Declaring the Death of Christ: James Denney. IV.

At the Free Church College, Glasgow, James Denney was lured away from the Cameronian faith of his fathers by the concessive apologetics of Brofessor A.B. Bruce. Yet Denney also engaged in evangelism, becoming a student missionary for Free St. John's, Glasgow. Denney had an evangelist's heart, and he thoroughly enjoyed himself. Still more theologically conservative than Professor Bruce, James Denney the student entered on his first work as author. He wrote anonymously, mostly because he was attacking a book written by one of his professors (although a professor with whom Professor Bruce disagreed)!
Denney was reviewing Professor Henry Drummond's Natural Law in the Spiritual World, and he intended to counteract the work's tendency. Drummond, Denney contended, had so confused the Spiritual and Natural worlds that his title was frankly a misnomer!

In 1886, James Denney graduated from the Free Church College and was licensed to preach by the Free Presbytery of Greenock. Immediately afterwards the 31 year-old preacher was called to succeed his mentor Professor Bruce in the pastorate of the East Free Chruch, Broughty Ferry.
Broughty Ferry was a wealthy town near Dundee in which the wealthy of Dundee lived, away from the poverty of the city. Professor Bruce had given his famous book The Training of the Twelve as sermons from the Broughty Ferry Pulpit, quite a challenge for a young preacher!

How Denney coped we shall, God willing, see next time.