Henry Drummond (evangelist)

For other people with the same name, see Henry Drummond.

Henry Drummond

Henry Drummond (17 August 1851 - 11 March 1897) was a Scottish evangelist, writer and lecturer.

Life and work

Drummond was born in Stirling. He was educated at Edinburgh University, where he displayed a strong inclination for physical and mathematical science. The religious element was an even more powerful factor in his nature, and disposed him to enter the Free Church of Scotland. While preparing for the ministry, he became for a time deeply interested in the evangelizing mission of Moody and Sankey, in which he actively co-operated for two years.

In 1877 he became lecturer on natural science in the Free Church College, which enabled him to combine all the pursuits for which he felt a vocation. His studies resulted in his writing Natural Law in the Spiritual World, the argument of which is that the scientific principle of continuity extends from the physical world to the spiritual. Before the book was published in 1883, an invitation from the African Lakes Company drew Drummond away to Central Africa.

Upon his return in the following year he found himself famous. Large bodies of serious readers, among the religious and the scientific classes alike, discovered in Natural Law the common standing-ground which they needed; and the universality of the demand proved, if nothing more, the seasonableness of its publication. Drummond continued to be actively interested in missionary and other movements among the Free Church students.

In 1888 he published Tropical Africa, a valuable digest of information. In 1890 he travelled in Australia, and in 1893 delivered the Lowell Lectures at Boston. It had been his intention to reserve them for mature revision, but an attempted piracy compelled him to hasten their publication, and they appeared in 1894 under the title of The Ascent of Man. Their object was to vindicate for altruism, or the disinterested care and compassion of animals for each other, an important part in effecting the survival of the fittest, a thesis previously maintained by Professor John Fiske.

Drummond's health failed shortly afterwards (he had suffered from bone cancer for some years), and he died on 11 March 1897. His character was full of charm. His writings were too nicely adapted to the needs of his own day to justify the expectation that they would long survive it, but few men exercised more religious influence in their own generation, especially on young men.

Selected writings

Signature of Henry Drummond

See Lennox's book for a fuller bibliography of Drummond's writings.

• Natural Law in the Spiritual World (1883)
• Tropical Africa (1888)
• The Greatest Thing in the World and Other Addresses (1894)
• The Ascent of Man (1894)
• The Ideal Life and Other Unpublished Addresses (1897)
• The Monkey That Would Not Kill (1898)
• The New Evangelism and Other Papers (1899)

For Further Reading

• Smith, George Adam (1898). The Life of Henry Drummond. New York: Doubleday & McClure Company. http://www.archive.org/details/lifeofhenrydrumm00smitiala. 
• Simpson, James Y. Henry Drummond. Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 1901, ("Famous Scots Series")
• Drummond, Henry (1894). Natural Law in the Spiritual World. Hodder and Stoughton (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 978-1-108-00013-0)
• Drummond, Henry (1883). The Ascent of Man. J. Pott & Co. (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 978-1-108-00053-6)

External links

• Works by Henry Drummond at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Henry Drummond at archive.org
• The Monkey Who Would Not Kill with full text and full page images from the Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature
• Evangelicalism in Transition: A Comparative Analysis of the Work and Theology of D.L. Moody and His Proteges, Henry Drummond and R.A. Torrey, a Doctoral Dissertation by Mark James Toone, presented to the Faculty of St. Mary's College, University of St. Andrews, 1988

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.