29. Henry Drummond (1851–1897)
Never have I known a man who, in my opinion, lived nearer the Master, or sought to do His will more fully.” So wrote Dwight L. Moody in the May 1897 issue of the Record of Christian Work. He was writing about Henry Drummond, who died on March 11, 1897, at age forty-five. Drummond was one of Moody’s friends, and Moody called Drummond “one of the most lovable men I have ever known.” Moody wrote to James Stalker: “No man has ever been with me for any length of time that I did not see something that was unlike Christ, and I often see it in myself, but not in Henry Drummond. All the time we were together he was a Christ-like man and often a rebuke to me.”
And yet Drummond was an evolutionist and an advocate of higher criticism. His approach to evangelism was different from that of Moody in that he rarely preached about the cross or referred to the atonement. “As to his theology,” wrote W. Robertson Nicoll, “no theologian would admit that it was satisfactory or coherent. Of the atonement, for example, he made nothing; not that he rejected it, but that he had no place for it, and received it as a mystery.”1
Drummond’s ministry was more than once a source of trouble to Moody, and yet the great evangelist remained true to his friend. In July 1893, when Drummond came to Northfield to speak, a deputation of concerned ministers asked Moody to remove Drummond from the conference program. Some questioned the soundness of Drummond’s theology; he did not defend verbal inspiration and even questioned some of the miracles. Others opposed his evolutionary teachings and his cigar smoking. Moody asked for a day to think the matter over. He met the deputation after breakfast the next morning and informed them that he had “laid the matter before the Lord, and the Lord had shown him that Drummond was a better man than himself; so he was to go on.” Apparently this frank reply did not solve the problem, for Drummond reported: “At Northfield I felt a good deal out of it, and many fell upon me and rent me. . . . It was not a happy time.”
That same year Drummond refused to help Moody in the Chicago World’s Fair campaign, a decision that cut Moody deeply. “Well, Mr. Moody, you know why he refused,” George Adam Smith told Moody while visiting Northfield in the summer of 1899. “It was because he was afraid to compromise you further with the men with whom you were working.”
“I know it,” Moody replied. “He did it out of pure love, but that he should have had to do it cut me.”
Perhaps this explains why, in spite of their differences, Moody and Drummond were dear friends: both of them preached “God is love,” and practiced that love.
Henry Drummond was born into a devout evangelical family in Stirling, Scotland, on August 17, 1851. At age fifteen he entered the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1870. He then entered New College, Edinburgh, but he did not get his degree until 1876; the reason for this delay is the most important part of the story. On November 23, 1873, Moody and Ira Sankey opened the “Great Mission” in the Edinburgh Music Hall, an event that was to change Drummond’s life. Nobody is quite sure how Drummond became involved in the campaign. More than one student had gone to hear Moody “on a lark,” only to be arrested by God and put to work by the evangelist. Drummond was keenly interested in personal work, and personal work was what Moody emphasized. In fact, just a few weeks before the meetings opened, Drummond had read a perceptive paper on “Spiritual Diagnosis” before the Theological Society, advocating the very thing Moody was practicing in his inquiry room. So Drummond began as a counselor in the inquiry room, and Moody was quick to detect his gifts.
When the mission moved to Glasgow and was so singularly blessed by God, Moody sent to Edinburgh for reinforcements and Drummond rallied to the cause. Before long he was not only dealing with inquirers but also speaking to large meetings of new converts, and God was using his messages. He was Moody’s “Timothy,” and the bond between the two men grew stronger as the months passed.
“I got a treat last night,” Drummond wrote to his mother from Liverpool on February 15, 1875. “Moody sat up alone with me till near one o’clock telling me the story of his life. He told me the whole thing. A reporter might have made a fortune out of it.” In 1894 Drummond wrote a personal tribute to his friend, titled simply D. L. Moody, and it is a valuable contribution to Moody lore. After Moody’s death, George Adam Smith added “A Personal Tribute” to Drummond’s tribute, and the two were published together in 1900.
After the mission ended, Drummond returned to New College and graduated in 1876. Moody wanted Drummond to go with him to America, but Drummond remained in Scotland. How he made this decision is the first of four providential events that could be considered coincidences, were it not for the impact they made on his life and ministry.
In the early days of the Moody mission, Drummond became fast friends with Robert W. Barbour, son of wealthy cotton merchant George F. Barbour. Often Drummond would visit his friend at the family home, Bonskeid House. During one of these visits Drummond stumbled over a stone and wrenched his knee, resulting in confinement for nearly two weeks. During that time he discussed Moody’s invitation with Mrs. Barbour, who wisely counseled him to finish school and let God give him a ministry of his own. This counsel he followed; but during that final school year he continued his evangelistic ministry by holding meetings on Sunday evenings in the Gaiety Theater, not far from school. Some of the students who assisted him in these services were James Stalker, John Watson (later known as Ian Maclaren), Charles William Gordon (later known as Ralph Connor the Sky Pilot), and George Adam Smith.
After graduation, Drummond became an assistant at the Barclay Free Church. In 1877 he began lecturing in natural science at the Free Church College in Glasgow. During the second year he became pastor of a mission in Possilpark, a suburb of Glasgow. The mission was under the jurisdiction of the Renfield Free Church, whose pastor, Marcus Dods, was to have tremendous influence over Drummond for the rest of his life.
At this point we must pause to examine the spiritual and academic situation that prevailed in the Free Church in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. There were two forces beating away at the citadel: biblical criticism and evolution. In 1878 W. Robertson Smith, professor of Old Testament at the Free Church College in Aberdeen, was charged with heresy because of an article he had written for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The church was divided over the issue, and even the godly Alexander Whyte defended Smith’s orthodoxy and his right to academic freedom. In 1881 Smith was finally suspended; Drummond wrote that Smith had been “lynched.” Charles Darwin had published his Origin of Species in 1859, and evolution was the “going thing” by the time Drummond began studying science in Edinburgh. Higher criticism was basically an application of evolutionary theory to the documents of the Bible. First and foremost, Drummond was a scientist. Though ordained, he preferred to be called Professor Drummond rather than Reverend Drummond. One hundred years later we have a clearer view of both evolution and higher criticism, so we must be somewhat sympathetic with men like Drummond, who faced the impact of these issues in ways that we do not today.
Now for the second “coincidence” in Drummond’s life. During his regular ministry as a pastor, Drummond had delivered a number of sermons that sought to express spiritual truth in terms of modern scientific beliefs. He felt there was no conflict between science and Christianity if each was properly understood. He saw the Christian life in terms of evolution, something his friend Moody certainly did not do. Nicoll explained Drummond’s ministry in this way:
He saw that the age was essentially scientific. He saw that there appeared to be between science and religion a spanless and fathomless abyss. He saw that the materialists were swiftly poisoning the nation. . . . He threw himself with all his strength into the work of effecting a reconciliation, and though we do not propose in this place to discuss the value of his work, it may certainly be said at the very least that it helped to change the situation, and to bring into many minds, scientific and religious, more than a ray of hope.2
One day Drummond “happened” to meet H. M. Hodder on Paternoster Row, London, and the publisher asked about some of Drummond’s papers that had been rejected by two or three other houses. Drummond promised to send the manuscript to the firm of Hodder and Stoughton, and the result was the publication of Natural Law in the Spiritual World, a book that took both the scientific and religious worlds by storm. But when the book came off the press in June 1883, Drummond was steaming toward East Central Africa to investigate the area’s natural resources for a trading firm in Scotland. Not until he received his mail somewhere near Tanganyika did Drummond discover his book was a bestseller and he was famous. By the time he died in 1897, well over 100,000 copies had been sold, and the book had been reviewed in practically every major journal.
In 1884, Drummond was promoted to professor of natural sciences. In his inaugural address, titled “The Contribution of Science to Christianity,” he reaffirmed his belief in evolution as God’s method of both creation and revelation. Drummond’s new position, plus the success of Natural Law in the Spiritual World, made him somewhat of a folk hero among the students, and he used this popularity as a means of reaching them for Christ.
On Sunday evening, January 25, 1885, Drummond gave the first of his “addresses” in the Oddfellows Hall, Edinburgh; for nine years these meetings continued, reaching students by the hundreds. The meetings were supervised by a “secret committee” composed of Alexander Whyte, A. R. Simpson, A. H. Barbour (brother to Robert), and Dods. (Whyte’s interest in Drummond stemmed from the fact that Mrs. Whyte was Jane Elizabeth Barbour, sister to Henry’s dear friend, Robert. Whyte’s nephew, G. F. Barbour, wrote Whyte’s biography.)
It is worth noting that Moody as well as Drummond had tremendous appeal to students, but for different reasons. Both were utterly transparent and sincere, but Moody appealed to the authority of Scripture while Drummond spoke to the intellect and reasoned with students. Drummond felt that the Christian faith had to be presented in the language and categories of a scientific age—the “new evangelism” he called it. Moody presented the Christ of the cross; Drummond emphasized Christ’s perfect life.
That Drummond believed in the efficacy of the atonement is beyond question; his scientific attitude, however, prevented him from trying to explain it. Even Sankey, Moody’s song leader, had his doubts about the professor; in 1892 Sankey wrote Drummond and asked why he did not emphasize the cross. Drummond’s explanation was that he was called to preach “the forgotten truths,” not those that are being repeated by others again and again.
In 1887 Drummond came to Northfield. While in this country, he visited many Eastern colleges and universities. Everywhere he went the students turned out in droves and, from every indication, tremendous spiritual results followed. William Lyon Phelps said of Drummond’s visit to Yale, “I have never seen so deep an impression made on students, by any speaker on any subject.”
But 1887 is important for another reason: Drummond delivered his famous address on 1 Corinthians 13, and Moody insisted that he publish it. The Greatest Thing in the World is still in print today.
The third “coincidence” in Drummond’s life occurred in 1890, when he was ministering in Australia. It was decided that Drummond should visit mission stations in the New Hebrides, and for the first time Drummond came face to face with the gospel’s confrontation with raw heathenism. He was so impressed that he delivered a powerful paper at the college that November on “The Problem of Foreign Missions.” This paper influenced a number of mission leaders and was indirectly responsible for the great Edinburgh missionary conference of 1910.
Drummond was always interested in children and young people, though he never married. A Glasgow businessman and Drummond, while walking down the street one day, saw a merchant throw a stack of round strawberry cartons into the gutter. Instantly a group of boys swooped down upon the cartons and put them on their heads for caps. Then they lined up in military formation and “marched” away. “There’s an idea for you,” Drummond told his friend; and out of that “coincidence” grew the Boys’ Brigade program that God still uses to win boys to Christ.
After two years of suffering, Drummond died on March 11, 1897. He was laid to rest next to his father in Stirling.
If you want to become better acquainted with Drummond, begin with Henry Drummond: An Anthology, edited by James W. Kennedy. The brief biographical chapter will give you the basic facts about Drummond’s life and ministry, and the selections from his writings will give you insight into his thinking. I know of no single volume that better explains Drummond to space-age Christians. The official biography was written by George Adam Smith: The Life of Henry Drummond (1899). Smith included several extracts from Drummond’s addresses to students, but Kennedy’s selections are, I think, better. Not long after his death, Drummond’s “The Ideal Life” and Other Unpublished Addresses was published. Two memorial sketches preface the fifteen popular addresses, one by Nicoll and the other by John Watson, Drummond’s lifelong friend. Drummond’s address “Ill Temper” is one of the best sermons on the elder brother in Luke 15 that I have ever read.
After Moody’s death in 1899, some cited his friendship with Henry Drummond as proof that Moody was theologically liberal. Even his son, Paul Moody, wrote an article for Christian Century suggesting that the evangelist had been liberal, but this was immediately refuted by no less an expert on the subject than R. A. Torrey. He wrote from Los Angeles on August 20, 1923:
It is true that Mr. Moody loved Henry Drummond as he loved very few other people. . . . But Mr. Moody did not sympathize at all with some of the views into which Prof. Henry Drummond was led. . . . Though Mr. Moody loved him still, and loved him to the end, he would not use him, and greatly regretted the position which Prof. Henry Drummond had taken up.3
At one of the memorial services for Moody, J. M. Buckley said: “Mr. Moody had his prejudices, for I once heard him declare that he would own fellowship with everybody that believed himself to be a sinner and trusted in Christ; but, said he, ‘God being my helper, I will never own fellowship with a man who denies the deity of my God and Savior Jesus Christ, or sneers at His atonement.’” Moody and Drummond had their differences, but each was used to bring Jesus Christ to lost sinners. Had Drummond ever cast one slur on the person or work of Jesus Christ, Moody would have defended his Lord and denounced his friend. Moody loved his friend, but he loved his Savior more.