About the same time he began to learn Dutch.  He assigned as one reason for this that he wanted to read Kuenen’s works.  But as the only one of these that he had was in his library already, having come to him from the effects of a deceased friend, it is possible that this was just an unconscious excuse on his part for indulging in the luxury of learning a new language—­that he read Kuenen in order to learn Dutch, instead of learning Dutch in order to read Kuenen.  However, his knowledge of the language enabled him to follow closely a movement which excited his interest in no common degree, viz. the secession of a large evangelical party from the rationalistic State Church of Holland, under Abraham Kuyper, the present Prime Minister of that country, and their organisation into a Free Presbyterian Church.

Other languages at which he worked during this period were Spanish, of which he acquired the rudiments during his tour in California; and Dano-Norwegian, which he picked up during a month’s residence at Christiania in 1877, and furbished for a meeting of the Evangelical Alliance at Copenhagen in 1884.  All this time he was pursuing his Patristic and other historical studies with unflagging vigour, always writing new lectures, always maintaining his love of abstract knowledge and his eager desire to add to his already vast stores of learning.  When, a year and a half before his death, a vacancy occurred in the Church History chair in the College, he stepped into the breach and delivered a course of lectures on the Fathers, which took his class by storm.

“His manner,” says one who heard these lectures, “was quite different in the Church History classroom from what it was in that of Systematic Theology.  In the latter he taught like a man who felt wearied and old; but in the former he showed a surprising freshness and enthusiasm.  It was delightful to see him in the Church History class forgetting age and care, and away back in spirit with Origen and his other old friends.”

These lectures, while abounding in searching and masterly criticism of doctrinal views, are specially noticeable for their delineation of the living power of Christianity as exhibited in the men and the times with which they deal.  This was the aspect of Christian truth which had all along attracted him.  It was what had determined his choice of the ministry as the main work of his life, and in his later years it still asserted its power over him.  Although he had now no longer a ministerial charge of his own, he could not separate himself from the active work of the Church—­he could not withdraw from contact with the Christian life which it manifested.