he stood on their sunlit
summits, that they too are part of God's great world. He would have
the time of his life if he would only commence to sample infinity. His
people are accustomed to seeing him every now and again in a new suit
of clothes. If he begins to-day to sample infinity, they will next
week experience a fresh sensation. They will see the same suit of
clothes with a new man inside it.

II

READY-MADE CLOTHES

Carlyle, as everybody knows, once wrote a Philosophy of Clothes, and
called it _Sartor Resartus_. He did his work so thoroughly and so
exhaustively and so well that, from that day to this, nobody else has
cared to tackle the theme. It is high time, however, that it was
pointed out that with one important aspect of his tremendous subject he
does not attempt to deal. Surely there ought to have been a chapter on
Ready-made Clothes!

I am surprised that Henry Drummond never drew attention to the glaring
omission, for, if Drummond hated one thing more than another, he
loathed and detested ready-made clothes. They were his pet aversion.
Ready-made clothes, he used to say, were things that were made to fit
everybody, and they fitted nobody. Men are not made by machinery and
in sizes; and it follows as a natural consequence that clothes that are
so made will not fit men. The man who is an exact duplicate of the
tailor's model has not yet been born. How Carlyle's omission escaped
the censure of Drummond I cannot imagine. It is true that Drummond was
not particularly attracted by Carlyle; he preferred Emerson. I am
certain that if Drummond had read _Sartor Resartus_ at all carefully he
would have exposed the discrepancy, and Carlyle is therefore to be
congratulated on a very narrow escape.

Drummond's hatred of ready-made clothes is the essential thing about
him. I happened to be lecturing on Drummond the other evening, and I
felt it my duty to point out that Drummond would take his place in
history, not as a scientist nor as an evangelist, nor as a traveller,
nor as an author, but as the uncompromising and relentless assailant of
ready-made clothes. Unless you grasp this, you will never understand
him. He scorned all affectations and imitations. He would adopt no
style of dress simply because it was usual under certain conditions.
'He was,' as an eye-witness of his ordination remarks, 'the last man
whom you could place by the woman's canon of dress. And yet his dress
was a marvel