend to the 
 particular, men pray for things which they are quite unable 
 to receive, or altogether unwilling to pay the price for. They 
 expect effects without touching the preliminary causes, and 
 causes without calculating the tremendous nature of the 
 effects. There is nothing more appalling than the wholesale 
 way in which unthinking people plead to the Almighty for 
 the richest and most spiritual of His promises, and claim 
 their immediate fulfilment, without themselves fulfilling one 
 of the conditions either on which they are promised or can 
 possibly be given. If the Bible is closely looked into, it 
 will probably be found that very many of the promises have
 
 248 HENRY DRUMMOND [1885 
 
 attached to them a condition itself not infrequently the 
 best part of the promise. True prayer for any promise is to 
 plead for power to fulfil the condition on which it is offered, 
 and which, being fulfilled, is in that act given. We have 
 need, certainly in this sense, to know more of prayer and 
 natural law. And science could make no truer contribution 
 to modern Christianity than to enforce upon us all, as un- 
 weariedly as in nature, the law of causation in the spiritual 
 life. The reason why so many people get nothing from 
 prayer is that they expect effects without causes ; and this also 
 is the reason why they give it up. It is not irreligion that 
 makes men give up prayer, but the uselessness of their 
 prayers. 
 
 ' One other gain,' he continues, ' may be expected to Chris- 
 tianity from the wider use of the scientific method. It must 
 attract an ever-increasing band of workers to theology. . . . 
 We are warned sometimes that this method has dangers, and 
 told not to carry it too far. . . . The danger arises, not from 
 the use of the scientific method, but from its use apart from 
 the scientific spirit. For these two are not quite the same. 
 Some use the scientific method, but not in the scientific spirit. 
 And as science can help Christianity with the former, Chris- 
 tianity may perhaps do something for science as regards the 
 latter. And so just is the remark of "Natural Religion" 
 that the true scientific spirit and the Christian spirit are one, 
 that the Christian world is probably prepared to accept 
 almost anything the most advanced theology brings, provided 
 it be a joint product of the scientific method with the scien- 
 tific spirit the fearlessness and originality of the one tem- 
 pered by the modesty, caution, and reverence of the other. 
 
 ' To preserve this confidence and to keep this spirit pure is 
 a sacred duty. There is an intellectual covetousness abroad 
 just now which is neither the fruit nor the friend of a scien- 
 tific age a haste to be wise, which, like the haste to be rich, 
 leads men into speculation upon indifferent securities, and can 
 only end in fallen fortunes. Theology must not be bound up 
 with such speculation. . . . 1 The one safeguard is to use the 
 intellectual method in sympathetic association with the moral 
 
 1 Here comes a fine quotation from Bacon's Works, v. 132, 133.
 
 /Ex. 33] EVOLUTION AND REVELATION 249 
 
 spirit. The scientific method may bring to light many fresh 
 and revolutionary ideas ; the scientific spirit will see that they 
 are not given a place as dogmas in their first exuberance ; 
 that they are held with caution and abandoned with generos- 
 ity on sufficient evidence. . . . 
 
 ' So much for the scientific method. Let us now consider 
 for a moment one or two of its achievements. . . . 
 
 ' Itself at an elementary stage, we should be wrong to look 
 [to it] for any very pronounced contribution as yet to the 
 higher truths of religion. We should expect the first effect 
 among the elements of religion. We should expect science 
 to be fairly decided in its utterances about them, to become 
 more and more hesitating as it runs up the range of Christian 
 doctrine, and gradually to lapse into silence. Proceeding upon 
 this principle, we should go back at once to Genesis. We 
 should begin with the beginnings, and expect the first serious 
 contribution to theology on the doctrine of creation. 
 
 ' And what do we find ? We find that upon this subject of 
 all others science has most to offer us. It comes to us, not 
 only freighted with vast treasures of newly noticed facts, but 
 with a theory which by many thoughtful minds has been ac- 
 cepted as the method of creation. And, more than this, it 
 tells us candidly it has failed and the failures of science 
 are among its richest contributions to Christianity it has 
 failed to discover any clue to the ultimate mystery of origins, 
 any clue which can compete for a moment with the view of 
 theology. 
 
 ' Consider first this impressive silence of science on the 
 question of origins. Who creates or evolves; whither do 
 the atoms come or go ? These questions remain as before. 
 Science has not found a substitute for God. And yet, in 
 another sense, these questions are very different from before. 
 Science has put them through its crucible. It took them 
 from theology, and deliberately proclaimed that it would try 
 to answer them. They are now handed back, tried, unan- 
 swered, but with a new place in theology and a new power 
 with science. ... If there are answers to these questions, 
 and there ought to be, theology holds them. ... In its 
 investigations of these questions science has made a dis-
 
 250 HENRY DRUMMOND [1885 
 
 covery. It has seen plainly that atheism is unscientific. It 
 is a remarkable thing that, after trailing its black length for 
 centuries across European thought, atheism should have had 
 its doom pronounced by science. With its most penetrating 
 gaze science has now looked at the back of phenomena. It 
 says : " The atheist tells us there is nothing there. We can- 
 not believe him. We cannot tell what it is, but there is cer- 
 tainly something. Agnostics we may be, we can no longer 
 be atheists." ' 
 
 He illustrates this by the passages from Huxley's Lay Ser- 
 mons, quoted above in Chapter VI. 1 
 
 ' When we turn now to the larger question of the creation 
 of the world itself, we find much more than silence, or a per- 
 mission to go on. We find science has a definite theory on 
 that subject. It offers, in short, to theology a doctrine of the 
 method of creation in its hypothesis of evolution. That this 
 doctrine is proved yet, no one will assert. That in some of 
 its forms it is never likely to be proved, many are convinced. 
 It will be time for theology to be unanimous about it when 
 science is unanimous about it. Yet it would be idle to deny 
 that in a general form it has received the widest assent from 
 theology. But if science is satisfied, even in a general way, 
 with its theory of the method of creation, " assent " is a cold 
 word for theology to welcome it with. It is needless at this 
 time of day to point out the surpassing grandeur of the new 
 conception. How it has filled the Christian imagination and 
 kindled to enthusiasm the soberest scientific minds is known 
 to all. For that splendid hypothesis we cannot be too grate- 
 ful to science, and that theology can only enrich itself which 
 gives it even temporary place. There is a sublimity about 
 the old doctrine of creation we are speaking of its scientific 
 aspects which, if one could compare sublimities, is not sur- 
 passed by the new ; but there is also a baldness. . . . The 
 doctrine of evolution fills a gap at the very beginning of our 
 religion ; and no one who looks now at the transcendant spec- 
 tacle of the world's past, as disclosed by science, will deny 
 that it has filled it worthily. Yet, after all, its beauty is not 
 the only part of its contribution to Christianity. Scientific 
 
 1 P. 150.
 
 JEr. 33] EVOLUTION AND REVELATION 251 
 
 theology required a new view, though it did not require it to 
 come in so magnificent a form. What it wanted was a credi- 
 ble presentation, in view especially of astronomy, geology, and 
 biology. These had made the former theory simply unten- 
 able. And science has supplied theology with a theory which 
 the intellect can accept, and which for the devout mind leaves 
 everything more worthy of worship than before.' 
 
 ' We might pass on,' the second lecture begins, 'to mark the 
 effects [of science] upon many other theological truths [than 
 that of creation]. One shall be the doctrine of revelation it- 
 self. According to science, as we have already seen, evolu- 
 tion is the method of creation. Now, creation is a form of 
 revelation ; it is the oldest form, the most accessible, the most 
 universal, and still an ever-increasing source of theological 
 truth. 
 
 ' If, then, science, familiar with this revelation, and know- 
 ing it to be an evolution, were to be told of the existence of 
 another revelation an inspired word it would expect that 
 this other revelation would also be an evolution. Such an 
 anticipation might or might not be justified ; but from the law 
 of the uniformity of nature there would be, to the man of 
 science, a very strong presumption in favour of any revelation 
 which bore this scientific hallmark, which indicated, that is 
 to say, that God's Word had unfolded itself to men, like His 
 works. 
 
 ' Now if science searches the field of theology for an addi- 
 tional revelation, it will find a Bible awaiting it a Bible in 
 two forms. The one is the Bible as it was presented to our 
 forefathers ; the other is the Bible of modern theology. The 
 books, the chapters, the verses, and the words are the same 
 in each; yet in form they are two entirely different Bibles. 
 To science the difference is immediately palpable. Judging 
 of each of them from its own standpoint, science perceives, 
 after a brief examination, that the distinction between them 
 is one with which it has been long familiar. In point of fact, 
 the one is constructed, like the world, according to the old 
 cosmogonies, while the other is an evolution. The one rep- 
 resents revelation as having been produced on the creative 
 hypothesis, the Divine-fiat hypothesis, the ready-made hypoth-
 
 252 HENRY DRUMMOND [1885 
 
 esis; the other on the slow-growth or evolution theory. It 
 is at once obvious which of them science would prefer it 
 could no more accept the first than it could accept the ready- 
 made theory of the universe. 
 
 ' Nothing could be more important than to assure science 
 that the same difficulty has for some time been felt, and with 
 quite equal keenness, by theology. The scientific method in 
 its hard, scientific theology has been laboriously working at 
 a reconstruction of biblical truth from this very view-point of 
 development. And it no more pledges itself to-day to the in- 
 terpretations of the Bible of a thousand years ago than does 
 science to the interpretations of nature in the time of Pythag- 
 oras. Nature is the same to-day as in the time of Pythago- 
 ras, and the Bible is the same to-day as a thousand years ago. 
 But the Pythagorean interpretation of nature is not less objec- 
 tionable to the modern mind than are many ancient interpre- 
 tations of the Scriptures to the scientific theologian. 
 
 ' The supreme contribution of Evolution to Religion is that 
 it has given it a clearer Bible. Science is the great explainer, 
 the great expositor, not only of nature, but of everything it 
 touches. Its function is to arrange things and make them 
 reasonable. And it has arranged the Bible in a new way, 
 and made it as different as science has made the world. It 
 is not going too far to say that there are many things in the 
 Bible which are hard to reconcile with our ideas of a just and 
 good God. This is only expressing what even the most de- 
 vout and simple minds constantly feel, and feel to be sorely 
 perplexing, in reading especially the Old Testament. But 
 these difficulties arise simply from an old-fashioned or un- 
 scientific view of what the Bible is, and are similar to the 
 difficulties found in nature when interpreted either without 
 the aid of science, or with the science of many centuries ago. 
 We see now that the mind of man has been slowly devel- 
 oping, that the race has been gradually educated, and that 
 revelation has been adapted from the first to the various and 
 successive stages through which that development passed. 
 
 ' The moral difficulties of the Old Testament are admittedly 
 great. But when approached from the new standpoint, when 
 they are seen to be rudiments of truth spoken and acted in
 
 JT. 33] EVOLUTION AND REVELATION 253 
 
 strange ways to attract and teach children, they vanish one 
 by one. For instance, we are told that the iniquities of the 
 fathers are to be visited upon the children unto the third and 
 fourth generation. The impression upon the early mind un- 
 doubtedly must have been that this was a solemn threat which 
 God would carry out in anger in individual cases. We now 
 know, however, that this is simply the doctrine of heredity. 
 A child inherits its parents' nature, not as a special punish- 
 ment, but by natural law. In those days that could not be 
 explained. Natural law was a word unknown, and the truth 
 has to be put provisionally in a form that all could under- 
 stand. And even many of the miracles may have explana- 
 tions in fact or in principle, which, without destroying the 
 idea of the miraculous, may show the naturalness of the 
 supernatural. 
 
 ' The theory of the Bible, which makes belief in a revela- 
 tion possible to the man of science, Christianity owes to the 
 scientific method. It is not suggested that the evolution the- 
 ory in theology was introduced to satisfy the mind of the 
 scientific thinker, any more than that his appreciation of it is 
 the test of its truth. As regards the latter, it is to be weighed 
 on its own evidence and judged by its fruits ; and as regards 
 the question of origin, its ancestry is much more reputable, 
 for it was not a concession to any theory, but rose out of the 
 facts themselves. Indeed, long before evolution was formu- 
 lated in science, discerning minds had seen, with an enthusi- 
 asm which few could at that time share, the slow, steady, 
 upward growth of theological truth to ever higher and nobler 
 forms. . . . [He here quotes John Henry Newman on the 
 development of theology.] However physical science may 
 have contributed to this result, it is certain that the method is 
 not the creation of science. . . . 
 
 ' Evolution is the ever-recurring theme in theology as in 
 nature. We might indeed almost have grouped the entire 
 contribution of science to Christianity around this point. No 
 truth now can remain unaffected by evolution. Evolution has 
 given to theology some wholly new departments. It has 
 given to it a vastly more reasonable body of truth about God 
 and man, about sin and salvation. It has lent it a firmer base,
 
 254 HENRY DRUMMOND [1885 
 
 an enlarged horizon, and a wider faith. But its great contri- 
 bution, on which all these depend, is to the doctrine of 
 revelation. 
 
 ' What, then, does this mean for revelation ? It means, in 
 plain language, that Evolution has given Christianity a new 
 Bible. Its peculiarity is that in its form it is like the world in 
 which it is found. It is a word, but its root is now known, 
 and we have other words from the same root. Its substance 
 is still the unchanged language of heaven, yet it is written in 
 a familiar tongue. The new Bible is a book whose parts, 
 though not of unequal value, are seen to be of different kinds 
 of value, where the casual is distinguished from the essential, 
 the local from the universal, the subordinate from the primal 
 end. This Bible is not a book which has been made ; it has 
 grown. Hence it is no longer a mere word-book, nor a com- 
 pendium of doctrines, but a nursery of growing truths. It is 
 not an even plane of proof texts without proportion, or 
 emphasis, or light and shade; but a revelation varied as 
 nature, with the divine in its hidden parts, in its spirit, its 
 tendencies, its obscurities, and its omissions. Like nature, it 
 has successive strata, and valley and hilltop, and mist and 
 atmosphere, and rivers which are flowing still, and here and 
 there a place which is desert, and fossils too, whose crude 
 forms are the stepping-stones to higher things. It is a record 
 of inspired deeds as well as of inspired words, an ascending 
 series of inspired facts in a matrix of human history. 
 
 ' Now it is to be marked that this is not the product of any 
 destructive movement, nor is this transformed book in any 
 sense a mutilated Bible. All this has taken place, it may be, 
 without the elimination of a book or the loss of an important 
 word. It is simply the transformation by a method' whose 
 main warrant is that the book lends itself to it. 
 
 ' It may be said, and for a time it will continue to be said, 
 that the Christian does not need a transformed Bible; and 
 fortunately, or in some cases unfortunately, this is the case. 
 For years yet the old Bible will continue to nourish the soul 
 of the Church, as it has nourished it in the past; and the 
 needy heart will in all time manage to feed itself apart from 
 any forms. But there is a class, and an ever-increasing class,
 
 JEi. 33] EVOLUTION AND REVELATION 255 
 
 to whom the form is much. Theology is only beginning to 
 realise how radical is the change in mental attitude of those 
 who have learned to think from science. Intercourse with 
 the ways of nature breeds a mental attitude of its own. It is 
 an attitude worthy of its master. In this presence the student 
 is face to face with what is real. He is looking with his own 
 eyes at facts, at what God did. He finds things in nature 
 just as its Maker left them ; and from ceaseless contact with 
 phenomena which will not change for man, and with laws 
 which he has never known to swerve, he fears to trust his mind 
 to anything less. Now this Bible which has been described 
 is the presentation to this age of men who have learned this 
 habit. They have studied the facts ; they have looked with 
 their own eyes at what God did; and they are giving us a 
 book which is more than the devout man's Bible, though it is 
 as much as ever the devout man's Bible. It is the apologist's 
 Bible. It is long since the apologist has had a Bible. The 
 Bible of our infancy was not an apologist's Bible. There are 
 things in the Old Testament cast in his teeth by sceptics to 
 which he has simply no answer. These are the things, the 
 miserable things, the masses have laid hold of. They are the 
 stock-in-trade to-day of the free-thought platform and the 
 secularist pamphleteer. And, surprising as it is, there are not 
 a few honest seekers who are made timid and suspicious, not a 
 few on the outskirts of Christianity who are kept from coming 
 farther in, by the half-truths which a new exegesis, a recon- 
 sideration of the historic setting, and a clearer view of the 
 moral purposes of God would change from barriers into bul- 
 warks of the faith. Such a Bible scientific theology is giving 
 us, and it cannot be proclaimed to the mass of the people too 
 soon. It is no more fair to raise and brandish objections to 
 the Bible without first studying carefully what scientific theo- 
 logians have to say on the subject, than it would be fair for 
 one who derived his views of the natural world from 
 Pythagoras to condemn all science. It is expected in criti- 
 cisms of science that the critic's knowledge should at least be 
 up to date, that he is attacking what science really holds, and 
 the same justice is to be awarded to the science of theology. 
 When science makes its next attack upon theology, if indeed
 
 256 HENRY DRUMMOND [1886 
 
 that shall ever be again, it will find an armament, largely 
 furnished by itself, which has made the Bible as impregnable 
 as nature. 
 
 ' One question, finally, will determine the ultimate worth of 
 this contribution to Christianity. Does it help it practically ? 
 Does it impoverish or enrich the soul ? Does it lower or exalt 
 God? These questions, with regard to one or two of the 
 elementary truths of religion, have been partially answered 
 already. But a closing illustration from the highest of all 
 will show that here also science is not silent. 
 
 ' Science has nothing finer to offer Christianity than the 
 exaltation of its supreme conception God. Is it too much 
 to say that in a practical age like the present, when the idea 
 and practice of worship tend to be forgotten, God should wish 
 to reveal Himself afresh in ever more striking ways ? Is it 
 too much to say that at this distance from creation, with the 
 eye of theology resting largely upon the incarnation and work 
 of the Man Christ Jesus, the Almighty should design with 
 more and more impressiveness to utter Himself as the Wonder- 
 ful, the Counsellor, the Great and Mighty God ? Whether 
 this be so or not, it is certain that every step of science 
 discloses the attributes of the Almighty with a growing 
 magnificence. . . .' 
 
 So much for the Expositor articles. About a year 
 after they were published, Drummond wrote for the 
 Nineteenth Century a short article entitled ' Mr. Glad- 
 stone and Genesis.' It appeared 1 under one on the 
 same subject by Mr. Huxley. Mr. Gladstone and Mr. 
 Huxley had been waging a controversy upon the rela- 
 tions between the teaching of Genesis and that of 
 modern science upon the creation or evolution of life. 
 
 In an article on the ' Dawn of Creation and Wor- 
 ship,' Mr. Gladstone committed himself to three propo- 
 sitions : The first, that, according to the writer of the 
 Pentateuch, the ' water population,' the ' air population,' 
 and the ' land population,' of the globe were created 
 
 1 February, 1886.
 
 JET. 34] EVOLUTION AND REVELATION 257 
 
 successively in the order named ; the second, that this 
 has been ' so affirmed in our time by natural science 
 that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and 
 established fact ; ' and the third, that the fact of this 
 coincidence of the Pentateuchal story with the results 
 of modern investigation makes it ' impossible to avoid 
 the conclusion, first, that either this writer was gifted 
 with faculties passing all human experience, or else his 
 knowledge was divine.' And accepting, of course, the 
 second of these alternatives, Mr. Gladstone declared : 
 ' So stands the plea for a revelation of truth from God, 
 a plea only to be met by questioning its possibility.' 
 
 In answer to this, Mr. Huxley had little difficulty in 
 showing that Mr. Gladstone's second proposition was 
 ' not merely inaccurate, but directly contradictory 
 of facts known to every one who is acquainted with 
 the elements of natural science,' and arguing that 
 therefore the ' third proposition collapses of itself.' In 
 other words, Mr. Gladstone based his ' plea for a revela- 
 tion of truth from God' upon the agreement, which 
 he asserted, of the first chapter of Genesis with the 
 discoveries of modern science. Mr. Huxley denied 
 that agreement, and concluded that with it there dis- 
 appeared all argument for a divine revelation. It was 
 at this point that Drummond intervened, with the 
 assertion that the question which the two antagonists 
 debated, that, namely, of the harmony between Genesis 
 and modern science, was absolutely irrelevant to the 
 problem of revelation. On the one side he accepted 
 Mr. Huxley's statement that it is impossible to harmo- 
 nise Genesis and science ; on the other side, he de- 
 nied that the contradiction between them was fatal to 
 the belief that Genesis contains ' a revelation of truth 
 from God.' 
 
 He showed how from the standpoint of the new
 
 258 HENRY DRUMMOND [1886 
 
 science of Biblical criticism ' the problem of the recon- 
 ciliation of Genesis with geology simply disappears. 
 The question, in fact, is as irrelevant as that of the 
 Senior Wrangler who asked what Milton's Paradise 
 Lost was meant to prove.' Biblical criticism, he says, 1 
 has pronounced the Bible ' to be absolutely free of natu- 
 ral science ' he means, of course, in its modern shape. 
 
 ' The critics,' he continues in the rest of his article, ' find 
 there history, poetry, moral philosophy, theology, lives and 
 letters, mystical, devotional, and didactic pieces ; but science 
 there is none. Natural objects are, of course, repeatedly 
 referred to, and with unsurpassed sympathy and accuracy of 
 observation ; but neither in the intention of any of the innu- 
 merable authors nor in the execution of their work is there 
 any direct trace of scientific teaching. Could any one with 
 any historic imagination for a moment expect that there 
 would have been ? There was no science then. Scientific 
 questions were not even asked then. To have given men 
 science would not only have been an anachronism, but a 
 source of mystification and confusion all along the line. The 
 almost painful silence indeed, the absolute sterility of 
 the Bible with regard to science is so marked as to have led 
 men to question the very beneficence of God. Why was not 
 the use of the stars, explained to navigators, or chloroform to 
 surgeons ? Why is a man left to die on the hillside when the 
 medicinal plant which could save him, did he but know it, 
 lies at his feet ? What is it to early man to know how the 
 moon was made ? What he wants to know is how bread is 
 made. How fish are to be caught, fowls snared, beasts 
 trapped and their skins tanned these are his problems. 
 Doubtless there are valid reasons why the Bible does not 
 contain a technological dictionary and a pharmacopoeia, or 
 anticipate the Encyclopedia Britannica. But that it does not 
 inform us on these practical matters is surely a valid argu- 
 ment why we should not expect it to instruct the world in 
 geology. Mr. Huxley is particular to point out to us that the 
 
 1 After repeating the paragraphs of his Expositor article given above on pp. 
 251 ff.
 
 JET. 34] EVOLUTION AND REVELATION 259 
 
 bat and the pterodactyle must be classified under the "winged 
 fowl " of Genesis, while at a stretch he believes the cockroach 
 might also be included. But we should not wonder if the 
 narrator did not think of this. 
 
 ' Scientific men, apparently, need this warning, not less 
 than those whom they punish for neglecting it. How igno- 
 rantly, often, the genius of the Bible is comprehended by 
 those who are loudest in their denunciations of its positions 
 otherwise, is typically illustrated in the following passage 
 from Haeckel. Having in an earlier paragraph shown a 
 general harmony between the Mosaic cosmogony and his 
 own theory of creation, he proceeds to extract out of Genesis 
 nothing less than the evolution theory, and that in its last 
 and highest developments : 
 
 ' " Two great and fundamental ideas, common also to the 
 non-miraculous theory of development, meet us in this Mosaic 
 hypothesis of creation with surprising clearness and simplicity 
 the idea of separation or differentiation, and the idea of 
 progressive development or perfecting. Although Moses looks 
 upon the results of the great laws of organic development 
 ... as the direct actions of a constructing Creator, yet in 
 his theory there lies hidden the ruling idea of a progressive 
 development and a differentiation of the originally simple 
 matter." 1 
 
 ' With the next breath this interpreter of Genesis exposes 
 " two great fundamental errors " in the same chapter of the 
 book in which he has just discovered the most scientific 
 phases of the evolution hypothesis, and which lead him to 
 express for Moses "just wonder and admiration." What can 
 be the matter with this singular book ? Why is it science to 
 Haeckel one minute and error the next? Why are Haeckel 
 and Mr. Huxley not agreed if it is science ? Why are Haeckel 
 and Mr. Gladstone agreed if it is religion? If Mr. Huxley 
 does not agree with Haeckel, why does he not agree with Mr. 
 Gladstone ? 
 
 ' George Macdonald has an exquisite little poem called 
 " Baby's Catechism." It occurs among his children's pieces : 
 
 1 Haeckel, History of Creation, vol. i. p. 38.
 
 26O HENRY DRUMMOND [1886 
 
 ' " Where did you come from, baby dear ? 
 Out of the everywhere into here. 
 
 Where did you get your eyes so blue? 
 Out of the sky as I came through. 
 
 Where did you get that little tear? 
 I found it waiting when I got here. 
 
 Where did you get that pearly ear? 
 God spoke, and it came out to hear. 
 
 How did they all just come to be you? 
 God thought about me and so I grew." 
 
 ' For its purpose what could be a finer, or even a more true, 
 account of the matter than this ? Without a word of literal 
 truth in it, it would convey to the child's mind exactly the 
 right impression. Now conceive of the head nurse banishing 
 it from the nursery as calculated to mislead the children as to 
 the origin of blue eyes. Or imagine the nursery governess, 
 who has passed the South Kensington examination in Mr. 
 Huxley's " Physiology," informing her pupils that ears never 
 " came out " at all, and that hearing was really done inside, 
 by the fibres of Corti and the epithelial arrangements of the 
 maculae acusticas. Is it conceivable, on the other hand, that 
 the parish clergyman could defend the record on the ground 
 that " the everywhere " was a philosophical presentation of the 
 Almighty, or that " God thought about me " contained the 
 Hegelian Idea ? And yet this is precisely what interpreters 
 of Genesis and interpreters of science do with the Bible. 
 Genesis is a presentation of one or two great elementary 
 truths to the childhood of the world. It can only be read 
 aright in the spirit in which it was written, with its original 
 purpose in view, and its original audience. What did it 
 mean to them ? What would they understand by it ? What 
 did they need to know and not to know ? 
 
 ' To expand the constructive answers to these questions in 
 detail does not fall within our province here. What we have 
 to note is that a scientific theory of the universe formed no 
 part of the original writer's intention. Dating from the child- 
 hood of the world, written for children, and for that child-spirit
 
 ^ET. 34] EVOLUTION AND REVELATION 26 1 
 
 in man which remains unchanged by time, it takes colour and 
 shape accordingly. Its object is purely religious, the point 
 being, not how certain things were made, but that God made 
 them. It is not dedicated to science, but to the soul. It is a 
 sublime theology, given in view of ignorance or idolatry or 
 polytheism, telling the worshipful youth of the world that the 
 heavens and the earth and every creeping and flying thing 
 were made by God. What world-spirit teaches men to finger 
 its fluid members like a science catalogue, and discuss its 
 days in terms of geological formations ? What blindness pur- 
 sues them, that they mark the things He made only with their 
 museum-labels, and think they have exhausted its contribution 
 when they have never even been within sight of it ? This is 
 not even atheism. It is simple illiterateness. 
 
 ' The first principle which must rule our reading of this 
 book is the elementary canon of all literary criticism, which 
 decides that any interpretation of a part of a book or of a 
 literature must be controlled by the dominant purpose or motif 
 of the whole. And when one investigates that dominant pur- 
 pose in the case of the Bible, he finds it reducing itself to one 
 thing religion. No matter what view is taken of the com- 
 position or authorship of the several books, this feature 
 secures immediate and universal recognition. 
 
 ' " Mais s'il en est ainsi (says Lenormant), me demandera- 
 t-on peut-etre. Ou done voyez-vous 1'inspiration divine des 
 e"crivains qui ont fait cette archeologie, le secours surnaturel 
 dont, comme chr6tien, vous devez les croire guide's? Ou? 
 Dans 1'esprit absolument nouveau qui anime leur narration, 
 bien que la forme en soit reste"e presque de tout point la 
 meme que chez les peuples voisins." x 
 
 ' A second principle is expressed with such appositeness to 
 the present purpose, by an English commentator, that his 
 words may be given at length : 
 
 '"There is a principle frequently insisted on, scarcely denied 
 by any, yet recognised with sufficient clearness by few of the 
 advocates of revelation, which, if fully and practically recog- 
 nised, would have saved themselves much perplexity and 
 
 1 Les Origines de rffistoire, Pref., xviii.
 
 262 HENRY DRUMMOND [1886 
 
 vexation, and the cause they have at heart the disgrace with 
 which it has been covered by the futile attempts that have 
 been made, through provisional and shifting interpretations, 
 to reconcile the Mosaic Genesis with the rapidly advancing 
 strides of physical science. The principle referred to is this: 
 matters which are discoverable by human reason, and the 
 means of investigation which God has put within the reach 
 of man's faculties, are not the proper subjects of Divine 
 revelation ; and matters which do not concern morals, or bear 
 on man's spiritual relations towards God, are not within the 
 province of revealed religion." 1 
 
 1 Here lies the whole matter. It is involved in the mere 
 meaning of revelation, and proved by its whole expression, 
 that its subject-matter is that which men could not find out 
 for themselves. Men could find out the order in which the 
 world was made. What they could not find out was, that 
 God made it. To this day they have not found that out. 
 Even some of the wisest of our contemporaries, after trying 
 to find that out for half a lifetime, have been forced to give 
 it up. Hence the true function of revelation. Nature in 
 Genesis has no link with geology, seeks none and needs 
 none : man has no link with biology, and misses none. What 
 he really needs and really misses for he can get it nowhere 
 else Genesis gives him ; it links nature and man with their 
 Maker. And this is the one high sense in which Genesis 
 can be said to be scientific. The scientific man must go 
 there to complete his science, or it remains forever incom- 
 plete. Let him no longer resort thither to attack what is not 
 really there. What is really there he cannot attack, for he 
 cannot do without it. Nor let religion plant positions there 
 which can only keep science out. Then only can the inter- 
 preters of Nature and the interpreters of Genesis understand 
 each other.' 
 
 From all this it is apparent how far Drummond had 
 travelled from the positions of the older orthodoxy 
 which he described in the college essay, quoted on 
 pages 46, 47. These positions had been the intel- 
 
 1 Quarry, Genesis, pp. 12, 13.
 
 ^ET. 34] EVOLUTION AND REVELATION 263 
 
 lectual basis of the Christian faith for centuries. To 
 question them seemed to many to be treason ; to 
 abandon them, madness. But Drummond was forced 
 from them by his study of facts in the departments of 
 natural science and of Biblical criticism and Biblical 
 theology. And upon the new positions to which he 
 was led he has evidently found a basis for his faith 
 more stable than ever the older was imagined to be, 
 richer mines of Christian experience and truth, better 
 vantage grounds for preaching the gospel of Christ, 
 and loftier summits, with infinitely wider prospects of 
 the power of God and of the destiny of man. 
 
 Drummond's exposition of revelation, as also an 
 evolution, needs to be supplemented by only one 
 remark, which, when he wrote his articles it was not 
 possible to make with confidence. Recent researches 
 into the origins of the Old Testament have proved 
 that the factor in the extraordinary development of 
 moral and religious truth, which is so discernible in 
 the history of Israel and in their gradual ascent to 
 the loftiest heights of spiritual knowledge from the 
 low levels of life which they had once occupied with 
 their Semitic neighbours, was the impression upon 
 the people as a whole through the wonderful deeds of 
 their history and the experience of their greatest 
 minds of the character of God. But to impress the 
 character of God upon a people so sensitive and so 
 responsive is revelation in its purest and most effective 
 form.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 1884-1890 
 
 THE PROFESSORSHIP AT GLASGOW THE GROSVENOR HOUSE 
 ADDRESSES ASSOCIATED WORKERS' LEAGUE POLITICS AND 
 HOME RULE FOR IRELAND REFUSAL TO STAND FOR PAR- 
 LIAMENT SWITZERLAND HIS FATHER'S DEATH FIRST AT- 
 TEMPTS AT THE ASCENT OF MAN SECOND SERIES OF 
 GROSVENOR HOUSE ADDRESSES THE '88 CLUB SWITZER- 
 LAND AND VENICE MEETING WITH BROWNING COLLEGE 
 SETTLEMENTS PREPARATIONS FOR AUSTRALIA OPINIONS 
 ON MEN, BOOKS, AND MOVEMENTS 
 
 SOON after he returned from Africa Henry Drum- 
 mond was promoted by the Church to the status of a 
 Professor of Theology. 
 
 In April, 1883, Mr. James Stevenson, of Largs, had 
 offered to the Free Church funds sufficient for a consid- 
 erable increase of the salary of the Science Lecturer 
 in Glasgow College, provided that the office was 
 raised to an equal rank with that of the four Pro- 
 fessors who formed the Senate. The General As- 
 sembly of 1883 accepted Mr. Stevenson's offer, and 
 remitted the proposal of the Professorship to the Pres- 
 byteries. By a majority of four to one these decided 
 in its favour, and by 260 votes to 167 the General 
 Assembly of 1884 'enacted and ordained that the 
 Theological Faculty of Glasgow shall consist of five 
 professors instead of four, the additional professor 
 being a professor of Natural Science.' The title was 
 interpreted in the same sense as that of the corre- 
 sponding chair in New College, Edinburgh, so its 
 occupant, Professor Duns, wrote to Drummond, 
 
 264
 
 1884 265 
 
 which had been chosen ' as sufficient to secure the 
 intimate theological relations of the chair, and to give 
 free scope for the Professor to deal with all the ques- 
 tions of a physico-theological kind sure to turn up as 
 science advances. The place of the chair in a theo- 
 logical college was from the first held to settle its 
 character and scope.' The Assembly reserved the 
 right to revise the constitution of the chair whenever 
 Natural Science should be included in the Arts cur- 
 riculum of the universities. 1 
 
 On May 31 Drummond was unanimously elected 
 to the new chair, and the Assembly instructed the 
 Presbytery of Glasgow to arrange for his ' ordination 
 and induction.' This took place on November 4 in 
 College Free Church, according to the simple Scottish 
 rite, and by laying on of the hands of the Presbytery? 
 
 This rite is the same in the case whether of a min- 
 ister or of a professor, for the Church of Scotland 
 recognises no difference between her teachers and her 
 
 1 The deliverance of the Assembly of 1884, constituting the chair, declared: 
 ' In accordance with the wishes of James Stevenson, Esq., who has provided the 
 endowment, that in the event of such arrangements being made for the teaching 
 of Natural Science as part of the M.A. curriculum in the universities as may 
 make it inexpedient or unnecessary to keep up this chair on its present footing, 
 it shall be competent for the Church to revise the constitution of the chair, and 
 to determine the subjects to be taught as may then be most suitable, retaining 
 the basis of the relation of science and theology, and adding such subjects as 
 are cognate.' Assembly Blue Book, 1884, pp. 69, 70. 
 
 2 There had been some uncertainty about this. Drummond was ordained an 
 elder of the Church on his appointment to the lectureship, and Mr. Stevenson 
 wrote Principal Rainy and Dr. Melville, the Principal Clerk of Assembly, that 
 surely it was not necessary to ordain him as minister. Dr. Melville replied that 
 the Assembly wished to place the Professor of Natural Science on the same foot- 
 ing as his colleagues, but that Drummond's ordination to the ministry need not 
 prejudice any future appointment to the chair of a layman, who was an elder. 
 This was what Mr. Stevenson had wished to secure. Probably also Drummond 
 himself had been anxious not to be ordained as a full minister of the Church; for 
 after the ordination, and to the end of his life, he persisted to the amusement of 
 his friends that he had never been ordained as a minister. The fact, however, 
 is beyond all doubt. On November 4, 1884, he received by the hands of the 
 Glasgow Presbytery the full orders of the Presbyterian Church.
 
 266 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 pastors, but lays them under the same vows and ordains 
 them all as ministers of Christ's Gospel and of His 
 Sacraments. The form is as follows: After public 
 worship the candidate stands up before the congrega- 
 tion. In answer to the questions of the presiding 
 minister he declares his ' belief in the Scriptures of the 
 Old and New Testaments as the Word of God, and 
 the only rule of faith and manners ' ; his acceptance of 
 the doctrines of the Church as denned in the Westmin- 
 ster Confession of Faith j 1 his adherence to the Presby- 
 terian form of church government ; his loyalty to the 
 ' spirituality and freedom of the Church under the sole 
 headship of the Lord Jesus Christ,' for which the Free 
 Church of Scotland testified and separated from the 
 State in 1843; an d that 'zeal for the honour of God, 
 love to Jesus Christ, and the desire of saving souls are 
 his great motives and inducements in entering into 
 the function of the Holy Ministry.' Having signed the 
 formula the candidate kneels before the Moderator 
 (that is, the presiding minister), who offers the 
 ordination prayer, the other ministers of the Presby- 
 tery standing round. When the prayer invokes the 
 Holy Spirit upon ' this our brother whom we solemnly 
 ordain and set apart to the office of the ministry,' 
 the Presbytery lay their hands upon the head of 
 the kneeling man. At the close of the prayer, he 
 stands up and receives his induction from the Mod- 
 erator ' in the name and by authority of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ,' and the Presbytery give him the right hand of 
 fellowship. He is then suitably charged by one of the 
 ministers, and his congregation, or students, as the 
 case may be, are also exhorted. When Drummond 
 was ordained, the presiding minister was the Reverend 
 
 1 Which confession is now interpreted according to a Declaratory Act passed 
 by the General Assembly in 1893.
 
 1884 267 
 
 George Reith of College Free Church, who delivered 
 the following charge : 
 
 'Your appearance this day reminds us of the faith our 
 Church wisely reposes in a trained and cultivated ministry. 
 No wise man will undervalue culture, especially in the line 
 of scientific investigations the peculiar feature of our time. 
 The more of culture a man has the better for his hearers. 
 But, after all, we may mistake wherein lies power, and 
 besides it is not with a few cultured sceptics a Church has to 
 do. It is with the great masses of men. I very sincerely 
 rejoice that you have earned, I will not say a better title to 
 your chair, but I do say an equally valid title, by your sym- 
 pathy with the evangelistic work of our Church, and your 
 very considerable practical acquaintance with it. A professor 
 is all the better for having known the practical work of the 
 ministry ; and in your case, though the name has been want- 
 ing, the thing has been there. We look to you as one espe- 
 cially qualified to show how culture and sympathy with evan- 
 gelistic work are to go hand in hand. We look to you to 
 impress your students with the love of men. You can teach 
 them what culture can, and what it cannot do. You can 
 teach them and from your lips it will come with additional 
 emphasis that to gain men we must lay down our lives for 
 them, and that our true power is the power of the Master we 
 serve, the love that moves to daily self-sacrifice.' 
 
 Professor Drummond then delivered his inaugural 
 address on the ' Contribution of Science to Christian- 
 ity ' virtually the same as the articles in the Expos- 
 itor, summarised in the previous chapter. 
 
 To James Stevenson, Esq. 
 
 <3 CARLTON GARDENS, KELVINSIDE, GLASGOW, 
 November 13, 1884. 
 
 ' Thank you for your very kind note on the morning 
 of my induction. There was more interest in the 
 starting of this chair than in anything that has
 
 268 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 happened publicly in the history of this Glasgow 
 College. The inauguration was advertised for 
 the College Hall, but the audience would have 
 filled it three or four times, and we had to have 
 it in Mr. Keith's church. I am quite sure there 
 is a great and increasing interest in the subject. 
 The Philosophy men find it hard to believe that 
 the day of science has come, but I am sure four- 
 fifths of our Church are not only favourable, but 
 enthusiastically favourable, to our science chairs. 1 
 ' I believe in the work of this chair more and more 
 every day. Indeed, perhaps it is due to you that 
 I should tell you what I have not told any one 
 here, that I lately refused a very lucrative govern- 
 ment appointment lest it should hinder me in 
 my new work.' 2 
 
 ' Our session,' wrote Principal Douglas to Mr. Steven- 
 son on December 8, ' has begun this winter, I think, 
 well. Drummond is very popular with the young 
 men, and I hope you will have evidence that he is 
 exercising a healthy and powerful influence.' There 
 were ninety-five regular students (twenty-five of them 
 in their first year), and twenty non-regular. The 
 course through which Drummond took his class con- 
 tinued to be the same as it had been. 3 He lectured 
 four hours a week, and, besides expounding the prin- 
 ciples of modern science and their relation to religion, 
 taught the elements of botany and geology, and, I 
 believe, a little zoology. It is clear that in the short 
 session the lectures numbered about eighty a 
 thorough treatment of these sciences was impossible, 
 
 1 This was not the case. The chair would never have been created but for 
 Drummond's personality, and Mr. Stevenson's generous offer. 
 
 2 The secretaryship of the Shipping Commission. 
 8 See above, page 1 30.
 
 1884. 269 
 
 and students who had already taken any of them at 
 the University must have found Drummond's teach- 
 ing rudimentary. But, as an ' old student ' has said, 1 
 * Drummond did his students a world of good by 
 teaching them some of the general principles which 
 underlie all science, and by making them feel that 
 truth is indivisible, whether it be of science or religion. 
 He taught his students at least not to fear science; 
 and if they could not get a complete reconciliation, 
 meanwhile they must work with broad, flexible hy- 
 potheses which would keep their minds from harden- 
 ing and narrowing. Once a week at College he used 
 to give his class special lectures, beginning with the 
 evolution of the world, and coming down to the evolu- 
 tion of life. These were intensely interesting, and 
 had a certain apologetic purpose, and were more use- 
 ful than the mere teaching of the rudiments of science.' 
 Probably Drummond did even more good to his 
 students in another way. The education of nearly all 
 of them had been confined to languages, literature, 
 and philosophy, with some mathematics. He drew 
 their attention to the common facts of nature. About 
 three weeks after the beginning of the session, he used 
 to set what he called an ' ignorance examination.' 
 The questions were such as : ' What are air, water, 
 earth ? What is the use of a leaf ? What makes a 
 leaf fall? What is the use of a flower? What do 
 trees live on ? What makes the sea salt ? Why are 
 mountainous districts rainy ? What colour or colours 
 are the stars? Define a volcano. What happens 
 chemically, first in striking, second in burning, a 
 wooden match? Name any two of Mr. Darwin's 
 works, and their theses. Define Natural Selection.' 
 No marks were given for the answers. Each paper 
 
 1 Article in the* Woman at Home for 1897, by H. B.
 
 270 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 was treated as if anonymous, but it was carefully 
 reviewed before the whole class, and thus students 
 received a healthy knowledge of their ignorance, 
 both of the common facts of nature and of the 
 dominant methods of science. 
 
 Drummond remembered his ordination vows, and 
 welcomed his work in the College for the time which 
 it left him to minister to a far wider congregation in 
 the matters of morality and religion. Of this ministry 
 an enormous increase was brought to him by the fame 
 of his book. Having read his African journal, one 
 is tempted to regret that he did not spend a quiet 
 year in elaborating the results of his travels into a 
 careful treatise upon the geology and resources of the 
 Zambezi and the Nyasa regions. He could have given 
 us such a work, and it would have established his 
 scientific reputation upon a height from which his 
 subsequent ministry might have been directed with 
 perhaps even greater force than it actually achieved. 
 That he considered the question is clear from the 
 following letter from R. W. Barbour: 
 
 THE FREE MANSE, CULTS, ABERDEEN, i7th August, 1884. 
 
 ' Henry is here and it is good to entertain angels 
 awares or unawares. I expect the Lord often looked 
 like he does, a mere man of the world, dining out 
 and living in rich men's houses to the Pharisees at 
 least. 
 
 ' Henry says it is his birthday he is thirty-three 
 to-day but it has felt liker my own. He spoke to us 
 to-night on Paul's Hymn of Heavenly Love in the 
 thirteenth of First Corinthians, and it was like being 
 in heaven or in sight of it, to hear him. One had the 
 sweet pain of seeing something which he might strive 
 after for many days.
 
 1884 
 
 ' Monday, 8.20 P.M. 
 
 ' I have just been down seeing Mr. , who was 
 
 announced at eight. I went in fear and trembling, 
 lest he should be going to raise a cry about Drum- 
 mond's doctrine, or ask me to hold a franchise meet- 
 ing, but it was ordinary business. I expect Henry 
 will leave to-day to see after his MSS. for winter. 
 He is hesitating whether to give some time to vigor- 
 ous scientific work, as a monograph on some of his 
 African spoils, or whether to go in entirely for evan- 
 gelism. I think the latter will have it.' 
 
 The latter did have it, and could not but have it. 
 Since his return from Africa Drummond was met by 
 numerous appeals for counsel in religious difficulties 
 and for assistance in moral and social work. He 
 found door after door opened to him among classes of 
 men to which the ordinary ministers of religion had no 
 access, or having access, upon which they had no real 
 influence. Into two spheres, especially, there seemed 
 to be a strong call for him to enter. His work in one 
 of these, the life of our universities, was large enough 
 to need here a chapter to itself. At present we may 
 take the other. 
 
 So distinguished a writer as the author of Natural 
 Law in the Spiritual World was bound to be sought 
 after by the more religious portions of what is termed 
 'Society.' By 1884 the evangelical movement in 
 Great Britain had lost much of the doctrinal influence 
 which it previously exercised upon the higher ranks 
 of the community. The more serious among the 
 younger generation of these were loyal to Christ, 
 anxious for His sake to do good works, but, like many 
 men and women of their time, in considerable intel- 
 lectual uncertainty. In the author of Natural Law 
 they discovered a teacher, with a strong fresh mind
 
 272 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 of his own; not only a subtle expert in religious 
 experience, but one who enforced the principles of 
 Christianity apart from ecclesiastical formulas. From 
 such persons of position there came in April and May, 
 1884, a number of letters, either addressed to Drum- 
 mond himself asking an interview, or addressed to 
 those who knew him asking an introduction. When 
 the writers met him they found a man of sim- 
 plicity and winsomeness, courteous, unassuming, and 
 generous in the communication of his apparently 
 exhaustless stores of experience in dealing with men 
 and women with religious difficulties. Our national 
 life is probably nowhere so sensitive to influence as 
 throughout its upper ranks, and the individuals who 
 had been benefited by Drummond busied themselves 
 to extend the boon throughout their class. The cor- 
 respondence which ensued is one of very great interest, 
 but it involves the views and personal experiences of 
 so many who are still alive, that it is impossible to 
 quote largely from it. Among the new friends 
 found by Drummond were Lord and Lady Aberdeen, 
 with whom his relations for the rest of his life were 
 most close and affectionate. The following corre- 
 spondence with Lord Aberdeen relates to a movement 
 for which Drummond's help was asked, and which 
 took shape not only in the remarkable addresses de- 
 livered in Grosvenor House, but in the still more prof- 
 itable enlistment of a number of the families of 
 London society in various forms of philanthropy. 
 The nine months which intervened between his return 
 from Africa and the date at which this new crusade 
 opened, Drummond spent in a visit to the Perth Con- 
 ference ; in an autumn visit to Haddo House, 1 with 
 addresses and lectures in the neighbourhood ; in a 
 
 1 Lord Aberdeen's.
 
 273 
 
 visit to the Y.M.C.A. Convention in Dublin; in his 
 winter work at college ; in lecturing on Africa in 
 Liverpool, before the Edinburgh Philosophical Insti- 
 tution, and elsewhere ; and in organising the religious 
 movement among the students of the Scottish uni- 
 versities. 
 
 To the Earl of Aberdeen 
 '3 CARLTON GARDENS, GLASGOW, March 5, 1885. 
 
 1 1 quite thought I should have been able to have 
 answered your letter and Lady Aberdeen's to- 
 day. But light comes very slowly; and though I 
 have been thinking over the request very seriously, 
 I am still in the twilight. I fear I must therefore 
 beg you to allow me a few more hours before 
 writing in detail. My difficulties are : 
 
 'i. To lecture in the circumstances named would 
 be a matter of very great delicacy and difficulty, 
 and to prepare a set of lectures worthy of the 
 object would require months of careful prepa- 
 ration. 
 
 '2. I am seriously involved just now in the work 
 among students. This is spreading daily, and is 
 now extending to the other universities. Whither 
 it may develop one cannot foresee ; but, as nothing 
 like this has ever happened in my lifetime, I am 
 not sure but that my immediate duty lies here. 
 We have many plans for April, and there are very 
 few men among the professors who give any help. 
 What makes me shrink from the idea of running 
 away from it prematurely is the profound convic- 
 tion that this university movement is a distinct 
 work of God such a work as I, after consider- 
 able experience of evangelistic work, have never 
 seen before.
 
 274 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 ' I must not disguise from you, also, that I would 
 have little faith in my lecturing producing any 
 permanent result. The lecture, as a weapon, 
 always has seemed to me a poor influence in 
 religion; and although, as Lady Aberdeen very 
 kindly says, my book has won for me some friends, 
 I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that it has also 
 won me many enemies witness the critic who 
 dances upon me so mercilessly in this month's 
 Contemporary. 
 
 ' I should really have some faith in addresses of a 
 simple kind not written lectures, but clear state- 
 ments of what Christianity really is, what personal 
 religion really is, and evangelical matter generally. 
 To attempt this would be very much more trying ; 
 but if the call came I would feel that I dared not 
 shrink from it. . . .' 
 
 'March ;th, 1885. 
 
 ' Your most considerate letter, this moment handed 
 to me, relieves me much. It was the word lecture 
 that frightened me. This simplifies matters 
 greatly.' 
 
 Finally Drummond agreed to give three addresses 
 in the ballroom of Grosvenor House, the Duke of 
 Westminster's, on the afternoons of the last Sunday 
 in April and of the first two in May. Between the 
 second and third he joined us at our club, held this 
 year at Grasmere, and told us of his new work. The 
 only record I have been able to discover is one by 
 Robert Barbour in a letter to his wife.
 
 z88 5 275 
 
 from Robert W. Barbour 
 TRINCE OF WALES' HOTEL, GRASMERE, May 5, 1885. 
 
 ' I slipped along the passage here, guided by the sound 
 of friendly voices, and slapped Ewing on the shoulder 
 as he was entering the room. Such a burst of greet- 
 ings met me from half a dozen voices and faces: 
 Frank's and Henry's and George's, Mr. Stalker's, Mr. 
 Ross's, Mr. Brown's, and Mr. Skene's. Mr. Watson is 
 going abroad, so cannot come. The change from the 
 darkness and the raw night air with a chill north wind 
 blowing in my face as we drove, my dogcart-man and 
 I, the ten miles along the lakes from Windermere, to 
 the light and warmth of our snug dining-room, was 
 very pleasant. I think the faces all look older 
 perhaps having missed a year makes a difference 
 and I am older too. The time alone last year drew 
 me apart from every one, I think, only to be nearer of 
 course, but still not to depend on any one outside so 
 much henceforward. Henry looks least changed. His 
 Master makes him ever young. 1 He came up from 
 London, where he has been giving addresses in Gros- 
 venor House these two Sabbaths past. At supper 
 Mr. Stalker was the chief talker, taking off (in a 
 genial sympathetic way) several of Henry's " colts," and 
 what things they had said and done in his pulpit.' 2 
 
 'May 6th. 
 
 ' We are just in from a herrlicher Tag. We started 
 at 10.30 for Helvellyn. . . . The climb was be- 
 guiled by Henry telling me of the Grosvenor House 
 meetings. They are held in the ballroom of the 
 
 1 At another ' Gaiety ' meeting Barbour bad described Drummond ' princely 
 and bewitching as ever.' 
 
 2 These were the members of the Students' Holiday Mission. See below, pp. 
 3278-.
 
 2/6 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 duke's house, which may hold 650. The invitation 
 is made through the society column of the Morning 
 Post. Any one who wants to come may call for a 
 ticket at Lord Aberdeen's. The first day the place 
 was filled, and none were turned away. The second 
 another room was thrown open. There is no service 
 just an address for an hour. The first day Forster, 
 Childers, etc., were sitting next to him on the platform 
 and the room was full of members of the Upper 
 House. They came expecting to hear a lecture on 
 science, but Henry took the simplest evangelical sub- 
 ject he could about Conversion. He never felt so 
 horrid in his life, but I think he must have been 
 greatly helped. At the end he asked them to engage 
 with him in prayer. He said it seemed to take them 
 by surprise, but they all knelt down. It is a wonder- 
 ful opportunity God is giving him, and he is wonder- 
 fully fitted for it. Looking at him moving among 
 
 us, I have the feeling I used to have about : 
 
 it is a noble creature of God. We must remember 
 him there again next Sunday.' 
 
 How those meetings impressed a part of London 
 society may be seen in the following extracts from an 
 article in the World, May, 1885, entitled 'Wanted, a 
 Religion': 
 
 'Mr. Drummond has struck out a completely new line of 
 his own, in which there is nothing that is not dignified, noth- 
 ing that is not telling. To be able to collect, even under a 
 ducal roof, on four 1 successive Sunday afternoons, four or 
 five hundred people, many of them of the highest distinction, 
 social and intellectual, is a triumph of ingenious ingenuity 
 \_sic~\. Mr. Drummond has invented a gospel, which, if not 
 entirely new, has just enough novelty about it to pique and 
 interest the fashionable public, and which can be perfectly 
 
 1 Three?
 
 i 88 5 2 77 
 
 well reconciled with the somewhat effete, but always to be 
 respected, evangel of the New Testament. He applies the 
 principle of evolution, the law of the survival of the fittest, to 
 spiritual existence. He does not consign to perdition all 
 who fail to lead a highly spiritual life here. He only reminds 
 them that they are not qualifying themselves for the life to 
 come. For the effect he has produced, everything depends 
 upon his management of his material. Sometimes his reli- 
 gion and his science have fused their currents and travelled 
 in a common stream. Sometimes they have run in parallel 
 channels. Sometimes their relations have been of a different 
 kind, and the lecturer has employed religion as the gilding 
 of the pill of science, or science as the rationalising witness 
 to religion. But whatever the method adopted, the result 
 produced has been the same; and the audience has departed 
 profoundly impressed by the words of wisdom and solemnity 
 issuing from the lips of a young man with a good manner, 
 a not ill-favoured face, a broad Scotch accent, clad in a 
 remarkably well-fitting frock coat, and reciting, after his 
 prelection, the Lord's Prayer in a tone of devout humility 
 remarkable for the professors of the period. Mr. Drummond 
 has, in fact, produced upon his hearers the impression that 
 the teachings of science are, upon the whole, in favour of 
 revealed religion. . . . 
 
 ' Nothing could be easier, and nothing could be more con- 
 temptible, than to disparage or satirise the serious struggle 
 which society is now making to obtain from some one of its 
 many spiritual teachers a new revelation, or, if not that, to have 
 its feet directed into the ways of a new religion. Nothing, 
 again, could be easier than to take a more or less humorous 
 view of Mr. Drummond's dissertations at Grosvenor House. 
 Naturally, the professional religionists are a little jealous 
 of his success. The Church papers hint that he is an ama- 
 teur and a quack. But then that is only professional jealousy. 
 There seems to be no reason why evangelists like Mr. Drum- 
 mond should not cooperate with the salaried interpreters of 
 another evangel, now some nineteen centuries old. Or it 
 may be said that Mr. Drummond would scarcely take a lead- 
 ing part in a performance which certainly seems to have a
 
 278 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 good deal that is artificial about it, if he had any store of the 
 sincerity and earnestness which ought to be the attributes of 
 the religious teacher. Upon this it is enough to observe that 
 audiences as fastidious and discriminating, and as highly edu- 
 cated, as any in the world, have been won over by his utter- 
 ances. That he will produce a moral or social revolution is 
 no more to be anticipated than that he will change the future 
 history of the human race. But that he will be instrumental 
 in effecting an appreciable degree of improvement in our social 
 tone is far from impossible. He may, indeed, almost claim to 
 have done this already. He has caused society to talk, not 
 only about himself, but about the subjects which he expounds. 
 Perhaps the interest he has created in the topics that throng 
 the borderland between physics and faith may not be perma- 
 nent. But what is permanent in these times ? And it is quite 
 enough to know that his words do, for the time, provide mat- 
 ter for reflection. Granting even that religion, or the new 
 blend between science and religion, is taken up by society as 
 a species of diversion, and occupies the same moral level as 
 philanthropy, charity organisation, domiciliary visits paid to 
 the poor at the East End, music, old china, or lawn tennis, 
 that is no reason why it should be discouraged. It is better 
 for society to be occupied in this manner than in many others 
 which might be mentioned. And, indeed, to those who look 
 a little beneath the surface, there is something not only in- 
 structive, but pathetic, in the avidity with which English 
 society, supposed to be irreligious, but really the most reli- 
 gious in the world, snatches at the spiritual mixture prepared 
 for it by Mr. Drummond. What such is the question 
 which presents itself to many minds might not be hoped 
 for, if some new and authentic revelation were to be delivered 
 to society by a greater even than Mr. Drummond?' 
 
 No one, however, can estimate the force of the 
 Grosvenor House addresses who has not seen some, 
 at least, of the appeals which they called forth. As 
 always when he spoke, Drummond drew to himself 
 the secrets of many lives, and became, to a large num- 
 ber of them, an influence of light and hope. The fol-
 
 i '88 '5 279 
 
 lowing letter from himself reports the beginnings of 
 an effort to organise women of the West End of Lon- 
 don into an Associated Workers' League, for social 
 and religious help among the poor : 
 
 To Mrs. Simpson, Edinburgh 
 
 '37, GROSVENOR SQUARE, LONDON, July 10, 1885. 
 1 . . . You ask me what I have been doing ? Meet- 
 ing, meetings, meetings. These have been mostly 
 in private houses, and we are now seeking a little 
 fruit. It ripens slowly in this climate, but there 
 are signs of life on every hand. The latest devel- 
 opment is a " Workers' League " to set all the 
 unemployed in the West End to work.' 
 
 The League was started in July at a drawing-room 
 meeting, at which Drummond gave an address, de- 
 scribing the need for ' some kind of link among 
 workers with a view to assistance in their difficulties 
 and encouragement in their efforts. The objects of 
 the League were to introduce those desiring work to 
 fields of usefulness best suited to their special gifts ; to 
 reinforce existing agencies with workers ; to form a 
 workers' exchange ; and to help workers in the country 
 during their temporary residence in London by bring- 
 ing them into contact with actual work there.' The 
 proposal was eagerly welcomed, and many names 
 were given in at the first meeting. In the second year 
 ninety-eight were added, and by 1890 the total mem- 
 bership was 240. Reports were periodically asked 
 from workers, and the endeavour was made to inspire 
 in the members ' the true temper of work, as distinct 
 from mere busyness in good works.' An appeal, signed 
 by Lady Tavistock, says : 
 
 ' Thought must be below all, and deep purpose and
 
 280 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 much dependence on God, or our efforts will degener- 
 ate into mere restlessness, and we shall exhaust our- 
 selves and other people, while we effect nothing of any 
 permanence or value/ 
 
 In the end of May, 1885, Drummond was the guest 
 at Holyrood Palace of Lord and Lady Aberdeen, 
 while the former filled the office of the Queen's Lord 
 High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the 
 Church of Scotland. In July he was back in Lon- 
 don, holding meetings and organising the Associated 
 Workers' League, as above described. August he 
 spent at home in Stirling, and fishing at Lairg in 
 Sutherland. In September and October he passed 
 some weeks at Haddo House, and went to the Aber- 
 deen meeting of the British Association, at which he 
 read a paper before the Geological Section. On Sunday 
 evenings he gave addresses in the chapel of Haddo 
 House to congregations consisting of the household, 
 the guests, and residents in the neighbourhood. 
 
 ( HADDO HOUSE, Sept. 17, 1885. 
 
 ' All the wise men from the Association are here, 
 resting after their labours among them Lord 
 Rayleigh, Sir John and Lady Lubbock, Lady 
 Boyle, Professor Masson, Mr. Du Maurier of 
 Punch, and other celebrities.' 
 
 'Friday, Sept. 25, 1885. 
 
 ' Still in the North, though I am now wearying to 
 have done with it. But I have a service on Sab- 
 bath and one or two of an important nature next 
 week', which will keep me a few days longer. 
 Most probably I will wind up Haddo with a 
 meeting on Sabbath week.'
 
 188$ 281 
 
 The following letter from Robert Barbour gives a 
 portrait of Drummond, as he showed to his friends in 
 those days. The rapid descent upon them and the 
 swift flight were very characteristic : 
 
 ' STUDY ROOM, CULTS, Monday night, 
 'Oct. 10, 1885. 
 
 ' I have had a great treat to-day. 
 
 ' As I was seeing A. into the train, who should seize 
 me by the arms but Henry ! He was the old charac- 
 ter black and white check tweeds, brown hat, dark 
 green plaid, and princely swing stepping into the 
 12.20 for Aboyne. He was fresh from Haddo, where 
 he has been spending the time since the British 
 Association salmon-fishing and men-fishing together. 
 Lubbock, Sedgwick, Trevelyan, etc., were among his 
 companions. . . . Each Sabbath evening he has 
 spoken there in the chapel, suiting his theme to the 
 special guests. On Saturday they had a kind of 
 Perth Conference, with two or three hundred of the 
 farmers' wives and daughters around, to start the 
 Haddo House Association's work for the year. 
 The earl and Henry were the speakers. 
 
 4 1 left my errands and came back to Cults by the 
 12.30, deposited his wraps at the Manse, and then had 
 a glorious two hours' walk in the face of the bracing 
 west wind, gazing with delight at the autumn woods 
 and the grand blue hills and moors behind, round by 
 the back of Hillton on to the Skene Road and so 
 home by Countesswells and Craigton. " Das war 
 eine Freude, nicht wahr?". . . M. gave us dinner, 
 all her pieces de persistance et resistance with coffee. 
 
 ' Then followed a chat, face to face and heart to 
 heart, by the study fire, and a solemn moment of 
 prayer. And so the Bird of Paradise spread his 
 wings, and I saw him no more.'
 
 282 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 In October Drummond spent a week geologising, 
 in preparation for a case in the Court of Session, 
 to which he was summoned as an expert witness ; 
 and in the end of the month he started his short 
 mission in Oxford, which we may reserve for the 
 general history of the Student Movement in next 
 chapter, From Oxford he returned to the winter ses- 
 sion in Glasgow. Here are a few extracts from his 
 letters during ' a terribly busy ' session his classes at 
 college, lectures in many places, social operations in 
 Glasgow, and a series of addresses to the Edinburgh 
 students: 
 
 ' I am glad you are taking to Emerson. I have 
 been reading Herbert Spencer this week, and I 
 must say with great admiration. I read through 
 Queen Mab, which is cleverly done, but does not 
 come to much except destruction. The best 
 thing in it is where the author calls the Thirty- 
 nine Articles " tinned theology." 
 
 ' Here I was suddenly interrupted by the advent of 
 the Edinburgh deputation four students, whom 
 it really does one good to see. Only they won't 
 go away. They have been five hours in the 
 house already. . . . 
 
 ' I had a great day with the students. They sat 
 eleven hours, and we went the whole round of 
 the theologies. Their request was that I should 
 go to Edinburgh every Sunday in February and if 
 possible March. I hope at least to do something. 
 . . . On Sunday there is to be a monster meet- 
 ing here at which Dr. Barbour and I are to 
 speak. It was begun by the Edinburgh students, 
 and I took it last night and found over a thousand 
 people present.
 
 1885-1886 283 
 
 4 1 have just (Dec. 12, 1885) finished an article for 
 the January Nineteenth Century^ You will be 
 shocked to hear that it is not about beetles, but 
 about Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Huxley. I fear it 
 is really hard on Mr. Gladstone ; it certainly is, 
 though I have been as gentle as I could. But I 
 could not help the thing: it is a real duty; Sir 
 
 also works on Mr. Gladstone's lines, 
 
 and they do incalculable harm to men of science, 
 so I write to repudiate their whole position in the 
 name of scientific theology. ... In the original 
 MS. I had in a page of admiration, but, on second 
 and third thoughts, I reluctantly compelled my- 
 self to exclude it. It was not germane to the 
 subject, and would not come in without a sense 
 of forcing, which would have spoiled every- 
 thing. . . .' 
 
 'New Years Day, 1886. I look over the clean fig- 
 ures of our Almanac and the yet as blank pages 
 of its diary with strange wondering as to what 
 they hold in store. We ought all to be getting 
 into the heart of our life-work now, and, in feel- 
 ing how much there is to do and how short the 
 time is, one cannot but pray that no day of it 
 may be misspent.' 
 
 To Drummond and his correspondents, the year 
 1886 was to bring many changes and many cares. In 
 February the political life of the nation was convulsed 
 by Mr. Gladstone's return to power and his declara- 
 tion of a policy of Home Rule for Ireland. The Earl 
 of Aberdeen was appointed Viceroy of Ireland, and 
 offered Henry Drummond a post on his staff. He 
 replied as follows : 
 
 1 See above, end of chap. x.
 
 284 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 To -Lord Aberdeen 
 
 'GLASGOW, Feb. 12, 1886. 
 
 ' My immediate feeling (after the blush of thanks, 
 which you will so fully understand that I need 
 not open with any formal reference to it) my 
 immediate feeling is one of intense shrinking 
 from a post of such honour and publicity. I feel 
 it is not for me at all. As I have often told you, 
 the Tub is the place for me and not the Castle ; 
 and, at the moment, I do not see how I am to dis- 
 place this feeling. But, of course, one's mere 
 feelings are neither here nor there, and the real 
 consideration is what is right. Now, I am not 
 sure that it would be right for me to do this 
 right in connection with one's real work and 
 mission in life. I need not enlarge upon this ; 
 you will know what I mean. Try for a moment 
 to look at it from my point of view not that you 
 have not done that, but I mean in this relation 
 in relation to my friends and my audience, past 
 and future. For Mrs. Grundy I do not care, I 
 hope; but for others, for the students and for 
 those to whom one may yet speak of a Spiritual 
 World, one would like to avoid even the appear- 
 ance of ambition. Is it not so ? On the other 
 hand, what more could I do in an official relation 
 than as a full private? The difference could 
 only be in name ; and, if that name involves a 
 loss in the highest sense without there being any 
 real gain, ought I to seek it? This is how the 
 thing strikes me at the moment. I wish I could 
 talk it over with you, for writing is so stupid; but 
 I have told you frankly what is in my mind. If 
 I could be of real use in the more official capacity,
 
 i886 285 
 
 that of course would weigh ; but I can be of none, 
 and I am fearful lest I injure any evangelistic 
 work that may be given me to do. The Edin- 
 burgh work has broken out in a marvellous man- 
 ner last Sunday, and I shall be going there for 
 some time, so that the summer may have calls 
 upon me which I cannot now foresee. So please 
 leave me to think over it for a few days, and 
 judge this base ingratitude as gently as you can.' 
 
 The result was that he did not accept the post. In 
 April, in the midst of work for the student movement 
 at Edinburgh, Aberystwyth, and elsewhere, he paid 
 a flying visit to Ireland to lecture before the Royal 
 Dublin Society on Africa, and to prepare for a student 
 deputation to Trinity College. He was the guest of 
 the Viceroy, and re-crossed the Channel with Mr. 
 John Morley. 
 
 * Mr. Morley told me en route that he had come 
 away from Ireland with at least one very definite 
 impression the extraordinary and widespread 
 influence for good throughout the country of the 
 present vice-regal reign, or, as I ought to put it, 
 reigns. I think I shall get to Killin on Monday.' 
 
 It was at Killin that year that our club met, the last 
 time we were all together, for Ewing left soon after- 
 wards for Melbourne. Naturally we discussed the 
 Home Rule question, on which we were divided, and 
 the impending General Election. Drummond quietly 
 stated both sides of the case and gave his reasons for 
 adhering to the portion of the Liberal party which fol- 
 lowed Mr. Gladstone. He had not been converted 
 by Mr. Gladstone's own judgment, nor had he the 
 materials to form an independent opinion. Some of
 
 286 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 his nearest friends were hotly opposed to Home Rule ; 
 his youthful experiences in Dublin had given him 
 distrust of the Irish party 1 and his natural caution 
 in such matters was so great that none of us would 
 have been surprised if he had not taken a side. But 
 he had been impressed by the evidence of Lord Spen- 
 cer, Sir Robert Hamilton, and other statesmen respon- 
 sible for the government of Ireland, who had declared 
 for Home Rule ; he recognised that the policy was in 
 agreement with the Liberal principles which he had 
 always professed, and he was attracted by the moral 
 possibilities which he felt it to contain. Probably, too, 
 he judged, as many other Liberals did, that even if 
 Home Rule were never carried in the form in which 
 Mr. Gladstone projected it, and in a few weeks this 
 was to become very likely, Mr. Gladstone's policy 
 had already created at least the kind of atmosphere 
 in politics in which alone the Irish problem could 
 ripen to a solution. And this may be said to have 
 come to pass, for on whatever side of the question 
 men have taken their stand, they must allow that Mr. 
 Gladstone's effort has succeeded in making our former 
 policy towards Ireland impossible, and has been the 
 real cause, for instance, of the possibility of the Local 
 Government Act recently passed by Parliament. In 
 such opinions and expectations Drummond had been 
 fortified by his recent visit to Ireland, 2 his conversa- 
 
 1 See above, p. 37. 
 
 2 On this point Mr. Gladstone had requested his opinion and he sent it. He 
 received the following reply : 
 
 ' 10 DOWNING STREET, WHITEHALL, June i, 1886. 
 
 ' DEAR MR. DRUMMOND, I have handed your letter to Mr. Gladstone, who 
 desires me to ask you to excuse him if he does not write himself as he is so very busy, 
 and to say that he is greatly obliged to you for what you have written. Your tes- 
 timony as to the change wrought in Irish feeling is very remarkable and has 
 afforded Mr. Gladstone the highest satisfaction. Yours very truly, 
 
 'H. W. PRIMROSE.'
 
 i886 287 
 
 tions with Mr. Morley and Sir Robert Hamilton, 
 and his experience of the effect upon the people of 
 the reign of a Viceroy who represented a Govern- 
 ment pledged to Home Rule. So he was not only 
 prepared to give his vote for this at the coming 
 election, but to speak in public on its behalf with 
 conviction and even with enthusiasm. 
 
 The diminished Liberal party endeavoured to in- 
 duce Drummond to take a further step. They were 
 in sore need of candidates at the election candi- 
 dates of his class and culture and he was urgently 
 requested to stand for several constituencies. 1 The 
 Partick Division of Lanarkshire was especially import- 
 unate, and Mr. Gladstone himself wrote a strong letter 
 of persuasion. But Drummond was wiser than his ad- 
 visers, and, as at so many other periods of temptation, 
 refused to launch upon a line of life which would have 
 distracted him from the vocation that he felt and had 
 now so amply proved to be his own. 
 
 '3, PARK CIRCUS, GLASGOW, June 17, 1886. 
 
 ' I found in possession of my Tub a horrid monster 
 a deputation from the Partick Division of Lan- 
 arkshire. All past refusals were fruitless, although 
 I had an hour with their chairman yesterday, and 
 they came to renew the attack. I fought single- 
 handed for three hours, with what result you 
 know.' 
 
 1 There are letters to him from Partick, West Edinburgh, and the Inverness 
 Burghs.
 
 288 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 To the Right Honourable W. E. Gladstone 
 
 Copy dated June 15, 1886. 
 
 ' MY DEAR MR. GLADSTONE, 
 
 ' A letter from you on the subject of going into Par- 
 liament I feel to be a most sacred call. It has 
 touched me unspeakably. I am entirely un- 
 worthy of a thing so high and generous, and it is 
 with a deep sense of responsibility that I now 
 try to trust myself to reply. 
 
 ' After the most serious and anxious consideration I 
 fear I must ask your forbearance for an answer 
 in the negative. I shall not waste your time by 
 entering on the many reasons which contribute 
 to a decision which I offer you with the profound- 
 est respect and regret, but as far as my present 
 light goes I feel that I can serve you and the 
 great cause better in other ways than by myself 
 entering Parliament. What little I can do as 
 regards the present crisis I think I can do to 
 equal purpose apart from the House of Commons, 
 and in the long run for the good ends of which 
 this is but a part. 
 
 ' I believe that by working in the fixed walk of life 
 which seems to be assigned to me, and which re- 
 fuses, in spite of private struggles and the per- 
 suasion of the wisest friends, to release me for 
 this special service, I can do more for every cause 
 of truth and righteousness. 
 
 ' What personal regrets and regards mingle with 
 this letter you can form little idea of ; and I shall 
 not attempt to express my sense of gratitude for 
 the extraordinary honour and kindness of your 
 letter. With great respect, I remain, 
 ' Sincerely yours, 
 
 ' HENRY DRUMMOND.'
 
 i886 289 
 
 But while refusing to stand for any constituency, 
 Drummond gave help to several Liberal candidates. 
 He went the round of the Ayr Burghs with his friend, 
 Captain Sinclair, and spoke also in Possilpark and at 
 Kilmarnock. 
 
 He was warmly attacked both by friends and by 
 strangers. 
 
 ' A torrent of wrath from over the advertise- 
 ment of the Home Rule meeting. is not 
 
 satisfied yet, and the general public is treating 
 me to anonymous letters. But really neither are 
 at all severe, and I am very far from complaining.' 
 
 His critics could have no idea of how seriously 
 and how religiously he took up the work of which 
 they complained. His few speeches were very care- 
 fully planned ; they rang high and true, and, as I find 
 from some notes to friends, he did not appear on those 
 political platforms without the same kind of prepara- 
 tion that he invariably made for his religious addresses. 
 When defeat came he reverently considered the mean- 
 ing of it, and his letters to those to whom it shut doors 
 of usefulness, hardly opened, are among the finest he 
 wrote. 
 
 Drummond spent July fishing in Sutherlandshire 
 and came to Glasgow for August. 
 
 ' I have been working like a tiger. No Scotch 
 moor is quieter than Glasgow just now, and I 
 have not seen one white man since I came back. 
 Half the churches were closed on Sunday, and I 
 worshipped in the slums. . . . Germany is tak- 
 ing shape, and I must work, work, work.'
 
 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 This was for a visit to the German universities. 
 But first Drummond went to Switzerland with his 
 sisters for part of September. 
 
 To Lady Aberdeen 
 i HOTEL AXENSTEIN, LAKE OF LUCERNE, Sept. 2, 1886. 
 
 ' There is but one spot in the world, and its name is 
 Axenstein. In all my wanderings I never saw 
 anything to approach the place from which I now 
 scribble. I know you are a heretic about Swit- 
 zerland, but ten minutes of this would win you for 
 evermore. The scenery is of the very noblest 
 type mountain, lake, and forest and this hotel 
 is surrounded with shady walks, with views break- 
 ing out everywhere of the most bewildering beauty 
 and sublimity. And but really you are laugh- 
 ing. Do excuse me, for I had to blow this off 
 before writing one word. I have often marked 
 this spot in my knapsacking days a forest ledge 
 two thousand feet high, on a precipice falling 
 sheer into the lake, with a great eagle's nest of a 
 hotel and I always looked forward to the quiet 
 visit which has now come. We had engaged 
 rooms in Paris on Tuesday, but the heat and 
 noise were intolerable, so we took the first ex- 
 press and came right on to Lucerne, and then 
 here by steamer. My main mission to Paris was 
 to see Pasteur and go over his laboratory, but I 
 found he had just left for a holiday. We got 
 here yesterday afternoon, and we feel we would 
 just like to stay here all the time. 
 
 ' No words can but I must not begin again. . . . 
 
 ' On the Calais ferry I crossed with Count , 
 
 and had an interesting talk with him. He has
 
 i886 291 
 
 given up the Consulate (from political motives) 
 and has nothing to do but travel. I feel very 
 sorry for him, for he is an exceptionally good 
 Frenchman. You would have been intensely 
 amused to see the letter of introduction he gave 
 me to a friend of his in Paris. I was " un savant 
 tres-religieux, et au meme moment double\ment\ un 
 homme du monde ! " Part of the humour of the 
 thing consisted, as I afterwards discovered, in his 
 friend Count T. being the leading man at the 
 Paris Jockey Club ! ' 
 
 'HOTEL RIFFEL-ALP, ZERMATT, Sept. 12, 1886. 
 
 1 1 am very glad you are president. This sentence 
 is good and contains all you want for a text to 
 speak on : " These girls must be met, not by au- 
 thority, but with sympathy and respect." I am 
 sure these people will trust you and allow you to 
 say almost anything you like, and I should not 
 be afraid to speak plainly. It is a fine opportu- 
 nity, though a very delicate one, to help on the 
 modern movement towards a more real and solid 
 faith and a truer Christianity. And I am sure we 
 can do much without breaking with the evan- 
 gelicals. . . . Last Sunday I went to church 
 twice 1 and got two very fine sermons from Dr. 
 Laidlaw of Edinburgh.' 
 
 * VALLOURMANCHE, Sept. 15. 
 
 1 1 am at this moment in a rustic inn in the most glo- 
 rious valley in Piedmont. This is the most deli- 
 cious travelling in the world. One wanders where 
 one likes, stops where one likes, the weather is 
 perfect, the scenery glorious, the wine good, and 
 
 1 At Interlaken.
 
 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 the inns as sweet as the Alpine roses. To-mor- 
 row we make for Milan, and on Saturday start for 
 the Italian lakes.' 
 
 Drummond stayed on in Switzerland to prepare his 
 German addresses. He had many opportunities of 
 helping those in religious doubt whom he met at table 
 or by the wayside, and who like all their kind were 
 drawn to open their hearts to him. On October i6th 
 he left for Tubingen. I do not know whether he 
 visited other universities, but by October 25th he was 
 in Bonn, of which we will hear afterwards. 
 
 By November 2 he was in Glasgow, and 'in a 
 whirl of work.' 
 
 To Lady Aberdeen 
 
 'Dec. 16, 1886. 
 
 1 One sees one's life in perspective when one goes 
 abroad, and to be spectators of ourselves is very 
 solemn. I have been reading a new book this 
 week which brings out in a startling light the old 
 distinction between "the ourselves" in us and our 
 mere outward talents. Those last are but the 
 Weapons ; the Warrior is within. The Weapons, 
 it says, are but the accidents of birth, and no more 
 to be placed to our credit than gold or clothes or 
 worldly possessions. Yet how often we think the 
 Warrior is well if but the Weapons do their 
 work; and how much self-satisfaction is based 
 upon what we, i.e. the Weapons, not we have 
 done; how little upon what we, the real we are. 
 But the measure of the success of our life can 
 only lie in the gains of the last, in the stature of 
 our manhood, in the growth in unworldliness 
 and moral elevation of our inner Self. But I 
 wonder what makes me ramble on like this.
 
 293 
 
 Alas it is the memory of a remorse which 
 always follows one in one's own holidays. The 
 text I oftenest think on then is this: "What is 
 the Man profited if he gain the whole world 
 morally or spiritually and lose his own soul.'" 
 
 To Lord Aberdeen^ 
 
 'GLASGOW, Jan. 6, 1887. 
 
 * MY DEAR ABERDEEN, First, please look at the 
 queer stamp on the outside of this letter. As 
 Viceroy (temporarily Ex.) I thought you would 
 like to see the new symbols of the Crown, and 
 ordered a complete set, for everything is changed 
 except the penny ones this Jubilee year; but 
 the telegraph boy who was despatched to the 
 General P.O. for them the local offices have to 
 use up the old ones is probably playing snow- 
 balls somewhere in the city, so I fear this must 
 go before I can send them. I do not know if 
 you have a weakness for stamps, but I confess 
 this relic of boyhood still survives in me. Per- 
 haps, however, in present circumstances, you 
 would prefer the boy to send you the snowballs. 
 
 I Pour moi, I have nothing to report. My life 
 
 flows on in silence, almost in solitude. These 
 winter months I am the pure Diogenes. I read 
 a little science, write ein wenig, skate when the 
 frost pleases, and walk three or four times a week 
 with Dods. I like it all, nevertheless, very much. 
 I think I was made to remain " in der stilled 
 
 I 1 begin Edinburgh on Sunday. It haunts me like 
 a nightmare. The responsibility of these coming 
 Sundays I feel almost more than anything in 
 my life.' 
 
 1 In India.
 
 294 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 To Lady Aberdeen 
 
 ' GLASGOW, Jan. 20, 1887. 
 
 'We had a splendid meeting last Sunday; and on 
 Sunday week the students open a campaign 
 among the bigger Edinburgh schoolboys. We 
 have got the athletic men, whom the schoolboys 
 all know, to take this in hand, and I think it 
 ought to succeed. 
 
 'Mr. Barbour, Senior, died on Saturday night. I 
 was present at the time ... a very quiet and 
 beautiful end. Robert is in Corsica for his health, 
 and will feel it much. I go to Bonskeid on Sat- 
 urday for the funeral. 
 
 'Jan. 27, 1887. Edinburgh was splendid on Sun- 
 day. 
 
 * Feb. 17. Edinburgh is as good as ever, both the 
 
 boys and the students. Much happier. " The 
 Lord is good to all." 
 
 * March 3, 1887. Symptoms you now openly avow 
 
 of having caught the Travel Fever in earnest. I 
 have seen premonitory symptoms of this for some 
 time, and in A.'s last letter it had gone the length 
 of " spots? but I held my counsel and kept silent, 
 knowing the hour was at hand. And now it has 
 come, and I make merry. But is it not good? 
 And really wholesome and tonic, and expansive 
 all round ? And what a new proportion it gives 
 to things; for example, "God so loved the World? 
 and " The City had twelve gates, and every one a 
 Pearl." 
 
 ' But what it is exactly that travel gives, and is, one 
 can scarcely define, though not the least of it
 
 i88 7 295 
 
 must be the immensely bigger Environment to 
 think in. 
 
 1 1 had forgotten that Emerson did not appreciate 
 roving, but then he was an American, and their 
 big country saves them from insularity, so they 
 did not need it. Speaking of Emerson, I heard 
 this of him lately: Himself tottering on the verge 
 of the grave, he went to Longfellow's funeral. 
 (L. was his oldest friend.) For some time he 
 stood looking at the dead poet's face, and then 
 said, " He was a beautiful soul . . . but ... I 
 forget his name ! " (I do not know in the least 
 what recalls this here, but, as you see, I am just 
 chatting to-night.) 
 
 ' In Edinburgh the current is flowing deep and strong. 
 I do not think I would exchange that audience for 
 anything else in the world.' 
 
 Through March the Edinburgh meetings continued 
 large and enthusiastic. They closed with a Com- 
 munion Service on the third Sunday. For the first 
 few days of April Drummond took his own class as 
 usual to Arran, and throughout the month was busy 
 arranging the Students' Holiday Mission. 
 
 'GLASGOW, May 10, 1887. 
 
 1 Moody writes urgently about going to America for 
 a students' gathering, and I think I must go. I 
 am also asked to give some lectures at Chautauqua 
 (excuse the word), and thereafter may evangelise 
 about among the American and Canadian colleges. 
 If I go, it will be in the beginning or middle of 
 June.' 
 
 In America he arrived on the i8th of June. But 
 his work there was among the colleges, and falls to be 
 described in another chapter.
 
 296 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 From America Drummond returned to find his 
 father dangerously ill. To a friend watching beside 
 her mother's bed he wrote as follows : 
 
 'GLENELM, STIRLING, Nov. 10. 
 
 * This is sad news your telegram brings me. I 
 
 wonder much how it is at to-day. I suppose 
 
 will have come, but nothing in the world 
 
 can take off the awe and solemnity of a time like 
 this. I did not tell you before for you have 
 enough to bear that I am one with you in 
 trouble. They wrote to Queenstown to prepare 
 me for it, but the meeting has been a great shock. 
 The doctors seem to fear the worst, and I am 
 living here at present, and going in to Glasgow 
 every day for a few hours. So you will know 
 how I can partly understand what is going on 
 with you. 
 
 ' How suddenly the water deepens sometimes in 
 one's life ! How fast the bottom shelves, and yet 
 how little one knows the depths that lie beyond 
 or whether the currents are to be swift or still ! 
 
 ' Well, I suppose it must be better, this deeper sea, 
 than the shallows where the children play. But 
 this is not my line to talk aloud like this: so 
 basta ! But I must add this. One thing I am 
 learning, slowly, to believe in prayer. So I pray 
 for you all.' 
 
 1 1 4th Nov. The thing that crushes is to look on 
 silently at the unalleviable pain of those we love. 
 But God knows the end ; and it is His natural 
 order that generation after generation should 
 pass away.' 
 
 ' 1 6th Nov. I have been reading an exquisite essay 
 by Edwin Arnold on Death, which I shall send
 
 297 
 
 you some day. After all, what an entrancing 
 thing Death is ! I am glad I am an evolutionist, 
 yet its surroundings are very terrible, in your case 
 terrible unspeakably.' 
 
 'i8th Nov. I look eagerly for every report from 
 
 . The last looks as if there might be a 
 
 resurrection. But living or dying we are the 
 Lord's. Trouble is not such a new thing to you. 
 But it is to me, and I hear it saying many things. 
 Some I never knew before ; others one has heard, 
 but never believed ; others one has heard often, 
 and as often forgotten. But the great benedic- 
 tion of it seems to lie less in the personal ele- 
 ments than in the larger views one gets of what 
 is permanent, eternal, and most worth living for. 
 
 ' My father lived for these things if ever man did. 
 
 ' Pardon me writing more. He is sinking fast, and 
 the end must be near.' 
 
 1 22d Nov. I hope you have found all well on your 
 return. It is a kind of shock always to come back 
 from a place of great and solemn experiences and 
 find things all going on as if nothing had happened. 
 We tread the winepress alone. And yet it is sight 
 and healing that the world should be so busy and 
 unsympathetic.' 
 
 4 2 gth Nov. My father lingers on. We can fore- 
 cast nothing.' 
 
 ' loth Dec. I begin to think my father is rallying 
 in earnest.' 
 
 * 3ist Dec. This is the last time I shall write 1887. 
 I have lots to say, but the post goes earlier to- 
 night, and I must commit my wishes to the south 
 wind. Nun Gott sei mit, durch dieses Jahr ! 
 And please see the blue in the sky, and there is 
 always more than we can see.'
 
 298 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 1 ist Jan. 1888. The end has come now. My 
 father has begun the New Year. He passed 
 away this morning at five o'clock. You did not 
 know him, but he was a good soldier.' 
 
 The winter and spring of 1888 were spent by Drum- 
 mond on his college class, and on what had now be- 
 come his yearly meetings for the Edinburgh students. 1 
 He also did some literary work. 
 
 ' Jan. 28th. I have become a veritable hermit-crab, 
 so far as that is consistent with about ten meet- 
 ings per week. In the -intervals of making new 
 addresses 2 I am doing a little (strictly private and 
 confidential) to the Ascent of Man, but the prog- 
 ress is miserable.' 
 
 ' March 5th. I am too exhausted after this to add 
 more. The Tub has been as still as the Pacific 
 since you left. Little has happened to the Ascent. 
 Edinburgh has been unusually absorbing. I have 
 stitched together a wee book on Africa ; written a 
 college lecture or two ; prepared an article for the 
 Britannica;* and consumed infinite smoke. C'est 
 tout! 
 
 There was the usual visit to Arran with his students 
 in the end of March, and assistance, all that and the 
 next month, to a friend who was standing for a vacant 
 constituency. Concerning certain intrigues in regard 
 to which he is tempted to say, ' " The more one knows 
 of men," says my favourite Artemus Ward, " the more 
 one thinks of dogs." ' 
 
 On the Higher Education of Women he writes : 
 
 1 See next chapter. * On the Zambezi. 
 
 2 For Edinburgh students.
 
 i888 299 
 
 To Lady Aberdeen 
 
 ' The main thing surely is that it be real, and not 
 the mere accretion of further " accomplishments." 
 I dp not think it has touched this ideal yet, cer- 
 tainly not in the case of men. Wise women, bal- 
 anced women, are what are needed, not accom- 
 plished ornaments or bores. Specifically, then, 
 they should be educated to be E. women and not 
 second-rate E. men. Hence (don't laugh) the three 
 things they should know from the foundation to 
 the top before they put on any stucco are : (Mind) 
 Education t?N\a.\.1 Why? How?); (Body)/^- 
 ology and Ethics ; Psychology and (Soul) Theol- 
 ogy, or Theology alone. Apart from the obvious 
 reason, and the importance of it, in these days 
 when even our novels are theological, or sham- 
 theological, women should know their way about 
 here. Then your Political Economy would come 
 in, etc., etc.' 
 
 In May Drummond received a remarkable requisi- 
 tion to deliver another series of religious addresses at 
 Grosvenor House during the London season. It was 
 signed with the following names: Aberdeen, Arthur 
 James Balfour, W. St. John Brodrick, George N. 
 Curzon, R. Munro Ferguson, Alfred Lyttelton, W. S. 
 Murray (of the Grenadier Guards), George W. Russell, 
 John Sinclair, and J. E. C. Welldon. To Captain 
 Sinclair, who acted as secretary, Drummond replied : 
 
 'GLASGOW, May 5, 1888. 
 
 1 1 feel very unequal to this piece of work, but after 
 the most serious consideration I feel bound to 
 face it. The kind interest of yourself and of your 
 fellow-conspirators in the matter is of itself almost
 
 3OO HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 enough to determine my decision ; and on all 
 grounds I am persuaded I ought at least to make 
 the attempt. 
 
 ' With reference to the points you raise let me 
 say: 
 
 4 1. That I am strongly of opinion that only 
 three addresses, and on the Sundays you name, 
 should be announced. When a long series is in- 
 timated, men imagine they can go at any time ; 
 and a main object should be to keep the first day's 
 audience through the course rather than to have 
 new men coming in at the end. An isolated ad- 
 dress is almost useless. If it turned out to be 
 advisable to have a fourth, it could be intimated 
 at the third meeting without the necessity of 
 issuing fresh tickets. But on all grounds, I think 
 we should wait developments before announcing 
 more than three. 
 
 ' 2. I am quite at a loss for the title of my sub- 
 ject. Robert Elsmere is a good suggestion, but 
 would scarcely give scope for what one would 
 really like to say, and would give rather a polemi- 
 cal or apologetic cast to the address. Would it 
 not do to name no subject? None was an- 
 nounced last time. With this precedent, and the 
 fact that the addresses are on Sunday, the sug- 
 gestion of a religious subject might perhaps be 
 strong enough without a direct statement. I fear 
 no title would quite cover the ground one would 
 like to go over. 
 
 ' 3. As the limitation to Men only might create 
 an impression that the subject necessitated this, 
 and was of a private character, would it not be 
 well to put a footnote on the card in small type 
 to some such effect as this :
 
 1 8 88 301 
 
 ' " The limitation strictly to men is necessitated by 
 
 the accommodation." 
 ' I hope these suggestions will not be out of keeping 
 
 with your own views.' 
 
 In accordance with this, a circular was drawn up 
 and signed by the requisitionists, intimating meetings 
 for men only, on Sundays, 3d, loth, and lyth June, at 
 4 P.M. ' The great square room was densely crowded 
 by an interested and representative gathering poli- 
 ticians, clergymen, authors, artists, critics, soldiers, and 
 barristers, with a large sprinkling of smart young men, 
 whose appearance would scarcely have suggested a 
 vivid interest in serious concerns.' 1 The addresses 
 (I do not know in what order) were on ' Evolution 
 and Christianity,' ' Natural Selection in Reference to 
 Christianity,' and the * Programme of Christianity.' 
 After distinguishing between religion and theology 
 and emphasising Christianity as life, Professor Drum- 
 mond said that the truth of Christianity is manifest in 
 the fact that there is no real civilisation without it, 
 and that the purer the form of Christianity, the greater 
 the development of civilisation. ' Show me,' he said 
 with Matthew Arnold, ' ten square miles outside of 
 Christianity where the life of man or the virtue of 
 woman is safe, and I'll throw over Christianity at 
 once.' He defined its place in the evolution of the 
 universe and of man as the crown and consummation 
 of the process. He showed its adaptability to the most 
 pressing requirements of the individual and of society, 
 accounted for its apparent failure to accomplish its 
 mission by the unfaithfulness of Christians to their 
 own ideal, and compared the efficacy of Christ's Gos- 
 pel in ministering to such common ills as poverty, 
 
 1 Pall Mall Gazette, June lith.
 
 3O2 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 distress, melancholy, and bad habits, with that of 
 Socialism, Political Economy, and Natural Morality. 
 The address upon ' Natural Selection in Reference to 
 Christianity ' applied the latter to the individual. They 
 were often told, he said, that so far from religion being 
 a question of the survival of the fittest, it was the very 
 opposite ; that nature and religion here parted com- 
 pany ; that while in nature the race was to the swift 
 and the weak went to the wall, in religion the weak 
 and heavy-laden were helped and the bruised reed was 
 not broken. Yet, he thought, the same law held good 
 for both. Illustrating the meaning of the term ' sur- 
 vival of the fittest ' by the case of the tadpole, which 
 when the pond dies and myriads of other organisms 
 die, yet survives and develops into another creature, 
 because it is surrounded with a mysterious apparatus 
 which enables it to effect that transformation under 
 different vital conditions, Professor Drummond said 
 that when they came to religion they found exactly 
 the same state of matters. ... At the dissolution of 
 their bodies 'those who had here, in their being, some- 
 where, an apparatus for living in an unseen environ- 
 ment would survive, and they would survive because 
 they were fit, and not because they were worthy of 
 eternal life. . . . They were told by many that all men 
 at last would have eternal life, that God was good, and 
 that it was out of the question to conceive that any 
 should not survive. He knew nothing about the 
 survival or non-survival of those who had not the 
 special apparatus for developing; but they had little 
 reason to believe that if a man had not developed in 
 him the faculties for communicating with the spiritual 
 world, he would have that kind of life at least, what- 
 ever his immortality might be. He that hath not the 
 Son hath not life. God had invited every man and
 
 i888 303 
 
 woman to come to Him that they might have life ; and 
 if they resisted that invitation, they could not fall back 
 upon generalities about God's goodness. And instead 
 of it being more likely for a man to get these faculties 
 after death, he was afraid it looked as if the chance 
 diminished every year of his life. They were told by 
 many that the future was so vague they should just 
 take their chance. There was no such thing as chance. 
 It was a question of the survival of the fittest, and 
 unless a man was fit he had not the ghost of a chance. 
 This was not an arbitrary enactment on God's part. 
 It was natural law: a natural selection, a selection 
 of those who had become fit, done by nature, not 
 by God. As to what constituted fitness, they were 
 told in the Bible that without holiness no man shall 
 see the Lord. . . . They were also told in the Bible 
 that if a man loves the world, the love of the Father 
 is not in him. The man who loved the world was by 
 that incapacitated from loving God. It was a question 
 of taste, and religion was the education of the taste in 
 that particular. The Christian was not to go out of the 
 world, but he was not to love it. ... Again they were 
 told, If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is 
 none of His. Only those who were unworldly could 
 live in that society. A man to get into heaven, which 
 was simply a select family, must have the family 
 interest at heart. . . . These three things constituted 
 fitness, and it was impossible to survive without them. 
 Could they tell whether they were fit to survive or not? 
 Must they wait until the judgment day, or was there 
 to be a judgment day at all ? He did not think there 
 would be any bar, or any trumpet, or the machinery 
 of a human event. These would be unnecessary, 
 because a man would know whether he was fit to 
 live in that world the moment he was brought into
 
 304 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 contact with it. The moment a man submitted his 
 soul to God's friends, he would see at a glance instinc- 
 tively whether he was fit to live in that company or 
 not. The moment he came into contact with Christ 
 there was the judgment. Those he was addressing 
 could know at that moment whether they were fit to 
 survive. It was not religiousness nor good works 
 that constituted fitness. It was the possession of the 
 mind of Christ, unworldliness, holiness. They who 
 had these would survive. That was eternal life. It 
 was a beautiful life, it was the life they would like 
 to have eternal, the only life worth being eternal. 
 They could see at once that the law of natural selec- 
 tion was a law which would keep heaven pure. Its 
 object was to produce fitness not to keep some out, 
 but to make clear that those who got in should be 
 worthy of it, pure, heavenly minded, unworldly. All 
 men could be eligible if they would get into the envi- 
 ronment suitable to the development of this fitness. 
 To do that, they must, in the first place, turn their 
 backs upon the old environment, upon the world ; and, 
 secondly, they must live in the new environment, or, 
 in Scriptural language, Abide in Christ, and that envi- 
 ronment would in itself produce these changes. There 
 was an undeveloped bud in every one, and they had 
 only to abide in Christ, and it would grow into beauty 
 and send its fragrance upon all around. A brief 
 prayer followed the address. 1 
 
 The usual letters, appeals, interviews, ensued upon 
 these addresses ; and years after they were given, 
 thoughts, questions, resolutions, and decisions of char- 
 acter which they had stirred came back to Drummond 
 for sympathy and counsel often from lonely men 
 and women working on the far fringes of that world- 
 
 1 From a newspaper report.
 
 i888 305 
 
 wide Empire to the whole of which you speak if you 
 speak in London. 
 
 Besides the meetings for men at Grosvenor House, 
 Drummond addressed a large meeting of young women 
 of the West End of London in the residence of the 
 Speaker of the House of Commons. This meeting 
 was held in pursuance of the aims of the Associated 
 Workers' League started in 1885 ; and a separate club 
 was formed from among those present for the purpose 
 of informing and guiding them in all the usual work 
 to which they had given themselves. The ' 88 Club ' 
 (as it was called) was to consist ' of working members 
 who will each undertake some definite work, however 
 small, undertaking to help each other when so called 
 upon, to remember each other at some set time, and 
 to send in to the Secretary quarterly reports of their 
 work.' A letter from the President 'rejoices that every 
 one who has joined the " 88 " has in some way or other 
 definitely recognised the obligation under which we 
 are placed as human beings to make life better worth 
 living to others. The raison cTetre of the Club is not 
 to impose any fresh duty upon us, but the Club was 
 intended to act as a constant help and reminder that 
 we are already bound, in some way or other, to make 
 service for others the aim of our lives. We recognise 
 to the full the paramount claim of home-duties.' The 
 motto of the Club was ' Prasto et Persto ' : ' I under- 
 take and persevere.' In 1889 the Club started a 
 magazine to give descriptions of philanthropic activity, 
 and especially of such as are suitable for young women 
 of the wealthier classes who live in the country, reports 
 of the members' work, and notices of books relevant to 
 the aims of the Club. A volume, from December, 
 1 889, to September, 1 892, contains articles on ' Women's 
 Work in Large Cities,' ' Friendly Societies for Women,'
 
 306 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 ' Women's Work and Wages,' ' Women's Settlements 
 in London,' ' Clubs for Girls,' ' The Higher Education 
 of Women,' ' Country Neighbours,' ' Village Choirs,' 
 ' Needlework Guilds for the Country,' ' Suggestions 
 how to help Servants,' ' An Experimental Household 
 Club,' ' Workhouse Suggestions,' ' Bee-keeping,' ' Chil- 
 dren's Country Holiday' and so forth. 
 
 'LocHMORE LODGE, LAIRG, July 3. 
 
 * Arrived here one hour ago after a charming drive. 
 The place is buried in mountains, and London 
 already seems a million miles away. There has 
 been no rain, and till it comes I must simply 
 smoke and dream, for there is not a solitary fin 
 in the loch.' 
 
 'July 9. 
 
 ' The change from London has been delightful. I 
 have had four days' absolute peace and indolence. 
 Yesterday I had a service at twelve in the ser- 
 vants' hall, to which keepers, foresters, and their 
 wives trooped in for miles and miles, and I liked 
 the thing much better than Grosvenor House. 
 
 The has been spreading its poison in the 
 
 Highlands, and one or two would not contami- 
 nate themselves by coming out to hear so awful a 
 monster. (This is quite true.) London ended 
 better than it began. The ladies' meeting went 
 off, I think, fairly well, and Harrow was of some 
 use also, I hope.' 
 
 In the middle of August Drummond started for a 
 tour in Switzerland with his mother and sisters. 
 
 ' SONNENBERG HOTEL, ENGELBERG, Aug. IQ. 
 
 4 1 am lost in wonder all day long. Switzerland is 
 the one place in the world which is never false to
 
 i888 307 
 
 old impressions, which never betrays one by a 
 shadow of disappointment, but grows in grandeur 
 with all one's faculties. I find this truer than 
 ever this year, and I suppose this is my eighth 
 or ninth time in it.' 
 
 He took his mother and sisters by Engsteln Alp, 
 the Grimsel, Fiesch, and over the Simplon to the 
 Italian lakes, where he left them and returned to 
 meet Lord Aberdeen at Lucerne. 
 
 To Lady Aberdeen 
 
 1 LUCERNE, Sept. 16. 
 
 ' A printed notice at our hotel told us of the usual 
 Free Church service here in the Maria Hilf 
 Kirche. Mr. of to preach during Sep- 
 tember. When we got there we found a congre- 
 gation, mostly American, standing outside the 
 locked door. The hour struck, but no minister 
 appeared, and not even a beadle was about. By 
 and by A. and I hunted up an old woman, got 
 the keys, requisitioned two Swiss urchins to blow 
 the organ, and an American Miss to play it, and 
 got under way with an extemporised sermon. A. 
 gave out the hymns and precented from an organ 
 loft, about a hundred feet above the floor, and 
 after a little singing I read a chapter and dis- 
 coursed, and then we had prayer and more sing- 
 ing and no collection. The hymn-books had 
 to be sent for to " The Swan," and no one knows 
 why the parson did not appear. One idea is that 
 the thing closes in the middle of September; 
 another, that the parson had fallen down a cre- 
 vasse. Anyhow, I mean to report matters to 
 headquarters, as there was some unparliamentary
 
 308 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 language going, and the Down Grade in the F. C. 
 must not be allowed to descend to glaciers. I 
 
 hope at next Assembly will introduce an 
 
 overture that henceforth "all continental chap- 
 lains shall be roped." ' 
 
 'ANDERMATT, Sept. 23. 
 
 ' This has been a happy Sabbath. In the morning 
 I went up the mountain alone ; then spent an 
 hour with two old bauers in a wee Roman Catho- 
 lic Chapel. Hymns with A. and Dr. and Mrs. 
 in the afternoon and evening.' 
 
 'VENICE, Sept. 27. 
 
 ' I met Browning 1 to-day and had a chat, also the 
 Queen of Portugal and had no chat.' 
 
 ( MONTE GENEROSO, Oct. 4, 1888. 
 
 ' I left A. at Zermatt and ran off to Venice to my 
 mother and sisters. We wandered up and down 
 with Ruskin's Stones of Venice in our hands till 
 it was too dark to read. I never felt more be- 
 holden to any author than to Ruskin during these 
 days. It was to me a revelation. I must go 
 back. 
 
 ' I met Browning on the street one day and had a 
 memorable chat with him. He said this was his 
 ninth visit to Venice, and he always found out 
 new things. 
 
 ' The Italian Bible I sent you is selling in every 
 kiosk, and by the ten thousand. Issued simply 
 as classical literature by an irreligious man, it is 
 being read on every hand. 
 
 ' I am now back again with A., and will stay quietly 
 reading and dreaming till the loth or i2th.' 
 
 1 H. D. had met Browning at Dollis Hill in June, 1885. ' I had a walk with 
 him. He is quite unlike a poet, and talks plain prose. To meet him you would 
 think he was an elderly but well-preserved and smart French banker.'
 
 1888-1889 
 
 The winter of 1888-89 passed in the usual labours 
 college lectures, new addresses for Edinburgh, and 
 endless meetings of philanthropic societies. He was 
 kept very busy, and claim after claim upon him had to 
 be refused in the interests of his work for the students. 
 In February he wrote : 
 
 ' I shall need my Saturday night to myself, that is, 
 to the students. I have not had a moment this 
 
 week. There are always heaps of people for , 
 
 and I am sure they do not need me so much as I 
 need myself on Saturday. Try to see it in this 
 way.' 
 
 Part of his work this year was the founding of a 
 University Settlement in Glasgow. His intense in- 
 terest at this time in such work is proof of how far 
 he had advanced in his conception of Christianity since 
 the early days, when the social side of religion had 
 few charms for him. 
 
 ' March 27. 
 
 ' I am busy with the University men here, planning 
 a Settlement in a poor district. The leader is an 
 Established Church student, the second a med- 
 ical, the third an Arts man coming on for the 
 Free Church College. Plans are out, and the 
 thing will be built by the beginning of next ses- 
 sion. Thirty men are already at work in the dis- 
 trict, and there will be fifteen residents. Is not 
 this good ? It will be on earnest evangelical 
 lines, and ought to be a great blessing to the 
 University. The first formal meeting of workers 
 takes place in my house next Tuesday night.' 
 
 In the beginning of April Dr. Smeaton, Professor 
 of New Testament Exegesis in New College, Edin-
 
 3IO HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 burgh, died, and Drummond threw himself with ardour 
 into the work of securing the election of Dr. Dods to 
 the vacant chair. 
 
 To Lady Aberdeen 
 
 'April 25, 1889. 
 
 * I have great hope. The younger men are rallying 
 finely, and the issue is now seen to be, not the 
 personal one, but the large question of Liberalism 
 versus Toryism. I have long wanted a test vote 
 on that point, as Scotland has changed much even 
 since Robertson Smith was put out. His critics 
 have been watching a chance to get at Dods for 
 his Pan-Council Speech, and this will be made 
 the occasion of it. The row will be very serious, 
 and many good people must pass through tribu- 
 lation the price of progress.' 
 
 June 10. 
 
 ' I hope you recognise the handwriting. I believe 
 the writer has been in his Tub for some weeks. 
 The scenery there is at times monotonous, so the 
 poor wretch has seldom anything to write about. 
 These are placid days, and no earthquakes. 
 
 1 One came upon me like a meteor on Friday, 
 
 and on Saturday went off again into Space. His 
 talk was of fish, flies, and lochs, and at times in- 
 coherent, so I know not whither he has gone. 
 He used much guile to allure me from these 
 shades, but wild-horses could not draw me at 
 this moment. Towards the end of the month 
 this pelican of the wilderness and owl of the 
 desert plumeth his wings for Stack.'
 
 311 
 
 To a Friend 
 
 'GLASGOW, July 19. 
 
 ' All good wishes go with this for the 2Oth. Surely 
 your cup can never be much fuller than it is this 
 July. The sentries cry " All Well " from every 
 outpost, and only the one ubiquitous and never- 
 sleeping enemy within lives to be reckoned with. 
 What can I wish for you better, and for all of us, 
 than that he shall have less and less dominion 
 over us? With your thorn in the flesh the fight 
 is hard, but when the smoke clears we shall 
 wonder at the legions that were slain, and when 
 we almost thought the battle had turned against 
 us. Every bullet has its billet. That is one 
 thing sure. The moral is " Charge ! " 
 
 ' GLASGOW, July 24. 
 
 ' I went up to Stack, looked at it, then at the rain- 
 less sky, and said to the coachman, " Drive on." 
 It was absolutely hopeless. At present I am a 
 close prisoner, trying to work, but making almost 
 nothing of it. I hope your busy life pays you 
 better.' 
 
 'CUILFAIL HOTEL, KILMELFORD, ARGYLLSHIRE, Aug. i. 
 
 ' Interruptions to my work have been incessant all 
 
 summer, and I have run off here to try to get 
 
 some necessary things done before the Bonskeid 
 
 gathering stops my work at the end of the month. 
 
 You have heard rave about Loch Melford? 
 
 That is where I am. This hotel is at the head 
 of the loch, twenty-five miles' drive from Ardris- 
 haig, fairly lovely, very healthy, and lonely enough. 
 There are several people at the hotel, but I have 
 scarcely spoken to a soul for some days, and am 
 deep in a hamper of books.'
 
 312 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 < Aug. 14. 
 
 ' I am inextricably fixed here with a heavy pro- 
 gramme to get through and a warning sent to 
 all my friends that I am not going to be visible, 
 audible, or accessible for the whole of August. 
 
 ' I go to the Tub to-morrow, as my books of refer- 
 ence are exhausted, also the weather, and the 
 hotel has become a shooting-lodge, and a bedlam 
 of dogs has broken loose.' 
 
 ' BONSKEID, Sept. 3. 
 
 ' A thousand thanks for your letter. How well do 
 I know the experience you describe the evapo- 
 ration of a great and moving thought when one 
 tries to expose it to the public air ! " Hast thou 
 Faith ? Have it to thyself" the Bible somewhere 
 says.' 
 
 ' BONSKEID (no date) . 
 
 * I must still be vague and say, " About the last 
 week." There ought to be margins left round 
 all lines where it is possible. We sometimes tie 
 up Providence as well as ourselves.' 
 
 After Bonskeid he spent a fortnight deerstalking 
 and fishing at Guisachan and Haddo, then came back 
 to Glasgow for work, and before the session began 
 went to Haddo and Rossie Priory for certain meetings 
 and services. 
 
 'Oct. 5. 
 
 ' D has been saying very straight things lately, 
 
 and this crooked and perverse generation is doing 
 its best to drive him from the synagogue. He 
 does not like it, and is in very low water, but one 
 dare not wish him rescued.'
 
 1884*1890 
 
 'Nov. 12. 
 
 ' P.T.O. and you will find something worth reading. 
 I shall not spoil it by adding more at present. I 
 pray all goes well. Yours ever, H. D.' 
 
 '"Holiness is an infinite compassion for others: 
 Greatness is to take the common things of life 
 and walk truly among them : Happiness is a 
 great love and much serving." ' 
 
 'Nov. 1 6. 
 
 ' I am glad you are getting among your books. 
 With shame I confess I have never read Stanley's 
 Jewish Church. Long it has been on my List. 
 I have just been glancing at George Eliot's Jubal 
 and Stradivarius. ... I see no new books worth 
 sending. I wonder if you feel, as I do, an un- 
 healthy liking for new books. I have continually 
 to pull myself up and go back to old and dusty 
 friends to find them after all the best. 
 
 ' I hope you did not have it out with . How 
 
 well I know the torture of suppression ! " Many 
 things" had He also which He could not tell His 
 disciples.' 
 
 ' Nov. 20. 
 
 'Your letter this morning is delightful. I am so 
 glad you have taken the veil. There is no life 
 like the Tub life. How calmly one regards the 
 passing show, now laughing at it, now crying 
 over it, now rushing in for a day to help some 
 poor wretch falling under his flag, but always 
 coming back again to the true Ark ! I suppose 
 one ought to join the procession oftener, z>. me : 
 pour vous, you have trudged till you are tired, 
 and others must pull your caravan a bit. You
 
 314 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 see poor Elmslie 1 has fallen at his post. You did 
 not know him or see him, the real Elmslie. But 
 this is a real shock to me. He was one of the 
 brightest and most living spirits of this age, one 
 of the best equipped men for the future struggle ; 
 a hundred of us ought to have gone before him. 
 
 * I see that your thoughts still go out to the " new 
 
 theology," and I am going to send you a few 
 books in that line to glance over. You will 
 doubtless already have discovered the points in 
 Jubal and Stradivarius' 
 
 ' Bellamy I never heard of. Mackintosh I know as 
 an acquaintance of some years' standing. He 
 studied for the Free Church, but stuck at the 
 Confession, and will not be ordained. He lives 
 to expound the new theology. He is one of the 
 acutest minds in the country, a thorough scholar, 
 and has already written one book (Christ and the 
 Jewish Law) and two pamphlets (one on the 
 Confession, the other an attack on Revivalism). 
 These pamphlets are too fierce. But his book is 
 admirable. The new book 2 I have only glanced 
 at. It is sure to be good. I shall send you a 
 new book of Dr. Bruce's, which you will get much 
 
 from.' 
 
 ' GLASGOW, Nov. 28. 
 
 * To-night I preside at the opening of our Univer- 
 
 sity Settlement here.' 
 
 'Jan. 2, 1890. 
 
 ' This is a delightful sketch of yours, and really 
 important. If you ask my honest opinion, I 
 shall give it on all the points you ask, but please 
 
 1 Professor W. G. Elmslie, died Nov. 16, 1889, atat forty-two. 
 
 2 Essays towards a New Theology.
 
 1889-1890 3*5 
 
 notice the above first sentence, and take what 
 follows for what it is worth. . . . Last. The 
 style is not good ! Indeed, it is bad ; once or 
 twice very bad. Sentences are overloaded ; and 
 though words are always well chosen, no work 
 has been spent in improving it. You never do 
 spend enough work on that department, and how 
 can you when you are so busy? But please, 
 Mr, Editor, you must try. Pass the roller slowly 
 over your work. Now I have said it, and of 
 
 course feel a fiend for doing it. Tell not to 
 
 bring a horse-whip next time we meet. You can 
 do it, i.e. write better, if you will only keep the 
 simple rule of the Umbrian and ''fence in the 
 morning hours." A Nineteenth Century article 
 should be written at least three times once in 
 simplicity, once in profundity, and once to make 
 the profundity appear simplicity. 
 
 *This letter, being official, shall contain no more. 
 Other matters will follow to-morrow. Yours 
 mercilessly, 
 
 ' EXCELSIOR. 
 
 4 What a horrid letter ! * 
 
 'GLASGOW, Jan. u, 1890. 
 
 * Dresden ? Freut mich sehr to hear you speak of 
 it. I did not think you would bridge across the 
 Channel for all the doctors in the kingdom. I 
 wish I could make it more tempting, but, do you 
 know, I have never even been in Dresden. I am 
 waiting for that German governess, who will help 
 me to understand the pictures. But all I have 
 heard of it is good, and you will get what you 
 need most just now art, both music and paint- 
 ing, to your heart's content. To make it an 
 epoch you must read up the Masters a bit be-
 
 31 6 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 tween this and then. How I wish I could do 
 that ! I believe a fortnight's reading is enough 
 to make one a cracked enthusiast for life. But, 
 like Darwin, most of us (not you) live dead to 
 it all.' 
 
 'Jan. 17. 
 
 ' At Christmas-time I tried everywhere, both in 
 Edinburgh and Glasgow, for a bound copy of 
 Greatest Thing, but it was nowhere to be found, 
 and no copies are yet forthcoming. On New 
 Year's Day I ordered the fifty thousand from the 
 printers, but the binders cannot get the bound one 
 touched until orders for the other one are executed. 
 However, I hope it will come in a day or two, and I 
 shall then obey your behest, though much against 
 
 the grain. Of course I did not send one, 
 
 and I absolutely refuse to send " tracts " to him.' 
 
 This letter touches on a curious habit of Drum- 
 mond's. He did not do his publishing like other 
 authors. He chose paper, type, and binding, and dealt 
 with the printers himself. It was a needless trouble, 
 but he said he enjoyed ' the sport ' of it. 
 
 'Jan. 21. 
 
 4 1 am all but talked to death these days. One 
 meeting, Sunday; two, Monday; two, Tuesday; 
 one to-day, and so on.' 
 
 During the previous autumn invitations had reached 
 Drummond from the Australian colleges to come and 
 tell them of the Edinburgh Student Movement and do 
 what he had done in America. He had refused to go 
 to Australia the year before, but now he agreed. 
 
 'Feb. 28. 
 
 ' I wish I knew better what Australia would be, and 
 how the work will open and develop. I must do
 
 i 8 qo 317 
 
 that thoroughly, for it is once in a lifetime, and I 
 shall " not pass this way again " in all probability. 
 And since I saw you I have had an urgent appeal 
 from Japan to go to Tokio University for a little 
 on my way back. The University opens there 
 late in autumn.' 
 
 ' March 6. 
 
 ' I should much like to meet George Macdonald. 
 He has been a real teacher to many. I am taking 
 Robert Falconer to read on the voyage. My piece 
 de resistance, however, will be Browning. I am 
 taking him complete, and mean to go through 
 with him thoroughly. None can approach him 
 for insight into life, or even into Christianity. 
 
 ' Imperial Federation begins to dawn upon me. 
 Perhaps you shall hear of me lecturing upon it ! 
 I have a lecture all ready on the " Evolution of 
 Natives," and two pages added would make it out 
 and out Imperial-Federationesque. The idea is 
 great and worth working at. But as I have to 
 introduce into Australia the Boys' Brigade, the 
 Home Reading Union, and other modern im- 
 provements, I fear I have too many strings to my 
 bow.' 
 
 1 884-90. These seven years of Drummond's life, 
 which have been summarised in this chapter, were 
 the years of his fame and greatest activity along many 
 lines. Even in them he did nothing greater than his 
 work among students. We have already marked the 
 signs of its progress, but it was so big and the issues 
 so far-reaching that it requires a chapter to itself. To 
 follow the movement we must return to 1884, in which 
 year it started in Edinburgh.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE STUDENT MOVEMENT, 1884-1894 
 
 BESIDES his mission to young men under Mr. Moody, 
 the greatest work which Henry Drummond achieved 
 was his work among students. Started at Edinburgh 
 in 1884, it spread to many other colleges of Great 
 Britain. It took him to Germany, to America, and 
 to Australia. Up to the very end it remained his 
 chief interest and burden. He reckoned as mere dis- 
 tractions from it not only the most honourable of calls 
 to positions of eminence on other arenas of life, but 
 even many of those forms of work in which he had 
 hitherto achieved success. He shut himself off from 
 the pulpits of his Church, denied his friends, turned 
 from the public, banished reporters, and endured in- 
 finite misrepresentation, if only he might make sure 
 of the students. Had one asked him towards the end 
 what the work of his life had been, he would certainly 
 have replied, ' My work among them.' And measured 
 by results, almost everything he did seems less; for 
 the field was one on which other ministers of religion 
 
 o 
 
 had many failures, and he conspicuously succeeded. 
 Hundreds of men who never went to church were 
 won for Christ at his meetings. He invented methods 
 that are now employed wherever students join for 
 religious service. He preached the Gospel of Christ 
 with a fulness and with a pertinacity of personal appli- 
 cation which he never excelled on any other platform. 
 And so he influenced thousands of lives, which are 
 
 318
 
 jEr. 32-33] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 3 1 9 
 
 now at work among many nations, in all those pro- 
 fessions of governing and teaching and healing, to 
 which the University is the necessary introduction. 
 
 As for all great religious movements, so for this, 
 there had been preparation and signs beforehand. 1 
 In April, 1884, the University of Edinburgh cele- 
 brated the tercentenary of its foundation. Among the 
 many meetings was one under the auspices of the 
 Students' Representative Council, for the students 
 themselves, of whom there were eleven or twelve 
 hundred present. The Lord Rector, Sir Stafford 
 Northcote, was in the chair, and brief addresses were 
 given by Mr. Russell Lowell, then American Ambas- 
 sador, Count de Lesseps, Count Saffi, Professors Pas- 
 teur, Virchow, von Helmholtz, and de Laveleye. 
 Robert Browning, too, said a few words. ' If the 
 speakers had merely given utterance to complimentary 
 commonplaces, such an assembly could not have been 
 commonplace. But the unexpected thing was that 
 from the deeply spiritual prayer of Principal Rainy 
 till the closing benediction, there was a reverential 
 tone, and throughout the addresses there sounded 
 an earnest call to the acknowledgment of God, which 
 rang out most clearly in the closing word of the last 
 of the illustrious orators, Professor de Laveleye: 
 " Remember the profound and beautiful words of 
 Jesus, which would put an end to all our troubles and 
 all our discords if it were but listened to : Seek first 
 the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all 
 other things will be added unto you? ' 
 
 Again, at the beginning of the following session in 
 October, Principal Sir Alexander Grant, in his open- 
 
 1 The following paragraphs owe much to Professor A. R. Simpson's pamphlet 
 The Year of Grace 1885 in the University of Edinburgh, published by the Inter- 
 University Christian Union, 93, Aldersgate Street, London, E.G.
 
 32O HENRY DRUMMOND [1884-85 
 
 ing address the last he was to deliver 'claimed 
 for his University, founded by the Reformers, that it 
 always had a distinctively Christian character,' and he 
 called upon the students to ' recognise and sustain this 
 reputation.' 
 
 In November the Medical Students' Christian Asso- 
 ciation held their annual meeting, and listened to more 
 than usually helpful addresses from Professor Douglas 
 Maclagan, the retiring President, and his successor, 
 Dr. Greenfield, the Professor of Pathology. ' The 
 Arts Students' Prayer Meeting also set out with much 
 vigour, aided by a stimulating address from Professor 
 Calderwood.' Outside the University some students 
 and resident surgeons at the infirmary had been roused 
 to an earnest faith by the work of Dr. Moxey, the 
 Lecturer on Elocution at New College. 
 
 So things had been shaping, when on the loth 
 December Messrs. Stanley Smith and C. T. Studd, 1 
 the two Cambridge graduates who had given them- 
 selves to the work of the China Inland Mission, held 
 in Edinburgh a meeting for students. Professor 
 Charteris was in the chair, and had around him several 
 of his colleagues from the different faculties, extra- 
 mural lecturers and hospital residents. There were 
 seven hundred students present, and the addresses were 
 so impressive that the greater proportion remained to 
 a second meeting, after which a crowd of students 
 singing hymns accompanied the two young evangelists 
 to the railway station. In January Messrs. Smith and 
 Studd held three more meetings in Edinburgh under 
 the presidency of Professors Charteris, Butcher, and 
 Grainger Stewart, and attended by increasing num- 
 bers of students. ' At times in those days scenes were 
 
 1 Smith had been stroke-oar of the Cambridge eight, Studd captain of the 
 Cambridge eleven.
 
 ^ET. 32-33] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 321 
 
 enacted that recalled the First of John, and young 
 men who were disposed to think that no good could 
 come out of the meetings were induced by their fellows 
 to come and see; and they came and found Jesus. 
 Some were impressed by the stirring eloquence of 
 Mr. Stanley Smith's appeals. Others were attracted 
 by the straightforward narrative of Mr. Studd's expe- 
 riences. All were fain to recognise that it was no 
 unmanly thing to become a Christian, and that there 
 was some magnetic, mighty influence in the power 
 of a life wholly given to the service of the world's 
 Redeemer.' 
 
 All these facts it is necessary to give, in order to 
 show how disposed to religion the life of a university 
 is, and lest any might think that to start a great move- 
 ment on such a stage requires the advent of one 
 commanding personality. 
 
 In December Drummond had made his first appear- 
 ance before his own university as a teacher by giving 
 the annual lecture of its Christian Medical Associa- 
 tion. Professor Geikie was in the chair; there was a 
 fair number of students present, and Drummond re- 
 delivered his inaugural discourse on ' The Contribution 
 of Science to Christianity.' * Whatever his audience 
 had previously known, or not known, about him, they 
 now saw before them a religious teacher utterly free 
 from conventionalism, ardent and enthusiastic as any 
 of themselves, fearless of facts, loyal to the intellectual 
 methods of the age, but still with an unshaken faith 
 in God and in the reality of spiritual experience. He 
 was immediately urged to return and lead the move- 
 ment which had just started. His reply was, ' I cannot 
 address students in cold blood ; ' and besides (as appears 
 from his letters), he was sure that he could not work 
 
 1 Summarised above in chap. ix.
 
 322 HENRY DRUMMOND [1885 
 
 with freedom upon all the methods on which the move- 
 ment was conducted. The difficulties, however, were 
 removed, and he engaged to give one address on the 
 Sunday evening subsequent to Messrs. Smith and 
 Studd's last meeting. He stipulated that it should be 
 for students only, and upon new ground. The Odd- 
 fellows' Hall was chosen, the nearest that could be 
 found to the University Buildings. It was simply 
 announced that ' Professor Drummond would give an 
 address,' and an audience gathered that nearly filled 
 the hall. 1 
 
 'It is difficult,' says one who was present, 'to describe the 
 impression one got in such a meeting. We have seen young 
 men's meetings gathered before a platform crowded with 
 ministers surrounding a world-renowned evangelist. But this 
 was not a random gathering of the young men of Edinburgh. 
 There were youths from all parts of Scotland. There were 
 many from England and Wales. India had some of her dark 
 sons there. Australia, Canada, the Cape and all our colonies 
 sent their contingents. They had all come to our city to 
 study, and were in various stages of their curriculum. Know- 
 ledge had been for them the principal thing ; and they found 
 themselves, somewhat wonderingly, in a scene where they 
 might haply get something they had not got in any classroom. 
 They saw the platform filled with their teachers, their class- 
 tutors, and some of their own number whom they might rec- 
 ognise as officials of one or other of the Christian Associations. 
 When they had sung the Hundredth Psalm, and the Professor 
 occupying the chair had led in prayer, and read a portion of 
 Scripture, they sang another hymn. Then the young gentle- 
 man at the chairman's side, who was a stranger still to many 
 of them, came forward to the table, and the confidence at 
 once awakened by his open, earnest look at them was con- 
 firmed when he began to talk to them in the well-known 
 classroom tone of a lecturer who has some knowledge which 
 it is his business to impart to his auditors, and which it is their 
 
 1 It holds about nine hundred.
 
 J<ET. 33] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 323 
 
 supreme business at this hour to acquire. He began by tell- 
 ing, with graphic detail, how a geologist had opened a mine 
 in search of a silver lode, and when his fortune had nearly 
 melted away, said to his people that for a few weeks longer 
 they might dig, and if they found no silver they must cease ; 
 how it was sold to one more fortunate, whose men had only 
 dug through two yards of soil when they came on one of the 
 richest veins of silver in England. " Now, I believe," said 
 the lecturer, " that there are some men in this hall who are 
 not two yards off from a treasure greater than can be found 
 in all the mines of earth." And then he proceeded to en- 
 force on them the command of Jesus, Seek ye first the king- 
 dom of God and His righteousness. After the address he 
 prayed, and before giving out a closing hymn he intimated that 
 an after-meeting would be held for personal converse with 
 any who might feel that they could get further help from 
 himself or any other believers present. No urgent appeal 
 was made ; rather they were told that probably the best thing 
 for some of them would be to go home and speak with none 
 but God. Yet the after-meeting was large, and some declared 
 their willingness to be the Lord's.' 
 
 Drummond would not commit himself to a series of 
 meetings. Till the end of each it was left open whether 
 there was to be another. With one break, he returned 
 every Sunday evening till the end of the session. 
 
 ' The atmosphere of the classroom seemed always to per- 
 vade the meetings, and at a telling illustration, or apt appeal, 
 there was often a suppressed sound of the pleasure with which 
 it had been received. It must have been at one of the early 
 meetings, when he had for text the grand Gospel invitation 
 in the end of the eleventh of Matthew, that Mr. Drummond 
 used an illustration which caught their attention and guided 
 some to the discipleship of Christ. " You ask what it is, this 
 coming to Christ. Well, what does Jesus Himself tell you 
 here ? He says ' Learn of Me.' Now, you are all learners. 
 You have come to Edinburgh, some of you from the ends of 
 the earth, to learn. And how did you put yourself in the 
 way of learning what is here taught ? You went to the Uni-
 
 324 HENRY DRUMMOND [1885 
 
 versity office and wrote your name in a book. You matricu- 
 lated ; and becoming a University student, you went to get 
 from each individual professor what he had to teach. So, 
 with definite purpose to learn of Christ, must you come to 
 Him and surrender yourself to His teaching and guidance." 
 Sometimes thereafter, when a happy worker had to tell of a 
 new addition to the number of Christ's disciples, he would 
 pleasantly say that So-and-so had " matriculated." ' 
 
 In February the Indian statesman, Sir William 
 Muir, was appointed Principal of Edinburgh Univer- 
 sity. On the day after his inauguration, he attended 
 one of the meetings in the Oddfellows' Hall, and closed 
 his brief address by pronouncing upon it the benedic- 
 tion of the closing verses in Numbers vi. ' You will 
 more easily imagine than I can describe the thrill of 
 emotion that ran through the hall. It would have 
 sought utterance in the usual applause, but for the 
 reverent " Hush-sh ! " of the majority, and was finally 
 expressed by the whole mass in the galleries and floor 
 rising up and sitting quietly down again when the 
 Principal had bowed his acknowledgment of their 
 loving reverence.' 
 
 How real and deep Drummond felt the work to be 
 may be seen from his letters, which we have already 
 quoted. Even with his experience of such movements 
 he was taken by surprise. 'It is a distinct work of 
 God,' he writes; 'such a work as I, after considerable 
 experience of evangelistic work, have never seen be- 
 fore.' ' It haunts me like a nightmare. The respon- 
 sibility I feel almost more than anything in my life.' 
 ' I do not think I would exchange that audience for 
 anything else in the world.' 
 
 The work in Edinburgh required Drummond's pres- 
 ence every Sunday, and he refused invitations to visit 
 other universities ; but these of themselves seemed
 
 JET. 33] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 325 
 
 ready for the movement, several of their own profess- 
 ors organised meetings, and from Edinburgh deputa- 
 tions were sent to address these under the leadership 
 of Professors Charteris, Grainger Stewart, and Green- 
 field, and Dr. Cathcart, while several of their own pro- 
 fessors and graduates worked hard to make them a 
 success. In Aberdeen, Dr. Hay, the Professor of 
 Medical Jurisprudence, organised three meetings be- 
 fore the end of the session. From about eight hundred 
 students at King's and Marischal Colleges, three hun- 
 dred and eighty attended the first meeting, addressed 
 by a deputation from Edinburgh, and over seventy 
 remained to the after-meeting, the majority of them 
 discussing questions with the leaders till a very late 
 hour. More than three hundred attended the second 
 and third. The result was not only the formation of a 
 University Christian Association, and the decision of 
 many for a more strenuous Christianity, but the moral 
 elevation of the whole life of the University, which, as 
 I remember well, was not transitory. 
 
 In Glasgow the movement was still stronger. The 
 first deputation from Edinburgh consisted of Pro- 
 fessor Grainger Stewart, Dr. Cathcart, Mr. G. P. 
 Smith, 1 one of the chief Organisers of the Edinburgh 
 work, and seven other students. 
 
 From James M. Macphail to Professor Drummond 
 
 2, MAULL TERRACE, PARTICK, March 16, 1885. 
 
 ' The hall was crowded to excess by the most orderly 
 students' meeting I 2 ever attended. Dr. M'Kendrick 
 presided, and Professors Gairdner, Ramsay, Veitch, 
 
 1 Now a medical missionary in China. 
 
 2 James M. Macphail then a medical student at Glasgow University, and now 
 medical missionary among the Santhals.
 
 326 HENRY DRUMMOND , [1885 
 
 Robertson, and quite a crowd of assistants were present. 
 The Edinburgh men spoke with power, especially, I 
 think, the young fellows who were making a public 
 stand for Christ for the first time. Four hundred 
 remained to the after-meeting. We were kept busy 
 till about ten o'clock [when the hall had to be closed]. 
 Many men waited who had been thinking about accept- 
 ing Christ for a long time, and who talked to us about 
 their difficulties. As far as we could see, there were 
 many cases of true conversion, and also of spiritual 
 quickening. Dr. M'Kendrick told me the meeting was 
 the finest he had ever attended. We are continuing 
 our union of prayer in our rooms at ten o'clock every 
 evening this week.' 
 
 'March 10. 
 
 ' The meeting on Sabbath evening was not quite so 
 large as on the previous Sabbath, but the hall was 
 filled. Dr. M'Kendrick took the chair, and Professors 
 Dickson and Gairdner were on the platform, and quite 
 a number of assistants were present. The meeting 
 was a very impressive one, and Dr. M'Kendrick spoke 
 more clearly and earnestly than I had ever heard him 
 speak before. The after-meeting was a very remark- 
 able and, I believe, fruitful one. The inquirers were 
 of all sorts some convinced of sin, some atheists, 
 some anxious to be Christians, and yet with doubts and 
 difficulties in the way. I felt very much the extreme 
 delicacy of the task of dealing with many of these 
 fellows. Really this is the part of the work, above 
 all others, which demands earnest prayer. Professors 
 Gairdner, Ramsay, and Jebb have been waited upon, 
 and have expressed a very deep interest in the whole 
 movement. Dr. M'Kendrick is quite convinced that 
 it is a work of God and not of man.'
 
 ^Er. 33] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 327 
 
 'March 24. 
 
 4 The meeting last Sabbath was a most successful 
 one. Dr. M'Gregor Robertson presided. Dr. Barbour 
 gave an exceedingly beautiful and striking address, 
 and Dr. Woodhead's was also very impressive. The 
 inquiry meeting was a large and, we have good reason 
 to believe, a fruitful one.' 
 
 'March 30. 
 
 ' Last Sabbath's meeting was, I think, the most 
 impressive of all. The hall was crowded in every 
 part, thirty or forty having to stand. Professor Jebb 
 presided, but did very little beyond giving out hymns 
 and introducing the speakers, yet the mere fact that 
 he was there bore testimony to the widespread interest 
 in the movement. Dr. Williamson of China gave an 
 address. Dr. Yellowlees, Lecturer on Insanity, and 
 Dr. Hay [of Aberdeen] followed. Our after-meeting 
 was the largest we have had. Dr. Williamson spoke 
 a few words from the platform ; and after that Pro- 
 fessor Hay, Dr. Yellowlees, and Principal Douglas 
 went among the students. One feature of this meet- 
 ing was the large number who waited to discuss doc- 
 trinal difficulties. Several cases of apparent decision 
 for Christ came under my own notice.' 
 
 Though Drummond could not attend any of those 
 Sunday meetings, he met with the Glasgow students 
 on week-days for prayer and conference. 
 
 When the session came to an end, sixty or seventy 
 of the Edinburgh students volunteered to carry the 
 influences which had blessed themselves to young men 
 in other towns. So the Holiday Mission arose. It 
 spread to many parts of Scotland, England, and Ire- 
 land. The volunteers were carefully organised, and 
 Drummond, Dr. Cathcart, and some of the professors 
 superintended many of the operations.
 
 328 HENRY DRUMMOND [1885 
 
 '3, CARLTON GARDENS, March 24, 1885. 
 
 ' Everything goes well. And, I think, by the time 
 you come back you will find fires lit in many 
 places. I hear that the third year's men, at their 
 meeting on Sunday afternoon in Edinburgh, 
 arranged to start eight Bible-classes, and they 
 hope to raise the number to fourteen. They had 
 the best inquiry meeting they have yet had. 
 To-morrow I am coming to meet our sixty new 
 evangelists. They have all been summoned by 
 post-card to meet in Oddfellows' Hall at five. . . . 
 Many of the medicals now want to be missionaries.' 
 
 Which of us does not still remember the advent of 
 these first ' Holiday Missioners ' among our manses ! 
 They were scattered upon us with the spring, and 
 they came young, hearty, and laughing to be free of 
 the long winter's classes. They were sent, not as 
 advocates, but as witnesses, and they gave their testi- 
 monies with a freshness and simplicity that went to 
 the hearts of the older people who listened to them. 
 Of course, there were crudities and indiscretions ; but 
 one would rather have had these than undue maturity 
 and bumptiousness, of which there was next to noth- 
 ing. Every deputation of five or six had one or two 
 really able men among them, carrying a good con- 
 science from their past work, and well trained in 
 philosophy or science. They had little or no theology, 
 but they told of Christ's power upon themselves, and 
 did so in a manly, moral spirit that brought new hope 
 to every tempted man who heard them. They talked, 
 too, of their doubts and intellectual difficulties in a 
 way that proved very profitable to us ministers in 
 dealing with young men, and appealed most power- 
 fully to those of their own age. Naturally, they
 
 Mi. 33] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 329 
 
 impressed their educated contemporaries more than 
 others. But they seldom left any town or village, 
 whatever its intellectual condition might be, without 
 having moved several young men to a clearer and 
 more strenuous life in dependence upon Christ. 1 
 Next to this, they interested us most by their open 
 reflection of Drummond. His way of putting things, 
 his stories, his accent, his characteristic reserve, his 
 pauses and hesitations, were reproduced almost to 
 mimicry. It was a great tribute to the influence of 
 his personality ; but how we used to chaff him about 
 it! 
 
 The organisation of the Holiday Mission cost Drum- 
 mond and his assistants very much thought and hard 
 work. He held the reins firmly, and had full reports 
 sent to him through the secretaries. From all the 
 towns, large and small, of the Scottish lowlands he has 
 kept letters with accounts of meetings and individual 
 cases; and he was applied to almost every day for 
 counsel as to the latter, as well as to the general strat- 
 egy of the mission. He knew the perils to which his 
 young missioners were exposed, and both received 
 reports on the conduct of each, and returned frank 
 warnings. There are many grateful letters from min- 
 isters, to whose parishes deputations had been sent. 
 Finally, he started off to examine some of the work 
 for himself. 
 
 1 In Greenock a large circus was filled with men to overflowing; ' several 
 openly professed decision for Christ in the after-meeting.' In Crieff Mr. Hender- 
 son said there had been nothing like the results since 1874. In Stirling the meet- 
 ings were ' crowded and enthusiastic.' At Killin ' a meeting well on for two 
 hundred men for a beginning;' in Wick week-night audiences varied from two 
 hundred to three hundred ; ' it is no metaphor to say that the whole town of 
 Wick is moved just now ; ' unanimity prevails among all the churches. And so 
 forth. In Edinburgh one congregation added forty-five young communicants, 
 'most of them the result of deputation work.'
 
 33O HENRY DRUMMOND [1885 
 
 To Professor Greenfield 
 
 ' EASTBOURNE, April 25, 1885. 
 
 1 ... I came here, or at least to Brighton, on Mon- 
 day, to see how a troupe of students were getting 
 on with their holiday mission. I found half a 
 dozen of them hard at work,, They had had 
 meetings for eight days before 1 came, and with 
 real result. They are splendid fellows, and talked 
 with the utmost simplicity, earnestness, and power. 
 I have spent the last month in visiting the depu- 
 ties at various places, and am greatly impressed 
 with the men. Nearly all are medicals, some mere 
 boys, and a finer set I never knew. It has been 
 a real privilege to be among them. I hear four 
 hundred new men are coming up to Edinburgh 
 this summer. What a work is before you ! My 
 heart is in Edinburgh, and I should greatly like 
 to be back again. But that dreadful business at 
 Grosvenor House, of which I told you, is in full 
 swing, and I am a prisoner till then.' 
 
 ' LONDON, July 10, 1885. 
 
 ' I met a Bradford man yesterday, who had been to 
 all the students' meetings in B. (we sent a depu- 
 tation there), and he reports a deep and enduring 
 impression.' 
 
 In October Drummond made his mission to the 
 undergraduates of Oxford. The proposal for this had 
 begun with some of his hearers at Grosvenor House, 
 and with one or two Oxford heads who had read his 
 book. There were some difficulties in making the 
 arrangements, for Drummond and those who knew 
 his work were anxious that he should not appear
 
 -^T. 33, 34] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 33! 
 
 under the auspices of any religious school, nor in con- 
 tinuance of the conventional methods of evangelistic 
 work. Finally, there was a wonderful consensus of 
 invitations to him from all quarters. Sir William 
 Anson, Warden of All Souls; Canon Girdlestone; 
 Canon Scott Holland; Mr. Butler of Oriel; Canon 
 Percival, President of Trinity ; the Rev. Mr. Christo- 
 pher; Mr. George N. Curzon and Mr. George W. 
 Russell all wrote wishing success, and offering to fa- 
 cilitate arrangements for his visit. Drummond went 
 as the guest of Sir William Anson, and his 'first 
 lecture ' was advertised for the ' Hall of Trinity Col- 
 lege on Sunday, October 25th, at 9 P.M., open to under- 
 graduate members of the University.' 
 
 To Lady Aberdeen 
 
 'ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD, 
 Monday, Oct. 26, 1885. 
 
 ' The Club dinner I found to be practically, though 
 not nominally, a Liberal gathering, and I met 
 quite a number of dons the Provost of Oriel 
 (Munro), with whom I dine to-night, the Warden 
 of Merton (with whom I had tea yesterday), one 
 of the other Heads Fowler of Corpus and 
 Professor Bryce and Mr. Pelham. 
 
 4 On my arrival on Saturday I found Mr. Christopher 
 waiting for me. He had some hundreds of circu- 
 lars printed for his proposed meeting next Satur- 
 day, but my telegram had stopped their issue. 
 What could I do? I had really no excuse for 
 refusing, so the thing must go on, though I fear 
 he will find he has caught a tartar. After all, if 
 anything is to be done in Oxford, this party 1 must 
 
 1 The Evangelical.
 
 332 HENRY DRUMMOND [1885 
 
 be carried along with it. They will supply great 
 and essential elements. And I am given to un- 
 derstand that the various parties are not nearly 
 so distinct and alien as they were some years ago, 
 and that a combined evangelistic work is not 
 impossible. 
 
 ' On the whole, therefore, I provisionally agreed to 
 take the private meetings, provided no more 
 urgent work opened. I now find that these 
 meetings in New College and Christchurch will 
 serve a very important function, and are perhaps 
 the best service I can do here. I have had a long 
 talk with the man of New College in whose rooms 
 the Thursday meeting was to be held. He is an 
 old Etonian, and rows in his college eight and the 
 fours, and seems a capital man. 
 
 1 The authorities at New College (as the result of 
 the Science in last night's address) have to-day 
 given the Common Room, or Hall, if we like, for 
 the Thursday meeting, so that it is now under no 
 auspices at all, but a College thing. The Musical 
 Society has not only undertaken to postpone their 
 meeting, but is going to distribute circulars for 
 ours personally. The man at Christchurch who 
 is getting up the meeting there to-morrow is not 
 identified with any party, and I think things will 
 
 go- 
 
 ' When I got to Trinity (I had called on the Presi- 
 dent in the afternoon along with Sir William 
 Anson, when we arranged that the President 
 should take the chair), I found the hall so 
 crammed that we could scarcely get in. All 
 the passages were crowded, all the tables, forms, 
 cornices, window-sills, with a seething mass of 
 undergraduates. The door being blocked, they
 
 . 34] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 333 
 
 were pouring in through the windows and filling 
 
 every inch of space. So much for Mr. , to 
 
 whom I have just written thanks. 
 ' I need not say how inspiring this sight was. 
 It was a most unconventional and picturesque 
 audience the thing I liked best. I longed to 
 give them something more than science, and I 
 did, a little, at the end ; but I suppose the science 
 was right. There are some splendid men among 
 the undergraduates, but they are in danger of 
 many things, especially cant and precipitate and 
 too aggressive evangelism. I am going to deluge 
 them with cold water this afternoon.' 
 
 ' Oct. 28. We had a very large gathering at 
 Wycliffe [Hall] on Monday, all the Low Church 
 workers and one or two dons being present. I 
 gave them a sketch of the Edinburgh Movement, 
 and explained at length our theological views and 
 methods of work. They seemed much surprised 
 at the former, i.e. our views, but did not instantly 
 burn me at the stake, as I feared. On the con- 
 trary, they asked many questions, and, on the 
 whole, I think, this meeting was useful. I had 
 no idea it would be part of my work here to run 
 a tilt at the evangelism current in the place, but 
 nothing is really more needed. On Tuesday 
 afternoon I had a Conference with a number of 
 
 men mostly Low Church workers in 's 
 
 rooms at New College. We discussed the " situ- 
 ation " for two hours, and I learned a good deal. 
 These men are eager to do something for the 
 University, and had half engaged the Corn Ex- 
 change for me for next Sunday afternoon. After 
 much consideration, I refused to attempt this.
 
 334 HENRY DRUMMOND [1885 
 
 The time is not ripe yet; there are not the men 
 to do it ; it could not be followed up ; and it 
 might compromise my present mission, which I 
 find is a very peculiar and delicate one. In fact, 
 I feel this week more like reconnoitring than 
 doing the actual battle that must be done by 
 somebody later. 
 
 * The meeting at Christchurch last night, I think, 
 went off well. 1 We had a large roomful of 
 men mostly, I believe, freshmen, for whom the 
 meeting seems to have been specially got up. I 
 think the gathering at New College to-morrow 
 will be much larger and more representative. 
 
 ' As to social arrangements. On Monday I 
 dined with the Provost of Oriel (whose people I 
 know), and met Freeman the historian, Professor 
 Bryce, Mr. Butler, and others. On Tuesday I 
 lunched at All Souls with some of the Fellows, 
 Sir William Anson being from home for the day. 
 This morning Canon Fremantle came here to 
 breakfast, and to-night the President of Trinity 
 comes to dinner. Mrs. Liddell was at tea yester- 
 day, and I had a short talk with her. To-morrow 
 I breakfast with Mr. Butler at Oriel to meet 
 Canon Holland; luncheon at Trinity with one of 
 the Fellows ; tea with Rhoda Broughton at her 
 house ; and dine before my nine o'clock meeting 
 with the Vice-Chancellor. Mr. Jowett wrote me 
 a very kind note 
 
 '"OXFORD, Oct. 22, 1885. 
 
 ' " DEAR SIR, Would you, if I may make the pro- 
 posal, give me the pleasure of your company at dinner 
 tete-a-tete, either on Thursday or Friday at 7.30? 
 Believe me, yours very sincerely, B. JOWETT." 
 
 1 The meeting was larger than the previous one in Trinity.
 
 . 34] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 335 
 
 ' Oct. 30. I thought my dinner with the Vice- 
 Chancellor very sad. We were entirely alone, 
 and had a good talk, also occasional silences. 
 He asked me if in Scotland we were now gener- 
 ally giving up belief in Miracles he meant as a 
 sign of progress. 
 
 ' I called for Dean Liddell yesterday on his granting 
 the hall at Christchurch. He gave me pretty 
 clearly to understand that it was solely on Aber- 
 deen's account. He thawed a little after twenty 
 minutes over tea, but I thought him very appall- 
 ing. I said they wanted leaders here, but really 
 they are almost hopeless. I thought I had got a 
 number of the best undergraduates to understand 
 our Edinburgh methods of work and to attempt 
 something on our lines i*. to work with abso- 
 lutely neutral and colourless men, both ecclesias- 
 tically and theologically. And this is what they 
 
 have done : made out a list, including , , 
 
 , , and his wife to sing ! I have implored 
 
 them to tear up the list, and I think they see it. 
 The only immediate counter proposal I can make 
 is to get a deputation of Edinburgh students for 
 the 8th, and some notable man (a young M.P., I 
 hope) for the chair. 
 
 ' I think we have at least four first-rate men at 
 Edinburgh who would come, and I shall put this 
 in train at once. The chair can be arranged later. 
 I have told the Low Church men to repress them- 
 selves entirely and keep out of sight, but to work 
 behind the scenes to any extent. To the latter 
 our ways of work, our leading ideas, the absence 
 of cant and of evangelical formulas, are a com- 
 plete revelation, and I really think they will adopt 
 them. It is inconceivable how left to themselves
 
 336 HENRY DRUMMOXD [1885 
 
 they have been. The proposal is to take the 
 Clarendon for a few Sunday nights ; but the great 
 difficulty is to get speakers. The High Church 
 party have arranged a special series of University 
 sermons in St. Mary's on Sundays at eight, and 
 have engaged some splendid men. The other 
 meeting might be grafted on to this as a species 
 of Second or Inquiry Meeting, and would have 
 to be at nine. I know some of the Committee of 
 this series Mr. Butler and Canon Holland 
 and both are anxious to have an Inquiry Meeting 
 afterwards, but do not see how it can be managed. 
 Perhaps our meeting may be the solution, but we 
 shall see how things develop before doing any- 
 thing definitely. 
 
 ' It would be a real gain to unite the low and high 
 factions in a piece of neutral evangelistic work. 
 
 ' The meeting at New College last night interested 
 me greatly. A great many men turned up, the 
 men were most attentive, and I hope the occasion 
 was not lost, though of course one had no indica- 
 tion of how they took it' 
 
 The following letter from the present Bishop of 
 Rochester, then Warden of Keble, reached Drum- 
 mond after he left Oxford: 
 
 'KEBLE COLLEGE, OXFORD, Nov. 2, 1885. 
 
 ' MY DEAR SIR, May I send a line to thank you 
 for taking the trouble to come up to me so early before 
 your journey? It was a great disappointment not to 
 see you. 
 
 ' We have much reason to be grateful to you, espe- 
 cially for what I have lately heard of the motives of 
 your visit to Oxford. You have seen, I know, some
 
 Ml. 34] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 337 
 
 of my great friends, Holland and Butler, and I hope 
 that some good may have its source in your talks. 
 
 ' It is perhaps a happy feature of the present time, 
 which is certainly one of revived religious feeling in 
 Oxford, that one of our greatest difficulties is to dis- 
 cern the right ways of doing good and teaching it, to 
 choose those which follow best the lines of God's own 
 working, to handle safely such powerful but difficult 
 instruments as emotional appeal and temporary enthu- 
 siasms and the like. 
 
 ' Since writing this my wife tells me that you have 
 just been discussing with her part of this very sub- 
 ject the difficulty of maintaining impressions and of 
 chronic work. May God guide us all in truth and 
 love. Yours very faithfully, H. TALBOT.' 
 
 To Professor Greenfield Drummond had written : 
 'ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD, Oct. 27, 1885. 
 
 * We had a tremendous turnout here on Sunday 
 night ; in fact, as the Americans say, it was neces- 
 sary to take the paper off the walls. I am at it 
 every night this week, though in different colleges, 
 and finish next Sunday night. I think the place 
 is ripe.' 
 
 If Drummond was right, and he was an expert in 
 the work, there was nobody and nothing at Oxford 
 to reap the harvest. The man for whom he looked, 1 
 able to lead a movement and unsworn to any religious 
 party, failed to appear ; but if he had appeared and had 
 been gifted with Drummond's own powers, it is doubt- 
 ful whether he could have done such work in Oxford 
 as for years Drummond continued to do in Edinburgh. 
 The conditions were very different. Earnest attempts 
 
 1 See p. 334 f.
 
 338 HENRY DRUMMOND [1885-86 
 
 were made at Oxford. Men of all religious schools 
 had been impressed by Drummond's addresses and 
 his explanation of the methods on which he worked. 
 I have been much struck, in the letters I have read, 
 with the sincere desire on the part of the leaders, both 
 of the High Church and the Low Church, to see what 
 one letter calls ' more direct and faithful mission work 
 among the students than we have yet had.' At least 
 one deputation came from Edinburgh after Drummond 
 had left, and were favourably received by a large audi- 
 ence, among whom were many leading dons. More 
 than one conference was held to consult as to the con- 
 tinuance of the work. But however sincere those were, 
 they only served to reveal (as Drummond's corre- 
 spondence proves) insuperable differences of opinion 
 as to methods. These were not differences between 
 Church and Dissent, but between High Church and 
 Low Church. The work was abandoned. 
 
 On the 8th of November, Drummond held a very 
 large meeting for students in Glasgow. A few more 
 followed at intervals, and were addressed by himself 
 and other University men. But in Glasgow no move- 
 ment arose, growing and permanent, like the move- 
 ment in Edinburgh, and in subsequent years Drum- 
 mond does not appear to have tried to start one. 
 Why there should have been this difference is not very 
 clear. The facts are, that in Glasgow there is not the 
 large body of English, colonial, and foreign students 
 who frequented the meetings in Edinburgh ; in Edin- 
 burgh the bulk of the students reside in a compara- 
 tively small area ; in Glasgow they are not only scat- 
 tered over an enormous city whose distances can only 
 be covered by railways not open on Sundays, but a 
 large proportion of them live in the smaller towns 
 around; and, above all, those Glasgow students who
 
 Mr. 34] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 339 
 
 are most interested in religion, and who could have 
 best organised a movement, are (part of them even in 
 their Arts course) occupied with city missions, in which 
 they have an amount of work and responsibility that 
 effectually disables them from other interests. 
 
 In Edinburgh the movement continued and increased 
 throughout session 1885-86. In October there was 
 a meeting of fifteen hundred without Drummond's 
 presence to draw them. The students urgently pressed 
 him to return, and he went back for another series of 
 meetings in February and March. The following are 
 extracts from his letters to various friends : 
 
 'Oct. 25, 1885. When I shall get to Edinburgh, 
 I know not. I have to begin the Glasgow meet- 
 ings on Nov. 8th, but my heart is in Edinburgh.' 
 
 ' Dec. 1 6. I fear it will be impossible for me to get 
 to Dundee. The students' work takes up all my 
 time, and I have to refuse all outside engage- 
 ments even yours, alas!' 
 
 'Feb. 26, 1886. You ask about the Edinburgh 
 students. I send you a letter from one of them, 
 which will let you know what is going on all 
 round. The work is still very wide and deep, 
 and I am still going there every Sunday. Four 
 of the students went as a deputation to Belfast on 
 Sunday week, and between Sunday and Monday 
 night addressed twelve meetings, the most im- 
 portant being at the College there. . . . 
 
 ' Now I must rush for the Edinburgh train.' 
 
 'March 13. The Edinburgh work goes on with 
 unabated interest. For the last two Sundays I 
 have been trying to tell them something about 
 the Kingdom of God after Ecce Homo. We 
 had a very large after-meeting last Sunday, and I
 
 340 HENRY DRUMMOND [1886 
 
 think the impression deepens as the term draws 
 to its close. A desire has sprung up to have the 
 Sacrament all together in our own hall, the Odd- 
 fellows' Hall, on the last Sunday night of the 
 session, and we are making arrangements to have 
 it done. It will be to-morrow fortnight, and I 
 think Professor Charteris will take the leading 
 part. To-night we have a meeting to organise 
 the Summer Holiday Mission. Belfast and the 
 North of Ireland are to have strong deputations 
 in April especially the colleges at Belfast, 
 Derry, and possibly Dublin. 
 
 * I am starting now to see the International Football 
 Match at Edinburgh.' 
 
 'March 27. Dr. Whyte and Dr. Charteris take 
 our Communion Service to-morrow night.' 
 
 'April 12. We had a very happy party at Arran. 
 Twenty-two came, and Dr. Greenfield joined us. 
 He and I meant staying over the Sunday, but 
 smelt battle across the sea, and could not help 
 flying off to Ayr, where six Edinburgh students 
 were making their debut. We concealed our- 
 selves till Sunday afternoon, and then dropped 
 suddenly among them, when they were "gathered 
 in one place for prayer." They were on their 
 knees praying for help when we entered. Two, 
 however, were in the secret, as they had discov- 
 ered us at church. We had a good meeting at 
 night, and the deputies kept at it all week, not 
 without result.' 
 
 The secretary of the Holiday Mission reported this 
 month deputations to between fifteen and twenty 
 places in Scotland, England, and Ireland. ' On the 
 whole, the news from all round is good. The work is
 
 MT. 35] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 341 
 
 very much worth helping by all accounts.' Most im- 
 portant was the work at Aberystwyth, and Drummond 
 himself went to it. 
 
 To Lord Aberdeen 
 
 'ABERYSTWYTH, May i, 1886. 
 
 ' MY DEAR ABERDEEN, I arrived here, after a very 
 fine crossing, yesterday afternoon, and found the 
 place ripe for action. 
 
 ' The students from Edinburgh began last Monday 
 by a novel manoeuvre: For two days they held 
 no meetings at all, but attended the Annual 
 Athletic Sports of the University, and other- 
 wise threw themselves into the students' in- 
 terests. They also were present at a social 
 gathering on the Tuesday night; and the only 
 one of them who spoke, instead of giving the 
 company a sermon, proposed in a humorous 
 speech the toast of "The Ladies." The effect 
 of this was to secure the whole " 'varsity " for the 
 meeting on Wednesday, and a profound impres- 
 sion was made. Thursday night was equally 
 good, and last night we had to move into a bigger 
 hall. Great interest is created both among pro- 
 fessors and students, and I am very glad I came. 
 We have a meeting again to-night, and three or 
 four to-morrow ; in fact, we shall be at it all day 
 long.' 
 
 The difficulties were great, chiefly the jealousies 
 between Church and Chapel ; but the work progressed 
 and spread to other places, with the result of many 
 conversions and the dedication of a large number of 
 young men to a life of service. 
 
 During the summer Professor Christlieb wrote from
 
 342 HENRY DRUMMOND [1886-87 
 
 Bonn to Professor Charteris of Edinburgh, inviting a 
 deputation of students to come over to the German 
 University. It was ultimately arranged that Drum- 
 mond should go, along with Mr. G. P. Smith, a medi- 
 cal student, who had taken from the first a leading 
 part in the Edinburgh movement, and was now study- 
 ing at Vienna. Natural Law had by this time been 
 translated into German, and Drummond's name was 
 well known. 
 
 'BONN, Oct. 26, 1886. 
 
 ' . . . The University has allowed a notice of my 
 meeting on the " privileged " blackboard, and 
 Christlieb, who has the largest theology class, 
 has intimated it from the chair and urged the 
 men to come. A good turnout is not to be 
 expected, although Christlieb is sanguine. The 
 difficulties here are enormous. Evangelism is 
 hated, loathed. Still, a feeble spark may smoulder 
 on, and time create a more accessible field for 
 our bigger deputation, which I hope will follow 
 
 next year.' 
 
 'GLASGOW, Nov. 6, 1886. 
 
 * I am in a whirl of work, and have only time to say 
 one word about Bonn. It was a strange experi- 
 ence. The chief feature of the mission was one 
 big meeting, at which some of the professors (one 
 or two science men amongst them) were present, 
 when I gave a detailed narrative of the Edinburgh 
 movement. Questions were invited at the end, 
 and for half an hour I was under a keen fire. The 
 depth of ignorance shown in these questions was 
 appalling. I think the men were interested, on 
 the whole, and one or two have promised to take 
 the thing up. By and by we shall send them 
 another deputation.'
 
 MT. 35] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 343 
 
 Drummond must have made a deep impression at 
 Bonn ; for among his papers, I find a requisition from 
 a large body of students of the University, inviting 
 him to return and hold a second series of meetings. 
 
 When he returned to Scotland in the beginning 
 of November, the Edinburgh work occupied his 
 attention. 
 
 ' Nov. 13, 1886. I ran in to Edinburgh this week 
 to see the students. They are to go on with their 
 meeting. I absolutely refused to go there mean- 
 time, as they have scores of men among them- 
 selves perfectly able to run the thing. So they 
 will start to-morrow, the Principal in the chair. 
 They have founded an East End University 
 Settlement (like Toynbee), and have five or six 
 first-rate men already in residence.' 
 Dec. 1 6. For me it will be a quiet winter. I see 
 it pretty well before me. I have begun The 
 Ascent of Man, though it climbs slowly, slowly. 
 Then after the Christmas holidays I begin Edin- 
 burgh. You know, I have purposely left it alone 
 this month to let them try themselves. And 
 they have succeeded perfectly. I got a descrip- 
 tion of their meeting of last Sunday night, which 
 really filled me with awe.' 
 
 His Edinburgh meetings began in the end of Janu- 
 ary. In addition to the usual gathering of students 
 on Sunday evenings, in the Oddfellows' Hall, an after- 
 noon service was started for schoolboys. 
 
 'Jan. 27, 1887. Edinburgh was splendid last Sun- 
 day.' 
 
 ' Feb. 1 7. Edinburgh is as good as ever, both the 
 boys and the students.'
 
 344 HENRY DRUMMOND [1887 
 
 ' March 3. Professor was in the chair last 
 
 Sunday night at the students' meeting, and led 
 off with a really fine address. The meeting 
 deepens in interest, and I have many bad hours 
 preparing for it every week. That sort of thing 
 keeps the rush off splendidly. The current is 
 flowing very deep and strong. I do not think I 
 would exchange that audience for anything else 
 in the world. The Boys' Meeting also, which 
 was meant only to last a Sunday or two, has 
 grown into an institution, and will not stop. Last 
 Sunday, after the hour's meeting, I sent all the 
 small boys home, and kept two or three hundred 
 of the big ones for a private talk about decision. 
 We did not think it wise to cross-examine them 
 individually, or put any undue pressure upon 
 them, but I am sure many of them are thinking 
 most seriously. One difficulty is to get into their 
 heads that they are to be religious as boys, and 
 that they need not be so " pious " as their maiden 
 aunts. I heard this incidentally the other day : 
 The boys from one of the Edinburgh schools 
 were playing a football match against a team from 
 another public school (not Edinburgh). During 
 the game the strangers used some bad language. 
 At " half-time " the Edinburgh boys got together 
 and resolved that they would do collectively what 
 they saw it would be priggish to do individually 
 namely, tell the other side that they must stop 
 this, or the game could not go on. They followed 
 this up by saying that unless this were done, their 
 school would never play a match with them again. 
 It came on the strangers like a thunderbolt, but 
 they gave in at once.' 
 
 ' March 10. We had very fine meetings again last
 
 JET. 35] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 345 
 
 Sunday, and a conversazione for the students on 
 Saturday evening. Among other things, we then 
 got from sixty to eighty entirely new men to start 
 a " Holiday Mission " next month.' 
 ' March 24. Sunday was our last great meeting 
 for the winter, and I can never forget it. Our 
 hall was crammed to the door, and at the close 
 we asked all the men who had become Christians 
 to remain and join in the Sacrament. Over six 
 hundred waited men of every kindred and 
 tongue. Sir William Muir was present, and 
 many of the professors, and Dr. Charteris dis- 
 pensed the Sacrament. Some of the students 
 acted as elders, and the leading prizemen were all 
 with us. The work has been outwardly very 
 quiet this winter, and none of us had the least 
 idea it was taking such marvellous hold until we 
 gathered around the Communion table. Forty 
 or fifty have volunteered to work in the " Univer- 
 sity Settlement " in the East End, and about a 
 hundred have given in their names for a Holiday 
 Mission in summer, and especially in April next. 
 All this, and the Boys' Meeting, which is bigger 
 than ever, has kept me very busy for the last 
 month or two, and it has been a great strain.' 
 
 'STEAMER "BRODICK CASTLE," March 31, 1887. 
 
 ' The above heading may suggest Timbuctoo, but it 
 is only Arran. I take my students for a week's 
 geology there every year, and I cannot tell you 
 what a relief it is to get out of the smoke. Green- 
 field and some of the Edinburgh medicals are to 
 join our party at Arran, and we are looking for- 
 ward to some capital climbs. 
 
 $ Edinburgh still glows. We have not been able to
 
 346 HENRY DRUMMOND [1888 
 
 stop the meetings. I had four last Sunday, and 
 
 have four more next. 
 ' Now I must go to my brethren of the hammer, 
 
 who are having a lively time on deck.' 
 'April. It would be splendid to get among the 
 
 heather and the fish for a little, for my spirit pines 
 
 in this tunnel. 
 ' I am just rushing off to Uddingstone, where a band 
 
 of the Edinburgh students have been at work all 
 
 week. 
 ' The Holiday Mission is in full swing, and quiet 
 
 good doing all round. All this keeps one's mind 
 
 away from the shame of politics. The sides get 
 
 more and more bitter.' 
 
 So from year to year the work went on. The 
 summer and autumn of 1887 saw it carried by Drum- 
 mond himself to the American Universities, as will 
 be described in another chapter. When he returned 
 to Scotland he found the Edinburgh students as eager 
 as ever to continue the movement, and the arrival of 
 a deputation from America gave the movement a new 
 impulse. 
 
 4 November 8, 1887. The students at Edinburgh 
 are determined to start work at once ; and I was 
 already advertised for next Sunday, although I 
 had written protesting that I would have nothing 
 more to do with them, as they could now get 
 along themselves. But a deputation came to 
 Glasgow, and my heart melted. In any case, 
 however, I could not get away from my Glasgow 
 work; and, although it is hard often to be tied, 
 so incorrigible a free-lance as myself needs it.' 
 
 'November 14. My father is also a case of 
 hoping almost against hope. But at the moment
 
 . 35-36] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 347 
 
 there is a hairbreadth of improvement, and 
 
 said I might go in to Edinburgh for the students 
 yesterday. We had the hall crammed, and the 
 American deputation gave an account of their 
 work. It was wonderfully interesting, and told 
 palpably on the hundreds of new men who were 
 there.' 
 
 ' November 24. I am advertised for the Edin- 
 burgh students next Sunday. It was the same 
 last Sunday, and I disappointed them, and if at 
 all possible I ought to keep the engagement this 
 time. But, to tell the truth, I had all but given 
 up hope of getting there, as my father's condition 
 has been most critical for the last day or two. 
 He could not well be much worse than he is, 
 but if he were, I fear I could not go to Edin- 
 burgh. . . . 
 
 * If, however, my father's condition remains satis- 
 
 factory, I feel I ought to go to Edinburgh. I 
 would very much rather not, but I see no way of 
 escape from so plainly the line of " ought." ' 
 
 * December 10. You do not know what an unver- 
 
 satile being I am, and how I recoil from all but 
 one or two special lines of work. 
 
 * We had a big meeting of the students on Saturday 
 
 night, and the biggest of the term on Sunday. 
 We also started the schoolboy meeting yesterday 
 afternoon.' 
 
 'January i, 1888. These terrible medicals are at 
 it again, a conversazione, this time in George 
 Street Hall next Saturday evening. They will 
 not let one eat one's dinner in peace. I do 
 hope you have made no plans, for they have 
 upset your arrangements every time. Growl- 
 ingly yours, H. D.'
 
 348 HENRY DRUMMOND [1888-94 
 
 ' January 28, 1888. Edinburgh takes a lot of time, 
 for we are in full sail there again, and I had three 
 students' meetings last Saturday and Sunday. I 
 am also in the middle of a persecution. 
 
 ' Did you see a letter in the Christian about my 
 heresies, signed by a medical student ? A small 
 clique has addressed a printed circular to the 
 Edinburgh ministers, begging them to suppress 
 me and my views. Of course, I have taken no 
 notice, and I think it has not hindered the work 
 at all, which is the main thing. Now I have 
 brought myself up to date. You see I am not 
 doing much. 
 
 * My one engagement is Edinburgh, which I fear I 
 dare not abandon, even for a Sunday, in the 
 present persecution, though I would fain let it 
 go, for none knows what a nightmare that work 
 
 is. I have an important commission for as 
 
 soon as he gets into Parliament, to rush a Bill 
 through securing a Copyright in Public Speech ; 
 i.e. to prevent these irresponsible miscreants, the 
 reporters, from doing their work except when 
 permission and revision are granted by their 
 miserable victim. 
 
 ' This scream is not apropos the Pope, but many 
 other enormities.' 
 
 'March 26, 1888. It is very hard to be called 
 names, but very right, and in the nature of things 
 altogether inevitable. " It is enough for the ser- 
 vant that he be as his Master." ' 
 
 In session 1888-89 it was still the same. 
 
 'November 12, 1888. Really fine students' meet- 
 ing yesterday, hall filled to standing, and much
 
 -ET. 33-43] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 349 
 
 interest. I fear I am in for it again this winter, 
 but I really wanted a few months' peace.' 
 
 'November 26, 1888. I dinna think I can come. 
 Edinburgh is at it again, and I must stick there. 
 You know, I have no faith in a stray shot, and 
 mean to bombard the students steadily both here 
 and at Edinburgh. It is too dreadful to have to 
 refuse you so often, but you know your man.' 
 
 'February 26, 1889. May I spread my mat at 
 
 No. ? I fancy we shall have only two more 
 
 meetings after next Sunday, so one may not have 
 the chance of a cigarette again for a little, so I 
 hope you can give me a corner.' 
 
 So week after week during January, February, and 
 March he held the Edinburgh meetings. In August 
 there was a Students' Conference at Bonskeid, very 
 active and very successful. And session 1889-90 saw 
 the work as engrossing as in previous years, the 
 freshmen who had come up as interested and respon- 
 sive as their predecessors had been. 
 
 'January 6, 1890. All the Sundays now for two 
 months or so must be in Edinburgh at least I 
 think so. 
 
 ' We begin next Saturday night with a conver- 
 sazione in the new Students' Union Building, 
 which is just opened. Twelve hundred invitations 
 are out. A deputation of Cambridge men are 
 coming. On Sunday the old meeting in the 
 Oddfellows' Hall begins, but though I preside, 
 the Cambridge men will do the bulk of the 
 talking. 
 
 ' I have been flying everywhere during these last 
 days first accompanying my mother to a place
 
 35O HENRY DRUMMOND [1884-94 
 
 near Edinburgh for a little, and then going a round 
 of meetings both in Edinburgh and Glasgow. It is 
 the busiest time amongst the poor, and especially 
 among the tempted, and it has fallen to my lot 
 this year to devote my holiday mainly to them, 
 turning up at my mother's from time to time as I 
 could.' 
 
 'January n, 1890. I have been in Edinburgh 
 meetings, meetings, meetings and am just start- 
 ing back again for more.' 
 
 Such was the outer history of the Student Move- 
 ment so far as Drummond himself has told it, and 
 his notes for the years 1884-90 hold good also for 
 1891-94. 
 
 In these ten years the work covered about three 
 generations of students, and Drummond was able to 
 give many of his better-known addresses more than 
 once, but always with varieties and additions suitable 
 to the occasion. At first he confined himself to very 
 simple themes: 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God? 
 Christ's call to the weary and heavy laden to learn 
 of Him, and similar texts. Sometimes he had these 
 printed upon cards and distributed to his audience as 
 they entered, as thus : 
 
 Let the wicked forsake his way 
 
 And the unrighteous man his thoughts : 
 
 And let him return unto the Lord, 
 
 And He will have Mercy upon him, 
 And to our God 
 
 For He will abundantly Pardon. 
 
 STUDENTS' MEETING, ' HIM THAT COMETH UNTO ME 
 
 MARCH 8, 1885. I WILL IN NO WISE CAST OUT.' 
 
 Those addresses were all upon the relation of the 
 individual to Christ. In 1886 he began to emphasise
 
 ^ET. 33-43] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 351 
 
 the social aspects of religion, and gave some addresses 
 on the Kingdom of God, based on Ecce Homo ; his 
 Programme of Christianity from Isaiah Ixi. ; and his 
 address, or parts of it, on i Cor. xiii. Then while 
 preparing his lectures on The Ascent of Man, he took 
 up the relations of science and religion, and illustrated 
 the naturalness of Christianity as the crown of all 
 human evolution ; but always drove home to the indi- 
 vidual his place and duty in the process. Take the 
 very remarkable series of addresses delivered in the 
 winter of 1890, a summary of which will be found in 
 the Appendix to this volume. They start with science ; 
 but as they go on, one is impressed no less by the ful- 
 ness of the Gospel which is in them than by their 
 persistent pressure upon the individual to accept 
 Christ and consecrate life to Him. It is a seer who 
 speaks, stimulated like the prophets of old by the in- 
 tellectual conditions of his own time to a new view 
 of the things that are eternal. Modern science has 
 enabled him to view life as a whole, and to perceive, 
 with an eye which, as he tells you, he also owes, 
 partly to science, that in the universe Christianity is 
 at once the most natural and the most sublime of facts. 
 He sweeps before us, in a magnificent panorama, the 
 forces which have built the world, developed the indi- 
 vidual, and fashioned human society, and he relates 
 Christianity to them as their continuance and con- 
 summation. But the individual is made to feel his 
 place in this and his duty towards it. And for all 
 those purposes the speaker excites not the imagina- 
 tion only, but reason and common sense. There is 
 no sensation in the addresses, nor any imposition of 
 authority ; no artificiality nor false mysticism ; but the 
 style is as simple as the thinking; it is one sensible 
 man talking to others of his own generation.
 
 352 HENRY DRUMMOND [1884-94 
 
 In the Christianity which he presents as the crown 
 of the life of the universe, the spring and cause is 
 Jesus Christ. He is the Source of all life and light; 
 the assurance of the forgiveness of sins; the daily 
 nourishment of the soul ; the one power sufficient for 
 a noble life ; the solution of all problems ; the motive 
 and example of all service. Night after night this 
 teacher shut up the reason of his young hearers to the 
 acceptance and obedience of Christ. Night after night 
 he pleaded before their hearts God's love in Christ 
 and God's need for them in the life of the world. 
 This is the most striking feature of the addresses, and 
 next to it is their adherence to the Bible and Christ's 
 own words, which are expounded with a simplicity and 
 homeliness that remind one sometimes of Luther, and 
 sometimes of Robertson of Brighton. And next is 
 another feature which will surprise many who did not 
 hear the addresses their loyalty to the Church and 
 to the doctrines of the Church. Church-going, they 
 say, is not Christianity, and belief in doctrines is not 
 Christianity, but no sane man will refuse the regular 
 nourishment and strength of fellowship which church- 
 going supplies ; and, as in every department of science, 
 so here also a reasonable mind will recognise that 
 there must be doctrines, and will go for their explana- 
 tion only to their highest authorities. But description 
 of these addresses is useless save to tempt the reader 
 of these lines to study them himself. He will find 
 them among the best which Drummond ever achieved. 
 
 Nor will he who reads these addresses need to be 
 told how ignorant and irrelevant was the criticism 
 from which their author suffered. It arose, in the 
 first instance, because he excluded all reporters from 
 the meetings. He adopted this policy, not from any 
 wish to hide his teaching, but apart from the obvi-
 
 ^T. 33-43] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 353. 
 
 ous fact that the daily press can give only fragmentary, 
 and therefore to some extent misleading, reports of 
 long religious addresses because his mission was to 
 students only, and he was persuaded that the very per- 
 sonal and sacred work which it involved would thrive 
 better if kept to himself and his audience. Every one 
 who is familiar with such work can perceive the many 
 reasons for this. But at the same time it was bound 
 to provoke criticism and misunderstanding. Some of 
 the misrepresentations from which the addresses suf- 
 fered were wilful ; bits torn from their context by a 
 young prig or two in his audience, and flung to the 
 rapacity of certain of the lower-class religious papers, 
 who followed the author of Natural Law with an in- 
 satiable suspicion. Others were the effect upon good 
 but unduly sensitive minds of the inevitable distortion 
 of the half-reported teaching of an evangelist with 
 unconventional ways of stating the truth. Such 
 charges are mentioned here only to emphasise how 
 unfounded they now appear to be in face of the ad- 
 dresses themselves. And, in fact, when any of Drum- 
 mond's harder critics went to hear him, they generally 
 came away disarmed. The newspaper which attacked 
 him most persistently for his exclusion of reporters 
 acknowledged that he had intelligible reasons for this, 
 and published at least one candid appreciation of his 
 power by an outsider to the work. 
 
 The following account of the addresses has been 
 sent me by one who was a medical student at Edin- 
 burgh from 1888 to 1892, Mr. George Newman, now 
 Lecturer on Bacteriology at King'^ College, London, 
 and lately Warden of Chalfont House Settlement: 
 
 ' The first time I saw Professor Drummond was in the 
 winter time in 1888. I was a freshman; and though I had, 
 of course, heard of him by name, I had no idea at all as to 
 
 2A
 
 354 HENRY DRUMMOND [1884-94 
 
 any connection he had with the University of Edinburgh. 
 Some fellow-undergraduate gave me a card to attend " a meet- 
 ing for students in the Oddfellows' Hall, to be addressed by 
 Professor Drummond." It seemed only by chance that I 
 went to the meeting. I believe Sir William Muir, the Princi- 
 pal of the University, was in the chair. There were several 
 of the leading men in the University upon the platform, and 
 the room, which seats, I think, about a thousand, was full. I 
 suppose I shall never forget I certainly do not wish to for- 
 get the impression I gained of Professor Drummond that 
 night. He spoke with evident earnestness, but with marked 
 control, if not reserve. His whole bearing was calm and 
 collected. There were no gestures. Nor was there a sug- 
 gestion of the " preacher " natural voice, natural demeanour, 
 natural and dignified from beginning to the end. At the 
 close of his remarks he uttered a few words of prayer. A 
 hymn was sung, and the great gathering dispersed with pre- 
 ternatural quietness and decorum. The impression left on 
 my mind was such as to cause me to reflect upon what I had 
 seen and heard. Taken at the very lowest estimate, here was 
 a disciplinarian of no ordinary skill. To those who have not 
 heard Drummond, or have wondered at his influence, I sug- 
 gest a consideration, viz., that his methods were of a rare kind, 
 and obtained for him a hearing which many religious teachers 
 never seem able to secure. The matter of a sermon is clearly 
 of first importance, but is it not possible that great matter is 
 frequently spoiled by not being greatly uttered ? 
 
 ' Now, whilst in my judgment Drummond was not an orator, 
 he had a most exceptional faculty of simple, beautiful, and 
 dignified expression. His style and mode of procedure 
 appealed, I think, to his hearers in Edinburgh. He was 
 admittedly a tall, well-built, handsome man almost a king 
 among men and no one who has looked into those eyes 
 can ever hold any other opinion than that they were attrac- 
 tive. He was rather particularly well and neatly dressed. 
 These things, combined with his skill of style, all had their 
 influence upon his hearers. But there was another character- 
 istic which struck me that night. I had heard a real Teacher. 
 Such are rare. Many professors in our universities can no
 
 /T. 34-43] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 355 
 
 more teach than fly ! At best, possibly they are crammers 
 in. But Drummond educated men. He drew them out 
 and drew them onwards and upwards. His ideas may have 
 been, or may not have been, orthodox, scholastic, theological, 
 scientific but they resulted in leading out a young fellow's 
 mind. His teaching opened men's eyes not to wondrous 
 doctrines, but to see. After a course of Drummond, men 
 began to look about for themselves. 
 
 ' A considerable experience of those meetings of Professor 
 Drummond's only convinced me the more that he was a 
 Teacher possessing an admirable style. But it was not long 
 before I learned of at least two other features which made 
 this visitor to Edinburgh such a power in the University. 
 He held no position whatever in the University. He came 
 as " unofficial preacher " ; but in that capacity he had, in my 
 judgment, a greater and a more lasting effect upon the 
 University at that time than any of the University teachers 
 themselves. And for a very simple reason. He dealt not 
 with technical subjects, but with ethics and life. The Pro- 
 fessors of Divinity might be said to be his only competitors. 
 But while they spoke to small compulsory classes reading 
 for a degree, Drummond spoke to the largest class in the 
 University, and it was a voluntary one, composed of students 
 in all the Faculties. Moreover, he possessed his influence 
 very largely because he went beneath the surface of things 
 beyond formularies, creeds, definitions to the elementary 
 questions of life and conduct. It is true, such a course led 
 him inevitably into controversy and misapprehensions, but it 
 accomplished that which he desired. I should sum up his 
 entire teaching in those meetings in one sentence from the 
 pen of George Macdonald: "Life and religion are one thing, 
 or neither is anything." Here was a minimum of theology 
 and a maximum of simple common sense. How well it acted 
 was proved by experience. 
 
 ' For three winters, to my personal knowledge, these large 
 gatherings of students took place. Nor was the effect imme- 
 diately transient. It acted in a perceptible measure as the 
 salt of the University. The foremost men in the University 
 gave these meetings their support, and were often present
 
 356 HENRY DRUMMOND [1884-94 
 
 themselves. Lord Aberdeen presided on several occasions, 
 and frequently distinguished visitors to Edinburgh were 
 present. Otherwise the meetings were absolutely limited to 
 matriculated students. The elementary basis of doctrine 
 if such it is to be called was of a nature to bring men of 
 all shades of religious feeling, and of "no religion at all," 
 together in one hall. Professor Drummond has frequently 
 been criticised respecting the matter of his addresses to the 
 students of Edinburgh. Of that I am not qualified to speak. 
 Many of those who might be considered as representatives 
 of the children of Israel were sore afraid that the religious 
 spirit of Evangelism was absent. The world of exact science 
 declared that Drummond was "unscientific." In a measure 
 he was guilty of both accusations. He was not, I should 
 say, an evangelical teacher in the general acceptation of the 
 term. Professor Masson, in an essay written, I think, about 
 1852, on "Scottish Characteristics," selects finally as those 
 most often found : (i) An intense spirit of nationality; (2) the 
 habit, in thinking, speaking, and writing, of laying emphasis 
 upon certain points rather than in co-ordinating them into 
 one entirety. Drummond erred if it be erring in the 
 latter of these two characteristics. He was a philosopher, yet 
 he has left us no philosophy. Like Jowett at Oxford, though 
 in a less degree, he individualised his creed and his teaching. 
 Though his entire contribution to religious thought has done 
 much to co-ordinate, still it must be recognised that he had, 
 or thought he had, a very definite part or side of Truth to 
 enforce. This he did with as great pertinacity as he declined 
 to speak to audiences outside those he deemed desirable. 
 He emphasised, not to misplace or isolate Truth, but to 
 bring out the finer points, which he felt were so often 
 neglected, because they lay below the surface. The final 
 result was a revealing of unity, co-ordination, and adaptation 
 in the Truth of the Christian Religion and Nature. Nature 
 was to Drummond a sympathetic background to human life 
 and the kindred revelation of a divine intelligence. Most of 
 the many misconceptions of spirituality may be traced, as 
 T. H. Green of Balliol pointed out, to the notion that it is 
 attained by eliminating, leaving behind, and transcending
 
 ^T. 33-43] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 357 
 
 what is natural. Drummond believed and taught that, on 
 the contrary, the spirituality which was real, and which would 
 stand the test of time, was attained by absorbing, assimilat- 
 ing, and developing what was Natural. " Nothing," said 
 Drummond, " can ever be gained by setting one-half of Nat- 
 ure against the other, or the rational against the ultra- 
 rational." That is a fine quotation the whole of it, in my 
 judgment, absolutely representative of Drummond's best 
 thought and contribution. Seeley declared for Natural Re- 
 ligion : Drummond demanded that religion should be natural. 
 
 ' As I have said, his whole tenor of thought inevitably led 
 him into differences with the exact sciences. He was above 
 everything else the Poet of Science. And the general run of 
 exact scientific men have little or nothing to do with poetry. 
 I imagine Drummond has left comparatively little original 
 work behind him. He interpreted the Ethics of Nature rather 
 than investigated new matter. 
 
 'From what I have said, you will gather that I think 
 Drummond's immense influence was due to solid reasons, and 
 neither ephemeral nor superficial. The reasons were three : 
 (i) His style and methods ; (2) his power of teaching; (3) his 
 creed. But more, I think, than all these, and inspiring them 
 all, was his own personality and pure spirit. He practised, 
 so far as we could judge, what he preached. His life was 
 the home of fair visions and noble thoughts and courteous, 
 kindly deeds. He seemed to many of us to be removed from 
 the sordidness of life. 
 
 ' After my first experience I saw a great deal of him, and 
 had the delight of being of some little use in the furtherance 
 of his work at Edinburgh. Of this he often spoke, and any 
 little service done for him was amply repaid by his gratitude 
 and appreciation. He was not a frequent correspondent, but 
 his letters were admirable, and contained much helpful and 
 wise advice. My time in Edinburgh was certainly a very 
 happy one. But I learned to measure many things as but 
 poor and common compared with our friendship. It was the 
 most precious thing I found during my course. Nor was I 
 alone in this experience. I remember not a few who shared 
 it. Drummond was prepared to take almost endless trouble
 
 HENRY DRUMMOND [1884-94 
 
 with men who desired his help. " After-meetings," I think, 
 he disliked as strongly as some of us did. But if a man wished 
 to see Drummond privately and have a talk with him, he was 
 always ready. Indeed, he would come through from Glasgow 
 on a week-day simply to see a man who desired his help. 
 Few teachers have ever had such confidences bestowed in 
 them as Drummond, and yet he was strangely reserved as 
 regards his own heart. He would not be drawn just by 
 anybody at any time. He was fastidious to a degree in all 
 spiritual matters. His taste was the essence of refinement. 
 
 ' The last walk we had together was along Princes Street 
 and towards the Dean Bridge. It was a Sunday night at the 
 end of term in 1892, and we discussed amongst other things 
 his meetings during the four years. He spoke very modestly 
 of his share in them, though, of course, his share was every- 
 thing. 
 
 ' I loved him with all my heart and soul and mind I think 
 1 have never loved any man so much, so strongly, so con- 
 tinuously. I have never seen in any man so much that was 
 admirable for he seemed to possess all the graces and 
 virtues of which as perfect man I dreamed.' 
 
 As in his mission in 1873-75, so m this work among 
 the students it was not so much the addresses them- 
 selves which told, as the personal intercourse with 
 hundreds of young men to which they formed the 
 introduction. One who heard Drummond through 
 several years of the students' movements said there 
 was one power which distinguished him beyond every 
 other preacher to men, and that was the power of so 
 speaking as invariably to move from one to two hun- 
 dred of his audience of seven or eight hundred not 
 merely to stay to an after-meeting, but to talk with 
 him one by one and face to face. This power never 
 failed him with the students, and it was by it he left 
 an abiding mark on many hundreds of lives. 
 
 What it cost him he alone could tell, and even his 
 closest friends during those years had only glimpses of
 
 ^T. 33-43] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 359 
 
 the labour, the thought, and the anxiety which it en- 
 tailed. In mere talk or writing, that take up time, it 
 occupied him for a part of every day during the winter 
 session. To deal with a single case he would come 
 through from Glasgow to Edinburgh for an afternoon. 
 On Saturdays, when he was free, he arrived in the 
 morning and spent several hours fulfilling appoint- 
 ments with men. And on Sunday, after the meeting 
 was over, he would talk with one and another far on 
 into the night, in the Hall, on the winter streets, or in 
 his lodgings. One of his hosts tells me that after 
 having worked all night with men in trouble, he came 
 in to breakfast on Monday morning, fresh and happy 
 as any round the table, and was off to Glasgow before 
 they knew what he had been doing. That must have 
 been a night when men were given to him for his hire, 
 and God's grace was so evident as to be meat and 
 drink to him. But there were other times at which 
 the confessions of some of the men and his disappoint- 
 ments with them strained and wore him out. One, 
 with whom he stayed over a Sunday, writes as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 1 One Sunday evening we were having prayers when 
 he returned. I did not know that he was in, and went 
 down to the dining-room to see if the soup was ready 
 and hot for him. (He laughingly called our house the 
 " Sign of the Ox-tail.") I found him there leaning 
 with his head bowed on the mantelpiece, looking into 
 the fire. He raised a haggard, worn face when I spoke 
 to him, and I made him take a glass of wine, and asked 
 him if he were very tired. " No," he said, " not very. 
 But oh, I am sick with the sins of these men! How 
 can God bear it ? " '
 
 360 HENRY DRUMMOND [1884-94 
 
 If his experiences that night were the same as were 
 sent to him in a large number of letters, anonymous 
 and signed, then one cannot wonder that coming forth 
 from the living face and eyes they stunned and sick- 
 ened him. He has kept letters with strange and awful 
 stories of sin, told for the most part in utter despair. 
 Some are from men who have fallen once, and cry for 
 his quick hand to lift them. Some are from those 
 whom he has befriended before, and perhaps shep- 
 herded for a time, but away from him they have 
 yielded. 
 
 1 1 suppose you will be coming to Edinburgh for Sunday. 
 If you are not specially engaged and would come through 
 early, I should be very glad. . . . The winter before last I 
 was always at your meetings, and a year last Easter was on 
 deputation. Now I am off the mark and fully aware that 
 things cannot go on this way much longer. A talk quietly 
 with you might do good and help me.' 
 
 There are many letters like that. 
 
 ' DEAR SIR, Can you tell me what will help me in the 
 first second succeeding moral defeat and the consciousness 
 of it ? What, when we have but a moment to think before 
 plunging into the next bit of work that lies to our hand, will 
 save us from losing heart at the consciousness of our weak- 
 ness and giving way to a feeling that it is useless to prolong 
 a struggle which can only end in our total defeat ? I have 
 found that the first moment of defeat is the crucial instant 
 determining whether it is to be a stumble from which we shall 
 recover, or whether it is to usher in a period longer or shorter 
 of listlessness and wasted opportunities. I feel certain there 
 must be some way of doing right at every instant independent 
 of the Tightness or wrongness of previous acts. Can you help 
 me and possibly others ? I am yours expectantly, 
 
 'VICTOR S^EPE VICTUS.' 
 
 ' DEAR PROFESSOR DRUMMOND, I was at your meeting 
 to-night, and was also present at your after-meeting. I may
 
 Mr. 33-43] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 361 
 
 say that I am a member of 's church. . . . When a fel- 
 low leaves home he finds it pretty hard work to keep straight 
 sometimes, and I frankly say I have come to grief since I 
 came to Edinburgh. I have been trying for some time back 
 to live a better life and be more like Christ. I am taking 
 advantage of your offer to give us advice.' 
 
 ' DEAR SIR, How past sins are to be blotted out is a 
 matter of special difficulty to those who enter upon the Chris- 
 tian life, leaving a dissolute career behind them. The usual 
 method of meeting this difficulty is that of the Atonement. 
 Some perplexity has been caused through your making no 
 reference to this, and it is felt that you would render a great 
 service by elucidating the matter. If convenient, would you 
 kindly refer to the subject this evening? Yours respectfully, 
 
 ' A STUDENT.' 
 
 ' DEAR SIR, I have been attending your Students' meet- 
 ings for some time, and am now resolved to follow Jesus 
 Christ. But my past life has been a very wild and sinful one, 
 and I want to know how I am to regard the past. What 
 assurance may I have that the past is forgiven ? Do you 
 believe in the Atonement of Christ ? ' 
 
 This last letter Drummond 'read to the meeting, 
 and, laying it down, declared his unequivocal faith in 
 the efficacy of Christ's Atonement. That Atonement 
 (he said) furnished the ground and assurance of the 
 forgiveness of sins. There were many theories of the 
 rationale of that doctrine ; and he would not venture 
 there to offer any theory of his own, but he took the 
 opportunity of magnifying the Atonement as one of 
 the central facts of Christianity.' 1 
 
 Another sends the following : 
 
 ' I recollect particularly well an answer he gave once in 
 private conversation to the question, " Do you believe that the 
 sacrifice of Christ is the essential and basal thing in the Chris- 
 tian religion ? " The interrogator desired an answer, Yes or 
 
 1 From a student who was present at the meeting.
 
 362 HENRY DRUMMOND [1884-94 
 
 No. It was at a time when Drummond's position was being 
 assailed from almost every quarter. I shall not soon forget 
 the slow, deliberate reply: "Then my answer must be No." 
 The questioner remarked that it was satisfactory to have such 
 a plain answer. But there was in store for him something 
 which probably made matters plainer still : " If I may venture 
 a supplementary remark," said Drummond, " I would say that 
 in my opinion the sacrifice of Christ is a part of the very 
 essence of Christianity, but the basis of Christianity is the 
 eternal love of God." ' 
 
 I have been told by those who assisted Drummond 
 at the after-meetings, that you could not know him till 
 you saw how he pleaded there with groups of men, and 
 still more with individuals. He was very straight; 
 and God's forgiveness made sure in Jesus Christ was 
 what he pressed home, with all the simplicity of Script- 
 ure itself, upon the men whom he found convinced of 
 guilt. Yet he used to say that it was not to the sense 
 of guilt he could most powerfully appeal, nor did he 
 believe that such an appeal was the most suitable to 
 make to a meeting of young men. Indeed, the secret 
 of his large area of power was his recognition of the 
 enormous variety of religious difficulty and of moral 
 trouble which beset the young men of his time. He 
 took these as he found them, and shaped the begin- 
 nings of his gospel to suit their experiences, their 
 ideals, their lines of study and of recreation. But the 
 end was One, and Christ stood at it. For every man 
 the thing needful was surrender to Him, and the begin- 
 ning of a life of service in His Spirit. 
 
 These labours and anxieties brought their own 
 reward. It came not only in the undiminished meet- 
 ings, ' I would not give up my audience in Odd- 
 fellows' Hall for anything in the world,' but in the 
 more precious acknowledgment by one man after an-
 
 <**. 33-43] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 363 
 
 other that he had been turned from evil, lifted to self- 
 control, and was happy in serving Christ. 
 
 What sheaves of such tributes he got, and yet so 
 seldom spoke of them ! I cannot imagine documents 
 of the kind more honest or reserved. 
 
 ' I think it my duty to tell you (after my request last week) 
 that I have this week benefited by your address, and feel sure 
 that you have prayed for me. This week has been one of 
 victory and strength unknown to me for years. ... Ever 
 gratefully yours, 'A STUDENT.' 
 
 ' Up till Sunday, and for some time past, I felt myself drift- 
 ing ; but the wonderful things I heard last night, and particu- 
 larly your words, have done me a great deal of good. I can 
 again enjoy communion with God and my Saviour, and that I 
 know that I work not for myself but for Him fills my heart 
 with joy. I feel assured that last night's meeting has given 
 courage to many. Yours sincerely, ' L.' 
 
 These are like a great number from men whom he 
 did not know, and with whom he had not spoken. 
 But very many others he did know, and, step by step, 
 helped from sin or from doubt to stability of faith and 
 conduct, which so long as he lived he had the joy of 
 seeing unshaken among the real troubles of life, and 
 frequently upon high positions of responsibility and 
 influence. 
 
 ' SIR, Some years ago I gave my heart to my Saviour, 
 yet I have not followed Him as I ought. It seemed to me as 
 you spoke as if I had taken it back again, and soiled it with 
 sins unmentionable. But I thank and praise Him that through 
 you I have been enabled by His great unspeakable grace to 
 say "Lord, I come." Will you pray for me that I may be 
 kept from falling, and that I may sit humbly at His feet and 
 learn of Him ? God knows, if any ought to be humble I 
 should.'
 
 364 HENRY DRUMMOND [1884-94 
 
 ' DEAR PROFESSOR DRUMMOND, Though I did not succeed 
 in getting through my " second," I feel it has not been alto- 
 gether a failure. As a practical result, my getting through 
 three has been more than I expected or deserved ; but, apart 
 from that, it has given me more hope for the future, as I look 
 back upon the last two months. It has taught me that I can 
 still do work, if only I apply myself, though it was very 
 difficult at times. (You know of my outbreak.) A very 
 helpful influence to me in my struggle has been yours, sir, 
 
 and that of Dr. . I write to-night to tell you that I thank 
 
 you from the bottom of my heart for your great kindness to 
 one who was not only a stranger, but even almost a foreigner. 
 I hope and trust that the tide has now turned with me, and 
 that I shall yet be a useful member of society. I begin to 
 realise how nearly I had become a perfect wreck ; in a great 
 measure I owe my escape to your personal influence.' 
 
 One of the finest features of the movement, how- 
 ever, was the large number of the men affected by it 
 who set themselves, often at great sacrifice, to win 
 their fellow-students for Christ. Here is an instance 
 which Drummond himself told at a students' meeting 
 in America: 
 
 ' One night I got a letter from one of the students 
 of the University of Edinburgh, page after page 
 of agnosticism and atheism. I went over to see 
 him, and spent a whole afternoon with him, and 
 did not make the slightest impression. At Edin- 
 burgh University we have a Students' Evange- 
 listic Meeting on Sunday nights, at which there 
 are eight hundred or one thousand men present. 
 A few nights after this, I saw that man in the 
 meeting, and next to him sat another man whom 
 I had seen occasionally at the meetings. I did 
 not know his name, but I wanted to find out 
 more about my sceptic, so when the meeting was 
 over, I went up to him and said, " Do you happen
 
 33-43] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 365 
 
 to know ? " " Yes," he replied, " it is he 
 
 that has brought me to Edinburgh." " Are you 
 an old friend ? " I asked. "I am an American, 
 a graduate of an American University," he said. 
 " After I had finished there I wanted to take a 
 post-graduate course, and finally decided to come 
 to Edinburgh. In the dissecting-room I hap- 
 pened to be placed next to , and I took a 
 
 singular liking for him. I found out that he was 
 a man of very remarkable ability, though not a 
 religious man, and I thought I might be able to 
 do something for him. A year passed and he 
 was just where I found him." He certainly was 
 blind enough, because it was only two or three 
 weeks before that that he wrote me that letter. 
 " I think you said," I resumed, " that you only 
 came here to take a year of the post-graduate 
 course." " Well," he said, " I packed my trunks 
 to go home, and I thought of this friend, and I 
 wondered whether a year of my life would be 
 better spent to go and start in my profession in 
 America, or to stay in Edinburgh and try to win 
 that one man for Christ, and I stayed." " Well," 
 I said, " my dear fellow, it will pay you ; you will 
 get that man." Two or three months passed, and 
 it came to the last night of our meetings. We 
 have men in Edinburgh from every part of the 
 world. Every year, five or six hundred of them 
 go out never to meet again, and in our religious 
 work we get very close to one another, and on 
 the last night of the year we sit down together in 
 our common hall to the Lord's Supper. This is 
 entirely a students' meeting. On that night we 
 get in the members of the Theological Faculty, 
 so that things may be done decently and in order.
 
 366 HENRY DRUMMOND [1884-94 
 
 Hundreds of men are there, the cream of the 
 youth of the world, sitting down at the Lord's 
 table. Many of them are not members of the 
 Church, but are there for the first time pledging 
 themselves to become members of the Kingdom 
 
 of God. I saw sitting down and handing 
 
 the communion cup to his American friend. He 
 had got his man. A week after he was back in 
 his own country. I do not know his name ; he 
 made no impression in our country, nobody knew 
 him. He was a subject of Christ's kingdom, 
 doing His work in silence and in humility. A 
 
 few weeks passed and came to see me. I 
 
 said, " What do you come here for? " He said, 
 " I want to tell you I am going to be a medical 
 missionary." It was worth a year, was it not ? ' 
 
 One of the letters quoted above strikes a note which 
 was a very strong feature of Drummond's mission. 
 He recognised that the first duty of his converts was 
 to the University itself and to their studies. There 
 was an entire exclusion of the romance, the sentimen- 
 talism, the vague philanthropies, the short cuts to in- 
 fluence and fame, which often so seriously hurt work 
 among students. The business in hand the class- 
 work, the examinations, the science or profession for 
 which they were studying was pressed upon all as 
 their first duty. In this, too, the leaders of the move- 
 ment, the secretaries, the committee and the most 
 prominent workers, set a noble example. Many of 
 them were the first men of their years. All round, 
 the honours lists showed, as was right, the first-fruits 
 of the mission. 
 
 How has it gone since ? How have ' Drummond's 
 men ' stood the world ? In nearly every town of our
 
 ^T. 33-43] THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 367 
 
 country, in every British colony, in India, in China, 
 in Japan, converts or disciples of this movement, who 
 gratefully trace to it the beginnings of their moral 
 power, are labouring steadfastly, and often brilliantly, 
 in every profession of life. 
 
 If any have grown indifferent, if any have fallen, 
 should the story of those great days come into their 
 hands, may it rouse the memory within them of what 
 they then owned, of what they then found themselves 
 capable of. And let them be assured, that if sins have 
 fallen on them since, the same Grace which Henry 
 Drummond then pleaded to their hearts is theirs still, 
 if with all their hearts they turn and seek it.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE AMERICAN COLLEGES 1887 
 
 FOR some years various persons and institutions in 
 America had been inviting Drummond to cross the 
 Atlantic. Mr. Moody was urgent that he should join 
 him in such a general mission as they had accom- 
 plished together in 1873-75. But Drummond, as 
 we have seen, was concentrating his energies upon 
 students. About 1885 Mr. Moody, too, began to 
 specialise in the same direction. At Northfield, 
 Massachusetts, he had built a number of institutions 
 for the discipline of young men and women in various 
 forms of Christian service; and in the spring of 1887 
 he invited Drummond there to a Conference of Stu- 
 dents. Drummond agreed to go to Northfield as well 
 as to certain ' summer schools ' of Chautauqua and 
 elsewhere. On the i ith of June he sailed from Liver- 
 pool, and reached New York on the i8th. 
 
 He had scarcely landed before requests for lectures 
 and addresses poured in upon him from all sides. 
 The American Association for the Advancement of 
 Science ; the Presidents of many universities and col- 
 leges beginning with Dr. M'Cosh of Princeton, Dr. 
 Dwight of Yale, Dr. Oilman of Johns Hopkins, Dr. 
 Grant of Kingston, and Sir Daniel Wilson of Mon- 
 treal ; scholars like Dr. Bissell of Hartford, and Dr. 
 Rendel Harris of Haverford ; literary men like Mr. 
 George Cable ; the Christian Associations of many 
 universities; the International Committee of the 
 Young Men's Christian Association ; besides the host 
 
 368
 
 J&r. 35] THE AMERICAN COLLEGES 369 
 
 of ' Lecturing Bureaus,' ' Societies of Inquiry,' ' Insti- 
 tutes of Christian Philosophy,' Women's Clubs, 
 Pastors' Associations, and Societies of Teachers 
 begged him to give them either single lectures or a 
 series of addresses. 
 
 He might have spent a couple of years on the 
 Continent, and made a fortune by lecturing. But he 
 saw the opportunity of extending to the American 
 Colleges the religious movement which he had started 
 among the Edinburgh students, and, with the excep- 
 tion of a couple of visits to ' summer schools,' he 
 resolved to confine himself to this great work. He 
 made arrangements for a strong deputation to come 
 over from Edinburgh and commence a mission to the 
 colleges so soon as these opened in September, and 
 accepted pecuniary engagements only so far as to 
 cover his travelling expenses for the next four months. 
 The few purely scientific lectures which he gave were 
 also undertaken by him solely for the purpose of 
 furthering his influence as a religious teacher. 
 
 To the lecturer or preacher from Great Britain, 
 America presents a width of area, an urgency of 
 demand, and a wealth of organisation which are 
 simply amazing after his experience of the insular 
 opportunities and somewhat sluggish conservatism of 
 his own country. It is not only the enormous popu- 
 lation nearly seventy millions speaking the Eng- 
 lish language, nor the hunger for knowledge which a 
 young people, hitherto engrossed in the material 
 development of their vast continent, so naturally show, 
 nor the religious freedom which welcomes a strong 
 man for his own sake without asking what denomina- 
 tion he belongs to. But all these lavish opportunities 
 have been as lavishly organised by the present genera- 
 tion of American people. 
 
 2B
 
 37O HENRY DRUMMOND [1887 
 
 The curriculum of the Universities includes oppor- 
 tunity for lectures from ' visiting Professors,' experts 
 in various sciences and literatures from all parts of 
 the world. In every University there are at least a 
 few, and often many, such lectureships. 'University 
 Extension,' too, has reached enormous dimensions in 
 the United States. Besides the Summer Course which 
 Chicago University that never shuts its doors from 
 one year's end to the other provides for clergymen, 
 teachers, and other adult men and women, anxious to 
 complete an imperfect education, there are the great 
 summer schools, camp-meetings in excelsis, to which 
 thousands of people gather at some healthy and beau- 
 tiful spot to attend regular courses of instruction from 
 experts in all branches of a school and university edu- 
 cation. At Chautauqua, for instance, for two months 
 every year, a small town of tents, wooden lodging- 
 houses, and a large hotel is inhabited by seven or eight 
 thousand people, and you will find among them whole 
 families, each of the members of which seeks instruc- 
 tion in some subject suited to his or her age ; groups 
 of men and women students from many colleges, a 
 large number of whom pay for their education by act- 
 ing as waiters or servants in the hotel and lodging- 
 houses ; and a whole host of teachers, shopkeepers, 
 tradesmen, and others, who will carry away the good 
 seed they get from many of the best minds of their 
 generation, and sow it again in every state and territory 
 of the Union. And besides all these concentrations 
 of intellectual opportunity, there are in every town the 
 lyceums and lecture associations, which attract a peo- 
 ple busy with the practical problems of life, yet alive 
 to the necessity of culture, to listen in crowds, and 
 with an eagerness for information that to the lecturer 
 who is blessed with the privilege of imparting it is one
 
 ^Ex. 35] THE AMERICAN COLLEGES 371 
 
 of the greatest inspirations which life can afford. Of 
 these things Drummond used to speak with enthusiasm. 
 It was a frequent saying of his that ' for one man you 
 can help by lecturing in Great Britain, you can help 
 twelve or twenty in America.' 
 
 'NORTHFIELD, MASS., June 28. 
 
 ' It is a great chance this Conference five hundred 
 students from over eighty different colleges.' 
 
 'July I. 
 
 4 1 am tearing away here at American speed. Al- 
 ready I have been asked to become principal of 
 a college, ditto of another college, to write for 
 various papers, to lecture in half the states of the 
 Union, and otherwise to line my pocket with 
 dollars. But I have refused all wiles, and am 
 plodding along at Moody's, with lots to do and 
 lots to enjoy. The hardest thing is the heat. 
 Northfield is like Crieff without the high moun- 
 tains, but with a bigger river and more timber. 
 It is very beautiful, and Moody is as grand as 
 ever. To see him at home is a sight. He is 
 simply a farmer, running messages, going for the 
 cream and the beefsteak for dinner, and so on. 
 Hundreds of students have now come, many in 
 tents all over the place. Two are from Cambridge, 
 England.' 
 
 After his work at Northfield, Drummond spent a 
 few days at Niagara with Lord and Lady Aberdeen 
 on their way home from India. Then he went to two 
 summer schools.
 
 372 HENRY DRUMMOND [1887 
 
 To Lady Aberdeen 
 
 <S. FRAMINGHAM, MASS., July 21. 
 
 ' I hope this will find you safe and well in port once 
 more very thankful that it has all come to an 
 end. It has been a wonderful episode ! Yet how 
 quickly it becomes dreamland again ; and one 
 picks up the threads of real life once more just 
 where they were dropped. I cannot believe I 
 really saw you and A. here. It was so short and 
 sudden, and you passed away like a weaver's shut- 
 tle. I spent the Sunday at Newport, and often 
 looked over the Atlantic and thought of the ser- 
 vice, and hoped and wished all would go well. 
 
 ' On Monday I came here, and I now write in the 
 open air, while Principal Fairbairn of Oxford is 
 lecturing to two thousand people about Ancient 
 Religions, and imagines I am taking wise notes 
 about Buddha and Confucius while I am scrib- 
 bling this. Dr. Fairbairn is the only one I know 
 here. I fancy you know some of his books, which 
 are very fresh and able. 
 
 ' I cannot begin to describe this place. It is one of 
 a dozen Chautauquas, the oldest and biggest of 
 the family, after the great mother which. I visit 
 next week. Imagine seventy acres of forest, with 
 a hundred cottages and endless tents buried among 
 the trees, a lake, an orchestra, a vast auditorium, 
 and halls and buildings innumerable. This spot 
 is tenanted for ten days every year by from three 
 to six thousand people, who are all busy educating 
 themselves. The vast majority are young women, 
 especially those of a certain age, but there are 
 many old people, entire families, teachers, clergy- 
 men, etc., etc. Their appetite for lectures is in-
 
 T. 35] THE AMERICAN COLLEGES 373 
 
 satiable, and from six in the morning till nearly 
 midnight there are meetings all over the grounds, 
 and talks and discussions on every conceivable 
 subject. I have an impromptu meeting each 
 morning at eight for " religious talks," and I have 
 prepared and discharged all the worst bombshells 
 I could think of. There is much heat here, but 
 no light. The Pharisees are down on one of 
 course, but the Barbarians show me no little kind- 
 ness. On the whole, it is a good thing this 
 Chautauqua, but withal it is a bit of a rabble, and 
 to-morrow I am going to steal away back to 
 Niagara for a quiet Sunday and a cigarette. 
 On Tuesday I go to the parent Chautauqua for a 
 few days, then back to " call " on Moody, and then 
 to the Science Congress the American " British 
 Association " which meets at New York.' 
 
 To his Father and Mother 
 
 1 CHAUTAUQUA, July 28. 
 
 ' All goes well. I am having lots of work and long, 
 long journeys in the great country. Sabbath last 
 I spent at Niagara alone. This is my third pil- 
 grimage to it, and it gets better every time. Chau- 
 tauqua is a wonderful place. I think I shall write 
 an article about it, and tell you and the British 
 public how the Americans are trying to educate 
 themselves. I have lectured already to-day to a 
 vast audience, and am " on " in half an hour again ; 
 subject, " Nature and Religion." I have been 
 " interviewed " several times, but some of the 
 accounts I have never seen, and others are so 
 absurd that I have been ashamed to send them to 
 you. . . . My next move will be back to Moody.
 
 374 HENRY DRUMMOND [1887 
 
 He has another big Conference on hand for the 
 first eleven days of August' 
 
 'CLIFTON SPRINGS, N.Y., August 3. 
 
 ' I had two glorious days at Niagara, then endless 
 meetings for a week at Chautauqua, which is 
 really a fine thing; then a day or two at a vast 
 summer hotel and sanatorium, where also I have 
 been let in for meeting after meeting, and to-night 
 I go back to Moody. 
 
 * I do not think I have ever had such meetings in 
 my life as I have had here. Marvellous opportu- 
 nities have been open on every side, and I never 
 felt so charged with a message. Hundreds of 
 ministers have been coming, some to entangle 
 one in their talk, like the Pharisees, but more to 
 learn what poor things I could give them. I 
 must tell you about it all some day; but the 
 people here never seem to have even heard of 
 
 Christianity.' 
 
 'GREENFIELD, MASS., August 5. 
 
 ' For two days I have been at a monster hydropathic, 
 " Clifton Springs." I wish father could see how 
 they do things here. There are eight resident 
 doctors all the year round and a chaplain. Some 
 of the baths are very curious ; one room is given 
 up to slapping, and rubbing, and pounding done 
 by machinery worked by a steam-engine. What 
 fetched me there was a petition forwarded to 
 Chautauqua, and signed by a great many people 
 of note, including George H. Stuart of Philadel- 
 phia. On both nights I lectured on " Nature and 
 Religion," and on leaving I found the folks had 
 raised one hundred dollars to give me. This is 
 the way they do things in America, but I could
 
 . 35] THE AMERICAN COLLEGES 375 
 
 not take their money. I can charge for science, 
 but not for religion. I find I could make a fort- 
 une here very quickly, and have been offered 
 large sums to lecture, but I have other fish to fry. 
 I charged the Chautauqua Company for what 
 science I gave them, and this will cover all my 
 expenses, along with 20 which I have got for a 
 magazine article. So I am very well off. Were 
 it only to break down the universal impression 
 here that all religious work has an equivalent in 
 dollars, I feel it a duty to enter this small protest. 
 
 But enough about dollars.' 
 
 'NEW YORK, Aug. 12. 
 
 ' 1 hope my cablegram reached you at dinner-time 
 to-day l to act as stuffing to the grouse. I have 
 come to lecture to the American " British Asso- 
 ciation," z which by some unaccountable ignorance 
 and mistake has given up a whole night to me 
 to discourse on the Geology and Botany of Cen- 
 tral Africa. I am not sorry at heart about this, 
 as I have been riding the other hobby fiercely in 
 America, and need this to balance matters.' 
 
 To Lady Aberdeen 
 
 ' MONTREAL, Aug. 26. 
 
 ' . . . He [Captain Sinclair] came to Chautauqua, 3 
 where he found me addressing the mob in the 
 vast amphitheatre. Greenfield and an Edinburgh 
 doctor, who form part of our College deputation, 
 arrived in Quebec last week, and came straight to 
 Chautauqua also, and we have been all more or 
 less together ever since. After Chautauqua we 
 
 1 His father's birthday. 
 
 2 The American Association for the Advancement of Science. 
 * Drummond returned there.
 
 3/6 HENRY DRUMMOND [1887 
 
 went to Niagara, 1 where I went over all the old 
 ground. After Niagara we did Toronto and the 
 Thousand Islands, and arrived here last night 
 
 ' I enjoyed the American Association greatly. Saw 
 a good deal of Professor Marsh, who regretted 
 greatly not seeing you. He had set his heart on 
 showing you his fossils, which are the most unique 
 bones in the world. I am going to see them in 
 September. My lecture to the Association was 
 mostly about African insects, and I had a magnifi- 
 cent audience, as it was the only evening lecture 
 of the Association. I was appalled by the re- 
 sponsibility of the occasion, as all the savants of 
 the country were present, but for the sake of a 
 certain religious meeting some of us held on the 
 Sunday I was not sorry to do it. This last meet- 
 ing went off very well, and even the New York 
 Herald had no fault to find with it. This was 
 
 also something to be thankful for, as had 
 
 made a coarse attack on religion in his address 
 two days before. 
 
 ' At Chautauqua I have been talking at least twice 
 a day, and this is the only holiday I have had 
 since you left. I hope to be wandering about 
 Canada and Nova Scotia with Captain Sinclair 
 for the next ten days, and we are now making 
 leisurely for some good fishing ground in the 
 lower provinces. 
 
 ' I am in correspondence with half the Colleges of 
 America about our work, and my mail-bag is 
 something dreadful.' 
 
 'WHITE MOUNTAINS, NEW HAMPSHIRE, Sept. 8. 
 
 ' I have been having " my holidays " for the last 
 week, and a very good time I have had. Captain 
 
 1 Fourth visit.
 
 Mr. 36] THE AMERICAN COLLEGES 377 
 
 S. and I went to Quebec, and had two days' fish- 
 ing in one of the tributaries of the St. Lawrence. 
 . . . The best scenery here is nothing [? in com- 
 parison with Switzerland], and everything in that 
 line I have gone to see has been a disappointment. 
 Professor Simpson joins me among the Colleges.' 
 
 ' Sept. 8. 
 
 ' My band of guerillas will all be at work by next 
 Sunday three in New Brunswick, one at Wash- 
 ington, and myself in New England. This divi- 
 sion of the forces has been necessary owing to the 
 number of colleges we have to overtake. I hope 
 we shall concentrate by and by, and make the 
 work more effective. I expect to have a very 
 hard spell for the next month or more. Every 
 night of the week will probably be occupied 
 except those spent in trains. 
 
 ' We have far more invitations than we can use. 
 Among other things, I am booked for four lect- 
 ures to one of the theological colleges the 
 " Something Lectures," which will pay all my 
 expenses, I think. Had this not been a college, 
 I could not have undertaken the work, as I am 
 refusing all paid lectures, our time for the colleges 
 being too short as it is.' 
 
 'DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, N.H., Sept. 16. 
 
 ' You will be glad to know that our College work 
 has opened finely. Last Sunday we had three 
 meetings at Williams, 1 and again on Monday and 
 Tuesday, though we had meant to go on Monday. 
 
 1 The whole College turned out on Monday night 
 after we had each spoken. To our intense sur- 
 prise, one of the students rose one of the very 
 
 1 Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
 
 HENRY DRUMMOND [1887 
 
 best and brightest men in the College, whom all 
 knew and admired and said, " I want to tell you 
 fellows that I've been thinking it's about time I 
 changed my life, and from this time forward I am 
 resolved to follow Christ." You may imagine the 
 effect. All next day we were busy dealing with 
 the wounded ; and the work is to be continued 
 among themselves for the rest of the term. 
 ' At Dartmouth the classes are suspended for our 
 visit, and we have already had three meetings. 
 But I have no time to add details. Only all goes 
 well. Professor Greenfield and Dr. G. P. Smith 
 are with me, and we hope to find Professor Simp- 
 son at Amherst College to-morrow. Our recep- 
 tion everywhere is most hearty. We generally 
 board with the principals of the Colleges, and 
 have very good quarters and first-rate company. 
 . . . The ground is prepared already by an 
 agent in advance, who has been stirring up all 
 the Colleges by letter about our campaign. The 
 National College Y.M.C.A. Secretary 1 has given 
 up his entire time to us for the next two months.' 
 
 Before joining Drummond, Professor Greenfield, Dr. 
 Webster, and Dr. G. P. Smith had been among the 
 New Brunswick Colleges. Professor Simpson went 
 to Washington and Philadelphia. 
 
 ( HARTFORD, CONN., Sept. 23. 
 
 ' We are now up to the neck in hard work. . . . We 
 have had really splendid work at the Colleges, far 
 surpassing our expectations. Any one of them 
 would have paid us for crossing the Ocean. We 
 are now all together, Simpson, Greenfield, and 
 
 1 Mr. C. K. Ober.
 
 Mr. 36] THE AMERICAN COLLEGES 379 
 
 Smith, and Sabbath first will find us at Prince- 
 ton.' 
 
 ' HARTFORD, Sept. 30 ( ? 29) . 
 
 ' Since I last wrote from Hartford I have been to 
 Princeton and Philadelphia. At Princeton I was 
 the guest of President M'Cosh, a grand old Scotch- 
 man whose wife is a niece of Dr. Guthrie's. 
 Simpson, Greenfield, Webster, and Smith were 
 all with me, and we had meetings with the stu- 
 dents from morning till night all the time. At 
 all the Colleges we have got the students started 
 on deputation work, and we hope the movement 
 will spread all over the country. To-morrow I 
 go to Yale, and then to Harvard. Unfortunately, 
 Smith and I have to tackle them single-handed, 
 as all the others are off on the Umbria to-morrow 
 morning.' 
 
 At Yale very careful preparation had been made 
 for Drummond's mission by students of the Univer- 
 sity who had met him at the Northfield Conference. 
 Consequently the work there was very deep, and, in 
 the testimony of many, permanent. 
 
 'YALE COLLEGE, NEW HAVEN, CONN., Sept. 30. 
 
 ' My life is roaring along like a cataract. I have 
 not been so busy for years, and have literally not 
 had an hour to call my own. The Colleges have 
 given us the most generous reception, and we 
 have been allowed to hold meetings as often and 
 at whatever hours we liked. The heads of the 
 Colleges have given us hospitality, and nothing 
 has been denied us by the Faculties that could 
 facilitate our work. The students at the larger 
 Colleges are a remarkably fine set of men. The
 
 380 HENRY DRUMMOND [1887 
 
 Princeton, Amherst, and Yale men are quite 
 equal to the English undergraduate on the aver- 
 age, while the best of them will compare well 
 with the best of our men both in brain-power and 
 in scholarship. There is much less antipathy to 
 Christianity than at home, and many need only 
 to have the case fairly put to them to win them 
 over. It has all been very wonderful and very 
 
 delightful.' 
 
 ' YALE, Oct. 7. 
 
 * This has been one of the best and busiest weeks 
 of my life, but I have not a moment to tell my 
 tale. I write in the Yale Graveyard the only 
 uninhabited spot I can find ; and I have only 
 twenty minutes for my whole English mail. 
 The work here has been most wonderful, great 
 meetings at night, and talks and walks (your kind 
 of walks) all day long. 
 
 ' We have got at the very heart and brain of this 
 College, and I am sure permanent work has been 
 done which will tell on all the colleges round 
 when the men start out to work. They are to 
 begin the aggressive work on a neighbouring 
 University on Sunday first, while I go on to 
 Harvard. Do not infer that the whole College 
 is in a state of wild excitement, for it is not so ; 
 nor did we want that. But the head centres are 
 reached in every department, and they will do 
 the rest before the term is many weeks older. 
 
 ' I had a delightful day at Hartford last Friday after 
 writing you called on Mark Twain, Mrs. Har- 
 riet Beecher Stowe, and the widow of Horace 
 
 Bushnell. I was wishing A had been at the 
 
 Mark Twain interview. He is funnier than any 
 of his books, and, to my surprise, is a most
 
 Mr. 36] THE AMERICAN COLLEGES 381 
 
 respected citizen, devoted to things aesthetic, and 
 the friend of the poor and struggling.' 
 
 'UNION LEAGUE CLUB, NEW YORK, Oct. 18. 
 
 * All has gone merrily. 
 
 ' I am now busy among the medical students of 
 New York, a scattered and lawless set, who are 
 housed in colleges all over the city one for 
 homoeopaths, one for allopaths, one for surgeons, 
 and so on so that they are hard to reach. 
 Harvard College (the college of Lowell, Emer- 
 son, Longfellow, Fiske, etc.) is the college of the 
 country, and under Unitarian auspices, so that 
 I was told it would be impossible to do any- 
 thing there, but the work was really better than 
 anywhere. I lived with one of the professors, a 
 Unitarian, but I found no difference between him 
 and myself, and I never saw a more lovely Chris- 
 tian home. I have come away with a new idea 
 of the Unitarians, or at least of some of them. 
 After Harvard I spent a couple of days in the 
 American Girton Wellesley College. It is the 
 largest and most splendid woman's college in 
 the world, and the standard is as high as Har- 
 vard. I was the sole male among six hundred 
 "girl graduates," so you can imagine the terror 
 of the first meetings I had.' 
 
 'ALBANY, N.Y., Oct. 21. 
 
 ' It will be meetings, meetings till the last hour, as 
 we have all the colleges of New York to tackle 
 next week. I am at present on my way to a 
 Convention of Students for the State of New 
 York at a place called Schenectady, but I return 
 to New York on Saturday.'
 
 382 HENRY DRUMMOND [1887 
 
 On the 29th of October Drummond sailed in the 
 Umbria for England. The evening after, in Dock- 
 stader's Theatre, New York, a meeting of students 
 was held, to hear addresses from members of Yale 
 University and to further the movement among the 
 New York Colleges. The Hon. Chauncey M. Depew 
 was the chairman. The following characteristic report 
 appeared in the New York World: 
 
 " Had the chief minstrel attempted to occupy his usual seat 
 on the stage of Dockstader's Theatre last night, he would 
 have found the house packed with a great audience. Had 
 Lew Dockstader himself gone to his usual place in the centre 
 of the circle, he would have seen Chauncey M. Depew there. 
 The end men and the funny men would have seen their 
 places filled with men of brawn and muscle, men who have 
 lowered records, men who can pull an oar with the best, and 
 men who can knock home runs. Athletes, ball-players, run- 
 ners, and gymnasts, all men of Yale, who had come here to 
 start a new movement among college men, were there. Three 
 years ago some students in the University of Edinburgh 
 formed an association designed to increase Christian in- 
 fluence and Christian teachings among college men. It has 
 borne fruit. Professor Henry Drummond introduced the 
 same organisation at Yale. The men on the stage last night 
 had come to tell their experiences and tell their fellows here 
 that a man can be a Christian and an athlete and be better 
 for being both. 
 
 ' The theatre was filled with college men : Princeton, Co- 
 lumbia, Dartmouth, Amherst, and the University of New 
 York were all represented. The meeting opened with sing- 
 ing. College men can sing, and the old walls of the theatre 
 had no reason to be ashamed of what they had to echo. Mr. 
 Foster introduced Mr. Depew as the Chairman, who said : 
 
 ' " I am here to-night because I am always interested in 
 students and graduates. I don't think much of the man who 
 can't go through life and continue to have the freshness, 
 breeziness, and honesty of the University. The object of 
 this movement is to rescue students from false ideas of life.
 
 ^T. 36] THE AMERICAN COLLEGES 383 
 
 To teach a man to live this life and get the best of it. I 
 have known one man to ruin a whole class. Too often I 
 have seen the pet, the most popular man of his class, a 
 drunkard, a debauchee, and a depraved man morally, and it is 
 such examples that have led many a young man to think it 
 impossible to be a good fellow and a Christian. 
 
 ' " The object of such a meeting as this is to counterbalance 
 the false ideas and associations of young men. There has 
 been too much of the bigotry of creed, and not enough 
 practical Christianity in this world. A man must learn that 
 the largest dividends come from right living. The only thing 
 that can save a man from drinking, gambling, and lust is 
 Christianity. 1 There are, too, people trying to break the 
 foundations of society. Now the checking of all this must 
 come from the colleges. We must have Christian men." ' 
 
 Mr. Depew then introduced some of the leading 
 students and athletes of Yale University. They de- 
 scribed the work of Professor Drummond, and how he 
 had enlisted the services of college men. One told 
 how he had changed his life for the better. ' It was 
 all due,' he said, ' to Professor Drummond. He talked 
 to me for an hour one day, and after that I saw my 
 way clear.' 
 
 It was in America as in Scotland. Hundreds of 
 men repeated the story of this Yale student about 
 themselves. Some from a life of sin, some from an 
 aggressive hostility to all religion, some from weary 
 and dark doubts, were won for a clear faith and a 
 strong life of duty and unselfish service. The men 
 did not fail, and the movement did not die. The 
 quickened religious life of the American Universities, 
 the Student Volunteer Missionary Movement, power- 
 ful in the United States as in Great Britain, 2 has in 
 
 1 1 add this sentence from another report. 
 
 2 By 1891 no fewer than six thousand university men pledged themselves to 
 go to the foreign field if opportunity offered.
 
 384 HENRY DRUMMOND [1887 
 
 a large measure been due to Drummond's mission. 
 The Rev. Charles Fleming of Minneapolis wrote as 
 follows in the Boston Congregationalist for 1888: 
 
 ' Sober-mindedness, religious earnestness, Christian aggres- 
 siveness, characterise the present generation of college stu- 
 dents. These qualities are perhaps more intellectual and less 
 emotional than formerly. They are manifesting themselves 
 less in occasional revivals, and more in regular methods of 
 Christian conduct and service. Religion is, in some colleges, 
 becoming more natural. I know of no college in which this 
 change is greater than in Harvard. A dozen years ago the 
 Harvard student was too much in the mood of the man in 
 Sterne's Sentimental Journey whom a mule was about to kick 
 the attitude of humble apology. The Christian man of 
 Harvard seems to-day to have learned that Christianity has 
 rights which he should be willing to claim and be able to 
 oblige his fellows to respect. It would not have surprised me 
 more, when I was in college, to see Memorial Hall Tower 
 floating on the Charles than to see Harvard students holding 
 public religious services in the Globe Theatre with eminent 
 clergymen as preachers, and the President of the University 
 bestowing the approbation of his presence. Some of the 
 causes which have effected this revolution in Cambridge are 
 at work in other colleges. The influence of Professor Drum- 
 mond and his associates has been potent. His addresses 
 and his private conversations with students in many colleges 
 have proved to have somewhat of that power which the series 
 of sermons of the elder President Dwight had in expelling 
 infidel opinions from Yale College. His youth, his ease of 
 approach, his ability, his simplicity, his method of satisfying 
 the reason before attempting to arouse the feelings or to 
 move the will appeal with special persuasiveness to college 
 men. His journeys to the different colleges, and his lectures 
 to students in the Northfield Conferences, have resulted in a 
 revival of personal piety and of Christian service.' 
 
 On May i, 1889, Professor Francis Peabody of 
 Harvard wrote Drummond :
 
 JEt. 36] THE AMERICAN COLLEGES 385 
 
 ' I venture to recall myself to you and to report to 
 you the substantial good that has remained of your 
 week among us here. Movements of the deepest in- 
 terest have sprung from the impulse you gave, and 
 I date from the beginning of last year a larger sense 
 of religious responsibility. 
 
 ' There is a marked and growing interest among us 
 in work, among the humbler classes, of a University 
 Settlement or University Extension kind ; and in 
 order to direct this interest wisely, I think I must 
 see what has been done both in England and Scot- 
 land. ... I should very much like to meet you once 
 more and to tell you how the religious life of our Uni- 
 versity has been led since your visit to us. ... Mean- 
 time, pray be sure that a debt of serious obligation 
 is still felt to you here for your wise and inspiring 
 counsel.' 
 
 2C
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 AUSTRALIA AND THE AUSTRALIAN COLLEGES 1890 
 
 THE invitation to Australia rose, as we have seen, 
 out of the * Student Movement.' There are always 
 a number of Australians at Edinburgh University, 
 and many of these had been influenced by Professor 
 Drummond's meetings since 1885. They had sent 
 home reports of his work ; some of them had returned 
 with the proof of it in their own characters ; and finally 
 news came of how he himself had carried its influ- 
 ence to the American colleges in 1887. In 1889 two 
 hundred and thirty members of Melbourne University 
 invited Professor Drummond to come out to them in 
 the following year. When his promise to do so was 
 known, invitations were pressed upon him from all the 
 Australian colonies. But, faithful to the policy which 
 he had followed in Scotland and America, he refused 
 to go among the churches, or do anything that 
 might distract his mission to students, young men, and 
 boys. 1 He planned to come home by some of the 
 mission stations in the South Seas and China, and to 
 speak to the students of Japan, who had more than 
 once invited him to their country. One other service, 
 which he could not foresee, awaited him in Melbourne. 
 He arrived there in time to watch by the death-bed of 
 his friend, John F. Ewing, and to be the chief mourner 
 at his funeral. 
 
 1 Mr. W. Lucas, F.R.G.S., to whom I am indebted for some details of the 
 Australian visit, informs me that Professor Drummond stipulated that he should 
 be allowed to pay his own travelling expenses. 
 
 386
 
 Mi. 38] AUSTRALIA AND AUSTRALIAN COLLEGES 387 
 
 Drummond left London on the I4th March the 
 year was 1890 and embarked on the P. and O. 
 steamer Carthage at Brindisi. 
 
 1 S.S. CARTHAGE, OFF PORT SAID, March 19. 
 
 * This is not a voyage, but a trip in the Columba in 
 
 July on the Clyde. Nothing could be more per- 
 fect than sky, sea, ship, or weather. It is so glo- 
 rious that one cannot even read. But I hope to 
 settle to books presently, and even manage "A 
 Death in the Desert " * before luncheon to-day. 
 
 * I quite forget if you play chess. I have Staunton's 
 
 book with me, and mean to get up the game scien- 
 tifically. It is my first love among games, and I 
 have long wanted a week to do homage to it.' 
 
 ' OFF ADEN, March 24. 
 
 * We are just turning in to Aden memories coming 
 
 back of the last time I was here on my way to 
 Africa with Bain, whose grave now lies by Lake 
 Nyasa. And Keith Falconer, too, with his mys- 
 teriously short life. But one recalls those things 
 only as a tribute to the dead. Nothing could be 
 more living than this ship, or less morbid than its 
 passengers ; for we have had the most perfect voy- 
 age ever made, and everybody is very happy. . . . 
 The keel has never stirred from the " absolute 
 perpendicular," and for certain the sea will be 
 smooth for the next fortnight. There has been 
 no heat to speak of, and one has felt every day 
 that one could sail on and on like this forever. 
 1 1 am at the Captain's table, with five others, a solid 
 yet merry party. My immediate neighbour is an 
 Italian Count on his way, as Ambassador, to 
 China. He is a splendid man, full of sense* 
 
 1 He had taken with him all Browning's works for the voyage. '
 
 388 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 goodness, and wide culture, and we have formed 
 a friendship. Indeed, he has given me by his 
 personality quite a new idea of Italy; and such 
 is my admiration for him that I find myself daily 
 on the point of asking him whether there are 
 many more like him in his native land. We 
 read Browning aloud together. 
 
 ' On Sunday we had the usual service in the Saloon. 
 In the evening I gave an address in the Second 
 Class Saloon to about sixty or seventy people 
 fine young fellows, for the most part, going to 
 push their way in Australia. 
 
 ' Last night I followed up with a lecture on "Africa," 
 and I hope to get to know some of them pres- 
 ently.' 
 
 1 NEARING ALBANY, April 12. 
 
 ' I meant to have written you at Colombo, where 
 we had the usual day ashore, but some friend 
 had telegraphed on the passenger list, and I 
 found at least four deputations waiting to make 
 life a burden and time a hallucination. I had to 
 trot round everywhere, but really that place is too 
 splendid for this world, and my one regret this 
 voyage is that Japan has done me out of at least 
 a fortnight there. . . . 
 
 ' I think one of the books that has pleased me most 
 has been George Macdonald's Robert Falconer. 
 Towards the end there are some really fine bits 
 about work among the poor.' 
 
 'April 13, 1890. 
 
 ' This is my last Sabbath at sea. Australia is ex- 
 actly three hundred yards off, and this finds me, 
 after a voyage of absolute rest, quietness, happi- 
 ness, and health, the most thankful man under 
 the Southern Cross. You know what a miserable
 
 JET. 38] AUSTRALIA AND AUSTRALIAN COLLEGES 389 
 
 sailor I am, yet all these weeks I have never 
 missed a meal, and the sea seems to have lost all 
 its terrors. We judge of it from our own grey, 
 troubled coast, but to know it, and to know what 
 climate is, one has to come here. I emphasise 
 this because you always shiver at the thought of 
 China, and I would like to try to make the pros- 
 pect pleasant even if it should never be realised. 
 Up to Colombo the China route is glorious, and 
 Ceylon itself is worth the whole voyage.' 
 
 'MELBOURNE, April 21. 
 
 ' Your prediction was right about the interviewers, 
 who turned up in phalanxes at each port. Happily, 
 I did not see their lucubrations, as the steamer 
 always bore me from the scene of trial before the 
 papers were out. 
 
 ' A troop of students met me at the pier here on 
 Saturday morning, and in the evening we met 
 again to plan the campaign. We begin on 
 Friday with a reception in the 'Varsity and then 
 on Sunday. 
 
 ' To-day is a public holiday, with a workmen's pro- 
 cession to commemorate the Eight Hours' 
 victory. 
 
 ' I read Dilke and Seeley on the voyage, according 
 to instructions, and feel very wise and Imperial- 
 Federationally. 
 
 1 We must take this jolly child a little nearer its 
 grey old mother. I am asked to the opening 
 dinner of Parliament a fortnight hence. 
 
 ' I did not stop at Adelaide, as Ewing wrote it 
 would not do to begin there. But I shall return 
 soon.'
 
 390 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 Drummond stayed with John Ewing, his fellow- 
 student, his comrade at Sunderland, and one of ' our 
 Club.' Ewing had built up a large working-class 
 congregation in Dundee ; for some years he had held, 
 with great courage, a very difficult post in Glasgow ; 
 and in 1887 he was called to the large Presbyterian 
 Church of Toorak, a leading suburb of Melbourne. 
 Physically he was a very strong man. I climbed 
 Monte Rosa and the Matterhorn with him in 1885, 
 and he could then go up hill faster than any guides. 
 But his zeal and unselfishness were even greater than 
 his physical strength, and the way he worked for 
 three and a half years at Toorak wore him out. A 
 week after Drummond landed in Melbourne, Ewing 
 was down with what was thought to be influenza, then 
 raging in Australia. On the 2d of May the doctors 
 pronounced it to be typhoid. He saw his lawyer, and 
 gave Drummond a message for his wife, who had gone 
 on a visit to Scotland. After this he spoke little, 
 slept most of the time for eight days more, his friend 
 by his side, and on May 1 1 th passed quietly away. 
 
 To D. M. Ross 
 
 ' TOORAK MANSE, May 12, 1890. 
 
 ' MY DEAR Ross, I am alone in the Manse. It 
 is very terrible. This is his desk and paper. 
 How can I write you? 
 
 ' Send this round the Club if you like, for I ought 
 to write each one. After I wrote last he slowly 
 sank ; never spoke ; no pain. At dusk on 
 Friday he passed away, my hand in his. The 
 nurse said it was the gentlest death she ever saw. 
 
 4 He never spoke much, and never said farewell. 
 We had four very happy days together, then the
 
 JEi. 38] AUSTRALIA AND AUSTRALIAN COLLEGES 39! 
 
 cloud fell, and he, the real he, was slowly taken 
 from my sight. . . . 
 
 ' Oh, Ross, I cannot go on. This is the first break 
 in our ranks, and I never thought it was so big. 
 We must close up now and work hard. This is 
 what I am feeling much these days. Tell the 
 men to excuse me writing, as I have all E.'s peo- 
 ple to communicate with at length. For them, 
 for her, how terrible it all is ! ' 
 
 To Lady Aberdeen 
 
 ' You would hear perhaps of the awful thing that 
 happened in the next room. He passed away, 
 my hand in his, more gently than a sleeping child. 
 Strange that I should have been sent across these 
 seas for this. For the time it has sobered me. 
 I feel I must work hard. 
 
 ' Ewing had some absurd mannerisms, but under- 
 neath I never knew a saner, purer, grander soul. 
 His influence here has been phenomenal. No 
 man ever made such an impression on a com- 
 munity in three years and a half. At his funeral 
 the church was crowded with weeping people 
 from the Premier and the Bishop to the Street 
 Arabs whom he had saved. Four of these last 
 drove in a cab to the grave, and could scarcely 
 lay down the wreath they had clubbed to buy, 
 for tears.' 
 
 At the memorial service Professor Drummond de- 
 livered the address : 
 
 ' Six days before the end he asked me to take a sheet 
 of paper and write a message to his wife. I think I 
 betray no trust if to you, his people, I repeat a sen-
 
 392 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 tence of what he said. His voice never faltered as 
 he gave it ; his look was grave but calm ; he spoke as 
 one whose mind was made up, as if he expressed a con- 
 viction, deliberate, fixed, and fully ripe. " Tell her," 
 he said, " that my mind is not very clear, but the one 
 thing clear in it is her, and all this suffering is nothing 
 if it means going to Christ and getting her after. I 
 was so robust that I did not feel need of taking special 
 precaution. Sir James Bain says I should have spared 
 myself ; so I should. But there was nothing to warn 
 me. I suspect it was God's will." 
 
 1 There are,' continued Drummond, * two ways in 
 which a workman regards his work as his own or 
 as his master's. If it is his own, then to leave it in his 
 prime is a catastrophe, if not a cruel and unfathoma- 
 ble wrong. But if it is his Master's, one looks not 
 backwards, but before, putting by the well-worn tools 
 without a sigh, and expecting elsewhere better work 
 to do. So he suspected it was in the will of God. 
 We must try to think so too. Work is given men 
 not only, nor so much perhaps, because the world 
 needs it, but because the workman needs it. Men 
 make work, but work makes men. An office is not 
 a place for making money, it is a place for making 
 men. A workshop is not a place for making ma- 
 chinery, it is a place for making souls ; for fitting 
 in the virtues to one's life; for turning out honest, 
 modest, and good-natured men. So is it with the 
 work of the State or of the Church. This is why it 
 never hurries because it is as much for the worker 
 as for the work. . . . For Providence cares less for 
 winning causes than that men, whether losing or win- 
 ning, should be great and true; cares nothing that 
 reforms should drag their course from year to year 
 bewilderingly, but that men and nations, in carrying
 
 JEr. 35] AUSTRALIA AND AUSTRALIAN COLLEGES 393 
 
 them out, should find their education, discipline, unself- 
 ishness, and growth in grace. These lessons learned, 
 the workers may be retired not because the cause is 
 won, but because it is not won ; because He has other 
 servants, some at lesser tasks, some half employed or 
 unemployed, whom He must needs call into the field. 
 For one man to do too much for the world is in one 
 sense the whole world's loss. So it may be that God 
 withdraws His workers even when their hands are full- 
 est and their souls most ripe : to fill the vacancies with 
 still growing men, and enrich many with the loss of 
 one. I do not propose this, even as an explanation 
 of the inexplicable phenomenon, which startles the 
 Church from time to time, as one and another of its 
 noblest leaders are cut down in the flower of their 
 strength. But when our thoughts are heavy with 
 questions of the mysterious ways of God, it keeps 
 reason from reeling from its throne to see even a 
 glimpse of light. 
 
 ' But one diverges into these things mainly because 
 it is easier to say them than to approach any nearer 
 to the man himself. When I think of Mr. Ewing's 
 work and influence here, my soul fills with gratitude 
 and enthusiasm for my friend. His concentration, it 
 is true, was exceptional, his initiative very great, his 
 vitality as exuberant as his hope. It is true and 
 how wonderful this is that he never did anything 
 but his work. He had no petty interests. He saw 
 always the main stream of the kingdom of God, all 
 currents in Church or State that make for righteous- 
 ness, and he threw himself into them. But none of 
 these things could have produced the extraordinary 
 demonstration here on Friday last. Intellectual brill- 
 iancy could not have done it, nor ecclesiastical posi- 
 tion, nor successful preaching power. What did it
 
 394 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 was his character, his downright, sterling, pure, strong 
 character. Three and a half years of that it looks 
 very short. But character knows no calendar, for it 
 alone of all forces is infinitely great, and cannot but 
 do its work. . . . 
 
 ' Three weeks ago to-day, when he stood here and 
 gave us the last Sunday morning's message of his 
 life, you remember he preached on the " Atonement." 
 He dwelt upon one or two sides of that stupendous 
 theme, and promised to lay before us a further aspect 
 on a future day. I am not sure that that promise is 
 unfulfilled. Perhaps what he meant to tell us was 
 that the principle of the Atonement was a law of 
 Nature . . . that up and down the whole of God's 
 creation the one law of life, the supreme condition of 
 progress, the sole hope of the future is Christ's law of 
 the sacrifice of self. If that were his meaning, his 
 sermon has been surely preached. The corn of wheat, 
 of which he spoke to us that day, has fallen into the 
 ground and died. I, for one, have neglected many a 
 sermon. But for this one never spoken, this mute 
 appeal of a life laid down, this last life-message from 
 one who will never speak again is there a man 
 among us who will be to-morrow as if that had never 
 been ? ' 
 
 In Melbourne and in Adelaide Drummond held 
 meetings for students, for young men generally, and 
 for boys and girls. As in Edinburgh, he would have 
 nothing but students at his student meetings, and 
 admitted no reporters. Some of the religious papers 
 were very angry at this. ' The newspaper interviewer,' 
 said one editor, ' who can generally draw blood from a 
 stone, can get nothing for a notice out of Professor 
 Drummond.' What he gave the Australian students
 
 J&T. 38] AUSTRALIA AND AUSTRALIAN COLLEGES 395 
 
 was, with suitable variations, what he had been giving 
 the students of Scotland and America. 
 
 t MELBOURNE, April 29. 
 
 ' The meetings have done well. The students are 
 turning out splendidly, and I think something 
 may be effected before long.' 
 
 < May 6. 
 
 * The students' meetings have gone on. All I will 
 
 say is that it has been all I hoped for.' 
 
 'May 12. 
 
 * I have had a few good meetings, and some talks 
 
 with the right kind of men. To-morrow I go to 
 Adelaide for ten days, and back here for nightly 
 meetings. Thereafter my future is still a blank. 
 All depends on how the work develops.' 
 
 ' May 27. 
 
 ' I have been off to Adelaide and put in a week's hard 
 work meetings, meetings, meetings. I can send 
 you no reports, as I have discovered how to cir- 
 cumvent the Press, and have succeeded most 
 effectually everywhere. 
 
 'Hobart is not in sight yet. Poor Ewing's illness 
 has thrown me rather out of my programme. It 
 is certainly hard to get in anything else when one 
 is on a mission. Do not be surprised if you hear 
 that I am off to the South Sea Islands (!) in a few 
 weeks. It is only a prospect as yet, but some 
 people here are keen about my going, and I am 
 at least thinking over it. The point is mainly 
 political France wants the New Hebrides, and 
 Victoria says she shan't get them. They want 
 me to write the thing up at home. Then there is 
 a very crucial missionary problem ; and the esca-
 
 396 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 pade tempts me generally. It would take about 
 four weeks, leaving Sydney June 17, and return- 
 ing cannibals permitting about July loth. 
 But it is only a dream. I mention it in case 
 there should be a silence presently for about a 
 month. It would not alter my general plan, as 
 I am getting quicker through my College work 
 than I expected. . . . 
 
 ' Now I must off to the 'Varsity to meet some wild 
 beasts.' 
 
 ' SYDNEY, June 7. 
 
 * I arrived in How-d'ye-like-our- Harbour a couple of 
 hours ago, and have just heard that the English 
 mail starts earlier from here which is natural. 
 So I fly to my pen, though I have little or nothing 
 to report. 
 
 ' Melbourne has been one round of meetings, some- 
 times two daily. All were got up quite privately, 
 and I think there may have been some little good 
 done. What I liked most was some meetings 
 with the Young Australian Club men, who gave 
 me a real chance to speak to them. You will be 
 disgusted to know that I never had a night for 
 Government House, though they were most kind 
 in asking me ; but I had every hour of every day 
 filled with what I came to do. 
 
 ' On my way here I broke the journey at a Squatter 
 Station, and had a really happy day in the bush. 
 I saw heaps of kangaroos, dined on the tails 
 thereof, and after dinner hunted 'possums in the 
 moonlight till the Express whizzed up shortly 
 after midnight. It had been ordered to stop 
 for me, and when I tumbled out of the bush into 
 the Pullman I rather surprised Mr. J. L. Toole 
 (if you don't know who he is, see The Christian]
 
 JET. 38] AUSTRALIA AND AUSTRALIAN COLLEGES 397 
 
 and some of his mates playing roulette, after they 
 supposed the coast was clear. I had met Toole 
 at Melbourne, and he offered me a corner at 
 rouge-et-noire, which was brotherly. I cannot get 
 to Hobart, which is miserable. Time is the cul- 
 prit. I had no idea I should be so busy. The 
 New Hebrides look nearer. I had a long talk 
 with the Premier of Victoria on the subject. 
 Every one is very anxious for me to go, as they 
 have taken into their heads that I can help things 
 politically. If I go, it will simply take the time I 
 should have given to New Zealand.' 
 
 ' June 9. 
 
 ' Finished Melbourne. All very good. At the last 
 I had sometimes two or three meetings a day. 
 Students and others are taking up several bits of 
 work. Boys' Brigade launched.' 
 
 The following letter to the Rev. John Walker of 
 Woolahra, 1 who arranged the Sydney meetings, gives 
 a good idea of our evangelist's aims and methods all 
 through the last twelve years of his life : 
 
 'AUSTRALIAN CLUB [MELBOURNE], Wednesday. 
 ' If you can manage it, perhaps you will get up a 
 meeting on Sunday night for better-class young 
 men, non-church members as far as possible. 
 Everybody goes to the Y.M.C.A. young man ; 
 I am anxious for a shot at the outsiders. Last 
 night a young champion tennis-player got up a 
 meeting of two hundred splendid young fellows 
 here, and that is exactly the sort of thing I 
 should covet. There were no public advertise- 
 ments. He and half-a-dozen young fellows 
 about the clubs handed cards of admission to 
 
 1 Mr. Walker was one of his old fellow-workers in Liverpool in 1875.
 
 398 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 their own " set " privately, and we reached a class 
 who never go to church. I should prefer fifty of 
 that class to one thousand of the church-goers. 
 The great problem in these colonies is the young 
 " outsider." I am sure you will know one or two 
 men who will run this quietly through. I sup- 
 pose seven at night in some small central hall 
 would be the best time and place. No elders 
 admitted. Parsons, 10 a head. Reporters, 
 
 ' Lastly, dorit do this if you don't think it will 
 
 work.' 
 
 'SYDNEY, June 18. 
 
 4 1 was told Sydney was the wickedest place in 
 Oceania. I must say I have nowhere had such 
 a chance. The students have turned out nobly 
 night after night, and they are going to run the 
 meetings henceforth every Sunday night them- 
 selves. The most influential undergraduates are 
 leading the movement, and the two most liked 
 and most brilliant among the professors will 
 second them in every way. 
 
 ' On Sunday I had one of the most curious gather- 
 ings I ever faced. Some doctors asked me to 
 address " the Sydney doctors," of whom it seems 
 only four or so go to church. They got the 
 Royal Society's rooms, and the President thereof 
 took the chair. There were exactly one hundred 
 and forty present, all doctors. I spoke from the 
 standpoint of Evolution ; and they were so much 
 interested that next day twenty of them agreed 
 to pay ,50 a year each to " start a Church for 
 doctors " on the spot, and get out a man from 
 home at, at least, ^1000 a year. Many of them 
 are extremely able men, and several medical pro-
 
 JEr. 38] AUSTRALIA AND AUSTRALIAN COLLEGES 399 
 
 fessors have joined since. The " Conversion " is 
 somewhat " sudden," but something will certainly 
 come of it. 
 
 * Yesterday I was honoured by a Sydney magistrate 
 with a Picnic on the Harbour. A steamer was 
 chartered, and about one hundred and fifty guests 
 invited. We sailed about all day, and had luncheon 
 and afternoon tea on board. I talked for seven 
 hours without a comma, and saw very little of the 
 Harbour, but I hope for a more private inspection 
 on my return. 
 
 ' It is now two in the morning, and in eight hours I 
 start for the New Hebrides. The ship is good, 
 the sea smooth, the cannibals fairly fed at present, 
 and all looks well for a happy voyage. The 
 wretch who led me on the ice (a politician), who 
 was to go with me, telegraphed me from Mel- 
 bourne, a few hours ago, that he could not come. 
 It seems my fate to be a solitary traveller. A 
 special ship is to call for me at one of the groups 
 and land me here about July loth. . . .' 
 
 On his return from the New Hebrides, Drummond 
 'found the Sydney students running their Sunday 
 evening meeting bravely, and all going splendidly.' 
 From Melbourne he had ' also good news.' 
 
 What else can be said about his Australian mission, 
 except that it evoked the usual number of personal 
 appeals, which met him wherever his books had 
 come or he himself spoken. To every platform on 
 which he appeared, there came a rush of questions, 
 and many hours a day were filled with private inter- 
 views. His addresses to students must have taken 
 the line of his Ascent of Man, for the questions which 
 he kept relate to the reconciliation of the doctrines of
 
 4OO HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 evolution with the statements of the Bible as to man's 
 creation. Among the letters he received are a number 
 from men praying for the appearance of a broader and 
 more rational Christianity, and expressing the sense 
 that it is at least ' in the air.' As if to emphasise the 
 need of this, there are letters of a kind which met 
 Drummond wherever he went in Britain, America, or 
 Australia letters which reveal Christian faith wrecked 
 and Christian energies dissipated by the doctrine of 
 verbal inspiration. 1 In remote corners of our great 
 colony, Drummond came across men who still knew 
 only of the older orthodoxy and the easy triumphs 
 which certain infidel writers had obtained over its 
 beliefs in the equal and absolute inspiration of every 
 part of the Bible. To read the letters of such men 
 is to understand how many earnest and pure spirits in 
 our day have been forced to give up Christianity be- 
 cause they have ignorantly thought that it is identified 
 with everything in both the Testaments. And it was 
 no small part of Drummond's mission in Australia, as 
 in Great Britain and America, to bring home to such 
 'forwandered ' souls the new possibilities of faith which 
 lie in the rational and discriminating criticism of the 
 Old Testament, to which Christ Himself has shown 
 us the way in the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 But difficulties of faith are not the subject of all the 
 letters Drummond received in Australia. 2 Some men 
 and women write to ask his prayers for their recovery 
 from long disease ; they are convinced that God must 
 grant what he asks. And, as usual, there are petitions 
 
 1 A note by Drummond on a character projected for a story by a friend runs 
 thus: 'No. I.'s fundamental mistake is verbal inspiration. This prevents him 
 thinking. The paralysing and stunting effect of anything which interferes with 
 the legitimate exercise of human faculty.' 
 
 2 At one place in Victoria a ' Drummond Club ' of men was formed for the 
 regular study of his writings.
 
 fix. 38] AUSTRALIA AND AUSTRALIAN COLLEGES 40 1 
 
 from men with grievances, with unrecognised inven- 
 tions, or with patents overlooked by Government. One 
 curious letter, which he received after his return to 
 Scotland, intimates that the writer, a resident in some 
 far-away station, has ideas for which the world is hun- 
 gering; that he is afraid to communicate them to 
 Drummond lest the latter should unconsciously appro- 
 priate them ; but that he will send them in a sealed 
 envelope, to be opened on the author's death, and 
 published with his name. And a still more pathetic 
 epistle comes from an old man, who has spent his life 
 in vainly trying to get expression for a ' system ' of 
 philosophy he has perfected, and who wishes to name 
 Drummond as his successor and its prophet. 
 
 For wherever he came, men both old and young 
 had new hope, and the weary were refreshed by his 
 sympathy.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 DIARIES OF TRAVEL. III. THE NEW HEBRIDES 
 
 Coral Islands and Volcanoes; the Last of the Canni- 
 bals; Civilisation and Christian Missions 
 
 IN a letter, quoted above, 1 Drummond gives his 
 reasons for going to the New Hebrides. He had not 
 included them in his Australian plans; but after his 
 arrival at Melbourne, several leading colonists pressed 
 upon him the importance of making himself acquainted 
 with the political problems on these islands, from which 
 our Australian colonies were then suffering no small 
 anxiety. The New Hebrides lie some fifteen hundred 
 miles east from the coast of Queensland ; to the south 
 is the French convict settlement of New Caledonia, to 
 the south-east the British Fiji Islands. Discovered by 
 the Portuguese in 1606, but first explored by Captain 
 Cook in 1773, they were found to be inhabited by can- 
 nibals of the lowest type. Every one knows their 
 strangely mingled history since they came into touch 
 with Europe. The trade for sandalwood, cocoanuts, 
 and arrowroot ; the exportation of the natives to labour 
 in Queensland ; and the work of the English and 
 Scottish missions none of these has happened with- 
 out bloodshed and cruelty. After long toil and many 
 martyrdoms, the missionaries have civilised the south- 
 ern islands, the labour traffic has been regulated by the 
 Australian governments, but politically the islands 
 remain, so to speak, in the air. Before 1890 Great 
 
 1 P. 395- 
 402
 
 JET. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 403 
 
 Britain claimed them, but had done nothing to annex 
 them. France claimed them, but our Australian 
 colonies resented the claims of France, and baffled 
 more than one attempt to make these good. By a 
 Convention both Powers have since agreed to respect 
 their independence. 
 
 It was in order to bear testimony at home on this 
 critical state of affairs that leading men in Australia 
 pressed Drummond to visit the islands. He was also 
 attracted by the prospect of seeing the effects of 
 Christian missions upon a savage people ; the mission 
 in Aneityum was of his own Church, and he would be 
 her first direct visitor to it. Moreover, as a geologist 
 he would have the opportunity of studying islands at 
 once of volcanic and of coral formation. On all these 
 lines the bright promise was fulfilled. Drummond 
 made a close and most exciting inspection of the crater 
 of a volcano in full activity. He conversed with sheer 
 savages, and with his own eyes saw their customs. He 
 obtained a clear view of the political situation. But, 
 above all, he came home from his visit to the missions 
 with a new belief in the power of Christianity, and in 
 the heroism of his fellow-churchmen upon those lonely 
 and barbarian edges of the world. 
 
 He left Sydney on June iQth, and by way of Noumea, 
 the capital of New Caledonia, he reached Aneityum. 
 He attended the Synod of the New Hebrides Mission, 
 and heard it pass a resolution calling on the British 
 Government, first, to encourage British settlers on the 
 group and provide for the secure tenure of the lands 
 they purchased ; secondly, either to extend the prohibi- 
 tion of the sale of firearms, which was enforced only 
 on British subjects, to men of all nations, or to rescind 
 it altogether ; and, thirdly, to abolish the foreign labour 
 traffic, ' the more especially as settlers on this group
 
 404 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 will have need of at least all the available labour which 
 
 it can afford.' 
 
 'ANEITYUM, June 25. 
 
 ' All the missionaries are gathered here for the 
 General Assembly. 1 I represent the Free Church 
 there to-night. What a change ! ' 
 
 He left Aneityum next day, and now we follow his 
 diary. 
 
 ' June 27. 
 
 ' At dawn skirting Futuna. The volcano of Tanna 
 ve'ry much in evidence all night. Usually a narrow 
 pillar of red, neither dull nor glowing; a red-hot 
 colour, very large, occasionally a brilliant display. 
 This was at a distance of over forty miles. 
 
 ' Futuna, one huge block of rock covered completely 
 green, like Aneityum : caused by grasses, herbs, and 
 wildflowers, patches of forest here and there, and a 
 dense fringe of cocoanuts along the coast. Cocoanut 
 trees in quantity do not help a landscape much. It 
 is one against the sky that stirs your soul with the 
 wonder of its grace and beauty. But any kind of 
 tree will beat them as foliage. The form is not fine ; 
 shadows are wanting. There is a stiff, metallic look, 
 and the green is dingy and tarnished with decaying 
 fronds, the shreds of fibrous cloth, and even the 
 bunches of brown . . . [?] which hold the cocoanuts. 
 Green to water's edge. Roughly terraced ; only here 
 and there bare rock visible. 
 
 ' Very like Table Mountain. 
 
 ' Geologically one would say at once " a truncated 
 cone." One or two baby volcanoes. On landing all 
 is coral. It extends upwards at least one thousand 
 feet. Dip upwards, ////. This dip towards a supposed 
 
 1 Administrative Synod.
 
 JET. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 405 
 
 crater is found all round. The top is a plateau. Is 
 any basalt visible ? I think not. It looks all the 
 same, coral to the very top. Basalt, water-worn stones 
 gathered from shore are arranged round the Manse 
 garden, and I was told there was volcanic rock " on 
 the other side." The small hill on shore line, where 
 the " geological photograph " was taken by Dr. Gunn, 
 seems from his description to be like the Giant's 
 Causeway. 
 
 ' Glorious colour of the sea bluest blue. 
 
 ' Off in whale-boat to land Dr. Gunn. Coral grow- 
 ing everywhere. Ashore on human-back. Small crowd 
 of natives. Real article this time. Some clothed 
 women ; with grass kilts and shell necklaces ; huge 
 earrings made of tortoiseshell look like a bunch of 
 keys. Bushy hair of the aureole type. Some women 
 had this covered with a green banana leaf decoratively 
 arranged thus : wound once round head after being 
 cut into four or five " liths," and then gathered on the 
 top of the head and tied in a knot. The appearance 
 is most picturesque, looks as if each had a crown on 
 her head. 
 
 ' Many shook hands. Offered bags for sale made 
 of neatly plaited pandanus leaf. Some offered rare 
 shells of great beauty and a flint axe, which I bought 
 for a stick of tobacco. Another offered four eggs. 
 
 ' Clambered up rugged path, winding up coral. In- 
 troduced to Mrs. Gunn. She has not been off the 
 island, except to Aneityum for short time, for eight 
 years. Only had ship calling once in six months. 
 " I suppose I cannot ask you if it is ever dull ? " 
 " We prove that," said Dr. Gunn, " by taking furlough 
 every twelve years instead of every ten." But this is 
 phenomenal. This couple on this Rock for eight 
 years. For six years saw absolutely no visible result.
 
 406 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 Now just beginning. New mission-house finely situ- 
 ated on a terrace of coral shrined in palms as usual. 
 Old house destroyed by hurricane lately. Cocoanut 
 grove behind house, walk six yards, behold, a native 
 village ! The houses are like the thatched cover of a 
 bullock waggon, without windows of course, and door 
 
 at end.' 
 
 ' TANNA, June 27. 
 
 ' 7.30. Steamer steamed at its best to reach Tanna 
 in time for volcano visit. Close under the island almost 
 two o'clock. Spot was Port Resolution. Captain 
 Cook's eye (he had a genius for seeing these things : 
 any ordinary navigator would have passed the place 
 as a mere shallow irregularity on the coast-line), saw 
 here an anchorage, and called it after his ship the 
 Resolution. 
 
 ' This was the scene of Mr. Paton's struggles. Not 
 a sign of life, the usual type of Hebrides island 
 mountainous, sloping gently towards sea, the belt of 
 tropical vegetation terminating below in the usual 
 fringe of cocoanut, above in light-green under- 
 wood, and wooded to the top. The volcano is not 
 centrally situated, so much so that from a distance it 
 almost seems a low island separate from the large 
 mountainous masses of the interior. The coast here 
 to the far-away side has a very strange look to the 
 geological eye. It has a new look. A low cliff of 
 unswathed rock runs all along the coast, quite un- 
 broken by the sea. This was the result of an upheaval 
 in 1878. Instantaneous. Seen by Mr. Neilson the 
 missionary. Accompanied by tidal wave. A trader 
 man woke up next morning, things so changed, 
 thought he had delirium tremens. Half the harbour 
 quite shallow now. Largest ships cannot enter. 
 The elevation was thirty-two feet. Later a further
 
 JET. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 407 
 
 elevation of sixteen. Quite local, affecting only as 
 far as Sulphur Bay, say one and a half miles, the end 
 quite distinct where the normal beach resumes, z>. 
 only one and a half miles disturbed: no appearance 
 of fault. 
 
 ' In Tongoa nation, native tradition has it that Api 
 and all the Shepherd group formed one island (Tongoa, 
 Tongariki, Buninga, Ewose, Valla, Api, and two small 
 islets, Laika, Tevata, and a small rock), which was de- 
 pressed during a volcanic disturbance. All life was 
 destroyed. Island reinhabited for upwards of eight 
 generations. One man was saved inside a native 
 drum. This is a well-known tradition. The mission- 
 ary has used the drum in his preaching as a symbol 
 of Christ. There are no indications in these islands 
 of elevation. Tradition also of a large island existing 
 called Buleiwo, to the west of Emae, where Cook's 
 reef is now situated. 
 
 ' Evidence of elevation very distinct in other islands, 
 especially at Nguna Bay in Efate, and at Eromanga 
 and at Dillon's Bay, also Havannah Harbour. Few 
 feet of tide, five or four feet. 
 
 ' Ashore in whale-boat. No sign of life. Then 
 dusky figures gathered one by one, stood motionless, 
 each with his gun, no women or children. Very 
 threatening crowd of savages, say forty or fifty, ranged 
 on open beach. Mr. Gray went to bow, stood up, 
 waved hat. " Missionary from Wassesi." Magical 
 effect, guns laid down, women came out from the 
 trees. Men advanced, pulled boat over breakers, 
 helped us ashore. 
 
 * The Pure Savage. Men naked with three-quarters 
 inch band of leather or grass. Women with volumi- 
 nous short skirts in tiers. Some painted red or blue. 
 Hair in threads, tied behind in a thick bunch. Fierce,
 
 408 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 furtive look. One noseless, another with forehead 
 battered in. Earrings, Breech-loaders, Sniders, half- 
 cock, loaded. 
 
 ' Walk through tropical vegetation, especially Pan- 
 danus. After half hour of gentle ascent reached great 
 crater, many miles round, with lake in centre, on left 
 the active cone rising some seven or eight hundred 
 feet higher. Total, eleven hundred feet. Ash cone, 
 pure fine ash dotted with lumps of scoria, one side 
 quite free from these stones, pure ash. Climbed up a 
 shallow ravine to a Solfatara, much sulphur about, bad 
 smell, very fatiguing, natives trod with bare feet the 
 rough scoria, very cutting. Peles'-hair scattered in 
 threads over every inch : some eighteen inches long, 
 of a pale horny, gamboge colour ; very fine, sometimes 
 in wisps or bundles. 
 
 ' Then to left up crater rim, with unequal edges, 
 sometimes rising to a point, then dipping to rise again, 
 about a mile and a half round, one mass of steam and 
 pale blue vapour. Explosions nearly every two or 
 three minutes, like powder in a quarry. At long inter- 
 vals there were very severe, tremendous explosions 
 without warning, a " bang " only louder than loudest 
 thunder, with trembling earth. Superb display of red- 
 hot stones and splashes, shooting to an incredible 
 height, and clattering down in hundreds. Shaped like 
 bombs, carcases of sheep, boomerangs, shreds and 
 patches, roots of trees, etc., etc. indescribable forms. 
 
 ' Greeted with one of these when within twenty 
 yards of crater lips pelted with stone. They were 
 most alarming made one spring back, then watch 
 overhead to dodge. Dust like rolling smoke exactly. 
 Brown. After some hundreds of yards' walk, steam 
 rolling all about, came to a clear glimpse, lurid fire. 
 Watched, saw something like a fountain spouting, also
 
 &T. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 409 
 
 a boiling pond at the side, a smaller one spouting 
 some yards off; but the vision closed tantalisingly just 
 when you thought you had made out something. 
 Then further on a perfect view from an ash cornice, 
 lower down, at just over the focus. Very precarious 
 standpoint. But what a spectacle ! The fountain 
 resolved itself into a dome of fire (shape of a bell-jar 
 or cathedral dome) of streaming lava, almost white 
 heat, changing immediately into a lurid red, boiling up 
 and exploding every few seconds, bespattering the 
 walls of the funnel with red-hot lava. These did not 
 trickle down like water. They stuck as they fell, very 
 curious, as if it was putty, never budged, cooled black 
 almost immediately. Occasionally they fell back into 
 the pot, but the form did not alter. 
 
 ' At one side of this fountain was a seething linn of 
 swirling fire all colours of red writhing about. Sur- 
 mounted with steam. Some distance back another 
 little pot spouting away. Beyond that three-fourths 
 of the area of the funnel was shrouded in steam and 
 blue vapour. No sulphurous colouring as at Etna. 
 Probably whole crater is full of lava, with septal 
 between, a series of funnels. 
 
 ' A great spectacle ! The suddenness of it. You 
 come up smiling awe-stricken in two minutes. A 
 surprise. You are totally taken aback by what you 
 see. Not the extent of it: the fierceness of it, the 
 wickedness of it, the instantaneousness of it. It lives. 
 Wonderful this unwatched thing working away 
 there. Royalist officers agree that crater, where lava 
 s \varn, was two or three hundred feet deep. This would 
 give a hundred feet for height of dome. Stones flew 
 up as high again, certainly say five hundred feet. 
 Surely this at least is not exaggerated. 
 
 ' While peering over this cornice Mr. . . . [?] pho-
 
 4-IO HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 tographed the scene. Asked two others and myself 
 to sit down while he took us. Position taken. " Don't 
 look back," he said, " or move for anything less than 
 the size of a brick. I will warn you if anything bigger 
 comes." Photo over, we had scarcely risen when there 
 was a terrifying report, and a bewildering shower of 
 molten projectiles rained around us. One block the 
 size and shape of a small sheep descended with a 
 sullen thud on the very spot where a minute ago I had 
 sat. It was not near the spot, but across the very 
 mark in the soft ashes. I took my revenge by light- 
 ing my cigar at it. 
 
 ' Very fine panorama as we mounted the top again 
 to descend on the other side. Circle of wooded 
 mountains. Sun slanting over the lake below. De- 
 scent like coming down a snow mountain on the Alps. 
 The natural slope of fine dust. As we passed along 
 (far below) the direction of the wind, had to put up 
 sun umbrellas to shield ourselves from the volcanic 
 dust which rattled like fierce hail upon us. 
 
 ' Here our guides sped off to their village, frightened 
 to go farther, paid in tobacco sticks. Left volcano 
 about 4.30. Moonlight walk through tropical vege- 
 tation, very thick ; footpath ; the feature, tree-ferns. 
 Those require moonlight, and overhead, as it then 
 was. Like gigantic ostrich feathers, translucent fronds. 
 " Log" passed along line, " Hole," " Overhead," " Snag." 
 Here and there a luminous fungus. Size of a large 
 button, vividly phosphorescent, like a small velvet 
 button soft and flexible to the touch. When travel- 
 ling at night, missionaries stick one on a native's back, 
 who goes on in front. 
 
 ' Came to a native village about eight o'clock, first 
 a magnificent Platz oval sward surrounded with 
 enormous spreading banyan-trees, where dances and
 
 JET. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 4 1 I 
 
 feasts are held. Then reed-cane fence, three feet 
 high, to keep out pigs ; same reeds as are used for 
 arrows, quite straight, yellow. Women came out, 
 dogs barked, children trooped round. No. men. 
 Where ? Away drinking kava, i.e. " at the public- 
 house." Women brought cocoanut milk, most re- 
 freshing [with ?] water. 
 
 ' Ten minutes farther met men drinking. Some 
 stupid with kava. 
 
 '. . . [?] very rugged and almost dangerous path 
 with abrupt descents, reached shore. Went aboard.' 
 
 'June 28. 
 
 ' Not under way till 4.30. Eromanga reached 
 about twelve. Coasted. Coral plateau, tier above 
 tier, covered with vegetation no special feature. 
 Coral cliffs met at an obtuse angle. Bit of beach, 
 creek, expanded mouth of good brook or stream. 
 Ashore after dinner at one. Crossed in boat, pulled 
 and pioneered by two natives, one the son of the 
 murderer of Williams, and the leading elder ! Two 
 other brothers also about station, both members now.' 
 
 ' Sunday, June 29. 
 
 ' After very nasty night, heavy sea and rain, arrived 
 at Fili Harbour. 1 A wide bay, then an inner bay, 
 like Sydney Harbour. Islands. Lagoon running up 
 six miles across nearest neck. All elevated coral reef 
 typical. 
 
 ' After breakfast, went off to island, Fila, for service. 
 Mr. and Mrs. Michelsen tried to Christianise this 
 some years ago. Couldn't even live on the island, 
 but made their home on small island adjoining. No 
 success. Now the whole island is Christian, an out- 
 station of Mr. Mackenzie. We found a fine church. 
 
 1 On Efate or Sandwich.
 
 412 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 Service just over. Warm reception on the beach. 
 Held another service. Native hymn, then a native 
 read and prayed at length. English hymn, and then 
 I spoke twenty minutes, 2 Cor. iii. 18. Mr. Macdonald 
 translated afterwards. Very attentive. After service 
 went to mission-house. Natives brought puddings of 
 yams ; ditto taro (cooked on Saturday) ; both very 
 good. Also cocoanuts. Charming spot. Great 
 drums in a cluster, like Stonehenge, in manse garden. 
 These had been carved and painted : sounding-board 
 worn thin with use, now going to decay. Small ban- 
 yan taken root on top of one of them. Heathenism 
 will soon be forgotten. 
 
 ' Site of Franceville here. A commune. On paper 
 a fine city, with municipal buildings, and streets all 
 planned and named. From the sea a single one-story 
 house is visible on the whole expanse of forest. I 
 believe another exists, but did not see it. The first 
 house is a store, the second a doctor's house. For 
 the patients I looked in vain. The Commune col- 
 lapsed. One after another withdrew. But there are 
 one or two planters about here who grow coffee, etc. 
 Plantation young yet, but prospect fair. Planters are 
 French ; one is Portuguese. 
 
 ' Rowed back to steamer to lunch. After, accom- 
 panied by Mr. Fraser, to visit Mr. Mackenzie's mission- 
 station. Were rowed (four native crew, splendid men) 
 ashore. Walked through French and Portuguese 
 plantations, cocoanut. Saw the nut sprout. Reached 
 lagoon, like a still river of emerald green, two hundred 
 yards broad, white coral sand, tumult of green creep- 
 ers rushing down into it from lofty branches of trees. 
 Bastard cotton-tree with its Padella lights of flowers, 
 as large as saucers, lemon-yellow, little brown candle 
 rising from centre.'
 
 Mi. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 413 
 
 ' Monday, June 30. 
 
 ' Left at ten for Havannah Harbour. Temperature 
 at H. H., never rises above 92. There are never 
 mosquitoes. Mr. D. does not use curtains in his 
 house. Almost none of the missionaries do. None 
 complain of heat.' 
 
 'Tuesday, July i. 
 
 ' Left at seven for Tongoa. Flying-fish common, 
 sometimes seen walking about on surface. Occasional 
 shark ; few birds. On the whole, life is scarce. 
 
 ' Tongoa, Tongariki, and the neighbouring islands 
 are probably the tops of a large submerged island. 
 They are all like tops of hills. Contain almost no 
 flat acres. Very healthy in consequence. Fever little 
 known on Tongoa. 
 
 ' Earthquakes very frequent in all the islands. On 
 Tongoa counted seventeen in one day. Can see them 
 
 see the banyan-trees twisting and shaking.' 
 
 * TONGOA, July 2. 
 
 ' Arrived about three. Worst anchorage in group. 
 A beautiful island, black sand showing its volcanic 
 nature, apart from the rounded cones and waving lines 
 of the craters, and richest possible foliage. Cones and 
 craters always manage to depart from the conventional 
 type, and never announce themselves as volcanic. 
 Great assemblage of natives on beach, red cloth pre- 
 dominating ; very picturesque ; fires smoking. Every 
 man different. Some had red handkerchiefs loosely 
 knotted round neck, a turban of same, with two waving 
 feathers over his neck or in his ears. One woman 
 wisp of yellow pigs' bristles tied in each ear. Wood 
 for Mr. Smaill's house lying on beach. Each man 
 seized a block or sheet of iron each boy and woman 
 
 and carried down to boats for shipment. Animated
 
 414 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 scene, all done for nothing, being for missi. Bought 
 a club for a shilling from an old savage. Stroll up 
 with Mr. Michelsen, steep pull, hot, ferns, flowers, 
 stones, stopped us at every yard. Mission-house on 
 flattish ridge, facing the sea, dipping down on other 
 side into a large shallow depression, like [a] crater. 
 
 ' Scene on beach next morning (July 3d) waiting for 
 steamer. One handsome damsel in red gown picking 
 her teeth vigorously with a carving-knife ; rim of 
 strawberry basket on head, one or two wildflowers 
 stuck in it; hair, close cut, except island on top, 
 which the basket fringed like a coral-reef. 
 
 ' One group in a canoe. Tallest savage on 
 island, white vest open, bedecked with new red hand- 
 kerchief, trying to count 5^. and three halfpennies, 
 very dirty, to see if he could make out a shilling from 
 them ; several helping the arithmetic ; deep problem. 
 Fine figure ; hair bushy, swelling all round in a ring ; 
 coloured white with coral lime ; on top of this a red 
 handkerchief crown, twined round with a tender spray 
 of convolvulus. Very striking figure. N.B. The 
 ornamentation is never overdone. If a flower is stuck 
 anywhere, it is the size of a button, never a showy 
 flower, though there are myriads everywhere. Some- 
 times a fern stuck in the ear, or two white cock's 
 feathers. Many a comb or scratcher. No sameness. 
 Most men have shirts and a loin cloth, red, over 
 them. Women have either skirts of calico, spotted 
 and striped, or a nightgown. Several men have old 
 slouch hats; most uncovered. Bracelets made of a 
 creeper's stem, or boar's tusks ; no anklets. Many 
 chewing sugar-cane, held in both hands, most monkey- 
 like. Many women carry neat native baskets woven 
 with pandanus. 
 
 ' Tongoa small, especially luxuriant even for the
 
 ^T. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 415 
 
 Pacific. Remarkable variety of foliage conspicuous 
 on all islands, but especially here. Every shade of 
 green, wooded to the top of highest hills. Natives 
 very kind and quiet, in spite of the butcher's knife 
 most of them carry. One half-naked fellow followed 
 us up path with two feet of cold steel in his hands. 
 They use these for clearing their way through the 
 bush. House four hundred feet; grand view of sea 
 and island. Mr. Michelsen's station a model of neat- 
 ness. Trim, terraced garden, glowing with balsam, 
 roses, and golden egg-plant. All buildings very 
 roomy, built with his own hand. Has poultry, pea- 
 cock, ducks, goats, even horses ; teacher's premises 
 perfect. Most unassuming of men, simple Norwegian. 
 Sat down opposite bread-fruit tree. Asked native to 
 taste. Went to adjoining hut ; brought one out from 
 oven, like dough of very French rolls. My favourite 
 native food. At supper tasted it again, also queen- 
 cakes made from arrowroot (native) and cocoanut 
 milk; very delicious. Taro mashed like potatoes; 
 great improvement, as the hard texture is the chief 
 distinction ; white like potatoes. A dish of native 
 mushroom, a fungus which grows mostly on the ban- 
 yan-tree, stewed in cocoanut juice, a great delicacy. 
 Saw the luminous centipede, i^ inches long, a wrig- 
 gling yellow packthread, luminous in spots along the 
 body, at least as I saw it, rather than glowing as a 
 whole. The chief effect comes when it is crushed, 
 when everything is phosphorescent. . . . The great 
 trumpet-shell, now rare, with smaller shell patched in 
 for mouthpiece, probably the origin of the trumpet. 
 Sound very similar, and not unvaried. Talking of 
 music, an old fellow on the beach had a pan-pipe, on 
 which he ran down the scale. Mr. Atkinson bought 
 it for me.
 
 41 6 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 ' Mr. M. has been eleven years on Tongoa. All 
 Christian. Three years ago the last cannibal feast. 
 Going up hill was introduced to a man who had been 
 at it, the "piece de resistance" being his own half- 
 brother. At Tongoa, in the moonlight, on the ve- 
 randah, heard evening song going up from hut after 
 hut on this side and on that. Less than four years 
 ago the missionary had seen from this same verandah 
 the smoke ascending from roasting human flesh. 
 
 ' While I was eating my bread-fruit, word was passed 
 round that I was a purchaser of clubs, etc. All that 
 afternoon things were brought to me. Was offered 
 several bundles of arrows, carefully tied up at the 
 points with black feathers and matting (small lancet- 
 like heads, very slender and fine). I wondered why. 
 Asked were these poisoned ? Yes. Again and again 
 they were brought me. 
 
 ' " Where you get him you put along arrow ? " " No 
 savez." " You get him on tree ? " " No savez." " Get 
 him on ground ? " " Ei, no." " Where you get him ? " 
 " Put him along man he finish " i.e. thrust it into a 
 dead body. Blood-poisoning. Strange fact; a body 
 with the life gone out of it is one of the acutest 
 poisons known. 
 
 ' On Tongoa causes of decrease of population : early 
 marriages, destroying function ; abortion ; suckling 
 children till three or four years old; young bloods 
 going off to labour traffic, leaving only old men and 
 children at home ; foreign diseases only to a very small 
 extent. On Api infanticide is common to save bother. 
 
 ' The bountifulness of these islands on Tongoa 
 natives are very well off. Far better than the Africans. 
 Yam, taro, banana, cocoanut, bread-fruit, are staple 
 diet. Better off than the crofters in the Highlands. 
 Fish, shell-fish, fungi.
 
 &r. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 4 1 7 
 
 'Left Tongoa about 11.30 [July 2d] for Api. 
 Crossed open water for an hour, with two shreds of 
 rock in mid-channel. The water is very shallow here, 
 bearing out the submergence tradition. No coral 
 reef on Tongoa ; all volcanic. Api at first volcanic, 
 then reef growing along shore, finally elevated reef 
 visible on terrace inland. The out-station of Mr. 
 Eraser. 
 
 ' Coasting along Api, approaching Borumba, Mr. 
 Eraser's station two sea . . . three miles apart, very 
 gentle curve, like an unstrung bow; land rising as 
 usual, but more gradual, and much tumbled about ; 
 neither hills in the immediate foreground nor plateau, 
 but broken hilly country, with many valleys and de- 
 pressions, all timbered. Fever here and mosquitoes. 
 Five different languages, not dialects, make work very 
 difficult.' 
 
 'Julys- 
 
 ' Planting new station for Mr. Smaill. Bad anchor- 
 age about ten. Two sweeping bays ; high point be- 
 tween is the site. Coral-reef with foam upon it. To 
 land, wade over coral-reef with shoes on ; delicate 
 branches, antlers, cauliflower, almost sacrilege to walk 
 on them. Blue star-fish like guttapercha. Walk along 
 sand. Halt under tree. Native women brought four- 
 teen young cocoanuts. Stiff climb, and crawl to pro- 
 posed site. Poor Mrs. Smaill, what a home ! She 
 was with us, with Mr. and Mrs. Annand, Mr. and 
 Mrs. Michelsen, and their two little girls (five and 
 six), and Mr. Atkinson from Ceylon. More cocoa- 
 nuts ; roasted plantains whole on fire. Return to 
 lunch on beach. Table landed, captain sent ashore 
 victuals ; more cocoanuts for water. Awful crowd of 
 savages surrounded us as we ate. Never saw white 
 ladies before, probably, nor plates, knives, and forks. 
 
 2E
 
 418 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 Every man (fifty at least) stark naked, except for 
 infinitesimal strip between legs, turned into a belt of 
 bark, back and front. Women wear a scant loin-cloth 
 of bark. All armed, mostly rifles, cocked. Several 
 had bows, with sheafs of poisoned arrows. One face 
 painted vermilion. Little tattooing. Necklace of 
 white small bead-like shells on a few. Many armlets, 
 beads or bark, with a pipe stuck in. Some with coral, 
 a sprig of leaves, bracelet of tortoiseshell. Many with 
 diseases of the leg, bones soft. This is common all 
 over group. Men kept gathering from far and near 
 all afternoon to watch the show, especially to see stores 
 landed. Immense curiosity as each article was car- 
 ried (wading) across the shallow strips where the ship's 
 boats stuck. Cane deck-chair very exciting, as it was 
 in their line ; use undreamt of till I sat down in it 
 amid great laughter. 
 
 ' No cloth here ; everything native except guns. 
 None of us knew this language. Mr. M. had one 
 native with him who knew the language, and whom 
 he could speak to in another lingo, so a little com- 
 munication was possible. 
 
 ' Volcano of Lofevi in full foreground, a superb vol- 
 canic cone of great grace rising out of the sea, with a 
 single momentary change of slope at one side, and 
 a piece of rockwork to balance it at other. Slight 
 abrupt tilting of whole from the abrupt straight line 
 of base when seen against horizon. 
 
 ' Landing of goods eagerly watched. Climax reached 
 when two native women, teachers' wives, stepped ashore 
 in full dress, i.e. nightgowns, their babies slung with 
 calico. Immense sensation. Pots and pans much 
 criticised, especially frying-pans. Iron water-tank 
 painted red much discussed. Great drumming on it. 
 Packet of native bows and arrows from Eromanga
 
 JEr. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 419 
 
 greeted with lively gesticulation. No one would 
 touch it at first, then picked up gingerly with one 
 finger and thumb by one brave, and hastily laid 
 ashore. Probably frightened for poison, as arrows 
 were very delicate. 
 
 4 Two tents pitched, two huts also made from roofing- 
 iron. Each native got three sticks tobacco for his 
 day's work. Full moon at night, surf roaring, glorious 
 scene, perfect temperature. 
 
 ' Confab on beach. " Now Missi come ; no more 
 war; all change now. Sing-song to-morrow, kill pig, 
 dance." Celebrate the end of heathenism, and arrival 
 of missionary. Real object is to make an end of war. 
 One thing they all know, that when he comes there is 
 peace. On Mr. Annand's island the canoes from 
 Malokolo had not visited for a generation. Now they 
 come constantly. Life is safe. On other islands, 
 where the peace-making power of the missionary is 
 unknown, no doubt they receive him for what they 
 think they will get out of him. In these cases at first 
 they will be friendly, but when they see what he has 
 really come for, after he can speak to them, the trouble 
 begins. They had not counted the cost ; now will not 
 pay it. For it means renunciation of heathen customs 
 and immorality. 
 
 ' Holothuria examined. He was choke full of coral. 
 No doubt he chews up vast quantities. Helps denu- 
 dation of reef, and makes sand. Possibly these pieces 
 which strew the beach like inches of white slate-pencil 
 have passed through the bodies of worms. 
 
 * Induction soiree in house made of four window- 
 sashes, two doors for roof, iron for sides ; tea, bread, 
 butter, cheese. 
 
 4 Many murders on this beach and cannibal feasts. 
 Notorious district. All cannibals here, and armed.
 
 42O HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 Land next year, and probably there will not be a 
 weapon on the shore.' 
 
 ' Friday, July 4. 
 
 ' Got on board by breakfast, and steamed off for 
 Sandwich Harbour, Port Sandwich, Malokolo, at nine 
 o'clock. Malokolo has the worst reputation of any in 
 the group. The missionaries make little headway. 
 
 ' Passed Lofevi. Passed along Ambrym. Volcano 
 on inconspicuous part of a central ridge composed of 
 several hills ; not prominent. Through telescope 
 seemed to be steaming distinctly, but may have been 
 cloud. 
 
 ' At three entered Port Sandwich, another noble 
 harbour, quite landlocked. One buoy here only 
 one I have seen on the group. " Is the Royalist 
 there ? " " There she is," said Captain King, with his 
 glass. Went on board with Lieutenant, who had 
 called for mails. Captain Davis.' 
 
 ' Saturday, July 5. 
 
 ' Jogged along, mostly under sail, reaching Havannah 
 Harbour, Efate, about eleven morning. Mr. Macdon- 
 ald, with Mr. and Mrs. Macdonald (elect of Santo), 
 and Mr. Lindt, boarded us, and took me off for day's 
 picnic to Island of . . . ? (See Mr. Macdonald's 
 Oceania?) Heathen village ; man spearing fish. Folks 
 all off on mainland, clearing plantations. Few idlers 
 about. One, seven years in New Zealand, spoke 
 pretty fair English. Stroll to caves. Immense, finely 
 shaped dome, very lofty, scooped [out of] calcareous 
 sandy hill by sea action ; probably a current struck it 
 at this point. Rude inscriptions on walls, made by 
 natives ////////////// o ooo. These lines (notches), 
 they say, represent lives of men. The spirits 
 notch them each time a man dies. Idea, perhaps, 
 taken from their dreams. Three [?] are notched each
 
 /Er. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 42 I 
 
 time a great man dies. Only on one side. Lindt 
 photo 'd these with magnesium light. Drums in vil- 
 lage, obscene ; thirty or forty in cluster, longest group 
 I have seen. Immense labour to cut these with stone 
 adzes in former generation. Celebrations for dead 
 last a year or two ; most elaborate customs. Dance. 
 Drummer in centre, then men advance in pairs, with 
 spears ; face each other, dance, others join. Then all 
 join hands and dance round and round the drums. 
 Women by themselves dancing.' 
 
 ' HAVANNAH, Sunday, July 6. 
 
 ' Grow anything, no manuring for eight or nine 
 years on coffee. Unsifted, sun-dried article, ^70 
 per ton, value at 2000 Ibs. to the ton, say ^75. Pep- 
 per, allspice, cocoa, rice, sugar-cane ; three crops of 
 Indian corn per annum = Telia flint [?] variety. Two 
 kinds of soil, volcanic centre, coral lime round it, 
 equally suit different crops. Good coffee land every- 
 where, but not near water in many cases. Water 
 needed for pulping, etc. But spices would do every- 
 where. Plenty of rain; safely 100 inches per annum. 
 Rain every week the year round. Never flood, never 
 drought, the rainfall is so distributed. 
 
 ' Labourers from adjoining islands ; thirty of these. 
 Feed themselves. ^"4, 45-. per year is paid in wages 
 for labour per man; and 10 for the recruiter who 
 finds the men in his cutter. The 4, 4^. is not paid 
 to the natives until the three years' engagement is up. 
 
 ' First year make a nursery of coffee plants, then 
 clean land. Next year you are a year on your way, 
 having the nursery. In three years you have your 
 first crop. There is no disease, no manure is needed. 
 Almost the sole risk is a hurricane, which may blow 
 off the flowers, or at the drying season a showery day
 
 422 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 may interfere. But artificial drying here, as elsewhere, 
 will be introduced in time. The natives eat yams and 
 bananas with cocoanuts and taro. When they run 
 out, a boat-load can be bought for a few sticks of to- 
 bacco, so that a few extra shillings, scarcely pounds, 
 are enough to keep all in abundance. 
 
 ' Owing to the slopes there is choice of land for dif- 
 ferent kinds of planting; one kind grown on shore, 
 another higher up. Bananas alone would pay splen- 
 didly. Three and a half days nearer to Sydney than 
 Fiji. All the year steamers with bananas run from 
 Fiji to Sydney. The three and a half days sooner 
 would deliver the fruit in prime condition and avoid 
 the heavy depreciation at present existing. 
 
 ' Fever not serious anywhere, and most islands quite 
 free from it. Havannah Harbour has a bad reputa- 
 tion, but all much exaggerated. Ships of war met in 
 group, Dart and Royalist had seven per cent, on sick 
 list, all slight cases. 
 
 ' French population, adult males, on group may 
 number sixty in all. English, perhaps ten, excluding 
 missionaries. Land may be bought for almost noth- 
 ing. A couple of old muskets and a bag of tobacco 
 will buy an estate. A good deal of land has been 
 " chapped " already, especially by French, who have 
 bits on most islands, never touched of course. No 
 one ever comes near them. Boundaries are very 
 dubious. Sometimes a stone mark is used. Natives 
 are very fair about these purchases, and respect them 
 loyally, provided the right owner or owners have been 
 treated with in the first instance. Natives have often 
 professed to sell land as theirs ; when the real owner 
 turns up months or years later, a row is inevitable. 
 Some of the missionaries have paid for their land to 
 one " owner " after another. Unavoidable, for there is
 
 Mr. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 423 
 
 no tribunal. The desideratum is an authentic means 
 of conveyance and registration of titles. 
 
 ' English skies in New Hebrides, not blistering, 
 burnished skies. White clouds as at home, and even 
 dull days. Constant light winds (trades) blow. 
 
 ' Quite true about the gayfish, red, striped, barred, 
 box-shaped, etc. One exquisite thing, a dart of brill- 
 iant blue or purple. A pure-blue starfish. But the 
 scenic effect is not quite what one had expected, any 
 more than parrots make a great feature on an Austral- 
 ian landscape. They are really inconspicuous in the 
 woods, and fly so fast you only see a general dark form. 
 
 ' Few seaweeds. I question if our seaweedy pools 
 are not more lovely. White coral sand does give brill- 
 iancy to the water, but there is much coral island 
 without any. 
 
 ' Corals individually are exquisite, but do not expect 
 to see them like what they are at Kensington. Shells, 
 ditto. The nacreous shells are all covered with mem- 
 brane. The speckled ones are all right, but the ma- 
 jority are swathed. The corals are swathed in gelatine, 
 coloured slime. Like a clump of cauliflowers half 
 withered. Like large fungi or mushrooms. Faint 
 purple or pinkish. Red coralinus grows in deep 
 water. I am speaking of what you can see in a boat. 
 Irregular bottom is a feature. Like sailing over a 
 submerged flower and shrub garden. When the tide 
 is out it is not beautiful. The colour is dirty-brown 
 or black, as if smoked with a torch. Rough and un- 
 even, like a field frost-bound very hard to walk on 
 with bare feet. " Still lagoons " you see generally 
 roughened with wind. " Calm retreats " are not 
 common. 
 
 ' White ants l on all the islands ; furniture destroyed. 
 
 1 This and the following paragraphs taken from stray notes.
 
 424 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 Some make tunnels in the trees; small hills not so 
 large as in New South Wales. 
 
 ' In Tongoa there is a native turkey ; black bird, 
 long legs and neck ; red wattles, scarcely size of com- 
 mon hen, lays eggs, one above another, sometimes to 
 the number of ten. The birds leave them to hatch 
 there, but from time to time change the order, digging 
 up the deeper ones, which have most heat, and placing 
 them on the top. These birds are also found in Efate. 
 In Tongoa they lay in the neighbourhood of the Fu- 
 marole. This is some acres in extent, faintly steam- 
 ing. There are two such places in Tongoa. 
 
 ' Ascendency of the English Language. Formerly 
 chief's sons and the leading bloods were sent for a 
 year to another island to learn the language for trade 
 purposes. This is now stopped, owing to the rapid 
 rise of pigeon-English. All trade is done in that lan- 
 guage ; French labour boats have to use it. Remem- 
 ber the convict at Noumea speaking to the native 
 prisoners in English: " Do not like wee-wee man." 1 
 
 ' Process of Evangelising an Island. Missionary 
 settles in a village often by request of natives. Either 
 (i) they want a "missi," as he will see justice done be- 
 tween them and passing trader a court of appeal: 
 he is known as always on the side of the natives ; (2) 
 the islanders may have shot so many boats' crews that 
 they want him as a guarantee of good behaviour ; (3) 
 labour men returned may have been influenced in 
 Queensland and want a teacher; or (4) they know that 
 Christianity will abolish sorcery, which is the cause of 
 all death and war. They do want to stop war, and 
 therefore ask missionary. Christianised natives never 
 carry firearms, but go unarmed. 
 
 ' Sometimes the missionary comes on a bare con- 
 
 1 A sketch of the political situation is not inserted here, as it is now out of date.
 
 JET. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 425 
 
 sent, extracted from the people, after much discussion 
 on their part. This permission will be given, and fol- 
 lowed by repeated hints, and even requests, to leave. 
 But he sticks to it. 
 
 'Programme. He settles, builds on bought site. 
 Never wanders one hundred yards from door, learns 
 language. For a year he may be almost a prisoner. 
 Then he extends his walks gradually till he compasses 
 all. Sometimes the nearest village is hostile, the next 
 friendly. He may have to go round by open sea, or 
 be fired at. At Erornanga, Mr. . . . [?] was always 
 attacked at " the point," unless he kept out to sea till 
 he reached the further villages. 
 
 ' The Missionaries have made the Islands Habitable. 
 On several (Tongoa, Mai, etc.) for long not even 
 a missionary could land. Christianising comes before 
 civilising, say the missionaries. Thus, a native from 
 a heathen village goes to Queensland, comes back 
 with box of clothes. Will sell them for two sticks of 
 tobacco, and return to savagedom. They have never 
 been civilised. Their heathen customs make it impos- 
 sible. Only Christianity can make them give up their 
 heathenism. Must be made gentle men.' 
 
 Drummond's regular diary closes with Sunday 6th 
 at Havannah Harbour. He left it for Eromanga, and 
 on Monday left Eromanga for Noumea, the French 
 capital of New Caledonia, where he arrived on Wednes- 
 day. He has one note upon the place : ' Amphi- 
 theatre of really fine hills ; tawdry boulevard of 
 one- and two-story houses, each different; a central 
 square or place; flamboyant trees, most of their 
 growth still to come ; a semaphore station. Govern- 
 ment House (^1500 a year). Lives = convicts.'
 
 426 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 'SYDNEY, July 21. 
 
 ' Just stepped off steamer. Have had a wonderful 
 time among New Hebrides. I do not think I 
 ever had such an interesting tour in my life. I 
 was on Mr. Paton's Tanna, and saw all his painted 
 cannibals. But for the missionary with me, I 
 should now be inside them. No grander mis- 
 sionary work was ever done than by these N. H. 
 missionaries. Every man is a king.' 
 
 Having seen one end of the labour traffic in the 
 New Hebrides, Drummond went on a tour in Queens- 
 land to find out about the other. His companion was 
 Professor Rentoul, of Melbourne, and they not only 
 investigated the facts about the importation of the 
 Kanakas to the sugar plantations, but inquired as 
 well into the condition of the Queensland aborigines. 
 What opinions Drummond formed were stated by 
 him to a representative of the Pall Mall Gazette, and 
 published in that paper on the i8th May, 1892. He 
 corrected the proof himself. 
 
 ' " Below the surface of this question there lies a 
 story with a world of interest. It has its deep pathos, 
 and it has also its bright side. But the question of 
 continuing the labour traffic with Polynesia is an 
 anthropological rather than an economic question. 
 Here you have hundreds of islands inhabited mainly 
 by cannibals. They are utterly uncivilised. Except 
 for a handful of heroic missionaries, a white man 
 hardly ever steps ashore among them. There they 
 are, doing no work, sitting all day long under their 
 palm-trees, and living the life of savages and canni- 
 bals, except in the few cases where the patient labours 
 of the missionaries have had some civilising and soft- 
 ening influence. They know nothing of the outside
 
 JET. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 427 
 
 world. No vessel, possibly, has ever touched their 
 shores, and the only white man's face they have ever 
 seen is that of their missionary. Then, one day, a 
 vessel arrives, and a boat is lowered filled with armed 
 men and steers for the island. These armed men are 
 the traders who have come to engage labour. It also 
 lands a Government agent, whose duty it is to see that 
 matters are arranged humanely and on fair terms. 
 This boat is followed by another carrying a further 
 bodyguard, armed to the teeth, and covering the first 
 boat with their rifles at a short distance. The Kanaka 
 is easily persuaded to engage to accompany the trader 
 for a term of years, when a few sticks of tobacco, a 
 gun, or some other toy is put into his hands as a pres- 
 ent. When, a few days later on, the vessel leaves the 
 island, it carries the flower of the population away 
 with it. There are, happily, a good many islands on 
 which the unwearied work of the missionaries has 
 borne fruit, where the natives are docile and indus- 
 trious ; but there are many others on which this is not 
 the case. For an unarmed man to land would be 
 certain death." 
 
 ' " Have they a common language ? " " No ; the 
 dialects are innumerable on these island groups, and 
 it is, indeed, not infrequently the case that several 
 almost distinct languages are spoken on the same 
 island. Each dialect differs widely from the rest, and 
 each is only understood by a handful of natives. On 
 the island of Eromanga, which I visited the year be- 
 fore last, the first missionary who came was murdered 
 by the natives ten minutes after he went ashore. The 
 second also was murdered, and several after him. But 
 the work was not, therefore, given up, for the mission- 
 aries will not be kept back, and now the missionary 
 whom I found there has been at his post for thirteen
 
 428 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 years. There is a church on the island, and the Kana- 
 kas live peacefully together. Can you wonder at the 
 missionaries protesting when some day they wake up 
 to find that the pick of their young men have left their 
 island and gone to the sugar plantations in Queens- 
 land ? " 
 
 '"Then, Professor Drummond, do I understand that 
 you sympathise with the outcry against the importa- 
 tion of the Kanakas into Queensland?" "Not ex- 
 actly; I am with the Pall Mail's reasoning in Monday's 
 leading article. At the same time, it is a question on 
 which there is so much to be said on both sides that 
 I should not like to speak too definitely. What I have 
 told you is a matter of information, not of opinion. On 
 the whole, this is not a problem peculiar to the Pacific. 
 Wherever the white man comes into contact with the 
 black, wherever the product of civilisation has to deal 
 with the child of nature, the same class of difficulties 
 arises. To keep these happy children to their own 
 coral islands and cut them off from the contaminations 
 of civilisation may be a pardonable ideal to the mis- 
 sionary. But it is a question whether such a state of 
 things is possible, or possible long. Sooner or later 
 the breath of the outer world must reach them. In 
 too many cases it has reached them already. They 
 must brace themselves for the contact. The drafting 
 of successive bands of natives to a civilised country for 
 a term of years and then shipping them back again to 
 their own islands as the labour-employer is bound 
 to do might become an important factor in the prog- 
 ress of these races. Everything would depend on the 
 treatment they received and the moral atmosphere 
 which surrounded them. The Queensland Govern- 
 ment has certainly left no stone unturned to secure 
 that, so far as legal enactments can protect an inferior
 
 /ET. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 429 
 
 race, the Kanakas are safe on Australian soil from 
 any possible tyranny, violence, or even physical dis- 
 comfort. If it could also secure that the planter would 
 do his duty, and feel an adequate moral responsibility 
 with regard to his employees, there would be no right- 
 eous opposition to the labour traffic. The question, 
 therefore, reduces itself to the universal moral prob- 
 lem. Given the ideal employer, the man who will 
 protect his people from moral contamination, who will 
 seek their good and interest as well as his own, and 
 return them to their country wiser and better men, 
 and with some rational equivalent for the labour they 
 have given then this traffic can do nothing but 
 good. Nor is it idle to hope that one day this ideal 
 may be partially realised. . . . 
 
 ' " If it is inevitable that this human stream from 
 the Pacific should continue to discharge itself upon 
 Australian soil, one very practical thing remains for 
 those who have raised their voices against it to turn 
 every energy to secure henceforth the righteous fulfil- 
 ment of the conditions under which the Kanaka is 
 engaged, and especially to ameliorate his lot, and give 
 to it that educational and moral value which humanity 
 and Christianity demand. More than ever it must be 
 made certain that the Government agent on board the 
 labour schooner will resist the temptation to play into 
 the hands of the employers, and make it certain that 
 in each individual case the terms of the contract are 
 fully understood by the natives whose services are 
 enlisted. The plantations themselves must be pro- 
 tected from the illicit drink-seller; and educational 
 and missionary work among the colonies of workers 
 ought to be everywhere introduced. If this were done, 
 and done effectually, the return of the Kanaka to his 
 island home would mean something vital in social and
 
 43O HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 moral influence for his race. At present, though the 
 Kanakas are thoroughly well treated by their masters, 
 on the mere ground of economy this is necessary, 
 Kanaka labour being far too costly to be trifled with, 
 it is questionable whether they gain anything by their 
 absence either morally or materially. Their hard- 
 earned wages they cannot take back with them in 
 coin, since money is almost unknown in Polynesia. 
 What they do take back is usually a lot of rubbish, 
 purchased in Brisbane at fancy prices, to be distributed 
 among their brother savages as presents. This, it must 
 be confessed, is a poor show for three or four years* 
 work among the cane-brakes. 
 
 ' " On thinking over this whole question it is impos- 
 sible not to compare the action of the Queensland 
 Government, where the Kanakas are concerned, with 
 their treatment of their own natives. The comparison 
 is all in favour of the Kanakas. The Queensland 
 natives are treated as veritable outcasts. They are 
 not employed; they are driven away from the towns 
 and settlements, and their lives in certain districts are 
 freely taken on the smallest provocation, and no ques- 
 tions asked." ' 
 
 From Australia Drummond voyaged slowly by Java, 
 to Singapore. He had two days among the Anamese 
 at Saigon, and came round to Hong Kong and Shang- 
 hai, where he saw the missions. 
 
 At Shanghai he addressed a native meeting as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 ' I know just one word of Chinese, and that is " Foh " 
 (happiness) ; the missionaries come to China to give 
 the people happiness, and there is nothing in the world 
 can give the people happiness except the teaching of 
 Jesus Christ. I have been all over the world, and have
 
 Mi. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 43! 
 
 just come from Australia. Away among the South 
 Sea Islands I saw men who feed on human flesh ; a 
 few miles off the islanders ten years ago were cannibals 
 too ; why not now ? Because the missionaries of Jesus 
 Christ have been among them ; and these people gave 
 me their spears and bows, which I have now in the 
 ship "because," they said, "we do not need them 
 any more." 
 
 ' When Jesus came into this world to give happiness, 
 He said His religion was to be three things to men, 
 salt and light and leaven. 
 
 * What is the use of salt ? It is the salt in the sea 
 that keeps it fresh. It is the salt on the fish that keeps 
 it from going rotten. The people of Christ are the 
 salt of the earth. Every country will become rotten 
 if there are no Christians in it. Nothing can prevent 
 men turning rotten and bad but the Gospel. 
 
 4 Christ is light. The world is dark. It needs a 
 heavenly teacher to tell men what is truth. If one 
 man tells me this or that is true, another tells me it is 
 not true ; whom am I to believe ? If I go to an idol, 
 it cannot tell me anything, true or false. 
 
 ' Christ is the Light of men, and we know His Word 
 to be truth beyond all doubt or dispute. There may 
 be only two or three men in this great congregation who 
 want to know what is truth. They have only to read 
 the New Testament, and they will see that Jesus Christ 
 is the Light of the world. 
 
 ' I suppose you know what leaven is ; it is that which 
 raises up. It is the religion of Christ that uplifts men. 
 It makes them higher and nobler and nearer God ; and 
 if we come to. Jesus Christ and learn of Him, He will 
 lift up first one, then another of you who hear me now, 
 then this city of Shanghai, and then this great country; 
 but if we reject Him we must sink lower and lower.
 
 432 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 1 1 understand too little of what passes in your minds, 
 stranger and foreigner as I am, to say more to you this 
 evening. But I leave with you these simple thoughts 
 Jesus Christ is Light, Leaven, and Salt and if we 
 learn from Him, learn what He is, and what He says, 
 we shall be made light and salt and leaven to those 
 among whom we dwell.' 
 
 From China he went on to Japan, and at Tokio was 
 able to answer the invitation sent him a year before 
 by a large number of students. He addressed about 
 five hundred of them. From Japan he came home 
 through Canada. 
 
 In November he opened the College Session with 
 an address upon Missions, which he repeated on sev- 
 eral occasions during the next month or two. As it 
 was not only fresh and full of information, but raised 
 some controversy, it seems desirable to give at least a 
 summary of it : 
 
 He begins by saying that 'there are two ways in which men 
 who offer their lives to their fellow-men may regard the world. 
 They mean the same thing in the end, but you will not mis- 
 understand me if I express the apparent distinction in the 
 boldest terms. The first view is that the world is lost, and 
 must be saved; the second, that the world is sunken, and 
 must be raised. . . . The first preaches mainly justification ; 
 the second mainly regeneration. The first is the standpoint 
 of the popular evangelism ; the second is the view of evo- 
 lution. The danger of the first is to save the souls of men, 
 and there leave them ; the danger of the second is to ignore 
 the soul altogether. As I shall now speak from the last 
 standpoint, I point out its danger at once, and meet it by add- 
 ing to its watchword Evolution the qualifying term Christian. 
 This alone takes account of the whole nature of man, of sin 
 and guilt, of the future and of the past, and recognises the 
 Christian facts and forces as alone adequate to deal with 
 them.' 
 
 He then emphasises the complexity of the missionary
 
 /Ex. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 433 
 
 problem, and the amazing variety of the work required in 
 different fields. ' Nothing ought to be kept more persistently 
 before the minds of those who are open to sense as mission- 
 aries. ... It is just as absurd for a man to choose in general 
 terms "the foreign field" and go abroad to rescue "heathen," 
 as for a planter to go anywhere abroad in the hope of sowing 
 general seed and producing general coffee. ... It is irra- 
 tional for the missionary to carry the same form of message 
 to every land, or to think that the thought which told to-day 
 will tell to-morrow ; he must rotate his crops as God through 
 the centuries rotates the social soil on which they are to 
 grow. . . . Above all, when he reaches his field, his duty is 
 to find out what God has sown there already ; for there is no 
 field in this world where the Great Husbandman has not sown 
 something. Instead of uprooting his Maker's work, and clear- 
 ing the field of all the plants that found no place in his small 
 European herbarium, he will rather water the growths already 
 there, and continue the work at the point where the Spirit of 
 God is already moving.' l 
 
 He next illustrates, from the fields he had visited, 'the 
 necessity for specialisation in missions.' 'In Australia the 
 missionary problem is to deal with a civilised people under- 
 going abnormally rapid development. ... It is what a biolo- 
 gist would call an organic mass of the highest possible mobility, 
 of almost perilous sensitiveness to prevailing impressions, with 
 feeble safeguards to conserve its solid gains, and few boun- 
 dary lines either to shape or limit other growths. . . . The 
 chief problem of Christianity is to keep pace with the con- 
 tinued growth ; the immediate peril is that it may be wholly 
 ignored in the pressure of competing growths. 
 
 ' The South Sea Islands lie at the opposite end of the scale. 
 Growth has not even begun. . . . The first step in evolution, 
 aggregation, has not taken place. These people are still at 
 zero ; they are the amoebae of the human world. There is no 
 complication here from immigration, but the opposite diffi- 
 culty depletion due to emigration and other causes.' 
 
 1 ' A hasty critic, when these sentences were spoken, construed them into a 
 plea for building Christianity upon heathenism. The words are : " What God has 
 sown there," and " Where the Spirit of God is already moving." ' H. D., in a 
 later edition of this address.
 
 434 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 China stands midway between the Australian colonies and 
 the South Sea Islands, ' an instance of arrested development. 
 On the fair way to become a vertebrate, it has stopped short 
 at the crustacean. The capacity for change is almost non- 
 existent, and there is a powerful religion already in possession.' 
 
 Japan, in turn, is an almost perfect contrast to China. 
 'It has broken its "cake of custom." It is the insect emerg- 
 ing from the chrysalis. From a Christian standpoint the 
 case is unique in history. Its own religion was abandoned 
 a few years ago, and the country is at present looking for 
 another.' 
 
 If the variety illustrated in this rough classification were 
 present, in the degree it ought to be, to the imagination of the 
 Christian churches, 'the missionary staff would be differen- 
 tiated with more exactness than at present. Each man would 
 make his choice, and, equipping himself along certain lines, 
 would become a specialist. In the second place, it would 
 become possible for some men to be missionaries, and these 
 among the best men entering the universities, who see no 
 room for them at present in the foreign field.' . . . They 
 'would find, in a service which they had looked upon as 
 perhaps somewhat limited and narrow, something which, 
 when looked upon in all its length and breadth, was large 
 enough and rich enough in practical possibilities to make 
 them offer to it the whole-hearted work of their lives. To-day, 
 certainly, some of the best men do go to the foreign field, but 
 the reason why more do not go is uncertainty as to whether 
 they are exactly the type of men wanted, i.e. in plain 
 language, uncertainty as to whether the cut of their theology 
 quite qualifies them to be the successors of Carey or Williams. 
 . . . Now, this feeling is very real, but I am convinced it is 
 very ignorant ignorant of the changed standpoint from 
 which scores of our missionaries are even now doing their 
 work, ignorant of the world's real needs, ignorant of the 
 hospitality which they would receive from many at least of 
 the officials of most of the Mission Boards.' Not that he 
 counts these altogether guiltless in this matter. ' I do not 
 think the Mission Committees of the world have ever worded 
 their advertisement for men in language modern enough to
 
 JEr. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 435 
 
 include the class of whom I speak. I am not arguing for 
 free-lances, or budding sceptics, or rationalists being turned 
 loose on our mission-fields, but for young men and our 
 colleges were never richer in them than at this moment 
 who combine with all modern culture the consecrated spirit 
 and Christlike life. ... It ought at least to be understood 
 that what qualifies to-day for the leading churches at home 
 ought not to disqualify for the work of Christ abroad, but that 
 there is for Christian men of the highest originality and power 
 a career in the foreign field at least as great and rational as 
 that at home. ... I am sure the committees at least of some 
 of the churches not only want these men but scarcely want 
 anything else.' 
 
 He then describes the different classes needed ' first, the 
 old missionary pioneer of the Sunday-school picture-books, 
 who stands with his Bible under the stereotyped palm-tree, 
 exhorting the crowd of impossible blacks. . . . Their work 
 must still and always continue. Next, we have these same 
 men in settled charges . . . carrying on the whole evangeli- 
 cal work of the Christian Church. But next, among these, 
 and gathered from these, and in addition to these, we require 
 a further class, not wholly absorbed with specific charges, or 
 ecclesiastical progress, or the inculcation of Western Creeds, 
 but whose outlook goes forth to the nation as a whole men 
 who, in many ways not directly on the programme of the 
 Missionary Society, will help on its education, its morality, 
 and its healthy progress in all that makes for righteousness. 
 This man, besides being the missionary, is the Christian 
 politician, the apostle of a new social order, the moulder and 
 consolidator of the state. He places the accent, if such an 
 extreme expression of a distinction may be allowed, not on 
 the progress of a church, but on the coming of the kingdom 
 of God. He is not the herald, but the prophet, of the Cross.' 
 
 Of course, he says, every missionary acquires some general 
 idea of this, but ' what is needed is more than a general idea. 
 The Christianising of a nation like China or Japan is an 
 intricate, ethical, philosophical, and social, as well as Christian, 
 problem ; the serious taking of every new country, indeed, is 
 not to be done by casual sharp-shooters bringing down their
 
 436 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 man here and there, but by a carefully thought-out attack 
 upon central points, or by patient siege planned with all 
 a military tactician's knowledge. . . .' 
 
 He then describes the fields he has seen, and begins with 
 the New Hebrides and their slowly dying populations. The 
 mission there, he says, has no place in the evolutionary branch 
 of missions, and cannot attract the class of minds he has been 
 describing. ' It belongs to the order of the Good Samaritan. 
 It is a mission of pure benevolence. Its parallel is the mission 
 of Father Damien on the Leper Island.' He follows with a 
 eulogy of the missionaries, and of the martyrs who preceded 
 them. ' I have no words to express my admiration for these 
 men . . . and their even more heroic wives ; they are perfect 
 missionaries ; their toil has paid a hundred times, and I count 
 it one of the privileges of my life to have been one of the few 
 eyewitnesses of their work.' But, he adds, the missionaries 
 themselves do not ask for more workers here. 
 
 On China he offers a 'surface impression of little worth.' 
 ' Small congregations are springing up everywhere. The 
 industry and devotion of the workers is beyond all praise. . . . 
 But they possess no common programme or consistent method ; 
 there is waste and confusion the sin not of the missionaries, 
 but of Christendom. A reconsideration of methods is needed 
 in face of the fact that the educated classes are not being 
 reached. The best missionaries themselves are crying for 
 this.' But he warns his hearers against the criticism of 
 missions which one gets from ninety per cent, of commercial 
 men who after a time in China return to this country. ' As a 
 rule, these critics have never had ten minutes' serious talk 
 with a missionary in their lives. If they had, they would 
 find two things first, that there were some missionaries a 
 thousand times worse in folly and incompetence than they had 
 ever imagined ; and, second, that there were others, and these 
 by far the majority, than whom no wiser, saner, more practical 
 could be found in any of the business houses in the world. 
 It is men of this latter class who are calling for more scientific 
 work and more rational methods in the mission-field.' 
 
 ' ... It is the deliberate opinion of many men who know 
 China intimately, who are missionaries themselves, that half
 
 Mr. 38] THE NEW HEBRIDES 437 
 
 of the preaching, and especially the itinerating preaching, 
 carried on throughout the empire, is absolutely useless. I 
 cannot verify this criticism ; I merely record it. But at a 
 time when the loud cry for hundreds of more laymen to pour 
 into China is sounding over this land, the warning ought at 
 least to be heard. I go further. This call is frequently 
 uttered in such terms as to take almost an unfair advantage 
 of a certain class of Christians uttered with a harrowing 
 importunity and sensationalism of appeal, which, when it falls 
 upon a tender conscience or an excited mind, makes it seem 
 blasphemy to decline. The kind of missionary secured by 
 this process, to say the least, is neither the wisest nor the 
 best ; and China not only needs to be protected from these 
 men, but they need to be protected from themselves and 
 from those who, in genuine but unbalanced zeal, appeal to 
 them protected by sober statements from sober men, who 
 love the work of God and souls of men not less, but who 
 understand both better.' 
 
 He passes to Japan, ' where the situation is still more deli- 
 cate,' 'the most interesting country in the world at this 
 moment,' 'the past has never witnessed the birth of a civil- 
 ised nation so remarkable, so orderly, so sudden.' ' The 
 Japanese have set themselves up with all the material and 
 machinery of an advanced and rising civilised state all the 
 materials except one.' 'They are in the unique position of 
 prospecting for a religion.' 
 
 He describes the competition for Japan by the various sec- 
 tions of Christendom, the chance for all, the ' mood and 
 malleability of the nation.' ' If there be here one prophet, 
 or half a prophet, or even the making of half a prophet, let 
 me assure him there is no field in the world to-day where, so 
 far as man can judge, his best years could be lived to so great 
 a purpose.' ' You are aware the work of the missionaries has 
 been so successful that there are already thousands upon 
 thousands of Christian converts, very many as perfectly read 
 in European literature and as cultured as the picked men in 
 our universities ! A leader of thought among these said to 
 me : " We have got our Christianity almost exclusively from 
 the missionaries, especially the American missionaries, and
 
 438 HENRY DRUMMOND [1890 
 
 we can never thank them enough. But after a little we began 
 to look at it for ourselves, and we made a discovery. We 
 found that Christianity was a greater and a richer thing than 
 the missionaries told us. ... We want Christianity, not per- 
 haps necessarily a Western Christianity. . . ." In justice to 
 the missionaries, it ought to be said that all were agreed that 
 the Japanese Church could not yet be left to stand alone. . . . 
 In Tokio I had the privilege of addressing some thirty or forty 
 Japanese Christian pastors. At the close I asked them if 
 they had any message they would like me to take home to the 
 churches here or in America. They appointed a spokesman, 
 who stood up and told me in their name that there were two 
 things they would like me to say. The one was, " Tell them 
 to send us one six thousand dollar missionary rather than ten 
 two thousand dollar missionaries." But the second request 
 went deeper. I again give the exact words : " Tell them," he 
 said, "that we want them to send us no more doctrines. 
 Japan wants Christ. . . ." To judge from the Japanese con- 
 verts I met, I would question whether any mission work in the 
 world had ever produced fruit of so fine a quality. How deep 
 it is, how permanent, remains for the test of time to declare ; 
 but the immediate outlook, though disheartening possibly to 
 individual missionaries, seems to me one of the richest 
 promise.' 
 
 On the whole mission-field which he had visited, Drum- 
 mond said : 
 
 ' If one saw a single navvy trying to remove a 
 mountain, the desolation of the situation would 
 be sufficiently appalling. Most of us have seen 
 a man or two, or a hundred or two ministers, 
 missionaries, Christian laymen at work upon 
 the higher evolution of the world ; but it is when 
 one sees them by the thousand in every land, and 
 in every tongue, and the mountain honeycombed, 
 and slowly crumbling on each of its frowning 
 sides, that the majesty of the missionary work 
 fills and inspires the mind.'
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 1891-1894 
 
 THE LAST LAP CONTROVERSIES AND ATTACKS THE DEATH 
 OF ROBERT BARBOUR LIFE AND WORK IN GLASGOW VISIT 
 TO AMERICA THE LOWELL INSTITUTE LECTURES NORTH- 
 FIELD CANADA CHICAGO LAST ADDRESSES TO EDIN- 
 BURGH STUDENTS 
 
 WE have now reached the last lap of Henry Drum- 
 mond's race : the point at which he had but three 
 years and a half of work left to him. These years, 
 with their many interests in Glasgow, their contro- 
 versies, the visit to America in 1893, and the prepara- 
 tion of the Ascent of Man, will occupy this chapter. 
 
 He was hardly back from the South Seas when he 
 was attacked from many quarters for what his critics, 
 friendly and unfriendly, called the defects of his teach- 
 ing. The trouble started from the address, with which 
 he opened the winter session, on the ' Christian Evo- 
 lution of the World.' l We have seen with what admi- 
 ration the missionaries inspired him. He once said 
 that what he saw in the New Hebrides of the life of 
 the missionaries helped him to understand the Incar- 
 nation. His address, too, had other tributes of the 
 same kind. Yet his critics fastened upon those por- 
 tions of it in which he stated the still unsolved 
 problems of the mission-field, and urged upon the 
 churches a wider policy in meeting them, and a more 
 elastic choice of men. The perusal of the letters with 
 which he was bombarded reveals on the part of his 
 
 1 This address is summarised above in the end of last chapter. 
 439
 
 44O HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 assailants a genuine alarm and an honest zeal to put 
 down error. But the astonishing thing is that Chris- 
 tian men should have so little sense as to base such 
 charges upon a necessarily brief report in a newspaper. 
 Also, it is still more grievous that when this has been 
 pointed out to them, they should not express regret at 
 having misrepresented a fellow-Christian, nor seem to 
 appreciate the pain it gives him to have his opinions 
 travestied to the public. On that line the morality of 
 the religious among us has not a little to make up. 
 Drummond's letters of this date are full of pain, and, 
 for the first time in his life, of warm indignation on 
 his own behalf. He calls his traducers 'assassins of 
 character.' But there is no use going into the details 
 of what was an utterly unnecessary controversy. 
 
 'Nov. 20, 1890. 
 
 ' I am catching it for my " attack on missionaries " 
 all the result of a one-sided newspaper report. 
 
 ' The redeeming feature is that when I redelivered 
 the address last Sunday night in Edinburgh, it 
 bagged several really first-rate men for the mis- 
 sion-field.' 
 
 The attacks, however, scattered from the Address 
 on Missions to the little books which for nine years 
 Drummond had published before Christmas, and they 
 were specially virulent upon the last of them, Pax 
 Vobiscum. All that need now be told of the temper 
 in which he met these criticisms, or of the substance 
 of his replies to them, is contained in the following 
 letters to his uncle, Mr. David Drummond of Dublin, 
 and to Mr. Sankey. 
 
 On January 4, 1891, his uncle wrote him a very 
 kind letter, expressing his disappointment at finding 
 that in ' all your writings and addresses you all but
 
 1890-1891 441 
 
 ignore the Atonement,' and deploring this ' in view of 
 the great influence you exert over young men.' To 
 this Drummond replied: 
 
 ' 3, PARK CIRCUS, GLASGOW, Jan. 6, 1891. 
 
 ' MY DEAR UNCLE, Your letter has just this mo- 
 ment been handed to me, and I sit down to 
 answer it at once. I am very glad you have 
 written me, and thank you most sincerely. It is 
 surely the only fair as well as the only Christian 
 thing to do in such circumstances, and not to 
 harbour dark suspicion and mistrust, as some of 
 my enemies do. I think you will find the straight 
 answer to your question in the little book l which 
 I enclose, if you will kindly look at the last two 
 or three pages. This will not only show you my 
 belief in the doctrine you refer to, but partly 
 explain my attitude towards it. 
 
 ' The two little booklets lately issued were not 
 evangelistic addresses, but simple talks to Chris- 
 tian people, and beyond these I have no other 
 "published writings" from which people can 
 judge my views. 
 
 ' It passes my comprehension how people should 
 venture to "judge" at all much less on the 
 ground of two half-hour addresses and say the 
 fierce things that are said of me without any basis. 
 Therefore it is that I am grateful to you for asking 
 the question before sharing in my condemnation. 
 
 ' A man's only right to publish an address is that he 
 thinks the thing said there is not being said other- 
 wise. Now, ninety per cent, of the evangelical 
 literature of the day is expressly devoted to enforc- 
 ing what I am accused of not enforcing, i.e. the 
 
 1 An Address to Workers at Dollis Hill.
 
 442 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 fundamentals of Christianity. But if a doctor 
 treats a patient for nerve-disease, or writes a 
 book upon it, no one would accuse him of not 
 believing in heart disease ? He writes his book 
 because nerve-diseases are not being treated by 
 others, while half the profession is busy over 
 heart-disease. 
 
 ' Of course, you may think I make an error of judg- 
 ment in my reading of the popular pulse, and in 
 not writing books on the fundamentals. 
 
 ' But there seem to me very many more books on 
 those aspects of Christ's work than on the others, 
 and I must give the message that, in addition, 
 seems to me to be needed. While saying this, I 
 repeat, I may be making an error of judgment. 
 But one can only judge by the facts around him 
 and act for the best, as it seems to him, with such 
 dim light as he has. 
 
 ' I am afraid I shall have to trouble you to return 
 the little booklet accompanying this, say within 
 a month, as I have only a copy or two left, and 
 I believe it is out of print. It is not expressed so 
 fully or clearly as I would like, for it was spoken 
 in a field, without more than ten minutes' notice, 
 and I had no idea a reporter was present. I re- 
 main, your affectionate nephew, 
 
 ' HENRY DRUMMOND.' 
 
 His uncle's reply is so kind and true, that it is well 
 to give it : 
 
 'Jan. 1 6, 1891. 
 
 ' MY DEAR HENRY, I had yours of the 6th inst., 
 with enclosure, and your frank, open explanation has 
 greatly delighted me, and removed from my mind an 
 anxiety I confess pressed heavily on me. You have
 
 i8 9 i 443 
 
 quite satisfied aunt and me, and we both express how 
 pleased we are at the kind way you took my letter ; 
 but, indeed, I knew you so well, I need not have had 
 any anxiety on that score. Now that you show in 
 your Address at Dollis Hill how clear your views are 
 on the Atonement, notwithstanding all that is written 
 and said to the contrary, I have every expectation that 
 in some of your future writings you will take your own 
 way of making it clear ; and you have such a hold of 
 the public through the immense sale of your publica- 
 tions, it is quite incalculable the power you can wield, 
 and, therefore, I repeat, I hope you will yet give out, 
 by no uncertain sound, your belief on a matter of such 
 vast importance. I admit that as you have the blood 
 of the clan in your veins, like myself, you may be " a 
 wee thrawn," and won't be drilled as I see certain 
 writers are trying to do ; hence my reason for saying 
 that I have no doubt but that by and by you will take 
 your own way of speaking out on the subject, only 
 asking the " Sure Guide " to direct you. ... Ever 
 your old uncle, D. DRUMMOND.' 
 
 The other letter on this subject is of later date, 1892. 
 It was written in reply to Mr. Sankey, who was then 
 in Scotland, upon his and Mr. Moody 's last mission 
 to the country. Mr. Sankey had come across the ex- 
 tract quoted on page 8 of this volume, and wrote 
 Drummond asking if the words were really his. 
 Drummond's reply came next day. ' On his last visit 
 to America in 1893,' says Mr. Sankey, ' I showed him 
 this letter and the " extract," and asked him if he had 
 any objection to their publication if occasion should 
 arise. After reading them over, he replied : " Cer- 
 tainly not ; you have my hearty permission to use 
 them in any way you think best." :
 
 444 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 '3, PARK CIRCUS, GLASGOW, April 3, 1892. 
 
 ' MY DEAR MR. SANKEY, Would that all, calling 
 themselves by the sacred name of Christian, had 
 your charity ; knew the meaning, as you and Mr. 
 Moody do, of " judge not," and afforded a man at 
 least a frank trial before convicting him. 
 
 ' These are my words, and there has never been an 
 hour when the thoughts which they represent were 
 not among my deepest convictions. Nor, so far 
 as I know, have I ever given any one ground to 
 believe otherwise, nor is there any one of my 
 writings where these same ideas will not be found 
 either expressed or understood. 
 
 ' If you ask me why I do not write whole books on 
 these themes, I reply that I believe one's only 
 excuse for writing a book is that he has something 
 to say that is not being said. 
 
 ' These things are being said. Hundreds of books 
 and millions of tracts are saying them afresh every 
 month and year. I therefore feel no call to enter 
 literature on that ground. My message lies among 
 the forgotten truths, the false emphasis, and the 
 wrong accent. To every man his work. 
 
 ' Let me thank you most heartily for your kindness 
 in writing. The way to spoil souls, to make them 
 hard and bitter and revengeful, is to treat them 
 as many treat me. If I have escaped this terrible 
 fate, it is because there are others like yourself 
 who " think no evil." 
 
 ' But tell your friends that they know not what they 
 do, or what solemn interest they imperil when 
 they judge. Yours very sincerely, 
 
 1 HENRY DRUMMOND.'
 
 i8 9 i 445 
 
 The session of 1890-91 was spent in his college 
 work, his weekly visits, after the New Year, to the 
 Edinburgh students, and a multitude of other duties. 
 In April came a call to the sick-bed of his friend 
 Robert Barbour, who had been carried, on a vain quest 
 for health, to the Riviera. In the beginning of May, 
 Barbour was taken to Aix-les- Bains, from which Drum- 
 mond writes : 
 
 'HOTEL SPLENDIDE, AIX-LES- BAINS, May 6, 1891. 
 
 ' I have had a very anxious and doleful time and 
 much heavy nursing, as Barbour all last week 
 would allow no one near but his wife and myself. 
 No one can predict when the curtain may fall, but 
 I feel he has already left us. This day last year 
 I was standing by Ewing as the sand ran low in 
 the glass.' 
 
 This vigil lasted for three weeks, Barbour not caring 
 to have Drummond out of sight, and loving to hold 
 him by the hand. He read, cheered, and tended the 
 dying man, and wrote to the friends daily letters full 
 of those details which we all love to hear about our 
 dear ones when they hover between life and death and 
 we are far away. Barbour died on May 27. 
 
 To Lord Aberdeen 
 
 'June.iS, 1891. 
 
 * Your letter much more than pleased it touched 
 me. It is much, in this busy life, through what- 
 ever silences and separations, always to be able 
 to count on the true beat of a heart. Friendship 
 can yield but little more, and nothing more that 
 is greater. 
 
 ' So, many real thanks.
 
 446 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 ' It was hard to watch Bar-hour die. The impression 
 of his life is cropping up from many sides just now, 
 and it is very wonderful. His peculiar character- 
 istic was saintliness, an element in life which one 
 is apt to think either superfluous or morbid, but 
 which is after all a vital ingredient. When one 
 thinks of it, it is the unworldly people who have 
 really helped us most.' 
 
 Drummond spent July and August in Sutherland- 
 shire, fishing at Loch Stack, and driving about the 
 country. All September he worked steadily at home, 
 was at Haddo House, fishing and holding services for 
 part of October, and in the end of the month, after 
 the publication of his new booklet, The Programme 
 of Christianity, he began the winter session. 
 
 Perhaps this is the most convenient point at which 
 to attempt to express Drummond's feelings towards 
 the city of his winter residence, and to describe the 
 place he took in her life. From 1885 he lived in 
 No. 3, Park Circus, above the West End Park, on the 
 summit of one of the range of low hills that run 
 parallel to the Clyde, and is covered by the north side 
 of Glasgow. It is a large house, and he could not use 
 the whole of it, but he worked best when there was 
 space about him, and the house afforded a noble study, 
 with a long view northwards across some suburbs to 
 the Campsie hills. The house was furnished, as he 
 himself put it, ' with dead hobbies,' one of which, how- 
 ever, was not dead, for till the end he added to his 
 store of beautiful cabinets, and of pictures of which 
 accuracy obliges one to say that they were of more or 
 less ambiguous value. The hall had a few spoils of 
 travel javelins, arrows, and curious candlesticks. 
 The large dining-room contained a carved sideboard,
 
 1885-1894 447 
 
 which friends averred, but which he would never allow, 
 had been part of an altar ; on the walls were pictures 
 of the glories of the Yellowstone Valley, and some 
 European landscapes, one by Thomson of Dudding- 
 ston. The study contained a large library, scientific, 
 theological, and literary, a table of new books, and the 
 aforesaid cabinets, an etching of Millet's Angelus, and 
 several portraits of friends. At the writing-table 
 against one of the windows Drummond wrote only 
 letters. All his other work was done in a chair with 
 his back to the light, and a large blotter on his knee. 
 His working day began after a half-past eight o'clock 
 breakfast. He read or wrote till his lecture at twelve, 
 lunched at one, and generally went out to walk or to 
 business till half-past four or five. After tea he settled 
 down, if he was permitted, to a long spell of work till 
 ten, when he supped, and so to bed usually by mid- 
 night. But his evenings were often broken by visitors. 
 Sometimes there would be a constant stream of these, 
 most of them with errands that required his close 
 attention. For a few years after 1886, the interests 
 that poured into his study were largely political ; men 
 came to consult him about Liberal prospects in the 
 neighbouring constituencies. The philanthropic socie- 
 ties of Glasgow are innumerable; equally so are the 
 associations in need of lectures and addresses; and 
 gradually, as the years went on, he became personally 
 engaged in movements like the University Settlement, 
 the Boys' Brigade, and the Pleasant Sunday After- 
 noons at the Canal Boatmen's Institute. On behalf 
 of these he was constantly receiving visitors. But in 
 addition there drifted upon him from the vast popula- 
 tion, in which he occupied so conspicuous a position, 
 all sorts of individuals, representing only themselves : 
 students with mental difficulties, unacknowledged
 
 448 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 poets, artisans with a gift for writing, a host of ' cranks," 
 and more than one actual madman. Yet even their 
 visits, frequent and prolonged as they could be, were 
 exceeded by the letters which came in showers, chiefly 
 after his lectures in America and Australia. Those 
 who blamed him for not answering all his letters ought 
 to have seen his daily post. Much of his correspond- 
 ence, of course, deserved no answer; but, with his 
 other work, it was impossible for him to overtake even 
 that portion which had a real claim on his attention. 
 He had no staff of clerks, like a business man, nor a 
 secretary. 
 
 His interest in more than one ' settlement ' brought 
 him the acquaintance of a number of artisans ; and his 
 knowledge of their life was increased by his habit, 
 already described, of contracting for the printing and 
 binding of his books himself. It must have been out 
 of this that the following call came, soon after his 
 return to town in the autumn of 1891 : 
 
 To Lady Aberdeen 
 
 '3, PARK CIRCUS, GLASGOW, Nov. 25. 
 
 ' . . . I am off to settle a strike, positively sole 
 arbiter. Printers. How A. would envy me 
 and how I wish he had to do it ! ' 
 
 The winter passed in the usual change of labours 
 between his class and other interests in Glasgow, and 
 his meetings with students on Sunday evenings in 
 Edinburgh. The latter were continued for a few 
 Sundays during the summer session of 1892, and it 
 was at this time that an Edinburgh journal raised that 
 cry against the meetings which has been referred to 
 in a previous chapter.
 
 1891-1892 449 
 
 The summer of 1892 brought another General 
 Election, which carried Mr. Gladstone into power 
 with a small majority. Drummond took a smaller 
 part in this Election than in the previous one. The 
 following are the only notes I can find with regard 
 to it: 
 
 'June 12. 
 
 ' I had a call from John Burns and Cunninghame 
 Graham, mourning over their lost cause. The 
 latter will lose his seat certain. The labour 
 people are a serious threat this time.' 
 
 'July II. 
 
 ' We [Captain Sinclair and H. D.] go to speak at 
 Helensburgh to-night. We sleep there, and go 
 all over the county [Dumbarton] from dawn to 
 dark to-morrow visiting the polling-booths.' 
 
 During September he took a fishing at Banchory- 
 Ternan, on the Dee. Then, and for the rest of the 
 autumn, he was hard at work on the Ascent of Man. 
 
 In November I joined the Glasgow College, and 
 lived for the first month of the session with Drum- 
 mond. It was then I became aware of the big corre- 
 spondence and large number of daily visits to which 
 he was subject, and learned to admire his constant 
 patience, and the leisure he made for those who had 
 the least claim upon him, although at the time he was 
 preparing his American lectures. A number of the 
 letters he used to get were very amusing. Some 
 admirers wrote him regularly, I think every day, but 
 at least every day or two. Other letters brought the 
 penalties of his American fame. Unscrupulous per- 
 sons in the United States had put his name on the 
 title-page of pamphlets and of poems with which he
 
 45O HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 had nothing to do. One day there came a letter in a 
 feminine hand 
 
 ' DEAR SIR, I am a widow with one boy of twelve 
 years of age. He promises well, and, I think, could 
 be secured for the Kingdom if you would send him an 
 autograph copy of your sweet hymn, " Are they safe 
 with Him?"' ' 
 
 One day he said : ' You are a decent fellow. You 
 never ask a man " whom he sits under," or " whether 
 he has been at church to-day ? " Now, it has been 
 commonly supposed that he hung loose to church life, 
 and very seldom of a Sunday worshipped with his 
 fellow-Christians ; and this idea has been strengthened 
 by a mistaken reading of his booklet The City With- 
 out a Church, which was published that autumn in 
 1892. I can only say that during all the winters I 
 worked by his side in Glasgow I never knew him to 
 miss attending church on Sunday ; and a more hearty 
 and reverent worshipper it would be hard to find. 1 
 
 During the week he very seldom went to any dinner- 
 party, 'At Home,' or evening amusement. He had 
 not the time for them, or he had a friend staying with 
 him. But he made an exception for the social meet- 
 ings of students. There his gaiety was always infec- 
 tious, and he joined in every chorus. On Saturday 
 afternoons he was always found watching football 
 either one of the great League matches, or a match 
 between two companies of the Boys' Brigade. 
 
 By the end of the session of 1892-93 he had written 
 his lectures on the Ascent of Man, and on March 22nd 
 sailed on the Teutonic for America. 
 
 Drummond went to America to give at Boston 
 
 1 Compare what he says about church-going in his Addresses to Students, Nos. 
 I. and vi., given in the Appendix to this volume.
 
 1892-1893 45 i 
 
 the Lowell Institute Lectures, founded by Mr. John 
 Lowell, Jun., in 1839, and delivered from year to year 
 by a series of famous scholars, artists, and literary and 
 scientific authorities. But before he started he re- 
 ceived, even more numerously than on his visit in 
 1887, invitations from other institutes and societies, 
 and from nearly all the leading universities of the 
 States. The Chicago Exhibition was about to open, 
 Lord and Lady Aberdeen were in Canada, and his 
 friend, Mr. W. E. Dodge of New York, had asked 
 him to go on a fishing expedition up one of the 
 Canadian rivers. He left England, therefore, to spend 
 all the summer and autumn vacation in America. 
 Even if the material existed for doing so, it would be 
 impossible, for reasons of space, to follow his work 
 and his wanderings in detail. There is room only for 
 a few salient points. 
 
 In Boston, one of the most intellectual cities in the 
 world, the Lowell Institute Lectures of 1893 aroused 
 the most vivid interest. 1 They were practically his 
 volume on the Ascent of Man. ' For every one who 
 received a ticket of admission to them, there were ten 
 turned away.' 'Standing room is at a premium, and 
 scores are turned away every evening.' On Wednes- 
 day and Saturday afternoons, therefore, Drummond 
 repeated the lecture of the previous evening. But, the 
 strain of this notwithstanding, he remembered other 
 interests which were dear to him, and gave a number of 
 addresses upon the Boys' Brigade, and to the students 
 of Harvard University. One of the latter in Apple- 
 ton Chapel, by which he said he desired to reach those 
 who were not Christians, concluded with the charac- 
 teristic words : ' Above all things, do not touch Chris- 
 
 1 For information as to this, I am indebted to Mr. Howard A. Bridgman, one 
 of the editors of the Boston Congregationalist.
 
 452 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 tianity unless you are willing to seek the kingdom of 
 heaven first. I promise you a miserable existence if 
 you seek it second.' 
 
 In May he spoke to the students of Amherst Uni- 
 versity 1 upon Temptation, and delivered addresses in 
 other places. In the end of the month he went to 
 Chicago, to see the ' World's Columbian Exposition,' 
 and in particular the Irish village, which formed part 
 of it, and the existence of which was mainly due to 
 Lady Aberdeen. There he gave lectures on Evolu- 
 tion, and addresses in connection with the Boys' 
 Brigade at Minneapolis and Duluth. In the former 
 of these towns he had a curious adventure. At the 
 close of his lecture he was denounced by a well-known 
 citizen as ' a fraud and imitator of the real Professor 
 Drummond, whom the speaker had heard elsewhere, 
 and knew.' In July he repeated his Boston lectures 
 at Chautauqua, and went on to a Conference, under 
 Mr. Moody, at Northfield. Here he delivered the 
 three addresses ' A Life for a Life,' ' Lessons from 
 the Angelus] and ' The Ideal Man,' 2 and it was here 
 that he encountered the inevitable attack upon his 
 teaching. Drummond told me that the reporter of 
 one of the leading English religious papers said to 
 him, that he had orders not to report a word of what 
 Drummond said ; and the story goes that a deputation 
 of the usual adherents of the Northfield Conference 
 waited on Mr. Moody and urged him not to allow 
 Drummond to speak. Mr. Moody asked a day to 
 think over the matter ; and when the deputation re- 
 turned, informed them that he had ' laid it before the 
 Lord, and the Lord had shown him that Drummond 
 
 1 It was Amherst which gave him the only degree he possessed, LL.D. 
 
 2 Published with an introduction from Mr. Moody by the Fleming H. Revell 
 Co., New York, Chicago, and Toronto, 1897.
 
 1*93 453 
 
 was a better man than himself ; so he was to go on ! ' 
 This, if true, was like the man who penned the tribute 
 to Drummond, given in the first chapter of this vol- 
 ume, and who once said to the writer, ' There's noth- 
 ing I ever read of Henry Drummond's, or heard him 
 say, that I didn't agree with.' What Drummond him- 
 self felt about his Northfield visit appears in the follow- 
 ing lines, written some days afterwards : 
 
 ' At Northfield I felt a good deal out of it, and many 
 fell upon and rent me. Before the close of the 
 Conference, I struck an orthodox vein and re- 
 trieved myself a little. But it was not a happy 
 time.' 
 
 In the end of July he went on holiday into Canada. 
 
 To Lord Aberdeen 
 
 1 RESTIGOUCHE SALMON CLUB, METAPEDIA, QUEBEC, 
 July 27, 1893. 
 
 ' MY DEAR A., You will see by the above heading 
 that I am at present not only one of your loyal 
 subjects, but that in spite of the contretemps with 
 the Cascapedia, I am permitted the indulgence of 
 my besetting sin. This river is perhaps the next 
 best to the Cascapedia, and as I know several of 
 the members of the Club, my deplorable instincts 
 are more than satisfied. . . . 
 
 ' One goes up the river in a house-boat (primitive) 
 with a fleet of Indians and canoes for the actual 
 fishing, and sleeps either in the boat or in the 
 clubhouses at the various pools. Salmon abound, 
 and I have had my share, though the river has 
 been very low, and barely fishable these last few 
 days. A man sitting opposite me as I write,
 
 454 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 along with a friend, captured ninety-two salmon 
 in five days a phenomenal score, however, even 
 for Canada at the beginning of the season. 
 Pardon all this fish-talk. Your thoughts must be 
 in better and graver directions at present.' 
 
 To Lady Aberdeen 
 
 From the same address, July 31. 
 
 ' Here is the last of this poor old Monkey 1 sent 
 in shame and confusion of face for writing such 
 stuff, and especially for not writing it months 
 ago. How ever did you get me to make such a 
 fool of myself I can't imagine. But you are an 
 angelic editor not to worry your contributors for 
 return-of-post copy, and how you have let me off 
 the scolding I deserve I can't fathom. Cannot I 
 make atonement by doing something else to help 
 on anything after you are gone from us ? I shall 
 really try, if you will commit some untied knot 
 end to me. 
 
 ' At the moment, fishing being over, I am trying to 
 write a few papers for Chicago and elsewhere. 
 But the beauty of this river, absolute solitude, 
 and an extra good box of cigars are somewhat 
 against work. All the fishermen have gone home, 
 and I am camped in a snug farm a few miles from 
 the clubhouse. 
 
 ' A humming-bird passed the verandah a moment 
 ago. 
 
 ' A week hence, if I succeed in doing any work, I 
 shall pay a visit to Bar Harbour.' 
 
 1 The end of his story, The Monkey that wouldn't Kill, published first in Wee 
 Willie Winkie, and separately, in 1898, by Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton.
 
 455 
 
 In September he stayed with their Excellencies the 
 Governor-General of Canada and Lady Aberdeen at 
 the Citadel, Quebec ; and it was here, on the great 
 rock above the St. Lawrence, one Sunday afternoon, 
 that he gave his beautiful address from the text, 
 ' There is a River.' 
 
 In the first week of October he was back in Chicago 
 for the opening of the University. It was the begin- 
 ning of the second year of that wonderful institution 
 wonderful in its great and sudden endowments ; won- 
 derful in the broad and complex organisation which 
 President Harper and his colleagues had already 
 achieved; and wonderful in the way in which the 
 classes go on all the year round. Drummond often 
 said how large and open he found the life to be there, 
 and how strongly it roused the best that was in him. 
 On the first Sunday of October he gave his religious 
 address on Millet's Angelus and two days later the 
 Convocation Lecture on ' Some Higher Aspects of 
 Evolution.' Outside the University was the Great 
 Exposition, about whose beauty and vastness he could 
 hardly cease talking when he came home. Drummond 
 addressed the Congress of the Evangelical Alliance 
 under the presidency of his friend Mr. W. E. Dodge. 
 On his way home, in New York, he addressed another 
 meeting for the Boys' Brigade. 
 
 Drummond's American visit was accompanied and 
 followed by the usual showers of letters, which fell 
 wherever he spoke for any length of time. They re- 
 call the results of his earlier missions. It is astonish- 
 ing how his words touched the hearts of men and 
 women who, brought up to religion, had suddenly 
 found it mere routine, and had slipped away from 
 faith, and often from all hope. Their grateful letters 
 justify the jealousy with which, at the risk of offending
 
 456 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 the orthodox, he adapted his teaching to such cases. 
 He knew that these existed in crowds, unsought, un- 
 cared for; and in numbers they responded to his 
 efforts to reach them. ' All the old hopelessness is 
 gone,' says one ; ' you sent it away.' ' Your words 
 last night gave me back again the faith I had lost, and 
 this morning I woke for the first time for long a happy 
 and a hopeful man.' And so on. Of course, with 
 these came the customary appeals from the simple and 
 from the twisted ; the young man who wrote, ' I like 
 your style of speaking so much, I venture to ask you 
 how you acquired it,' and the ' recipient of marvellous 
 revelations,' ' Heaven's vice-gerent on earth ' (as he 
 styled himself), who ' has been commanded to publish 
 the Gospel that the Coming Man is a Woman ! ' 'I 
 think,' said Drummond once, ' they do breed more 
 cranks in America than we do here ; yet we run them 
 hard.' 
 
 On Drummond himself the energy and hopefulness 
 of the people and all the more that upon this visit 
 he had seen it concentrated in the colossal exposition 
 at Chicago had produced the effect which never 
 failed him on his journeys to America. From the 
 States he always came back, he said, as from ' a bath 
 of life ' ; and America and the Americans remained to 
 the end one of his great enthusiasms. 
 
 1 1 do think they are the most wonderful people un- 
 der the sun. A nation in its youth is a stirring 
 spectacle.' 
 
 Physically, however, this visit to America tried him 
 greatly, notwithstanding the short rest he got while 
 fishing, and he came home looking much older. The 
 preparation of the Lowell Lectures had been a strain ;
 
 1893-1894 457 
 
 he said that after he saw his audience at the first of 
 them he had practically to rewrite the rest. 1 
 
 The winter session of 1893-94 was passed in work 
 harder than usual. He was preparing his Boston dis- 
 courses for the press. He gave a number of lectures 
 outside the College, and on February 5th began his 
 last series of addresses to the Edinburgh students. 
 About this time he was offered the Principalship of 
 M'Gill University, Montreal, and he did not refuse it 
 till after long consideration. The summer was spent 
 in fishing-holidays, hardly enjoyed under the first pains 
 of his last illness, in addressing various clubs, and in 
 writing some articles, among them two for M^Clures 
 Magazine, on Mr. Moody. One of his visits in June 
 was to a boys' club in Edinburgh. He asked them to 
 put questions to him, and he was so struck and amused 
 by those put, that he kept a list of them. Here they 
 are: (i) How can we find happiness? (2) What is 
 the bottomless pit ? (3) What is the camel through a 
 needle's eye ? (4) What do you think of gambling ? 
 (5) What do you think of strikes ? (6) Is it offensive 
 to God to smoke a pipe ? (7) Who is God ? (8) Why 
 do monkeys not become human ? (9) What is the use 
 of going to church ? 
 
 In May the Ascent of Man was published. 
 
 1 From a note by Mr. James Drummond.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE ASCENT OF MAN 
 
 THE Lowell Lecturer for 1893 did not intend to 
 publish his lectures in a volume for some years. He 
 had secured an American copyright, 1 and Messrs. J. 
 Pott and Co. of New York were announced in the liter- 
 ary journals as the American publishers. But no date 
 was fixed for the publication, and Drummond looked 
 forward to a long revision of his material. Before he 
 left America, however, he heard that a Philadelphian 
 publisher was about to issue a volume entitled * The 
 Evolution of Man, being the Lowell Lectures delivered 
 at Boston, Massachusetts, April, 1893, by Professor 
 Henry Drummond,' and claiming to be made up from a 
 contemporary report of the lectures recently delivered 
 by Professor Drummond in the Boston Institute, 
 which ' reports,' the introduction further stated, ' have 
 been carefully collated and presented to the reader 
 with the certainty that they will prove of value.' The 
 reports were said to be taken from the British Weekly 
 of April and May, 1893, in which the first lecture had 
 appeared almost in full, but the rest in gradually dwin- 
 dling summaries, up to the eighth, when they ceased. 
 They were, therefore, partial reports, and besides, in 
 
 1 To do this all that is necessary is to print or typewrite a title-page with name, 
 date, and ' copyrighted by So-and-So ' printed on the back, and enclose a regis- 
 tration fee of a dollar. It is not even necessary that the book be written. ' Twelve 
 copies must be exposed for sale,' but at what time is not explicitly stated. An 
 account of the whole case appeared in The Bookman for July, 1894, and I have 
 verified the facts given there from the copy of the original papers, which Drum- 
 mond had preserved. 
 
 45 8
 
 Xx. 42] THE ASCENT OF MAN 459 
 
 the volume they were modified ; ' edited ' was the term 
 used. 
 
 Drummond wrote to the enterprising publisher, who 
 answered that, though not legally bound to do so, he 
 would suppress the edition if all his expenses were 
 paid. As the edition consisted of some ten thousand 
 copies already printed, Drummond refused, and the 
 case was carried into Court the Circuit Court of the 
 United States for the eastern district of Pennsylvania, 
 to the judges of which it was presented by the plain- 
 tiff's agents 'in equity.' In pronouncing judgment, 
 Judge Dallas remarked that 
 
 ' The subject of copyright is not directly involved in the 
 case. The complainant does not base his claim to relief upon 
 the statute but upon his right, quite distinct from any con- 
 ferred by copyright, to protection against having any literary 
 matter published as his work which is not actually his crea- 
 tion, and, incidentally, to prevent fraud upon purchasers. . . . 
 The defendant's book is founded on the matter which has 
 appeared in the British Weekly ; and if that matter had been 
 literally copied, and so as not to misrepresent its character 
 and extent, the plaintiff would be without remedy; but the 
 fatal weakness in the defendant's position is that, under colour 
 of editing the author's work, he has represented a part of it 
 as the whole, and even as to the portion published has mate- 
 rially departed from the reports which he set up in justifica- 
 tion. ... A most important circumstance in this connection 
 is that the defendant, while precisely adopting his title from 
 the headlines of the reports, has so altered their text as to 
 make it appear, contrary to the whole tenor of the reports 
 themselves, that what his book contains is the precise lan- 
 guage of the author of the lectures, although, as has been 
 said, it contains only some of the lectures, not all of them, 
 and presents none of them fully or correctly. The complain- 
 ant's right has been fully made out, and the case shown is 
 manifestly one which calls for the interposition of the Court 
 at this stage.'
 
 460 HENRY DRUMMOND [1894 
 
 Decree was accordingly given, 1 temporarily restrain- 
 ing the precipitous publisher from selling his edition. 
 The injunction was afterwards made permanent ; the 
 edition, ten thousand copies, with the stereotype plates, 
 was ordered to be destroyed, and Drummond got his 
 costs. It is said to have been ' the first case in which 
 a favourable judgment was given to an alien in such a 
 matter.' 
 
 But Drummond was obliged to hasten his own pub- 
 lication of the lectures, and after being able, to his 
 chagrin, to spend only the leisure of one busy winter 
 in revising them, he sent them to press in the spring 
 of 1894, and they were published in May of that year. 
 
 The Ascent of Man was looked for with the interest 
 and the curiosity which await the works only of the 
 most popular writers in literature or science. But 
 immediate and universal as was the recognition which 
 it received, its author could not have expected so 
 unanimous a chorus of praise as had greeted the 
 appearance of his Natural Law. The men who had 
 at first been carried away by the latter remembered, 
 and were on their guard. The author was not now a 
 new writer ; he had some enemies and many jealous 
 critics in the camps both of religion and of science. 
 Moreover, the reports of his lectures had already ex- 
 cited the suspicion of some and the full-armed hostility 
 of others. On the whole, the criticism of the reviewers 
 when it came was worthy and without ulterior mo- 
 tives. One daily paper, indeed, sought persistently to 
 stir up ill-blood in the author's church by its insinua- 
 tions upon his adhesion to the doctrines of Evolution ; 
 one scientific critic wrote in a bad temper that be- 
 trayed him into scientific error more grave than any 
 with which he charged the book; and Mrs. Lynn 
 
 1 This judgment was given at the October Sessions, 1893.
 
 JZi. 42] THE ASCENT OF MAN 46 1 
 
 Linton 1 made a furious onslaught on what she al- 
 leged to be Drummond's ' pseudo-science ' and ' pla- 
 giarisms,' overlooking, as her critics pointed out, his 
 acknowledgments of indebtedness to Herbert Spencer 
 and other writers on the very points with reference to 
 which she made her serious charges. 2 But these were 
 almost the only exceptions in the adverse criticism 
 which the book encountered. The fairness of his 
 reviewers Drummond himself heartily acknowledged. 
 The book, as the critics confessed, had all the ex- 
 ternal qualities of his previous works the lucid 
 style, the power and charm of illustration, and the 
 many happy phrases. Nor had it any less of the 
 youthful courage and enthusiasm which made Natural 
 Law so famous. It disarmed, too, a large number of 
 
 1 In the Fortnightly for September, 1894. 
 
 2 A very trenchant reply to the good lady, whose zeal on this occasion outran 
 her knowledge, will be found in an author who has no sympathy with Drum- 
 mond's religion, but, as an Agnostic, attacks this strenuously Mr. George 
 Shoorbridge Carr, MA., in Social Evolution and the Evolution of Socialism ? 
 A Critical Essay. London: W. Stewart and Co., 1895. ^ ^ s an a ^ e anc ^ candid 
 essay, but very much mistaken in its conception of what Christianity is. Mr. Carr 
 says of Mrs. Lynn Linton's sentence, that Drummond ' brings his subject, which 
 only the educated can rightly understand, down to the level of the ignorant,' that 
 it ought to run : ' He brings his subject, which only the specially educated can 
 rightly understand, down to the level of ordinary minds,' and adds : ' This is true, 
 and it is to his everlasting praise that he does it.' As to her charge of ' pseudo- 
 science,' he points out that she has given no instance, and he claims that in the 
 main the science is correct ; as to her statement that ' the philosophy is inadequate 
 and shallow,' he says that her ' attempt to prove it by the single instance adduced 
 of what she is pleased to call " clap-trap " about the fission in the cell, is unfortu- 
 nate, for it involves her chosen authority, Herbert Spencer, in the same accusa- 
 tion.' And he continues : ' Professor Drummond's vocation and object are quite 
 different from those of Herbert Spencer. No comparison need be instituted. If 
 Mrs. Linton prefers the philosophic diction of the latter, that fact does not abstract 
 one iota from the value of the Professor's eloquent, ingenious, and masterly argu- 
 mentation. Thus in no instance does Mrs. Linton make good her sweeping 
 assertions, and she may be hoisted with her own petard. It is this wholesale, 
 indiscriminating, exaggerated criticism, so easy in the writing, but not pleasant in 
 the reading, that ' lets slip truth,' that is ' inadequate and shallow,' that is ' false, 
 strained, and inconclusive.' These furious onslaughts . . . are mischievous, for 
 they tend to make a byword of criticism and a laughing-stock of the reviewer ' 
 (pp. 46 f.).
 
 462 HENRY DRUMMOND [1894 
 
 the most severe critics of Natural Law, and won their 
 praise by a line of argument and by conclusions, set 
 in an opposite direction from those which had pro- 
 voked their condemnation of the earlier volume. In 
 Natural Law Drummond had attempted to carry 
 physical processes into the region of the moral and 
 the spiritual ; in the Ascent of Man he essayed the 
 converse task, and succeeded in showing the ethical 
 at work in regions of life generally supposed to be 
 given over to purely physical laws or at least he 
 succeeded in exhibiting among the lower stages of 
 the evolution of life bases and opportunities suitable 
 for the action of moral feelings and for the formation 
 of moral habits. In the opinion of the same critics, 
 there was another improvement in his philosophic 
 attitude which was akin to the one just described. 
 Natural Law had drawn a very hard and fast line 
 through the universe ; it had divided human experi- 
 ence on either side of the new birth into two kinds 
 of existence, the lower of which was emphasised as 
 without capacity for, or prophecy of, the higher. 
 Drummond had favoured by his argument an oppo- 
 sition between all man's natural qualities and powers 
 on the one side, and religion on the other; in the 
 feelings and the reason of the natural man he had 
 said there was nothing of grace nor the power of the 
 Spirit. He had, in fact, excommunicated Nature, and, 
 without intending it, had given his support to a dual- 
 ism prevalent not only in some of the churches, but 
 in certain of the philosophic schools, of our day, a 
 dualism which emphasises the opposition between 
 human reason and (according to the temper of the 
 writer) either revelation, or grace, or religious author- 
 ity. Between 1883 and 1893 Drummond had seen 
 this dualism develop, and had recognised its falseness
 
 Mr. 42] THE ASCENT OF MAN 463 
 
 with a start which swung him free of his own entangle- 
 ments in some of its premises. How free may be 
 seen from the following statements in the Ascent of 
 Man : 
 
 ' Nothing can ever be gained by setting one-half of 
 Nature against the other, or the rational against 
 the ultra-rational. To affirm that Altruism is a 
 peculiar product of religion is to excommunicate 
 nature from the moral order, and religion from 
 the rational order.' 1 
 
 And again 
 
 ' If Nature is the Garment of God, it is woven with- 
 out seam throughout ; if a revelation of God, it is 
 the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; if the 
 expression of His Will, there is in it no variable- 
 ness nor shadow of turning. Those who see 
 great gulfs fixed and perhaps we have all 
 begun by seeing them end by seeing them 
 filled up. Were these gulfs essential to any 
 theory of the universe or of man, even the estab- 
 lishment of the unity of Nature were a dear price 
 to pay for obliterating them. But the apparent 
 loss is only gain, and the seeming gain were in- 
 finite loss. For to break up Nature is to break 
 up Reason, and with it God and Man.' 
 
 There could not be a more complete recantation of 
 the principal philosophic heresy of Natural Law, and 
 for such a recantation the Ascent of Man received a 
 warm welcome from the most severe of the philosophic 
 critics of its predecessor. Nor was it in this respect 
 any less welcome to the theologian. For the book 
 vindicated Nature, as also the sphere of the God of 
 
 1 Ascent of Man, p. 72.
 
 464 HENRY DRUMMOND [1894 
 
 Love, and sought to prove the presence of the char- 
 acteristic forces of Christianity sympathy and self- 
 sacrifice upon the lower stages of the evolution of 
 man. It might almost be said that Drummond ex- 
 pressed, in the language and with the information of 
 his own time, the vision which the ancient seer saw 
 of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. 
 
 But having passed these tests, the Ascent of Man 
 had next to undergo the examination of scientific au- 
 thorities as to the methods by which its author sought 
 to prove his great principles. The book covers the 
 evolution of man both as an animal, a rational being, 
 and a member of society. It draws its proofs and 
 illustrations from biology, the sciences of language 
 and of the origin of mind, as well as from that new 
 and interesting department of modern research which 
 deals with sex and the beginnings of the human 
 family. In all these departments Drummond made 
 use of the thoughts of many thinkers. His book 
 would never have been written without inspiration 
 derived (not to speak of the great authorities of our 
 time in physical science) from the investigations and 
 arguments of Herbert Spencer, Fiske, Westermarck, 
 and others, and from the brilliant suggestions of Mar- 
 tineau. Drummond has spoken of his main thesis, 
 the influence upon the evolution of man of the strug- 
 gle for the life of others, as ' the missing factor in 
 current theories,' and as if it were a new discovery. 
 But no one who reads his frequent references to other 
 thinkers can honestly believe that he intended to take 
 the glory of this discovery to himself ; and he has cer- 
 tainly expounded and emphasised the appearances of 
 Altruism, or the provocations to Altruism, which are 
 present in the earlier stages of evolution, as these had 
 never been illustrated, or impressed upon the public
 
 Mr. 42] THE ASCENT OF MAN 465 
 
 mind by any previous writer. 1 Mr. Carr makes one 
 criticism, which I have not found elsewhere. It is 
 with reference to the distinction which Drummond 
 draws between ' The Struggle for Life ' and ' The 
 Struggle for the Life of Others,' and the charge 
 which Drummond makes against Darwin, of omit- 
 ting all notice of the latter while expounding the 
 former. Mr. Carr points out that when Darwin spoke 
 of the ' struggle for life,' and consequent ' survival of 
 the fittest,' he had in view the struggle of the species. 
 The ' struggle for life,' therefore, included two aspects 
 the struggle for self and the struggle for others ; in 
 the latter category the struggle for the preservation of 
 offspring being absolutely necessary for the continu- 
 ance of the species. . . . Professor Drummond at- 
 taches to the phrase the false, restricted meaning of 
 the struggle of the individual for its own life, and then 
 scores his point by opposing to this, in strong antith- 
 esis, and with much rhetoric, the ' Struggle for the 
 Life of Others.' 2 
 
 By some critics the Ascent of Man was charged 
 with containing a number of errors in the domain of 
 physical science. On such a point the present writer 
 is incapable of offering an opinion, but here are the 
 criticisms of two authorities on the subject Professor 
 M'Kendrick, of the Chair of Physiology in the Uni- 
 versity of Glasgow, and Professor Alexander Macalister, 
 of the Chair of Anatomy in the University of Cam- 
 bridge. 3 
 
 Professor M'Kendrick calls the first chapter an excellent 
 account of the Ascent of the Body, but takes exception to the 
 
 1 Compare Mr. Can's remarks quoted above, p. 461, n. 2. 
 
 2 Social Evolution, pp. 36, 37. 
 
 3 The latter reviewed the Ascent of Man in The Bookman for June, 1894; 
 the former reviewed it in the Critical Review for October of the same year.
 
 466 HENRY DRUMMOND [1894 
 
 statement on p. 79 that the ova of different animals are 
 practically identical. . . . ' Certainly the highest microscopic 
 powers can observe no marked distinction, although recently 
 progress has been made in this direction, and we may be 
 assured that physical differences exist.' Of the same chapter 
 Professor Macalister says that 'once or twice his love for 
 analogy betrays [the author] into trivial misconceptions, as 
 on p. 86, and as a lecturer he only deals with what may be 
 regarded as the sensational points of his subject.' Both 
 authorities think he has been hardly just to the place of the 
 ape in the ancestry of man. In Chapter II. Dr. M'Kendrick 
 thinks it ' dangerous to reason as to habits supposed to have 
 been derived from ancestors,' e.g. to infer that the clutching 
 power of a new-born child is derived from the arboreal habits 
 of animal progenitors. Both Professors reckon the state- 
 ments in Chapter III. on 'The Arrest of the Body' to be in 
 need of qualification. 1 Dr. M'Kendrick says, 'How unthink- 
 able is the proposition that "the slumbering animal brain 
 broke into intelligence " : Professor Drummond cuts this knot 
 with a hatchet ' ; and finds otherwise on this point ' some con- 
 fusion of language.' In Chapter IV., on 'The Origin of 
 Mind,' Dr. M'Kendrick thinks that the account of Mr. Wal- 
 lace's opinion, in opposition to Mr. Darwin's, is hardly accu- 
 rate ; and that the illustration, which Drummond gives from 
 the sensitive plant, 'is not cogent, as few naturalists would 
 admit the mimosa possesses sensation. Mere movement is no 
 proof of the psychological condition termed a sensation.' 
 Nor does this critic think the evidence adduced from the 
 writings of George J. Romanes trustworthy 'regarding the 
 correspondence as to order in the evolution of the emotions 
 in the animal series and in the development of the same 
 emotions in a child, because of the great difficulty in the 
 interpretation of the motor phenomena accompanying these 
 emotions. . . . Unintentionally, we interpret the movements 
 by reading our own thoughts or emotional states into the 
 creatures we happen to be watching. Mr. Romanes was an 
 excellent observer, but his work in the direction indicated 
 
 1 Dr. Macalister says ' it would be enough for his purpose to show that physical 
 endowment could not progress at the same pace as psychical growth.'
 
 /ET. 42] THE ASCENT OF MAN 467 
 
 was tentative, and it is hazardous to treat these observations 
 as if they were on a par with the facts of comparative anat- 
 omy. 1 
 
 With one exception, to be presently noticed, these 
 are all the defects which those two great authorities 
 find in the natural science of the volume. And it 
 cannot be denied that they give some grounds for the 
 charges of hasty inference and exaggeration of the 
 emphasis on certain points, which seem favourable to 
 the author's main thesis. Such charges were chiefly 
 fastened by many critics upon that part of the chapter 
 on ' The Struggle for the Life of Others ' which dis- 
 covers the appearance of altruism in the self-multiplying 
 cell. On this Dr. Macalister says : ' The multiplying 
 cell may be the potential, but can scarcely be called 
 the actual exponent [of the ethical element in life], for 
 in its origination cell division is really selfish, and 
 solely for self-interest, as far as this language of moral 
 import can be applied to a biological process. . . . 
 The physiological mechanism of cell reproduction 
 has its ultimate base in the necessity for small size 
 with relatively large surface, or else the cell cannot be 
 properly fed. If the division be regarded as an act of 
 self-sacrifice, it is one which is submitted to for a 
 purely selfish end.' Similarly Dr. M'Kendrick, who 
 adds, ' One cannot help feeling that in not a few of 
 the illustrations Professor Drummond reads into the 
 phenomena of nature some of his own mental moods.' 
 
 In his account of evolution Professor Drummond, 
 Dr. M'Kendrick hints, has emphasised disproportion- 
 ately the favourable features, and this was also the 
 
 1 Dr. M'Kendrick does not think that the illustration drawn, in the last chapter, 
 from the Sigillaria and the Stigmaria is quite apt. Their relation is not a true 
 analogy. He thinks that Professor Drummond lays too great an emphasis on 
 environment, and is guilty of some confusion of thought in endeavouring to blend 
 the physical with the spiritual.
 
 468 HENRY DRUMMOND [1894 
 
 opinion of a critic who approached the book from the 
 standpoint of philosophy. Professor Iverach, in a 
 review which called forth from Drummond a warm 
 acknowledgment of its justice, 1 pointed out that the 
 argument of the book avoided such difficult questions 
 as are raised ' by the stumbling and the failures of 
 evolution, and the persistency of lower forms of life 
 alongside the higher.' In answer to this, it might be 
 urged that Drummond had set himself to emphasise 
 aspects of evolution, which, though mentioned by 
 others, had not had full justice done them; and it 
 might be added that the book is the work of a poetic 
 translator of the science of his time rather than of an 
 original scientific thinker. 2 Still, if this were granted, 
 others might justly urge that in imputing ethical 
 character to some of the lower processes of life, 
 Drummond sinned also in art, by overdoing his case, 
 and rendering it open to ridicule. 
 
 It would not be fair to give these adverse criticisms 
 upon points in the Ascent of Man without adding 
 from the two distinguished critics who have been 
 quoted their appreciations of the volume as a whole. 
 
 Professor Macalister says of it : 
 
 ' The problems which Professor Drummond has dealt with 
 are perplexing and complex, and there will probably be much 
 difference of opinion as to the degree of success with which 
 he has applied the biological method to their solution ; but 
 the candid reader cannot lay down the book without feeling 
 that it is an honest and manly attempt to grapple in a rev- 
 
 1 The review appeared in the British Weekly for May 24, 1894. On May 
 25th Drummond wrote to his critic : ' I wish I had had your own volume sooner, 
 for it would have made me wiser. It has already helped me, and it will do much 
 more in the future. Your criticisms are just. I did not like the " self-sacrifice " 
 passage myself, but let it pass, thinking the qualifications strewn through the book 
 ad nauseam might save it. But it is not good.' 
 
 2 ' Not so much science as the poetry of science.' Mr. Benjamin Kidd, in his 
 appreciative review of the volume in the Expositor for June, i 894.
 
 JET. 42] THE ASCENT OF MAN 469 
 
 erential spirit with these difficulties, and that it constitutes a 
 seasonable contribution to the literature of the fundamental 
 department of sociology.' 
 
 And Professor M'Kendrick says: 
 
 'Towards the close, Professor Drummond indicates that 
 the appearance of Christianity is a part of the evolutionary 
 process. " What is Evolution ? A method of creation. 
 What is its object? To make more perfect living beings. 
 What is Christianity ? A method of creation. What is its 
 object? To make more perfect living beings. Through 
 what does Evolution work ? Through Love. Through what 
 does Christianity work? Through Love. Evolution and 
 Christianity have the same Author, the same end, the same 
 spirit." This is the grand conclusion. Still one is inclined 
 to ask, Does Evolution really work through Love ? We 
 wish it were proven to be the case, but facts seem to be 
 against it. 
 
 ' We have not entered on the consideration of the Introduc- 
 tion, because we thought it better to let the lectures speak 
 for themselves. The Introduction is an excellent account of 
 the position of the author towards the Evolution view, and it 
 emphasises the contribution that the author has added to the 
 discussion, namely, the recognition of the great principle of 
 the struggle for others as a factor in Evolution. There can 
 be no question that this is a substantial contribution to the 
 philosophy of the subject, and it has never been put forward 
 with such force and fulness as by Professor Drummond. 
 Apart from the general literary excellence of the book, this 
 is the part that will live in literature, and this is the portion 
 that will awaken thought in many minds, and lead them to 
 look again at Nature. At present we feel bound to say we 
 are not convinced, although, as we have hinted, nothing 
 would be more delightful than to be able to look at the 
 struggle going on in Nature through Professor Drummond's 
 spectacles. 
 
 ' As a contribution to the discussion of the great theme of 
 Man's relation to the evolutionary process, the book must be 
 regarded as tentative. The time has not yet come for any-
 
 47O HENRY DRUMMOND [1894 
 
 thing like a final statement. The gaps that science has yet 
 to fill up are far too great to allow us to frame a consistent 
 scheme, as has been attempted in this book. The adoption 
 of such a scheme will not ultimately weaken faith, although it 
 will necessitate change of view. We doubt if Professor Drum- 
 mond himself fully realises the tremendous consequences that 
 must flow from a complete acceptance of the theory of Evolu- 
 tion as applied to man (body, mind, soul, religion, sin, death, 
 the future) as we are at present advised. A thorough-going 
 evolutionary view demands a new theology, and such funda- 
 mental questions as the origin of sin, human responsibility, 
 the taking of our nature by the Son of God (as implied in the 
 doctrine of the Trinity), the possibility of miracle, the possi- 
 bility of a future life for the individual, will all need to be 
 restated and to receive fresh answers. No one could attempt 
 such a task at the present stage of the world's history, as the 
 data are still far too insufficient. The last word has not yet 
 been spoken by science as to the evolution of life from dead 
 matter, or the evolution of animal forms, still less as to the 
 evolution of all that is included in psychology and morals. 
 Even physical science is only struggling to the light, and 
 cannot yet explain Energy, Light, Electricity, Gravitation, 
 Matter. More light will come, but it may take years, hun- 
 dreds of years, before it will pierce the darkness of our 
 present ignorance, and enable us to see things in their just 
 proportions. In the mean time, Professor Drummond deserves 
 credit for the courage with which he has applied the evolu- 
 tionary hypothesis to current views, for his attempt to form 
 a consistent cosmology, for the clear-sightedness with which 
 he sees that all must ultimately be explained by the applica- 
 tion of one great Law or Principle representing the Mind of 
 God working out the Harmony of His Universe, and for the 
 beautiful account he has given of the story of Evolution, a 
 story that reads like a fairy tale.' 
 
 In addition we may quote the following opinion by 
 Dr. Gairdner, F.R.S., Professor of Medicine in the 
 University of Glasgow 1 : 
 
 1 Now Sir William Gairdner, K.C.B. The opinion was expressed in a let- 
 ter to Dr. Stalker immediately after H. D.'s death; it is quoted in an article
 
 JT. 42] THE ASCENT OF MAN 471 
 
 'The earlier book, 1 while full of suggestive and finely 
 expressed thought, did not convince me nor appear to me a 
 permanent forward step in the Eirenicon between Religion 
 and Science. The latter book has, to my mind, a far wider 
 sweep, and a much more permanent value in its marvellously 
 lucid and at the same time profound exposition of the root 
 principles of altruism, as evolved in the wide field of nature. 
 Nothing that I have read on the subject of ethical theory has 
 appeared to me to go so deep or to be so convincing as this, 
 which makes it a fundamental part of God's universe from 
 the beginnings, at all events, of sexual life therein.' 
 
 And finally, we may take, along with the views of 
 these scientific authorities, the following expression of 
 opinion from a philosophical standpoint. It is by the 
 Rev. D. M. Ross, one of Drummond's oldest and 
 closest friends, whose criticism of the main thesis of 
 Natural Law had been adverse : 
 
 ' If Natural Law in the Spiritual World was an apologetic 
 for his early individualism, no less is the Ascent of Man an 
 apologetic for his later socialism. The Ascent of Man, whether 
 we have regard to its literary style or its intellectual power, is 
 unquestionably his greatest book. Here again, for the study 
 of his religious teaching, the chief interest of the book is not 
 in its proofs, but in what it seeks to prove that love, or the 
 struggle for the life of others, is a law deeply embedded in the 
 whole life of the universe. Love, service, sympathy, sacrifice, 
 co-operation, brotherhood these were dominant thoughts in 
 his own "wider outlook and social ideal." One may question 
 whether it is necessary to appeal to " nature " for a sanction 
 to the law of love in our social life, and one may question 
 whether the author is successful in obtaining from "nature" 
 the sanction of which he is in search ; but no one can read 
 this brilliant volume without being impressed by the social 
 enthusiasm which lies behind its reasoning and eloquence. 
 
 by Dr. Stalker, Henry Drummond,' in the Expositor, Fifth Series, vol. v. p. 
 
 293- 
 
 1 Natural Law.
 
 47 2 HENRY DRUMMOND [1894 
 
 ' It has been said that Professor Drummond had already 
 given the world the best work he was likely to achieve before 
 he was struck down in the prime of his manhood. It seems 
 to me that there are indications in the Ascent of Man that, 
 had he been spared, he would have given us work of a still 
 higher quality. The concluding chapter on Involution shows 
 an appreciation of the import of an idealistic philosophy 
 which is a new feature in his thinking. " Are we even quite 
 sure that what we call a physical world is, after all, a physical 
 world ? . . . The very term ' material world,' we are told, is 
 a misnomer, that the world is a spiritual world, merely em- 
 ploying ' matter ' for its manifestations." " Evolution is not 
 progress in matter. Matter cannot progress. It is a prog- 
 ress in spirit, in that which is limitless, in that which is at 
 once most human, most rational, most divine." " Evolution 
 is Advolution ; better, it is revelation the phenomenal 
 expression of the divine, the progressive realisation of the 
 ideal, the ascent of Love." I cannot help feeling that Pro- 
 fessor Drummond hampered himself needlessly by seeking 
 arguments for the laws of the spiritual world in Nature. 
 The sentences I have quoted show how he was beginning to 
 work himself free of this hampering influence by recognising 
 that spirit is the prius of matter, that nature is itself only 
 interpretable through the mind of man, or (to use his own 
 phrase) the spiritual world. No one could have adopted a 
 more hospitable attitude towards new truth. Had he lived 
 to follow out the hints contained in the last chapter of the 
 Ascent of Man, he had it in him to do work as an Evangelist 
 to the scientific and cultured classes for which the great 
 work he has already done would have seemed but a prepara- 
 tion.'
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 BOYS AND THE BOYS' BRIGADE 
 
 NOT only did Henry Drummond preserve the mem- 
 ory of his boyhood, as the pure do, but to the end he 
 remained a boy, happy, whole-hearted and unspoiled. 
 None could be fuller of the love of sport or of the 
 spirit of fun than he. He would have confessed that 
 his chief liking was for a fire, a launch, or a football 
 match. He had climbed to the height of experience, 
 and success ; he was on familiar terms with the greatest 
 men of his generation ; but some angel had blessed 
 him with the fortunate gift of still being able to look 
 out on life from the level of a boy's eyes, and nothing 
 in him was more attractive than his wonder at a new 
 engine, or his awe of every great man whom he 
 encountered for the first time. Many men, when in 
 all sincerity they ' humble themselves and become as 
 little children,' do so awkwardly and with a clatter; 
 they tumble down to the children's level, and are 
 childlike only by being boisterous. But he had never 
 left that level. I always think of him as the fulfilment 
 of the broken dream of which Mr. Wendell Holmes 
 tells us so prettily in one of his poems : Drummond 
 had the secret of being a boy without leaving his 
 manhood behind him. 
 
 This brought him great influence with boys, and he 
 won their love without difficulty. To us who were his 
 contemporaries, nothing gave more pleasure than to 
 discover, when we had boys of our own, all the way 
 from seven to seventeen, how quickly they too became 
 
 473
 
 474 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 his friends. He was amazingly fertile in surprising 
 their wishes. Every new book a boy could love, every 
 new game or puzzle, on these he was our trusted 
 adviser. A children's party was sure to go off well if 
 he was there. When boys were at school or parents 
 from home, his visits to those, his letters to these, were 
 things to be remembered for many a day. In deeper 
 things it was the same. He read a boy's heart, under- 
 stood his temptations, and knew on what side religion 
 touched him. Lads who shirked religious meetings 
 did not shirk those which Drummond held after they 
 had heard him once. His services for boys in Edin- 
 burgh were happy and unforced. In style (it almost 
 goes without saying) his addresses had nothing about 
 them of the conventional or condescending the ' my- 
 dear-young-friends ' attitude. In substance they were 
 true to his maxim that ' a boy's religion must be his 
 own, and ought not to be his grandmother's or his 
 aunt's.' What he counted such a religion to be, may 
 be found in First ! printed for the Boys' Brigade, or 
 in Baxter s Second Innings. Here we may give a few 
 of his letters only to show how happy he was with 
 boys, and what trouble he took to be kind to them. 
 The first is in anticipation of a visit that some brothers 
 were about to pay him in Glasgow. It is to their 
 mother. 
 
 'Feb. 28 [year not given]. 
 
 '. . . The boys will swagger in later. Private. 
 Can you indicate anything in the wide world 
 which I could buy, borrow, or steal which could 
 make them happy: anything edible, drinkable, 
 scentable, seeable, or feelable which could give 
 them delight. Perhaps there is nothing; but 
 most boys have a particular brand of chocolate 
 or something.'
 
 BOYS AND THE BOYS' BRIGADE 475 
 
 He sent Baxter s Second Innings to a young friend 
 before he published it. 
 
 <3, PARK CIRCUS, GLASGOW, Oct. 8, 1891. 
 
 ' Boys are so terribly cute that I must have an old 
 boy's opinion before I can venture to print this ! 
 You will notice there is a minimum of direct 
 religion, but that is designed.' 
 
 To another who wrote asking if he might pay a 
 visit there came on a card this reply : 
 
 b MR. H. DRUMMOND <t> 
 
 & > 
 
 v very much <y 
 
 / AT HOME V, 
 
 ^ on tb 
 
 & Friday, March ist *Jfc 
 
 ^J> From 6 P.M. 
 
 J 
 
 till 
 y All Hours. 
 
 The Hippodrome, 
 Feb. 28, 1889. 
 
 To the same boys, in 1889, he sent examination 
 papers. Here are some of the questions: 
 
 ' HISTORY 
 
 ' i. Give a short life of Piggott. 
 
 ' 2. Where was Major Whittle born ? contrast him briefly 
 with Wellington, Napoleon, General Booth, General Tom 
 Thumb, and the General Supply Stores. 
 
 ' 3. Who was Lord Fauntleroy, and what were his chief 
 battles ? 
 
 ' 4. How long did it take Dante to " climb the mountain " ? 
 and what is the shortest time it has ever been done in ? Who 
 first beat Dante's record ? 
 
 ' 5. Are you a Home- Ruler ? If so, why not ?
 
 47^ HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 ' DOMESTIC ECONOMY 
 
 ' i . What is the retail price of sausages ? 
 
 ' 2. Name the two best brands of shortbread. What is 
 longbread, and how does it differ from high-bred ? 
 
 ' 3. Discuss the following : " Has the Discoverer of Chloro- 
 form or of Beanbags done the most for humanity ? " 
 
 '4. How would you spend 2d. if you got it ? Subtract \d. 
 from 2.d. y and parse the remainder. 
 
 ' PHYSIOLOGY 
 
 ' i. Define the term " Get-your-hair-cut," and say if Red 
 Hair is Hair-red-itary. 
 
 ' 2. Where was your face before it was washed ? ' 
 
 When he was at Dax, in the Pyrenees, in 1895, one 
 of the same brothers wrote him that he had discovered 
 a skeleton in the gravels of the river Garrie in Perth- 
 shire. The skull had two ' clours ' in the back of it, 
 signs that it had belonged to some fugitive from the 
 battle of Killiecrankie, caught from behind as he fled 
 south. Drummond wrote this reply, while he was 
 lying on his back, racked with the pains of his last 
 illness. The 'fama ' is a reference to the attacks 
 made upon his Ascent of Man by some Highland 
 Presbyteries. The card is undated : 
 
 ' MONSIEUR, Honoured as I am by any communi- 
 cation from you, I cannot but be aware of the 
 motive which has induced you to acquaint me 
 with your disgusting discoveries. No, Sir, / did 
 NOT kill that man. Doubtless he was fishing 
 with WORM, and therefore was worthy of Death ; 
 but if you judge my hand did this deed, the 
 suggestion is the product of a disordered intelli- 
 gence, and I have witnesses to prove an Alibi. 
 I beg, Sir, that this fama clamosa which, as
 
 BOYS AND THE BOYS' BRIGADE 477 
 
 I am credibly informed, has, to my grievous 
 hurt, already spread to Dingwall and the borders 
 thereof be immediately arrested, and that you 
 will cease to trouble the short nights and linger- 
 ing days of a Poor Invalid with Base Suspicions. 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 D(AX): 
 
 But it was not only the sons of his friends whom 
 Drummond loved. He studied, for he loved, the Boy, 
 wherever he found him. In Glasgow, message and 
 telegraph boys, the urchins that play football behind 
 the policeman's back, and the little ragamuffin bands 
 which used some years ago to parade the streets with 
 penny whistles and tin pails, these were his con- 
 stant entertainment. He was always stopping you 
 to watch some of them. Here is a picture he drew 
 from his own windows : 
 
 ' What are these creatures shambling up the cres- 
 cent? These are two message-boys. And who 
 is that troglodyte roosting on the railing ? That 
 is Drake's boy, waiting on Peel's boy and Smellie's 
 boy. Why does he wait? Because he never 
 travels alone ; secondly, because he has infinite 
 time. Do they shake hands when they meet? 
 No : Drake's boy puts out his foot and trips up 
 Peel's boy. What does Peel's boy do? He 
 rises in haste and smites him with a leg of 
 mutton. Are they now enemies? No; these 
 are proofs of attachment. After burnishing the 
 leg of mutton, they sit down to discuss the uni- 
 verse i.e. the street, the pantomime, and one 
 Kidd, a pirate. 
 
 ' Why does Smellie's boy go off by himself and 
 yell ? If he did not do that, he would burst. He
 
 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 does not know he is yelling. Why does he lay 
 down his basket and dance ? Hush ! do not 
 betray him. All boys do that when they are 
 alone. Does he look ashamed if you see him ? 
 No; boys never look anything. Will he come 
 to, if you leave him ? Yes ; he will whistle pres- 
 ently, and calm down. How much does he get 
 for this ? Four-and-sixpence a-week.' 1 
 
 Since. the days when he taught in the Sunday-schools 
 of the Edinburgh Cowgate, he had been face to face 
 with the religious problem of our city-boys ; when he 
 came to Glasgow he felt its urgency still more ; and 
 in addition, there were pressed upon his observation 
 one or two painful facts concerning, in particular, 
 message-boys, and still more, message-girls. I do not 
 know whether the evil continues, but some years ago 
 it was not uncommon for boys and girls to be sent 
 from shops with baskets or parcels far too heavy for 
 them. Drummond tested some of the weights him- 
 self, while helping these poor children along the street, 
 and found them cruelly overladen. In some cases, 
 the constant carriage of a heavy basket on the elbow 
 drew round the shoulder-blade and rendered the child 
 slightly deformed for life. Drummond saw the folly 
 of using a child's elbow to hook on to a great burden, 
 and he had baskets made to strap over the shoulders 
 and rest on the back like a knapsack. Several trades- 
 men in Glasgow adopted these, and we used to see 
 them in use on the streets. I have not seen any for 
 several years. 
 
 But the moral problem of the city-boy was a much 
 harder one, and there was nothing in existence which 
 had quite solved it. In many Sunday-schools the 
 
 1 From article in Good Words printed by the Boys' Brigade.
 
 BOYS AND THE BOYS' BRIGADE 479 
 
 discipline was genuine ; and here and there teachers 
 of rough boys not only interested them on Sunday, 
 but kept in touch with them through the rest of the 
 week. To this extent Drummond's wholesale criticism 
 of Sunday-schools, which we shall presently quote, 
 needs qualification, as indeed he himself hints. But 
 of a very large proportion of Sunday-schools, whether 
 in the rougher or more respectable parts of our cities, 
 every word he says is true. The discipline was fitful, 
 and often secured only by threats of exclusion from 
 the winter soiree and summer trip, for the sake of 
 which many children would attend two or three schools 
 in the course of one Sunday. Beyond an occasional 
 visit to the homes of their boys, or having them once 
 a year at their own houses, the teachers did nothing 
 to control or refine the life of their pupils. The crisis 
 was becoming desperate, for a large number of teachers 
 annually deserted a work of which they recognised 
 the futility, and for which they knew of no other 
 methods. 
 
 To one teacher who had felt all this the happy 
 inspiration came of bringing down upon the older 
 boys the methods of military discipline. Mr. W. A. 
 Smith was a Glasgow merchant, a lieutenant in the 
 ist Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers, and a Sunday-school 
 teacher, with good business capacity, soldierly effi- 
 ciency, a sound judgment, and a real love for boys. 
 On October 4, 1883, Mr. Smith formed thirty of the 
 pupils of his own school the Mission School of Col- 
 lege Free Church into a company, and tried upon 
 them the effects of regular drill. This was the first 
 company of the now famous Boys' Brigade. The 
 experiment succeeded so well that it was imitated in 
 some other schools; the movement won the confidence 
 of several men of position in Glasgow and other Scot-
 
 480 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 tish towns; and at last, in January, 1885, the Brigade 
 was formally constituted as a national organisation. 
 The movement rapidly spread, companies were formed 
 in every part of the kingdom, and in connection with 
 nearly every branch of the Christian Church. 
 
 The object of the Brigade was denned as ' The 
 advancement of Christ's kingdom among boys and the 
 promotion of habits of obedience, reverence, discipline, 
 self-respect, and all that tends towards a true Christian 
 manliness.' The Brigade seeks ' to secure this object 
 through the agency of military drill and discipline, as 
 a means whereby boys are attracted, held together, 
 and brought into a receptive attitude for the religious 
 teaching and guiding, which is the main work of the 
 Brigade.' 1 Each company is attached to some Church 
 or other Christian organisation, which is held respon- 
 sible for everything connected with the formation of 
 the company, for the nomination of suitable officers, 
 and for the religious teaching of the Boys. The 
 management of the Brigade is committed to an execu- 
 tive of fifteen members, elected annually by the council, 
 which represents every company in the Brigade. 
 The headquarters are in Glasgow, 2 but the annual 
 gatherings of the council and the periodical meetings 
 of the executive are held in different large cities 
 throughout the kingdom. The patron is H.R.H. the 
 Duke of York, the vice-patron His Grace the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, and the honorary president, the 
 Earl of Aberdeen. In 1883 there was the single com- 
 pany with three officers and thirty boys. On May 
 31, 1898, the returns for the United Kingdom were 
 786 companies, with 2828 officers and 34,209 boys. 
 
 1 From a Memorandum by Mr. J. Carfrae Alston of Glasgow, the Brigade 
 President, to which I am indebted for most of what follows. 
 
 2 Full information may be procured from Mr. W. A. Smith, the Secretary, at 
 162, Buchanan Street, Glasgow.
 
 BOYS AND THE BOYS' BRIGADE 481 
 
 The district battalions are inspected annually at their 
 centres by military officers. Among those who have 
 acted as inspectors, and have expressed high com- 
 mendation of the discipline and efficiency of the bat- 
 talions they have reviewed, have been Field- Marshals 
 Lord Wolseley, Lord Roberts, and Sir Donald Stewart, 
 General Chapman commanding Her Majesty's Forces 
 in Scotland, and other distinguished soldiers. From 
 Great Britain the movement has spread to the United 
 States, Canada, the West Indies, South Africa, Aus- 
 tralia, New Zealand, and India. The numbers in these 
 countries, when added to the Home Brigade, made a 
 grand total of 1550 companies, 5400 officers, and 
 67,500 boys. 
 
 The Brigade is neither Presbyterian nor bound to 
 any other denomination. Nor is it confined either to 
 the Churches established by law or to Dissent. The 
 Church of England and the Episcopal Church of 
 Ireland are largely represented on its strength, and 
 throughout the kingdom most of the other Christian 
 organisations give it full support. The Roman 
 Catholic Church in Ireland and elsewhere has adopted 
 the methods of the Brigade ; and the Jewish com- 
 munity in London has found that these can be adapted 
 to the religious training which they give their boys. 
 
 The movement had to make its way at first in 
 face of hostile criticism, chiefly from those who were 
 alarmed at its military side, and were ignorant of what 
 was behind. But the sound sense of its promoters, the 
 sincerity of the religious aims of the officers, and the 
 manifest effect upon the conduct and character of all 
 the schools in which companies were formed, very 
 speedily silenced objectors, and the Brigade has be- 
 come established as one of the unquestioned religious 
 forces of our time.
 
 482 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 The distinguishing feature of the organisation is 
 that it has two sides the military and religious 
 which are not separate, but closely interwoven. The 
 first is the letter of the movement, the language, 
 the means, the discipline ; the second is the spirit, the 
 significance, the power, the final aim and purpose. By 
 the first, the methods of which have caught their fancy 
 to a quite remarkable extent, the boys have been brought 
 under a control rarely, if ever, attained by the methods 
 common to most Sunday-schools. They take the Bri- 
 gade seriously, perform the duties with alacrity, and 
 obey the restrictions which it imposes upon them. A 
 boy takes readily to drill because he enjoys it. And it 
 is this liking that first brings him within range of the 
 good influences by which he is to be surrounded in 
 his company. Then there grow upon him the feelings 
 of strength in union, of joint responsibility, and of the 
 dependence of the boys upon each other, all of 
 which by themselves produce within him acquiescence 
 in that wonderful pressure of discipline that is calcu- 
 lated to bring important and permanent changes upon 
 his character. Those in charge of the movement, 
 however, have been very careful that its military side 
 shall not be carried further than is necessary. While 
 the formation of companies involves the appointment 
 of officers, aping of the style of a military force is 
 avoided. The uniform is limited to a cap, belt, and 
 haversack, added to the ordinary clothing of the boys. 
 A cross-belt and chevron distinguish the sergeants, 
 and the officers wear a suitable cap and carry a cane. 
 This simplicity does not prevent the drill being of the 
 very best quality. It is the Army Drill laid down by 
 the War Office in the Official ' Red-Book,' and in 
 many instances it has been brought to a remarkable 
 perfection.
 
 BOYS AND THE BOYS' BRIGADE 483 
 
 But while this external evidence of the Brigade 
 is that which is most conspicuous to the public, 
 the deeper and the principal operations of the move- 
 ment are upon the religious side. The personal deal- 
 ing with each boy in relation to religion, to his home, 
 to his companions and his amusements, is not a thing 
 to be paraded, but it is here that the strength of the 
 Brigade lies; and just in proportion as this inner work 
 has been genuine, the movement has earned its great 
 success. The Brigade is not a conglomeration of drill- 
 classes. Religion permeates it in every department. 
 The religion of the Company Bible-class is the same 
 as that of the drill-meeting, the recreation-room, and 
 the club for cricket, football, or athletics, which is 
 attached to the company. It is sought to make the 
 boys realise that religion is for the whole life of a boy, 
 and not merely for one day in the week. 
 
 From this it will be seen how much depends on the 
 company officers. A company officer not only main- 
 tains discipline, gives orders, and brings the drill up 
 to a high standard. He is the friend and guide of his 
 boys, the home visitor, the superintendent of sports, 
 and the Bible-class teacher. He conducts the short 
 service at drill and gives the tone to the whole life of 
 the company. If he be the right man, he can so 
 mould the boyhood of our land that Christ's kingdom 
 shall be truly advanced. Now, one of the successes 
 of the movement has been to secure a supply of able 
 and devoted young men to act as company officers. 
 When Lord Roberts came to inspect the Glasgow 
 battalion, he was satisfied with the discipline and drill 
 of the boys ; but more than once he expressed his ad- 
 miration that so many young men of the requisite skill 
 and earnestness should have been found to act as 
 officers, and he repeatedly praised their diligence
 
 484 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 in a cause so unselfish and so practical. They have 
 their reward. There is nowhere at the present day 
 such a field for young men who desire to work for the 
 community in the spirit of Christ. 
 
 I have thus fully described the Boys' Brigade, be- 
 cause from the first the movement won Henry Drum- 
 mond's heart, and secured his hearty and deliberate 
 co-operation. He was consulted by its promoters, en- 
 tered its councils, became an Honorary Vice- President, 
 frequently addressed its members, wrote books for 
 them, and pleaded for them before the public both on 
 platforms and by articles. He started the movement 
 in Australia, and laboured for it strenuously in the 
 United States and Canada. Next to his own work 
 among the Edinburgh students, there was no institu- 
 tion of our time to which he gave more thought in 
 the last ten years of his life, or of which he used to 
 speak up to the very end with more satisfaction and 
 more hope. I have quoted l the opening of his article 
 in Good Words. Here are some more extracts : 
 
 ' The boy is accounted for by the Evolution Theory. 
 His father was the Primitive Man. It is only his 
 being in a town and his mispronunciation that 
 make you think he is not a savage. What he 
 represents is Capacity ; he is clay, dough, putty. 
 This boy cannot as yet walk straight, or dress 
 better, or brush his hair. He is not good. He 
 is not bad. He has no soul. He has not even 
 soap. He is simply Boy, pure, unwashed, unre- 
 generate Boy. Can anything be done for him? 
 Yes, a very great invention has appeared ; it is 
 known to the initiated as the " B.B." Until the 
 " B.B." was discovered, scarcely any one knew 
 
 1 See above, p. 477 f.
 
 BOYS AND THE BOYS' BRIGADE 485 
 
 how to make a man, a gentleman, and a Christian 
 out of a message-boy. The thing had happened, 
 perhaps, as a chance or sport, but there was no 
 steady machinery for it. Specimens could be 
 turned out at the rate of a score or two in a year, 
 but under the New Process you have them by the 
 battalion. The message-boy of the close of the 
 nineteenth century, in fact, will soon become a 
 tradition. All that will remain of him will be a 
 basket and a woollen comforter. 
 
 ' Like all really great inventions, the New Process 
 is very simple. It rises naturally out of a process 
 already in use, or rather in uselessness, for the 
 Old Process rarely effected anything. Let us 
 suppose you have gathered a Sunday-class of 
 boys, and treat them at first on the old or time- 
 dishonoured plan. Infinite trouble and infinite 
 bribery have brought these creatures together; 
 and as they come solely to amuse themselves, 
 your whole effort is spent in keeping order in 
 quelling riots, subduing irrelevant remarks, mini- 
 mising attacks upon the person, and protecting 
 your Sunday hat from destruction. No boy, you 
 know perfectly, has yet succeeded in listening to 
 you for two consecutive minutes. They have 
 learned nothing whatever. Respect is unknown, 
 obedience a jest. Even the minor virtues of 
 regularity, punctuality, and courtesy have not yet 
 dawned upon their virgin minds. 
 
 ' What is wrong is that they have no motive, no 
 interest, and you have not tried to find these for 
 them. They are street-boys, and you have treated 
 them as if they had the motives and interests of 
 domestic boys. The real boy-nature in them has 
 never been consulted. You may be a very re-
 
 486 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 markable man, but it is not their kind of remark 
 ableness, so you are a person of no authority in 
 their eyes. You may be a walking biblical 
 cyclopaedia, but they have no interest even in a 
 stationary biblical cyclopaedia. They believe you 
 to be a thoroughly good fellow in your way, only 
 it is an earth's diameter from their way ; and that 
 you should know precisely what their way is they 
 guilelessly give you opportunity of learning every 
 single second you spend among them. 
 
 ' One night, after the usual emeute, you retire from 
 the place of torture vowing to attempt some 
 change. Next morning you betake yourself to 
 the Headquarters of the New Process and deter- 
 mine to explore its secret. The whole art and 
 mystery of making Boys is explained to you ; the 
 whole process of cleaning, restoring, renovating 
 them ; of clothing them and putting them into a 
 right mind, of giving them a sound body and a 
 reasonable soul. And at your preparation-hour 
 the following Saturday night, instead of trying to 
 find out whether the Israelites crossed the Red 
 Sea by the shoals at Suez or went round, " as 
 some say," by Wady Tawarik, you read up the 
 literature of the " B.B.," and learn how the chil- 
 dren of your own city can be led across the more 
 difficult sea of life's temptations. 
 
 ' When you faced your Boys the next night, the New 
 Process bursting within you, they discerned at a 
 glance that something was going to happen. To 
 be sure a carefully planned mutiny was to come 
 off that night on their part, but the look of you 
 arrests them, and they delay hostilities to give you 
 one more chance. You confide to them that next 
 Thursday evening you are going to secure a hall,
 
 BOYS AND THE BOYS' BRIGADE 487 
 
 and if they will meet you there at eight o'clock 
 they will spend the most wonderful night of their 
 lives. Yourself and a friend who is an Officer in 
 the Volunteers are going to tell them all about 
 Drill and teach them exactly how it is to be done. 
 You promise, moreover, by and by, to bring caps 
 and belts, which they may have for the price of a 
 few Sons of Britannia, and hint that in time a 
 haversack may be entertained, and a band, and 
 stripes, and prizes, and even a rifle, which, though 
 warranted not to go off, will yet be a weapon of 
 no mean calibre. After a few other details of an 
 equally enticing nature, the mine is fairly sprung, 
 and with a very brief postscript on the Israelites 
 you bring to a triumphant close the first successful 
 class-meeting in your experience. 
 * Next Thursday, strange contrast to all Sunday pre- 
 cedents, every Boy is on the spot at the hour. In- 
 stead of the wandering, bored look, every eye is 
 transfixed on the brown-paper parcel which, with 
 newly acquired cunning, you have labelled " Ac- 
 coutrements " not that they know the word, but 
 they feel sure it is something military. After cap- 
 ping and belting them, though this is not lawful 
 at this early stage, and standing them up in a 
 row, you proceed to business. You do not start 
 off with the old injured Sunday air, " Now, Boys, 
 behave yourselves." There are no Boys in the 
 room. These are privates, full privates. You do 
 not cringe before them and beg and implore atten- 
 tion. You pull yourself together and shout out 
 that last word, " 'Tenshun," like an explosion, and 
 the very change of accent to the last syllable par- 
 alyses the whole row into rigid statues. Follow- 
 ing up this sudden advantage you keep them
 
 488 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 moving marching, halting, marking time, and 
 doubling, till they are dropping with fatigue. 
 What liberties you take 'this blessed night ! No 
 lion-king making his wild beasts jump through 
 hoops could be prouder of himself. You order 
 them about like an emperor. You criticise their 
 hands, their faces, their feet even their boots 
 without a murmur of dissent. Number Five's 
 hair is pilloried before the whole company, and 
 he actually takes it as a compliment. Eleven's 
 coat has a tear across the breast which is de- 
 nounced as unmilitary, and he is ordered to have 
 it repaired on penalty of the guardroom. If Three 
 of the rear rank again kicks Two of the front rank 
 he will be put into a dungeon. Any private absent 
 from drill next Thursday will be branded as a 
 deserter, while unwashed hands will be a case for 
 a court-martial. 
 
 ' Amazing and preposterous illusion ! Call these 
 Boys, Boys, which they are, and ask them to sit 
 up in a Sunday-class, and no power on earth will 
 make them do it ; but put a fivepenny cap on them 
 and call them soldiers, which they are not, and you 
 can order them about till midnight. The genius 
 who discovered this astounding and inexplicable 
 psychological fact ought to rank with Sir Isaac 
 Newton. Talk of what can be got out of coal-tar 
 or waste-paper ! Why, you take your boy, your 
 troglodyte, your Arab, your gamin, on this princi- 
 ple, and there is no limit to what you can extract 
 from him or do with him. Look at this quondam 
 class, which is to-night a Company. As class it 
 was confusion, depression, demoralisation, chaos. 
 As Company, it is respect, self-respect, enthusi- 
 asm, happiness, peace. The beauty of the change
 
 BOYS AND THE BOYS' BRIGADE 489 
 
 is that it is spontaneous, secured without heart- 
 burn, maintained without compulsion. The Boy's 
 own nature rises to it with a bound ; and the live- 
 lier the specimen, the greater its hold upon him.' 
 
 He then gives the history of the movement and the 
 details of organisation. After stating that the Brigade 
 takes boys between twelve and seventeen, being ' de- 
 signed to operate on a Boy only during a specific part 
 of his development,' and then hand him over to the 
 Y.M.C.A., or Church Guilds, or the like, he con- 
 tinues : 
 
 ' The Brigade, in fact, is meant to supply the miss- 
 ing link between these institutions and the ordi- 
 nary Sunday-school. As soon as a Boy becomes 
 a wage-earner, and breathes the free air of street 
 or workshop, the Sunday-school ceases to hold 
 him, and without something to bridge the interval 
 between school life and the educative and reli- 
 gious associations for young men, he would either 
 be lost or spoiled before these could throw their 
 meshes round him. It is in this respect more 
 perhaps than in any other that the Boys' Brigade 
 is to be welcomed to a place among the staple 
 institutions of the country. If those higher insti- 
 tutions are not large enough or elastic enough or 
 attractive enough to receive and hold the veterans 
 who pass out of the ranks of the Boys' Brigade, 
 they must either do better or give place to some 
 organisation which will.' 
 
 . Then follows an emphasis on the fact that every 
 Company must be connected with a ' Church, Mission, 
 or other Christian organisation.'
 
 49O HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 4 For it cannot be too emphatically said that the 
 Boys' Brigade is a religious movement. Every- 
 thing is subsidiary to this idea. It may not 
 always be brandished before the eyes of the Boys 
 themselves in so many words, and it would not be 
 wholly true to the type of boy-religion to over- 
 advertise it, but at bottom the Boys' Brigade 
 exists for this, and it is never afraid to confess it. 
 On the forefront of its earliest documents stand 
 these words : " The Object of the Boys' Brigade 
 is the advancement of Christ's Kingdom among 
 Boys, and the promotion of habits of reverence, 
 discipline, self-respect, and all that tends towards 
 a true Christian manliness." That flag has never 
 been taken down. "A true Christian manliness" 
 that is its motto ; and the emphasis upon the 
 manly rather than upon the mawkish presentation 
 of Christianity has been its stronghold from the 
 first. 
 
 1 Contrary to a somewhat natural impression, the 
 Boys' Brigade does not teach the "Art of War," 
 nor does it foster or encourage the war-spirit. It 
 simply employs military organisation, drill, and 
 discipline, as the most stimulating and interesting 
 means of securing the attention of a volatile class 
 and of promoting self-respect, chivalry, courtesy, 
 esprit de corps, and a host of kindred virtues. To 
 these more personal results the military organi- 
 sation is but an aid, and this fact is continually 
 kept before the Officers by means of the magazine 
 which is issued periodically from Headquarters, as 
 well as by the official Constitution of the organisa- 
 tion. With the Officers, saturated as they are with 
 the deeper meaning of their work, feeling as they 
 do the greatness and responsibility of their com-
 
 BOYS AND THE BOYS' BRIGADE 49! 
 
 mission, it is an idle fear that any should so far 
 betray his trust as to conceal the end in the means. 
 As to the retort that the end can never justify such 
 means, it is simply to be said that the " means " 
 are not what they are supposed. To teach drill 
 is not to teach the "Art of War/' nor is the drill- 
 spirit a war-spirit. Firemen are drilled, policemen 
 are drilled ; and though it is true the cap and belt 
 of the Boys are the regalia of another order, it 
 may be doubted whether drill is any more to them 
 than to these other sons of peace. That the war- 
 spirit exists at all among the Boys of any single 
 Company of the Brigade would certainly be news 
 to the Officers, and if it did arise it would as cer- 
 tainly be checked. One has even known Volun- 
 teers whose souls were not consumed by enmity, 
 hatred, and revenge ; and it is whispered that there 
 are actually privates in Her Majesty's Service who 
 do not breathe out blood and fire. Besides this, 
 what is known in the " Army Red Book " as 
 Physical Drill is more and more coming to play 
 a leading part in Brigade work, and the govern- 
 ing body may be trusted to reduce the merely 
 military machinery to the lowest possible mini- 
 mum 
 
 * The true aspiration and teaching of the Brigade 
 could not be better summarised than in this fur- 
 ther quotation from its official literature : 
 
 ' " Our Boys are full of earnest desire to be brave, true 
 men; and if we want to make them brave, true, Christian 
 men, we must direct this desire into the right channel, and 
 show them that in the service of Christ they will find the 
 bravest, truest life that it is possible for a man to live. We 
 laid the foundations of the Boys' Brigade on this idea, and 
 determined to try to win the Boys for Christ, by presenting
 
 492 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 to them that view of Christianity to which we knew their 
 natures would most readily respond, being fully conscious 
 how much more there was to show them after they had been 
 won." 
 
 ' There are at least two points where religious teach- 
 ing directly comes in. The first is the Company 
 Bible-class. Every Company being connected 
 with some existing Christian organisation, the 
 Boys are urged to attend whatever Bible-class 
 exists, and in most cases they do so. But wher- 
 ever no existing interest is interfered with, the 
 Captains usually provide a class of their own. 
 These special Company classes now number 
 about two hundred, with an average attendance 
 of over four thousand Boys ; and that this side 
 of the work is receiving special impulse is plain 
 from the fact that last year saw the birth of over 
 fifty new classes. 1 
 
 1 In addition to these Sunday-classes, nearly every 
 Company reports an address given at drill on 
 the week-night, with more or less regularity ; and 
 each parade is opened and closed with prayer, 
 or with a short religious service. Once a year 
 also it is becoming an increasing custom for the 
 Companies in populous centres to have a united 
 Church parade, where they attend Divine Ser- 
 vice in " uniform," and hear a special sermon 
 from some distinguished preacher. 
 
 ' But though this is the foundation of the Brigade, 
 it is by no means the whole superstructure. The 
 Brigade has almost as many departments of activ- 
 ity as a Boy has needs. It is clear, for instance, 
 that, in dealing with Boys, supreme importance 
 
 1 The report for 1898 gives 473 Bible-classes, with an average attendance 
 of 12,819 boys.
 
 BOYS AND THE BOYS' BRIGADE 493 
 
 must be attached to maintaining a right attitude 
 towards athletics. And here the Brigade has 
 taken the bull by the horns, and formed a special 
 department to deal with amusements a depart- 
 ment whose express object is to guide and elevate 
 sport, and, by unobtrusive methods, to get even 
 recreation to pay its toll to the disciplining of 
 character. 
 
 ' One or more clubs for football, cricket, gymnastics, 
 or swimming have been formed in connection 
 with almost every Company, and the honour of 
 the Brigade, both physical and moral, is held up 
 as an inspiration to the Boys in all they do. The 
 Captains are not so much above the Boys in years 
 as to have lost either their love or knowledge of 
 sports, and a frequent sight now on a Saturday 
 afternoon is to witness a football match between 
 rival Companies, with the Lieutenant or Captain 
 officiating as umpire. At practice during the 
 week also he will act as coach, and the effect of 
 this both upon the sports themselves and on his 
 personal influence with the Boys, is obvious. 
 The wise Officer, the humane and sensible Offi- 
 cer, in short, makes as much use of play for higher 
 purposes as of the parades, and possibly more. 
 The key to a Boy's life in the present generation 
 lies in athletics. Sport commands his whole 
 leisure, and governs his thoughts and ambitions 
 even in working hours. And so striking has 
 been this development in recent years, and espe- 
 cially among the young men of the larger towns, 
 that the time has come to decide whether ath- 
 letics are to become a curse to the country or a 
 blessing. That issue is now, and in an almost 
 acute form, directly before society. And the
 
 494 HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 decision, so far as some of us can see, depends 
 mainly upon such work as the Boys' Brigade is 
 doing through its athletic department. Were it 
 for this alone the elevation of athletics, the 
 making moral of what, in the eyes of those who 
 really know, is fast becoming a most immoral 
 and degrading institution the existence of the 
 Boys' Brigade is justified a hundred times.' 
 
 The article then describes the Summer Camps and 
 other organisations for working-lads' holidays which 
 when Drummond wrote (in 1892) had not reached a 
 tithe of the development to which, with vast benefit 
 to the health and morale of the boys, they have now 
 attained the ambulance classes, musical bands, and 
 reading-rooms and it closes with these remarks on 
 the Officers: 
 
 ' Behind all lies the supreme moulding force the 
 personal influence, example, and instruction of 
 the Officers manifesting itself in directions and 
 in ways innumerable and varied, and in results 
 which can never be tabulated. There is no limit 
 to what a good Officer can do for his Boys. He 
 is not only their guide, philosopher, and friend, 
 but their brother. In distress, in sickness, they 
 can count upon him. If they are out of work, or 
 wish to better themselves in life, they know at 
 least one man in the world to whom their future 
 career is a living interest. In short, throughout 
 life they have some one to lean upon, to be ac- 
 countable to, to live up to. He, on his part, has 
 something to live for. He is the Pastor of Boys ; 
 and, if he is the right man, of their homes. Great 
 and splendid is this conception that every Boy
 
 BOYS AND THE BOYS' BRIGADE 495 
 
 should have a brother, that every home a friend ; 
 not missionary, not ministering spirit, not even 
 woman, but man, a young man, himself in the 
 thick of the fight and helping others, not because 
 he is above them, but because the same powder- 
 smoke envelops both. 
 
 * Many of the prime movers in this new cause are 
 men who have been almost strangers to such 
 work before. But they saw here something defi- 
 nite, practical, human; something that they could 
 begin upon without committing themselves to 
 positions which they had not quite thought out ; 
 something which could utilise the manlier ele- 
 ments in them, and give them a useful life-in- 
 terest outside themselves. Thus through the 
 instrumentality of the Brigade not only have 
 multitudes of Boys in town and country been 
 brought under a regime, morally and physically 
 educative, but numbers of influential young men, 
 including a great many Volunteers, have found 
 themselves for the first time enlisted in the cause 
 of social and religious progress. For a real field 
 of honest usefulness, a field where the tools re- 
 quired are simply the stronger and better ele- 
 ments in Christian manhood, there is probably 
 nothing open just now to laymen which has in it 
 anything like the same substance and promise as 
 this.'
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE END 
 
 THE first touches of the disease which ultimately 
 killed him, were felt by Drummond in the spring 
 of 1894 on the back of a winter of hard work. 
 Our club meeting, the last which he attended, was 
 held in the beginning of May at St. Mary's Loch, 
 and we noticed that of an evening he would sit in the 
 warm sitting-room with his topcoat on. He had an 
 easy summer, and spent several weeks fishing on 
 Loch Stack, on the River Beauly, and elsewhere. But 
 I am told he was sometimes so stiff that he could 
 hardly cast a line. When he returned to college in 
 November, his face looked worn, and he would shield 
 himself from cold in a way we had never seen him do 
 before. In December he had some sharp attacks of 
 sickness, but he held to his college work without com- 
 plaint, spoke in November at a meeting of the Glas- 
 gow University Settlement, presided in December 
 over the gathering of the West of Scotland Ramblers' 
 Alliance, of which he was President, and even arranged, 
 with some trouble to himself, for the opening of a new 
 line of work, to which for many years he had been 
 looking forward. 
 
 This was the establishment of a ' Pleasant Sunday 
 Afternoon,' for the men of that district of Glasgow 
 known as Port Dundas, round the terminus of the 
 Edinburgh and Glasgow Canal. Some citizens of 
 Glasgow had founded here the Canal Boatmen's Insti- 
 
 496
 
 Mf. 43] THE END 497 
 
 tute, 1 in a fine building with a hall, library, and club- 
 rooms. In the early part of January the missionary, 
 Mr. Gilbert, distributed a large number of circulars 
 calling the men of the district to a preliminary meeting 
 on Sunday, January 2Oth, at which Professor Drum- 
 mond and Bailie Bilsland were to be present; and it 
 was intimated that they were prepared, if the move- 
 ment went on, to give short addresses on subsequent 
 Sunday afternoons. The meeting was full and hearty. 
 A large number of members was enrolled, and the 
 services were continued. Drummond had at first an 
 exaggerated idea of the dislike of the men for whom 
 the meetings were planned to the forms of religion, 
 and he intended that there should be almost no 
 prayers. This idea, however, was abandoned, and a 
 small service was printed ; good music was provided, 
 and besides pieces from visitors, two or three hymns 
 were sung by the whole gathering. Drummond grew 
 too ill to take his promised share of the work, but till 
 the last his heart was in it. I do not think he suffi- 
 ciently realised the danger, which the P.S.A. move- 
 ment involves, of leading its members away from the 
 family aspects of religion ; yet it is certain that, as in 
 other places, so here, the meetings attracted a large 
 number of men, who would otherwise not have attended 
 a religious service, and in his helplessness during the 
 next two years he was cheered by news of the progress 
 and the undoubted benefits of the work. 
 
 He intended to go to Edinburgh as usual for some 
 of the student meetings in February and March. But 
 at last he had to write as follows : 
 
 1 In connection with the Canal Boatmen's Friend Society of Scotland. Presi- 
 dent, Leonard Gow, Esq. ; Vice-Presidents, Major Allan and Bailie Bilsland. 
 
 2K
 
 HENRY DRUMMOND [tgps 
 
 To Professor Simpson 
 
 <3, PARK. CIRCUS, GLASGOW, Feb. 5, 1895. 
 
 * MY DEAR DR. SIMPSON, I am very loath to write 
 
 this letter, and have put off doing so from week 
 to week, in the strong hope that it would not be 
 necessary. But I see now the inevitable must be 
 faced, and I wish to say that I must abandon the 
 idea of coming to the Oddfellows' Hall this winter. 
 I have had a second breakdown in health since 
 Christmas ; and though not at the moment 
 actually ill or unfit for daily duty, I feel it would 
 be wrong to attempt Edinburgh in my present 
 condition. 
 
 * What you and the " Committee " will do in the 
 
 circumstances I do not know, nor dare I suggest ; 
 but I know how well my place will be filled by 
 others. Those who have come to our platform 
 all these years have each their message, and one 
 which will be fresher and weightier to the stu- 
 dents than mine. I should stand aside with a 
 very much lighter heart than I now do if I 
 thought they would fill the breach. ... I shall 
 add nothing as to the disappointment all this 
 means to me.' 
 
 It was grievous to watch him during these days at 
 the work to which he clung in spite of all his pain and 
 our remonstrances. When he came to his daily lecture 
 the straight, lithe figure that used to bring brightness 
 into our sombre college, crossed the vestibule bent 
 and stiff. We found he was not sleeping at night, 
 and his face grew pinched. So he struggled on 
 till just a few days before the end of the session, 
 when his doctors peremptorily forbade more lectures. 
 He stayed in Glasgow a week or two, dissipating our
 
 JET. 43-44] THE END 499 
 
 fears all the more gloomy that fear for him was so 
 unusual by his brightness between the attacks of 
 heavy sickness. Then for change of air and relief 
 from the constant siege of interests which his house 
 endured while he was in it, he left Glasgow left it 
 for the last time. His work was done. 
 
 His work was done, yet one of the great services of 
 his life remained to be rendered. Looking back upon 
 the two years of weakness which ensued, we can clearly 
 see that as it had been given to him to prove how 
 fame, prosperity, and wealth of brilliant gifts may be 
 borne with unselfishness, so now he was strengthened 
 to show us how to suffer pain uncomplaining, endure 
 long illness, thinking more of others than of himself, 
 and at last face death, not only without fear, but with- 
 out even a strained or hectic consciousness of his 
 fate. His disease, though this was not known till 
 afterwards, was produced by a malignant growth of 
 the bones, that caused him intense agony. As the 
 months passed, and his hair whitened with the pain, 
 it deprived him of all power to move, and made him 
 so brittle that he could not endure even the grasp of a 
 friend's hand. Except for some moments of wander- 
 ing and these only during the last weeks his mind 
 was unclouded. He retained unabated the vigour, 
 and even the brilliance, of his intellect. He took an 
 eager interest in politics and in literature, remembered 
 in an astonishing way what absent friends were doing, 
 surprised them with telegrams of congratulation or 
 sympathy, planned the entertainment of those who 
 came to see him, and used to pose them with puzzles 
 and problems which he invented as he lay. The only 
 game he could play was chess, and he often won a 
 hard match. His sense of humour never left him, 
 and his room became a kind of ' pool ' for new stories
 
 5OO HENRY DRUMMOND [1895-97 
 
 which were brought him by his friends, and passed on 
 by him to others. He greeted you in his old way with 
 a flash of welcome, had a score of questions to ask 
 about your work, chaffed you, and chaffed himself, 
 too, in droll descriptions of his helpless state. His 
 weakness reaped the harvest of the love he had so 
 richly sown in the years of his strength. No man had 
 such friends or more devoted physicians. Some of 
 the former, and his brother, were always within hail 
 of him; the latter gave weeks out of their busy lives 
 to watch beside his bed. And so he sank slowly down 
 a long slope to the last edge, racked with pain, and 
 unable to move, but in clearness and peace of mind, 
 with faith and love and humour undiminished, and 
 with his friends about him to the last. 
 
 The stages of the journey were these. He was 
 taken from Glasgow to Edinburgh in the end of 
 March, 1895. In April he travelled to the south of 
 France for sunshine and the hot baths of Dax. In 
 May he removed to Biarritz. When these changes 
 failed to ease him, he was brought back to London 
 in July for further medical advice. From London he 
 was taken to Tunbridge Wells, where he lay under 
 the care of an old friend, Dr. Claude Wilson, his Scot- 
 tish doctors visiting him from time to time. There 
 was always some talk of taking him south again, but 
 he was never fit for the long journey, and at Tun- 
 bridge Wells he remained from September, 1895, till 
 the end, in March, 1897. At first he was able to go 
 about in a bath chair, and even to walk a few steps in 
 the open air. But as winter came on he moved only 
 between his bed and the dining-room. Soon he 
 ceased to sit up, and his couch was wheeled from the 
 one room to the other. Sometimes he was unable 
 even for this.
 
 yET. 43-45] THE END 5OI 
 
 I have tried to put together some of the relics of 
 those days the wise and humorous words with which 
 he charmed us to the last ; his kind judgments of the 
 men who were prosecuting him before the courts of his 
 Church ; his pencilled letters about the lands which 
 some of his friends were visiting; his amusing tele- 
 grams ; the fresh stories he told ; his jokes and his 
 puzzles ; his sane criticism of books and men ; his help- 
 ful counsels but they won't come into print. He 
 spoke often of the ' stupidity of being ill,' and twice or 
 thrice he said : ' Ah, you can't think how horrid I feel. 
 I have been giving all my life, and now it seems to me 
 positively indecent to be only getting. Well, perhaps 
 there's a lesson in that too.' Every good work of 
 which he heard still roused his interest, and sometimes 
 he longed to be up again for his share of it. ' I would 
 like to give a shove in there, if only with a catapult.' 
 Nor would he cease to plan what fishing he would 
 take for the next season. He did not speak of religion 
 more than he had done in the days of his strength ; 
 yet you felt it was there, as natural and unforced in 
 the face of death as it had been in the fulness of life. 
 Sometimes he asked us to pray and to read the New 
 Testament. ' That is the book one always comes back 
 to.' And sometimes he asked for music : ' Oh, any- 
 thing you like a hymn for preference, or a Scotch 
 song ; ' and once he named ' The Land o' the Leal ' 
 and ' Crossing the Bar.' 
 
 He was not without hopes of recovery, but it was 
 always difficult to know whether he really felt these, 
 or uttered them for our sakes. Yet from August, 1896, 
 his general health improved considerably; he put on 
 flesh. Towards the end of the year his pains abated, 
 and when his mother paid him at that time one of 
 her frequent visits, she could leave him without ap-
 
 5O2 HENRY DRUMMOND [1897 
 
 prehension. To a friend who was leaving after a visit 
 at Christmas he said, ' You may see little difference 
 upon me in a week, but in three months I shall be 
 another man.' This was not to be in the sense in 
 which he uttered it. The cessation of pain was due to 
 the progress of the disease, and only showed how nearly 
 this had finished its work. The constant strain was 
 telling upon his heart ; and we now know that when, 
 on New Year's Day, he spoke so brightly, and ex- 
 changed telegrams of congratulation with his col- 
 league, Professor Candlish, who, like him, had been 
 bedridden for months, the end for both was only 
 a matter of days. Through February they grew 
 weaker, and when Dr. Candlish passed away on Sun- 
 day, the yth of March, Drummond lay feeble and 
 languid. In the afternoon Dr. Barbour played to him 
 the music of the hymn, 'Art thou weary, art thou lan- 
 guid ? ' and other hymn tunes, with no response. Then 
 he tried the old Scots melody of ' Martyrdom,' to which 
 Drummond beat time with his hand, and joined in the 
 words : 
 
 ' I'm not ashamed to own my Lord, 
 
 Or to defend His cause, 
 Maintain the glory of His cross, 
 
 And honour all His laws.' 
 
 When the hymn was done, he said, ' There's nothing 
 to beat that, Hugh.' It is a paraphrase of the words 
 of Paul : / know whom I have believed, and am per- 
 suaded that He is able to keep that which I have com- 
 mitted unto Him, against that day. 
 
 On Monday he rallied, but on Tuesday he was 
 weaker again, and his brother James and Dr. Green- 
 field were summoned. His mind wandered upon 
 old themes. He talked, half-dreaming, about John's 
 Gospel.
 
 &t. 43-45] THE END 503 
 
 On Thursday morning he was very low. He mur- 
 mured a message to his mother, became unconscious, 
 and passed away very quietly about eleven o'clock. 
 
 The news came to us in Glasgow, by a tragic co- 
 incidence, as we were gathering to the funeral of his 
 colleague, Professor Candlish. Upon the following 
 Monday we went to Stirling to lay his body beside his 
 father's, on the Castle Rock, in the shadow of the old 
 Greyfriars' Church. This was not the only mourning 
 for him. On that day, or upon one of the Sundays on 
 either side of it, services were held in many towns of 
 the kingdom ; also in Princeton University, at Ottawa, 
 at Adelaide, at Singapore, and I know not where else. 
 Telegrams, public and private, with many later letters, 
 proved that there was hardly a country on earth in 
 which he was not being mourned. Yet at Stirling it 
 seemed as if all were represented. The day was a wild 
 one of sleet and rain, the steep town black with wet 
 under heavy clouds, the surrounding hills white with 
 snow. To lay him to rest there, upon the playground 
 of his boyhood wrapped in gloom, there gathered 
 mourners from every stage of the life that thence had 
 started on its brief but brilliant way : his own people, 
 the magistrates of the town, his mates at school and 
 college, his fellow-workers in every cause for which he 
 had laboured ; but chiefly a crowd of young men, 
 students in Edinburgh and Glasgow, yet from all parts 
 of the empire, and from lands beyond, whose fresh faces 
 shone through the dark church, not with the light of 
 memory only, but with the bright assurance that for 
 at least another generation Henry Drummond's work 
 on earth would not cease.
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 ADDRESSES TO STUDENTS OF EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY, ODDFELLOWS' 
 HALL, JANUARY-MARCH, 1890 
 
 THE reports from which these have been transcribed by me were 
 taken down, with Professor Drummond's permission, by Mr. George 
 Newman. 1 I have abridged or summarised them where they re- 
 peat any part of his published works. The audiences to which they 
 were given were of students, graduates, and professors only. They 
 were spoken from notes, for the most part very meagre notes, which 
 I have collated, so far as they are extant, with Mr. Newman's re- 
 ports. The reader will keep in mind that these are mere reports; 
 and that, while the substance of the addresses is given in them, and 
 also, so far as they go, Henry Drummond's very words, yet they are 
 not complete, and cannot reflect, except in a broken way, the ease, 
 the vividness, and the grace of his style. G. A. S. 
 
 I. EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 
 (January 26, 1890. Chairman: The EARL OF ABERDEEN.) 
 
 After illustrating Evolution as the method both of Nature and 
 History, the lecture takes up those aspects of it which concern the 
 Individual (i) The Evolution of the Body, (2) The Arrest of the 
 Body, the Arrest of the Animal, amply described in the Ascent of 
 Man, Chaps. I. -III. The lecture continues: 
 
 'Henceforth the man must rule, the body serve. Marcus Aurelius 
 tells us that the body is to be considered nowhere, and Paul says, 
 Reckon ye yourselves dead. This,, gentlemen, is one of the most 
 radical and subtle utterances ever spoken. But it does not mean 
 that the body may be treated in any way. Nay ! Neglect your 
 body, and it immediately comes from "under arrest" and cries 
 aloud. But this speaks and aims straight at the Temperance of the 
 
 1 See above, p. 353. 
 SOS
 
 506 APPENDIX 
 
 Body,' which the lecture then illustrates in a homely fashion by 'the 
 effects of a "third pipe," indolence,' etc. 
 
 He continues : 
 
 'Religion is not negative; it consists in spending life and time 
 for the man, i.e. the spirit to evolve. Give this a chance, and it 
 will evolve. Hence, crucify the flesh, take no thought for the mor- 
 row, but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. The 
 moment a man allows his body to rule this is sin, against God and 
 against Nature. . . . Men say as justification that sin is natural, 
 and man must sin. Aye, aye, gentlemen, he will do it naturally if 
 the body is supreme; but if the spirit is noble and ruling, sin is not 
 only not natural, but repugnant. One night some years ago in a 
 University town there was a meeting of the White Cross Society. 
 The meeting was over, one of the members had argued that sin was 
 not natural, and at the close one of the medical professors, gather- 
 ing a group of students around him, said, "That's gammon! The 
 sin you have heard of to-night is natural," and the students to a man 
 hissed him out of the room. It was not in Edinburgh. What I say 
 is this. I answer you, and I answer the world. It is not natural to 
 be inverted, not natural for the man to be dead and the body to rule. 
 
 '"Sin is the subordination of the higher nature to the lower" 
 (Martineau). It is, as I say, the subordination of the man to the 
 beast. But, remember, the Body is the Temple of the Holy Ghost, 
 and a violation of this Temple will be punished by certain death 
 nothing else, simply and purely death. Cell by cell, molecule by 
 molecule, the magnificent fabric will tumble to pieces. The rule 
 of the Body over the man is death. You (say, for example) are 
 allowing your body to rule; project your life imaginatively a decade, 
 and I say, tremble as you think. Death here, now and forever. 
 Religion gammon? Gammon, when it tells you that the Body shall 
 grovel to the man? I tell you, this is by far the grandest thing in 
 the wide world. . . . 
 
 ' Temptation is music to all ears. What is it that makes this vast 
 throng of men feel to-night like brothers? Temptation. You know 
 the man sitting next you is tempted like as you are. We are all 
 tempted, and we thus grow. The man grows as " the man " wins. 
 It is the brotherhood of temptation, a new and real tenderness, 
 which binds man to man, not body to body. 
 
 'Why is it that student life is critical? Because the body has 
 grown through all these ages, and we are thus full-grown "men- 
 bodies," so to speak, whereas that man in us, that good spirit in us, 
 is but a child, at the very most perhaps a score of years old. Train
 
 ADDRESSES TO STUDENTS 507 
 
 that boy to beat down the "man," the young spirit to beat down the 
 old body. How? By a Power not his own, a Power which is 
 greater than the power of evil. 
 
 'Religion, etymologically, is that which binds binds a man to 
 something higher, nobler, and better than himself, and binds man 
 to man. All the accessories of Religion are merely auxiliaries. 
 Prayer and church and reading your Bible are not Religion itself; 
 they are auxiliaries. They help to bind you to a Perfect Man, and 
 that Man is Jesus Christ, from whom can issue power to beat the 
 Body. You must be associated with something stronger and higher, 
 as the pure love of a sister or a faithful companion. You must be 
 bound to Jesus Christ, and this will help you to withstand, and 
 having done all to stand, that is, to rule. 
 
 ' Without Me ye can do nothing. That is, without something 
 higher and nobler than yourself you will do nothing good. You 
 must have an aim to evolve yourself to. This is an imperceptible 
 and a natural thing. You do not think about breathing. It is 
 natural. Your mother has thrown a sacredness over your life. Her 
 name brings to you purity and love in their highest forms; you are 
 bound to something higher, and through her you are bound to Christ. 
 Thus naturally you are evolved into the Perfect Man. You reflect 
 Him everywhere ; in other words, gentlemen, you are growing like 
 Him. A man at college who reflects Christ is a man who is bound 
 to Christ, and thus the "man" in him rules his life. You must 
 bind yourselves to Christ to get it at first hand; you must become 
 acquainted with the Lord Jesus Christ as your best Friend. 
 
 'Gentlemen, my object has been to bring into relief the great 
 line running across Nature. On which side will you live? I call 
 for decision. No man can serve two masters. Religion is what 
 meets you on the upper side of the line, and carries you upward to 
 live the life of the Spirit. Henceforth there is a dividing line in 
 your lives between dead (the body) and living (the man) ; between 
 temporal and eternal; between bad and good. I have one word to 
 utter to you Choose. 
 
 ' Gentlemen, choose ! If you choose life and good, you choose 
 "the man "; something which can evolve and go on from better to 
 better, even to the Image of the Perfect Man, backed up as you will 
 be by evolution and nature. Grace and strength come from the 
 Power to which you bind yourself. Remember, you cannot live on 
 meetings. This impetus will only last a day or two. Go home to 
 your knees and your Bible. Lay hold of Christ. You are a child in 
 Christ to-night; wait and trust Him, and you will evolve if once
 
 508 APPENDIX 
 
 you are in connection with Christ. Reckon ye yourselves dead 
 seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all things 
 shall be added. 
 
 ' May God bless the men of this University, and evolve in His 
 grace and power "perfect men," noble and upright and pure, that 
 they may go forth in their lives to bless and to heal, to purify and 
 to sanctify the world. ' 
 
 II. EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIANITY 
 
 (February 2. Chairman: Sir WILLIAM MUIR, K.C.S.I., D.C.L., Principal and 
 Vice-Chancellor of the University.) 
 
 Professor Drummond began by speaking of Love upon the same 
 lines as he has expounded it in The Ascent of Man: 
 
 ' Love is the greatest evolutionary force the world has ever seen. 
 All opposing forces fall at the sight of it. The animal power in 
 life yields to it. The power of war is broken by that which formed 
 the power of war at the first. . . . This has been a long story, but 
 its application, I trust, will not be so long. Last Sunday it was 
 Evolution and Religion. To-night it is Evolution and Christianity. 
 
 'For what is this great ascent of power rising out of mere grega- 
 riousness into sympathy, into love, into sacrifice what, I say, is 
 this, if not the dawn of Christianity before Christ comes? . . . 
 Christianity is as old as the dawn of life itself. It began in the 
 nooks and crannies, far away down there in the past, built in to the 
 very foundation of the world. . . . 
 
 'A man came to my house last week, and said he wanted to talk 
 over religion, for he was in a muddle. I asked him in, and we set 
 to. He was not a Christian, he said. He found Kings very diffi- 
 cult to understand. He knew a man who called himself a Christian, 
 and did not seem to live by the Bible truth. He thought the 
 commas in the Bible uninspired, for he could not make things tally. 
 I thought, Is it possible that this is a "man " before me? Has all 
 this absurdity anything in the world to do with Religion? Not un- 
 derstand Kings! Nor the "six days" of Genesis! A few days 
 before I had been thinking about this most glorious scheme of Chris- 
 tianity, and here before me stood a man whose whole religion I 
 could put in a pill-box ! And yet I say to you that there are men 
 listening to my voice now who will not accept Christ because they 
 do not understand the Old Testament nor see how Jonah could live 
 in a fish's belly. Oh, gentlemen, look for one moment at the
 
 ADDRESSES TO STUDENTS 5OQ 
 
 magnificence and sublimity of Christianity from the standpoint of 
 evolution. Look at the sublime age from the earliest dawn of 
 life ! Look at the size illimitable ! Look at the beauty ! Could 
 anything be more perfect than the greatest thing in the world : any 
 force so irresistible as the greatest evolutionary power, Love ! I 
 say, stand back if you can. A man with the faintest touch of reason 
 sees something before which everything else fades. He cannot 
 help reaching forward and grasping the most splendid treasure in 
 the universe. 
 
 'All this fits in perfectly with Science. ... A Christian is a 
 man who furthers the evolution of the world according to the pur- 
 poses of Jesus Christ. I do not see how men can resist religion if 
 they have the most elementary views of evolution. - . . But has 
 everything occurred by its own evolutionary power? I answer 
 definitely and distinctly, No. As there is a force pushing cell to 
 cell, or a cell onwards alone through life, so precisely in the course 
 of nations, God is behind all. The love of God pushes on society, 
 pouring itself into the hearts of men. What is the outcome then 
 to you sitting before me to-night, looking forwards to your lives and 
 professions? It is this in a word: Choose that life and profession 
 in which you can work alongside this evolutionary force for the re- 
 demption of the world. Work with God ! 
 
 ' Work with this love of God. An iota short of that you are lost 
 and useless, but this power will last to the end, till all else has passed 
 away. It is for you and me simply to choose. Oh, for a new poet 
 to place in a religious poem the power of this evolutionary force ! 
 
 ' Gentlemen, it is nothing sudden or capricious, nothing vague. 
 It has come now in perfect order, not a day too late, and it could 
 not have come sooner. By the revelation of God in Christ Jesus it 
 is yours; and how does it affect us to-night? This-wise, that if you 
 and I agree now to cast in our lives with His scheme, we shall be 
 different men to-morrow morning from what we are to-day. To- 
 morrow in this University there will be a new evolutionary force of 
 Brotherliness to stimulate our actions. . . . Every word you utter, 
 every thought you think, every action you do, will be said, thought, 
 and done by Christ Jesus in this power of the love of God. . . . 
 
 'There was a medical student a year or two ago, who was half way 
 through his course, when it dawned upon him that he had lived for 
 himself, and he decided to change and go and see if he could find 
 any one to help. And he found an old chum who had gone to the 
 dogs, He had fallen to pieces, given up his work, and his exams., 
 and was living aloof from other students and drinking hard.
 
 5 I O APPENDIX 
 
 No. i went and found him lying on the floor drunk. He paid his 
 debts and took him to his own rooms, gave him supper, and put 
 him to bed. On the next day he had a talk with him. He pro- 
 duced a piece of paper, and they made a contract to keep them both 
 straight : 
 
 '(i) Neither of us to go out alone. 
 
 ' (2) Twenty minutes only to be allowed to go to the college 
 and return : overtime to be accounted for. 
 
 '(3) One hour every night to be given over to reading other 
 than studies. 
 
 ' (4) That byegones be byegones. 
 
 'Both men put their names to this, and for weeks they lived, 
 No. i praying and doing all he could to help No. 2. After a time 
 No. 2 saw that the odd evening hour was spent by No. i in reading 
 his Bible. No. i never spoke to him about it; he simply sat and 
 read. Aye, gentlemen, I tell you that was a fine sermon. He 
 never spoke about Religion; but he spoke Religion. He was teach- 
 ing the brotherhood of man and the life of Christ. Now No. 2 
 was learning unconsciously to know God. Why? Because God is 
 Love No. i loved him; and Christ is Sacrifice No. i sacrificed 
 his life for him. Not a word was said. At last No. 2 changed. 
 What he changed to I need not say. The last I heard of them was 
 this. No. i is filling an appointment of great importance in Lon- 
 don. No. 2 passed his exams, that year with the highest University 
 distinction, and is now in private practice. 
 
 'Gentlemen, you have that opportunity of doing good. You have 
 asked me here to-night. I have come, and you have brought on 
 yourselves this responsibility. I lay it upon you. Gentlemen, you 
 are not doing a small and silly thing when you follow Christ. That 
 man was a Christian. Take up the cross of Christ to-night and 
 follow Him this week, for it is the most reasonable and natural 
 thing for you to do. Band yourselves together as consecrated men 
 in the Divine struggle of the world. It will bring you happiness of 
 which you have never dreamt. Arise as men in Christ to-night, and 
 give yourselves altogether to this supremest duty ! '
 
 ADDRESSES TO STUDENTS 51 1 
 
 III. SIN 
 
 (February 9. Chairman : Professor T. GRAINGER STEWART, M.D., LL.D., etc., 
 President of the Royal College of Physicians.) 
 
 'For two evenings, gentlemen, I have tried to speak to your 
 Reason 1 . . . but this is only one part of your existence, and to- 
 night I want to open the Book of Human Nature. As your Princi- 
 pal has said, the great thing is your life: we do not want your 
 theories and your knowledge, but your life. Religion is not to be 
 proved, but to be lived, and every man among us to-night is trying 
 the experiment of how best to conduct his life. You must remem- 
 ber that this life of yours is an original creation. Each life is a 
 fresh gift from God, for usefulness or uselessness. How can I use 
 this precious gift to the best ends? 
 
 'To-night I would like to say a few words on the deepest thing 
 in Human Nature that which is called in theological language Sin. 
 We may view this subject in three different aspects, (i) There is 
 the guilt of Sin. (2) There is the poiver of Sin. (3) There is the 
 stain of Sin. It is to this last I wish you to look to the conse- 
 quences of Sin that something which you and I cannot turn our 
 backs upon and let alone. It is a stain. . . . 
 
 'Sin is a living thing. The idea which I had as a child, and 
 which probably many of you had as well, was that our sins were like 
 bad marks put opposite our names. They were placed against us in 
 the Book, and then Some One would come and wash away the whole 
 lot, and we should be fit for the Kingdom. Our page would be 
 white and clean, and therefore the little things one added to the list 
 mattered little, because it all would be washed away and made clean. 
 
 'There is no more disastrous view that you can possibly take. 
 
 'Once when I was at Sunday-school I heard this story: In the 
 East there was a man lying in his prison cell for murder. A friend 
 came to see him, and in their conversation they spoke of the mur- 
 der. I should have said that between the cells there was only a 
 curtain, so that one on the other side could hear all that was being 
 said. Well, the man told his friend all about his life, and then came 
 the story of the murder, when, in the middle of it, he suddenly 
 pulled up startled, and stopped. Why? Because he heard through 
 the curtain the scratch of a pen. So he remained silent; the inter- 
 view ended, and his friend went. The man was afraid lest his words 
 should be noted against him. So I used to think that a Recording 
 
 1 Here follows a summary of the last two lectures.
 
 512 APPENDIX 
 
 Angel stood by me and noted down all I did or said. This, gentle- 
 men, is an erroneous view to take of Sin. God does not play the 
 detective with us. That would make men dislike God, not Sin, and 
 they would attempt forthwith to forget Him and live without Him. 
 They would have no hatred for Sin. Since then I have found out that 
 there is, after all, a Recording Angel. She is yourself, and her 
 name is Nature. And her pen never scratches, and you never hear it. 
 It is silent, for it is great. Year by year, moment by moment, all is 
 taken down, but in complete silence. The pen never ceases to write. 
 It works in the body, aye, in the very nerves and tissues of the soul; 
 and all you have ever said or done, or left undone, is registered 
 forever in your own nature. 
 
 ' Whatsoever a man soweth THAT shall he reap. Mind you, he 
 shall not only see it grow and see it ripen, but he shall reap. And 
 everything you sow shall grow, and you, and you only, shall most 
 certainly reap. Be sure your sin will find you out. It won't per- 
 haps be found out. But, I say, it will find you out. It will grow 
 and grow and eat out your life. It will run you to earth a doomed 
 man. For the end of these things is Death. 
 
 'And you will reap in many directions. You may not know the 
 seed or the ground you sow, but sow and you will reap. You will 
 soon know what harvest when you reap. Men know thistles from 
 oats. You sow and sow, and then you hope God will forgive and 
 your page be clean. I answer you, Nay. Sow thistles, and thistles 
 will come up. Sow oats, and thistles will not come up, oats will 
 come up. "Sow thistles," you say, "and then sow good oats, 
 and thus clear the thistles." No, the harvest will be thistles and 
 oats. . . . 
 
 ' Physiologists tell us that men never forget that the memory is 
 independent of the will, and that our memories will follow us, will 
 live to the end, and will go down with us to the grave. 1 . . . 
 
 ' Students' sins are special sins. Every class of man is tempted 
 in its own special way. You are not tempted to avarice, stealing, 
 murder. No. You are tempted to dishonesty; and though it is 
 not spoken of in sermons, it is, all the same, as big a sin as drunk- 
 enness and lust. Nay, more so. Why? Because it is a sin of the 
 higher nature, and sins of the higher nature are blacker than sins of 
 the lower nature. If there is a man in this University who is doing 
 evil things; if he is scamping his work, he will reap. ... In the 
 church, in law, in commerce, in medicine, scamp your work, cheat 
 your examiners, and you maim your lives. I say the consequences 
 
 1 Here follow some cases of cheating at examinations.
 
 ADDRESSES TO STUDENTS 513 
 
 of Sin are living and real, and a man has not done with them at the 
 moment. He may have done with them, but they have not done 
 with him. He will reap in his memory, in his conscience. Re- 
 morse is the most awful thing that can haunt a man's life. It is, in 
 a word, a stain. 
 
 'And the stain spreads to those around him. . . . 
 
 'The whole of a man's nature is built up, I might say, of cells. 
 One after another, good and bad, all things have become part of 
 him. His sins have made sin a part of him. That unkind thing 
 you say or do makes you an unkind character. That selfish thing you 
 do makes you selfish, pure and holy and noble thoughts are turned 
 out, and you become an animal. Paul says, Wretched man that I 
 am, who shall deliver me from this dead body ? Chained as they 
 were in those dark dungeons of the East, if one prisoner died he 
 was left chained to the man next him. . . . This dead body it 
 was Sin. But, gentlemen, we are making dead bodies with our own 
 hands and lives : cell by cell we become dead. Sin is a part of one, 
 and the end of these things is death, and all of a sudden some 
 morning we awake and say, Wretched man that I am, who shall 
 deliver me from this dead body ? 
 
 ' Sin finds men out in the form of Temptation. Temptation is 
 the result of constantly yielding. A constant doing passing into a 
 habit it really comes to be a predisposition to do what we have 
 done before over again, and this is temptation. We have built up 
 the muscle-fibre of temptation by constantly using it. Some day 
 Tennyson's lines will be true, that our character is a part of all we 
 have met. Look at the brain. It is made up, as you know, of 
 countless cells and processes. If an intellectual process runs 
 through our brain once, it leaves comparatively no effect. But say 
 it over a hundred times, and a foot-path is worn through the brain; 
 the hundred and first time will be easy. Say it a thousand times, 
 and lo ! through all the cellular structure of the brain there is for- 
 ever laid a thoroughfare upon this one intellectual idea, and tempta- 
 tions and sins march to and fro in endless procession along the 
 beaten track. Men do not commit two different kinds of sin. 
 You have your own favourite sin, and I have mine, and as it grows 
 the trick is intensified, the path more beaten still, and the end 
 is Death. One thing kills a man, and if you are guilty of one 
 sin, your doom is sealed. Therefore guard against making a 
 thoroughfare. Decide once for all to close the thoroughfare by 
 gates which shall last forever. Let that evil thought never pass 
 that way again. 
 
 2 L
 
 514 APPENDIX 
 
 ' Some say and will tell you that religion has the power to take 
 away the punishment of Sin. I think not. You and I shall bear 
 the punishment of the sins we commit, for whatsoever we sow we 
 shall reap. But what is taken away is the guilt. The guilt of Sin 
 is forever swept away from us by one thing only, and that is the 
 death of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 ' If you are drinking hard, don't think religion will give you a 
 new body. No ; you must go back and undo it. Your religion will 
 not uproot it [the old body], however much it may change you. 
 But I believe, gentlemen, that if a man goes back, the grace of God 
 will overpower and minimise his sin, but it must be paid for. In 
 other words, you shall reap. 
 
 ' Now, what am I to say to the man who wakes up to-night from 
 the past and looks back, and wants now to change. I say three 
 things, and the first is a hard saying. 
 
 ' It is Restitution. If it be possible to go back along the trodden 
 road, find the place where you fell, and undo the mischief. . . . 
 God can give you courage to go through fire and water for His sake, 
 and He will do it now and here for any man who hears my voice in 
 this silence. 
 
 ' I knew a man who led a woman astray. He was fast and evil 
 then, but a year or two after he was changed, and became what he 
 is one of the most prominent men in the religious world. But 
 through all his success and apparent blessings there was the stain 
 and the shadow of that woman's life upon him. Only three people 
 ever knew about it, and it was twenty years ago. He preached all 
 through England and Scotland and Ireland in the hope, I fervently 
 believe, that that woman might hear him and be saved. Every 
 prayer he prayed, he prayed for her. Not long ago I was in Lon- 
 don at a meeting which he was addressing, and after the meeting a 
 woman walked up to him with bent head, weeping. I saw them 
 alone as they stood. That was the woman he had searched for in 
 the restitution of twenty years. That man's sin was finding him 
 out, and God will help and stand by you if you will make a manly 
 and heroic effort to turn back and undo the past. 
 
 ' The second, gentlemen, is Resolution. Be decided for Christ. 
 Don't just come here and go away again and forget. Don't let it 
 be any passing emotion. Go away home across the Meadows to your 
 rooms, and stand alone in the silence of the night before God, and 
 decide, and be prepared to pay the cost. 
 
 'And the third is Religion. It is cruelty to tell a man to give 
 something up if you don't give him something in its place. Nature
 
 ADDRESSES TO STUDENTS 515 
 
 abhors a vacuum. He must not say, "Yes; I will arise and be this, 
 that, or the other; " but it must be, I will arise and go to my Father; 
 and in that Father's presence, love, and power, he will find a new 
 life, a new love, a new power aye, something that will change 
 him and restore him to the image of his Maker. Put off the past, 
 but in putting off the old, put on the new. Emerson says that the 
 great crises in men's lives are not marriages, deaths, or great occa- 
 sions, but some afternoon at the turn of the road you find new 
 thoughts and new impulses fill your breast. You are ^-verted to 
 something. Your life is changed, and you henceforth live for that 
 new and higher impulse. As you sit to-night alone, before your 
 Maker and your God, is there no new impulse fills your heart? 
 Something which sweeps the past away? Something which wins 
 you; something which is the perfection of loveliness; something 
 peaceful? Do not fear it, but listen, and in the stillness there 
 comes the voice of Jesus : " Come unto Me, all ye that labour and 
 are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest" ' 
 
 IV. TEMPTATION 
 
 (February 16. Chairman : Professor CALDERWOOD, LL.D., represented by 
 Dr. C. W. CATHCART.) 
 
 'Gentlemen, I must ask the forbearance of the men here to-night 
 who are in intellectual difficulties if I speak to the men who are in 
 moral degradation. It has come to my knowledge through the week, 
 from a bundle of letters from men now sitting in this room, that 
 there are a large number with their backs to the wall. They are 
 dead beat, and I shall consider their cases first. 
 
 'I want to say a few words on the subject of Temptation from an 
 evolutionary point of view, and I shall begin by planting one ray of 
 hope in the heart of the man who listens to my voice at this moment 
 who is in utter despair, for this is the most brotherly thing I can 
 possibly do for him. He says his best resolutions for years have 
 been broken, and his prayers apparently unanswered, so that all his 
 hope for the future is gone down in the struggle for his life. 
 
 'It was said once that the Duke of Wellington was in a foreign 
 country trying to get his soldiers to a place of safety, and between 
 him and this hoped-for safety there was a deep and rapid river, 
 neither bridge nor ford could be seen, and it was a hostile country; 
 he sent his men up and down the side of the river to hunt for 
 a bridge or ford, but they found none. So the Duke went to the 
 top of a hill near by and looked through his telescope, and far away
 
 5 1 6 APPENDIX 
 
 down the river side he saw a town, and on the other side of the 
 river he saw a straggling village, and he said, " Now, between that 
 town and that village there must be a ford or a bridge." So when 
 night came he sent his soldiers in the darkness and silence to see, 
 and they returned and said, "Yes, there is a ford." He passed 
 his army over in the night, and the next day they were found in the 
 land of safety. Gentlemen, many men have been in dangers as 
 great and greater than you, and have found a ford. So I say to that 
 man and to you all Don't despair! 
 
 'You can do nothing when you are in despair. The very first 
 thing to do in this, as in everything else, is to believe in possibility. 
 All things, you remember, are possible to a certain class of men. 
 
 'There may be some here to-night who were here some years ago 
 when these meetings had their first beginning, and you may remem- 
 ber me reading a letter which was characterised by some of you as 
 "A Letter from Hell." You remember, it was a frightful revelation 
 of a tortured, sunken, lost human soul. It was anonymous, and 
 signed "Thanatos." * Years have gone by, and I have not forgotten 
 that man; and if ever I thought a man was hopelessly, irretrievably 
 lost, it was that man. He was an intellectual, physical, and moral 
 wreck. I thought that case an impossibility. Gentlemen, I have 
 in my pocket to-night a letter from "Thanatos," which he sent me 
 this week, and he says he is at last a changed man a new creature 
 in Christ Jesus. He says the new life has choked the old, and that 
 he is now in a position of responsibility and usefulness in this 
 country. ' 
 
 The address then proceeds to 'view the whole subject of Tempta- 
 tion from an evolutionary standpoint.' 'Temptation is this man 
 enticing that man, 2 flesh versus spirit. . . . Temptation is not sin, 
 and not only not sin, but it has a high evolutionary value. Count 
 it all joy when you fall into divers temptations. It is an opportunity 
 for virtue; it stimulates us to a higher and nobler life; it is the test 
 of a "man." , , . Now comes the practical teaching. To-day I 
 asked one of your professors : " What do you tell a man will help 
 him to resist temptation?" He said: "I tell him that the best 
 thing by far is to ignore it." Do you hear that, gentlemen? " Ig- 
 nore it." Don't think he meant "take no thought of it, or don't 
 think it of any consequence." But it is to be ignored. Reckon ye 
 yourselves dead. . . . Give it no quarter, and the moment you do 
 that a great natural force comes at once to your rescue, and the 
 most wonderful principle of nature backs you up "vis a tergo " 
 
 1 dvaros = Death. 2 See above, in the first address.
 
 ADDRESSES TO STUDENTS 517 
 
 Degeneration, that great power which removes everything that is 
 not used the great lopper off, the Scavenger. For some time, 
 however, the temptation will appeal to you. It will ask to be heard 
 again, or for the last time. It has [too] a habit of hibernating. . . . 
 I say to you Trust in Nature and trust in God, and Degeneration 
 will do its perfect work. 
 
 'That is the negative, and now I turn to the positive, and would 
 like to express it to you in Scriptural formula : Walk in the Spirit. 
 Expand and enrich that higher life. In all ways and in every way 
 expand. In music, in the arts, in literature, in poetry, in religion 
 anything which is stimulating to the man. And I would mention 
 another way which is foremost for us, and that is, Work, good hard 
 work, nothing can keep the devil out so well. . . . But let me 
 add, don't work too hard. In the interests of physiology and the 
 physiological relations to temptation, don't work to excess.' 
 
 Then follow some wise counsels about food and exercise; some 
 counsels taken from The Mental Diseases (p. 490), by Dr. Clouston, 
 the lecturer on Insanity in Edinburgh University; and a beautiful 
 parable. The address closes : 
 
 'Now I have only two words to say. The first is, Begin thor- 
 oughly. It is a thousand times easier to live altogether for Christ 
 than half for Christ. Don't be an amphibian, half in one world, 
 half in another. Be men, through and through, men in Christ Jesus. 
 Come to Jesus now, and come altogether. And the other thing is : 
 Every man will only finally succeed in gaining the victory in himself 
 so that it includes others. A man this week was in difficulty about 
 these things, and I said, "Have you ever helped any one?" He 
 said, "No." So I said, "Well, go now and help somebody. I 
 don't care how or when you do it. Simply do it. Go and help 
 somebody." ' 
 
 V. THE NEW NATURE 
 (February 23. Chairman : Professor A. R. SIMPSON, M.D.) 
 
 'I think, gentlemen, I can get to the position at which we left off 
 last Sunday night if I tell you a story about an Indian officer. 
 
 'A certain Indian officer lived in a bungalow in India, and this 
 bungalow was elevated on the top of a mound. One season the 
 whole country was inundated with a flood; water was everywhere; 
 but there was just a speck of land which was left, and it was the 
 mound with the official bungalow upon it. And upon this mound 
 was gathered together a motley crowd of natives, some wild beasts,
 
 5 1 8 APPENDIX 
 
 insects, and birds, all having gone there for safety. And after a 
 while, to the consternation of the company, they observed a large, 
 fine Bengal tiger swimming to the island. It reached it, clambered 
 up on the bank, and lay down close to the edge in fear and quiet- 
 ness. It lay like a dog, and did not know what to do. What made 
 that tiger be like that, so quiet? What made it forget its natural 
 and ordinary fierceness? It was the expulsive power of a new emo- 
 tion. It was Fear : the fierceness and wild nature were gone, and 
 it lay perfectly still because it was afraid. But the officer knew 
 that shortly that fear would pass away, and the fierceness would re- 
 turn, so he took his gun and walked close up to the tiger, and put 
 the muzzle of the gun into the tiger's ear and shot; and the great 
 beast rolled over dead. You say that was cruel. Maybe, but it was 
 the wisest thing to do. I tell you that because it brings out a point 
 of great importance. It shows the power of a new emotion, and it 
 also shows its transitoriness. What would you and I not give, I 
 would like to know, to shoot dead in us the tiger? Some men here 
 have for the last five weeks been slowly killing it. I ask you to 
 shoot. Shoot it dead. 
 
 1 Last Sunday we tried to see how to deal with the animal. To- 
 night I want to show, if I can, what is to be done for the Develop- 
 ment of this New Nature when we have ceased to live the animal 
 life after our own nature. But I need scarcely tell you that the new 
 nature, the new life, may fade away and pass off as an emotion 
 would fade. If the officer could have kept that tiger in great fear, 
 there would have been no need to shoot. The tiger would have 
 been domesticated. The secret of all taming of animals is by a 
 process of fear and subduing nature. If you and I could keep up 
 the new nature of ourselves, we should go on aright to the end of 
 the chapter. But to keep in the new life and to keep out of the 
 old animal is the great problem of religious life. How can we be 
 brought into the new life, that the new life may stand by us to the 
 end, not for a session or two, but be something which will build its 
 foundation into our deepest nature, that we may be ready for the 
 struggle of life which is before us? 
 
 'How is the ship tested? When it is in mid-ocean, in the middle 
 of a cyclone? No; the ship is tested with its ropes down, its masts 
 not yet fixed, and the last rivets not driven. It is tested first, 
 and then it goes out to sea. Shortly, gentlemen, you will be out 
 at sea, and I must ask you, Is your building stable? Is the helm 
 adjusted? Because if it is not thoroughly made, it will not over- 
 come in this world of temptation.
 
 ADDRESSES TO STUDENTS 519 
 
 'The question of Evolution, as you know, is divisible into two 
 factors: (i) The Nature of the Organism; (2) The Nature of the 
 Environment. We have learned in the past something of being 
 evolved. There are two compartments one the animal, the other 
 the spirit. That is a correct classification; but, to be exact, split 
 the higher into two or more parts, because men must not only stand 
 above the animal nature, but between him and the animal nature a 
 long, weary series of years, during which our ancestors existed, has 
 welded a force into our nature, and we must deal with both. Many 
 of you are not troubled with flesh temptations, but you are troubled 
 with temptations of the disposition, so I divide temptations into two 
 classes from the Beast and from the Savage. 
 
 ' The question to-night is, How to evolve, how to pass from the 
 Savage. We have already learned of the Passage from the Beast. 
 We know we must reckon ourselves dead, our animal nature dead. 
 We simply let it alone and evolve past it. But what is to be done 
 with this savage disposition? 
 
 'In this disposition we have one fact, the organism, and a second 
 fact, the environment. There is no organism that is self-supporting 
 or self-sufficient. Nothing can do for itself. It must of necessity 
 be helped by its environment. 1 . . . Now of all created beings 
 man is the most sensitive to his environment. . . . God has pro- 
 vided environments for all other constituents of man's nature. . . . 
 It is inconceivable that He has provided nothing for the highest of 
 these. What has He done for the environment of the soul? He 
 has done the most natural thing conceivable. What is it you want 
 to be in the Spiritual Life? I say, you want to play the MAN. We 
 want to be above the Savage, not below. The Savage state is self- 
 ishness, love of approbation, absence of sympathy ; these are the 
 marks of the Savage. We have the same savage in us. He has 
 come to us through our ancestors, and he is in every one of us. We 
 must find somewhere a larger mind, a sweeter disposition. Now, 
 what God has done is to place before you and me an absolutely Per- 
 fect Man, with whom, as we are in contact, we shall rise. He is to 
 be our environment, and we shall slowly change till we are like Him. 
 Can a man be born when he is old? Not so easily, I grant you, as 
 when he is young. But still he may be born when he is old ; it is 
 not impossible, and this new birth is a change in a man's nature, as 
 he is in contact with the perfect spirit and the perfect nature of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ. I am not talking any false religion or cant. 
 It is perfectly natural that a man's nature may be changed by 
 
 1 Here follow several illustrations from the physical sphere.
 
 52O APPENDIX 
 
 the spirit and nature of another man. God sent Newton to teach 
 physics, Kepler astronomy, Darwin biology. And God sent Christ 
 to teach humanity. I do not put Christ on the same level as 
 Newton or Darwin. I am speaking of analogue, not of homologue. 
 As Christ was a perfect representation of God Himself, by so much 
 more was He greater than Newton, Kepler, or Darwin. But just as 
 these men were provided by God for the times, and each taught and 
 perfected his own science to his best ability, so Christ was provided 
 as an environment of thought and nature for the spirit and nature 
 of man. In a word, He was divine. But that does not remove 
 Him from the rational and intelligent, for it is by taking Christ 
 as a man that we understand the power of His life. There's the 
 principle, and it is demonstrable by science. Nothing can evolve 
 of itself. . . . There is something without which you cannot 
 possibly grow. Without Me ye can do nothing. Get into contact 
 with the perfect life of Christ, and leave the rest to nature. But 
 how is this to be done?' 
 
 There follows a passage on the real and full manhood of Christ, 
 and the absence of mawkishness, sanctimoniousness, and effeminacy 
 from true Christianity. 
 
 ' Find out the people who are the friends of Christ. Read books 
 about Him. Find how He spoke, how He lived, what He lived 
 for, how He died, and what He died for. Faith cometh by hear- 
 ing, and you will find as certainly as anything that an irresistible 
 passion will rise within you. . . . You say to me, "Give me de- 
 tails about Him." I cannot do that, for time is passing. Read 
 Ullmann, read Ecce Homo, read any of the recent great biographies 
 of Christ. Can you not spend thirty minutes of your life in getting 
 to know the Perfect Man? Go home and take up the best of all 
 the lives, the exquisite biographies by simple, honest men, the 
 authors of the New Testament. Begin with Matthew; and if you 
 don't run aground before the end of the fifth chapter, I shall be 
 astonished. You cannot help yourselves, gentlemen. You read a 
 few verses, and you fall hopelessly in love with a Man you have so 
 far neglected. Slowly the knowledge changes into character, and 
 that is changed in turn into the same Image. . . . Then you lisp, 
 " My Lord and my God "; then you know His Divinity. 
 
 'This is not a sudden change. . . . You won't find this life in 
 Christ in these meetings; no sensation revival and sweep and all 
 done. To-day and to-morrow will be the same, generally speaking, 
 because the evolution of a life is a gradual process. Start in a 
 moment. Be born now, but grow like unto Him, and be changed
 
 ADDRESSES TO STUDENTS 521 
 
 in time into His image, for the kingdom of God comcth without 
 observation. 
 
 WHAT COMING TO CHRIST MEANS 
 
 ' There will be two more meetings only, and I want to say a very 
 few words to those who are really anxious for these things. I want 
 to be practical, and so I am going to ask those of you who would 
 like to stay for ten minutes to keep your seats while we sing a hymn. 
 You will be asked no questions; you'll not even be called to come 
 forward. You may remain in the seats you occupy. We want new 
 lives and consecration to Christ. Now I hope all the rest will go 
 out quietly as we sing the last verse of the hymn. ' 
 
 Some two dozen men left. ' The rest, ' eight hundred or nine 
 hundred, remained for the ten minutes. 
 
 ' Gentlemen, I proposed this because, unless I am wrong, there are 
 men in the hall to-night who have seriously made up their minds 
 to live for Christ. And there is another set of men, more numerous 
 still perhaps, who do not know whether or not they are Christians. 
 There is a certain value in decision on our own parts; not that the 
 change from the old to the new life is marked by any decisive 
 periods, but it is help to many following Christ and to many hang- 
 ing back to have definite epochs of encouragement or choice. 
 
 ' I want to ask you one or two questions in the secret chambers of 
 your hearts. 
 
 ' Why do you come to Christ? What do you want? Is there a 
 sense of need ? Do you want the unholy part to be blotted out for- 
 ever? If so, you have come to the right place, for God for the sake 
 of Jesus forgives sin. 
 
 ' Have you a sense of the power of sin that nothing you know of 
 can break? Do you believe Christ is stronger than the Devil? If 
 so, again you have come to the right place, for that is true. 
 
 'Are you longing to live a better, nobler, truer life? If so, again 
 you have come to the right place, because Christ alone can give 
 you this. Remember, Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after 
 righteousness. 
 
 'Another question is, Have you counted the cost? Have you 
 made up your mind to throw in your lot with the people of Christ? 
 I don't ask you to be identified with all that is done in the name of 
 Religion. Religion is a popular thing, and many things are done 
 in its name which will make you revolt; but I do insist that you 
 shall not be ashamed to be identified with Christian men and join 
 them in their work for the world. Gentlemen, count the cost.
 
 522 APPENDIX 
 
 Have you made up your mind to say good-by to the world, the flesh, 
 and the devil ? If your answer is, Yes, I have to say that you are 
 eligible candidates for the kingdom of God, for of such is the 
 kingdom made. And I have further to add, that you are not only 
 eligible, but invited; that on the authority of Chirst. It is not 
 presumption on your part. You are to come just as you are. Little 
 as you have and are, you are requested to bring it all for the service 
 of the Master. Otherwise, otherwise you are not wanted. He says, 
 Come unto Me; Give Me thine heart, thine all; and, Him that 
 cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out. It is Recruits Wanted! 
 A personal invitation. Christ has set His heart on you here and 
 now; and now and here invites you to enter into His life. 
 
 'What steps must you take? Different are the aspects, different 
 the ways all leading unto Him. We are told in the last chapter but 
 one in Revelation that the twelve gates of the city were twelve 
 pearls. You may come in by any of them : some of you will come 
 by one, some by another. Don't think you must go in by the way 
 your friend went. Go your own way. Every single gate was of one 
 pearl. Spurgeon goes in by one; Robertson of Brighton by another; 
 you by a third. Go just as you are in your own nature. You must 
 get near to Christ and close to Him. The emphasis is on the 
 object, not the action of faith; and that which is in us showing us 
 the way is Christ Himself holding out His hand to help us. 
 
 ' There are one or two different aspects in the New Testament of 
 the Christian Life a Race, a Fight, and Fellowship (John's aspect). 
 . . . They are all the same, and include one another. 1 . . . 
 
 ' You are before God now. Just tell Him all about it. Tell Him 
 your need. Consecrate your life and talents to His service; and if 
 you will listen, you will hear Him say, Him that cometh, him that 
 cometh I will not cast out. 
 
 ' I cannot guarantee that the stars will shine brighter when you 
 leave this hall to-night, or that when you wake to-morrow a new 
 world will open before you. But I do guarantee that Christ will 
 keep that which you have committed to Him. He will keep His 
 promise, and you will find something real and dependable to rely 
 on and lead you away from documental evidence to Him who 
 speaks to you in your hearts at this moment. 
 
 'Gentlemen, He will be youi leader, He will be your guide, He 
 will be your highest ideal. He has asked you for your life, and He 
 will make you just as you are at this moment His entirely His.' 
 
 1 Here follows what he said in 1885 about matriculating in the school of Christ
 
 ADDRESSES TO STUDENTS 523 
 
 VI. WHAT IT IS TO BE A CHRISTIAN 
 (March 2. Chairman : The Rev. Professor FLINT, D.D., LL JX) 
 
 'Gentlemen, I do not feel at all anxious to continue the some- 
 what formal set of addresses which I have given to you. Not only 
 because this is one of the last, and we are near the end, but because 
 we cannot possibly go on to-night as if nothing had happened last 
 Sunday evening. You remember that at the end of the meeting I 
 expressed a wish that those who desired to come to the point and 
 know what were the first steps into the Christian life should wait 
 behind the others for ten minutes; and, as you know, several hun- 
 dred men remained; and therefore, gentlemen, it is impossible to 
 go on as usual. You remember that I asked you to count the cost. 
 Have you done so? I asked you if you felt a sense of need, and 
 I put Christianity before you in the form of four metaphors, which 
 I chose from Scripture, in which I explained to you the beginning 
 of the Christian life.' 
 
 Professor Drummond then summarised his second address of the 
 previous evening, and added : 
 
 'Decide once for all, and have no more coquetting with the world, 
 the flesh, and the devil. You cannot serve two masters. Make up 
 your mind, gentlemen, what you are going to do. 
 
 'When a man begins to be a Christian, he does not commit him- 
 self to a great many things which some people think necessary. 
 The antithesis is not whether good or bad, but the choice between 
 temporal and eternal. Christianity is not to make men behave 
 themselves all men should do that. Paul did it before his con- 
 version. . . . Christianity is to be something more than good. 
 
 'I need not tell you, of course, that it is not necessary for Chris- 
 tians to go to church. Thousands of Christians never go, and thou- 
 sands go who are not Christians. . . . But I qualify the statement 
 by saying that every right-minded man will go to church, because it 
 is advisable and expedient. Not only as a personal matter, but for 
 the sake of the community, associate yourselves with the people of 
 God. A Christian can do without church, but it weakens himself 
 not to go. To go to church is to be taught how to do without 
 church, and, though I say this, I also say that if he goes he will be 
 fed. He will be helped, and he will have a better chance of sur- 
 vival in the higher life. However much you like to despise such 
 institutions, if you give them up you will get lost; because they pre- 
 vent Reversion. A domesticated animal cannot go back to the wild
 
 524 APPENDIX 
 
 state it will die. All Christians should make that an impossi- 
 bility by building up around them a fortress. 
 
 ' In the next place, to be a Christian does not mean that you must 
 believe in all the various doctrines. All doctrines are not Chris- 
 tianity. Many a man with no doctrine is a Christian. . . . Chris- 
 tianity is not a thing to be proved, but a life to be lived. But I 
 qualify this also. You men will be wise indeed to find out and 
 study the great doctrines of Christianity. There are doctrines in 
 Christianity as much as in medicine. The authorities are as scien- 
 tific in method as the most learned scientific observer here. You 
 must search theology as you do other subjects. Go to the experts, 
 not to the penny magazines. From tracts men get depraved and 
 distorted views of the great Christian doctrines, as, for example, 
 the Incarnation and Atonement. Take your stimulus from wherever 
 you like, but for doctrines you must go to authorities as trustworthy 
 and confident as you go to in any other subject. 
 
 ' I do not say that to be a Christian you must have no doubts. 
 Doubts show interest and zeal, and I pity the man here to-night who 
 is cocksure of everything in Christianity. It is not all plain as a 
 pikestaff. . . . Doubt is one of the most blessed states a man can 
 be in. It is the purifier of thought. Until he has doubted and 
 then thought, faith to a man is merely credulity. . . . No man 
 can live in this nineteenth century and not have doubts. . . . All 
 great truths are doubtable. I don't say doubtful, but doubtable. 
 The instrument through which a doubter looks is broken more or 
 less, and it must be corrected for achromatism or distortion. Men 
 don't understand, and when they don't understand they doubt. 
 There was no class of men with whom Christ was more sympathetic 
 than those who doubted. He liked to get away from the Pharisees 
 and the men who were cocksure, the men who "knew it all," and to 
 walk with the humble, true-hearted, loving spirit. . . . Christ was 
 not hard on those who were not sure. He was not narrow, like so 
 many Christians to-day. There was no speculation about His teach- 
 ing. He taught truth which men might lay their hands upon and 
 grasp. He said to them all: I don't speak truth, or about truth 
 either, but I am truth. I am truth the truth of life, of conscience, 
 of righteousness. . . . 
 
 'Well, all these things, gentlemen, are non-essential; and there 
 are one or two minor things which men must not hold back for. I 
 am often told by men here in Edinburgh that they don't come to 
 Christ because they are told that it is setting themselves up. This 
 is a charge made against every man, and I acknowledge the possi-
 
 ADDRESSES TO STUDENTS 525 
 
 bility that self may wrongly get set up. But so far from a man feel- 
 ing set up by accepting Christ, he feels like a brand plucked from 
 the burning, and it is the grace of God which is holding him up by 
 the skin of his teeth the grace of God which has pulled him out 
 of the mire of his temptations. 
 
 'Others come and say they don't like to begin, because they are 
 afraid they will go back. This is remedied completely by making 
 a decided step and stand for Christ. Be a Christian, and let men 
 know it. 
 
 'Everything in Christianity, I always think, should be in the 
 superlative degree. The best men are the men Christ wants. The 
 best mentally, the best morally, the best socially.' 
 
 Then he pointed out the high places in the honours list of medi- 
 cine which were gained by men foremost in the Christian life of the 
 University, and also how some of the latter were members of the 
 University Fifteen. 
 
 'I have said all this, gentlemen, because there are men who delay 
 because they expect some marked epoch in their lives to usher them 
 into the Christian life. They are waiting for some catastrophe to 
 begin the new life. I tell you, it is a mistake. Nature does not 
 work by bangs, catastrophes, and great events, Nature works silently, 
 Nature glides; and I solemnly say that I know of nothing in the 
 wide world more natural than Christianity, for the Kingdom of God 
 cometh without observation. ' 
 
 He then stated the case of the Metazoa, and illustrated meta- 
 morphoses taking place after birth, from the caterpillar and butterfly. 
 * So is it,' he said, 'with man. No wonder that Christ said Marvel 
 not. ' Here follow the heads and much of the matter of his own 
 sermon on 'Marvel Not ' in the Ideal Life. 
 
 'And now I have told you the negative side of the question with 
 which we started, and the positive is, Help on the evolution of the 
 world. Although Christ allows us to be indefinite about our beliefs 
 [? doctrines], still He has expressed this duty in the plainest pos- 
 sible way. Look all through the New Testament, and the important 
 facts of Christ are marked by Verily. To those you must be con- 
 sistent, for He has asserted His purpose to carry on the evolution of 
 the world. But He uses a figure of speech, The Kingdom of God. 
 This is evolution. It begins, He says, in the grain, then the blade, 
 then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. What do you want more ? 
 Is not that a precise evolutionary statement? . . . The man who 
 joins the Christian Life finds security and something which, as a 
 Law of the World, will evolve the animal into the perfect man.
 
 526 APPENDIX 
 
 'Let me choose three words which Christ used to make His teach- 
 ings plain, Salt, Leaven, Light. 
 
 'What use is Salt? It is to keep things from going rotten. . . . 
 It is Christ that keeps this University from going rotten. It is the 
 followers of Christ in this city that keep Edinburgh from going 
 rotten. . . . Without Christ this world would fall to pieces. There 
 is nothing in Nature which can hold together without the salt of 
 Truth, Honour, and Righteousness. 
 
 'What does Leaven do? It raises. Why is it that education fol- 
 lows Christ round the world? Because Christ is the elevating and 
 raising force of the world. 
 
 'And, gentlemen, Christ is the Light of the World. The moral 
 Light and the mental Light. Half of the great problems are un- 
 solved, because they are without Christ and without light. Increase 
 your knowledge, and you will increase your sorrow. It will trouble 
 you. You will be weary of it, and there will be no end. But hear 
 this from Christ : Learn of Me, and ye shall find rest. The more 
 you think and know, so much the more will you find in Christ. 
 
 'Christ wants you to join Him in His work: this is the motif 'of 
 God through all the ages. Is it not worthy to accompany Him in 
 the evolution of the world? There is no higher life than helping 
 others. And the only way it is to be done is by men's lives. . . . 
 I solemnly say, God wants you. As you came along the street to- 
 night you heard a man preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus. You 
 heard the bare, narrow, stern religion, and as you passed, a smile 
 crossed your lips. Why? Because you know of something which 
 is broad and lovely, infinitely loving and beautiful. I say, don't 
 laugh till you have done better; for these men are the evangelisers 
 of the world. So don't sneer at them, but, gentlemen, cast in your 
 lot with them, go forth, stand under the lamp-posts, and tell out to 
 the world the grand old story of Jesus and His Love. 
 
 ' The first thing is to carry that story into the world in your lives. 
 Every man here to-night who names the name of Christ is to create 
 round him an environment of Christ, so that men shall see the king- 
 dom of God, and grow up like Christ. Give them the social posi- 
 tion to serve Him; give them legislation, give them wages, give 
 them houses; to keep, to spend, to live in for His sake and service. 
 
 'And, gentlemen, to you, some of you, who will go out to your 
 village and be the doctor of the neighbourhood, to you I say : Create 
 the environment of Christ. Be some one to remind the people of 
 Jesus. Be some one to represent Christ in the district. Do what 
 He would do; say what He would say; live as He would live, just as
 
 ADDRESSES TO STUDENTS 527 
 
 if He were the Doctor of the neighbourhood. Live the life, and 
 reproduce the life of Christ. 
 
 ' To those of you who have in the past few weeks learned the rudi- 
 ments of following Him, I offer my sincere congratulations, because 
 this will grow. Be decided for Him. I am more and more con- 
 vinced of the fact that what the world wants now is not more men 
 of the ordinary type of Christian, but better men and finer men : 
 men consecrated to Christ, men out and out for Christ, whose one 
 life's ambition is not to get rich or achieve a great name, but to 
 learn of Him, and to seek_/r$7 the kingdom of God and His righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 VII. ADDRESS BEFORE COMMUNION 
 THE BREAD OF LIFE 
 
 (March 9. Chairman: Rev. Professor CHARTERIS, D.D., who afterwards pre- 
 sided at the Communion Service and dispensed the Sacrament. There also 
 assisted Principal Sir William Muir, the Rev. Principal Cairns, Professor 
 Calderwood, Professor Crum-Brown, Drs. Coldstream, Barbour, etc.) 
 
 ' Gentlemen, I am glad that this series of meetings is to close by 
 our sitting down together at the Lord's Supper. Because it is one 
 of the many things that bring into our memories the necessity of 
 living upon Christ. It teaches you and me, in the first place, that 
 man may be hungry, and it shows us that Christ is the Bread of Life. 
 And, secondly, the presence of the actual bread is an object lesson 
 to us which will emphasise the essential things that we are to carry 
 away with us. I was talking last Sunday to a man who said that 
 though he could live for Christ at the close of the meetings, or could 
 even for a month or so keep straight, yet after that his new life went 
 down and was lost. Now, gentlemen, this proves two things. It 
 proves the possibility of a man living for Christ and keeping straight 
 under suitable conditions, and it proves also that if a man tries liv- 
 ing without the Bread he will flag and die. You can't live on air. 
 You can't live on one another. You can't live on what I say; but, 
 gentlemen, you can live on the Bread of Life, which is Jesus Christ. 
 
 ' Now the great question which we must ask ourselves is this, Have 
 we ourselves, at first hand, learned to draw our nourishment and 
 strength from Christ? I want you to settle now and forever, Is He 
 the heart and kernel and spring of your life, or is He not? If He 
 is not, then all these meetings are of no avail, all this talk of no use; 
 but if He is, then, gentlemen, you need nothing else, for He is the 
 Bread of Life.
 
 528 APPENDIX 
 
 ' Your holidays are coming to some of you, and to some of you 
 your examinations. Now I warn you the hour will come when 
 hunger will assert itself, and I tell you to-night that Christ is the 
 Bread at that hour. The time will come when temptation will knock 
 at the door, and it will be something then to know that Jesus Christ 
 is the Bread. Perhaps during the summer you will meet another 
 beggar, and you will hear his piteous cry, and you will see his con- 
 dition, and you will want to feed him. It will be something then 
 to know that Christ is the Bread of Life and can keep a man from 
 starvation. Keep from starvation? Aye, and not only that, but 
 give happiness and fulness to life. 
 
 ' The problem of Nutrition is the fundamental problem of physi- 
 ology, the fundamental problem of living beings. So exactly is it 
 the fundamental problem of the Christian life.' 
 
 He then drew a long analogy between physical and spiritual nutri- 
 tion in the terms of physiology. 
 
 ' But the closest parallel I can draw is that which we see in life and 
 read of in tales, where one man is the sustenance and life of another, 
 or more often where a woman is the sustenance and help of a man. 
 Something which is very pure, which is fresh, which is high and 
 lofty why, it throws an influence around the base life which ele- 
 vates and ennobles that miserable life to the level of its own. Not 
 in a day. Not in a year. But in a long continuous process which 
 works unseen. How is it done? By abiding in the presence of 
 that which is pure and noble. One life affects the other, and the 
 weak becomes stimulated and roused; there are the elements of 
 growth. So a man who abides in the presence of Jesus Christ in 
 some mystical way appropriates, unconsciously and unavoidably, 
 the life and character of Christ, so that he is built up like Him. 
 That is the whole process. It is perfectly simple and perfectly 
 natural. The point of importance is this, that it is quite impossible 
 to go on at all in the spiritual life without living in the immediate 
 presence and fellowship of Christ. This, gentlemen, is to reach 
 the Supreme. This is to be nourished and strengthened for life, 
 not showing just a leaf or two of the fruits, not something that will 
 last only to the end of the session; but something that will last from 
 day to day. You know of people who have fasted thirty days. 
 Don't try that in your own spiritual lives. You cannot do it. Give 
 us this day our daily bread. And, gentlemen, I warn you in all 
 affection and humility that if we try living on ourselves, it will fail. 
 Why? Because Jesus has said, Without Me ye can do nothing. 
 Nothing at all, so don't try it. Our spiritual lives will dry up; our
 
 ADDRESSES TO STUDENTS 529 
 
 characters become poor, our faculties atrophied. You may have ill- 
 health and a breakdown in your spiritual, as in your natural, lives. 
 It is just as simple, just as natural. Eat bad food, or no food, and 
 it will tell in a fortnight. Your nourishment must be pure, noble, 
 lovely, and of good report, or else you will lose your appetite. 
 These meetings may come again, but you will not be there. The 
 Christian men will know you not, and you will not be found with 
 them, because you have lost the taste of better food. This I say : 
 Let us keep ourselves in Christ as we are now; live day by day; and 
 be renewed day by day into the image of Christ Himself. Surely 
 that is simple to understand, and perfectly natural. 
 
 ' But, gentlemen, you need something more than bare life, I tell 
 you. Christ expects from men like you more than mere life. He 
 wants the fulness and richness of Himself impressed for ever upon 
 you. He wants from you the Christian graces In their fullest and 
 utmost perfection. We hear that as long as men have the roots of 
 these things they are all right, and never mind about the graces. I 
 answer, What do you imagine a garden like full of roots only? 
 Beautiful soil yet nothing but roots! What do you say to a gar- 
 den full of sov.r apples? What is the difference between a sour 
 apple and a sweet pippin? The gardener will tell you it is a differ- 
 ence mainly of nutrition. Transplant that sour apple, give it your 
 best soil, give it fresh air and sunshine, and lo ! it becomes larger, 
 and then it changes and becomes sweet, and then luscious and juicy. 
 Take only average food, and you will have average life; but good 
 nourishment will bring forth a strong and beautiful character. 
 
 ' You will find in your Bibles a lovely phrase which I like very 
 much. It is this: The Beauty of Holiness. The Beauty! The 
 perfection of the Christian character; not simply things done after 
 a good style, but things done with beauty and with grace. Look for 
 a moment at the exquisite loveliness, beauty, and grace which char- 
 acterised all the actions of Jesus. There is a marvellous grace about 
 each and all; there is an attractive peculiarity which calls forth un- 
 bidden our deepest love and admiration. What is it? Gentlemen, 
 it is the Beauty of Holiness. 
 
 ' There are a great many graces which go to form our religion. 
 Religion does not just consist in stopping this sin and stopping that, 
 and fleeing this temptation or that, but it consists in growing not 
 perfection, but growth growing into the likeness of Christ. If a 
 man's ideal is simply to stop sinning, his Christian life becomes 
 monotonous. The man here who knows how to play the violin goes 
 to hear R play, and it dawns upon him that it will take at least 
 
 2M
 
 5 3O APPENDIX 
 
 another twenty years before he can play at all. The artist goes 
 through the Turner gallery, and he finds it will take him a lifetime 
 to copy the major points from Turner. The man who will sit down 
 for twenty minutes in his room and look at the character of Jesus 
 Christ, feels his longest life not long enough; nay, that eternity 
 itself is not long enough to approach the surpassing and infinite 
 glory of that Figure. Then, gentlemen, a new sensation comes. 
 He rises and what? Lo! He is hungry and thirsty. He hun- 
 gers and thirsts to live like that, or see in himself and in others the 
 mind which was in Christ Jesus. The spiritual life becomes stale 
 and uninteresting when the man has lost sight of his Ideal. He has 
 forgotten his life's work. He perishes morally, just as he would do 
 in his physical nature by ceasing to take nourishment. 
 
 ' But we are told by some that beauty in character is a matter of 
 birth; that it is a matter of temperament whether you and I have a 
 bad temper or not; whether we have patience, gentleness, meek- 
 ness, and that therefore we need not trouble about them. These 
 may have been affected by predisposition they are, I grant you, 
 influenced more or less by heredity but I say, these are fitted into 
 men's lives. Any man in this hall who covets any single virtue or 
 grace can have it, if he sets about getting it in the right way. Let 
 me try and indicate some of these graces. 
 
 ' I remember well how I used to pray for joy. I was told that a 
 Christian must be joyful. I prayed and prayed, and I must say I 
 did not get it. Why not? Because it does not come by prayer 
 alone. It may come that way, but not alone. I used to think that 
 joy was kept in lumps packets which were stored up and then 
 doled out or injected like morphia and that if I prayed a lump 
 would come. This is a material conception that many hold. They 
 want virtues and graces, and they set to and pray. They pray for 
 rest, peace, love, joy, and they hope these will drop from heaven 
 and stay with them forever. But these are Fruits. How can you 
 have Fruits without Branches ? Where are your branches to bear 
 fruit, where is your blossom to precede it? What's the use of a 
 lump of joy if there are no branches? Now, gentlemen, look up 
 in your Bibles and find out how to get joy; find the cause of joy. 
 Work by the law you know of as " cause and effect." Joy is an effect, 
 find the cause. There is one, just as surely as you have a cause for 
 toothache. Turn to the fifteenth of John, and there you will read 
 the parable of the Vine in the words of Jesus. He tells His disci- 
 ples about the tree and its branches, and then He tells them the 
 "why" of these things: These things have I spoken unto you, that
 
 ADDRESSES TO STUDENTS 531 
 
 My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. That 
 is the end of the parable the cause of joy, something of which 
 the effect is joy. Joy comes of a great law. But what is the con- 
 dition? Go home and look and see. It is to do good. Abide in 
 Christ and bring forth fruit, then comes the joy, and you can't help 
 yourself. You don't make the joy. It simply follows after a certain 
 cause, and I defy any man in this hall to go off and do something 
 for somebody, comfort them, help them, any one whom you may 
 meet I say, I defy him to do that and not come back happier and 
 full of joy. This is cause and effect, and any one can get joy in this 
 way. Abide in Christ, be in His presence, and you shall certainly 
 have fulness of joy. These things have I spoken unto you that your 
 joy may be full. Find out these things, and the joy must follow.' 
 
 Then follows a paragraph or two on the same thought, applied to 
 the gift of Rest as in Pax Vobiscum. 
 
 'All this is simple, and it comes to a Christian. By living on the 
 Bread of Life we get the form and the functions of the Christian. 
 Those things follow . . . and make your lives fair and lovely, which 
 is the Beauty of Holiness. 
 
 * You know how healthy and full of vigour you feel after a walk 
 or exercise. So it is after spiritual exercise, doing good to those 
 around you, that you have the fulness of spiritual health and vigour. 
 But while each grace and virtue has a cause, of which it is the effect, 
 yet to secure them we must go back to the source which is Christ. 
 As you know, all power in the mechanical world is from the sun. 
 It is the source of all energy. ... So also all the energy of the 
 Spiritual Life comes from the Bread of Life, which is Christ Jesus. 
 God is our Sun. 
 
 ' There are a few other things I would wish to say. No man 
 liveth or worketh for himself. Live for others. Work for others. 
 Work unitedly as members of His body. This at once brings me 
 to the social character of the members of Christ. Let there be 
 among you Christian Solidarity. The man who goes away from the 
 world and shuts himself up in his rooms and won't come and join 
 you in the social life of his time is useless, and useless things die. 
 Don't, gentlemen, don't live for yourselves. The finger is not use- 
 less. Cut it off and place it on the table, and it is not only useless, 
 but ugly. But you are living; you must be useful and lovely. Take 
 away any member from the body, and it becomes ugly. Apart from 
 Christ you may say what you will you are ugly, and you are use- 
 less, and you will die. Watch these men on the street finishing 
 those figures to adorn that building. How foolish the pieces look
 
 532 APPENDIX 
 
 until they are put together in the building, until they become part 
 of the building. A solitary Christian life is an anomaly. You are 
 to be social, joyful, beautiful, and fresh for His sake. For the 
 body has for its Head Jesus Christ. That changes life, and man has 
 a new tie to the man next him, because they are both members of 
 one body . , . each in its own place with its own work to do for the 
 body. And the hand is not to say to the foot, I have no need of thee ; 
 nor the ear to say it has no need of the eye. . . . There is nothing, 
 I think, of more comfort than that we are all, as members of the 
 body of Jesus Christ, of some use; and made by Him especially for 
 His work in the world. If you have not discovered your function, 
 depend upon it, that is something out of the ordinary. . . . There 
 is an endless variety of things in the Christian life. One says : No, 
 I have nothing to do. I say, let that man believe he has something 
 very definite to do as a member of the Body. Because the Head 
 expects it, and will show him what it is. 
 
 ' Gentlemen, you will not live long before you find your work for 
 Him. Do it with all your might. Seek first the kingdom of God 
 and His righteousness. I have said it so often, I am almost ashamed 
 to repeat, but I must. It is this. Do your seeking thoroughly. Be 
 out and out for Christ. It is far away easier. I have the most 
 supreme pity for the man who is an amphibian, a sort of Dr. Jekyl 
 and Mr. Hyde at church to-day, to-morrow with the world a 
 constant struggle to get back the life. Some men think it is easier 
 to do so. But they will, I hope, live to discover that it is a thou- 
 sand times easier to be out and out for Him. Go in for His service 
 thoroughly. Be soldiers of the Cross. Be completely consecrated, 
 as you have sung in that hymn 
 
 " Take my life, and let it be 
 Consecrated, Lord, to Thee ! " 
 
 Reversion to the old man and his life will be impossible. Not 
 until each of you has consecrated his whole and his all will he have 
 any chance of usefulness or joy in the Christian life. 
 
 ' You will remember what is said in Revelation of the lukewarm, 
 the amphibian Because thou art neither cold nor hot, I will spue 
 thee out of my mouth. This is the only passage in which words of 
 disgust are written from the lips of Christ. A last love, a dying 
 man, a sacrifice because of the half-hearted ! / would thou wert 
 cold, for thy sake, but especially for the world's. Why? Because 
 He says that tepid Christians bring the world's contempt upon Jesus 
 Christ. They crucify Him.
 
 ADDENDA 533 
 
 ' Resolve to-night at the Table of the Lord. Make an oath before 
 Him to consecrate your lives to Him a living sacrifice, holy, accept- 
 able unto God which is your reasonable service. You, come to min- 
 ister, not to be ministered unto. For me to live is Christ. Don't, 
 oh, gentlemen, I beg you, don't go out at that door to-night without 
 Christ, without God, without hope in the world. Leave the past, 
 forget it, and come to Him now: men consecrated entirely to 
 Christ. 
 
 ' The harvest is past, the winter is gone, and yet you are not saved. 
 You will look back over years to this night, and you will see you 
 missed your chance. Have no fear, lot perfect love casteth out fear. 
 Jesus loves you, loves you all with an everlasting love. If you are 
 the chiefest among sinners, come now to Him, just as you are, and 
 He will receive you gladly and cleanse you from all unrighteousness ! 
 
 ' May God bless and elevate this University ! May He purify it 
 by His followers ! May He bind together a band of men who shall 
 go forth to the ends of the earth to spend their lives and be spent 
 in His service.' 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 ADDENDA 
 
 SINCE the larger part of this biography was in print, papers of 
 Henry Drummond, and recollections of him by others, have contin- 
 ued to reach me. They contradict nothing that has been recorded; 
 for the most part, they only corroborate this; but a few report some 
 facts which I have overlooked, and which appear important enough 
 to demand notice. I give them here, with references to the relative 
 pages. 
 
 Pages 82, 91. For Dr. Dale's opinion of Moody and Sankey's 
 Mission, see his biography, just issued. 
 
 Page 120, line 8 from bottom, read 'in the Free Church of Ayr.' 
 
 Pages i37ff. Henry Drummond did see Holmes after all on 
 his third visit to America in 1893. To his delight, the old man, who 
 was then eighty-four, talked 'straight on for an hour and a quarter, 
 then apologised that no one that day had previously called to " run 
 off the electricity." He says he usually gets ladies to call first and 
 " go into the water like the horses to take the electricity off the elec- 
 tric eels before the men come." He talked of all the Immortals of 
 New England.'
 
 534 APPENDIX 
 
 Pages 147 ff. Henry Drummond has left notes for a new Preface 
 to Natural Law in the Spiritual World. These make it clear that 
 he meant not to rewrite the Book, but in the Preface to qualify a 
 number of its absolute statements. He restates more guardedly the 
 physical law of Biogenesis. And in the spiritual sphere he says 
 that 'any suggestion of spiritual birth as an isolated phenomenon or 
 unrelated effect is to be taken with reserve.' Cf. pp. 157 and 463 
 (the quoted paragraph). 
 
 Pages 190 f. It should have been stated here that the United 
 Presbyterian Church has a share in the Livingstonia Mission of the 
 Free Church of Scotland. Dr, Laws, the head of the Mission, was 
 a member of the former Church, and is supported by it. 
 
 Page 224. Here, or on some other page of the chapter on Henry 
 Drummond' s African journey, it should have been stated that the 
 natives called him by a name which signifies 'He who looks' or 
 'gazes'; whether because of his careful scrutiny of minerals, in- 
 sects, etc., or because of the keenness of his eyes when he looked 
 into another man's face, is unknown. 
 
 Page 237. It is a remarkable fact that Mr. Campbell Finlayson's 
 very able reply to Natural Law reached in 1895 a third (a posthu- 
 mous) edition : London, James Clarke and Co. 
 
 Page 380. Yale University, Oct. 3, 1887. 
 
 'I spent half-an-hour with Mark Twain at his own house [Hart- 
 ford, Connecticut]. He turned on the gun at once, and is really 
 a very droll creature. He speaks just like his books. He let off 
 several jokes which would have printed on the spot. He has a 
 reputation for great kindness to all who need help. 
 
 'Next door to him I found Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe a won- 
 derfully agile old lady, as fresh as a squirrel still, but with a face 
 and air like a lion's. I have not been so taken with any one on 
 this side the Atlantic. '
 
 INDEX 
 
 ABERDEEN, Lord and Lady, 272, 280, 
 
 283.299, 35 6 > 45 4&>. 
 
 Letters to, 273, 284 f., 290 ff., 
 
 307 f., 331 ff., 341, 372 f., 375 f., 
 387, 391,445, 448, 453 f. 
 Aberdeen Meeting of British Associa- 
 tion, 280. 
 
 African Lakes Company, 191. 
 Natives, 198. 
 
 Native Funeral, 206. 
 
 Native Service, 211-214. 
 Alston, Mr. Carfrae, President Boys' 
 
 Brigade, 480 n. 
 
 America, visit to (1879), 136-138, chap, 
 vii. 
 
 , (1887), chap. xii. 
 
 Conference of Students at Northfield, 
 368, 37.' 
 
 Chautauqua, 368, 372, 373, 376. 
 
 S. Framingham, Mass., 372. 
 
 Greenfield, Mass., 374. 
 
 Niagara, 371, 373, 376. 
 
 Clifton Springs, N.Y, 374. 
 
 New York, 375. 
 
 Williamstown, Mass., 377. 
 
 Dartmouth, 377. 
 
 New Brunswick, 377, 378, 
 
 Washington, 378. 
 
 Philadelphia, 378. 
 
 Yale, 379. 
 
 Harvard, 381. 
 
 Wellesley, 381. 
 
 H. D.'s visit to (1893), 45 & 
 
 Lowell Lectures in Boston, 451. 
 
 Dodge, Mr. W. E, 451, 455. 
 
 Boston, 451. 
 
 Bridgman, Mr. Howard, 451 n. 
 
 Amherst University, 452. 
 
 Northfield, visits to, 368, 371, 452. 
 
 Canada, fishing in, 453. 
 
 Quebec, visit to, 455. 
 
 America, Chicago University, 455. 
 M'Gill University, Montreal, 457. 
 McGinn's Magazine, 457. 
 
 University Extension in, 370 ff. 
 
 American Association for the Advance- 
 ment of Science, 368, 373, 374, 
 Antelope-hunting, 184. 
 Arran, 130, 166, 197, 295, 298, 340, 345. 
 Ascent of Man, 298, 343, 351, chap. 
 
 xvii. 
 
 Publication of, 458 ff. 
 Copyright in America, 458 n., 465 n. 
 Criticisms of, 460-472; by Mr. Ben- 
 jamin Kidd, 468; Prof. Iverach, 
 468; Prof. Alex. MacAlister, 
 465-469; Mrs. Lynn Linton, 
 460; G. S. Carr, 461 n.; Prof. 
 M'Kendrick, 465-470; Prof. 
 Gairdner, 470; Rev. D. M. 
 Ross, 471 f. 
 
 Associated Workers' League, 279, 305. 
 Atonement, The, H. D.'s faith in, 361. 
 Australia, visit to, 386. 
 
 Melbourne University, 386. 
 Melbourne Student Meetings, 394- 
 
 397- 
 
 Adelaide, 394. 
 
 Sydney, 396, 397, 426. 
 
 Queensland, 426. 
 
 Queensland Aborigines, 426. 
 
 Importation of Kanakas into Queens- 
 land, 426-431. 
 
 Walker, Rev. John, letter to, 397. 
 
 BAIN, Rev. James, 192, 202, 209, 218, 
 
 219, 221, 387. 
 
 Balfour, Right Hon. A. J., M.P., 299. 
 Bandawe Mission Station, 191, 208, 
 
 222. 
 
 Barbour, Dr. Hugh, letters to, 150, 282, 
 327, 502. 
 
 535
 
 536 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Barbour, Mr. George F., death of, 294. 
 Barbour, Robert W., 109, 294. 
 
 Letters to, no, 125, 132, 133, 135, 
 
 144, 145, 388. 
 Letters from, 270, 275, 281; death 
 
 of, 445, 446. 
 Barnetson, Mr. (criticism of a paper of 
 
 H. D.'s), 53. 
 Baxter's Second Innings, by H. D., for 
 
 Boys' Brigade, 474. 
 Beaver dams, 186, 187. 
 Beecher Stowe, Mrs., 380. 
 Biarritz, 500. 
 
 Biblical Criticism, 140, chap. x. 
 Binnie, Rev. Dr., 39. 
 Blaikie, Prof., 45, 60. 
 Blackwood, Miss Jane (Mrs. Drum- 
 
 mond, senior), 19. 
 Mr. James, 19. 
 Blantyre Mission Station, 191, 200, 
 
 222. 
 
 Blathwayt, Raymond (quoted), 143 n. 
 Bonn, 292, 342. 
 Bonskeid, Perthshire, 109, 124, 294, 
 
 312. 
 
 Students' Conference at, 349. 
 Boulder, Colorado, 168. 
 Boys' meetings in Edinburgh, 343 ff. 
 Boys' Brigade, chap, xviii. 
 Origin of, 479. 
 Objects of, 480, 483. 
 Management of, 480. 
 Growth of, 480, 492. 
 Inspected by Lords Wolseley and 
 Roberts, Sir D. Stuart, and Gen. 
 Chapman, 481. 
 H. D.'s interest in, 484. 
 Article upon, 477, 484-495. 
 Religious character of, 489 f. 
 Athletics and amusements, 492 f. 
 Summer camps, 494. 
 Officers' duties and opportunities, 
 
 491, 493, 494. 
 Official heads of, 480. 
 In Australia, 317, 484. 
 In United States, 484. 
 In Canada, 484. 
 
 Addresses in America on, 451, 455. 
 British Association, Aberdeen Meeting, 
 280. 
 
 Brodrick, W. St. John, M.P., 299. 
 Browning, Robert, 308, 317, 319, 
 
 387 n. 
 
 Bruce, Prof. A. B., 134. 
 Bushnell, Mrs., 380. 
 Butcher, Prof., 320. 
 
 CAIRNS, Prof., 60, 65. 
 Cambusbarron Mission, 19, 39. 
 Calderwood, Prof., 32, 60, 320. 
 Canal Boatmen's Institute, Glasgow 
 
 (Friend Society) , 496. 
 Officials of, 497 n. 
 
 Candlish, Prof. James, 134, 140, 502. 
 Canyons, 170, 173, 174, 183. 
 Cathcart, Dr., 325. 
 Charteris, Prof., 60, 320, 325, 340, 
 
 345- 
 
 Chautauqua, 295, 368, 370 ff., 452. 
 Chicago University Summer School, 
 
 370, 455- 
 
 Exhibition, 451, 455. 
 
 China, 434-436. 
 
 Inland Mission, 320. 
 
 Christian, The, letter from H. D. to, 
 
 348. 
 
 Christlieb, Prof., 341. 
 Church, Dr. H. M. (reminiscence), 38. 
 Church of Scotland, General Assembly 
 
 of, 280. 
 
 Blantyre Mission, 191, 200, 222. 
 City without a Church, 450. 
 Cochin China, 430. 
 Congregationalist, The, 384, 45 in. 
 Crerar, Rev. T., reminiscences, 23 n., 
 
 29, 30- 
 
 Crieff, 27-28. 
 Curzon, George N., M.P., 299, 331. 
 
 DARWIN, reference to, 47, 149. 
 Davidson, Prof. A. B., 44-47, 112. 
 Dax, 500. 
 Denney, Prof. James (criticism of 
 
 Natural Law), 155. 
 Depew, Hon. Chauncey, speech on 
 
 Student Movement, 382. 
 Diary of African Travel, in chap. viii. 
 Dods, Dr. Marcus, 134, 143, 310. 
 Douglas, Dr. Carstairs, 46. 
 Douglas, Principal, 127, 134, 268, 327.
 
 INDEX 
 
 537 
 
 Drummond Family, 18-20. 
 
 Henry, senior, 18, 19 ; illness and 
 death of, 296 f. 
 
 William (H. D.'s grandfather), 153. 
 
 David (H. D.'s uncle), letter 10,441. 
 Drummond, Henry 
 
 Early years, 18 ff. 
 
 School life, 21-29. 
 
 Student life in Edinburgh, chaps. iL, 
 iii., and v. 
 
 Early writings, 28, 31-37, 46, 53. 
 
 Preparation for ministry, chap. iii. 
 
 First interest in Natural Science, 31, 
 46, 54. 
 
 At Tubingen, 51, 52. 
 
 Missionary in Edinburgh, 56, 67. 
 
 Work in Great Mission, 1873-75, 
 101-108. 
 
 Lectureship on Natural Science in 
 Free Church College, Glasgow, 
 126, 130; in Malta, 132; pro- 
 fessorship, 265. 
 
 Visit to Rocky Mountains, chap. vii. 
 
 Publication of Natural Law, 161- 
 164. 
 
 Travel in Africa, chap. viii. 
 
 Grosvenor House meetings, 274 ff. 
 
 Offered Shipping Commission Secre- 
 taryship, 268 n. 
 
 Political life, 283-289. 
 
 Visit to Ireland, 285. 
 
 Requested to stand for Parliament, 
 287. 
 
 Student meetings, chap. xii. 
 
 Second visit to America, chap. xiii. 
 
 Visit to Australia, chap. xiv. 
 
 New Hebrides, chap. xv. 
 
 Third visit to America, 450 ff. 
 
 Publication of Ascent of Man, 457. 
 
 Boys' Brigade, chap, xviii. 
 
 The end, chap. xix. 
 Dublin Y.M.C.A. Convention, 273; 
 
 Trinity College, 285. 
 Duns, Prof., 45, 130, 264. 
 
 Ecce Homo, 339, 351. 
 Edinburgh University, matriculation at, 
 29. 
 
 conditions of, 30. 
 
 professors at, 31, 32. 
 
 Edinburgh University, Philomathic So- 
 ciety, 3 1,32; Magazine, 33. 
 
 Chair of Geology and Mineralogy, 
 
 189. 
 
 Tercentenary, 319. 
 
 Students' Meetings, chap. xii. 
 
 Settlements, 343, 345. 
 
 Eighty- Eight Club, 305; Magazine of, 
 
 305. 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 295, 381. 
 Episcopalian Missions, 66 n. 
 Evolution and Revelation, chap. x. 
 Ewing, J. F., 51, 71, 385, 386, 389-394; 
 
 letter to, 93. 
 Expositor, Articles in, by H. D., 244- 
 
 256. 
 
 FAIRBAIRN, Principal, 372. 
 
 Finlayson, Mr. Campbell, criticism of 
 
 Natural Law, 232. 
 
 First, by H. D., for Boys' Brigade, 474. 
 Fiske, Mr., 381. 
 
 Foote, Capt., R.N. (at Mandala), 224. 
 Fossils in Central Africa, 218-221. 
 Fotheringham, Mr., reminiscences, 24, 
 
 25, 39- 
 
 Free Church of Scotland, 43 ff., 266. 
 professorships of Natural Science 
 
 in, 129 ff. 
 
 General Assembly (1883), 264. 
 
 General Assembly (1884), 265. 
 
 Rite of ordination, 265. 
 
 New College, 43 ff. 
 
 GAIETY CLUB, 116, 117, 144, 274, 285, 
 
 496. 
 Gairdner, Sir William, 325 ; opinion of 
 
 Ascent of Man, 471. 
 Gardiner River, Yellowstone, 171-174. 
 Geikie, Prof. Archibald, 50, 127, 130, 
 
 321; reminiscences, 10, 188- 
 
 189; letter to, 167, 189; travel 
 
 with, chap. vii. 
 Geological Observations 
 In Yellowstone, 170-188. 
 In Africa, 194, 203, 211 f., 218. 
 In New Hebrides, 405, 406, 408. 
 Geysers, observations of, 171-183. 
 Gilbert, Mr., secretary Canal Boatmen's 
 
 Institute, 497.
 
 538 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Gladstone, Mr., article in Nineteenth 
 Century, 256, 283; letter to, 
 from H. D., 288. 
 Glasgow, Free Church College, 127- 
 
 130. 
 
 Lectureship in, 127, 130. 
 Professorship in, 265. 
 Colleagues at, 134. 
 Glasgow University Settlements, 309, 
 
 314, 496. 
 
 Theological Club, 160, 229. 
 Possilpark Mission, 134, 139, 145 f. 
 Renfield Free Church, 134. 
 Boys' Brigade, chap, xviii. 
 Canal Boatmen's Institute, 496. 
 H. D.'s home in, 446. 
 Good Words, article by H. D. on Boys' 
 
 Brigade, 477, 484 ff. 
 Grant, Sir Alexander, 319. 
 Greenfield, Dr 4 320, 325, 345, 375, 
 
 378; letters to, 330, 337. 
 Grosvenor House addresses, 272-279. 
 second series, 299-305. 
 
 HADDO House, 280, 312, 446. 
 
 Association, 281. 
 
 Haeckel, History of Creation, quoted, 
 
 259 n. 
 
 Hamilton, Sir Robert, 286. 
 Harkiss, Mr., 202, 205. 
 Harvard University, 381, 451. 
 Hay, Dr., 325, 327. 
 Hayden, Prof., 167. 
 Hedderwick, Mr. (Blantyre), 193, 200, 
 
 223. 
 
 Helmholtz, von, 319. 
 Henderson, Mr. (Blantyre), 193, 200, 
 
 223. 
 
 High School, 20. 
 Higher Education of Women, H. D.'s 
 
 views on, 298. 
 Hinton, James, 236. 
 Hippopotami, 202. 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 138. 
 Home Reading Union, 317. 
 
 Rule, 283-289. 
 
 Huxley, Prof. (Lay Sermons), 150, 
 
 250. 
 article in Nineteenth Century, 
 
 256. 
 
 Inner-Afrika, 194 n. 
 Ireland, 283. 
 
 JAPAN, 432, 434, 437. 
 Java, 430. 
 
 KEDDIE, Mr. 126, 130. 
 Kelman, Rev. John (Leith), 58. 
 
 LAIDLAW, Dr., 291. 
 
 Laveleye, de, 319. 
 
 Laws, Dr. (Bandawe), 203, 208, 211, 
 
 222. 
 Lenormant, Les Origines de VHistoire, 
 
 261 n. 
 
 Lesseps, Count de, 319. 
 Lindsay, Prof. T. M., 134. 
 Livingstone, David, 190. 
 Livingstonia Mission, 176-190. 
 Longfellow, 138, 295, 381. 
 Lowell, Russell, 319, 381. 
 Lucas, Mr. W., 386 n. 
 Lyttelton, Mr. Alfred, 299. 
 
 MACDONALD, GEORGE (quotation), 259, 
 
 3i7 355> 388. 
 
 Mackintosh, Rev. Robert, 314. 
 Maclagan, Prof. Sir Douglas, 320. 
 Macphail, Dr. James M. (letter from), 
 
 325- 
 
 Madison River, 183, 186. 
 Malta, 132. 
 Mandala, 200, 224. 
 Mark Twain, 380. 
 Marsh, Prof. 376. 
 M'Culloch, Rev. J. H., reminiscences, 
 
 23 n., 33. 38 39 n-> 5& 
 M'Kendrick, Prof., 325. 
 M'Murtrie, Mr., quoted, 60, 65. 
 Mesmerism, paper on, by H. D., 33. 
 Mission, The Great (1873-75), chap. iv. 
 
 Liverpool, 58, 83, 88-91. 
 
 York, 58. 
 
 Newcastle, 58, 71. 
 
 Sunderland, 58, 71-75. 
 
 Edinburgh, 59-69. 
 
 Supporters in Edinburgh, 60. 
 
 Glasgow, 63-70. 
 
 Supporters in Glasgow, 65. 
 
 Greenock, 63.
 
 INDEX 
 
 539 
 
 Mission, The Great, Stirling, 64. 
 
 Perth, 64. 
 
 Dundee, 64. 
 
 Aberdeen, 64. 
 
 Inverness, 64, 70. 
 
 Oban, 64. 
 
 Campbeltown, 64. 
 
 Rothesay, 64, 77. 
 
 Student workers in, 67, 69. 
 
 South Shields, 71, 76. 
 
 Bishop Auckland, 71. 
 
 Hartlepool, 71, 73. 
 
 Hexham, 71, 75. 
 
 Morpeth, 71. 
 
 Belfast, 77. 
 
 Londonderry, 77, 78. 
 
 Dublin, 79-82. 
 
 Sympathy from Episcopalians in Ire- 
 land, 80 ; and from Roman 
 Catholics, 80. 
 
 Manchester, 82-85. 
 
 Sheffield, 82, 85, 86. 
 
 Birmingham, 82, 87. 
 
 London, 91-97. 
 
 General results of, 97-101. 
 
 H. D.'s special work in, 96, 100-108; 
 and its effect on his character, 
 100-108. 
 Missions, Address on Foreign, by H. D., 
 
 432 ft. 
 
 Moir, Mr. and Mrs., 200, 218, 224. 
 Moncrieff, Sir Henry, 131. 
 Moody, D. L., chap, iv., 368, 373; 
 estimate of H. D.'s character, 8, 
 9; letter from, 112; visits to, 
 138, I44-I47. 45 I- 
 
 and Sankey, Second Mission, 144. 
 
 Morison's Academy, Crieff, 27-29. 
 
 Morley, Mr. John, 285. 
 
 Mount Washburne, Yellowstone, 173, 
 
 175- 
 
 Moxey, Dr., 320. 
 Muir, Sir William, 324, 345. 
 Munro Ferguson, Mr. R., M.P., 299. 
 
 Mr., 238. 
 
 Murray, Mr., W.S., 277. 
 
 Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 
 
 148-164. 
 Publication of, 161-164. 
 
 Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 
 first news of its success, 221. 
 
 Its fame, chap. ix. 
 
 Criticisms, 237. 
 
 Fame abroad, 240. 
 
 Translations, 240. 
 New College, Edinburgh, 43. 
 Hebrides, 397, 399, chap. XT. 
 
 Missionaries, chap. xv. passim. 
 
 Aneityum, mission in, 403. 
 
 Futuna, 404. 
 
 Tanna, 406. 
 
 Volcanoes, 408-411, 418. 
 
 Eromanga, 411, 424, 425. 
 
 Efate, 41 1 n., 420, \">J\, 
 
 Fila, mission in, 411. 
 
 Tongoa, 413, 424. 
 
 Natives in New Hebrides, 405, 410, 
 411, 413 ff., 421. 
 
 Malokolo, 420. 
 
 Climate of, 423. 
 
 Products of, 421. 
 
 Mission in, 436. 
 
 Newman, Mr. George, 353 ff., and Ap- 
 pendix. 
 
 Mr., 161 n. 
 
 New York World, extract from, 382. 
 Nineteenth Century, article in, by 
 
 H. D., 244, 256-262, 282. 
 Northcote, Sir Stafford, 319. 
 Noumea, New Caledonia, 425. 
 Nyasa Lake, 190, 204. 
 
 ORDINATION, RITE OF, 265. 
 Orphans' Home, Leominster, 161. 
 Oxford, mission to undergraduates, 330- 
 
 339- 
 
 Fremantle, Canon, 334. 
 Liddell, Dean and Mrs., 333, 334. 
 Broughton, Miss Rhoda, 334. 
 Jowett, Mr., 334, 356. 
 Talbot, Mr. (Warden of Keble, 1885), 
 
 letter from, 336. 
 Anson, Sir William, 331. 
 Holland, Scott, Canon, 331, 334, 336. 
 Girdlestone, Canon, 331. 
 Butler, Rev. A. G., 331, 334, 336. 
 Percival, Canon, 331, 334. 
 Christopher, Rev. Mr., 331. 
 Munro, Mr. (Provost of Oriel), 331.
 
 540 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Oxford, Broderick, Hon. George (War- 
 den of Merton), 331. 
 
 Fowler, Mr. Thomas (President of 
 Corpus), 331. 
 
 Bryce, Prof., 331, 334. 
 
 Pelham, Mr., 331. 
 
 PARTICK Division of Lanarkshire, 287. 
 
 Paterson, A. S., 44, 225. 
 
 Pax Vobiscum, 439. 
 
 Peabody, Prof. Francis, letter from, 
 
 384. 
 
 Perth Conference, 272. 
 Pleasant Sunday Afternoons, 496. 
 Pomalombe, Lake, 204. 
 Programme of Christianity, 351. 
 
 QUA-QUA River, 194, 195, 224. 
 Quarry, Genesis, 262 n. 
 Quilimame, East Africa, 193, 224. 
 
 RAINY, Principal, 60, 114, 131, 319. 
 Ramblers' Alliance, West of Scotland, 
 
 496. 
 
 Red Indians, 166, 170, 173, 186. 
 Reith, Rev. George, ordination charge, 
 
 267. 
 
 Rentoul, Prof., 426. 
 Revelation and Evolution, chap. x. 
 Rocky Mountains, 138. 
 
 Travel in, chap. vii. 
 
 Diary, 170-188. 
 Ross, Rev. D. M., 44, 51, 113. 
 
 Letters to, 132, 390. 
 
 Criticism of Ascent of Man, 470. 
 Ruskin, 308. 
 Russell, Mr. George W., 299. 
 
 SAFFI, Count, 319. 
 
 Sankey, Ira D., chap, iv.; letter to, 444. 
 
 Schools in Scotland, 20. 
 
 Science and Religion, chap. vi. 
 
 Scott, Dr. and Mrs. Livingstonia, 193, 
 
 202, 223. 
 Shanghai, 430. 
 Shearer, Mr. and Mrs., African Lakes 
 
 Company, 193. 
 Shire Highlands, Africa, 191. 
 
 River, 196 ff., 224. 
 
 Simpson, Mr. R. R., 106 n. 
 
 Simpson, Prof. A. R., recollections, 
 
 108 n., no, 126 n. 
 Pamphlet by, 319 n., 377, 378. 
 Letter to, 498. 
 To Mrs. Simpson, 279. 
 Sinclair, Captain, 289, 299, 375, 449. 
 Singapore, 430. 
 Slave trade, 191, 226. 
 Smith, Mr. G. P., 325, 342, 378. 
 
 Mr. W. A., Boys' Brigade, 479. 
 
 Smith, Prof. Robertson, 43, 116, 131, 
 
 139-142. 
 
 Stanley, 320. 
 
 Spectator review of Natural Law, 221, 
 
 228, 232. 
 
 Spencer, Lord, 286. 
 Stalker, Dr. James, recollections, 53, 
 
 68-71, 103, 470 n. 
 
 Steele, Sir Richard, quotation from, 1 7. 
 Steven, Rev. G., 113. 
 Stevenson, Mr. James, 192, 209, 264. 
 
 letters to, 267, 268. 
 Stewart, Dr. (Lovedale), 190, 208, 209. 
 
 Mr. James, death of, 208, 212. 
 
 Grainger, Sir Thomas, 301, 320, 
 
 325- 
 
 Stirling, 18, 24, 28, 503. 
 Stuart, Mr. and Mrs., letters to, 118- 
 
 121, 122, I3S-I38, 147, 192. 
 
 Studd, C. T., 320. 
 
 Student Movement in Edinburgh, chap. 
 
 xii. 
 Meetings in Oddfellows' Hall, 322- 
 
 324 338, 343. 345-35. 448. 
 H. D.'s addresses to students, 350- 
 
 366, and Appendix. 
 Deputation of students, 282. 
 
 Holiday Mission, 295, 327-329, 
 
 340, 344. 
 
 Meetings, in Edinburgh, 293, 298, 
 
 342 ff., 345, 497. 
 Aberdeen, 325. 
 Glasgow, 325, 338. 
 Oxford, 330-339. 
 America, 295, chap. xiii. 
 Australia, 316. 
 Germany, 342. 
 Sutherlandshire, fishing, 280, 289, 305, 
 
 311,446,496. 
 Swedenborg, 236.
 
 INDEX 
 
 541 
 
 Switzerland, visits of H. D. to, 290 ff., 
 306 ff. 
 
 TANGANYIKA Lake, 192, 209, 215, 217. 
 
 Thomson, Peter, 44, 112. 
 
 Times of Blessing (quoted), 66 n., 80 n. 
 
 translations of, 240. 
 
 Tropical Africa, 194, 194 n., 198 n., 
 
 201 n., 205 n., 210, 214 f., 221 n., 
 
 226 n. 
 
 Tsetse fly, 202. 
 Tunbridge Wells, 500. 
 Tyndall, Prof., 150. 
 
 UNIVERSITY Extension in America, 
 
 37- 
 
 settlements in Glasgow, 309, 314. 
 
 in Edinburgh, 343, 345. 
 
 VIRCHOW, 319. 
 
 WATSON, Rev. John, 22, 25, 44. 
 Welldon, J. E. C., 299. 
 Wellesley College, U.S.A., 381. 
 Westminster Confession of Faith, 266. 
 Whyte, Dr. Alexander, 340. 
 Wilson, Dr. Claude, 500. 
 World, The, article on Grosvenor House 
 meetings, 275. 
 
 YELLOWSTONE, the, 170-188. 
 
 ZAMBEZI, article on, by H. D., 
 
 298 n. 
 
 , 190, 224 
 
 Zockler, Dr. Otto, criticism of Natural 
 
 Law, 242.