His Christmas Day discourse gathered
everything into it that could emphasize the anniversary,
including a vigorous attack upon the saints' days and
ceremonies of the Church of England calculated to correct
the concession of the service, and pull up sharply any
who thought that Presbyterianism was giving way to the
spurious attractions of sentimentality or ritual. The
special Easter service, with every appropriate feature
of hymn and invocation, was apt to be marked by an
unsparing denunciation of the pageants and practices of
the Church of Rome. Balance was thus preserved, and
principle relentlessly indicated.
Dr Drummond loved, as I have said, all that asked for
notable comment; the poet and the tragedian in him caught
at the opportunity, and revelled in it. Public events
carried him far, especially if they were disastrous, but
what he most profited by was the dealing of Providence
with members of his own congregation. Of all the occasions
that inspired him, the funeral sermon was his happiest
opportunity, nor was it, in his hands, by any means
unstinted eulogy. Candid was his summing-up, behind the
decent veil, the accepted apology of death; he was not
afraid to refer to the follies of youth or the weaknesses
of age in terms as unmistakable as they were kindly.
"Grace," he said once, of an estimable plain spinster
who had passed away, "did more for her than ever nature
had done.
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