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."