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 joyous-
ness, 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
3
34 INTRODUCTION
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 tinme, 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 sup-
porter. 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 en-
thusiasm. 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 con-
cealed, 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. Towards women, who are the
test and revelation of men, he was ever chival-
rous, but he left the impression on your mind
that neither they nor their company ā there may
have been exceptions ā attracted or satisfied him.
He was too courteous a gentleman to give any
INTRODUCTION 35
sign, but one guessed that a woman's departure
from the room meant to him no loss, and was
rather a rehef. One was certain that he was
loved ; one was quite certain that he would never
marry. So sexless was he towards women, so
neutral towards men, so void of the elemental
passions, which go to make the colour and
tragedy of life, yet so noble and true was he,
that one regarded him at times with awe, and for
a moment thought of him as a being of another
race, mingling with our life in all kindliness, yet
maintaining and guarding his other world in-
tegrity.
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 profes-
sion, was content to walk, and starting across the
moor on his own way. Nothing can be more
conventional than the career of the average Pres-
byterian minister who comes from a respectable
religious family, and has the pulpit held up be-
fore him as the ambition of a good Scots lad ;
who is held in the way thereto by various tradi-
tional and prudential considerations, and better
still ā as is the case with most honest lads ā 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 Proba-
36 INTRODUCTION
tioner, 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
ā his mother being amazed at the blindness of
the minority ā 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 ā ah me ! Did that stout,
middle-aged gentleman ever hint that Jonah was
a drama? ā 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 distribu-
tion of the Sustentation Fund. Adda 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 en-
tered 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, not become an eccle-
siastical prodigal ā but with what amazing varia-
tions 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 Col-
lege he completed in three years and one year,
with two years' evangelistic touring between ; and
he once electrified the students by a paper ā it
INTRODUCTION 37
seems yesterday, and I know where he stood ā
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 un-
selfish evangelist of our day, and saw strange
chapters in religious life through the United King-
dom. 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 Tan-
ganyika forests, where he sent me a letter dated
Central Africa, and mentioning, among other de-
tails, 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 illus-
trated papers used to recognise him in the vice-
regal group at Dublin Castle. His people at home
ā one could trace some of his genius and much
of his goodness to his father and mother ā grew
anxious and perplexed ; for this was a meteoric
course for a Free Kirk minister, and stolid ac-
quaintances ā the delicious absurdity of it ā re-
monstrated 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
38 INTRODUCTION
lecturer on Natural Science in the Free Church
College of Glasgow, and promptly annexed a
working-men's church. Afterwards his lecture-
ship 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 Drum-
mond for heresy. The chair itself was a standing
absurdity, being founded in popular idea to beat
back evolution and to reconcile religion and sci-
ence; 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
ā declaring (this was his fun) that he had no rec-
ollection of being ordained, and that he would
never dare to baptise 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 cleans-
ing of student life at Edinburgh University.
When he was an arts student, life in all the facul-
ties, but especially the medical, was reckless,
coarse, boisterous, and no one was doing anything
INTRODUCTION 39
to raise its tone. The only visible sign of religion
in my remembrance was a prayer meeting at-
tended by a dozen men ā one of whom was a
canting rascal ā and countenance from a profes-
sor 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 ā men were
now reverent, earnest, clean living and clean think-
ing, 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 pro-
voking 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 who can move young men by hundreds
towards the Kingdom of God, that she could
afford or have the heart to withdraw her con-
fidence from Drummond ? Was there ever such
madness and irony before Heaven as good peo-
ple lifting up their testimony and writing articles
40 INTRODUCTION
against this most gracious disciple of the Master,
because they did not agree with him about cer-
tain 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. The evangelist indicated that, so
far as he knew his world, it was very unlikely to do
any such becoming deed, and I did not myself
remember any instance of repentance on the part
of the Pharisees. Then, growing bold, I ven-
tured to ask why the good man had not sum-
moned Drummond to his side, as he was working
in a university town, and knew better than any
other person that he could not find anywhere an
assistant so acceptable or skilful. He agreed in
that, but declared at once that if Drummond came
his present staff would leave, and that two men
could not do all the work, which seemed reason-
able, and, besides, every man knows his own
business best, and that evangelist knew his re-
markably well. Nothing more remained to be
said, and I rose to leave. At the far end of the
room some of the staff were talking together.
" I gave them a ' straight talk ' at the men's meet-
ing last night, and then we had such a sweet little
INTRODUCTION 41
* sing,' and thirty souls dropped in." A young
man of the better class was speaking, and I looked
at the weak, self-satisfied face, but it is not neces-
sary to write down my reflections as I left the
place. Never did my friend say one unkind word
of the world which condemned him, but it may be
allowed to another to say that if any one wishes
to indict the professional religionists of our time
for bigotry and stupidity, painful and unanswer-
able proof lies ready to his hand in the fact that
the finest evangelist of the day was treated as a
Samaritan.
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 repent-
ance, 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 expe-
rience, 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
42 INTRODUCTION
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 ā although one would fain have
believed that such persuasive pleas have won all
hearts ā and I have some faint remembrance,
perhaps a nightmare, that people published re-
plies 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 Chris-
tianity, there are men in every age corresponding
to each of the periods ā modern, Reformation,
and Mediaeval minds ā 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 Judaisers
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 fellow-
ship 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
INTRODUCTION 43
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 him-
self 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 sug-
gestive 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 with-
drawn 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
44 INTRODUCTION
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 begin-
ning to end a fascinating combination of scien-
tific 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 par-
tisan, 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 command-
INTRODUCTION 45
ments, 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 ex-
ception 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, mag-
nanimous, Henry Drummond was the most
perfect Christian I have known or expect to see
this side the grave.
John Watson.
(/Ā«Ā« Madaren.)
The Ideal Life
NUMBER I
Ill-Temper
THE ELDER
BROTHER
" He was angry, and would not go in.''"' ā Luke xv. 28.
THOSE who have studied the paintings of
Sir Noel Paton must have observed that
part of their peculiar beauty lies, by a trick of
Art, in their partial ugliness. There are flowers
and birds, knights and ladies, gossamer-winged
fairies and children of seraphic beauty ; but in the
corner of the canvas, or just at their feet, some un-
couth and loathsome form ā a toad, a lizard, a
slimy snail ā to lend, by contrast with its repulsive-
ness, a lovelier beauty to the rest. So in ancient
sculpture the griffin and the dragon grin among
the angel faces on the cathedral front, heighten-
ing the surrounding beauty by their deformity.
Many of the literary situations of the New
Testament powerfully exhibit this species of
contrast. The twelve disciples ā one of them
is a devil. Jesus upon the Cross, pure and regal
ā on either side a thief. And here, as conspicu-
48 ILL-TEMPER
ously, in this fifteenth chapter of Luke, the most
exquisite painting in the Bible is touched off at
the foot with the black thundercloud of the elder
brother ā perfect, as a mere dramatic situation.
But this conjunction, of course, is more than
artistic. Apart from its reference to the Phari-
sees, the association of these two characters ā
the prodigal and his brother ā side by side has
a deep moral significance.
When we look into Sin, not in its theological
aspects, but in its everyday clothes, we find that
it divides itself into two kinds. We find that
there are sins of the body and sins of the dispo-
sition. Or more narrowly, sins of the passions,
including all forms of lust and selfishness, and
sins of the temper. The prodigal is the instance
in the New Testament of sins of passion; the
elder brother, of sins of temper.
One would say, at a first glance, that it was the
younger brother in this picture who was the
thundercloud. It was he who had dimmed all
the virtues, and covered himself and his home
with shame. And men have always pointed to
the runaway son in contrast with his domestic
brother, as the type of all that is worst in human
character. Possibly the estimate is wrong. Pos-
sibly the elder brother is the worse. We judge of
sins, as we judge of most things, by their out-
ward form. We arrange the vices of our neigh-
bours according to a scale which society has
tacitly adopted, placing the more gross and
ILL-TEMPER 49
public at the foot, the slightly less gross higher
up, and then by some strange process the scale
becomes obliterated. Finally it vanishes into
space, leaving lengths of itself unexplored, its
sins unnamed, unheeded, and unshunned. But
we have no balance to weigh sins. Coarser and
finer are but words of our own. The chances
are, if anything, that the finer are the lower.
The very fact that the world sees the coarser
sins so well is against the belief that they are the
worst. The subtle and unseen sin, that sin in
the part of the nature most near to the spiritual,
ought to be more degrading than any other.
Yet for many of the finer forms of sin society
has yet no brand. This sin of the elder brother
is a mere trifle, only a little bit of temper, and
scarcely worthy the recording.
Now what was this little bit of temper? For
Christ saw fit to record it. The elder brother,
hard-working, patient, dutiful ā let him get full
credit for his virtues ā comes in from his long
day's work in the fields. Every night for years
he has plodded home like this, heavy-limbed but
light-hearted, for he has done his duty and honest
sweat is on his brow. But a man's sense of re-
sponsibility for his character ends too often with
the day's work. And we always meet the temp-
tation which is to expose us when we least
expect it. To-night, as he nears the old home-
stead, he hears the noise of mirth and music.
He makes out the strain of a dancing measure
4
50 ILL-TEMPER
ā a novel sound, surely, for the dull farm.
*' Thy brother is come," the servant says, " and
they have killed the fatted calf." His brother !
Happy hour ! how long they mourned for him !
How glad the old man would be ! How the
family prayer has found him out at last and
brought the erring boy to his parents' roof! But
no ā there is no joy on that face; it is the thun-
dercloud. " Brother, indeed," he mutters; "the
scapegrace! Killed the fatted calf, have they?
More than they ever did for me. I can teach
them what / think of their merry-making. And
talk of the reward of virtue ! Here have I been
all these years unhonoured and ignored, and this
young roiie from the swine-troughs assembles the
whole country-side to do him homage." " And
he was angry, and would not go in."
" Oh, the baby ! " one inclines to say at first ;
but it is more than this. It is the thundercloud,
a thundercloud which has been brewing under
all his virtues all his life. It is the thundercloud.
The subtle fluids from a dozen sins have come
together for once, and now they are scorching
his soul. Jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity,
cruelty, self-righteousness, sulkiness, touchiness,
doggedness, all mixed up together into one ā 111
Temper. This is a fair analysis. Jealousy,
anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteous-
ness, sulkiness, touchiness, doggedness, ā these
are the staple ingredients of 111 Temper. And
yet, men laugh over it. " Only temper," they
ILL-TEMPER 51
call it: a little hot-headedness, a momentary-
ruffling of the surface, a mere passing cloud.
But the passing cloud is composed of drops, and
the drops here betoken an ocean, foul and ran-
corous, seething somewhere within the life ā an
ocean made up of jealousy, anger, pride, un-
charity, cruelty, self-righteousness, sulkiness,
touchiness, doggedness, lashed into a raging
storm.
This is why temper is significant. It is not in
what it is that its significance lies, but in what it
reveals. But for this it were not worth notice.
It is the intermittent fever which tells of uninter-
mittent disease; the occasional bubble escaping
to the surface, betraying the rottenness under-
neath ; a hastily prepared specimen of the hid-
den products of the soul, dropped involuntarily
when you are off your guard. In one word, it is
the lightning-form of a dozen hideous and un-
christian sins.
One of the first things to startle us ā leaving
now mere definition ā about sins of temper, is
their strange compatibility with high moral char-
acter. The elder brother, without doubt, was a
man of high principle. Years ago, when his
father divided unto them his living, he had the
chance to sow his wild oats if he liked. As the
elder brother, there fell to him the larger portion.
Now was his time to see the world, to enjoy life,
and break with the monotony of home. Like a
dutiful son, he chose his career. The old home
52 ILL-TEMPER
should be his world, the old people his society.
He would be his father's right hand, and cheer
and comfort his declining years. So to the ser-
vants he became a pattern of industry ; to the
neighbours an example of thrift and faithfulness;