THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD, A Life for a Life and other addresses, A Changed Life, THE PROGRAMME OF CHRISTIANITY, THE CITY WITHOUT A CHURCH, PAX VOBISCUM, and STONES ROLLED AWAY and other addresses - Henry Drummond (best reads of all time txt) 📗

smoking--which is not a sin at all. It showed me that the boys were very badly taught, and that they have no definite conception of sin.
Every one of these Brigades, almost without an exception, is connected with the church. The Bible class is held in the church; and the drill is usually there, too. It is thoroughly under the wing of the church. The movement is so religious that there is never any religious opposition to it, and it is entirely undenominational.


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AN APPEAL TO THE OUTSIDER; OR THE CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY
I am asked to talk specially to what we call in Scotland "the outsider"--the man who has not seen his way to throw in his lot with Christian men. We have made a specialty of the outsider in our university work in the old country. We have laid all our plans to interest him. He is generally the best man in the university; and for some years we have arranged all our Christian work and worship with a view to that type of man. We have laid down one or two principles. The first one is that none of us in any shape or form shall encourage cant. By that I mean sanctimoniousness, anything that is falsetto, any unreal expression of emotion or exaggeration of feeling. A second principle we have had to lay down is that no religious man shall interfere in any shape or form with the university amusements. Time after time I have seen at our religious meetings twelve out of the fifteen university football team; and we have always had amongst our foremost men the best athletes in the university. We have also laid it down as a principle that we shall not interfere with any university work. We have tried to get hold of the busiest men and interest them in whatever is going on, believing that a man may do his university work thoroughly and yet do something in the way of helping on the Christian life of his fellow students. In the Medical Faculty, where we have from 1,800 to 2,000 students, and which is our largest faculty in Edinburgh University, at the end of the four years' course we have the "Blue Ribbon Medical Course" scholarship. It is given to the man who has stood first all along the line for four years. Now the man who for the last four years has taken this scholarship has been not only one of the most active workers in the Christian community, but actually the secretary of the movement. I do not mean that one man has done that for four years; but the last four men have been not only the leading men in the scientific and professional studies, but the leading men in the Christian life of the place. With such a record as that you can understand that Christianity is, at all events, respected.
We never have any religious meetings on week days. We do not want the professors to say we are taking up the time the men ought to give other things. We believe a man's business at a college, and his religion, too, is to do his work. The meetings we have had, therefore, were on Sundays.
Another rule that we have had to make is never to interfere with a man's views. We want a man's life. We do not want his opinion. We do not start a man with a creed. We believe that the man arrives at a creed; and we take into our ranks any man who has any desire to seek the Kingdom of God. That, of course, had widened the door to a very large number of men who would have kept out, if we had been exclusive. But while we do not underrate a creed, while we believe that theological doctrines are just as scientific doctrines; yet religion is an art, and we can get men to practice the art who will arrive, we hope, in their future life, at something of the scientific principles which underlie it; but we make it a barrier to no man at the start that he knows little. In fact, a man enters the school of Christ as he enters a university. That is to say, he enters, not as a professor, but as a student. He comes to learn; and we believe the best way to learn is to let the man matriculate and begin.
If you ask me what obstacles we find specially in the way, I think the chief obstacle we meet is the revolt in thinking men's minds against popular and spurious and weak forms of Christianity. Men come to the institution who have been very strictly brought up, and they are not able, after a few months' college discipline, to believe the things they used to believe. A gentleman in Boston said to me a few days ago that he had a son at Harvard and that the young man had the audacity to come to him not long ago and tell him that he didn't believe so and so. I said to him: "Sir, what a splendid fellow your son must be." He preferred truth to comfort. A man is to be encouraged to think about religious matters. If Christianity cannot bear thinking about, it is not worth going in for.
One other thing that one finds is the idea many men have that it is a dull thing to go in for Christianity. Now, of course, that is simply not true. It is not true in fact, and it is not true in theory. It has, doubtless, more concern for a man's temperament and body than his creed; but if there is anything that can put sunniness or brightness into a man's life, it is Christianity. Christianity professes to cure dullness. Some of the greatest words in the Bible are "joy," "rest," "comfort." Christianity cures depression and gloom by removing the causes of it. What makes men depressed? Self-concentration, as a rule. When a man is wrapped up in himself, seeking only his own, he finds he is seeking a very shallow object, and very soon gets to the end of it; hence all the springs of life have nothing to act upon, and depression follows. Now, Christianity cures that by trying to take a man out of himself, and by showing him that his true life is in living out of himself.
Another source of dullness is the thwarting of the ambitions that we have. We get down in spirits because we do not get the recognition we think we deserve, because we are snubbed and slighted, because we are not at the top. Christianity cures that by a single sentence. It says: "The meek shall inherit the earth." There is no connection between Christianity and a dull life. It is the want of Christianity that makes any life dull. Christianity offers a young man, or an old man, or any man, a more abundant life than the life he is living--more life as life goes, more happiness in life, more intensity in life, more worthiness in life.
That, however, is perhaps not so great an obstacle, comparatively a trifling one, as the thought many men have that it is an unscientific thing in these days to endorse Christianity. Now it may be unscientific to endorse some forms in which Christianity is presented, but Christianity itself is a thoroughly scientific thing. There is nothing the least narrow about anything that Christ ever said. On the contrary, Christ said the broadest things that have ever been said; and he never rebuked breadth, but constantly rebuked narrowness. In His day there were three great philosophical, theological schools. There were the Pharisees, who were so narrow that they could not see spirit for form. There were the Sadducees, who were so narrow that they could not see spirit for matter. And there were the Essenes, who could not see matter for spirit. Christ was always rebuking these sects simply on account of their narrowness. His own view of life was as broad as the heavens. He took in every man and every part of every man. His religion was not kept back by any geographical or ethnographical limits. It was the religion of humanity.
You say, "But it is well known that many scientific men are opposed to Christianity." I ask you to give me their names. If you run over the names of the large figures in science at this moment, you will find that the majority are not only in favor of Christianity, but have expressed themselves in favor of it.
Mr. Huxley has never said anything against Christianity. He has defined the position of science. He says, "Science is not Christianity, nor is it anti-Christianity. It is extra-Christianity." He has thrown an arrow, with a little poison on it, perhaps, at some of the outworks of Christianity; but he has never said one word against Christ or the words or spirit of Christ. And it matters little what a man does to the outworks so long as he respects and is compelled to respect Christ; and Christianity is always respected, however humbly it is lived, by the wisest men.
The other day I came upon a statement by a Fellow of the Royal Society with regard to this subject, a sentence of which I should like to read to you. The Royal Society of London, as you know, is probably one of the first scientific bodies in the world. This man says: "I have known the British Association for the Advancement of Science under forty-one different presidents--all leading men of science. On looking over these forty-one names, I count twenty, who, judged by their public utterances or private communications, are men of Christian belief and character; while, judged by the same test, only four disbelieve in direct divine revelation."
You point to Mr. Darwin. Mr. Darwin never had, and never gave himself, a chance. He was brought up on Paley's Natural Theology--a great book in its day, but a book which Darwin himself made it impossible to read to-day; and he was bombarded with that book, and with religion along that line; and we have no evidence that he ever studied Christianity in any other form. But wherever he saw it, he respected it. When he was on the Island of Terra del Fuego, he saw the lowest subjects in the world. He told the missionaries they might go home. It was an impossibility, from the point of view of science, that these men could ever be elevated. A very few years after, Mr. Darwin wrote a letter to the secretary of that missionary society saying that he had found out what a great change had come over these islands--a certain amount of civilization had been introduced, and morality had been established; and he would like to withdraw what he had said. He enclosed a check for twenty five dollars for the work of the society; and he continued sending in his annual contribution to the end of his life.
Perhaps the greatest name known to you in the old country is that of Sir William Thompson, now Lord Kelvin, Professor of Physics in Glasgow University. If you go into his class room any day you like, you will hear him open his lecture with prayer.
It is not true that the scientific men have given up Christianity. Many of them have given up imitations of Christianity, spurious forms