Henry Drummond (evangelist)

Rev Prof Henry Drummond FRSE LLD FGS (17 August 1851 – 11 March 1897) was a Scottish evangelist, biologist, writer and lecturer.

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.

Drummond was born at Park Place in Stirling, the son of William Drummond (d.1888) a seedsman (founder of Drummond Seeds), and his wife, Jane Campbell Blackwood (d.1910). His early education was at Stirling High School and Morrison's Academy.

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 on Lynedoch Street in Glasgow, 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.

In 1880 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Sir Archibald Geikie, William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, John Gray McKendrick, and Sir Robert Christison.

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