The Ideal Life
By Henry Drummond

       THE IDEAL LIFE

       The Ideal Life and other Unpublished Addresses by HENRY DRUMMOND F.R.S.E.
       with Memorial Sketches by W. Robertson Nicoll and Ian Maclaren

       LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON

       27 PATERNOSTER ROW 1897

       INTRODUCTORY NOTE

       The addresses which make up this volume were written by Professor
      Drummond between the years 1876 and 1881, and are now published to meet the
      wishes of those who heard some of them delivered, and in the hope that they
      may continue his work.
       They were never prepared for publication, and have been printed from
      his manuscripts with a few obvious verbal corrections. A few paragraphs used
      in later publications have been retained.
       Of the memorial sketches the first was originally published in the
      Contemporary Review, and the second in the North American Review.
      December, 1897.

       CONTENTS

       MEMORIAL SKETCHES

       I. BY W. ROBERTSON NICOLL
       II. BY IAN MACLAREN

       ADDRESSES

       ILL-TEMPER
       "He was angry, and would not go in."--Luke xv. 28.
       1881
       WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART
       "It is expedient for you that I go away."-- John xvi. 7.
       1880
       GOING TO THE FATHER
       "I go to my Father." -- John xiv. 12.
       1880
       THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION
       "And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold of him:
      for they said, He is beside himself." -- Mark iii. 21.
       1880
       "TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST"
       "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." -- Philippians i.
      21.
       1879
       CLAIRVOYANCE
       "We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are
      not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which
      are not seen are eternal." -- 2 Corinthians iv. 18.
       1881
       THE THREE FACTS OF SIN
       "Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; Who healeth all thy diseases; Who
      redeemeth thy life from destruction." -- Psalm ciii. 3,4.
       1877
       THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION
       "Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; Who healeth all thy diseases; Who
      redeemeth thy life from destruction." -- Psalm ciii. 3,4.
       1877
       MARVEL NOT
       "Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again." -- John iii.
      7.

       PENITENCE
       "And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter and Peter went out and wept
      bitterly." -- Luke xxii. 61,62.
       1877
       THE MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART -- A BIBLE STUDY ON THE IDEAL OF A
      CHRISTIAN LIFE
       "A man after mine own heart, who shall fulfil all my will." -- Acts
      xiii. 22.
       "WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?"
       "Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your
      life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then
      vanisheth away." -- James iv. 14.
       Dec. 31, 1876
       WHAT IS GOD'S WILL
       "The God of our fathers has chosen thee, that thou shouldest know His
      will." -- Acts xxii. 14.
       1877
       THE RELATION OF THE WILL OF GOD TO SANCTIFICATION
       "This is the will of God, even your sanctification." -- I Thessalonians
      iv. 3.
       "As He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of
      conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy for I am holy." -- I Peter
      i. 15,16.
       "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God. . . . By the which will we are
      sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all."
      -- Hebrews x. 9,10.
       HOW TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD
       "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it
      be of God." -- John vii. 17.

       A MEMORIAL SKETCH BY W. ROBERTSON NICOLL

       Henry Drummond

       PROFESSOR DRUMMOND'S influence on his contemporaries is not to be
      measured by the sale of his books, great as that has been. It may be doubted
      whether any living novelist has had so many readers, and perhaps no living
      writer has been so eagerly followed and so keenly discussed on the Continent
      and in America. For some reason, which it is difficult to assign, many who
      exercise great influence at home are not appreciated elsewhere. It has been
      said, for example, that no book of Ruskin's has ever been translated into a
      Continental language, and though such a negative is obviously dangerous, it
      is true that Ruskin has not been to Europe what he has been to England. But
      Professor Drummond had the widest vogue from Norway to Germany. There was a
      time when scarcely a week passed in Germany without the publication of a
      book or pamphlet in which his views were canvassed. In Scandinavia, perhaps,
      no other living Englishman was so widely known. In every part of America his
      books had an extraordinary circulation. This influence reached all classes.
      It was strong among scientific men, whatever may be said to the contrary.
      Among such men as Von Moltke, Mr Arthur Balfour, and others belonging to the
      governing class, it was stronger still. It penetrated to every section of
      the Christian Church, and far beyond these limits. Still, when this is said,
      it remains true that his deepest influence was personal and hidden. In the
      long series of addresses he delivered all over the world he brought about
      what may at least be called a crisis in the lives of in numerable hearers.
      He received, I venture to say, more of the confidences of people untouched
      by the ordinary work of the Church than any other man of his time. Men and
      women came to him in their deepest and bitterest perplexities. To such he
      was accessible, and both by personal interviews and by correspondence, gave
      such help as he could. He was an ideal confessor. No story of failure
      daunted or surprised him. For every one he had a message of hope, and, while
      the warm friend of a chosen circle and acutely responsive to their kindness,
      he did not seem to lean upon his friends. He himself did not ask for
      sympathy, and did not seem to need it. The innermost secrets of his life
      were between himself and his Saviour. While frank and at times even
      communicative, he had nothing to say about himself or about those who had
      trusted him. There are multitudes who owed to Henry Drummond all that one
      man can owe to another, and who felt such a thrill pass through them at the
      news of his death as they can never experience again.
       Henry Drummond was born at Stirling in 1851. He was surrounded from the
      first by powerful religious influences of the evangelistic kind. His uncle
      Mr Peter Drummond, was the founder of what is known as the Stirling Tract
      enterprise, through which many millions of small religious publications have
      been circulated through the world. As a child he was remarkable for his
      sunny disposition and his sweet temper, while the religiousness of his
      nature made itself manifest at an early period. I do not gather, however,
      that there were many auguries of his future distinction. He was thought to
      be somewhat desultory and independent in his work. In due course he
      proceeded to the University of Edinburgh, where he distinguished himself in
      science, but in nothing else. He gained, I believe, the medal in the geology
      class. But, like many students who do not go in for honours, he was anything
      but idle. He tells us himself that he began to form a library, his first
      purchase being a volume of extracts from Ruskin's works. Ruskin taught him
      to see the world as it is, and it soon became a new world to him, full of
      charm and loveliness. He learned to linger beside the ploughed field, and
      revel in the affluence of colour and shade which were to be seen in the
      newly-turned furrows, and to gaze in wonder at the liquid amber of the two
      feet of air above the brown earth. Next to Ruskin he put Emerson, who all
      his life powerfully affected both his teaching and his style. Differing as
      they did in many ways, they were alike in being optimists with a high and
      noble conception of good, but with no correspondingly definite conception of
      evil. Mr. Henry James says that Emerson's genius had a singular thinness, an
      almost touching lightness, sparseness, and transparency about it. And the
      same was true, in a measure, of Drummond's. The religious writers who
      attracted him were Channing and F. W. Robertson. Channing taught him to
      believe in God, the good and gracious Sovereign of all things. From
      Robertson he learned that God is human, and that we may have fellowship with
      Him because He sympathises with us. It is well known that Robertson himself
      was a warm admirer of Channing. The parallels between Robertson and Channing
      in thought, and even in words, have never been properly drawn out. It would
      be a gross exaggeration to say that the contact with Robertson and Channing
      was the beginning of Drummond's religious life. But it was through them, and
      it was at that period of his studentship that he began to take possession
      for himself of Christian truth. And it was a great secret of his power that
      he preached nothing except what had personally come home to him and had
      entered into his heart of hearts. His attitude to much of the theology in
      which he was taught was that not of denial, but of respectful distance. He
      might have come later on to appropriate it and preach it, but the
      appropriation would have been the condition of the preaching. His mind was
      always receptive. Like Emerson, he was an excellent listener. He stood
      always in a position of hopeful expectancy, and regarded each delivery of a
      personal view as a new fact to be estimated on its merits. I may add that he
      was a warm admirer of Mr R. H. Hutton, and thought his essay on Goethe the
      best critical piece of the century. He used to say that, like Mr Hutton, he
      could sympathise with every Church but the Hard Church.
       After completing his University course he went to the New College,
      Edinburgh, to be trained for the ministry of the Free Church. The time was
      critical. The Free Church had been founded in a time of intense Evangelical
      faith and passion. It was a visible sign of the reaction against Moderatism.
      The Moderates had done great service to literature, but their sermons were
      favourably represented by the solemn fudge of Blair. James Macdonell, the
      brilliant Times leader-writer, who carefully observed from the position of
      an outsider the ecclesiastical life of his countrymen, said that the
      Moderate leaders deliberately set themselves to the task of stripping Scotch
      Presbyterianism free from provincialism, and so triumphant were they that
      most of their sermons might have been preached in a heathen temple as fitly
      as in St. Giles. They taught the moral law with politeness; they made
      philosophy the handmaid of Christianity with well-bred moderation, and they
      so handled the grimmer tenets of Calvinism as to hurt no susceptibilities.
      The storm of the Disruption blew away the old Moderates from their place of
      power, and men like Chalmers, Cunningham, Candlish, Welsh, Guthrie, Begg,
      and the other leaders of the Evangelicals, more than filled their place. The
      obvious danger was that the Free Church should become the home of bigotry
      and obscurantism. This danger was not so great at first. There was a lull in
      critical and theological discussion, and men were sure of their ground. The
      large and generous spirit of Chalmers impressed itself on the Church of
      which he was the main founder, and the desire to assert the influence of
      religion in science and literature in all the field of knowledge was shown
      from the beginning. For example, the North British Review was the organ of
      the Free Church, and did not stand much behind the Edinburgh and the
      Quarterly, either in the ability of its articles or in the distinction of
      many of its contributors. But especially the Free Church showed its wisdom
      by founding theological seminaries, and filling their chairs with its best
      men. A Professorship of Divinity was held to be a higher position than the
      pastorate of any pulpit. As time went on, however, and as the tenets of the
      Westminster Evangelicalism were more and more formidably assailed, the Free
      Church came in danger of surrendering its intellectual life. The whisper of
      heresy would have damaged a minister as effectually as a grave moral charge.
      Independent thought was impatiently and angrily suppressed. Macdonell said,
      writing in the Spectator in 1874, that the Free Church was being
      intellectually starved, and he pointed out that the Established Church was
      gaining ground under the leadership of such men as Principal Tulloch and Dr.
      Wallace, who in a sense represented the old Moderates, though they were as
      different from them as this age is from the last. The Free Church was
      apparently refusing to shape the dogmas of traditional Christianity in such
      a way as to meet the subtle intellectual and moral demands of an essentially
      scientific age. There was an apparent unanimity in the Free Church, but it
      was much more apparent than real. For one thing, the teaching of some of the
      professors had been producing its influence. Dr. A. B. Davidson, the
      recognised master of Old Testament learning in this country, a man who joins
      to his knowledge imagination, subtlety, fervour, and a rare power of style,
      had been quietly teaching the best men amongst his students that the old
      views of revelation would have to be seriously altered. He did not do this
      so much directly as indirectly, and I think there was a period when any Free
      Church minister who asserted the existence of errors in the Bible would have
      been summarily deposed. The abler students had been taking sessions at
      Germany, and had thus escaped from the narrowness of the provincial coterie.
      They were interested, some of them in literature, some in science, some in
      philosophy. At the New College they discussed in their theological society
      with daring and freedom the problems of the time. A crisis was sure to come,
      and it might very well have been a crisis which would have broken the Church
      in pieces. That it did not was due largely to the influence of one man-- the
      American Evangelist, Mr. Moody.
       In 1873 Mr. Moody commenced his campaign in the Barclay Free Church,
      Edinburgh. A few days before, Drummond had read a paper to the Theological
      Society of his college on Spiritual Diagnosis, in which he maintained that
      preaching was not the most important thing, but that personal dealing with
      those in anxiety would yield better results. In other words, he thought that
      practical religion might be treated as an exact science. He had given
      himself to scientific study with a view of standing for the degree of Doctor
      of Science. Moody at once made a deep impression on Edinburgh, and attracted
      the ablest students. He missed in this country a sufficient religious
      provision for young men, and he thought that young men could best be moulded
      by young men. With his keen American eye he perceived that Drummond was his
      best instrument, and he immediately associated him in the work. It had
      almost magical results. From the very first Drummond attracted and deeply
      moved crowds, and the issue was that for two years he gave himself to this
      work of evangelism in England, in Scotland, and in Ireland. During this
      period he came to know the life histories of young men in all classes. He
      made himself a great speaker; he knew how to seize the critical moment, and
      his modesty, his refinement, his gentle and generous nature, his manliness,
      and, above all, his profound conviction, won for him disciples in every
      place he visited. His companions were equally busy in their own lines, and
      in this way the Free Church was saved. A development on the lines of Tulloch
      and Wallace was impossible for the Free Church. Any change that might take
      place must conserve the vigorous evangelical life of which it had been the
      home. The change did take place. Robertson Smith, who was by far the first
      man of the circle, won, at the sacrifice of his own position, toleration for
      Biblical criticism, and proved that an advanced critic might be a convinced
      and fervent evangelical. Others did something, each in his own sphere, and
      it is not too much to say that the effects have been world-wide. The recent
      writers of Scottish fiction--Barrie Crockett, and Ian Maclaren, were all
      children of the Free Church, two of them being ministers. In almost every
      department of theological science, with perhaps the exception of Church
      history, Free Churchmen have made contributions which rank with the most
      important of the day. It is but bare justice to say that the younger
      generation of Free Churchmen have done their share in claiming that
      Christianity should rule in all the fields of culture, that the Incarnation
      hallows every department of human thought and activity. No doubt the claim
      has excited some hostility; at the same time the general public has rallied
      in overwhelming numbers to its support, and any book of real power written
      in a Christian spirit has now an audience compared with which that of most
      secular writers is small.
       Even at that time Drummond's evangelism was not of the ordinary type.
      When he had completed his studies, after brief intervals of work elsewhere,
      he found his professional sphere as lecturer on Natural Science in the Free
      Church College at Glasgow. There he came under the spell of Dr. Marcus Dods,
      to whom, as he always testified, he owed more than to any other man. He
      worked in a mission connected with Dr. Dods' congregation, and there
      preached the remarkable series of addresses which were afterwards published
      as Natural Law in the Spiritual World. The book appeared in 1883, and the
      author would have been quite satisfied with a circulation of l ,000 copies.
      In England alone it has sold about 120,000 copies, while the American and
      foreign editions are beyond count. There is a natural prejudice against
      premature reconciliations between science and religion. Many would say with
      Schiller: "Feindschaft sei zwischen euch, noch kommt ein Bundniss zu fruhe:
      Forschet beide getrennt, so wird die Wahrheit erkannt." In order to
      reconcile science and religion finally you must be prepared to say what is
      science and what is religion. Till that is done any synthesis must be
      premature. and any book containing it must in due time be superseded.
      Drummond was not blind to this, and yet he saw that something had to be
      done. Evolution was becoming more than a theory--it was an atmosphere.
      Through the teaching of evolutionists a subtle change was passing over
      morals, politics, and religion. Compromises had been tried and failed. The
      division of territory desired by some was found to be impossible. Drummond
      did not begin with doctrine and work downwards to nature. He ran up natural
      law as far as it would go, and then the doctrine burst into view. It was
      contended by the lamented Aubrey Moore that the proper thing is to begin
      with doctrine. While Moore would have admitted that science cannot be
      defined, that even the problem of evolution is one of which as yet we hardly
      know the outlines, he maintained that the first step was to begin with the
      theology of the Catholic Church, and that it was impossible to defend
      Christianity on the basis of anything less than the whole of the Church's
      creed. Drummond did not attempt this. He declined, for example, to consider
      the relation of evolution to the Fall and to the Pauline doctrine of
      redemption. What he maintained was that, if you begin at the natural laws,
      you end in the spiritual laws; and in a series of impressive illustrations
      he brought out his facts of science, some of the characteristic doctrines of
      Calvinism-- brought them out sternly and undisguisedly. By many of the
      orthodox he was welcomed as a champion, but others could not acquiesce in
      his assumption of evolution, and regarded him as more dangerous than an open
      foe. The book was riddled with criticisms from every side. Drummond himself
      never replied to these, but he gave his approval to an anonymous defence
      which appeared in the Expositor,1 and it is worth while recalling briefly
      the main points. (I) His critics rejected his main position, which was not
      that the spiritual laws are analogous to the natural laws, but that they are
      the same laws. To this he replied that if he had not shown identity, he had
      done nothing, but he admitted that the application of natural law to the
      spiritual world had decided and necessary limits, the principle not applying
      to those provinces of the spiritual world most remote from human experience.
      He adhered to the distinction between nature and grace, but he thought of
      grace also as forming part of the divine whole of nature, which is an
      emanation from the recesses of the divine wisdom, power and love. (2) His
      use of the law of biogenesis was severely attacked alike from the scientific
      and the religious side. Even Christian men of science thought he had laid
      dangerous stress on the principle omne vivum ex vivo, and declined to say
      that biogenesis was as certain as gravitation. They further affirmed, and
      surely with reason, that the principle is not essential to faith. From the
      religious side it was urged that he had grossly exaggerated the distinction
      between the spiritual man and the natural man, and that he ignored the
      susceptibilities or affinities of the natural man for spiritual influence.
      The reply was that he had asserted the capacity for God very strongly. "The
      chamber is not only ready to receive the new life, but the Guest is
      expected, and till He comes is missed. Till then the soul longs and yearns,
      wastes and pines, waving its tentacles piteously in the empty air, or
      feeling after God if so be that it may find Him." (3) As for the charge that
      he could not reconcile his own statements as to divine efficiency and human
      responsibility, it was pointed out that this was only a phase of the larger
      difficulty of reconciling the exercise of the divine will with the freedom
      of the human will. What he maintained, in common with Augustinian and
      Puritan theology, was that in every case of regeneration there is an
      original intervention of God. (4) The absence of reference to the Atonement
      was due to the fact that the doctrine belonged to a region inaccessible to
      the new method, lying in the depths of the Divine Mind, and only to be made
      known by revelation. (5) The charge that he taught the annihilation of the
      unregenerate was repudiated. The unregenerate had not fulfilled the
      conditions of eternal life; but that does not show that they may not exist
      through eternity, for they exist at present, although in Mr. Drummond's
      sense they do not live. There is no doubt that many of the objections
      directed against his book applied equally to every form of what may be
      called evangelical Calvinism. But I think that the main impression produced
      on competent judges was that the volume, though written with brilliant
      clearness of thought and imagination, and full of the Christian spirit, did
      not give their true place to personality, freedom, and conscience, terms
      against which physical science may even be said to direct its whole
      artillery, so far as it tries to depersonalise man, but terms in which the
      very life of morality and religion is bound up. Perhaps Drummond himself
      came ultimately to take this view. In any case, Matthew Arnold's verdict
      will stand: "What is certain is that the author of the book has a genuine
      love of religion and genuine religious experience."
       His lectureship in Glasgow was constituted into a professor's chair,
      and he occupied it for the rest of his life. His work gave him considerable
      freedom. During a few months of the year he lectured on geology and botany,
      giving also scattered discourses on biological problems and the study of
      evolution. He had two examinations in the year, the first, which he called
      the "stupidity" examination, to test the men's knowledge of common things,
      asking such questions as, "Why is grass green?" "Why is the sea salt?" "Why
      is the heaven blue?" "What is a leaf?" etc., etc. After this Socratic
      inquiry he began his teaching, and examined his students at the end. He
      taught in a classroom that was also a museum, always had specimens before
      him while lecturing, and introduced his students to the use of scientific
      instruments, besides taking them for geological excursions. In his time of
      leisure he travelled very widely. He paid three visits to America, and one
      to Australia. He also took the journey to Africa commemorated in his
      brilliant little book, "Tropical Africa," a work in which his insight, his
      power of selection, his keen observation, his fresh style, and his charming
      personality appear to the utmost advantage. It was praised on every side,
      though Mr. Stanley made a criticism to which Drummond gave an effective and
      good-humoured retort. During these journeys and on other occasions at home
      he continued his work of evangelism. He addressed himself mainly to
      students, on whom he had a great influence, and for years went every week to
      Edinburgh for the purpose of delivering Sunday evening religious addresses
      to University men. He was invariably followed by crowds, the majority of
      whom were medical students. He also, on several occasions, delivered
      addresses in London to social and political leaders, the audience including
      many of the most eminent men of the time. The substance of these addresses
      appeared in his famous booklets, beginning with the "Greatest Thing in the
      World," and it may be worth while to say something of their teaching. Mr.
      Drummond did not begin in the conventional way. He seemed to do without all
      that, to common Christianity, is indispensable. He approached the subject so
      disinterestedly, with such an entire disregard of its one presupposition,
      sin, that many could never get on common ground with him. He entirely
      omitted that theology of the Cross which had been the substance hitherto of
      evangelistic addresses. Nobody could say that his gospel was "arterial" or
      "ensanguined." In the first place, he had, like Emerson, a profound belief
      in the powers of the human will. That word of Spinoza which has been called
      a text in the scriptures of humanity might have been his motto. "He who
      desires to assist other people .... in common conversations will avoid
      referring to the vices of men, and will take care only sparingly to speak of
      human impotence, while he will talk largely of human virtue or power, and of
      the way by which it may be made perfect, so that men being moved, not by
      fear or aversion, but by the effect of joy, may endeavour, as much as they
      can, to live under the rule of reason." With this sentence may be coupled
      its echo in the "Confessions of a Beautiful Soul": "It is so much the more
      our duty, not, like the advocate of the evil spirit, always to keep our eyes
      fixed upon the nakedness and weakness of our nature, but rather to seek out
      all those perfections through which we can make good our claims to a
      likeness to God." But along with this went a passionate devotion to Jesus
      Christ. Emerson said "The man has never lived who can feed us ever."
      Drummond maintained with absolute conviction that Christ could for ever and
      ever meet all the needs of the soul. In his criticism of "Ecce Homo," Mr.
      Gladstone answered the question whether the Christian preacher is ever
      justified in delivering less than a full Gospel. He argued that to go back
      to the very beginning of Christianity might be a method eminently suited to
      the needs of the present generation. The ship of Christianity was
      overloaded, not perhaps for fair weather, but when a gale came the mass
      strained over to the leeward. Drummond asked his hearers to go straight into
      the presence of Christ, not as He now presents Himself to us bearing in His
      hand the long roll of His conquests, but as He offered Himself to the Jew by
      the Sea of Galilee, or in the synagogue of Capernaum, or in the temple of
      Jerusalem. He declined to take every detail of the Christianity in
      possession as part of the whole. He denied that the rejection of the
      nonessential involved parting with the essential, and he strove to go
      straight to the fountain-head itself. Whatever criticisms may be passed, it
      will be allowed that few men in the century have done so much to bring their
      hearers and readers to the feet of Jesus Christ. It has been said of Carlyle
      that the one living ember of the old Puritanism that still burned vividly in
      his mind was the belief that honest and true men might find power in God to
      alter things for the better. Drummond believed with his whole heart that men
      might find power in Christ to change their lives.
       He had seven or eight months of the year at his disposal, and spent
      very little of them in his beautiful home at Glasgow. He wandered all over
      the world, and in genial human intercourse made his way to the hearts of
      rich and poor. He was as much at home in addressing a meeting of working men
      as in speaking at Grosvenor House. He had fastidious tastes, was always
      faultlessly dressed, and could appreciate the surroundings of civilization.
      But he could at a moment's notice throw them all off and be perfectly happy.
      As a traveller in Africa he cheerfully endured much privation. He excelled
      in many sports and was a good shot. In some ways he was like Lavengro, and I
      will say that some parts of "Lavengro" would be unintelligible to me unless
      I had known Drummond. Although he refused to quarrel, and had a thoroughly
      loyal and deeply affectionate nature, he was yet independent of others. He
      never married. He never undertook any work to which he did not feel himself
      called. Although he had the most tempting offers from editors nothing would
      induce him to write unless the subject attracted him, and even then he was
      unwilling. Although he had great facility he never presumed upon it. He
      wrote brightly and swiftly, and would have made an excellent journalist. But
      everything he published was elaborated with the most scrupulous care. I have
      never seen manuscripts so carefully revised as his. All he did was
      apparently done with ease, but there was immense labour behind it. Although
      in orders he neither used the title nor the dress that go with them, but
      preferred to regard himself as a layman. He had a deep sense of the value of
      the Church and its work, but I think was not himself connected with any
      Church, and never attended public worship unless he thought the preacher had
      some message for him. He seemed to be invariably in good spirits, and
      invariably disengaged. He was always ready for any and every office of
      friendship. It should be said that, though few men were more criticised or
      misconceived, he himself never wrote an unkind word about any one, never
      retaliated, never bore malice, and could do full justice to the abilities
      and character of his opponents. I have just heard that he exerted himself
      privately to secure an important appointment for one of his most trenchant
      critics, and was successful.
       For years he had been working quietly at his last and greatest book,
      "The Ascent of Man." The chapters were first delivered as the Lowell
      Lectures in Boston, where they attracted great crowds. The volume was
      published in 1894, and though its sale was large, exceeding 20,000 copies,
      it did not command his old public. This was due very much to the obstinacy
      with which he persisted in selling it at a net price, a proceeding which
      offended the booksellers, who had hoped to profit much from its sale. The
      work is much the most important he has left us. It was an endeavour, as has
      been said, to engraft an evolutionary sociology and ethic upon a biological
      basis. The fundamental doctrine of the struggle of life leads to an
      individualistic system in which the moral side of nature has no place.
      Professor Drummond contended that the currently accepted theory, being based
      on an exclusive study of the conditions of nutrition, took account of only
      half the truth. With nutrition he associated, as a second factor, the
      function of reproduction, the struggle for the life of others, and
      maintained that this was of co-ordinate rank as a force in cosmic evolution.
      Though others had recognised altruism as modifying the operation of egoism,
      Mr. Drummond did more. He tried to indicate the place of altruism as the
      outcome of those processes whereby the species is multiplied, and its
      bearing on the evolution of ethics. He desired, in other words, a
      unification of concept, the filling up of great gulfs that had seemed to be
      fixed. "If nature be the garment of God, it is woven without seam
      throughout; if a revelation of God, it is the same yesterday, to-day, and
      for ever; if the expression of His will, there is in it no variableness nor
      shadow of turning." After sketching the stages of the process of evolution,
      physical and ethical, he develops his central idea in the chapter on the
      struggle for the life of others, and then deals with the higher stages of
      the development of altruism as a modifying factor. The book was mercilessly
      criticised, but I believe that no one has attempted to deny the accuracy and
      the beauty of his scientific descriptions. Further, not a few eminent
      scientific men, like Professor Gairdner and Professor Macalister, have seen
      in it at least the germ out of which much may come. One of its severest
      critics, Dr. Dallinger, considers that nature is non-moral, and that
      religion begins with Christ. No man hath seen God at any time--this is what
      nature certifies. The only begotten Son of the Father, He hath declared
      Him--this is the message of Christianity. But there are many religious
      minds, and some scientific minds, convinced, in spite of all the
      difficulties, that natural law must be moral, and very loth to admit a
      hopeless dualism between the physical and the moral order of the world. They
      say that the whole force of evolution directs our glance forward, and that
      its motto is _______ oran.
       With the publication of this book Drummond's career as a public teacher
      virtually ended. He who had never known an illness, who apparently had been
      exempted from care and sorrow, was prostrated by a painful and mysterious
      malady. One of his kind physicians, Dr. Freeland Barbour, informs me that
      Mr. Drummond suffered from a chronic affection of the bones. It maimed him
      greatly. He was laid on his back for more than a year, and had both arms
      crippled, so that reading was not a pleasure and writing almost impossible.
      For a long time he suffered acute pain. It was then that some who had
      greatly misconceived him came to a truer judgement of the man. Those who had
      often found the road rough had looked askance at Drummond as a spoiled child
      of fortune, ignorant of life's real meaning. But when he was struck down in
      his prime, at the very height of his happiness, when there was appointed for
      him, to use his own words, "a waste of storm and tumult before he reached
      the shore," it seemed as if his sufferings liberated and revealed the forces
      of his soul. The spectacle of his long struggle with a mortal disease was
      something more than impressive. Those who saw him in his illness saw that,
      as the physical life flickered low, the spiritual energy grew. Always gentle
      and considerate, he became even more careful, more tender, more thoughtful,
      more unselfish. He never in any way complained. His doctors found it very
      difficult to get him to talk of his illness. It was strange and painful, but
      inspiring, to see his keenness, his mental elasticity, his universal
      interest. Dr. Barbour says: "I have never seen pain or weariness, or the
      being obliged to do nothing more entirely overcome, treated, in fact, as if
      they were not. The end came suddenly from a failure of the heart. Those with
      him received only a few hours' warning of his critical condition." It was
      not like death. He lay on his couch in the drawing-room, and passed away in
      his sleep, with the sun shining in and the birds singing at the open window.
      There was no sadness nor farewell. It recalled what he himself said of a
      friend's death--"putting by the well-worn tools without a sigh, and
      expecting elsewhere better work to do."

       A MEMORIAL SKETCH BY JOHN WATSON (IAN MACLAREN)

       Henry Drummond

       HE had been in many places over the world and seen strange sights, and
      taken his share in various works, and, being the man he was, it came to pass
      of necessity that he had many friends. Some of them were street arabs, some
      were negroes, some were medicals, some were evangelists, some were
      scientists, some were theologians, some were nobles. Between each one and
      Drummond there was some affinity, and each could tell his own story about
      his friend. It will be interesting to hear what Professor Greenfield or Mr.
      Moody may have to say; but one man, with profound respect for such eminent
      persons, would prefer to have a study of Drummond by Moolu his African
      retainer. Drummond believed in Moolu, not because he was "pious"--which he
      was not--but because "he did his duty and never told a lie." From the
      chief's point of view, Moolu had the final virtue of a clansman--he was
      loyal and faithful: his chief, for that expedition, had beyond most men the
      necessary endowment of a leader--a magnetic personality. It is understood
      that Drummond's life is to be written at large by a friend, in whose capable
      and wise hands it will receive full justice; but in the meantime it may not
      be unbecoming that one should pay his tribute who has his own qualification
      for this work of love. It is not that he is able to appreciate to the full
      the man's wonderful genius, or accurately to estimate his contributions to
      scientific and religious thought--this will be done by more distinguished
      friends--but that he knew Drummond constantly and intimately from boyhood to
      his death. If one has known any friend at school and college, and in the
      greater affairs of life has lived with him, argued with him, prayed with
      him, had his sympathy in the supreme moments of joy and sorrow, has had
      every experience of friendship except one--it was not possible to quarrel
      with Drummond, although you might be the hottest-tempered Celt on the face
      of the earth--then he may not understand the value of his friend's work, but
      at any rate he understands his friend. As one who knew Henry Drummond at
      first hand, my desire is to tell what manner of man he was, in all honesty
      and without eulogy. If any one be offended then, let him believe that I
      wrote what I have seen, and if any one be incredulous, then I can only say
      that he did not know Drummond.
       His body was laid to rest a few weeks ago, on a wet and windy March
      day, in the most romantic of Scottish cemeteries, and the funeral, on its
      way from the home of his boyhood to the Castle Rock of Stirling, passed the
      King's Park. It was in that park more than thirty years ago that I first saw
      Drummond, and on our first meeting he produced the same effect as 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, deepening the green
      upon the belt of trees which fringed the eastern 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 A1, 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 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 only saw 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. What happened with one strange lad that evening befell all kinds
      of people who met Drummond in later years. They were at once arrested,
      interested, fascinated by the very sight of the man, and could not take
      their eyes off him. Like a picture of the first order among ordinary
      portraits he unconsciously put his neighbours at a disadvantage. One did not
      realize how commonplace and colourless other men were till they stood side
      by side with Drummond. Upon a platform of evangelists, or sitting among
      divinity students in a dingy classroom, or cabined in the wooden
      respectability of an ecclesiastical court, or standing in a crowd of
      passengers at a railway station, he suggested golden embroidery upon hodden
      grey. It was as if the prince of one's imagination had dropped in among
      common folk. He reduced us all to the peasantry.
       Drummond was a handsome man, such as you could not match in ten days'
      journey, with delicately cut features, rich auburn hair, and a certain
      carriage of nobility, but the distinctive and commanding feature of his face
      was his eye. No photograph could do it justice, and very often photographs
      have done it injustice, by giving the idea of staringness. His eye was not
      bold or fierce; it was tender and merciful. But it had a power and hold
      which were little else than irresistible and almost supernatural. When you
      talked with Drummond, he did not look at you and out of the window
      alternately, as is the usual manner; he never moved his eyes, and gradually
      their penetrating gaze seemed to reach and encompass your soul. It was as
      Plato imagined it would be in the judgment; one soul was in contact with
      another--nothing between. No man could be double, or base, or mean, or
      impure before that eye. His influence, more than that of any man I have ever
      met, was mesmeric--which means that while other men affect their fellows by
      speech and example, he seized one directly by his living personality. As a
      matter of fact, he had given much attention to the occult arts, and was at
      one time a very successful mesmerist. It will still be remembered by some
      college companions how he had one student so entirely under his power that
      the man would obey him on the street, and surrender his watch without
      hesitation; and it was told how Drummond laid a useful injunction on a boy
      in a house where he was staying, and the boy obeyed it so persistently
      afterwards that Drummond had to write and set him free. Quite sensible and
      unromantic people grew uneasy in his presence, and roused themselves to
      resistance--as one might do who recognised a magician and feared his spell.
       One sometimes imagines life as a kind of gas of which our bodies are
      the vessels, and it is evident that a few are much more richly charged than
      their fellows. Most people simply exist completing their tale of work--not a
      grain over; doing their measured mile--not an inch beyond; thinking along
      the beaten track--never tempted to excursions. Here and there in the world
      you come across a person in whom life is exuberant and overflowing, a force
      which cannot be tamed or quenched. Drummond was such a one, the most vital
      man I ever saw, who never loitered, never wearied, never was conventional,
      pedantic, formal, who simply revelled in the fulness of life. He was so
      radiant with life that ordinary people showed pallid beside him, and shrank
      from him or were attracted and received virtue out of him. Like one coming
      in from the light and open air into a stuffy room where a company had been
      sitting with closed windows, Drummond burst into bloodless and unhealthy
      coteries, bringing with him the very breath of heaven.
       He was the evangelist to thoughtful men--over women he had far less
      power--and his strength lay in his personality. Without anecdotes or jokes
      or sensationalism of doctrine, without eloquence or passion, he moved young
      men at his will because his message was life, and he was its illustration.
      His words fell one by one with an indescribable awe and solemnity, in the
      style of the Gospels, and reached the secret place of the soul. Nothing more
      unlike the ordinary evangelistic address could be imagined: it was so sane,
      so persuasive, so mystical, so final. It almost followed, therefore, that he
      was not the ideal of a popular evangelist who has to address the multitude,
      and produce his effect on those who do not think. For his work, it is
      necessary--besides earnestness, which is taken for granted --to have a loud
      voice, a broad humour, a stout body, a flow of racy anecdote, an easy
      negligence of connection, a spice of contempt for culture, and pledges of
      identification with the street in dress and accent. His hearers feel that
      such a man is homely and is one of themselves, and, amid laughter and tears
      of simple human emotion, they are moved by his speech to higher things. This
      kind of audience might regard Drummond with respectful admiration, but he
      was too fine a gentleman, they would consider, for their homespun. Place
      him, as he used to stand and speak, most perfectly dressed both as to body
      and soul, before five hundred men of good taste and fine sensibilities, or
      the same number of young men not yet cultured but full of intellectual
      ambitions and fresh enthusiasm, and no man could state the case for Christ
      and the soul after a more spiritual and winsome fashion. Religion is without
      doubt the better for the popular evangelist, although there be times when
      quiet folk think that he needs chastening; religion also requires in every
      generation one representative at least of the higher evangelism, and if any
      one should ask what manner of man he ought to be, the answer is to his
      hand--Henry Drummond.
       When one admits, without reserve, that his friend was not made by
      nature to be a successful officer of the Salvation Army, it must not be
      understood that Drummond was in any sense a superior person, or that he
      sniffed in his daintiness at ordinary humanity--a spiritual Matthew Arnold.
      It would strain my conscience to bear witness that working people, say,
      however much they loved him, were perfectly at home with him, and it is my
      conviction, from observation of life, that this is an inevitable disability
      of distinction. One may be so well dressed, so good looking, so well
      mannered, so spiritually refined that men with soiled clothes and women
      cleaning the house may realize their low estate, and miss that freemasonry
      which at once by a hundred signs unites them in five minutes with a plainer
      man. While this may have been true, the blame was not his, and no man lived
      who had a more unaffected interest and keener joy in human life in the home
      or on the street. No power could drag him past a Punch-and-Judy show--the
      ancient, perennial, ever-delightful theatre of the people--in which, each
      time of attendance, he detected new points of interest. He would, in early
      days, if you please, gaze steadfastly into a window, in the High Street of
      Edinburgh, till a little crowd of men, women, children, and workmen, loafers
      soldiers, had collected, and join with much zest in the excited speculations
      regarding the man--unanimously and suddenly imagined to have been carried in
      helpless--how he met with his accident, where he was hurt, and whether he
      would recover, listening eagerly to the explanation of the gathering given
      by some officious person to the policeman, and joining heartily in the
      reproaches levelled at some unknown deceiver! One of his chosen subjects of
      investigation, which he pursued with the zeal and patience of a naturalist,
      was that ever-interesting species--the Boy, whom he studied in his various
      forms and haunts: at home for the holidays, on the cricket field, playing
      marbles on the street with a chance acquaintance while two families wait for
      their food, or living with many resources and high enjoyment in a barrel.
      There was nothing in a boy he did not know, could not explain, did not
      sympathize with, and so long as it lasts his name will be associated with
      the Boys' Brigade. While any other would only have seen two revellers in a
      man and woman singing their devious way along the street at night, Drummond
      detected that a wife, who had not been drinking, was luring her husband home
      by falling in with his mood and that before it was reached she might need a
      friendly hand. His sense of humour was unerring, swift and masterful. If he
      came upon a good thing in his reading he would walk a mile to share it with
      a friend, and afterwards depart in the strength thereof, and he has been
      found in his room exhausted with delight with nothing before him but one of
      those Parisian plaster caricatures of a vagabond. Lying on his back in the
      pitiable helplessness and constant pain of those last two years, he was
      still the same man.
       "Don't touch me, please-- I can't shake hands, but I've saved up a
      first-rate story for you," and his palate was too delicate to pass anything
      second-rate. Partly this was his human joyousness to whom the absurdities of
      life were ever dear; partly it was his bravery, who knew that the sight of
      him brought so low might be too much for a friend. His patience and
      sweetness continued to the end, and he died as one who had tasted the joy of
      living and was satisfied.
       His nature had, at the same time, a curious aloofness and separateness
      from human life, which one felt, but can hardly describe. He could be severe
      in speaking about a mean act or one who had done wickedly, but in my
      recollection he was never angry, and it was impossible to imagine him in a
      towering passion. He was profoundly interested in several causes, but there
      was not in him the making of a fanatical or headlong supporter. None could
      be more loyal in the private offices of friendship, but he would not have
      flung himself into his friend's public quarrel. In no circumstances would he
      be carried off his feet by emotion or be consumed by a white heat of
      enthusiasm. He was ever calm, cool, self-possessed, master of himself,
      passionless in thought, in speech, in action, in soul. Were you in trouble,
      he had helped you to his last resource, and concealed, if possible, his
      service; but of you, in his sore straits, he would have neither asked nor
      wished for aid. Many confidences he must have received; he gave none; many
      people must have been succoured by him; none succoured him till his last
      illness.
       This is at least perfectly certain, that from his youth he refused to
      have his life arranged for him, but jealously and fearlessly directed it by
      his own instincts, refusing the brown, beaten paths wherein each man,
      according to his profession, was content to walk and starting across the
      moor on his own way. Nothing can be more conventional than the career of the
      average Presbyterian minister who comes from a respectable religious family,
      and has the pulpit held up before him as the ambition of a good Scots lad;
      who is held in the way thereto by various traditional and prudential
      considerations, and better still--as is the case with most honest lads--by
      his mother's wishes; who works his laborious, enduring way through the
      Divinity Hall, and is yearly examined by the local Presbytery; who at last
      emerges into the butterfly life of a Probationer, and is freely mentioned,
      to his mother's anxious delight, in connection with "vacancies"; who is at
      last chosen by a majority to a pastorate--his mother being amazed at the
      blindness of the minority--and settles down to the routine of the ministry
      in some Scotch parish with the hope of Glasgow before him as a land of
      promise. His only variations in the harmless years might be an outburst on
      the historical reality of the Book of Jonah--ah me! Did that stout,
      middle-aged gentleman ever hint that Jonah was a drama?--which would be much
      talked of in the common room, and, it was whispered, reached the Professor's
      ears; and afterwards he might propose a revolutionary motion on the
      distribution of the Sustentation Fund. Add a handbook for Bible-classes on
      the Prophecy of Malachi, and you have summed up the adventures of his life.
      This was the life before Drummond when he entered the University of
      Edinburgh in 1866, and it ought to be recorded that he died an ordained
      minister and Professor of the Kirk, so that he did not disappoint his home,
      nor become an ecclesiastical prodigal, but with what amazing variations did
      he invest the years between! What order he took his classes in no one knew,
      but he found his feet in natural philosophy and made a name in geology. His
      course at the New College he completed in three years and one year, with two
      years' evangelistic touring between; and he once electrified the students by
      a paper--it seems yesterday, and I know where he stood--which owed much to
      Holmes and Emerson, but revealed his characteristic spiritual genius. His
      vacations he spent sometimes in tutorships, which yielded wonderful
      adventures, or at Tubingen, where his name was long remembered. As soon as
      Moody came to Edinburgh, Drummond allied himself with the most capable,
      honest, and unselfish evangelist of our day, and saw strange chapters in
      religious life through the United Kingdom. This was the infirmary in which
      he learned spiritual diagnosis. For one summer he was chaplain at Malta, in
      another he explored the Rockies; he lived five months among the Tanganyika
      forests, whence he sent me a letter dated Central Africa, and mentioning,
      among other details, that he had nothing on but a helmet and three
      mosquitoes. He was for a time assistant in an Edinburgh church, and readers
      of the illustrated papers used to recognise him in the viceregal group at
      Dublin Castle. His people at home-- one could trace some of his genius and
      much of his goodness to his father and mother--grew anxious and perplexed;
      for this was a meteoric course for a Free Kirk minister, and stolid
      acquaintances--the delicious absurdity of it--remonstrated with him as one
      who was allowing the chances of life to pass him, and urged him to settle.
      His friends had already concluded that he must be left free to fulfil
      himself, but knew not what to expect, when he suddenly appeared as a
      lecturer on Natural Science in the Free Church College of Glasgow, and
      promptly annexed a working-men's church. Afterwards his lectureship became a
      chair, and he held it to the end, although threatened with charges of heresy
      and such like absurdities. You might as well have beaten a spirit with a
      stick as prosecuted Drummond for heresy. The chair itself was a standing
      absurdity, being founded in popular idea to beat back evolution and to
      reconcile religion and science; but it gave Drummond an opportunity of
      widening the horizon of the future ministry and infusing sweetness into the
      students' minds. He may have worn a white tie on Sunday duty at his church,
      but memory fails to recall this spectacle, and he consistently refused to be
      called Reverend --declaring (this was his fun) that he had no recollection
      of being ordained, and that he would never dare to baptize a child. The last
      time he preached was about 1882, in my own church, and the outside world did
      not know that he was a clergyman. From first to last he was guided by an
      inner light which never led him astray, and in the afterglow his whole life
      is a simple and perfect harmony.
       Were one asked to select Drummond's finest achievement, he might safely
      mention the cleansing of student life at Edinburgh University. When he was
      an Arts student, life in all the faculties, but especially the medical, was
      reckless, coarse, boisterous, and no one was doing anything to raise its
      tone. The only visible sign of religion in my remembrance was a prayer
      meeting attended by a dozen men--one of whom was a canting rascal--and
      countenance from a professor would have given a shock to the university.
      Twenty years afterwards six hundred men, largely medicals, met every Sunday
      evening for worship and conference under Drummond's presidency, and every
      evening the meeting was addressed by tutors and fellows and other
      dignitaries. There was a new breath in academic life--men were now reverent,
      earnest, clean living and clean thinking, and the reformer who wrought this
      change was Drummond. This land, and for that matter the United States, has
      hardly a town where men are not doing good work for God and man to-day who
      have owed their lives to the Evangel and influence of Henry Drummond.
       When one saw the unique and priceless work which he did, it was
      inexplicable and very provoking that the religious world should have cast
      this man, of all others, out, and have lifted up its voice against him. Had
      religion so many men of beautiful and winning life, so many thinkers of wide
      range and genuine culture, so many speakers able to move young men by
      hundreds towards the Kingdom of God, that she could afford or have the heart
      to withdraw her confidence from Drummond? Was there ever such madness and
      irony before Heaven as good people lifting up their testimony and writing
      articles against this most gracious disciple of the Master, because they did
      not agree with him about certain things he said, or some theory he did not
      teach, while the world lay round them in unbelief and selfishness, and
      sorrow and pain? "What can be done," an eminent evangelist once did me the
      honour to ask, "to heal the breach between the religious world and
      Drummond?" And I dared to reply that in my poor judgment the first step
      ought to be for the religious world to repent of its sins, and make amends
      to Drummond for its bitterness.
       One, of course, remembers that Drummond's critics had their reasons,
      and those reasons cast interesting light on his theological standpoint. For
      one thing, unlike most evangelists, it was perfectly alien to this man to
      insist on repentance, simply because he had not the painful and
      overmastering sense of sin which afflicts most religious minds, and gives a
      strenuous turn to all their thinking. Each thinker conceives religion
      according to his cast of mind and trend of experience, and Christianity to
      Drummond was not so much a way of escape from the grip of sin, with its
      burden of guilt and loathsome contact, as a way of ethical and spiritual
      attainment. The question he was ever answering in his writing and speaking
      was not how can a man save his soul, but how can a man save his life. His
      idea of salvation was rising to the stature of Christ and sharing His
      simple, lowly, peaceful life. This was the text of his brochures on
      religion, which charmed the world, from "The Greatest Thing in The World" to
      "The City Without a Church". It is said even they gave offence to some
      ultra-theological minds-- although one would fain have believed that such
      persuasive pleas had won all hearts--and I have some faint remembrance,
      perhaps a nightmare, that people published replies to the eulogy of Love. It
      was quite beside the mark to find fault with the theology in the little
      books, because there was none and could be none, since there was none in the
      author. Just as there are periods in the development of Christianity, there
      are men in every age corresponding to each of the periods-- modern,
      Reformation, and Mediaeval minds--and what charmed many in Drummond was
      this, that he belonged by nature to the pre-theological age. He was in his
      habit and thought a Christian of the Gospels, rather than of the Epistles,
      and preferred to walk with Jesus in Galilee rather than argue with Judaizers
      and Gnostics. It would be a gross injustice to say that he was
      anti-theological: it would be correct to say that he was non-theological.
      Jesus was not to him an official Redeemer discharging certain obligations:
      He was his unseen Friend with Whom he walked in life, by Whose fellowship he
      was changed, to Whom he prayed. The effort of life should be to do the Will
      of God, the strength of life was Peace, the reward of life was to be like
      Jesus. Perfect Christianity was to be as St. John was with Jesus. It was the
      Idyll of Religion.
       Perhaps his two famous books, "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," and
      "The Ascent of Man," ought to be judged as larger Idylls. A writer often
      fails when he has counted himself strong, and succeeds in that which he has
      himself belittled. It was at one time Drummond s opinion that he had made a
      discovery in that fascinating debatable land between nature and religion,
      and that he was able to prove that the laws which govern the growth of a
      plant are the same in essence as those which regulate the culture of a soul.
      It appeared to some of us that the same laws could not and did not run
      through both provinces, but that on the frontier of the spiritual world
      other laws came into operation, and that "Natural Law" set forth with much
      grace and ingenuity a number of instructive analogies, and sometimes only
      suggestive illustrations. Had Drummond believed this was its furthest scope,
      he would never have published the book, and it was an open secret that in
      later years he lost all interest in "Natural Law". My own idea is that he
      had abandoned its main contention and much of its teaching, and would have
      been quite willing to see it withdrawn from the public. While that book was
      an attempt to identify the laws of two worlds which, under one suzerain, are
      really each autonomous, the "Ascent of Man" was a most successful effort to
      prove that the spirit of Religion, which is Altruism, pervades the processes
      of nature. It is the Poem of Evolution, and is from beginning to end a
      fascinating combination of scientific detail and spiritual imagination. Both
      books, but especially the "Ascent," were severely criticised from opposite
      quarters--by theologians because the theology was not sound, by men of
      science because the science was loose, and Drummond had the misfortune of
      being a heretic in two provinces. But he had his reward in the gratitude of
      thousands neither dogmatic nor partisan, to whom he has given a new vision
      of the beauty of life and the graciousness of law.
       His books will do good for years, as they have done in the past, and
      his tract on "Charity" will long be read, but the man was greater than all
      his writings. While he was competent in science, in religion he was a
      master, and if in this sphere he failed anywhere in his thinking, it was in
      his treatment of sin. This was the defect of his qualities, for of him, more
      than of any man known to me, it could be affirmed he did not know sin. As
      Fra Angelico could paint the Holy Angels because he had seen them, but made
      poor work of the devils because to him they were strange creatures, so this
      man could make holiness so lovely that all men wished to be Christians; but
      his hand lost its cunning at the mention of sin, for he had never played the
      fool. From his youth up he had kept the commandments, and was such a man as
      the Master would have loved. One takes for granted that each man has his
      besetting sin, and we could name that of our friends, but Drummond was an
      exception to this rule. After a lifetime s intimacy I do not remember my
      friend's failing. Without pride, without envy, without selfishness, without
      vanity, moved only by goodwill and spiritual ambitions, responsive ever to
      the touch of God and every noble impulse, faithful, fearless, magnanimous,
      Henry Drummond was the most perfect Christian I have known or expe