"In recalling my impressions of Professor Elmslie, nothing strikes me so forcibly as his unfailing gentleness towards his students. It was very seldom indeed that any student was inattentive or troublesome in class, but when anything of the kind did occur Elmslie never spoke a word to the offender, and but for the pained flush on his face, one would have thought he had not noticed the occurrence. Again, when a student had not prepared his Hebrew lesson, and was unable to read it, Elmslie always appeared more ashamed than the student himself, but never said a word in blame or warning. Only he was afterwards chary of asking the same student to read. "Elmslie was always ready to answer questions or meet any difficulties raised by the students, and he was often more eloquent on these occasions than when engaged in the ordinary routine of the class. He had rather a dislike for the schoolmaster's work that he was compelled to do with junior students, and hurried the class on until they were able to read passages in Hebrew. He did not aim so much at turning out Hebrew scholars as at making preachers, with a deep interest in Hebrew literature, and imbued with its spirit. If he could only secure our interest in a Hebrew author, and enlist our sympathies, he was willing to excuse any ignorance of ours in regard to grammar or syntax." Another says— "Perhaps my most vivid remembrances of Dr. Elmslie collect round his criticisms upon his students' trial discourses. Always kind, invariably conciliatory, in his criticism, yet he pointed out very plainly the defects, and indicated what was lacking with unfailing clearness of judgment. Even in the midst of his rebukes he would frequently take the bitterness away by some half-playful remark or reference to his own experiences.... But better than any criticisms were his own concluding remarks on the text. Compressed, as they had to be, into a very few minutes, the whole intensity of his nature was seen in them. We often left the lecture-hall with our brains all astir and our hearts glowing with the inspiration of his words. "I rather think some of his first-year students generally thought him occasionally heretical in his remarks at the close of his criticism. The one thing he could not bear was dulness, a uniformity of mediocre unreproachableness about a sermon. So he loved to give with startling effect a single side of a truth, and thus to send us away with our minds in a state of rather anxious activity. Once he half-humorously gave us the advice to begin our sermons with a truth stated in an unusual, half-heretical way, if one liked; for there is nothing makes people listen so attentively as a suspicion of heresy. But these early doubts of our Professor's soundness soon vanished, and we found him, as one has said, 'not so much _broad_, as _big_.'"