C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Critical and Biographical Introduction

By Henry Drummond (1851–1897)

IN the nineteenth century, the record of great literary successes includes many books on religious and social themes. In this field no popularity was more immediate and more widespread than that attained by Henry Drummond. He was born at Stirling, Scotland, in 1851. Educated for the ministry, he passed through the Universities of Edinburgh and Tübingen, and the Free Church Divinity Hall, and after ordination was appointed to a mission chapel at Malta. The beauty and the historic interest of the famous island roused in him a desire for travel, and in the intervals of his professional work he has made semi-scientific pilgrimages to the Rocky Mountains and to South Africa, as well as lecturing tours to Canada, Australia, and the United States, where his addresses on scientific, religious, and sociological subjects have attracted large audiences. He was appointed lecturer on natural history and science at the Free Church College, Glasgow, in 1877.

A man of indefatigable industry, he has published many books, the most widely read of these being ‘Natural Law in the Spiritual World’ (1883), a study of psychological conditions from the point of view of the Evolutionist. This work has passed through a large number of editions, and been translated into French, German, Dutch, and Norwegian. Scarcely less popular were ‘The Greatest Thing in the World’ (love), and ‘Pax Vobiscum.’ In 1894 he published a volume called ‘The Ascent of Man,’ in which he insists that certain altruistic factors modify the process of Natural Selection. This doctrine elicited much critical commentary from the stricter sects of the scientists, but the new view commended itself at once to the general reader.

The citations here given are selected from Mr. Drummond’s book of travels, ‘Tropical Africa,’ a book whose simplicity and vividness enable the reader to see the Dark Continent exactly as it is. Drummond died, apparently at the height of his powers, at Tunbridge Wells, England, March 11, 1897.

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