Dabney on J.A. Alexander

Joshua Lim at Reformed Blogging has provided an interesting quotation from Dabney about Hodge (link). It's worth noting that the idiom Dabney employs is a bit outdated and might seem confusing to modern readers. "Man of the closet" means someone who studies a lot, which we might today refer to as a person who lives in an ivory tower.


UPDATE: It turns out that it is not Hodge, but J.A. Alexander that was being discussed. Joshua has removed the post, so I'll just post the relevant description, below:

"I was much struck with the fact that one who was so mach a man of the closet as he should have so much practical knowledge of society and human nature. During the day I remarked that there seemed to be a great difficulty in combining practical knowledge of men and affairs with thorough scholarship in our young men because the study which secured the latter necessarily shut them out of the publicity chich taught the former. He very quietly replied that there was a way by which the recluse in his study might acquire a correct knowledge of nature; by the study of his Bible and his own heart. I have no doubt that this remark gave the key to his own character as concerned this trait of it. There was a remarkable absence of egotism and dogmatism for one who must have been conscious of powers and acquirements and who had been so much complimented and applanded. This unhappily for me, happily for him, was my last interview for the good man was taken away from the evil to come." The Life of Joseph Addison Alexander By Henry Carrington Alexander, pp. 798-99.