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

by William Gray Elmslie

IV.

From the Rev. James Stalker, D.D.

"6 Clairmont Gardens, Glasgow

"March 24th, 1890.

"Dear Mr. Nicoll,—What a bright time it is to look back to! There is nothing else in life afterwards quite equal to it. Never again can one mingle day by day with so many picked men; never is thought so free; never are there such discoveries and surprises. Those years in the New College have in the retrospect almost a dazzling brightness, and Elmslie contributed more, perhaps, than any one else to make them what they were.

"I just missed being by his side all the four years, for we entered together; but after a week or so I left to go abroad with the Barbours, to whom I was tutor. I have no recollection of him that session, for I had not gone in for the bursary examination, where any one competing with him was pretty certain to be made aware of Elmslie to his cost. Next session, when I returned, I was of course separated from him by a year, which makes a great difference in college life. But for three sessions we must have met nearly every day, and I was thrown into the closest contact with him in the committees and societies where students of the different years come together.

"The Theological Society was at that time the centre of the life of the College. Under Robertson Smith, Lindsay and Black, whose last year was Elmslie's first, it had entered on a career of the most brilliant activity, in which, I suppose, it has never faltered since. We used to say, in our exaggerative way, that we got more good from it than from all the classes put together. And indeed it would be difficult to over-estimate the gain to be obtained from debates for which the leading men prepared carefully, being stimulated by audiences of fifty or a hundred to do their very utmost. Questions of Biblical Criticism were at that time the staple of the most important discussions; and then were fought out in secret the very battles which are now about to be fought out in the Church under the eyes of the world, with very much the same division of parties and amid the play of the same passions.

"It was here that Elmslie first unfolded his marvellous powers as a speaker. At the University I had been a member of the Dialectic, where there were one or two fine speakers. One of them was more fluent and agreeable to listen to than any one I have ever heard since; another—long ago, alas! gone over to the majority—spoke with a freer play of mere intellectual force than even Elmslie possessed. But I had never before, and have never since, heard speaking which, taken all in all, quite came up to that to which Elmslie treated us Friday after Friday. The combination of powers was the marvel of it—the knowledge, the clearness of exposition, the fecundity of ideas, the telling force with which he put his points, the play of fancy, the exuberant wit and humour, the tenderness and pathos into which he could glide for a moment if it invited him; there was no resource which he had not at perfect command. Yet it was entirely without display; he was always perfectly natural and familiar. He never won a triumph which humiliated any one; and, whilst others by expounding the same free views excited bitter feelings of opposition, he had the gift of saying the most revolutionary things in such a way that no one was hurt; his weapon, though it cut deep, having the marvellous property of diffusing an anæsthetic on the wound it made.

"If it is necessary to throw some shade into a picture so bright, I should say that in those days his speaking had one defect: while he had always complete mastery of his subject, he rarely made the impression that the subject had complete mastery of him. He could play with it so easily, and he could play so easily with his audience, that, as part of the audience, you felt that you were not quite sure whether he was giving you all his mind or only as much of it as he considered good for you. He had not yet been gripped so tightly by the realities of life as he was later, when his sense of the wrong and misery of the world transformed his eloquence into an irresistible stream of passion and made him the most earnest and whole-hearted of comforters. As yet the bantering, laughing element was in excess; and he did not always remember where to draw the line in the abandon of animal spirits. I used to wonder how it would do when he was settled as the moderator of a session of 'douce' Scotch elders.