Professor W. G. Elmslie, D.D.: Memoir and Sermons

by William Gray Elmslie

Though never chary in speaking of his religious experiences he did not obtrude them. A real belief in immortality he thought could hardly exist without other faiths being right. Such a belief would give life its true shape and colour. He was very patient of honest doubts, but had to make himself sure that they were honest, not the cloak of moral laxness. What he loved best to speak of was the magnificence of Divine grace—the love of God commended in Christ's death.

But it is time to lay down the pen. We may apply to Dr. Elmslie words, used, I think, about an American writer: his charm was of the kind that we fail to reduce to its grounds. It was like that of the sweetness of a piece of music, or the softness of fine September weather. In a certain way it was vague, indefinable, inappreciable; but it is what we must point to, for nothing he has left behind gives any adequate idea of his powers. Friendship occupied an immense space in his life, and all who knew him are conscious that,

Now the candid face is hid,

The frank, sweet tongue has ceased to move,

something has gone from them never to be replaced till that daybreak which shall unite all who belong to one another. But over the sense of their own loss there rises and remains the feeling how much God indicates in this life of which only some small portion is fulfilled. The world of expectation and love thus suddenly closed for earth must be open somewhere. There must be ministries in other spheres for which he was prepared and summoned. His life must—we know not how—be complete in Him, Who alone of all who lived fully achieved His life's programme, Who came down from Heaven to do His Father's business, and having done it died.

I.

From the Rev. Professor Marcus Dods, D.D.

"From my first acquaintance with the late Professor Elmslie, I availed myself of every opportunity of seeing him, for intercourse with him never failed to be inspiring. Our acquaintance may be said to have culminated in a five weeks' tramp through the Black Forest and the Tyrol, in company with Professor Drummond—to myself a never-to-be-forgotten holiday. Often compelled to sleep in one room, and always thrown upon one another from sunrise to sundown, we came to have a tolerably complete insight into one another's character. And for my own part, I never ceased to marvel at the unfailing good humour and gaiety with which Elmslie put up with the little inconveniences incident to such travel, at the brightness he diffused in four languages, at the sparkling wit with which he seasoned the most commonplace talk, and at the ease and felicity with which he turned his mind to the gravest problems of life and of theology, and penetrated to the very heart of them. His cleverness, his smartness of repartee, his nimbleness of mind, his universal sympathy and complete intelligence were each hour a fresh surprise, and were as exhilarating as the mountain air and the new scenes through which we were passing. I have often reproached myself with not treasuring the fine sayings with which he lifted us into a region in which former difficulties were scarcely discernible and not at all disturbing. But, indeed, one might as well have tried to bottle the atmosphere for home consumption, for into everything he said and did he carried a buoyancy and a light all his own.

"As a preacher Professor Elmslie was, in many of the highest qualities of a preacher, without a peer. No one, I think, appreciated more highly than he the opportunity the preacher of Christ has to apply balm to all the wounds of humanity, and no one exercised this function with a more intelligent or tender sympathy or with happier results. No human condition, physical, mental, or spiritual, seemed beyond his ken, and none but found in him the suitable treatment. His wealth of knowledge, his unerring spiritual insight, and his rare felicity of language gave him the ear of cultured and uncultured, of the believer and the sceptic alike. It has always seemed doubtful to some of his friends whether such exceptional aptitude for preaching should have been, even in any degree, sacrificed to professorial work. Yet he himself delighted in that work, and the very last time I saw him he was full of enthusiasm for Old Testament studies, and hopeful of what might be done by himself and his fellow-labourers in this field.