"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.
"When so energetic an individuality is withdrawn the world suffers an
appreciable loss; and one cannot yet think of the place he filled, or
of the place we all hoped he would yet fill, without a keen shoot of
pain."