gift: he was so self-forgetting, so sympa- curtained off. At Drummond's suggestion thetic, so brotherly, and there was about we resolved to adjourn outside the city him such an atmosphere of the upper levels altogether, to the solitudes of Arthur's of life. "There are some men and women Seat, where we should be untrammelled. in whose company we are always at our Singing snatches of students' songs and best. While with them we cannot think Sankey's hymns by turn, we reached the mean thoughts or speak ungenerous words. summit of Arthur's Seat in the midnight Their mere presence is elevation, purifica- hours, where, with the stars looking down. tion, sanctity. All the best stops in our on us and on the sleeping city which had nature are drawn out by their intercourse, nurtured our friendships, we heartened and we find a music in our souls that was each other by song and speech for the unnever there before." Such was Drummond known future that was awaiting us beyond himself in the closing months of his aca- the college walls. demic career.

During the winter of 1876-77, Drummond Drummond knew, however, how to un- gathered round him several of his friends bend from his strenuous seriousness. Nor in the New College, and organized a series could mere conventionalism deter him from of Sunday evening meetings for students giving outlet to his love of fun and adven- and other young men in the Gaiety ture. After the close of their theological Theater, opposite the Edinburgh Unicourse, the members of the class met to- versity. Out of those meetings there grew gether in a hotel for a farewell supper. up "a certain brotherhood, faithful in Alterations were going on in the hotel, and criticism, loyal in affection, tender in we were restrained in our mirth by the prox- trouble," known to ourselves as the Gaiety imity of other guests in a part of the saloon brotherhood.

The ten members, drawn

glorious time. Eleven men mustered-the cream of the class, and we hammered the island almost to bits. Nothing left but the hotel and a ledge of rock to smoke on." Such days of companionship with this genial leader are a happy memory, even for those who cared little for the paleozoic, mesozoic and cainozoic periods.

from different academic years, were linked together by religious affinities and by the memories of college friendships, under the presidency of a dear old Scotchman, Provost Swan of Kirkcaldy, at whose country house-Springfield-the first gatherings of the brotherhood took place. For more than twenty years the brotherhood has met in some quiet retreat for a week each sea- During all the years he was lecturer on son-a week which has been a big element science his heart was in evangelism. “I in the intellectual and spiritual life of its want a quiet mission somewhere, entry immembers. The names of some of the mediate, and self-contained if possible. brotherhood are known in America-Dr. Do you know such a place?" He found James Stalker, Dr. John Watson, and Dr. this quiet mission in Possil Park, where Dr. George Adam Smith. In this little circle Marcus Dod's congregation were fostering of old college friends Henry Drummond a new church in a suburb inhabited by had a unique place. His mere presence artisans. It was here that “Natural Law in was a perpetual benediction. His courtesy the Spiritual World" had its genesis, as he and thoughtfulness for others were unfail- tells in the preface: "It has been my priviing; his playful humor was like glints of lege for some years to address regularly sunshine; and in the years when his name two very different audiences on two very had become a household word in English- different themes. On week days I have speaking countries, his forgetfulness of lectured to a class of students on the natself was a rebuke to every vain and selfishly ural sciences, and on Sundays to an audiambitious temper. ence for the most part of workingmen on subjects of a moral and religious character. . . . The two fountains of knowledge began to overflow, and finally their waters met and mingled."

Drummond was a good talker; but what was more striking than his talk was his capacity for listening. There was a genuine modesty in him which made it easy for him to assume the attitude of a learner, even toward those whose knowledge gave them less right to speak than himself. He stooped to learn where another would have exalted himself to teach. Often it would happen that a theological discussion would go on for an hour or two in which Drummond took no part. He would lie back in an easy-chair listening in perfect silence. Then at the end he would ask a quiet question, or make an epigrammatic remark, which was more luminous than all our talk. Drummond was fond of a quiet tête-à-tête carried on to the early morning hours. With that modesty which never failed him, he assumed that his friend had much to teach him, and sat at his feet as a learner. It was himself probably, with his questions, suggestions, and caveats, who was kindling the light, but he put it down to the other's credit. There was a kind of witchery in his personality which drew the intellectual as well as moral best out of a man.

In the autumn of 1877 he began his work as a lecturer on natural science in the Free Church Theological Hall of Glasgow. He was in the habit of winding up the college session by inviting his class to a week's excursion in Arran for field work in the subjects of class study-geology, botany, and zoology. "We wound up with four days' geologizing in Arran, and had a

As to the impression produced by his ministry upon the artisans of Possil Park, a little incident which came to my knowledge is a more eloquent testimony than any labored description. A woman whose husband was dying came to Mr. Drummond late on a Saturday evening, and asked him to come to the house. My husband is deein', sir; he's no' able to speak to you, and he's no' able to hear you; but I would like him to hae a breath o' you aboot him. afore he dees."

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PROFESSOR DRUMMOND AS AN AUTHOR.

Another stage in Mr.

Drummond's career was marked by the publication in 1883 of "Natural Law in the Spiritual World." For a year or two before its publication the "message" of the book lay upon him like the "burden" of an Old Testament prophet which he must somehow get uttered. In his evangelistic teaching there were two dominant thoughtsthe distinctiveness of the Christian life and the reality of conversion. It broke upon him that both of these thoughts were vouched for by science. It was natural that he should exclaim with the enthusiasm of one who had made a great discovery, Eureka! If truths which were uncongenial not only to the world of scientific culture,

PROFESSOR DRUMMOND AS A PREACHER.

but even to large numbers of professing letters, and then turned over the newsChristians, should turn out to be counte- papers-the first I had seen for many nanced by the laws of science itself, there months. Among them was a copy of the was here the possibility of an unexpected Spectator' containing a review of Natreconciliation of science and religion, and ural Law,' a review with criticism enough religion, too, in a somewhat exaggerated in it certainly to make one serious, but with Calvinistic form. Mr. Drummond appealed that marvelous generosity and indulgence to the gulf which separates the inorganic to an unknown author for which the Speckingdom from the organic, in proof of the tator' stands supreme in journalism.' wideness of the gulf which separates the merely ethical life of man from the distinctively spiritual or Christian, and he appealed to the doctrine of biogenesis (that life can only come from life) in proof of the position that the distinctively spiritual life is a new creation let down suddenly into the natural ethical life. This is not the place to enter into a consideration of the validity of the arguments of "Natural Law." Mr. Drummond had himself ceased to attach much weight to the novelties in its teaching, by which many of its readers were attracted. He learned to apHe came from Glasgow for preciate better the deep affinities between almost every Sunday during several winter the ethical and the spiritual life, and he sessions. There are scattered over the also learned to appreciate better those ele- world to-day literally thousands of young ments of human personality, such as self- men-ministers, doctors, teachers, lawconsciousness and volition, which make it yers, merchants-who owe the chief spiriimpossible to interpret the moral and spiritual stimulus of their lives to these students' tual life of man by the help of nothing more than the categories of biological science.

The popularity of Professor Drummond on both sides of the Atlantic might well have turned the head of an ordinary man, but through it all he remained absolutely unspoiled, the same modest, unobtrusive friend as we knew him of old. His master passion was still evangelism. For years he was the unofficial preacher to the Edinburgh University in an unconsecrated building-the small, undignified Odd Fellows' Hall.

meetings. We have had great university preachers in our day and great university sermons, but no university preacher has done so much to quicken the spiritual life of a university as this unofficial preacher to the Edinburgh students, and no university sermons have gone home to the heart and inspired for service as his informal talks in the Odd Fellows' Hall.

But apart from its apologetic features, on which alone Mr. Drummond himself laid much stress, the book had extraordinary merits, both of style and of spiritual teaching, and deserved the popularity it speedily achieved. It was long, however, before the news of the sensation its publication created reached the author. Shortly after Professor Drummond had qualifications seeing it through the press he had started, for his work as Christ's evangelist to stuat the request of a Glasgow merchant, on dents. He believed in the glory and gladan exploring expedition into tropical ness of life; it was a wide, rich, and sunny Africa, the record of which is one of the life he lived himself. It was no gospel for most brilliant of books of travel. He has ascetics he preached, but a gospel for youth himself told us the strange circumstances with its genial energy and generous aspirain which he first heard of the reception of tion. It was no gospel for spiritual rehis volume. "For five months I never cluses, but for chivalrous youths eager to saw a letter nor a newspaper, and in my do some knightly service in the stout batnew work-I had gone to make a geologi- tle of life. His gospel was for the living cal and botanical survey of this region-the present, and not merely for the dim and book and its fate were alike forgotten. distant future. Salvation was the theme of ... I well remember when the first his message, salvation, though, not as mere thunderbolt from the English critics pene- safety for the future, but as the saving of trated my fastnesses. One night, an hour men's lives here and now, the winning of after midnight, my camp was suddenly the true life of manhood-“ a more abundroused by the apparition of three black ant life, a life abundant in salvation for messengers-despatched from the north themselves and large in enterprise for end of Lake Nyassa by a friendly white- the alleviation and redemption of the with the hollow skin of a tiger cat contain- world." ing a small package of letters and papers. Lighting the lamp in my tent, I read the

A striking feature in Professor Drummond's career has been his hospitable atti

66

tle while to redeem the wasted years. And week by week, as you go forth from worship, and day by day, as you awake to face this great and needy world, learn to seek a city' here, and in the service of its neediest citizen to find Heaven."

This growing appreciation of the social organism and of social duty throws light upon the motif of Professor Drummond's last and, whether we judge it by a literary or intellectual standard, his greatest book

book was an apologetic for individualism, his last, an apologetic for socialism.

tude toward new truth. He was a oneideaed man in as far as he allowed the truth that was dominant at the moment to take possession of him, to the exclusion sometimes of complementary truths. But no one could have been readier to expect and prepare for new light. The series of booklets which he began to issue in 1889 reveals a wonderful growth in breadth of spiritual insight. In Natural Law" he had laid an exaggerated emphasis upon the experience involved in sudden conversion; in his "The Ascent of Man." His first book later teaching, the "catastrophic" inter- had been an apology from the side of scipretation of spiritual life falls into the ence for two positions in his individualistic background. But perhaps the most im- theory of religion-the distinctiveness of portant change in Professor Drummond's the Christian life and the reality of the teaching is the new emphasis he lays upon sudden appearance of the spiritual life, or the social organism and social duty. In sudden conversion. His last book was an "Natural Law" and in the evangelism of apology-again from the side of sciencethat period the individual fills the sphere for the law of love, or "struggle for the of his vision-the claim of God on the in- life of others," as a law deeply embedded dividual, the friendship of the individual in the whole life of the universe. His first with Christ, the growth of the individual in Christlikeness. But the religious individualism of the early period was enriched in his later years through a deeper understanding of the worth of the social organization for fostering the spiritual life of the individual and a heartier appreciation of the closeness of the connection between spiritual life and social service. If "Natural Law" represents exaggerated individualism, “The City without a Church" almost leans toward an exaggerated socialism. Anyhow, Professor Drummond has here broken away into a noble and inspiring conception of the social mission of Christianity. Some of the passages in this booklet are worthy of being put alongside the impassioned appeals of the great prophet of modern democracy-Joseph Mazzini; as, for example, the passage in which he pleads with Christians to ennoble their life as citizens with the spirit of civic patriotism: "To move among the people on the common street; to meet them in the market-place on equal terms; to live among them, not as saint or monk, but as brother man with brother man; to serve God, not with form or ritual, but in the free impulse of a soul; to bear the burdens of society and relieve its needs; to carry on the multitudinous activities of the city-social, commercial, political, philanthropic: this is the religion of the Son of Man and the only fitness for Heaven which has much reality in it. Traveler to God's last city, be thankful that you are alive. Be thankful for the city at your doors and for the chance to build its walls a little higher before you go. Pray for yet a lit

Pro

The delivery of the Lowell lectures on "The Ascent of Man" in 1893 was the last important event in Professor Drummond's public career. He put his strength into these lectures-urged thereto not only by his interest in the apologetic argument for the law of struggle for the life of others, but also by his regard for the audience before whom they were to be delivered. fessor Drummond was no stranger in America. In 1879 he had explored the Rocky Mountains on a geological expedition with Sir Archibald Geikie. Several years afterwards, he visited Northfield on Mr. Moody's invitation, and spent several months in the States, addressing meetings and delivering lectures. He had a genuine liking for America and Americans; he found himself in a congenial atmosphere in the lecture hall at Boston.

Before I refer to the last two years of Professor Drummond's life, it may interest the reader if I turn aside for a little and point out some features in his activity which throw light on his personality.

PERSONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER.

Though Drummond was one of the best known citizens of Glasgow and was keenly interested in the philanthropic and religious life of the city, he loved to live in the shade. Hostesses were eager to secure him for dinners and receptions, but he had a horror of being lionized. He had a power of brilliant talk, a perfection of social manner, and a wide knowledge of men and