A. J. Gossip was born at Glasgow in 1873 and educated at the University of Edinburgh; there he attended Alexander Whyte's Church and was licensed for the ministry of the Free Church of Scotland in 1898.

He held successively the pastoral charges of St. Columba's, Liverpool; the West United Free Church in Forfar; St. Matthew's U.F. Church, Glasgow; and Beechgrove, Aberdeen. In 1928 he was appointed Professor of Christian Ethics and Practical Training in Trinity College, Glasgow, where he remained until his retirement in 1945.

To speak of Gossip's ministry in these four congregations and of the impact he made on his students in Glasgow is to call attention to only a part of the work which he accomplished. By his spoken and written words he became comforter and father in God to thousands who had never seen him and of whom he himself knew nothing.

The prevailing impression made by his preaching was that of a vital personality charged with the communication of an urgent message. That message was clothed in pithy and ardent words which reached the heart and played upon the feelings so as to revive energy and restore hope.

Preaching was for Gossip the heart of worship. He said, "The priest is a useful enough functionary, with a real part to play, and to whom we owe more than we always realize. But it is the preacher who sets men's hearts burning, and the prophet who brings in a new day of the Lord."

His preaching was always related to the demands and needs, the testings and trials of the common life, and always he preached the authentic notes of the Christian Gospel as he had tested them and found them true in his own experience. As he once wrote: "Preach to your own heart, and many startled passers-by will stop to listen, feeling you are addressing them. Draw anonymously on the story of your life, and they will sit astonished in the pews, asking, 'Who has been telling him about me?'"1

Two experiences were of supreme significance for Gossip's faith and preaching. One was his period of service as a chaplain with the Glasgow Highlanders in the First World War; it gave him a deep knowledge of men as they face the horrors of war.

He once buried a hundred boys he knew in one long grave, but he saw a nobility in the sacrifice which reminded him of the Cross. He learned in the trenches that words spoken from the heart and based on living experience, however lame and stumbling their expression, may make a lasting appeal.

During the Second World War he wrote an article in The British Weekly on "The Duties and Opportunities of Army Chaplains" in which he said: "Never have I found it so easy to preach as at the front: never have I known men so ready to listen. It was always the deep things that they wanted, not knowing what a day or an hour might bring forth. What shall I preach about? I used to ask. 'Tell us something about Jesus Christ'."

The second decisive experience of Gossip's life was the sudden death of his wife in 1927. He faced this loss with tremendous courage. He preached to his own people in Aberdeen and -- through the printed word -- to a much greater congregation that sermon to which he gave the title, "But when life tumbles in, what then?"