"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.
"But to us at the time it was splendid. It was in one of our sessions
that Dr. Blaikie founded the College dinner, which has since proved so
valuable an institution, bringing all the students together daily in a
social capacity; and any day you could have told where Elmslie was
seated at the table by the explosions of laughter rising in that
quarter all through the meal. Men strove to sit near him, and he
diffused a glow up and down, his budget of stories never getting
exhausted or his flow of spirits flagging. I well remember a speech he
made at the close of the first session during which the dinner existed,
to thank Professor Blaikie for his efforts on behalf of the students
and congratulate him on the success of his experiment. It was, perhaps,
the most remarkable of all Elmslie's speeches. Professors and students
alike were simply convulsed with laughter, and one explosion followed
another, till the assembly was literally dissolved; yet under all the
nonsense there was capital sense, and the duty which he had undertaken
could not have been more gracefully or completely discharged.
"On the serious side of college life he was equally a leader. His
enormous influence over his fellow-students was uniformly pure and
elevating; and in confidential hours, when conversation went down to
the depths of experience, it was easy to see that his life, which was
so gay and exuberant on the surface, was deeply rooted in loyalty to
Christ. He threw himself heartily into the work of the Missionary
Society in the Cowgate and the High Street. We began one winter to
speak in the open air, but none of us were successful till we brought
down Murray, who afterwards also went to the English Presbyterian
Church and finished his career even sooner than Elmslie. Murray was no
scholar, but in ten minutes he had a crowd round him extending halfway
across the street, while we could never attract more than forty or
fifty. It was a lesson which we often afterwards discussed with no
small astonishment.
"I remember an incident of the Mission which Elmslie used to tell with
great gusto. He was addressing the Children's Church on the story of
Samson and the lion, when, observing that the children were not
attending, he, instead of saying that the lion roared, emitted as near
an approach to the roar itself as he could command. Instantly there was
breathless attention; and when, after pausing long enough to allow for
the full effect, he was about to proceed, a little girl cried out
anxiously, 'O sir, do it again!' On another occasion he stopped to
reprove rather sharply a boy who was very restless, when a companion,
springing up, told him with great solemnity that he ought not to speak
so to this boy, because he was deaf and dumb. Taken completely aback,
Elmslie began humbly to apologise, when the whole class burst out into
a shout of laughter at the skill with which he had been taken in. The
boy could both hear and speak.
"After he went south I saw him very seldom. Once he caught me in London
and took me out to preach at Willesden, where I was immensely impressed
with his hold on the people and the extent of the field of influence he
had opened up. Like his other friends, I was very impatient for some
literary production worthy of his genius, and, when the brilliant tract
on Renan appeared, I took the liberty of writing him urgently on the
subject. It was always my hope that before very long we should be able
to entice him back across the Border, to adorn a chair in one of our
colleges. I did not hear of his illness till you wrote me that he was
just dying. 'God moves in a mysterious way.' I have no hesitation in
saying that Elmslie was by far the most brilliant man I have ever
known, and there was never a human being more lovable. He seemed to be
the man we needed most; but it is little we know; the Master must have
had need of him elsewhere.
"Believe me yours most truly,
"JAMES STALKER."