"As a preacher Professor Elmslie was, in many of the highest qualities of a preacher, without a peer. No one, I think, appreciated more highly than he the opportunity the preacher of Christ has to apply balm to all the wounds of humanity, and no one exercised this function with a more intelligent or tender sympathy or with happier results. No human condition, physical, mental, or spiritual, seemed beyond his ken, and none but found in him the suitable treatment. His wealth of knowledge, his unerring spiritual insight, and his rare felicity of language gave him the ear of cultured and uncultured, of the believer and the sceptic alike. It has always seemed doubtful to some of his friends whether such exceptional aptitude for preaching should have been, even in any degree, sacrificed to professorial work. Yet he himself delighted in that work, and the very last time I saw him he was full of enthusiasm for Old Testament studies, and hopeful of what might be done by himself and his fellow-labourers in this field. "When so energetic an individuality is withdrawn the world suffers an appreciable loss; and one cannot yet think of the place he filled, or of the place we all hoped he would yet fill, without a keen shoot of pain." II. FROM PROFESSOR HENRY DRUMMOND. "DEAR MR. NICOLL,—It is futile to plead want of recollection as an excuse for what must be a too brief contribution to your little portrait, for no one who ever knew Elmslie could ever forget him. But the truth is, I never knew him well. At college he was too much my senior for me to have presumed to know him, and in after years we scarcely ever met, except on one occasion, for more than a passing moment. "I never heard Elmslie preach, or lecture, or do anything public. I knew him chiefly as a human being. Elmslie off the chair was one of the most attractive spirits who ever graced this planet. It was not so much his simple character, or the bubbling and irresistible _bonhommie_, or even the amazing versatility of his gifts, but a certain radiance that he carried with him, a certain something that made you sun yourself in his presence, and open the pores of your soul, and be happy. I think I can recall no word that he ever spoke, or even any idea that he ever forged, but the _man_ made an impression on you indelibly delightful and joyous.