"Dorner is a thoroughly good and very able man, and I have found your
remark true, for I have already got a great deal of good from his
lectures on Romans. He is at present lecturing on the 4th chapter, and
since I began to understand him I have enjoyed his lectures very much;
formerly the first few chapters of Romans seemed to me almost
unintelligible, but I now see not only the meaning of the separate
verses, but the grand line of thought and argument running through the
whole, and I have a far clearer conception of many of the grandest
Gospel doctrines than I had before, and especially of the nature of
Christ's sacrifice for sin, and the necessity lying on God to punish
sin. I wish I could send you some extracts from the lectures to show
you how very good they are, but I can only give you one illustration.
On iii. 28—which Luther translates, 'We conclude, then, that a man is
justified by faith _alone_, without the deeds of the law'—he remarked
that the Romanists misrepresent the meaning of this, and accuse Luther
of Antinomianism, but (he added) Luther's position is simply this: 'The
fruit does _not_ make the tree, but a good tree cannot be without
fruit.' When he was lecturing on iii. 25, where the question comes up
whether Christ was merely the Altar for the propitiatory sacrifice or
Himself the Sacrifice, he quoted Dr. Chalmers and another Scotch
theologian with _extreme_ approval, viz., Morison—do you know who he
is? (Dorner took strongly the view that Christ was Himself the
Sacrifice.) It is a great pleasure to hear him reading the verses of
the passage he is to examine, for he does it with such earnestness and
impressiveness that they seem to have double the meaning that they have
ordinarily; he has a great deal of eloquence in him, and I like him
very much."
"I always read Meyer's Commentary on Romans before going to the class,
so that I am studying Romans very thoroughly, and as the other
Professor I attend is lecturing on Paul's Teaching, and has been
lecturing on his Life, I shall know a good deal more of Paul before I
come back."
"On Wednesday, the 9th, I bought two Commentaries—De Wette on Psalms,
and Meyer on Romans; they were rolled up in a sheet of paper taken out
of an old book, containing some sixteen pages. I happened to glance at
it in unfolding it, and my attention was caught by these words, in
German, of which the following is a translation: 'Look upon your
children as just so many flowers, which have been lent to you out of
God's garden; the flowers may wither or die, yet thank God that He has
lent them to you for one summer.' I thought at once that I had surely
known the style long ago, and on glancing down the pages I was not at
all surprised to find where the letter broke off—'S. R.— Aberdeen,
March 7th, 1637.' Was it not strange to come in that odd way on a
German translation of Samuel Rutherford's Letters? (See if you can find
the passage.) I also notice, in the bookseller's catalogue, that
Bunyan's works are all translated, also Spurgeon's, 'Schonberg-Cotta
Family,' Mrs. Henry Wood's novels, etc."
In the autumn of 1873 Mr. Elmslie came to London. Four years previously
Dr. Dykes had assumed the pastorate of the church at Regent Square. His
health made it necessary for him to receive, from the commencement,
assistance in his work. He was always anxious to secure the services of
young men who might be trained under him for high achievements in later
years. He heard of Mr. Elmslie's brilliant promise and invited him to
fill the position, then vacant, of assistant to himself. The invitation
was accepted, and Mr. Elmslie settled in London.
At Regent Square he flung himself into the work of the congregation with
eager sympathy. He rapidly became popular and was made welcome in every
home. In Dr. Dykes he found a wise and kind helper, to whom he became
warmly attached. He appreciated his methods of working and his power as
a preacher; but most of all he was struck by that grace of devotional
fervour which gave Dr. Dykes' prayers so constraining a power to draw
the souls of his people into communion with God. Nothing could have been
brighter and happier than the life of the young preacher in his new
surroundings, and his contagious enthusiasm and energy reacted on all
who knew him. Here in London, at the busy centre of so much of the
world's activity, his eager, questioning spirit found material for its
restless enquiries; whilst that knowledge of human nature and its needs,
which lay at the back of his most powerful spiritual work in later
years, was slowly moulded by the opportunities of this time.
He describes in a letter to his mother the opening of his pulpit work at
Regent Square. His chief fear was for his voice: "It looked such a
distance," he writes, "to the faces in the end gallery." He got a friend
to sit at the far end of the church, just over the clock, with a
handkerchief which he was to wave if the speaker were inaudible. The
subject of his sermon was, "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from
all sin."
It is curious that the only despondent note that sounds through his
correspondence at this time is the lamentation that he is unfitted for
the pulpit. Repeatedly he expresses the fear that he will never make a
preacher. He feels stiff and ill at ease. Official trappings of any kind
he always disliked; and the pulpit robes, which he afterwards, as far as
possible, discarded, he even then, as he told Dr. Dykes, detested. "I
find it," he writes, "most hopeless to get anything I much care to say,
and even then it is a perplexity generally to see what really is the
reason. I am at the very point of giving over preaching altogether."
Again, "I am more sure than ever that I am not a preacher," "Romps with
Mr. Turnbull's children's singing-class are, on the whole, the most
satisfactory occupation I know of."
These doubts and discouragements are not surprising. From the very first
Dr. Elmslie conceived of the Christian Faith in a deep, comprehensive
way, and its ideals of purity and holiness touched and warmed his nature
at many points. Just because the outline was so large the filling-in
took years to accomplish. It was only by continuous and patient
self-analysis, by long observation and study of his fellow-men, that he
was able to meet the needs of humanity, at all points, with a message
which no one interpreted more largely. His sermons at Regent Square are
sketches and outlines which experience alone could embody and complete.
I have been much struck, in preparing a selection of his sermons for the
press, with the growth of their composition. The sermon, for example,
which stands first in this volume is, I think, the earliest he ever
wrote. But the sermon, as it was last preached and is now printed, is
not the sermon as he wrote it. The latter, though in outline identical,
has been emptied of its original contents and re-filled out of the
abundance of a heart which had grown in deeper knowledge of human needs
and the approaches of Divine compassion.
His greatest satisfaction he found in his intercourse with the young men
in the congregation.
"At the Young Men's Society," he writes, "I have been chairman for some
time, and have to sum up: it costs me no preparation, and yet how they
listen, and how I feel I can sway them as I please! I enjoy _that_ kind
of speaking."
It was at the close of these weekly discussions that Mr. Elmslie and I
used often to meet. Our homeward paths were not identical, but we used
to imagine that we were alternately escorting one another home as we
spent a measurable portion of many a night upon the pavement, heedless
of the thinning traffic, in keen debate over some of those deep
insoluble problems which, I am glad to think, trouble his eager heart no
longer. "I have long believed," he writes, "_thinking_ to be more
unhealthy than fever, cholera, bad drains, etc. I would give a good deal
to be only an animal now and then."
Almost the first hopeful word about his preaching in Regent Square
occurs in the following passage; it is interesting otherwise:—
"On Monday evening I was at Mr. Bell's. He pressed me to stay; thought
I should not be a Professor; meant for a preacher; would have great
power; something quite peculiar about my sermons; made Christ and
everything so real, and near, and helpful; and my prayers always did
him good, etc., etc.
"Curious, _that_ in my sermons tells with everybody, for it comes from
my line of reading and thinking at college, especially from the _German
books on Christ, such as Strauss_; they made me trust Him as a Person
rather than a doctrine; besides, I know I have come to regard Him all
round differently in consequence. I have had to pay dearly for the
reading, and have often wished I had not, so it is a little comfort to
find that my coming through it makes me more helpful now."