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."