Professor Drummond's influence on his contemporaries is not to be measured by the sale of his books, great as that has been. It may be doubted whether any living novelist has had so many readers, and perhaps no living writer has been so eagerly followed and so keenly discussed on the Continent and in America. In the long series of addresses he delivered all over the world he brought about what may at least be called a crisis in the lives of innumerable hearers. He received more of the confidences of people untouched by the ordinary work of the Church than any other man of his time. Men and women came to him in their deepest and bitterest perplexities.

The addresses which make up this volume were written by Professor Drummond between the years 1876 and 1881.