Principal James Denney, D.D. : a memoir and a tribute : with a portrait

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CAVEN LIBRARY

KNOX COLLEGE.

TORONTO

PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

I

Principal James Denney, D.D,

A Memoir and a tribute

BY

T. H. WALKER

Author of

"Fellow-labourers: A Ministerial Septuary,"

" Clerical Cameos," "Impressions of Holland,"

''Travels in Russia," etc.

WITH A PORTRAIT

MARSHALL BROTHERS, LTD.
LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK,

CAVEN LIBRARY
KNOX COLLEGE

CO

ALL

EVERYWHERE
WHO ESTEEMED

Principal James Dennep, D<D.,

THIS VOLUME

IS DEDICATED

AS A GRATEFUL MEMORIAL

OF THE MAN AND HIS

WORK.

FOREWORD

As an Arts Student under James Denney's
tuition in Glasgow University, where he first
met the future Principal, the writer of this
memoir came to cherish a high regard — which,
in later years, developed into great reverence —
for the man. His humility and true piety
were remarkable, notwithstanding his im
mense learning and towering intellectual
superiority.

Tributes have already been paid to his
worth and work, and doubtless others will
be forthcoming. In undertaking the writing
of this volume, the author wished to have the
satisfaction of casting a wreath of his own
upon the mausoleum, already reverently
hallowed with memorials of affection. The
attempt has not been made to write an
exhaustive, elaborate or critical biography, but,
within limits, to give a picture, as true to
life as possible, of a many-sided personality
— a man of great talent, power and versatility,
who impressed his generation, as few have
done.

If, at the close of the memoir, the reader
finds that such a faithful portraiture of
Dr. Denney emerges, the writing of it will
not have been in vain.

T. H. W.

UDDINGSTON, LANARKSHIRE.
January, 1918.

CONTENTS

PAGE

FOREWORD 7

CHAPTER I
THE EARLY YEARS . . . . II

CHAPTER II
THE STUDENT . . . . 23

CHAPTER III
THE THEOLOGUE 31

CHAPTER IV
THE PREACHER 39

CHAPTER V
THE PROFESSOR 57

CHAPTER VI
THE AUTHOR 81

CHAPTER VII
THE SOCIAL REFORMER . . . 115

CHAPTER VIII
THE MAN OF AFFAIRS .... 133

CHAPTER IX
THE LAST PHASE .... 151

Years

Principal James Denney, D.D.

CHAPTER I
THE EARLY YEARS

GREAT is the debt which the religious world
owes to Scotland. If Germany before the
days of her degeneration sent forth a company
of intrepid Reformers, and England produced
an army of noble martyrs, no less has Scotland
nurtured a band of sturdy confessors and
theologians, whose outstanding careers are an
abiding inspiration. The smaller denomina
tions have not been less fruitful than others
in giving us great Christian leaders in this
Northern land — " Auld Lichts," Cameronians,
Burghers, Morisonians, have each had a group
of devoted men, whose gifts of heart and mind
added lustre to the Christian Church. While
their loyalty to their own section was whole
hearted and uncompromising, they yet loved
the brotherhood, and in turn their ability
and goodness commanded the love and respect
of all who knew them. Of these James Denney,
who belonged originally to the Reformed
13

14 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

Presbyterian or Cameronian Church, is a
conspicuous example. Writing at the time
of his death and apparently under strong
feeling, Sir William Robertson Nicoll said
of him, " That he was in many respects the
first man in Scotland, was coming to be
acknowledged by every one. It is our own
deliberate opinion that hardly any greater
loss could have befallen the Christian Church,
for he seemed destined to guide thought and
action in the difficult years to come as hardly
any one could but himself. . . . There is not
a thought or a memory connected with him
that does not stir our admiration and love.
There is none like him — none. His loss is
truly irretrievable." And this great Doctor
of the Church, in effect and in reality, born
in Paisley on 5th February, 1856, was of
Cameronian stock, the sect which had its
origin in the fierce and bitter controversies
which took place in Scotland in the latter
part of the I7th century.

His parents, worthy members of that
communion, removed to Greenock when he
was but four months old, and here his early
life was spent in association with the Church
of his fathers. Practically, therefore, a
Greenock man, Denney had in later years, as
intimates, two fellow-townsmen, the Rev. A. D.

THE EARLY YEARS 15

Grant and the Rev. J. P. Struthers. These
formed a trinity of kindred souls. Strong
and grave, yet kindly and loving, they were
bound each to each by the closest of moral
and spiritual bonds — " Men of the knotted
heart." Struthers belonged to the Reformed
Presbyterian Church, although born and
brought up in the Original Secession body,
and his genius and consecrated life made a
profound impression upon Denney. " I have
never known a man who had so deep a sense
of the love of God, or who so unmistakably
had the love of God abiding in him " was the
latter's testimony concerning his friend.

For twenty-seven years Struthers " edited,"
rather it should be said, he wrote The Morning
Watch — a vastly different periodical from that
which bore the same title in Edward Irving's
day, and surely the most delightful of all
Sabbath School Magazines. Denney loved
the Watch, as he loved its editor, and helped it
too. He once described the Magazine in these
words : " It is just like reading a letter " ;
and once, when giving a list of the Hundred
Best Books, he included The Morning Watch
as one of the Hundred. The last page of the
Watch Denney particularly prized, reading
the monthly as soon as he received it, from
beginning to end, but usually beginning at

16 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

the end. The choice combination and illus
tration of the texts he regarded as wonderful.
It has been said that to Struthers might
be applied the words inscribed on Gordon's
tomb in St. Paul's: "Always and every
where he gave his strength to the work, his
substance to the poor, his sympathy to the
suffering, and his heart to God." Such
witness is high, but true. The playfulness
and humour which made Struthers's talk so
fascinating, and lightened his preaching and
lecturing, were like sunbeams playing on
the face of the deep. Perhaps the most
gifted preacher of his time in the West of
Scotland and a veritable man of genius,
Struthers was yet very reserved, very shy,
very humble, very lovable. A creator of
pure fun of the whimsical order, he had also
the touch of sadness that so often accompanies
a playful wit. He was at once humourist
and melancholian. He was notable as the
man who, with characteristic modesty,
declined the honour of D.D. from Glasgow
University. He and Denney were to be
" capped " together, but the latter con
fessed afterwards to a feeling of relief, as he
felt himself so unworthy to stand on a parity
with an already so great and real " Doctor
of the Church " as Struthers.

THE EARLY YEARS 17

The Reformed Presbyterians were proud
of Struthers, as they had cause to be. He was
their foremost preacher and expounder of the
Word. Many of them were "characters"
in their own way. Small Churches seem to
be the cradle of such curious folk. Thus
the Cameronians often used to make great
sacrifices to attend preachings. Two of them,
humble but honest and devout men, were

wont to leave D , their native village, to

travel to Glasgow, a distance of over twenty
miles, to hear a minister of their own persuasion.
In the evening, after service, they travelled
back half-way, but were obliged to stop in a
moorland cot till next morning would fit
them for their journey. On one occasion,
being more than usually fatigued, one of
them awakening about the middle of the
night thus addressed his friend, " John, I'll
tell you ae thing, and that's no twa — if they
Auld Kirk folk get to heaven at last they'll
get there a hantle easier than we do ! "

These old Cameronians were not, however,
a heavy, sour and joyless people, but the
opposite. Many of them were possessed of a
happy and contented disposition ; their sense
of humour was keen, their estimate of per
sonal independence was high ; they cherished
profound religious convictions. The Denney

i8 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

family continued their connection with the
Reformed Presbyterian Church — in which the
father, who was a joiner by trade, held office as
a deacon — until the union of the majority
of the members of that denomination with
the Free Church of Scotland in 1876, Struthers
electing to abide by the " remnant " of his
old church, and thus remaining to the end
" R.P." But James Denney never forgot
his obligations to the Church of his fathers.
Here his earliest religious impressions had
been received and his first efforts in Christian
work engaged in. As Sir William Robertson
Nicoll puts it, he " passed over to the Free
Church, taking with him his serene but warm
piety, his instinctive appreciation of dogmatic
truth, and his hearty interest in the Church
of Christ." Here he had ample scope for the
exercise of his gifts. For his class in the
Sunday School, with scholars only slightly
younger than himself, he prepared as carefully
as if he were a preacher to a congregation of
critical hearers. The influence of his teaching
in those early days still abides, and is grate
fully recalled. As a boy he received his
early education at the Highlanders' Academy
of Greenock. Here he carried everything
before him, and ere long surpassed in learning
even his pastors and masters in that somewhat

THE EARLY YEARS 19

noted institution. It is interesting to recall
that at this period of his life he had as fellow-
scholar in the old Academy, John Davidson,
the poet, that hapless child of genius, whose
father was at the time minister of the Evan
gelical Union Church of Greenock, a man of
sterling worth and conspicuous ability.

The two lads also became colleagues as
pupil teachers in the Academy. And yet
how different the destiny of each as events
proved ! Both trained in the evangelical
religion, and ending their career, the one as a
master in Israel of the household of faith,
the other a suicidal victim of vanity and
unbelief. Davidson, like Denney, was a man
of considerable gifts. He tried to stem the
tide of French influence and endeavoured to
create a new dwelling-place for the human
imagination. There was, as has been pointed
out by critics, a distinction between Davidson's
work while he was still in Scotland and his
later work. The early dramas are easily the
best and sanest things he did, as indicating
an abundance of creative power, a love of
sunshine and the freshness and daring of
youthfulness. But a change came when
Davidson went to London, abandoned teaching,
and set himself to write for bread. Hack
work he hated, and came to detest all com-

20 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

pulsion and to resent intensely the slowness
of the world to recognize him, or to follow
him. The last stage of his life was very bitter.
He claimed to have anticipated Nietzsche.
He read him and was influenced. The conse
quence was that he threw himself passionately
against the world. He lived partly in profound
despair and partly in turbulence and revolt.
There was no background of faith to support
him in view of his failure to win the popular
success he sought, and felo de se on the cliffs
of Penzance was the sad result. Davidson's
meteoric success in London was a surprise
to his contemporaries in the old Academy, for
he clearly had little ability as a teacher, nor
did he then appear to possess anything of
the genius of greatness ; but the boys of the
Academy knew instinctively that James
Denney was destined to make his mark in
whatever profession he adopted. By nature
grave and studious, gentle and kindly ; in
thought and expression, clear and fluent ;
in work, thorough and inspiring, he made
a deep impression on the minds and lives of
his scholars. As he stood before his class,
in his favourite teaching attitude, balancing
himself from toe to heel, they felt that to him
the simplest theme was inexhaustible. Of an
afternoon, at this period the lad would spend

THE EARLY YEARS 21

hours at the bench in the workshop of his
father's firm — Crawford & Denney, joiners.
Doubtless he would give promise there of
being as efficient in joinery as in teaching
and theology.

Denney having reached the limit of the
school curriculum, and being still too young
to begin his course of training as a teacher —
the profession which at the time he had in
view as his life-work — made some acquaintance
with business affairs in the office of Messrs.
Liddell & Brown, tug boat agents, Greenock.
Here* he remained for two years or so and
practised most assiduously the art of penman
ship. His handwriting was good, but the
manner in which he was accustomed to hold
the pen was awkward, and he felt that he
must develop a style appropriate for a teacher
ot the art. About this time H.M. Inspector
paid a visit to the school in connection with
an examination of the pupil teachers who
purposed entering for the Normal Course of
training. At the close of the ordeal, the
Inspector summoned the candidates, with the
exception of Denney, into his room and
intimated that the papers handed in by the
latter were in all his (the Inspector's) ex
perience unsurpassed by any pupils who
had faced that examination. This was a

22 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

high compliment to the youth, coming from
such a quarter.

But schoolmaster, Denney was not destined
to be. All the characteristics which distinguish
the successful minister were already markedly
present in the youth. His diligence, ability
and thoughtful earnestness in the work soon
made him notable above his fellows. He was
admitted to circles and societies intended
for far older pupil-teachers. His knowledge
and learning were so conspicuous that the
one and only goal now set before him was the
Christian Ministry. To the attainment of
this object, therefore, he bent his youthful
energies.

Student

CHAPTER II
THE STUDENT

LEAVING the Highlanders' Academy after
four years' service as a pupil teacher, young
Denney matriculated as an Arts Student at
the University of Glasgow, in November, 1874.
And here a prodigy appeared. No scholar
of his time could equal him. In class he
soon began to answer questions that nobody
else could answer. His fame was established
when he underwent successfully the ordeal
of what is called in Glasgow " The Blackstone
Examination." A gold medal, the prize founded
by some old patron of learning, is given
annually to the student who may profess to
read the greatest number of Latin books, and
translate any passage or passages selected
by the professor, from the whole, correctly.
Sometimes the ambitious would-be medallist
would profess seventy or eighty books, say
twelve of Virgil, six of Horace, ten of Livy,
five of Cicero, and so forth. When the lists
were given in, it was found that Denney's was
prodigious, and when he took his seat on
25

26 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

the celebrated " Blackstone," the ebon
marble chair of antique construction which
stands in the Humanity class-room, he
was greeted with applause. The examina
tion was long and searching, but Denney
came off with flying colours. The Rev.
Professor Clow, D.D., a fellow-student in
Arts in those days, testifies to the impression
created by the student from Greenock as
he rose in his place in the class-room at the
Professor's call. Abnormally pale, almost to
an oriental pallor, intent in look, direct in
speech, he soon fulfilled the highest expecta
tions cherished concerning him. A stillness
at once fell upon his classmates as, in level
tones and with perfect enunciation, the lis
teners heard a translation as loyal to the
original as it was clean-edged and felicitous.
Throughout the whole curriculum, Denney
was his Professor's favourite pupil. The
Jeffrey and Cowan Gold Medals, as well as
the Blackstone, came his way.

For Professor Jebb, who was elected to the
Greek chair in Denney's second year of Arts,
the latter ever cherished the highest feelings
of esteem. In an appreciation of his Pro
fessor he writes : "I have no hesitation in
saying that he was by far the best teacher
I ever knew, and that he made his subject

THE STUDENT 27

real and inspiring as few are able to do. What
impressed the imperfectly prepared students,
who had to do any work for Mr. Jebb, was the
precision and finish of all his work for them.
Most of us had no idea of what translation
could be — whether from Greek into English
or from English into Greek. His renderings
of Sophocles, which have since become known
to all the world, came on us like a revelation.
He not only did the thing, but created an
ideal for us by doing it. His interest I should
say was in the poetry and history rather than
in the speculative thought of Greece. He
could not in any sense fraternize with his
pupils, the main interests of most of them
being too remote from his own, but he was
most willing to help those who sought his
guidance in his own field. After leaving the
University I assisted him for some years in
examination work, and know how sincerely
he was interested in the progress of his men.
In spite, however, of the sense of distance
which was never quite overcome — or perhaps,
even because of it — he gave many of us
an idea from which we can never escape, of
what a scholar can be. His professorship in
Glasgow was a fortunate episode in the history
of the University and in the intellectual life
of its alumni ; and though we could not grudge

28 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

his return to Cambridge, we felt that it would
be hard to find any one who could hope to
fill his place."

Old students of Professor Jebb will ap
preciate the justness of the tribute. All of
us felt deeply the privilege we enjoyed of
listening to the voice of one who combined
the utmost fidelity to the Greek tongue with
a diction that was unparalleled.

Denney was for a time assistant to Pro
fessor Veitch in the Logic Class. It was
here that the present writer, as a student,
first came into contact with him. What drew
one's attention to this man with the slender
frame, the scholar's stoop, the countenance
" sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,"
the intent look, the reticent manner, the
metallic tone of speech, was his character
rather than his career in Arts, brilliant as that
had been. A few moments in his presence
was quite sufficient opportunity to enable one
to see that this was a " high-souled " man,
calm in his manner, simple and modest in a
marked degree, yet strong and determined in
taking a stand, or advocating a principle — a
man who uttered not sentiments as one who
must say something, but rather as one who
had something to say. This was the first and
abiding impression. It only deepened on a

THE STUDENT 29

closer acquaintanceship ; and quite a genera
tion later, on a casual meeting with him in a
Glasgow tramway car — he was Principal
Denney then — from his demeanour and his
kindly inquiries, one realized again the
moral influence which he had exercised over
the plastic minds of his students in the long
ago. His method, his thoroughness, his
patience, his justness, his nice sense of honour,
his devotion to duty, have left their mark
on many men, far apart in time and in
place and in work, but united in a common
bond of affectionate regard for the memory
of their old tutor.

In Professor Edward Caird's Moral Philo
sophy Class, Denney 's phenomenally brilliant
Arts career culminated in his securing the
coveted gold medal. While esteeming this
master in ethics most highly for his own
and his work's sake, it has been asserted
that he never accepted Caird's philosophy,
and though learned in the history of philosophy,
he declined to tie himself to any system,
holding that one system gave way to another
and that Christianity was bound up with
none of them.

No branch of study came amiss to Denney.
Even in Mathematics, as Professor Clow
indicates, he held his place, although he used

30 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

to say with a smile, that, like Macaulay, he-
looked about for a footrule when certain
questions were asked ! He closed his Arts
course by taking a double first in Classics
and Mental Philosophy — the most distin
guished student of his time. When he
graduated with such high honours, it was
said of him that he could have occupied with
distinction more than one of the Chairs in the
Arts Faculty of his Alma Mater. Such a
Chair, indeed, seemed the appropriate goal
of his brilliant scholastic course. But no !
Theology, the "Queen of the Sciences/' claimed
him, and whatever philosophy and literature
may have lost, the Church of Christ has grandly
gained by his submission as a student to her
regal sway.

^heologue

CHAPTER III

THE THEOLOGUE

NOT until five years had elapsed did Denney
enter upon the study of theology proper in
the Free Church College, Glasgow, now the
United Free, an institution notable for the
eminence of its professoriate, including as it
did such men as Drs. Douglas, Lindsay,
Candlish, Bruce, with Henry Drummond
as teacher of Natural Science. On account
of its methods of preparation, probably no
other Church in the world has a better equipped
ministry than the United Free Church of
Scotland. There is a marked distinction
between men so intellectually trained in this
Church and others who enter the ministry
upon easier terms, yet the preacher, like the
poet and the prophet, must be born as well
as trained. The pastoral instinct, for example,
must ever find its best development in the
school of experience. With some students
it is easier to acquire than assimilate, and
the preoccupation of a severe training may
c 33

34 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

occasionally restrict the faculty of judgment
and the intuition of tact.

Denney, as a clear, far-seeing thinker, was
at a later day the initiator of the movement
towards a more modern equipment for our
future ministers. He recognized that to the
men and women of this age the message of the
pulpit too often is no evangel. The reason,
in great measure, is found in the fact that,
according to the present method of theo
logical training, the message sounds unreal —
not a voice living, eager, and arrestive, but
an echo indistinct and ineffective. He saw
that the means and the end in ministerial
training had fallen out of relation to each
other. He held that the existing systems in
divinity halls were too academic. It was not
so much ministerial training that was given
nowadays as theological education ; it was
not ministers that were being made so much
as Bachelors of Divinity ! Thus Denney dis
tinguished between the trained theologian
and the minister of Jesus Christ. The sphere
of research for the former as a specialist may
be the critical analysis of the hexateuch, or
tracking the intricacies of the synoptic prob
lem ; but the latter should be instructed in
the Christian religion, in the spiritual and
moral condition of the world, in the intellec-

THE THEOLOGUE 35

tual, social, and economic phenomena amid
which men have to live and on which the
ministry may cast the light of the Christian
revelation, rather than be asked to spend
much time over questions in theological
science which have little relation to the voca
tion of the preacher.

Denney entered his theological Alma Mater
at a somewhat more mature age than is usual
with students, but he had the benefit of a
fine mental furnishing, and here, as at the
University, he maintained his reputation as
the foremost student of his time. In the
intervening years he had not been idle, ful
filling the conditions attached to the holding
of the Clark Scholarship, tutoring at the
University, and in general equipping himself
fully for the work of the Theological College
A Continental tour also made about this
period, when he sojourned for a considerable
time in Germany, in the congenial company
of his intimate friends Professor (now Sir)
Henry Jones, Glasgow University, and Pro
fessor Hugh Walker, Lampeter College, Wales,
served to widen his mental outlook. In the
Glasgow College, in due course, Denney came
under the stimulating influence of Professor
A. B. Bruce, who was ever to him " the true
master of his mind " So much was he im

36 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

pressed by Bruce, and so warm an admirer
was he of his work, and especially of his
Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, that
he remarked concerning his teacher, " He
let me see Jesus ! " Bruce held Denney in
equally high regard, and on one occasion, it is
recorded, called upon him to give an exegesis
of a passage in Colossians to a class of senior
students, and the class, so far from resent
ing the liberty, felt themselves honoured,
Denney in the course of his theological
curriculum had a spell of what might be
termed Broad Churchism, but when he and
his Professor came to the cross-roads, Bruce
took one way and Denney another.

While reticent as to his own spiritual history
and experience, he was ever an evangelical
believer. His thorough scholarship, his
exegetical insight, his firm grasp of the great
doctrines of the Christian faith, were all
subservient to that.

Denney did a wise thing when as student
he became also missionary to the Rev. (now
Dr.) John Carroll of Free St. John's Church,
Glasgow. His special sphere of labour was
in East Hill Street schoolroom, Gallowgate.
Here he found a moral and spiritual clinic
under the superintendence of the minister,
who, it is said, was almost forced at the ime

THE THEOLOGUE

37

into acceptance of the pastorate of St. John's
by Denney, who only agreed to become his
assistant on condition of his taking up that
work. In East Hill Street he carried on the
Mission with the diligence, ability, and success
that might have been anticipated in such a
strenuous worker. On the conclusion of his
term of office, a Men's Class which he had
originated and taught, presented to him
a large parallel edition of the revised
New Testament, and a handsome walking-
stick, gifts of regard which he very highly
prized. During this novitiate Denney lodged
in Grafton Street, Glasgow. The "digs"
were oftentimes the scene of memor
able Nodes AmbrosiancB, particularly when
Mr. Carroll and his elder Mr. Salmon (a
well-known Glasgow architect and chosen
friend of Denney, in whose social intercourse
the latter delighted) would drop in of an
evening and exchange sentiments regarding
most things in heaven and on earth, or even
under the earth !

This period of Denney's career was marked
by his first contribution to theological
literature, written at the suggestion, it is
said, of Professor Bruce. It was anonymous,
and took the form of a trenchant review of
Professor Drummond's Natural Law in the

38 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D

Spiritual World, and was intended to counteract
the teaching of that work. The criticism
was a wonderfully able one, and altogether
the brochure, which bore the title " Natural
Law in the Spiritual World, by a Brother
of the Natural Man," was a remarkable
production, when it is remembered that
Denney but a short time before had sat at
Drummond's feet as one of his students.
Afterwards, it is believed, Denney revised
certain of his strictures on Drummond's work,
to the author of which, like many more, he
felt indebted for giving to the Christian
public a fresh and stimulating volume.

Another early literary venture was his
joint editorship with Professor Bruce of the
Union Magazine, in which many suggestive
theological articles appeared, fruits of a
sympathetic collaboration of master and
pupil. Undoubtedly Denney, like other stu
dents, owed much in the way of intellectual
stimulus to Bruce, although in most matters,
without either undue self-depreciation or self-
assertion, he could be trusted to take his own
line. But to the younger man it was matter
for justifiable pride, and more than a co
incidence, that he should be called upon to be
Bruce 's successor both in his congregation
and in his Chair in the Glasgow College.

'Preacher

CHAPTER IV

THE PREACHER

ON the completion of his University and
Theological Hall training, and when he had
become Bachelor of Divinity, Denney was
duly licensed by the Presbytery of Greenock.
Immediately thereafter, in 1886, in his 3ist
year, he was unanimously called to be minister
of East Free Church, Broughty Ferry, in
succession to the Rev. A. B. Bruce, D.D.,
who had been appointed to the Chair of
Apologetics in Glasgow College. Broughty
Ferry is a desirable place of residence. Save
for the old Castle to which it owes its origin,
and is indebted in turn for its own remarkable
prosperity to Dundee, the town is wholly
modern. It consisted a century ago of only
a few poor fishers' huts. But the pleasant
site, fine air, and social amenities have marked
it out for " Dundee's Country House," and
its sloping links have year by year become
more thickly studded with the handsome
villas of the merchant-princes of the jute
Metropolis. The "Jute Lords," and other
representative men in the multiform com-

42 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

mercial concerns, which have made the city
what it is to-day, constituted a not incon
siderable portion of Denney's congregation.
Highly favoured are the residents in this town
of many mansions, in their lot and heritage,
as also in their charming outlook over the Tay,
and the emerald slopes of Fife. But still more
privileged were they in their religious oppor
tunities in Denney's time.

Memories of Thomas Dick, the author of the
Christian Philosopher, who spent his last
twenty years in Broughty Ferry, still linger
round the place. Otherwise the mental
atmosphere is stimulating ; and to Denney the
sphere of service was most of all attractive
because he had in Dr. Bruce's famous treatise
on " The Training of the Twelve " a high
standard of pulpit exposition set before him
by which to test his own work from week
to week. A very brief period sufficed to prove
to his people that they possessed in their
young minister a scholar and preacher whose
learning and force were equal to those of
his eminent predecessor. The years as they
passed added to his reputation. He preached
"Christ and Him crucified" with an ever-
increasing power. The effect was patent in the
tense stillness and deep absorption with which
he was listened to by his interested congrega-

THE PREACHER 43

tion. With no adventitious aids such as
gesture or declamation, but ever making use
of the fitting and telling phrase, he showed
at once how profoundly he could think and
also strive after pulpit lucidity. He had the
faculty of making himself understood by the
common people — the folk "whom God must
love so much because He made so many of
them " ! At times his sermon was neither
doctrinal nor critical, exegetical nor academic.
This erudite theologian was not afraid, on
occasion, to preach in non-professional
fashion. He could meet his hearers on the
lowest planes of thinking, so that the most
unlearned among them might be able to
apprehend all that was said. His literary
products showed how profoundly he could
think, his sermon often indicated how
anxiously he would strive after parrhesia —
pulpit boldness as well as pulpit brightness.
Such discourses were popular in the truest
sense. They were of what is called the
appellative-argumentative order. The preacher
was, so to speak, running along a double
line of rails, simultaneously arguing in order
to reach the intellect and also appealing so
as to touch the conscience. There was the
impact of mental force, the sermon at the
same time having the effect of a moral

44 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

inculcation on the hearer. Perhaps emo
tionalism at times was lacking, that rare
quality in any preacher which sets the heart,
of the speaker and hearer alike, throbbing with
sympathy. In this particular, Denney might
occasionally show the defect of his qualities
even in a high order of pulpit discourse. The
only stricture that even the acutest critic
could pass in such a case was the comparatively
mild one, that the power was greater than
the pathos. Indeed his wife used to tell him
laughingly that there was not enough pathos
in his sermons. Even she, however, could
not gainsay the fact that there was a deep
evangelical warmth and tone. It is manifest
here, in a sermon on the text " Blessed is
he, whosoever shall not be offended in me "
(Matt. xi. 6).

" There are many people who seem to spend
their whole life — I mean their whole religious
life — in a kind of process of negotiation with
Jesus. Jesus has said, ' Strait is the gate
and narrow is the way that leadeth unto
life,' and they want to argue it with Him.
They want to negotiate with Jesus, see if
there cannot be some kind of compromise
made for them, whether for their particular
case the strait gate cannot be made wide,
whether for their particular benefit and use the

THE PREACHER 45

narrow way cannot be made broad, and they
are all their lives long trying as it were to
get special terms from Jesus for themselves.
Dear friends, there is nothing, there is nothing
at all in that kind of negotiation. That is
not the way our Lord deals with men. The
love of Christ is infinite and the love of Christ
is infinitely inexorable. He never lets down
His terms, He never makes the strait gate
wide, He never makes the narrow way broad,
He never makes the pearl without price
cheap, He never asks less than everything,
and happy is the man who comes to see that
and to understand that that is the only way
to life. When our Lord speaks to His dis
ciples, what does He say ? ' What man who
is going to build a tower does not sit down
first and count the cost whether he is able
to finish it ? ' That is what the Christian
life is like. It is like going to build a tower ;
it is not like building a hut or a coal cellar,
or building a cottage even, it is like building
a tower — a magnificent structure, something
that will cost a great deal and that a man
should not begin unless he feels it is in him
to go through with.

Or again, He says about the same thing,
' What king going to make war with another
king will not sit down first and see whether

46 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

he is able with ten thousand to meet him
that cometh against him with twenty
thousand ? ' What is the king doing who
is compared to a Christian ? He is a king
going to make war ; he is not a king going
to get a ride round the garden before break
fast or any little thing like that, which he
does not need to think about or that it does
not matter much whether he does it or not.
It is like going to war, prepared to give his
life, and going to do the greatest thing and
taking the greatest risk that a king could
take. And to be a Christian is to be like that.
No man should do it, no man should feel he is
doing the kind of thing that Jesus asks unless
he feels he is doing an unimaginably great
thing, taking the greatest risk and taking
it for the greatest prize. There is no kind
of joy even in earthly relations like the joy
of losing everything to get everything, giving
the whole of one's self to get the whole of
another ; and it is the whole-hearted com
mittal of the life to Christ and the whole
hearted renunciation of everything that keeps
it for His sake, it is on that that this happy
benediction is pronounced, ' Happy is he,
whosoever shall not be offended in Me.' The
word ' blessed ' used in these benedictions
of Jesus always denotes the highest kind of

THE PREACHER

47

happiness, the happiness on which God con
gratulates man, and God wishes joy. God
pronounces joy over the man who can give
up everything to win Christ. . .

" Many people are offended because Christ
requires men to become His debtors for a
debt which they can never repay. In one
way of it the Christian life always begins with
a great humiliation. Christ comes to us as
One without whom we cannot take the first
step in the new way of life ; even to begin
it we must be infinitely and for ever indebted
to Him. How do we need to begin ? All we
sinful men need to begin with the forgiveness
of sins. Now when we think of it, when we
think of the forgiveness of sins, what are we
to say ? We cannot earn it, we cannot claim
it, we cannot take it for granted, we must go
into debt for it, and we must go into debt
to Christ. That is the very heart of the
Gospel. Christ brings the forgiveness of sins
and He brings it at an unspeakable cost.
Christ died for the ungodly : ' in whom we
have redemption through His blood, even the
forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the
riches of His grace/ Now, that, strange to
say, is the thing that many people cannot get
over ; there is the sharp edge of the stone of
stumbling by which they are repelled They

48 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

cannot humble themselves to be Christ's
debtors for this unspeakable gift. No man
ever was made happy, no man ever will be
made happy by refusing to come under this
obligation to Jesus, by resolving to be in
dependent of Him and to maintain his
independence ; and on the other hand
blessedness comes, blessedness certainly comes
and surely comes, to the man who stands at the
Cross of Christ and says :

Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy Cross I cling.

" I say there is no doubt in the least that
the happiest, the most joyful hearts in this
world are the hearts that have attained, that
the gladdest songs are those that spring from
lips inspired by that great surrender and that
great blessing ' to Him that loved the souls
of men, and washed us in His blood/

Thou, O Christ, art all I want,
More than all in Thee I find.

I stand upon His merits,
I know no other stand.

" These are the authentic voices in which
human souls have uttered the deepest blessed
ness that human souls can know, and it is
the blessedness of those who are not offended
in Christ because He wishes to put them in
His debt. Oh, that anybody who has been*

THE PREACHER

49

holding back from Christ in that kind of
reserve or reluctance or pride, anybody who
has been doing that, may lay these things to
heart and consider whether he is going in a
way in which blessedness lies. ' Blessed is
he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me.' '

Denney was ever a true preacher of the
Word. He had no ambition to be known
as the " popular " preacher. Ah, that blessed
word " popular," how potent it becomes in
certain quarters. It is recalled how even the
distinguished Principal John Caird, when first
settled in the quiet rural parish of Errol, where
he laid the foundations of his fame, could not
be said to be a favourite with some at least
of his parishioners. The church building
was much too large for the people who attended,
and the young divine suggested the boarding
up of a portion of the premises. This, however,
was opposed by an irate elder who sought to
impress his views on the minister by saying,
" We'll maybe get a mair pop'lar preacher
when ye 're awa'." No more than Caird at
first, did Denney draw crowds to hear him
like Chalmers or Spurgeon, of both of whom
he was a profound admirer ; and he would
say at times that he had no desire to be a great
but only a useful preacher. Yet never did he
mount the sacred rostrum without the genuine

D

50 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

preacher's earnestness of purpose and intensity.
He had veracity of utterance — a special air
of truthfulness seemed to distil from him.
The pulpit was his throne, and from thence
he spoke with authority to men the great things
of God. His one volume of published sermons,
The Way Everlasting, gives evidence at once
of his theological insight and practical wisdom,
and also of his quiet yet intensive power.
The style, as has been said, cuts clean as a
blade of Damascus.

He wrote once to a friend : "In the course
of my Bible studies I have come to have a
great faith in the obvious, and to feel that
what we have got to do in preaching is
not to be original, but to make the obvious
arresting.'' And truly, few present-day
preachers could arrest mind and heart and
conscience as he could. Even his first written
work, by which the Church at large began to
estimate his power as an expositor, was not only
replete with fine scholarship, but throbbed with
spiritual passion. It was in the fifth year of
his ministry that he issued his volume on the
Epistles to the Thessalonians, and a little later
the one on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians,
both in the " Expositor's Bible " Series. They
were preached largely to the Broughty Ferry
congregation. These works show Denney to

THE PREACHER 51

be, what in every sense he was, the scholar,
thorough, accurate, impartial, critical, but
also far more than that. He was a great
moral and religious force, an eminent Christian
doctor of his generation, a kind of national
conscience to his ministerial brethren in all
the Churches. What was said about a cele
brated preacher may be said about Denney.
" His inmost spirit has been busy with
the New Testament doctrines, as one who
lived in the presence of great subjects,
subduing him, restraining him, calling for self-
recollection and sober words." He " toiled
terribly " and at length arrived at a style
of writing which was the acme of lucidity.
Thus too he came to speak with a readiness,
clarity and keenness which were almost
unexampled. For years he wrote none of his
sermons, and one might listen to him in critical
mood and yet fail to note a sentence un
finished, a phrase incomplete or a word
misplaced. It was in this way that he came
to be the unique teacher, theologian, and
leader that he proved himself. He had a perfect
passion for preaching the Gospel of righteous
ness.

Sir W. Robertson Nicoll has told us that
Denney was reticent in regard to his spiritual
history, "but," he says, "we believe that his

52 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

wife, who gave him the truest and most perfect
companionship, led him into a more pro
nounced evangelical creed. It was she who
induced him to read Spurgeon, whom he had
been inclined to despise. He became an
ardent admirer of this preacher and a very
careful and sympathetic student of his sermons.
It was Spurgeon perhaps as much as any one
who led him to the great decision of his life —
the decision to preach Christ our righteous

ness.

These men, Spurgeon and Denney, were
great Puritans both— that they were the
last of the race we are loth to admit — and
each was master of a pure Saxon style of
speech. Each also had learned to write with
a majestic sense of simplicity, precision, and
directness, and with a resolute limitation of
ordinary statement by the severity of facts.
And to one good woman — too early taken,
alas | — who made his home-life so happy, is
largely due the credit of the evangelical basis
of her husband's thinking, teaching, and
preaching. Mary Carmichael Brown's memory

a very precious one and too sacred a topic

to be written of here — is indeed blessed.

In Broughty Ferry, Denney the scholar, so
well read, and the teacher, so deeply thought,
gave himself to the plain and simple duties

THE PREACHER 53

of the pastorate with a faithfulness and
appetency which won the regard, not only of
his own congregation, but of the general
community as well. He had the qualities of
the true Christian pastor, simplicity and
modesty in a marked degree, manliness in
taking a stand or in advocating a principle,
nobility and unselfishness of disposition. To
his intimates he was the truest, warmest,
and tenderest of friends. Albeit he showed
none of those social embellishments that make
a man popular among his fellows. At times
a remarkable restraint, not to say coldness,
manifested itself in his demeanour.

He was ever ready to serve a ministerial
brother of his own Church or of any other
Church on the smallest occasion, and in
the humblest sphere. The Rev. Kirkwood
Hewatt, M.A., late of Prestwick, writing in
this connection of the modesty, simplicity,
and unpretentiousness of Denney, after he
had become the famous preacher and divine,
says : —

" Let me give an instance. Some time
ago there preached for me at Prestwick an
eminent divine who apparently believed in the
Philosophy of Clothes, for he brought with
him a portmanteau in which was a varied
assortment of ecclesiastical wearing apparel.

54 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

Of the inventory I remember the following :
A pulpit gown, a long cassock reaching to
his heels, a cincture, a university hood, and
bands. There was also a large, handsome
sermon-case, as if such alone were worthy
of the manuscripts it contained. Quite an
elaborate toilet, with many glances at the
mirror, was necessary before the great man
was ready for the services of the day. In
spite, however, of all this tailoring, millinery,
and finery, he preached well. Later I had
occasion to be associated with Dr. Denney
in the conducting of services in a church in
Glasgow. He was to take the morning and
I the evening service. I attended the church
in the earlier part of the day, and was with
the Doctor in the vestry before the service.

" He was dressed as an ordinary layman,
the white tie alone differentiating him.
I thought perhaps he intended to preach
just as he stood before me, but almost at the
last moment he took down from a peg a plain
Geneva gown which he saw hanging there,
and thus clothed upon, with no glance at
any mirror, in due time followed the church
officer to the pulpit. But as he proceeded
with the service in his earnest way the simple
attire appeared to add to the deep im
pression he was making on the congregation."

THE PREACHER 55

James Denney preached incessantly through
out his strenuous career — generally twice
every Sabbath. During the Brought y Ferry
ministry, despite all his literary efforts, which
must have made considerable inroads on the
time at his disposal, he gained, as we have
seen, the reputation of being a faithful pastor,
who took a keen and intelligent interest in
the general welfare of every member of his
congregation — even in the " lambs of the
flock."

A large part of Denney's pulpit work, as
was fitting, went to the production of his
first published volumes. It is well for the
religious public that it is so preserved. For
it is on record that when he left Broughty
Ferry for the Chair of Systematic Theology
in Glasgow, he made a bonfire of all his written
sermons up to that date Such a holocaust
has parallels. Sir W. Robertson Nicoll, when
concluding his ministry at Kelso, on leaving
for London to start the British Weekly, did
the same with his sermon MSS. It was at
the request of Sir William, who was at the
time editor of the " Expositor's Bible," that
the minister of Broughty Ferry gave his first
two volumes to the public, Denney may have
been but following his mentor's lead in the
burning of the sermons. There is certainly no

56 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

historic parallel in the incident referred to in
Acts xix. 19. There the documents committed
to the flames and reduced to ashes were worth
"fifty thousand pieces of silver." They were
famous in the ancient world. Literature of
the kind had a special worth. It was supposed
to be invested with a mystic virtue. Like
Denney's sermons, the MSS. were calculated
to awaken many a tender association and
thrilling incident in life. Notwithstanding
that — and here is the only correspondence in
the case — conscience would have them go.
Prudence might have pleaded, " Keep them
but do not use them any more, or, if you do
not keep them, publish them and give the
proceeds to the poor." No ! Conscience is
deaf to such pleadings, and her stern voice
fulminates " Burn them, burn them ! "

I

'Professor

CHAPTER V

THE PROFESSOR

JAMES DENNEY'S preaching power had now
begun to win him fame even of an international
kind. While minister in Broughty Ferry he
was invited to deliver a course of theological
lectures to the students of Chicago Theological
Seminary, one of the " schools of the prophets "
of outstanding merit in the States. The
lectures were published at the request of the
Faculty of that institution, and few books
have exercised a more potent influence through
out the religious world. The lectures when
delivered attracted crowded audiences and
gave rise to the keenest discussion. The
University of Chicago set its hall-mark on their
remarkable freshness and power, laureating
this new teacher with its Doctorate of Divinity,
a degree most rarely conferred on any
preachers, either American or British. The
distinction brought Denney still more prom
inently before the ministry and membership
of his own church, and he was thus marked
conspicuously for the first vacant Chair in any
59

60 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

of the Colleges. The opportunity came when
he was appointed to succeed the late erudite
Dr. James Candlish in the Chair of Systematic
Theology in Glasgow Free Church College,
but it was not without a pang of regret that
Denney left his attached congregation in
Broughty Ferry for the even more responsible
work of being a teacher of teachers in the
great city of the West. This man who was
now, above others, making for our Scottish
scholarship a name and a fame throughout
the civilized world, realized that it was through
the opportunity given him by this congre
gation that he had been enabled to build the
rich and noble edifice of his great learning.
The eleven years spent in his first pastorate,
he once told a friend, were the happiest years
of his life. In a very reverend and beautiful
sense his successor in the Broughty Ferry
congregation, the Rev. Frank Cairns, has said,
" Dr. Denny was minister of the East Church
till the day of his death." Never a year passed
without his appearing in his old pulpit. But
the call of his Church to the larger service
was imperative, and Denney entered upon
his great task, now recognized as one of
the most distinguished theologians of his
generation, possessing that remarkable com
bination of qualifications — even for a professor

THE PROFESSOR 61

— great scholarship, deep spiritual insight,
keen critical power, and a unique gift of
lucid and effective statement. He responded
to the summons of his Church with the full
intention of making not merely scholars and
ministers, but also believers. For this was
a very true, profound, and noble Christian
gentleman who made his advent within
the Glasgow College walls. It was seen that
resolution, collectedness, consciousness of equip
ment were salient features of his character,
together with a quiet finality of tone. His
presence in the classroom at once created a
feeling of the reality of the innermost,
deepest and most sacred things in religion—
the holiness and love of God, the riches of the
great salvation, the authority and decisiveness
of the voice of Christ, the ineffable worth
and incomparable happiness of the Christian
life, the wonder of the immortal hope.
Little marvel that students began to be
attracted to the Glasgow College by the com
bined fame of Dr. Denney and Dr. George Adam
Smith, who was then in the Hebrew Chair, and
who had by this time attained an enviable
fame. Young men of different nationalities,
eager and aspiring, were to be found sitting
at the feet of these peerless teachers. Side
by side have been seen Jew, Indian, Japanese,

62 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

Italian, men from the States and Canada,
Englishmen, Irishmen and Welshmen as well.
Every foreign student took at least one
session under Denney. Post-graduates, too,
were to be seen amongst the number, men
who had given up a year of active ministry
to gain the stimulus of work and the enrichment
of mind which every diligent student received
in Denney 's class. In the College his personal
influence as a spiritual force was great. He
was a living conscience among the men.
A favourite phrase of their professor was
" creating a conscience," and this he did
himself. For even more prominent than his
teaching was the high standard of duty and
responsibility he set up for those who would
be ministers of Jesus Christ. He demanded
honest preparation from his students. To the
man who skulked he could be terribly severe.
On occasion, the whole class has feared and
trembled, and been sorry for the student
who came under his lash. And yet there
was no temper shown. He did not storm
or rage as others would have done. He let
his class see when anything displeased him,
but only in a stern, quiet way. Consequently
there never was inattention, as there might
be in the case of other teachers. All was
tenseness and alertness, and no one dared

THE PROFESSOR 63

to take liberties lest he should bring down
>a severe rebuke on his own devoted head.
For the professor could reprimand and
criticize severely, and be very caustic, some
times almost mercilessly so, as when he referred
to a certain hapless wight as " not having
the ghost of a glimmering of an idea of what
he is talking about/'

On the other hand, Denney would praise
.also, with frank and full generosity. To
anything that indicated patient toil he gave
unstinted commendation.

Students sometimes felt rather shy of
Dr. Denney, and were overawed by him,
,and possibly he was a little shy himself.
There was even at times a suspicion of coldness
and distance between professor and student.
When the reserve was overcome, however,
the professor showed himself intensely human.
He was friendly and genial in the side-room,
or when he was " at home " to the men. Many
thought differently of Denney after an evening
spent in his study. He had the knack of
making the students open their minds to him
in private. They always found him kind and
patient and considerate when they broached
spiritual or intellectual difficulties. If his
answers failed to satisfy, he yet left the im
pression of his sympathy with the questioner.

64 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

At the College he was the final court of appeal'
in all matters pertaining to theology. " What
is Dr. Denney's view ? " was quite a common
query when some knotty problem was under
discussion in the lobby or at the dining-table
in the hall. He was Sir Oracle among the
men. With all the ardour of hero-worshippers
they reckoned the final word unspoken till
he had had his say. His judgment, ever
weighty, carried with it universal respect.
With all his great gifts he was one of the most
modest of men, simple to a degree in his
manner, and wholly free from pretentiousness
of any kind. He never tried to shine in
society, but could appraise it at discretion.

The Rev. Robert McKinlay, M.A., East
Kilbride, recalls how Dr. Denney once told,
with great good humour, a story of Spurgeon
and his love for the weed. Mr. McKinlay
had himself related a tale on this subject to
the professor, and the latter, by way of rejoinder,
said, " I know a better one. An old lady met
Spurgeon one day, and remonstrated with him
about his smoking. Spurgeon replied, ' I do
not see any harm in it as long as one does not
smoke to excess/ ' And pray, Mr. Spurgeon,.
what would you call smoking to excess ? '
Then came the withering retort, ' Madam,,
smoking two cigars at once ! ' " This story

THE PROFESSOR 65

Denney told with extreme relish and abandon.
It recalls that other about Spurgeon being
quizzed as to his alleged tobacco smoking
propensities by some quid, nunc, who was met
with the rejoinder from the famous preacher,
" Friend, I cultivate my own garden and
burn my weeds ! " Denney himself had a
very strong sense of humour, in spite of his
tense and keen nature. No one could be
lighter in touch and more genial or a propos
than he, say in an after-dinner speech or at
some informal function. His deep humanness
and humour were a constant revelation to those
who were admitted to his friendship.

These features came out in his conversation,
and also, as for instance, in an hour of relaxa
tion from severer studies, over a game of whist —
his chief recreation even to the last — a pastime
in which he maintained not only a keen interest
but a certain facility in play. As an out-door
diversion, and doubtless for health's sake, he
had recourse to cycling in his later years, but
did not persevere in this, probably finding
it a rather independent and solitary sort of
sport. He did much walking, even refusing
to take cabs or tramcars on Sundays for
far-off preaching engagements, in the city or
suburbs. Only latterly, when constrained by
weather or physical inability, did he use

£

66 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

these means of conveyance on the sacred day.
His brisk, sharp pace, and purposelike air
when on duty or business intent, were con
spicuous upon the streets of Glasgow.

Professor James Moffatt, D.D., says that
people sometimes spoke of Denney as a great
force, but those who knew him could not think
of him as a force : he was human ; a grave,
rich, generous personality, who never talked
down to you, who gave you of his best, who
never domineered, who came to move as easily
among many men as he did among many books,
and who impressed you with the conscious sense
of being far more than anything he said or did,
or wrote, no matter how you admired those
products of his mind. And similarly the
Rev. Professor Carnegie Simpson, D.D., of
Westminster College, Cambridge, testifies:
" There was no kind of ignorant narrowness
about Denney. He was as critical as he was
conservative, and knew when to be agnostic,
as when to be dogmatic ; all his thinking had
moreover the spacious and furnished background
of not merely ample philosophical, theological
and critical knowledge, but also a really wide
humanistic culture. His acquaintance with
letters was remarkable. He knew authors
through and through, and could appreciate all
types. I have heard him in one mood quote

THE PROFESSOR 67

whole passages of Dante or the Greek tragedians ;
in another, reel off with not less than passion
verses of Catullus. It needs, however, more
than mere reading to make the true humanist ;
and Denney had more. He had the really
experiencing mind. He knew more than what
authors had said about life ; he knew what
human life really is and means."

While theology, as we have seen, was the
chief concern of Dr. Denney's life, it therefore
by no means summed up his abounding in
tellectual interest. His joy was to revel in
the great literature of the world, a joy expanded
beyond the usual range, because of his superb
linguistic acquirements. " He loved Homer
and Shakespeare, Goethe and Burns, Burke
and Johnson. The great humorists were his
constant refreshment. A literary lecture from
his lips had the savour and sympathy of a
true humanism no less than the unerring
appreciation of moral aims. It cannot be
doubted that had Dr. Denney given himself
to literature, his insight and faculty of
expression would have produced work of
enduring value."

It was indeed a great treat to hear him
lecture on such a topic for instance as " Samuel
Johnson." The present writer recalls such
an experience, on a dull November afternoon

68 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

in the hall of a West End Church, in Glasgow,
where Denney was announced to speak. There
were but a handful of people present, the
gathering being under the auspices of a Ladies'
Literary Society connected with the congrega
tion. But the smallness of the audience had
apparently no effect upon the lecturer. He
handled his theme con amore. In lucid and
convincing style, with an abandon that was
refreshing to witness, he dealt with the out
standing features of the great Essayist's career.
None present could fail to be impressed by
his grip of the subject in hand or be in doubt
of his meaning, for on this and all such public
occasions he wielded " the power that flows
from the correspondence of word with thought."
But it was in the Professor's chair that
Dr. Denney was seen at his greatest and best.
Here he proved himself to be one of the fore
most champions of the most central doctrines
of our Faith — the Divinity and the Atoning
Sacrifice of our Blessed Lord. For three
years he taught the class of Systematic
Theology in his College, but in 1900, as a conse
quence of the union of the Free Church of
Scotland with the United Presbyterian Church,
he was transferred to the Chair of New Testa
ment Language, Literature and Theology,
thus succeeding the late Professor A. B. Bruce,,

THE PROFESSOR 69

his immediate predecessor in the pastorate
at Broughty Ferry. It has been pointed
out that as his philosophical equipment made
him a fitting successor to Candlish, so his
classical attainments designated him, in the
year of the Union of the Churches, as worthy
to carry on the work of Bruce in the Chair
of New Testament Language and Literature.

His colleague, Professor Clow, writes : " For
this Chair of New Testament Exegesis he was
uniquely prepared. Wide as was the range
of his reading in all literature, as his apt quota
tions from many languages gave evidence, and
thorough as was his mastery of the whole
round of theological scholarship, he was
essentially a man of one book. That book-
was the New Testament. Its history, its
sources, its authors, and especially the Gospel
writers, and Paul as their interpreter, called
forth from him all his powers, with a deep
joy in their exercise. To state the problem
of a great passage, to trace and lay bare the
writer's thought, to expound the doctrines
and apply the message to the lives of men,
was a visible delight to him, as it was a devout
fascination to his students. The proposal
made later, by those who did not know him
well, to transfer him back to the Chair of
Systematic Theology, because of his out-

70 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

standing competence, evoked from him a
keen protest. He lived in and loved the
world arid personalities disclosed by the New
Testament of Jesus Christ, his Redeemer."
This is a just estimate. Denney's interests
gathered especially round the Atonement of
his Lord and Master. In the class room he
ever emphatically declared " the unsearch
able riches of Christ." The doctrine of the
Atonement was central to his system.

What many thinkers reckon to be his greatest
work, bears the suggestive title The Atonement
and the Modern Mind. He proposed that
subscription to the Westminster Confession
of Faith should be abandoned in favour of a
Scriptural Confession, such as " I believe in
God, through Jesus Christ, His only Son,
our Lord and Saviour." This statement of
Dr. Denney, profound yet simple, has been
more quoted than any other of his. It is
symbolic of the Church's unity of faith. It has
even now accomplished more than perhaps
he knew, in quickening a general desire for
a modification of the Church's Standard into
a formula at once vital, essential, unspeculative,
and religious. From the sympathetic recep
tion rendered by Churchmen generally to
Dr. Denney's plea for a simple undogmatic
creed for Scotland, is it too much to hope that

THE PROFESSOR 71

the project may some day soon materialize ?
More of our young men of fine intellect might
be led to embrace the Christian ministry as
a calling were the case for the creed thus
simplified. The students who came under
Professor Denney's teaching must have realized
a discrepancy between the Church's practice
and profession on this vital question.

Recalling impressions of the professor's
pregnant teaching on the doctrine of the
Atonement, the Rev. Robert McKinlay, M.A.,
writes : " One thinks of him pre-eminently as
the great exponent of the Cross. Many of his
comments on the subject are simply unfor
gettable. He was speaking once of the
tendency of some Protestants to minimize
the Cross. ' If I had the choice/ said he,
' between being such an one and a Roman
Catholic priest, I had rather be the priest
lifting up the Cross to a dying man, and saying,
" God loved like that ! " It was said with
such a quiet intensity that it burned itself
upon the mind ineffaceably.

" Again he was speaking of the Mass and the
Roman Catholic accretions to the Cross. He
maintained that even in the Mass human souls
found the virtue of the Cross. Then he
added, ' Gentlemen, the Cross is such a thing
that even when you bury it, you bury it

72 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

ALIVE.' The very ground seemed to open
at our feet, and a flaming Cross came up
and stood over us, and we were overawed and
thrilled, and said, in heart if not in speech,
' How dreadful is this place. This is none
other but the house of God, and this is the
gate of heaven.'

" After they had left the College Dr. Denney
was most generous in helping his students
and preaching for them. It was a great
occasion when he came down and stayed at
the Manse. The present writer had the
privilege of listening to two sermons, one
glorious Sabbath day. The style was the
style of absolute simplicity, but wonderfully
moving and penetrating. He could, as few
men can, dredge the silt of the soul, and probe
its depths. When he spoke of Jesus receiving
sinners, I remember still the suppressed
passion twitching the muscles of the lips, and
moving in the face, and revealing itself in a
sentence which was almost explosive and
shattering in its stark but living simplicity
and reality.

"Whatever the future may bring with regard
to his theological impression of the Cross, it
will find few greater lovers of the Cross than
Dr. James Denney. Whatever fuller know
ledge modern psychology may give us of the

THE PROFESSOR 73

problems associated with the person of the
Messiah, it will not give us a man who was
more passionately devoted to Jesus Christ,
one whose whole nature in fuller measure
thrilled to the mention of the name of Jesus,
the Friend of publicans and sinners.

" Of the Christ of the Cross, Dora Greenwell
has said : —

" His feet have tracked the crimson stains
That lead up from the halls of dread.

" These words might now be applied to this
great servant of Jesus Christ. No doubt he has
come into the true secret of that Cross, where
there is no longer Calvinist or Arminian,
Protestant or Papist, Churchman or Dissenter.
The Cross is such a tree that it grows and over
shadows, and brings all under its wide and
benevolent embrace."

Thus Dr. Denney's own thought ever centred
in the New Testament, and from that position
he was not to be moved. " The New Testa
ment is not simply a document to be examined
under the microscope of the scholar ; it is the
record of an abounding life, which in a hundred
varying accents of love and gratitude bears
tribute to the Christ who redeemed it and
reconciled it to God." It was his standard for
judging all systems of theological thinking.
The system is right if it has the spirit of the

74 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

New Testament pervading it ; wrong if it is
alien thereto. Impressively he would urge
upon the men of the College the not-to-be-
disputed value and authority of its teaching.
This essentially. On other questions he might
be broad-minded, and be willing to travel far
in the company of scholars and critics with
many of whose views he sympathized. But
he had the faculty of caution, and the men
were certain that their teacher had not reached
his advanced position without deep and
anxious study or the assurance that he was
right. For convinced he was on every subject
that he spoke on, and he invariably carried
conviction with him. He never was afraid
to cross swords with any theologian if he
considered him to be on wrong lines. Ritschl
occasionally came in for some heavy castiga-
tion, and yet, like most present-day religious
thinkers, he himself was much influenced by
Ritschlianism. What was good in a man's
thinking, his mind readily assimilated ; it
as readily tossed off all that was unworthy or
seemed to be so. Dealing with dogma as he
did, the dogmatic temper occasionally made
him appear to his students to be somewhat
" narrow " ; they perhaps could not help
thinking he was so at times. His absolute
justice, fearless courage, and keen penetration

THE PROFESSOR 75

of all sham and pretence made him the " living
conscience " to the College. Even more
prominent than his teaching was the high
standard of duty and responsibility he set
up for those who would be ministers of Jesus
Christ. Being dead he yet speaketh, and
the candour, sympathy and earnestness im
parted to his student auditors will continue
to tell powerfully upon the Church for many
years to come.

The much-lamented demise, in 1914, of the
Rev. Principal Thomas M. Lindsay, D.D.,
LL.D., who for forty years was identified with
the Glasgow College, led to the appointment
of Dr. Denney as his natural successor in the
Principalship. He was himself a product of
the College, the first student from among its
alumni to be appointed a Professor within
its walls. The institution was proud of the
fact that it had trained a man of such out
standing scholarship, and above all of devout
faith and of such absolute and adoring devotion
to his Lord. When the General Assembly
met in 1915, it was found that there had been
a most remarkable concensusof opinion through
out the Church as to this appointment. The
name of Professor Denney was the only one
sent up by the Presbyteries. When the
venerable Dr. George Reith rose to nominate

76 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

him, he felt he had an easy task. In a hearty
and eulogistic speech, he briefly portrayed
the prominent characteristics of his nominee,
and remarked that Dr. Denney had not only
broken the record by being the first Professor
who had come out of the Glasgow College, but
once again the record was about to be broken
by their appointment of him to the Principal-
ship. The nomination was seconded by Sir
David Paulin, and there followed one of those
remarkable demonstrations which ever live in
the memory of all who are privileged to take
part in them. The proposal was received
with acclaim, and the whole Assembly rose
to its feet whilst the newly-elected Principal
was introduced to the house, escorted by his
proposer and seconder. It was a magnificent
and moving spectacle that was only intensified
by the humble bearing of the man on whom
was conferred this spontaneous tribute. In
a few brief sentences he indicated his willingness
to accept the appointment, an intimation that
was received with loud and prolonged applause
on the part of the Assembly. Thus he took
the highest honours with his accustomed
simplicity and modesty, and made at the time,
in reply to a message of congratulation, the
characteristic remark, " The chief joy of such
things is the demonstration they give of the

THE PROFESSOR 77

amount of goodwill there is in the world."
It was in such serene temper that the late
revered Principal Rainy was accustomed to
take the manifestations of generosity and
distinction that fell to his lot.

The present writer happened to return to Glas
gow from the Assembly on its closing night in
the same railway compartment as Dr. Denney.
Being there for the day in his official capacity
as chairman of the Congregational Union of
Scotland and as guest of the Moderator he had
received much kindness and hospitality at the
hands of United Free Churchmen, and especially
from Professor McEwen, whose Moderator's
breakfasts constituted the early diurnal round.
We had just listened to the closing address of
the Moderator — who, alas ! in such a brief space
of time was to be called away — the echoes of

" Pray that Jerusalem may have
Peace and felicity,"

were still ringing in our hearts, and the
homeward way was taken, brightened by
lively conversation. In the carriage, Principal
Denney, with his honours fresh upon him, sat im
mediately opposite to the writer, and one could
not fail to notice the placid look on the fine
countenance. But he seemed to prefer to listen
to the talk of others, rather than be communica
tive himself. The hour of the railway journey

78 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

quickly passed, but the touch of humanity came
out at its close, when, as hurried farewells were
being said at Queen Street, Denney insisted on
one of his old students, who was of the company,
sharing his taxi-cab, their journey westward
lying in the same direction. A small matter,
one might say ! But it showed the man.

The Principalship was the crowning honour
of Denney's career. It came to him within
two years of his lamented demise, but it left
unspoiled his noble simplicity of nature.
No man held in slighter regard the avidity
for place and power so manifest in these
days, or gauged more accurately the value
of the mere externalities of life. And no
man cared more for the realities. Natural
and unaffected he pursued his way, undertaking
and fulfilling great tasks, and small, as occasion
called; never found wanting in loyalty to his
Church, in fidelity to principle, in devotion to
his Saviour and Master. Such things, I repeat,
make known to us the man. They were touches
of beauty in the high calling of his earthly
ministry ; they have added lustre to his memory
now that he has gone from us to the higher
service.
4i He had ten talents and he used them all,

Courage to face and fight his Captain's foes ;

Patience to wait for dawn at eventide,

Strength to endure the conflict to life's close.

THE PROFESSOR 79

Vision to scan the grand Invisible,
A heart in tune with the Eternal plan,
A soaring soul, a steadfast, eager will,
To right the wrongs of every fellow-man.

Passion for toil, for truth, for native beauty,
He showed what all our mortal hours may be,
A walk with God, in joy-transfigured duty,
Beneath Love's waving flag of Liberty.

Lord help us now, Thy poor one-talent men,
Bravely to spend their one as he spent ten ! "

Author

CHAPTER VI
THE AUTHOR

FROM what has been written, it is evident that
in his own department of theology James
Denney was facile princeps. In the sphere
of New Testament studies he found his life-
work, and gained an influence and authority
acknowledged far beyond the bounds of his
own Church or land. He was said to know
thoroughly seven different languages. The
classical and literary scholarship which he
brought to bear upon his sacred studies was
in the highest degree technically complete.
It was noteworthy that he could quote the
New Testament with as much ease in the
original as in English. He had won his way
into, and dwelt continuously in, the passion
of the great experience that beats behind it.
He exulted in its freedom. Not only an
intense desire for exact scholarship, but a
determination to reach the very heart of Gospel
word or incident, was characteristic of the
man. His fine appreciation of the exact value
of the Greek and English tongues brought
83

84 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

Denney to the level of the great expository
writers like Westcott, Alford, Lightfoot and
others.

In the fifth year of his ministry at Broughty
Ferry he made his first big venture in
publishing, It took the form of a volume
on the Epistles to the Thessalonians. This
and a companion volume, on the second
Epistle to the Corinthians, issued a little
later, comprised much of his expository pulpit
teaching. Not only fine scholarship but
spiritual passion characterize these works, which
were given to the public by their author at
the request of Sir William Robertson Nicoll.
Dr. Marcus Dods, that noted and scholarly
exegate, had written the companion volume
of this series on First Corinthians, and Denney's
work had necessarily to bear comparison
with that of Dr. Dods. The younger man's
production stood the test. It showed him
at once to be the competent linguist, the
capable expositor, and the reliable historian.
Thessalonians consists of expositions preached
regularly from week to week, bearing the
stamp of the preacher's intense individuality,
but omitting the critical element of divergent
interpretations. Second Corinthians reveals
his true exegetical power. In the introduc
tion, he argues ably and conclusively for the

THE AUTHOR 85

immediate dependence of the Second Epistle
to the Corinthians on the First. Then the
exposition is entered upon, after the manner
that has always been familiar in the Scottish
Church, under the special title of " lecturing/'
One of the most appreciated features of this
volume is the emphasis laid upon the cir
cumstances which called the letter forth,
and of the people to whom it was written,
till we actually seem to know them, and live
among them.

It was the intrinsic merit of these two volumes
that secured the attention of the senators of
Glasgow University, who gave Denney at the
early age of 39 their honorary Doctorate of
Divinity. Then the young author's power
began to win for him a more than national
reputation. His volume found a ready public,
especially in America, and resulted, as already
indicated, in an invitation to the author, in the
early part of 1894, to deliver a course of
lectures to the alumni of Chicago University.
The lectures attracted crowded audiences, and
evoked keen discussion. It was the one on
Holy Scripture that mainly, perhaps entirely,
caused the " fluttering " in the ecclesiastical
dovecots. The reason we may never know, for
when in the autumn of that year the lectures
were published under the title of Studies in

86 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

Theology, it was found that this particular
lecture had been written over again by the
author, who had now made it the only one in
the volume that is difficult to read. The others
constitute most profitable reading, as if Denney
had made his own the art of making systematic
theology human.

In his Life of Gladstone, Mr. Morley
tells how the excitement of his viva voce
examination for the degree culminated when
the examiner, after satisfying himself about
Gladstone's mastery of some point in theology,
said, " We will now leave that part of the
subject " ; and the candidate, carried away by
his interest in the subject answered, "No,
sir ; if you please, we will not leave it yet."

This keen intellectual interest in theology
characterized Dr. Denney to the last working
day of his life. " We will not leave it yet."
It was no quaint, old-world fancy that made
theology the " queen of the sciences " to him.
Her royal title could not be disputed. After
natural science had explored the physical
universe, and psychology had disentangled the
working of the mind, and metaphysics had
investigated the first principles of Nature and
thought, theology was necessary to give man
his ultimate conception of the universe. As
all roads led to Rome, so all true knowledge,

THE AUTHOR 87

in Dr. Denney's view, leads to God, in and
through whom positive science becomes in
telligible.

Hence at theology he worked with all the
ardour of an explorer. Had he lived to be a
hundred years of age he could never have
become a " fossil." What he gave to his
students and readers was his latest thought
at the time, but they had no guarantee that
his position would be exactly the same a year
hence. True to the evangelical faith, convinced
and strong in his assertion of the deity of our
Lord and the reality and efficacy of the Atone
ment, he was not the man to be content with
a traditional statement of these doctrines.
His keen, restless mind was constantly search
ing into the deep things of God, and he who
could not always satisfy himself with his
theories was the last man to ask others to
accept them as final. " We will not leave it
yet," he seemed to say, especially to the men
whom he trained for the ministry, but also to
all readers of his books.

It is certainly no suggestion of any " New
Theology " in these Studies that fascinates
the reader, nor any expectation of novelty
to come. The salient chapters of the book
deal with the doctrine of the Atonement.
There is undoubtedly a candid acceptance-

88 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

of modern criticism but this is conjoined

with absolute loyalty to the central doctrines

of the faith " once for all delivered to the

saints." The meaning of the Cross is the

same as Denney learnt it at his mother's

knee. Like others he had travelled far since

then, but fetching his circle, while making

sure of his centre first, he had now returned,

and whatever Sturm und Drang, or Wander jahre,

he may have experienced, of these there is here

no sign. This is seen to be the merit — shall

we say the miracle ? — of the book. And

yet in circles on both sides of the Atlantic

our author caused some soreness to too

sensitive orthodoxy. The Studies constituted

an essentially conservative volume, in many

of its chapters pleasing even the ultra-orthodox

section of his own Free Church, but not all.

Of course, by this time the days of heresy

hunts had well-nigh spent themselves in that

communion, and only murmurs of dissent

were manifest when Denney was proposed

as Professor in the Glasgow College. For

years afterwards, however, references to his

attitude towards the Scriptures and the

doctrines of the Church were common, and

once, at all events, called forth an important

pronouncement from himself. It happened in

this way :

THE AUTHOR 89

An interesting discussion took place in
December, 1904, at the monthly meeting of
the Glasgow United Free Church Presbytery
(the union between the Free and United Pres
byterian Churches having been consummated
In 1900), when the Rev. John Buchan moved
— " That in view of the attacks now being
made on our creed, this Presbytery overture
the General Assembly to re-affirm the Church's
belief in the infallibility of Holy Scripture
and the doctrines of the Confession as hitherto
received among us." In doing so, he said it
was from no factious spirit that he had tabled
this motion that the Assembly should be
overtured as re-affirming the doctrine of the
Church. It was solely because he had among
his people some who were very seriously
disturbed in this connection. He thereafter
referred to a case of difficulty in his own congre
gation. One of his workers was in trouble in
regard to leaving the Church, and, on being
reasoned with, said, " How can you expect
me to remain in the Church when one of its
accredited teachers denies the Davidic author
ship of the noth Psalm ? " At the end of
a somewhat lengthy address, Mr. Buchan said
that since he had given notice of his motion
the Convocation had met, and his object had
been gained much more quickly than by waiting

go PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

for the Assembly. He therefore begged to
withdraw his motion

Professor Denney, after some discussion, was
allowed to make a statement. He said that
he was the teacher referred to in connection
with the authorship of the noth Psalm. He
asserted that Christ did not teach anything
about the authorship of the psalm. He spoke
of the authorship of the psalm as every one else
in His time would have spoken. He taught
that He was what He was, that He was the
Christ, not in virtue of a particular relationship
to David, but in virtue of a particular relation
ship to God. That was what Christ was
teaching. Professor Denney, continuing, said
that for his own part he was convinced that
the psalm did not belong to the age of David,
for the reasons that would convince him of any
other question of the same kind, and that
conviction did not touch in the least his
assurance of the unique relationship between
Christ and the Father. If the motion had been
pressed he frankly confessed he would have
moved a direct negative, on the ground that
to ask the General Assembly to affirm the
doctrine of the Church would be to ask the
Assembly to affirm something that people
who read those words would not take in the
same sense. There were people to whom

THE AUTHOR 91

infallibility of Holy Scripture meant that we
had the authority of Jesus for ascribing the
noth Psalm to David.

The Rev. Dr. W. Ross Taylor, at this stage,
said that he did not think they should enter into
a general discussion, and after some remarks
from other speakers in the same direction,
Professor Denney said he would just state
that it was quite possible for him to profess
his faith in the infallibility of Scripture. He
believed if a man committed his mind and
heart humbly and sincerely to the teaching
and guidance of the Holy Scripture, it would
bring him right with God and give him a know
ledge of God and of eternal life. But literal
accuracy and inerrancy were totally different
(things ; and they did not believe in that at all.
It was no use employing a form of words that
would mislead people into thinking they did
believe it. They believed in the Bible as
something that if they committed themselves
to, it would infallibly bring them to the
knowledge of God and eternal life in Jesus
Christ.

Thus Denney proved himself a sane and
open-minded champion of essential orthodoxy
•and held that{ it could be commended to
the reasonable modern mind. ^ He was a keen
critic o^ the Ritschlian " value judgments "

92 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

theory in which the criterion of any doctrine
was not so much " Is it true ? " as " Is it
useful ? " He was evangelical to the core,
and fervently evangelistic in his insistence on
the necessity of power rather than eloquence
and smartness in preaching or teaching. As
a theologian his mental poise and tolerance
towards schools of thought from which he
differed radically, made him, it is true, suspect
to certain ultra-orthodox evangelicals. He
hated, with a perfect hatred, surface generaliza
tions and rule-of-thumb methods of avoiding
patient working to established conclusions.
He wanted to be sure that he knew what he
knew — most of all to be sure of Christ. Ever
making Him the centre of the circle of his
thought, he argued for a serious doctrine of
the person of Christ, that could be reconciled
with the phenomena of personal and col
lective Christian experience. He was no mere
mental gladiator, as his friend the enemy
at times suggested. His supreme desire always,
was not to win controversial victories, but to
confirm the faith of men in the impregnable
Rock, Christ Jesus. Less and less did he
put his trust in credal and confessional attempts,
whether of Nicaea or Westminster, to limit
Christ to the mental outlook of a school or
an age. Hence his proposal, embodied in

THE AUTHOR 93

the concluding section of his book Christ and
the Gospel, that creed subscription should
be abandoned in favour of a comprehensive
and Scriptural confession of faith, which should
bind the members of the Church to the Christian
attitude to Christ, and to nothing else. He
recognized that it was neither wholesome nor
Christian for men to teach doctrines in defiance
of a formulated creed to which they had
adhibited their signature, and which no longer
expressed their living faith. Even Declaratory
Acts did not give the necessary relief. We
search in vain through the Gospels for any
creed that our Lord imposed. The Church
should either re-write her creed or give us a
simpler one expressed in terms which cease
to irritate and to which a man can honestly
affirm.

Surely it is not beyond the wit or province
of a General Assembly, met in solemn con
clave, to approve some such creed as Denney
suggested, enabling those who desire to
avail themselves of the provision to have
the right to substitute it for the old.
There should be no question of the " dead
hand " of the I7th century theologian holding
it back.

According to our modern thought, no one
has the right to fetter property for all time

94 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

— far less the human mind; and the owner
of the " dead hand," if he were here to-day,
would probably be a convert to liberal opinion !

The Church will speak with the note of
authority, and command the respect of a
democratic age only, when she stands before
men spiritually free. Her ministers will not
win attention from the coming generation
unless they are delivered from every suspicion
of unworthy motive of reserve. The Church
must believe in the presence of the Spirit of
Christ — which is the spirit of truth — in the
world to-day and in the future as in the
past.

Dr. Denney's proposal that creed subscription
should be abandoned in favour of a compre
hensive and Scriptural confession of faith,
which, as he suggested might be " I believe
in God through Jesus Christ, His only Son
our Saviour," was based on the view that
a man's or a Church's Christology was a thing
apart from a vital personal faith, and if the
faith were real the theological interpretation
of it might be infinitely variable. That there
was a good deal of ultra-orthodox discussion,
and criticism of his personal confession of
faith, as contained in the final sentences of
his book Christ and the Gospel, goes without
saying. His words are : " What Christ claims

THE AUTHOR 95

and what is His due is a place in the faith of
men. ... To be true Christians we are thus
bound to Him ; but we are not bound to
any one else. . . We are not bound to any
man's or to any Church's rendering of what
He is or has done. We are not bound to any
Christology or to any doctrine of the work
of Christ."

What above all things Denney sought for,
was a doctrine that would preach. ' The
evangelist," he remarks suggestively, "is in
the last resort the judge of evangelical theology.
If it does not serve his purpose it is not true/'
Hence he envied, as he would assert on occasion,
the Roman Catholic priest, who can preach
with the crucifix in his hand.

The Rev. Professor George Jackson, B.A.,
of Didsbury College, Manchester, writes : —

" Denney 's great work has been done as a
Christian theologian, and as an interpreter of
Christian truth in terms of the modern mind.
Speaking for myself, I do not know any man
of his generation who has done so much for
the revitalizing of evangelical theology and, if
I may so say, for making it ' preachable.'
Very much that has gone by the name of
theology in the past had been merely a matter
of words and names, of definitions and proof
texts — a jacket of sun-dried pellets which its

96 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

' students ' could find no use for when they
stood up in the presence of living men and
women. But, as Denney himself once told me,
he did not take the smallest interest in a
theology which could not be preached.

" Nature and grace had joined hands to make
of Dr. Denney an almost ideal teacher of the
religious teachers of this generation. He had,,
to begin with, the glow and passion of the true
evangelist. He held that the first, if often
forgotten, duty of the Church is to evangelize,
and that to that end all its best energies must
be bent. I shall never forget how he emptied
all the vials of his scorn on the head of some
unlucky minister who had excused himself for
giving what he called ' a simple evangelical
address ' because he had not had time to pre
pare a proper sermon. As if, said Denney,
there was any task that could so tax the
strength of the Christian preacher as to preach
the love of God, and so to preach it that men
should commit themselves to it. . . .

" To all his great gifts of mind and heart was
added a gift of style rare in writers of any
kind, but especially rare in the realmof theology.
Perhaps it is only a man who was brought up
on the dull and stodgy theological handbooks
of a generation ago who can appreciate to
the full the clear, incisive, trenchant pages

THE AUTHOR

97

of Denney's Studies in the same subject.
After reading them one is tempted to wish
that it were a law of the Church that no man
should be suffered to teach theology who had
not first given evidence of his power to write
lucid and idiomatic English."

To many, Denney's two volumes, The
Death of Christ: its place and interpreta
tion in the New Testament, and The Atone
ment and the Modern Mind, have proved the
most valuable of modern books on a central
theme, because written in such close agreement
with the New Testament . He is the outstanding
modern author, who has accomplished more
than almost any other in bringing this genera
tion back to the rational view of the Atonement.
His significant saying that not Bethlehem, but
Calvary, is the centre of gravity in the New
Testament is worthy of emphasis. While
some critics have not unnaturally felt that
these works set forth the Atonement as consisting
of the death of Christ, rather than in the death
of Christ, yet one feels in reading them that
they have been written, so to speak, with his
life's blood.

He could say with Frederick W. Robertson
of Brighton, "We have deliberately chosen
the Cross for our portion, and it is no marvel
if some of its blood is sprinkled on us.

98 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

The Cross is dear, come how or when it
will."

Denney was sure of his ground. He was
ever the Christ-intoxicated man, and what
he wrote or told out with unequalled passion
was this, that in the Cross, we see Jesus
Christ in his sinlessness, dying the death of
the sinful. There is the majesty and wonder
of the Divine grace at man's disposal in
the great Sacrificial Life. "All that sin
meant for us — all that in sin and through
it had become ours — God made His, and
He made His own in death . . . God's
righteousness is demonstrated at the Cross,
because there, in Christ's death, it is made once
for all apparent that He does not palter with
sin ; the doom of sin falls by His appointment
on the Redeemer. And it is possible, at the
same time, to accept as righteous those who
by faith unite themselves to Christ upon the
Cross, and identify themselves with Him in
His death ; for in doing so they submit in
Him to the Divine sentence upon sin, and at
bottom become right with God." Both in
his writing and preaching, Dr. Denney con
tinually emphasized the truth that at Calvary
there was judgment of sin, as well as revelation
of Divine love. A thought to which he delighted
to give expression was this, that while some

THE AUTHOR

99

say, God is love, therefore He requires no
Atonement, the New Testament says, God is
love, therefore He provides the Atonement.
Only in this way is there found a Divine
righteousness which " puts the ungodly in the
right."

Thus Calvary was ever the central point
in Denney's theology. Like the great apostle
of the Gentiles, his motto was, " I determined
not to know anything among you, save Jesus
Christ, and Him crucified." He derived
inspiration from the sublime conception of
Christ on the Cross, and in thoughts that
breathed and words that burned, he poured
out for the benefit of his fellows the convictions
it quickened in his mind. One of his latest
written statements was one of his most
suggestive in this respect : " The apostles
did not imagine the atoning power of the
death of Jesus — it is too great for imagination.
They did not invent it to cloak the offence of
the Cross ; it is too great to be a theological
contrivance. No, but a new truth rose on
their horizon as they looked on the perfect
sacrifice of Jesus — the truth of truths, beyond
all telling wonderful — that sin-bearing love
is the supreme and final reality of the
universe, and that here it is incarnate once
for all. From Christ on His Cross, a goodness

ioo PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

put forth its hand and touched them, which
outweighed all the sin of the world, and made
it impotent ; henceforth they believed in God
through Him." True words, grand words,
worthy to be written in letters of gold !

In Gospel Questions and Answers we have
an admirable example of Denney's method
as a preacher, at once scholarly and devout.
Here we get an idea of how supreme was
his faculty for making the New Testament
intelligible as the record and deposit of an
overwhelming experience of redemption, and
for generating the conviction in the reader's
mind that the Gospel incarnate in Jesus
is the only thing that matters in the

world.

A most weighty volume by Dr. Denney is
Jesus and the Gospel; a study of Christianity
in the Mind of Christ. The reasoning here,
in spite of certain critical concessions— which
some good people regretted, but which were
doubtless indications of the author's frankness,
and of his spirit of fearlessness— is masterly
and convincing. It was the very strength
with which Denney held fast to the things
at the centre that freed him from all anxiety
as to what was happening along the circum
ference. Every argument he uses in the book
is charged with an extraordinary intenseness

THE AUTHOR 101

of religious feeling, which acts with a kind of
compelling power upon the reader.

Other writings of Denney include a volume
of sermons entitled Eternal Life, the last work
published in his lifetime, and dealing with
problems arising out of the great European
War. All of these works passed into several
editions. The question has been asked, why
was it that a book by James Denney should
command so large a constituency in all parts
of Christendom, waiting to receive it ? The
answer is that no one can handle and
ponder treatises of his without knowing that
they contain nothing cheap, nothing mean,
nothing wrought without toil of heart and
brain, nothing unworthy of the great scholars
and divines of his own native land in whose
succession he stands.

Referring to Dr. Denney 's " precious com
mentary " on the Epistle to the Romans, a
contribution to the second volume of the
Expositor's Greek Testament, Sir W. Robertson
Nicoll describes it as " perhaps the very best
piece of work he has ever accomplished."
" We have," he says, " a certain mournful
pride n thinking that we did something to
induce him to come forward as an author.
At that time he had made up his mind He
was to preach the Cross of CHRIST — on the

IO2 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

one hand its power to save, and on the other
its sharpness and sternness, its imperious calls
to duty and self-denial. From this preaching
of the Cross he was never moved, but as time
went on, he became more and more master
of a style which did justice to the great thought.
It was his deep conviction that want of style
prevented almost all Scottish theological books
from reaching the first rank. Indeed he held
that MacLeod Campbell's treatise on the
Atonement was the only classical theological
book that came from Scotland. Like Dale
he drilled himself in Burke. "

There was much in Denney that recalled
Dale, and the older man recognized with joy
a true fellow soldier. It cannot be said that
Dr. Denney rose into poetry, or that his
imagination was highly developed. There was,
however, a deep evangelical tone in his writings.
He learned to write with self-command, a
majestic sense of simplicity and precision, a
resolute limitation of general statement by the
severity of facts. This serious clearness, this
grasp of his own thoughts, is perhaps most
plainly seen in his chief book, Jesus and the
Gospel. What was said of a great preacher
may be said about Denney. " His inmost
spirit had been busy with the New Testament.
He preached New Testament doctrines as one

THE AUTHOR 103

who lived in the presence of great subjects,
subduing him, restraining him, calling for
self-recollection, and sober words. By dint
of constant labour, he arrived at a style which
was the perfection of lucidity."

It is a matter of deep satisfaction that
the Cunningham Lectures on the Theology of
Paul — on which Dr. Denney was engaged
when his illness came upon him — were in such
a forward condition as to ensure publication
shortly after his death. Here we have an
important presentation of the great fact of
Christian thought and experience with which
it deals. In this posthumous work there comes
into play, the writer's qualities of clear and
careful thinking, critical judgment and devotion
to the evangelical faith, which had already
gained for him distinction as an expounder of
Chrsitian doctrine, Starting out historically,
the author indicates the consciousness of
tension that has always existed between
man and his environment, and that the
opportunity of Christian thinkers has been
to explain that tension and to prove that in
the Gospel there is a power which can remove
and transcend it. In working out his theme,
he emphasizes the need for the death of Christ,
whilst giving place to the importance of Christ's
example and the redemptive power of the

104 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

perfect life, and finds in the cross the most
signal instance of God's reaction against sin.
The end of reconciliation is the acceptance
of the mind of God with regard to sin, of love
as the law of life and the exercise of reconciling
power in human existence.

The volume as a whole will match with the
other works that Dr. Denney has left behind
him. It is a fine testimony to his industry,
piety and consecrated scholarship. The
lectures deal with the Christian Doctrine
of Reconciliation. The contents comprise :
The Experimental Basis of the Doctrine ;
Reconciliation in the Christian Thought of
the Past; The New Testament Doctrine
of Reconciliation ; The Need of Recon
ciliation ; Reconciliation as achieved by
Christ ; Reconciliation as realized in Human
Life. The Rev. Principal Alexander Whyte,
D.D., LL.D., says : " I do not know any modern
book that has so much preaching power in it
as this book has. And no old book, however
true and powerful, will speak to preacher and
hearer in our days as Dr. Denney's ' Recon
ciliation ' will speak." Here it may suffice to
say the author does himself justice again, in the
domain of Dogmatic, as he had already proved
his supreme merit in his chosen field of New
Testament Theology.
Although some may reckon his published

THE AUTHOR 105

contributions to Systematic Theology some
what meagre, it should be remembered that,
especially towards the close of his career,
Dr. Denney furnished many such doctrinal
articles to Religious Encyclopaedias and the
high-class Theological and Religious magazines
of the day. A memorable series of papers,
for example, appeared on the Theology of
the Epistle to the Romans in the Expositor
for 1901, while for a consummately able study
in Biblical Theology the reader's attention is
•directed to the article " Holy Spirit," in
Hastings' well-known Dictionary of Christ
and the Gospels.

Denney had already received the degree of
D.D. from Glasgow University, his Alma
Mater ; little wonder that from other quarters
also, his great abilities as a theologian should
receive full recognition. Princeton and
Aberdeen Universities likewise conferred their
doctorate upon him. It is recalled with
what extreme gratification Denney regarded
his selection for the degree by the Northern
Scottish University in the year of the celebra
tion of its 45oth anniversary. At the great
Strathcona banquet on that occasion, Marconi
of wireless fame was unable to be present, and
it was Dr. Denney who was called upon to
fill the seat of the clever inventor.

Many contributions to general literature

io6 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

as well as theology came from his gifted pen.
His knowledge of English literature was,
to say the least, uncommon, almost uncanny,
in its exactness. Towards the close of his
career he remarked to a familiar friend
that if Shakespeare's tragedies were lost, he
could replace them from memory ! With the
literary productions of the eighteenth century
particularly he had a most intimate acquaint
ance. That was one of the delights of being
in Denney's company of an evening. For a
staid theologian he had a catholic taste in
literature, and while toying with a lighted
cigarette — doing penance thereby that he
might become all things to all men — he would
surprise his friends with interests and
sympathies in that direction which the mere
scholar or divine would never have suspected.
Thus, he would dilate on the pleasure he had
experienced in dipping into St. Bernard, and
contrariwise how much he had been dis
appointed in Aquinas and the Puritans. The
classics were ever his delight to talk about, and
yet when in his last illness, he wanted some
light literature to ease his mind in the tedium
of the sick-room, he found the relief in "Q's"
fiction which especially caught his fancy,
in such works as Troy Town, The Delectable
Duchy, and others of a like kind. In fiction,

THE AUTHOR 107

however, Dickens was ever first favourite
with him.

In January of the year in which he passed
away, he contributed to the Glasgow Herald,
on editorial suggestion, a brilliant article
for the poet's anniversary day, entitled " Burns
and Present Distress." Denney was an
authority on Burns, as on some other poets,
and had lectured on the subject. But in the
production in question he took a fresh survey.
It was very opportune. After indicating that
the Great War had brought into relief many
aspects hitherto unnoticed, of almost every
thing, and might perhaps even give a fresh
turn to the speeches at Burns clubs, he went
on to indicate that this poet's sense was an
even more wonderful thing than his genius,
indicating as it did a finality both of insight
and expression. A more sensitive man, indeed,
never lived nor spoke. But as the strongest
sense may at times be deflected or tainted, so
it was with Burns.

"A poet is the natural representative of the
natural man, and has an instinctive delight
in the natural virtues. He likes the goodness
which is untaught, spontaneous, generous,
independent of reflection and comparison.
He suspects the goodness which is self-conscious,
which knows that it is not conforming to

io8 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

widely accepted standards, but deliberately
protesting against them. This non-conforming
conscience is his bete noire, and he assails it
with all the resources of his genius. As it
readily lapses into Pharisaism, his task is not
difficult. If he is magnificently superior to it,
as Shakespeare was, he may mock it with
genial humour, and never do goodness any
harm. ' Because thou art virtuous, shall
there be no more cakes and ale ? ' But if
he is not so magnificently superior — if the
non-conforming conscience of his society is
powerful enough to insult him — still more,
if it is powerful enough to reach his own
conscience and to convince him of real faults —
then the humour, if the poet can still command
it, is apt to be savage rather than genial, and
the good sense loses its balance.

" This explains a good deal in Burns. It was
unfortunate for him that in indulging his satirical
sense, he got into false relations with himself and
with a higher law than that of ecclesiastical
courts or social conventions. He cultivated
a kind of moral bravado which is just as
much hypocrisy as the hypocrisy of Holy
Willie, and not less prejudicial to genuine
goodness. ' You know/ he wrote to a
friend, ' that I can sin, but dare not lie.'
But when a man's sins are open beforehand,

THE AUTHOR 109

when he flaunts them in everybody's face
with conscious defiance, it is snatching a
reputation for virtue very cheap to say that
he dare not lie about them. To lie about
them, to pretend that they are not there,
is the one thing which he has put out of
his power. It is the melancholy fact that
Burns practised this miserable moral atti
tudinizing all his life. He did it about
drinking, and he did it about his unspeakable
relations to women. He sometimes exhibits
the painful spectacle of the Pharisaism of
profligacy — the prodigal son, not penitent,
but swaggering round the farm with a great
spread of moral shirt-front, as though he were
setting an example to his cold-blooded brother.
Of course this was not how he thought of
himself in his heart of hearts ; in the most
moving poem of his first volume, the ' Bard's
Epitaph' — a history, as Wordsworth calls
it, in the shape of a prophecy — he completely
drops the bravo and speaks the final humble
truth. Nobody who reads it will judge him.
But the bravado had been there, and its effects
both on himself and others were deplorable."

Then turning by antithesis to Shakespeare,
of whom Denney was a kind of hero-worshipper,
ever regarding him as a great spiritual gift
to the world, and quoting Sir Walter Raleigh's

no PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

estimate of him as " the creed of England "
(more, of course, in regard to the spirit of his
teaching than in mere verbal similarities)
he described this as a felicitous thought, and
true even when it is tested in detail.

SHAKESPEARE THE CREED OF ENGLAND.

"There is a long gallery of drinkers in Shake
speare, every one drawn to the life ; people like
Stephano, Sir Toby, Pistol, Cassio, ' the third
part of the world/ Lepidus, and many more.
There is no savour of Puritanism in the way
in which they are depicted, yet no one could
say the impression they make on the mind is
other than morally wholesome. They express
the creed of England about drinking, and it
is a sound and manly creed. But who would
venture to say as much for the representations
of drinking in Burns ? Making every allowance
for the element of extravagance without which
drinking songs could not be written at all,
and prizing above all price the humour of
the opening stanzas in ' Death and Doctor
Hornbook/ and much besides, we must
reluctantly admit, that our national poet has
provided us with a far less wholesome creed
than Shakespeare has made authoritative for
our neighbours. And there is no denying

THE AUTHOR in

that his practice squared with his creed. He
drank to the last. He drank, as he said him
self, when with every bout he gave away a
slice of his constitution. If repentance could
trammel up the consequences of evil we might
urge that he repented. But what is his own
description of the case — ' Whiles, but aye
ower late, I think braw sober lessons.' '

And thus Denney pungently applied the
principle to the present distress arising from
the war:

" One can hardly help wondering to-day,
whether in this, Burns is to prefigure the
fate of his people. There were two things
in which he was always absolutely sincere,
and in which he never posed more than pose
is inevitable in idealizing. The one was
the incomparable value of a pure and happy
family life ; the other was his love of country.
Both are signally illustrated in the ' Cottar's
Saturday Night/ which, though both its
merits and its popularity are to a large extent
conventional, is yet, as Lockhart truly says,
that one of all his poems, the exclusion of which
from the collection would be most injurious
to the character of the man. But his patriotism
and his sense for home did not save him from
the ignoble elements of his creed, and though
they are still powerful among us, it seems

112 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

uncertain whether they will save the
nation."

Referring to a speech made by a prominent
statesman lately in the House of Commons,
a deliverance which created a deep impression
and in which were rehearsed the " too lates "
of a previous Administration, Denney in a
concluding paragraph pertinently asks, " Is he
going to add to the number, the last and most
fatal, by deferring the day of reckoning with
the power which wrecked the life of Burns,
which is ceaselessly wrecking characters and
homes, and is capable, if let alone, of wrecking
the country ? "

It was a powerful plea, and timely as powerful,
and, as was to be expected, called forth much
public criticism. The Bulletin, a Glasgow
illustrated daily, came out with a clever cartoon
on Burns and Denney, giving a capital likeness
of the Principal, and headed, " Wha daur
meddle wi' Burns ? " while underneath ran
the legend, " Principal Denney has been com
paring the miserable moral attitudinizing of
Burns with the wholesome moral effect of
Shakespeare's pictures of drunkards." The
accompanying sketch represented Denney
affectionately embracing the Bard of Avon
on his pedestal, as he exclaims, " Lay the
proud usurper low/' while, as if the action

THE AUTHOR 113

suited the word, the bust of Burns lay prone
below.

In the foreground an indignant crowd,
presumably of Burns' admirers, is prominent,
for the most part looking daggers and shaking
wrathful fists !

The reference to the foregoing article on the
national poet and his influence is historically in
teresting, from the fact that it was the last that
Dr. Denney ever penned. A few days later
he contracted what proved to be his fatal
illness. He rallied for a time, but he never
really recovered. It will not be forgotten
that the final public pronouncement of this
far-seeing and intrepid Christian statesman
and thinker, was a powerful plea for the sobriety,
freedom and righteousness of his nation.

H

Social
Reformer

CHAPTER VII
THE SOCIAL REFORMER

IN the later years of his life, particularly,
Dr. Denney was called to leadership in great
vital causes. He was a man marked out for
this. In social questions generally he had
taken a deep interest, and on these had spoken
with authoritative voice. Party politics he
eschewed, although scanning with keen eye
the administration of public affairs. With
regard to other engrossing questions in which
the clergy usually find scope for their activities,
he practised a studied reserve, but on the
great Temperance question his mind was
made up. Doubtless in the later days, as the
war weighed heavily upon his heart, and he
was more and more convinced of our nation's
righteous cause, this one desire became regnant
with him — that the nation should be worthy
to win the victory. The evil of the drink
traffic at such a fateful hour, roused his energies
to white heat, and he spoke as with a tongue
of fire. When weaker men hung back through
indifference or cowardice, in relation to this
pressing reform, he pointed the way. Those
117

n8 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

impassioned addresses of his on prohibition,
will be long remembered by his grateful
followers. He became almost at once a tem
perance stalwart, sound, courageous and able
on this question. Although he had long been
an advocate of total abstinence, his sympathies
for many years were with those who advocated
a reformed public-house. He was one of the
few outstanding men in Scotland who sup
ported what is called " disinterested manage
ment." But circumstances were too strong
for Denney. A turn of events — the stress and
strain of the war — made him a prohibitionist,
and thereafter alike by his rich gifts of voice
and pen, he rendered memorable service in
bringing home the urgency of this question
to the people and the Government of the
land. He shared in the general regret that,
while the nation was practically united as to
the urgent necessity of prohibition as a war
time measure, Parliament had more than once
missed an opportunity of putting the luxury
of drink — a deadly luxury for so many sorely-
tried brothers and sisters of humanity — upon
an equality with luxuries which are infinitely
less harmful.

It is related of Thomas Clarkson that when
he was toiling earnestly for the emancipation
of the slaves and for the abolition of the slave

THE SOCIAL REFORMER 119

trade, William Wilberforce, a much more
apparent and respectable, but possibly a less
earnest labourer in the same cause, called
upon him one Sabbath morning, and found
his table strewn with the everlasting corre
spondence concerning the emancipation, and
Clarkson labouring at it. Wilberforce said
to him, " My dear Clarkson, do you ever
remember that you have a soul to be saved ? "
And Clarkson said, " My dear friend, I can
remember nothing now but those poor negroes."
It certainly was the answer of a thoroughly
rapt enthusiast and illuminative of a whole
character. So Denney, in all his active
propaganda against the drink, was really
remembering nothing but the souls held in
thrall by drink's power. His hatred of
liquordom as a barrier to the extension of
the Kingdom of God, sprang from devotion
to his Master, and regard for those He came
to save. He knew that again and again a
measure of prohibition might have been passed,
and would have been accepted almost without
a murmur. And even when semi-starvation
was well within the range of possibility, and
drastic curtailments were being made in every
direction, there was the spectacle of the liquor
trade still ranged among the necessities of the
national life. Indeed, right thinking men like.

I2O PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

Denney, willing to make the greatest sacrifices
themselves, and only asking to be called upon
to make them, were staggered and amazed
when they saw first one Prime Minister and
then another (with a record of splendid work for
temperance) virtually acknowledging the right
of beer and spirits to a place, however reduced,
in the category of national needs. There
might be secrets and compacts known only
to those in the inner circle of the national
administration, but to a man of Denney's
calibre the attitude of the Government on
this all-important question suggested weakness,
amounting to criminal folly, if not indeed to
treason. Above all, in the light of Scriptural
declarations he had definitely made up his
mind on the subject. He recognized the fact
that God never upbraided man for attempting
too much in the interests of human weal.
On the contrary, He approves of the bold
daring of men struggling for the right against
oppression and wrong, and again and again
incites to such action. " Quit yourselves like
men, and fight." " Deal courageously and the
Lord shall be with you." The energizing power
of such appeals roused Denney, as centuries
before the lion-like spirit of John Knox had
been stirred when, despite the timid counsels of
wavering friends and the threats of implacable

THE SOCIAL REFORMER 121

foes, he preached that memorable sermon in
St. Andrews which finally confirmed the
Reformation. We are told " that his audience
quailed under his solemn denunciations while
he urged on all according to their station to
remove the abominations" against which he
protested "before the fire of the Divine
wrath should descend and consume what
man had refused to put away." It was
the ennobling appeals of the Almighty which
fired the spirits of Reformers and Martyrs in
all ages, and which have lit up with imperish
able glory the page of Scottish History.

The Rev. William Muir, B.L., B.D., Home
Mission Secretary of the United Free Church
of Scotland, a worthy fellow-labourer in the
Temperance cause, writing with reference to
the part Dr. Denney took in connection with
the demand for prohibition during the period
of the war and demobilization, says, " He was
always so far-seeing and fearless, and there
was always such an element of finality in all
he said, that every utterance of his was a
genuine contribution to his theme whatever
it was. But in connection with the agitation
for prohibition, there was an element of passion
in his summons to the nation and his appeal
to the Government which gave him an alto
gether unique place in the crisis. His was

122 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

the clarion call to righteousness, and he became
a great national leader, with far-reaching
influence. His earnestness and moral en
thusiasm, his scorn for every subterfuge,
and his outlook at once spiritual and imperial,
did much to lift the movement above every
thing which tended to mere partisanship or
petty provincialism. Even those who knew
him best and to whom in his humility he turned
as if they were experts, were amazed not
merely at the thoroughness with which he threw
himself into the movement, but at the mastery
of detail which he showed throughout. It
jbecame increasingly manifest that he had
not merely the public instinct of the true leader
of men, and the insight which enabled him
to go straight, to the essential and relevant,
but that he had an eye for intricacies of
argument and subtleties of motive, which
enabled him to meet the enemy at every point
with an absolute sureness of touch. The
student and recluse proved himself a match
for the journalist and the man of the world.
He saw both the wood and the trees. He
was loyal alike to the universal and the
particular. He gave his time and his strength
to the conflict so prodigally, that probably
he was less fit than he would otherwise have
been to fight the disease which laid him low.

THE SOCIAL REFORMER 123.

He gave himself for sobriety, freedom, and
God. It is our unspeakable sorrow that he
has passed away before the crowning day;
and if that is ever to come, it will only be
through those who remain being loyal as he
was to duty, and above all to Christ, who
gave Himself for us/'

Denney had little experience of political
propaganda before he threw himself into
the movement for prohibition during the
war. Consequently when he became sure
that the Government was playing fast and
loose, he said so. He was delightfully out
spoken — this man of pure soul, of clear-eyed
vision, and with a burning sense of the wrong
done by a traffic from which are derived
" great revenues without right." Hence he
could not be gainsaid. Some might dislike
him for it, they might even denounce him, but
they could not ignore him. A very plain man,
a very straight man, refusing to be mealy-
mouthed, in words of judgment, he would
arouse others to the seriousness of this burning
question of the hour. There was something
cosmical about the movements of Denney
at this time. He seemed to be allied to the
natural powers. He was a force to be reckoned
with in public affairs, albeit his method of
persuasion with those in the " seats of the

124 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

mighty " was no more successful than the
ordinary " let's pretend " mode which is more
consecrated by political custom. He realized
that old Adam is even yet too much for
young Melancthon. And still there was
the spectacle of a nation practically united
as to the urgent needfulness of prohibition
as a war-time emergency ! Yes, practically
united, for of course there are exceptions to
every rule and principle, like that gentleman
whose preoccupation was so intense that, in
a convivial company on one occasion, he
suddenly burst into weeping, and on being
questioned as to the fons et origo of his tears,
answered in a voice broken by sighs and
hiccoughs—" It's the National Debt ! They'll
never pey it aff ! " That he himself had done
his best was evident, but it was in the thought
of how little one man can do as a revenue-
producer that his mind sought refuge from
the ominous well-being of a too perfect ebriety.
He had become a burden-bearer. His case
is typical, and it has become more and
more so since the days when a man could
forget the shabbiness and craziness of his own
little waggon, by hitching it to a fiery comet,
and let his wife and children go begging, while
he sped to the rescue of his country, so " sair
hauden doon " by financial burdens !

THE SOCIAL REFORMER 125

In view of the moral as well as financial
questions involved, our responsible legislators
ought to have answered the clamant demand
for prohibition by a clear statement of their
position on the subject, so that the nation
might know where it stood. Public life would
benefit if more men like James Denney would
emerge from their studies and say exactly what
they think upon vital questions of the hour.
Thus the stress and strain of the war having
made him a prohibitionist, as such, both by pen
and voice, he rendered distinguished service to
the proletariat and to the Government as well.
He wrote with discrimination a New Year
tract for the Scottish Temperance League ,
entitled " Where Temperance Work is Wanted,"
which attained an immense circulation.

In February, 1916, he preached the annual
sermon of the League to a large audience in
St. Andrew's Hall, Glasgow. In May he gave
a wonderfully telling speech at the joint
Temperance meeting of the Churches in the
Assembly Hall, Edinburgh, while his article
on State Purchase, appearing originally in
The British Weekly, and which has been circu
lated by tens of thousands, was epoch-making.

State Purchase, which he defines as necessarily
involving State management, would, he argues,
tend to the steady multiplication of Government

126 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

departments and civil servants, and thus be
an undoubted menace to the independence
of Parliament and to purity of administration.
Again, he declares : —

"The need of the country is urgent and
immediate, and any scheme of purchase would
be elaborated with difficulty, fiercely contested
at every step, and carried — if it were carried
at all — after prolonged delay, during which the
present fatal evils would continue unchecked.
It would put an enormous additional re
sponsibility on the shoulders of a Government
which is already weighted far beyond its
strength, and needs nothing less than a new
field for the display of administrative incapacity.
It would insensibly alter public sentiment with
regard to the trade, and rehabilitate a business
which the common conscience and its own
inevitable fruits had at last succeeded in ex
hibiting in its genuine and baleful character. It
would threaten, at least in Scotland, the liberty
which Temperance Reformers have secured
by fifty years' persistent toil, and it is difficult
to resist the impression that those who refuse
to combine it with the 1920 Act are trying to
get behind that Act, which was an agreed Act,
and to get better terms for the trade than
have been already settled for it by the law. But,
above all, it is irrelevant — wickedly and

THE SOCIAL REFORMER 127

maddeningly irrelevant — to the necessities of
the hour.

" State Purchase is being put forward as an
alternative to prohibition, but no one knows
better than its advocates that it is no alternative.
If all licences were in the hands of the State
to-morrow, would the consequences of the
drink trade be affected in the slightest ? Would
there be less liquor consumed, and less in
efficiency resulting from it ? Would there be
less waste of food and transport, or less employ
ment of men in an ' industry ' which only
debilitates and impoverishes the nation ?
Would there be less money wasted in drink
and more contributed to the War Loan ?
There is only one answer to these questions.
It does not matter a straw whether the trade
is managed by a State Department or by its
present owners ; as long as the common sale
of intoxicating drink is continued, no matter
under what auspices, we shall suffer as we are
suffering to-day.

" In this matter the Government is on its trial.
Long ago Mr. Lloyd George spoke the truth
about the third and most dangerous of our
enemies — the lure of the drink — and he has
never withdrawn what he said. He was not
able then to deal with it, but he is able now.
A Government which could not deal with it,

128 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

instantly, effectively, and for the emergency
of the war conclusively, would have no title
to exist. It would stand condemned as a
Government without moral sense or moral
courage, the slave of an interest and an appetite
to which the nation was being sacrificed. And
it cannot be said too strongly that State purchase
does not deal with it at all. Prohibition
does, and to offer State purchase as a substitute
for prohibition is to insult the common sense
of the country, and to outrage the common
conscience. If the Government, after all that
has happened, refuse prohibition, they are
deliberately prolonging the war ; they are
deliberately nursing inefficiency and waste ;
they are deliberately working for famine at
home and defeat in the field, and deserving it.
And if instead of prohibition they offer the
illusory and irrelevant measure of State purchase
— homeopathy when the one salvation is in
surgery — they will be guilty of a betrayal
of the vital interest of the nation which, even
to Mr. Lloyd George, will never be forgiven/'
In his sermon to the Scottish Temperance
League on " Insincerity in a Time of National
Crisis," Principal Denney was equally emphatic.
He declared that the lesson of the text, " If
I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will
not hear" (Psalm Ixvi. 18), was that of sincerity

THE SOCIAL REFORMER 129

and consistency in prayer. "If we appealed
to God to take our side we must be unreservedly
on His side. Otherwise we mocked God,
and God is not mocked. The one prayer in
which we all united at this moment was the
prayer for victory, and it concerned us to
know what sincerity here implied. It implied
that our interest in victory should not be
pitched too low. People who resented the
war only because it disturbed a life to which
they wanted to return — a life in which God
and the soul and the spiritual good of the
community had no place, and in which they
would still have no place if victory came —
could not pray so as to be heard. God was
not bringing the nation through this awful
experience but for purification and uplifting,
and to shirk this was to forfeit the right to
pray. The auspices under which they met
led them to think of insincerity in relation to
the national sin of intemperance and its
disabling effects.

"The head of the nation, they gratefully
acknowledged, had not been insincere. But
the King's example could not move either the
House of Commons or the Town Council of
Glasgow to equal sincerity, and by their
frivolous treatment of a grave responsibility,
our representatives had lost their title not only

130 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

to be heard by God but to be respected by men.
All the truth on this question was obvious,
and all the modes of insincerity were transparent.
Victory depended on strength, yet we tolerated
in all our cities, liquor-sodden slums, in which
a pitiful sediment of what should be human
life accumulated, in which vitality was
low and the death-rate high, and asked victory
on these terms. Let us deal sincerely first
with the liquor problem and the housing
problem : they would never be solved apart/'

After pointing out that victory depended
on Moral strength, and further upon Industrial
strength, the preacher, in measured and
impressive accents, continued :

" There was a final insincerity to be guarded
against in the use of the phrase ' for the
period of the war.' It was properly applied to
inconveniences to which we submitted, like the
darkening of the streets, but was quite in
applicable to matters of right and wrong. If
it was wrong now to make huge profits out of
the nation's need, without caring what they
cost, it would be wrong after the war. If
workshop customs were suspended now, because
they had made idleness a fine art, they should
be suspended permanently. It was honourable
to get all you could for your work, but demoral
izing to give the least you could for your wages.

THE SOCIAL REFORMER 131

If the prohibition of the common sale of
intoxicants was right now, for the reasons
indicated, it was always right. And we would
not be able to pray for victory without mocking
God till we made it our object to clear this
evil from the life of the nation, not for the
period of the war but for ever."

In view of such strong and incontrovertible
evidence, how statesmen should still trifle with
a stupendous evil in a fashion which frustrated
and forbade prayer, Denney could not under
stand.

He saw how the Government preached
economy night and day, stopped the importation
of luxuries, urged the growing of vegetables on
unoccupied patches in the Lothians and else
where, the rearing of pigs and poultry in the
Hebrides — saw, too, how millions of bushels of
precious grain go into the breweries and dis
tilleries of the land, and over £200,000,000 of
money drain away in intoxicants without the
Government thinking it worth while to interfere.
In Denney 's eyes it would all have been very
ludicrous if it had not been tragical. As a
nation, he declared, " We opened our veins
to bleed ourselves white, and prayed for
strength ! " And in view of the tragedy, for
it still faces us, well might a writer in a con
temporary journal put the question to the

132 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D,D.

British public, " Is there truth in the supposi
tion that the secret party funds, subscribed
by the liquor interests, dominate the position —
is it graft — hideous graft — that is prolonging
the life of this food-destroying monopoly,
and that calls the tune the Government shall
play?"

Social Reformers of different shades of
political opinion still await a clear answer
to a query at once so plain and pertinent.

Man

of
Affairs

CHAPTER VIII
THE MAN OF AFFAIRS

THERE was no other man, in his combination
of gifts, quite like James Denney in the United
Free Church of Scotland. In a Church,
happily still affluent in preachers, scholars
and theologians, he was primus inter pares.
In fact, in any assemblage gathered for religious
and moral ends, he was generally reckoned the
leading spirit. A powerful personality and
driving force, a master in the art of clear-cut
incisive speech and fearless in his championship
of any cause, he was not, in the conventional
sense, a Church leader. He had been trained
in quite another atmosphere. But he led in a
far wider sense and wielded a far more powerful
influence that those whose penchant is the
ecclesiastical forum.

It was because of this that the loss to his
own Church through his untimely demise
created a feeling akin to consternation. For
he was not only a deep thinker and accom
plished theologian by nature and study, but a
great administrator also, and a very straight-
135

136 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

forward and sane diplomat. Thus he had come
to impress himself upon the life of the Church
as no man had done since " the brave days
of old/' when Rainy was chief of the clan.
There was something of the clannishness of a
family in the old Free Ch urch of Scotland, and
the cause of it was affection for the chief.
Here Denney was successor to Rainy, as Rainy
was to Chalmers. Of co urse, there were marked
dissimilarities between the two former. The
one had gifts which the other had not. Their
environment had been different in the for
mative period of life, but each was dux in the
literal sense, in his own sphere. When Rainy
passed away, and then Dr. W. Ross Taylor,
great ecclesiastics both, it was seen that Denney
turned from scholasticism to questions bearing
more directly upon the work and welfare of
the United Free Church. He had had a share
in the negotiations which culminated in the
union of Free Church and United Presbyterian
Church, in 1900, and in the years immediately
prior to the outbreak of the war, he gave
himself unsparingly to the work of the con
ference between the members of the Church
of Scotland and his own Church, with a view
to their ultimate amalgamation. Dr. George
Reith, Denney's friend and pastor in his later
years, described him as without exaggeration

THE MAN OF AFFAIRS 137

the hope of the Church. He had done magnifi
cent work for his denomination, but he was,
when taken, comparatively speaking, still in
the midst of his days. He (Dr. Reith) did
not think there was a man in the Church to
whom the Church looked rather than to
Dr. Denney to guide them in the future, and
especially through the complex and intricate
questions which would arise in the course of
the negotiations on Union. He had heard
it said by a minister of the Church of Scotland,
" If Dr. Denney advocates Union, there will
be union ; if Dr. Denney is opposed to Union,
there will be none." That might be an
exaggeration, but it showed the estimation in
which he was held in the sister Church and how
widely he was trusted ; and also how great was
his capacity for impressing his views, and the
weight of his personality, on those outside
his ecclesiastical communion. The crowning
honour of Moderatorship of the General
Assembly would assuredly have come to him
had he lived. There was keen expectation
among his fellow-churchmen that the following
Assembly would have seen his appointment
to the post of honour, already so worthily won.
As Convener of the Central Fund, his work
can only be described as brilliant. Here his
great administrative qualities had full play.

138 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

And this was the surprising thing about
Denney, that the man who had been known
as the profound scholar, the distinguished
preacher, the accomplished teacher, should
also prove himself the man of affairs, endowed
with the tactful business art and manifesting
unbounded public spirit. It has been pointed
out, how as chairman in committee work, he
was ideal. Ever patient and courteous,
he listened to all views. He disregarded
irrelevancies with an instinct that was deadly
in its accuracy, and cut down through all
entanglements to the real issue. Then he
came to a decision, and to this he adhered
with unflinching determination. He always
spoke with authority — the authority of know
ledge, and of clear judgment, certainly, but
also the authority of a manifest sincerity and
impartiality. He was, however, far more to
the Central Fund than an ideal Chairman of
the Committee. By his personality, enthusiasm,
and his unwearied service in the country, he
had lifted the Fund into the central place in
the life of the Church which it ought to have.
Many realized its importance just because
they saw that it was important to a man
like Dr. Denney. It was a matter of sincere
gratification to the Convener that in the year
before he died the minimum stipend of £200

THE MAN OF AFFAIRS 139

to every minister of the church was so nearly
attained. This has been the aim of the
Committee for long — by no means an ex
travagant one in these days of costly living,
when every minister is feeling the pinch.
It was especially the cause of the rural pastor,
the appeal of the country manse that came
straight home to the heart of Denney. He
realized that these are they upon whom the
brunt of the righting falls. If there are wounds
and suffering to be endured, they endure them ;
and the distress incurred by many a minister
of the Presbyterian Church and his family
as a result of the " narrow circumstances of
the house " is very real and great. The best
monument his beloved Church could erect to the
memory of Dr. James Denney would be to
raise the equal dividend all over the Church
to at least £200 as in this year of his passing
from us, and to keep it raised.

In the care of the Churches which thus fell
upon him, Denney shouldered the burden
loyally. There is a certain wistfulness evident
in the recorded remark of such a man of
so great gifts, who took up the routine of
ecclesiastical work of his denomination at the
call of duty. A ministerial friend was talking
with him one day about Principal Marcus
Dods, and reported that Dr. Dods had felt

140 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

in his later years that one of the mistakes of

his life had been that he had not taken a greater

share in the work of the Churches' courts and

committees, Dr. Denney said with animated

emphasis, " This is most interesting. It is

the most interesting thing I have ever heard

about Dods." Adds the chronicler, " It looked

as if he had recognized in the mind of another

great scholar a process of development that

had been a reality for his own. Even giants,

however, must leave something to other men,

and the fact remains that while Dods lived

to be 75, Denney has gone at 61. " To what

purpose is this waste ? " is often thought and

sometimes said, when men of such outstanding

gifts as his take up the burden of the ecclesiastic.

Of course, his high position brought many

calls for Denney's services among the Churches,

and he never refused, if fulfilment were within

his power. Hence the things which men

expect to find were sought in him — wise,

practical judgment, keen moral vision, and the

power of seeing further than themselves in

an emergency. By many a country manse

fireside, his rare insight and quaint humour,

his tact and sensibility, his quiet and ready

sympathy rendered him a welcome guest.

For nothing that was human was alien to this

great Doctor of the Church. Thus to many

THE MAN OF AFFAIRS 141

a struggling pastor of a humble flock, dis
couraged and depressed, came Denney, and
left behind him such a gracious influence as
heartened the man and caused a new light
to shine in his eyes.

To the mistress of the manse also Dr. Denney
made appeal as guest. The following note
from one gives a glimpse of this, showing his
human side.

" It was decided. The great man had agreed
to come. That was splendid for the church,
but rather appalling for me. He would be our
guest, and I had no maid. My husband had
been a student under him, and I had an
impression that he was an austere man who
would be difficult . He had no children. Would
our two terrors annoy him ? He came, straight
from the many honours heaped on him by the
Assembly of May 1915. How simple he was :
so pleased with the arrangements made for
his comfort. In a few minutes the children
and he were friends. Was this Dr. Denney ?
This man who was like a child with them. Was
this the great man whose coming we had
feared? He left on Monday morning, and
our hearts were sore at the parting, for in that
brief week-end he had made us love him. In
our garden there is a spot hallowed by the
memory of him sitting there at rest through

142 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

the long summer Sunday between the services.
I cherish, too, as one of my most precious
possessions, the beautiful, courteous letter of
thanks which he, so busy a man, found time
to write to me."

There was ever the expression of this fine
trait in Denney's character — his deep interest
in the welfare of others less favourably placed
than himself — and scores of the smaller United
Free congregations of Scotland are his debtors.
It is gratefully recalled how, in the privacy of
the manse, this man whom some were inclined
to regard as on a plane aloof and remote from
themselves, and with an air of puritanical
austerity of life and mind, would strive to draw
his humbler confreres out of their diffidence
and reserve ; how he would labour to discover
their special interests, the books that had
influenced them, and then to talk of these, for
he was emphatically a " Bookman," knowing
and understanding them all. While his
interests were many-sided, his table-talk on
books was especially luminous and informative
Thus, in a South of Scotland country manse,
the conversation at one point turned on the
relative merits of fast and slow reading of a
book. Denney favoured the fast readers,
holding that fast reading, and the ability to
remember, almost always went together. He

THE MAN OF AFFAIRS 143

looked on fast reading as an indication of a
quick intellect, and on slow reading as denoting
a sluggish one, and cited Carlyle and Macaulay,
famous as fast readers, as instances in point.

Apropos of the question of unbelief, which
came up in the course of conversation, he told
a story of Jowett, Master of Balliol, which,
though perhaps not new, may be worth
repeating. A student came to Jowett one
morning and told him that he was troubled
with religious doubt. " In fact," said the
student, " I regret to confess that I don't
believe in God ! " " You don't believe in
God!" said Jowett. "No sir," said the
student, hoping that the great man would
clear away his difficulties. But Jowett's reply
was crushing. " Believe in God, sir/' said
Jowett, " by to-morrow morning, or leave the
college ! "

The incident reminds us of the attitude of
the late Professor A. B. Davidson to a young
divinity student proud of his doubts. It is
referred to by his biographer. Davidson could
say very incisive things as well as Jowett. The
youth, who was fond of airing his scruples and
unbeliefs on every possible occasion, called
on Dr. Davidson. A tone of unreality dis
closed itself in his recital of his difficulties and
perplexities, and the result was rather a chilling

144 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

reception. The Professor sat in silence. He
accompanied the student to the door when he
left. There the young man looked up to the
sky and said, " It's a lovely evening." " Oh ! "
said Davidson incisively, with some trace
of astonishment, "are you sure of thai?"

Sarcasm is the legitimate weapon against
pretentiousness and sham, and Denney was
a master of the art. His rapier was keen and,
when needful, skilfully handled. " From the
deliberating pause," says one of his former
students, " which almost invariably preceded
these strokes, we felt that he was ever con
scious of its danger, and almost feared its
power.

" Once when counselling us against its use
in the pulpit, he quoted Carlyle, ' Sarcasm is
the language of the devil.' Then came the
pause, and the faint smile and quiver of the
lip, which always made the class expectant.
' And one might almost say it was Carlyle's
mother-tongue/ The class was convulsed —
first one wave of laughter, then a second laugh.
The first was our homage to the quaintly
worded pungency of the retort ; the second laugh
was at the Professor himself. He saw it
and smiled — a very human, self-amusing smile.
He had hoisted himself with his own petard."
Denney, it has been said, wrote no paradoxes ;

THE MAN OF AFFAIRS 145

to him all epigrams had falsehood written on
their face. There may be some justice in the
criticism that he liked to have everything about
him just a little clearer than things are. So
completely was he equipped in scholarship,
and in such full command of all his weapons—
and these ever at their keenest and brightest
—that he could detect any flaw in an opponent's
argument with almost supernatural quickness.
He was an anti-sciolist, and for the man or
student of superficial knowledge he had a
profound contempt. Fools he never suffered
gladly, as some of the tribe know to their cost.
In irony he could be as scornfully severe as
Johnson himself. Even to his intimates, in
the course of talk, his pertinent " Why ? " or
" Why not ? " dropping from his lips like
explosive bullets, not only compelled attention
but had a shattering effect on all arrogance,
pretence and subterfuge. ' Wool-gathering "
was at a discount. Mental force had to
be quickly mobilized in the bracing and vital
mental atmosphere which Denney as a con
troversialist created.

His directness of style in speech, while it
tended to lucidity, sometimes, it must be
confessed, made him brusque and " short "
as a man with men. His abruptness may
even have brought him disfavour in certain

K

146 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

quarters. He was nothing if not direct-
circumlocution in any circumstances had no
quarter from him. And yet it might be truly
said that his heart was tender, if his words
were strong. His pastor in College and
Kelvingrove Church, Dr. Reith, has testified
how, beneath what sometimes seemed a stern
exterior, there were springs of deep and tender
feeling.

Those who were accustomed to listen to
his frequent prayers at the weekly devotional
gatherings knew they were in the presence
of a man to whom his Saviour was a living
reality, and whose very name he would not
pronounce without an obvious throb of
emotion and subdued tones of pathos, witness
ing to the touch of Christ's spirit on his own.
All his brilliant gifts were laid humbly and
lovingly at the feet of his Lord.

Members of the congregation, too, were aware
how loyal Principal Denney was to the duties
expected from a member and office-bearer,
and how thoroughly he identified himself with
the work and worship of this particular church,
just as if far wider interests did not claim his
concern. That was entirely characteristic of
the man. No elder was more faithful than
he in the discharge of the common work
belonging to that office. It was, Dr. Reith

THE MAN OF AFFAIRS 147

adds, disconcerting at first, perhaps, to the
preacher to have that calm, earnest look fixed
on him, kept without faltering on him, whatever
the spiritual provision at command. And yet
that steadfast gaze emptied the preacher of
all desire to be anything he was not and could
not be, threw him back on the glory of his
message and inspired him to endeavour to
rise to the greatness of the opportunity that
was his.

Dr. Denney employed his rich gifts to
further many good causes which lay near
his heart. It was only on rare occasions that
he went so far afield as London to speak or
preach — all the wide range of his own Church
made its special appeal to him, but he never
declined an invitation beyond it, if fulfilment
were in his power.

Those, for instance, who heard the Principal
some years ago when he preached the annual
sermon of the Baptist Missionary Society at
Bloomsbury Chapel still treasure the thrilling
message which he delivered on the occasion.

He had put all denominations in debt to
his scholarship and spiritual insight, and
people listened to him as they only listen
to a man who is wholly devoted to the highest
ends. But as we have seen, it was to the

interests of his own United Free Church
K*

148 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

supremely that Denney gave his time and
strength. He loved it to the last. A regular
attender of the Presbytery and Assembly as
well as of the Kirk Session, those most closely
associated with him, realized how deep and
practical was his interest in everything
which tended to the greater efficiency and
enterprise of the work of that Church, and
how his inventive mind was always thinking
out improvements in organization.

He enjoyed much his intimate relationship
with the laymen of the Church. His written
correspondence with them rarely failed to
contain some sentence apt and wise on the
most commonplace topics. In Presbytery he
would sometimes let himself go, to the great
delight of his auditors. If a subject came up
that interested him, whether bearing upon
Church polity, aggressive work, social reform
or theology, he was ready for the fray. The
debate in Glasgow Presbytery on the election
of women to the Deacons' Court is still recalled,
and how Denney, by opposing the idea, failed
for once to carry popular opinion with him.
On that tense face was the look of battle, and
from the pursed lips came the swift central
word which set things in the light in which
he at least clearly saw them. Indifference
to public opinion when himself convinced on

THE MAN OF AFFAIRS 149

any point, regardlessness of consequences —
fearlessness, that was the crowning glory of
the man. " Gentlemen," he would say to his
students, with glowing ardour, " I beseech
you to remember that there are in every con
gregation—even the humblest — men and
women of ripe Christian experience whose
shoe latchet you are not worthy to unloose."
He knew whereof he testified, and conscience
was ever in him a burning passion. There
was such sensitiveness to all that is high and
worthy, that his extraordinary mental gifts
were heightened by it. So he came to be
spoken of by men of different sorts and con
ditions as the " conscience " of Scotland
incarnate. They had in mind his profound
and passionately experimental faith in Jesus
Christ as Saviour and Lord, his essential
character of such goodness and devotion, his
zeal for his brethren's well-being, his patriotic
impeachment of the liquor interest as a curse
calling for suppression not merely " for the
period of the war," but for ever, and his
whole-hearted and serious approval of the
Allies' cause. A veritable Greatheart, worn
out at length with ungrudging service, there
was no man whose verdict was more eagerly
looked for on questions of the hour, religious,
social or political. In his laborious day he

150 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

accomplished a many-sided work and left a
name to be long and gratefully remembered.
He stands in the true line with Paul and
Augustine, with Calvin and Chalmers, of those
who have taught the Church to say, " Unto
Him be the glory, both now and for ever.
Amen."

Vhe
Last
Phase

CHAPTER IX

THE LAST PHASE

JAMES DENNEY was pre-eminently a man of
God, and bore about with him an atmosphere
of saintliness ; he seemed like one who always
walked on the confines of another world, and
viewed, with a certain aloofness, the affairs
about which most of his contemporaries
busied themselves, God took him— the God
with whom he closely walked— not weight of
years, disease, or even death, but God. And
he walked closely with man as well. From
the viewpoint of his friends it can be truly
said that no one could be long in his com
pany without being conscious of a quickened
spiritual life and a deepened earnestness of
purpose. His friends believed that he died
because he gave himself so generously to the
demands of God's cause. Certainly it was
this " conscience " for his fellows in his many-
sided work that will keep his name alive.

And thoii art worthy, full of power,
As gentle, liberal-minded, great.
Consistent, wearing all that weight
Of learning, lightly like a flower.

153

154 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

The strain of recent years, the carrying on
of the work of the College in war time, the
burden of the Central Fund Convenership
where his personality, enthusiasm and anxious
and unwearied toil counted for so much, and
latterly his ardent advocacy of prohibition,
had altogether proved a greater expenditure
of nervous energy than one man could bear.
Continually spending himself and being spent
in the service of God and man, his friends
seemed to take it for granted that he was
capable of any exertion. He was of this mind
himself, until the breaking point came. And
then, the pity of it all ! Alas ! for falling trees
and broken columns. The loss is terrible.

He held his place —

Held on through blame, and faltered not at praise,
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down,
As when a kingly cedar, green with boughs,
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.

His friend and colleague, Professor Moffatt,
testifies concerning this, in a fine appreciation
written for The British Weekly :

" The death of his two most intimate friends,
the Rev. A. D. Grant and the Rev. J. P.
Strathers, meant more to Dr. Denney than he
would ever allow others to guess, for he held
his feelings on this and other sacred intimacies
in a noble reserve. But one had the impression
that he felt somewhat lonely in his later years,

THE LAST PHASE 155

especially after his wife's death. He had
strong and happy family affections, and he
admitted others to his friendship with generous
freedom ; there was nothing of the recluse or
of the morbid laudator temporis acti about
him. But when the ranks of a man's con
temporaries are thinned, and the old friends
and comrades fall, it is not possible for their
places to be filled. His colleagues, Professor
Orr and Principal Lindsay, left him. Other
work took Professor George Adam Smith
away, and with him an intellectual and moral
stimulus of which he would speak sometimes
with a singular note of intensity. Meantime
he threw himself into the service of the Church
beyond even the range of his own subject,
developed business qualities which surprised
some who only knew him from his books, and
became one of the real leaders of public opinion
in the country. The care of the churches
fell upon him, and he shouldered it loyally.

" There came unsought to him that position in
which men expect wise judgment, moral vision,
and the power of seeing further than them
selves in a difficulty. Influence of this kind
is never exerted without a drain upon life,
of which a man is hardly conscious. Some
thing goes out of him as he gives his sympathy
and counsel, and Dr. Denney grew grey under

156 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

the mounting responsibilities with which he
was honoured. But there was no abating of
his spirit. It seemed to those whom he led
that every fresh demand revealed something
more in him, and one of our keenest regrets
to-day is that we shall miss him in the coming
readjustment of the Scottish Churches, a
problem for which he had acquired some of the
qualities which are essential and rare ; there
was a sense of confidence in his judgment which
made his words tell far and wide, in quarters
where the ecclesiastic would not command
a following. We counted on him as a factor
in the solution. Here and even more in his
College, what he said, what he was, mattered
as little else did. Now he has been withdrawn
from us in the very ripeness of his strength and
influence. What that means not even those
who were at his side can realize yet."

It does seem tragic that just at the crucial
moment when a mind keen and original like
his was most needed by his fellow country-men,
he should be lost to us.

Principal Denney was seized with illness,
one day in the month of February, while
lecturing to his class. Preaching at Kirkin-
tilloch on the Sunday previous, and motoring
home in an open car, he had evidently caught
a chill, the effect of which he was not able

THE LAST PHASE 157

to throw off. From that first illness—the
only one in the whole course of his professional
career — he never rallied, though he made
a brave effort to resume his work. His un
wonted cross he bore with patience, only
lamenting the resultant breaking off of preach
ing and other public engagements. From
his sick room he wrote on this wise to his
friend Sir W. Robertson Nicoll, with whom
he had enjoyed an intimate association lasting
unclouded for 25 years :

" I am counting on the open air, which
I had not breathed for seven weeks or so, to
set me up again. I don't know what was
wrong with me : I just collapsed suddenly
and completely like the one-hoss shay in
O. W. Holmes, and I have spent all these
weeks in painfully gathering myself in bits
out of the debris. I am past the point of
despair now, but when I shall be able to do any
kind of work with body or brain I cannot fore
see. I have been a little astonished at the
people who condoled with me on having to
postpone the Cunningham Lectures : the
things I am sore at being unable to help are
the temperance cause and the Central Fund."
For a time he seemed to be throwing off
his iUness, thanks to expert medical skill
and efficient nursing. On the shores of the

158 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

Gareloch, whither he repaired for change of
air and scene, he walked about for days in
the spring sunshine, but little betterment came.
His evenings were brightened by the visits and
genial talk of such resident neighbours as the
Rev. Dr. W. L. Walker of Lochanbrae and
the Rev. Walter E. Ireland, United Free
Church manse. Returning to the city, and
confined to his room latterly, for many weary
weeks, he was allowed to see very few friends ,
but he had his books, and it was hoped that
six months of total rest might restore him.
To the last he was devoted to work.

The Greek Testament was constantly in
his hand, and his notebooks were close by.
There he was, his fertile brain planning new
lectures, or with a privileged visitor, more
suo, talking theology, discussing the contents
of Professor Gwatkins' library, summing up
Tertullian and other Fathers of the Church,
even as he gasped for breath. The physical
discomfort he bore bravely, his mind as keen
as ever. To a friend he remarked, " My
doctor tells me I am improving, but " — and a
little, grim smile hovered for a second on his
lips — " I don't feel the witness of that in
myself as yet." Still there seemed some
hope of his getting better. But a few days
before the end came he had a collapse, and

THE LAST PHASE 159

he felt that he had finally lain down to die.
While he lingered on the Border-land it was
evident that the atoning death of the Lord
Jesus Christ was all and in all to him. He
felt that the ministry of atonement in his case
was perfected. There was no outstanding debt .
" Jesus paid it all." In the one commanding
sacrifice for human sin, Calvary had left nothing
for him to do. Years before he had declared
these words to be his article of faith,

" Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
In my place condemned He stood
Sealed my pardon with His blood,"

and now in the hour and almost in the article
of death, he was filling up that which was
behind of the afflictions of Christ. The suffer
ings needed a herald. The Gospel required
an evangelist. The work of Calvary must
proclaim itself in the sacrificial saint.

James Denney's mission had consisted in
making the evangel known to Christendom—
for this man was a good gift of God to all
the Churches, and there was not a branch of
spiritual activity that had not been enriched
and encouraged by his inspiring words, as
well as by the example of his devoted life.

At length came the timely relief of the Last
Messenger. The strong spirit passed to its
reward. As the tidings of his demise were

160 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

carried through the city and spread to the most
distant corners of the land there was general
sorrow. All denominations united in lamenting
the loss of one whose labours had been
accomplished not in the service of sect or party,
but to advance the truth which is the heritage
of the whole Catholic Church. In a simile
that Dr. Denney himself had used, regarding
the departure of another sainted minister
of Christ, his death was like the going out
of a bright light ; a darkness that could be
felt descended with it on many a heart. But
heaven was so near to him and so real, that
he would very likely have thought it wrong
to speak thus, and with all our sorrowful
remembrance of him, we thank God with
full hearts for giving us such a man, such a
Christian, and such a friend. And as we glorify
God in him, we pray that the true apostolic
and saintly succession of God's great and
gifted ones may never cease until this weary,
time-worn world has passed through all the
phases of its travail and its discipline, and is
merged in the shadowless light, and the in
effable love of the Eternal.

The funeral took place on Friday, the i5th
June, 1917. A private service at the house,
15, Lilybank Gardens, was conducted by the
Rev. G. A. Frank Knight, M.A., College and

THE LAST PHASE 161

Kelvingrove Church, of which Principal Denney
was an office-bearer. A public service was
afterwards held in the College, where he had
given such distinguished service. In front of
the platform, on a catafalque covered by a purple
pall, lay the oak coffin, on which rested many
beautiful floral tributes. The Rev. Professor
Forrest, Moderator of the Glasgow Presbytery
of the United Free Church of Scotland, presided,
and the service was conducted after the severely
simple Presbyterian form, those taking part
including the Rev. Principal Iverach, Aberdeen ;
the Rev. Professor H. A. A. Kennedy, Edin
burgh; the Rev. Professor George Milligan;
and the Rev. Dr. George Reith.

The large company of mourners assembled
from far and near, representative of various
sections of the public — religious, academic,
social, and civic — reflected the high and wide
spread esteem entertained for the distinguished
theologian. Within the building there were
many manifestations of the feeling of profound
sorrow which pervaded the whole community.
The gathering was one of men and women
whose hearts were deeply moved. At the
close of the service, to the strains of Handel's
immortal March, the coffin was borne to the
hearse, and the funeral procession to the
Western Necropolis was formed four deep.

1 62 PRINCIPAL JAMES DENNEY, D.D.

It was a wonderful and spontaneous expression
of the hold Dr. Denney had taken on the
affections of the people. A service at the
grave-side in " God's acre," within sight of
the city he had loved and served so well, was
conducted by the Rev. Dr. John S. Carroll
and the Rev. Professor Mackintosh. All that
was mortal of James Denney rests by the
side of his wife, and the tombstone is inscribed,
" Because I live, ye shall live also/' On that
lovely June afternoon, when the songs of the
birds were in the air, the flowers in their
sweetest bloom and the glorious sunshine and
warmth flooding everything, all nature seemed
to typify the grandeur of the new life to which
the spirit had attained, and the touching
prayer of committal tended to raise the thoughts
of the mourners to the God of all comfort ;
confirmed their faith in Him who is the
Resurrection and the Life, and recalled to
mind the words of the Immortal Dreamer—
" The pilgrim they laid in a chamber whose
window opened towards the sunrising ; the
name of that chamber was PEACE ! where
he slept till the break of day."

In rneitioriam : James Denncp,

JUNE u, 1917.
BY REV. W. R. THOMSON, B.D.

Friend, who hast fallen 'mid the din of war,
Take now thy portion of the soldier's sleep ;
For thou, God's sentry, didst thy vigil keep,

Nor watched with idle eye the strife from far.

Naught trivial found a home within thy mind,
Nor any baseness in thy spirit's place ;
Self's spectre fled the daybreak of thy face

To herd in dark confusion with its kind.

The light of thought enthroned upon thy brow
Its splendid largesse flung upon our way ;
God's benison to one who loved the day,

Whose riches did us poorer men endow.

And when the shadow fell, and bugles shrill
Blew war's fierce challenge all about the land,
Who more than thou, at Duty's high command.

Didst toil to fortify the nation's will ?

Who more than thou didst toil to feed the flame
Of high resolve ? to keep inviolate
Our troth with those — to honour dedicate —

Who reap on fields of death a deathless fame ?

Ah, silent now that voice of quiet power,
And dark the eye that kindled at the call
Of God within, and stilled beneath the pall

The valiant heart that held faith's endless dower.

Blow the Last Post across the soldier saint,
Give to the wind and sun our sor ow deep;
Friend, take thy portion of the soldier's sleep,

Thou who didst march God's way and didst not faint.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

--

PRINCIPAL DENNEY was the author of the

following Works : —

i. On Natural Law in the Spiritual World, by a
Brother of the Natural Man, 1882.

a. The Epistles to the Thessalonians, 1892.

3. The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 1894.

4. Studies in Theology : Lectures delivered in

Chicago Theological Seminary, 1894.

5. Romans: a contribution to the second volume

of the Expositors' Greek Testament, 1900.

6. The Death of Christ: Its Place and Interpreta

tion in the New Testament, 1902.

7. The Atonement and the Modern Mind, 1903.

8. Jesus and the Gospel: Christianity Justified

in the Mind of Christ, 1908.

9. Gospel Questions and Answers, 1911.
10. The Church and the Kingdom, 1911.
n. Factors of Faith in Immortality, 1911.

ia. The Literal Interpretation of the Sermon on
the Mount, 1911.

13. The Way Everlasting, 1913.

14. Eternal Life, 1915.

15. War and the Fear of God, 1916.

16. The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, 1917.

CAVEN LIBRARY

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