Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/365

 years is to be found in his articles (including Christianity) in the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1875–1888). The contributions of his friend, William Robertson Smith [q.v.], to the Encyclopædia led to the most famous heresy prosecution of recent years, and in the courts of the Free Church Lindsay defended Smith with no less courage than ability (1877–1881).

Lindsay's first historical work which attracted widespread attention was his book on Luther and the German Reformation, published in 1900. It was followed by his remarkable chapter on Luther in the second volume of the Cambridge Modern History (1903), and, in 1906–1907, by his largest and most important book, A History of the Reformation in Europe. He intended this work to be the description of ‘a great religious movement amid its social environment’, and he broke fresh ground in his investigations into popular and family religious life in Germany in the decades immediately preceding the Reformation, and in his exposition of ‘the continuity in the religious life of the period’. This insistence upon the significance of the records of social and domestic life was Lindsay's characteristic approach to any period of history, and it found expression in his collection of caricatures and illustrations of costume. His book on the Reformation added to its learning and candour a full-blooded humanity which makes it fascinating reading, and it is much the most important Scottish contribution to European history since the works of Robertson.

While Lindsay will be best remembered as an historian of the Reformation, the literary activity of his later life, when he prepared for the press the products of many years of reading and thinking, is illustrated by his Cunningham lectures on The Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries (1903), by chapters in the first volume (1911) of the Cambridge Medieval History (The Triumph of Christianity), and in the third volume (1909) of the Cambridge History of English Literature (Englishmen and the Classical Renascence), and by his estimate of the personality and the achievement of George Buchanan in Glasgow Quatercentenary Studies (1906). These are marked by sureness of touch, width of interest and sympathy, and clearness of exposition. He wrote vigorously and often picturesquely, and he had a remarkable power of visualizing both men and things.

Throughout his life, Lindsay was deeply interested in social problems. He organized the efforts of his students in insufficiently equipped Glasgow parishes, he took part in the crofter agitation in the West Highlands and islands, associated with the early political career of Joseph Chamberlain, and he was the friend of such labour leaders as Ben Tillett, Tom Mann, and Cunninghame Graham. He married in 1872 Anna, elder daughter of A. Colquhoun-Stirling-Murray Dunlop, of Edinbarnet and Corsock, formerly M.P. for Greenock, by whom he had three sons and two daughters; and he shared his wife's enthusiasm for the education of women. His advice was sought by many religious and social workers, who relied upon his sympathy and his robust and penetrating common sense. He died 6 December 1914. A portrait by Fiddes Watt is in the Glasgow United Free Church college.

 LISTER, JOSEPH, first, of Lyme Regis, (1827–1912), founder of antiseptic surgery, the second son and fourth child of Joseph Jackson Lister, F.R.S., wine-merchant and microscopist [q.v.], was born at Upton House, Upton, Essex, 5 April 1827. His ancestors were members of the Society of Friends since the early part of the eighteenth century. He was educated at Grove House School, Tottenham, and at University College, London, which he entered in 1844. At school he was forward for his age and early showed his taste for natural history by collecting and preparing specimens of various kinds. In later life he frequently spoke of the great influence on him of his father (of whom he has written an account in this ), and how much he was indebted to him for directing his mind to scientific pursuits and especially to the study of natural history. Whilst still at school, he determined to be a surgeon. None of his near relations were in the medical profession, and it would seem that this desire was entirely spontaneous. He took the B.A. degree of the university of London in 1847, but, owing to an attack of smallpox, he did not begin his medical studies until the autumn of 1848, and was thus rather older than most of his fellow-students. While a student in the faculty of arts, he was present at the first operation under ether in this country—performed by Robert Liston [q.v.] in the theatre of University College Hospital in December 1846.

University College was a small medical school at this time, since it had only been 339