THE IDEAL LIFE
The Ideal Life and other Unpublished Addresses by HENRY DRUMMOND F.R.S.E.
with Memorial Sketches by W. Robertson Nicoll and Ian Maclaren
LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27 PATERNOSTER ROW 1897
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The addresses which make up this volume were written by Professor
Drummond between the years 1876 and 1881, and are now published to meet the
wishes of those who heard some of them delivered, and in the hope that they
may continue his work.
They were never prepared for publication, and have been printed from
his manuscripts with a few obvious verbal corrections. A few paragraphs used
in later publications have been retained.
Of the memorial sketches the first was originally published in the
Contemporary Review, and the second in the North American Review.
December, 1897.
CONTENTS
MEMORIAL SKETCHES
I. BY W. ROBERTSON NICOLL
II. BY IAN MACLAREN
ADDRESSES
ILL-TEMPER
"He was angry, and would not go in."--Luke xv. 28.
1881
WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART
"It is expedient for you that I go away."-- John xvi. 7.
1880
GOING TO THE FATHER
"I go to my Father." -- John xiv. 12.
1880
THE ECCENTRICITY OF RELIGION
"And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold of him:
for they said, He is beside himself." -- Mark iii. 21.
1880
"TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST"
"For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." -- Philippians i.
21.
1879
CLAIRVOYANCE
"We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are
not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which
are not seen are eternal." -- 2 Corinthians iv. 18.
1881
THE THREE FACTS OF SIN
"Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; Who healeth all thy diseases; Who
redeemeth thy life from destruction." -- Psalm ciii. 3,4.
1877
THE THREE FACTS OF SALVATION
"Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; Who healeth all thy diseases; Who
redeemeth thy life from destruction." -- Psalm ciii. 3,4.
1877
MARVEL NOT
"Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again." -- John iii.
7.
PENITENCE
"And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter and Peter went out and wept
bitterly." -- Luke xxii. 61,62.
1877
THE MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART -- A BIBLE STUDY ON THE IDEAL OF A
CHRISTIAN LIFE
"A man after mine own heart, who shall fulfil all my will." -- Acts
xiii. 22.
"WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?"
"Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your
life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then
vanisheth away." -- James iv. 14.
Dec. 31, 1876
WHAT IS GOD'S WILL
"The God of our fathers has chosen thee, that thou shouldest know His
will." -- Acts xxii. 14.
1877
THE RELATION OF THE WILL OF GOD TO SANCTIFICATION
"This is the will of God, even your sanctification." -- I Thessalonians
iv. 3.
"As He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of
conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy for I am holy." -- I Peter
i. 15,16.
"Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God. . . . By the which will we are
sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all."
-- Hebrews x. 9,10.
HOW TO KNOW THE WILL OF GOD
"If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it
be of God." -- John vii. 17.
A MEMORIAL SKETCH BY W. ROBERTSON NICOLL
Henry Drummond
PROFESSOR DRUMMOND'S influence on his contemporaries is not to be
measured by the sale of his books, great as that has been. It may be doubted
whether any living novelist has had so many readers, and perhaps no living
writer has been so eagerly followed and so keenly discussed on the Continent
and in America. For some reason, which it is difficult to assign, many who
exercise great influence at home are not appreciated elsewhere. It has been
said, for example, that no book of Ruskin's has ever been translated into a
Continental language, and though such a negative is obviously dangerous, it
is true that Ruskin has not been to Europe what he has been to England. But
Professor Drummond had the widest vogue from Norway to Germany. There was a
time when scarcely a week passed in Germany without the publication of a
book or pamphlet in which his views were canvassed. In Scandinavia, perhaps,
no other living Englishman was so widely known. In every part of America his
books had an extraordinary circulation. This influence reached all classes.
It was strong among scientific men, whatever may be said to the contrary.
Among such men as Von Moltke, Mr Arthur Balfour, and others belonging to the
governing class, it was stronger still. It penetrated to every section of
the Christian Church, and far beyond these limits. Still, when this is said,
it remains true that his deepest influence was personal and hidden. In the
long series of addresses he delivered all over the world he brought about
what may at least be called a crisis in the lives of in numerable hearers.
He received, I venture to say, more of the confidences of people untouched
by the ordinary work of the Church than any other man of his time. Men and
women came to him in their deepest and bitterest perplexities. To such he
was accessible, and both by personal interviews and by correspondence, gave
such help as he could. He was an ideal confessor. No story of failure
daunted or surprised him. For every one he had a message of hope, and, while
the warm friend of a chosen circle and acutely responsive to their kindness,
he did not seem to lean upon his friends. He himself did not ask for
sympathy, and did not seem to need it. The innermost secrets of his life
were between himself and his Saviour. While frank and at times even
communicative, he had nothing to say about himself or about those who had
trusted him. There are multitudes who owed to Henry Drummond all that one
man can owe to another, and who felt such a thrill pass through them at the
news of his death as they can never experience again.
Henry Drummond was born at Stirling in 1851. He was surrounded from the
first by powerful religious influences of the evangelistic kind. His uncle
Mr Peter Drummond, was the founder of what is known as the Stirling Tract
enterprise, through which many millions of small religious publications have
been circulated through the world. As a child he was remarkable for his
sunny disposition and his sweet temper, while the religiousness of his
nature made itself manifest at an early period. I do not gather, however,
that there were many auguries of his future distinction. He was thought to
be somewhat desultory and independent in his work. In due course he
proceeded to the University of Edinburgh, where he distinguished himself in
science, but in nothing else. He gained, I believe, the medal in the geology
class. But, like many students who do not go in for honours, he was anything
but idle. He tells us himself that he began to form a library, his first
purchase being a volume of extracts from Ruskin's works. Ruskin taught him
to see the world as it is, and it soon became a new world to him, full of
charm and loveliness. He learned to linger beside the ploughed field, and
revel in the affluence of colour and shade which were to be seen in the
newly-turned furrows, and to gaze in wonder at the liquid amber of the two
feet of air above the brown earth. Next to Ruskin he put Emerson, who all
his life powerfully affected both his teaching and his style. Differing as
they did in many ways, they were alike in being optimists with a high and
noble conception of good, but with no correspondingly definite conception of
evil. Mr. Henry James says that Emerson's genius had a singular thinness, an
almost touching lightness, sparseness, and transparency about it. And the
same was true, in a measure, of Drummond's. The religious writers who
attracted him were Channing and F. W. Robertson. Channing taught him to
believe in God, the good and gracious Sovereign of all things. From
Robertson he learned that God is human, and that we may have fellowship with
Him because He sympathises with us. It is well known that Robertson himself
was a warm admirer of Channing. The parallels between Robertson and Channing
in thought, and even in words, have never been properly drawn out. It would
be a gross exaggeration to say that the contact with Robertson and Channing
was the beginning of Drummond's religious life. But it was through them, and
it was at that period of his studentship that he began to take possession
for himself of Christian truth. And it was a great secret of his power that
he preached nothing except what had personally come home to him and had
entered into his heart of hearts. His attitude to much of the theology in
which he was taught was that not of denial, but of respectful distance. He
might have come later on to appropriate it and preach it, but the
appropriation would have been the condition of the preaching. His mind was
always receptive. Like Emerson, he was an excellent listener. He stood
always in a position of hopeful expectancy, and regarded each delivery of a
personal view as a new fact to be estimated on its merits. I may add that he
was a warm admirer of Mr R. H. Hutton, and thought his essay on Goethe the
best critical piece of the century. He used to say that, like Mr Hutton, he
could sympathise with every Church but the Hard Church.
After completing his University course he went to the New College,
Edinburgh, to be trained for the ministry of the Free Church. The time was
critical. The Free Church had been founded in a time of intense Evangelical
faith and passion. It was a visible sign of the reaction against Moderatism.
The Moderates had done great service to literature, but their sermons were
favourably represented by the solemn fudge of Blair. James Macdonell, the
brilliant Times leader-writer, who carefully observed from the position of
an outsider the ecclesiastical life of his countrymen, said that the
Moderate leaders deliberately set themselves to the task of stripping Scotch
Presbyterianism free from provincialism, and so triumphant were they that
most of their sermons might have been preached in a heathen temple as fitly
as in St. Giles. They taught the moral law with politeness; they made
philosophy the handmaid of Christianity with well-bred moderation, and they
so handled the grimmer tenets of Calvinism as to hurt no susceptibilities.
The storm of the Disruption blew away the old Moderates from their place of
power, and men like Chalmers, Cunningham, Candlish, Welsh, Guthrie, Begg,
and the other leaders of the Evangelicals, more than filled their place. The
obvious danger was that the Free Church should become the home of bigotry
and obscurantism. This danger was not so great at first. There was a lull in
critical and theological discussion, and men were sure of their ground. The
large and generous spirit of Chalmers impressed itself on the Church of
which he was the main founder, and the desire to assert the influence of
religion in science and literature in all the field of knowledge was shown
from the beginning. For example, the North British Review was the organ of
the Free Church, and did not stand much behind the Edinburgh and the
Quarterly, either in the ability of its articles or in the distinction of
many of its contributors. But especially the Free Church showed its wisdom
by founding theological seminaries, and filling their chairs with its best
men. A Professorship of Divinity was held to be a higher position than the
pastorate of any pulpit. As time went on, however, and as the tenets of the
Westminster Evangelicalism were more and more formidably assailed, the Free
Church came in danger of surrendering its intellectual life. The whisper of
heresy would have damaged a minister as effectually as a grave moral charge.
Independent thought was impatiently and angrily suppressed. Macdonell said,
writing in the Spectator in 1874, that the Free Church was being
intellectually starved, and he pointed out that the Established Church was
gaining ground under the leadership of such men as Principal Tulloch and Dr.
Wallace, who in a sense represented the old Moderates, though they were as
different from them as this age is from the last. The Free Church was
apparently refusing to shape the dogmas of traditional Christianity in such
a way as to meet the subtle intellectual and moral demands of an essentially
scientific age. There was an apparent unanimity in the Free Church, but it
was much more apparent than real. For one thing, the teaching of some of the
professors had been producing its influence. Dr. A. B. Davidson, the
recognised master of Old Testament learning in this country, a man who joins
to his knowledge imagination, subtlety, fervour, and a rare power of style,
had been quietly teaching the best men amongst his students that the old
views of revelation would have to be seriously altered. He did not do this
so much directly as indirectly, and I think there was a period when any Free
Church minister who asserted the existence of errors in the Bible would have
been summarily deposed. The abler students had been taking sessions at
Germany, and had thus escaped from the narrowness of the provincial coterie.
They were interested, some of them in literature, some in science, some in
philosophy. At the New College they discussed in their theological society
with daring and freedom the problems of the time. A crisis was sure to come,
and it might very well have been a crisis which would have broken the Church
in pieces. That it did not was due largely to the influence of one man-- the
American Evangelist, Mr. Moody.
In 1873 Mr. Moody commenced his campaign in the Barclay Free Church,
Edinburgh. A few days before, Drummond had read a paper to the Theological
Society of his college on Spiritual Diagnosis, in which he maintained that
preaching was not the most important thing, but that personal dealing with
those in anxiety would yield better results. In other words, he thought that
practical religion might be treated as an exact science. He had given
himself to scientific study with a view of standing for the degree of Doctor
of Science. Moody at once made a deep impression on Edinburgh, and attracted