Life & Wisdom Quote by Henry Drummond

Drummond’s line doesn’t merely praise piety; it executes a hostile takeover of the reader’s value system. By declaring Christ-likeness “the only thing…worth caring for,” he leaves no room for the respectable middle ground of moral improvement plus worldly success. Everything else is not just secondary but “folly” and “vain” - words that carry the sting of wasted effort, a life spent polishing trophies on a sinking ship. The rhetorical trick is absolute language deployed as spiritual triage: one true priority, all other ambitions demoted to noise.

The intent is pastoral but also disciplinary. Drummond, a late-Victorian evangelical writer steeped in the era’s confidence in progress, turns that confidence against itself. The industrial age offered new ladders to climb - wealth, status, empire, “achievement” as an identity. He answers with a counter-metric that can’t be cashed out in public recognition. Christ-likeness is inward, slow, unmarketable. That’s the subtextual critique: the world rewards performance; the Christian life demands formation.

The phrase “before which” matters. It imagines Christ-likeness as a courtroom standard, or a bright light that makes other pursuits look smaller, even tawdry. Drummond isn’t arguing that art, work, or intellect are evil; he’s insisting they become meaningful only when subordinated. It’s a radical reordering - less self-help than self-displacement - aimed at readers tempted to baptize ambition rather than abandon it.