Servants of the King
iobert E. Speer
UCSB LIBKAKY .,4-'
Servants of the King
ROBERT E. SPEER
NEW YORK
MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT
OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
1914
Copyright, 1909, by
Young People's Missionary Mo\-ement
OF THE Ul-IITED StATES AND CANADA
CONTENTS
Page
Preface vii
I David Livingstone 1
II Henry Benjamin Whipple 19
III William Taylor 35
IV Alice Jackson 55
V Guido Fridolin Verbeck IZ
VI Eleanor Chesnut 89
VII Matthew Tyson Yates 115
VIII Isabella Thoburn 137
IX James Robertson 153
X John Coleridge Patteson 173
XI Ion Keith-Falconer 189
Index 205
itt
ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
David Livingstone 3
Inscription on the Tree in Ilala, Africa, Under
Which the Heart of Livingstone Was Buried 15
Henry Benjamin Whipple 21
The Rev. J. J. Enmegahbowh, a Full-blood Chippewa,
Ordained by Bishop Henry B. Whipple 25
William Taylor 37
Missionary Journeys of William Taylor 50
Alice Jackson 57
Smith College Basket-ball Team 61
Guido Fridolin Verbeck 75
Decoration of the Order of the Rising Sun 85
Eleanor Chesnut 91
Ruins of the Lien-chou Hospital, China 107
Matthew Tyson Yates 117
Yates Memorial Hall, Shanghai, China 133
Isabella Thoburn 139
Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow, India 145
James Robertson 155
James Robertson's Grave in the Kildonan Churchyard,
Manitoba 165
John Coleridge Patteson 175
Facsimile of a Letter Written by Bishop Patteson
from Melanesia 183
Ion Keith-Falconer 191
Keith-Falconer's Home in Scotland 201
Ruins of His Home in Arabia 201
V
PREFACE
The Bible itself is, in the main, simply a book
of biographies. The most wonderful part of it is
the biography of Jesus. The next most wonderful is
the life and letters of Saint Paul. And almost all
of the Old Testament is either the record of men's
lives or God's revelation through men who, in pro-
claiming the message which had been given to them
of God, also unawares laid bare their own inmost
souls. Through the lives of men and of his own
Son, God has revealed his truth, and in the record
of their lives reveals it still.
And we learn best what this revelation of God
means and can effect, by studying it, first in itself,
and then in true men who have studied it and who
are living by it. Of all such, none have lived more
richly or originally than the missionaries who have
gone out to live now such lives as Paul lived, and
to work such work as Paul wrought nearly nineteen
centuries ago.
The sketches in this volume are studies of such
men and women. Some worked at home, and some
abroad. Some are known to all, and some to smaller
circles, but in each one the great principles of the
Savior's own life were in a true though lesser meas-
via Preface
ure incarnate, and our purpose in studying them
should be to find those principles and open a larger
place for them in our own lives. As they served
Christ, so also ought we to serve him. And surely
we will serve him better as we see what a fine, great
thing their service was.
If those who study these sketches wish to consult
fuller biographies, they may turn to the following,
from which the material for the sketches has been
drawn: Blaikie, The Personal Life of David
Livingstone; Whipple, Lights and Shadows of a
Long Episcopate; Taylor, The Story of My Life;
Speer, A Memorial of Alice Jackson; Grififis, Verheck
of Japan; Taylor, The Story of Yates, the Mission-
ary; Gordon, The Life of James Robertson; Tho-
burn, Life of Isabella Thoburn; Yonge, Life of John
Coleridge Patteson; Sinker, Memorials of the Hon-
orable Ion Keith-Falconer,
Robert E. Speer.
New York City,
April 15, 1909.
DAVID LIVINGSTONE
I will place no value on anything I have or may possess,
except in relation to the kingdom of Christ.
— David Livingstone
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DAVID LIVINGSTONE
IN Westminster Abbey the visitor, wandering
about studying the monuments and inscriptions,
comes in the middle of the nave upon a large black
slab set in the floor bearing these words :
BROUGHT BY FAITHFUL HANDS
OVER LAND AND SEA^
HERE RESTS
DAVID LIVINGSTONE,
MISSIONARY, TRAVELER, PHILANTHROPIST,
Born March 19, 18 13,
At Blantyre, Lanarkshire.
Died May 4, 1873,
At Chitambo's Village, Ilala.
On the right border of the stone is a Latin sen-
tence, and along the left border :
OTHER SHEEP I HAVE WHICH ARE NOT OF THIS FOLD,
THEM ALSO I MUST BRING, AND THEY SHALL HEAR
MY VOICE.
This is the resting-place of the body, but not of
the heart, of the Scotch weaver lad who went out
3
4 Servants of the King
from his simple home an unknown lad and died as
one of the greatest and most honored of men.
From his earliest childhood he was of a calm, self-
reliant nature. We are told by his best biographer
that '*it was his father's habit to lock the door at
dusk, by which time all the children were expected
to be in the house. One evening David had infringed
this rule, and when he reached the door it was
barred. He made no cry nor disturbance, but, hav-
ing procured a piece of bread, sat down contentedly
to pass the night on the doorstep. There, on looking
out, his mother found him. ... At the age of nine
he got a New Testament from his Sunday-school
teacher for repeating the 119th Psalm on two suc-
cessive evenings with only five errors, a proof that
perseverance was bred in the bone."
At the age of ten he went to work in the cotton
factory as a piecer, and after some years was pro-
moted to be a spinner. The first half-crown he
earned he gave to his mother. With part of his
first week's wages he bought a Latin text-book and
studied that language with ardor in an evening class
between eight and ten. He had to be in the factory
at six in the morning and his work ended at eight
at night. But by working at Latin until midnight
he mastered Virgil and Horace by the time he was
sixteen. He used to read in the factory by putting
the book on the spinning- jenny so that he could catch
David Livingstone 5
a sentence at a time as he passed at his work. He
was fond of botany and geology and zoology, and
when he could get out would scour the country for
specimens. On one expedition he and his brother
caught a big salmon, and, to conceal the fish, which
they had no right to take, they put it in his brother's
trousers leg and so got it home.
When he was about twelve he began to have se-
rious thoughts about deeper things, but not till he
was twenty did the great change come which
brought into his life the strength of the consciousness
of his duty to God. Feeling *'that the salvation of
men ought to be the chief desire and aim of every
Christian," he made a resolution "that he would give
to the cause of missions all that he might earn be-
yond what was required for his subsistence." But
at twenty-one he read an appeal by Mr. Gutzlaff on
behalf of China, and from that time he sought him-
self to enter the foreign mission field, influenced by
"the claim of so many millions of his fellow crea-
tures and the want of qualified missionaries." So
he went out from his home to follow the advice of
old David Hogg, one of the patriarchs of the village :
**Now, lad, make religion the every-day business of
your life, and not a thing of fits and starts; for if
you do, temptation and other things will get the
better of you."
6 Servants of the King
China was the land to which Livingstone wished
to go, but the opium war prevented his doing so
at once. About the same time he came into con-
tact with Dr. Robert Moffat, who was then in
England creating much interest in his South African
mission. He told Livingstone of ''a vast plain to
the north where he had sometimes seen, in the morn-
ing sun, the smoke of a thousand villages, where no
missionary had ever been," and it was not long
before the young Scotch student decided for Africa.
Livingstone was thorough in his preparation, as he
was in all things. He determined to get a medical as
well as a theological education. To do it he had to
borrow books, to earn his own way, and to live with
the closest economy, paying alx)ut fifty cents a week
for the rent of his room. The first time he tried to
preach he entirely forgot his sermon, and saying,
*Triends, I have forgotten all I had to say," he hur-
ried out of the pulpit and left the chapel. One of his
acquaintances of those days wTote, years after, that
even then his two strongest characteristics were sim-
plicity and resolution. "Now after forty years," he
adds, "I remember his step, the characteristic for-
ward tread, firm, simple, resolute, neither fast nor
slow, no hurry and no dawdle, but which evidently
meant — getting there."
On December 8, 1840, he sailed for Africa, going
out by way of Brazil and the Cape of Good Hope.
David Livingstone 7
The captain of the ship taught him the use of the
quadrant and how to take observations. He was to
find good use for this knowledge. Arriving at the
Cape, he went on to his first station, Kuruman, but
he had no thought of staying there or of working
in any fixed groove. He was thinking of new plans,
and, above all, his eyes were turned northward to-
ward the great region absolutely untouched and un-
known. The first period of his work might be
roughly marked as from 1840 to 1852. From Kuru-
man he made several trips deeper into the country,
and had some of those experiences with lions of
which he was to have so many.
On one trip he broke a finger, and when it was
healing broke it again by the recoil of a revolver
which he shot at a lion which made him a sudden
visit in the middle of the night. Some of his trips
were in ox-wagons and some on ox-back. *Tt is
rough traveling, as you can conceive," he wrote.
*'The skin is so loose there is no getting one's great-
coat, which has to serve both as saddle and blanket,
to stick on; and then the long horns in front, with
which he can give one a punch in the abdomen if he
likes, make us sit as bolt upright as dragoons. In
this manner I traveled more than four hundred
miles." His investigations were undertaken on his
own responsibility. He wrote home to ask the direc-
tors of the London Missionary Society to approve,
8 Servants of the King
but if they did not, he said, he was at their disposal
"to go anywhere, provided it he forward."
He soon left Kuruman to locate at Mabotsa, and
it was there that a lion nearly killed him, tearing his
flesh and crushing the bone in his shoulder. A na-
tive diverted the attention of the lion when his paw
was on Livingstone's head. When asked once what
he thought when the lion was over him, Livingstone
answered: "I was thinking what part of me he
would eat first." When years later his body was
brought home to England it was by the false joint
in the crushed arm that it was identified. To avoid
friction at Mabotsa, Livingstone, who had just built
a house and laid out a garden, but who would quar-
rel with no one, gave up the station and went on with
the daughter of Robert and Mary Moffat, the great
missionaries of South Africa, whom he had just
married, and established a new station at Chonuane.
But there was no water there, so he moved again to
Kolobeng, on the river of that name, and the whole
tribe among whom he lived moved with him.
Kolobeng was unhealthful, and far beyond it
stretched the vast unknown interior. Something in
Livingstone's heart told him to go on. So on he
went. On August i, 1849, he discovered Lake
'Ngami, a body of water so big that he could not see
the opposite shore. And, later, he found the River
Zambezi. The lake was 870 miles from Kuruman
David Livingstone 9
across a desert. He must find a passage to the sea on
either the west or the east coast. ''Providence seems
to call me to the regions beyond," he wrote, and he
heard ever more loudly the call of God to strike at
the awful slave traffic. But what should he do with
his wife and children ? The only course was to send
them home to Scotland. So, hard as it was, he took
them to Cape Town in March, 1852, the whole party
appearing out of the interior in clothes of curious
and outworn fashions, having been eleven years
away from civilization, and in April he parted from
his family and turned back into the darkness.
Before he reached Kolobeng the Boers had at-
tacked and destroyed that station. With all ties to
any one place now broken, he started north, and in
June, 1853, reached Linyanti, fifteen hundred miles
north from the Cape. It was a hard and dangerous
journey, part of it made with fever, through swamps
and thickets and water three or four feet deep.
*'With our hands all raw and bloody and knees
through our trousers, we at length emerged. But,''
as he wrote in his journals on the way, "if God has
accepted my service, then my life is charmed till my
work is done. ... I will place no value on anything
I have or may possess, except in relation to the king-
dom of Christ. If anything will advance the inter-
ests of that kingdom, it shall be given away or kept
only as by giving or keeping of it I shall most pro-
lo Servants of the King
mote the glory of him to whom I owe all my hopes
in time and eternity. May grace and strength suffi-
cient to enable me to adhere faithfully to this reso-
lution be imparted to me, so that in truth, not in
name only, all my interests and those of my children
may be identified with his cause. ... I will try
and remember always to approach God in secret with
as much reverence in speech, posture, and behavior
as in public. Help me, thou who knowest my frame
and pitiest as a father his children." Evidences of
the curse of the slave-trade multiplied constantly,
and he saw more clearly at Linyanti that both for
the suppression of that traffic and for the expansion
of the missionary work it was necessary to open up
the continent.
Accordingly, on November ii, 1853, he started
westward for the Atlantic Ocean, and on May 31,
1854, came out at Loanda, about two hundred miles
south of the mouth of the Congo. He had thirty-
one attacks of fever on the way. He must find and
make his own road. The floods and rains kept him
almost constantly wet. Savages opposed him. He
had no white companions. He arrived ragged and
worn and exhausted, to find no letters from home
waiting for him. An ordinary man would have felt
that he had done enough and would have started for
home, but not Livingstone. He plunged back into
Africa and went eastward across the continent. He
David Livingstone ii
left Loanda September 24, 1854, and reached Quili-
mane, on the opposite side of Africa, on May 20,
1856. On the way he became nearly deaf from fever
and nearly blind from being struck in the eye by a
branch of a tree in the forest. On this trip he dis-
covered the great Victoria Falls, higher and fuller
than Niagara, and he had yet more exciting times
with savage tribes, whom, as always, he found a way
to placate. From Quilimane he sailed for England,
arriving August, 1856. At Cairo he learned of the
death of his old father, who had longed to see him
once again.
He got a tremendous welcome home. The Scotch
weaver lad who had been all alone in Africa found
himself the great hero of the day in Scotland and
England. He was received by the men of science,
by the Queen and the royal family, by all friends of
humanity. He was given the freedom of the cities
of London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, and honors of
the Universities of Glasgov/, and Oxford, and Cam-
bridge. Unspoiled by all the flattery, he left Eng-
land to return to Africa on March 10, 1858, going
out now to Quilimane as British consul for the east
coast and interior of Africa. As he sailed, he wrote
back to his son, Tom :
"London, 2nd February, 1858. — My Dear Tom:
I am soon going off from this country, and will leave
you to the care of him who neither slumbers nor
12 Servants of the King
sleeps, and never disappointed any one who put his
trust in him. If you make him your friend, he will
be better to you than any companion can be. He
is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. May
he grant you grace to seek him and to serve him.
I have nothing better to say to you than to take God
for your Father, Jesus for your Savior, and the
Holy Spirit for your sanctifier. Do this and you are
safe forever. No evil can then befall you. Hope
you will learn quickly and well, so as to be fitted for
God's service in the world."
"Pearl, in the Mersey, loth March, 1858. — My
Dear Tom : We are off again, and we trust that he
who rules the waves will watch over us and remain
with you, to bless us and make us blessings to our
fellow men. The Lord be with you, and be very
gracious to you ! Avoid and hate sin, and cleave to
Jesus as your Savior from guilt."
It was six years before Livingstone returned
again to England. During this time he explored the
Zambezi and the Shire rivers, making his way about
among the people, whatever the difficulties, always
with success, because he knew how to win and keep
their confidence and love by being himself ever
truthful, ever fearless. Mrs. Livingstone returned
with him to Africa on this trip, and died on April
27, 1862, at Shupanga, where she was buried, and
her husband went on alone to Lake Nyasa, making
David Livingstone 13
unwearied explorations, surmounting the obstacles of
nature and bad men, and learning ever more and
more about the iniquity of the trade in slaves.
In 1864 he went to India and thence to England
for the last time. While there he learned of the
death of his son Robert, who fought on the North-
ern side in the American Civil War and lies buried
at Gettysburg, and his mother also died while he
was on his way. He got home in time to fulfil
her wish that one of her laddies should lay
her head in her grave. He had another crowded
year, which included the writing of a book,
as his previous visit had done, and then with
the last public words in Scotland, "Fear God
and work hard," he returned to Africa to open
up the unknown eastern interior. This time his con-
nection was with the Royal Geographical Society.
For the first six years he explored eastern equatorial
Africa, discovering new lakes, rivers, and moun-
tains, exposing the slaVe-trade, suffering, struggling,
but never yielding. One Christmas he writes, "Took
my belt up three holes to relieve hunger." He had
no white companion, and in 1866 the report reached
Zanzibar that he had been killed.
This story was found to be false, but still no white
man had seen Livingstone for a long time. He was
not seeking to be seen, however. In the dark of the
interior, all alone, hungry and weary, he was press-
14 Servants of the King
ing on to open new country and to insure the future
freedom of poor and oppressed peoples. In 1871
he was reduced to the last straits, all the goods sent
to him at Ujiji having been sold by the rascal
Shereef to whom they had been consigned ; but just
then Henry M. Stanley, who had been sent by the
New York Herald to find him, came to him after a
long search, bringing him ample stores. What im-
pression he made on Stanley, Stanley himself has
told us :
"I defy any one to be in his society long without
thoroughly fathoming him, for in him there is no
guile, and what is apparent on the surface is the
thing that is in him. . . . Dr. Livingstone is about
sixty years old, though after he was restored to
health he looked like a man who had not passed his
fiftieth year. . . . You may take any point in Dr.
Livingstone's character and analyze it carefully, and
I would challenge any man to find a fault in it. . . .
His is the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility
of the Roman, the enduring resolution of the
Anglo-Saxon — never to relinquish his work, though
his heart yearns for home; never to surrender his
obligations until he can write finis to his work."
Refreshed by Stanley's visit and the supplies he
brought, Livingstone turned inland again, hunting
for the source of the Nile and fighting the slave-
trade. The iron frame had been taxed almost to its
INSCRIPTION' OX THE TREE IN ILALA, AFRICA, UNDER WHICH THE HEART OF
LIVINGSTONE WAS BURIED
David Livingstone 15
limit, however, and ever fresh difficulties had to be
overcome. His last birthday, March 19, 1873, found
him very weak.
"The 29th of April was the last day of his travels.
In the morning he directed Susi to take down the
side of the hut that the kitanda might be brought to
him, as the door would not admit it, and he was quite
unable to w^alk to it. Then came the crossing of a
river; then progress through swamps and plashes;
and when they got to anything like a dry plain he
would ever and anon beg of them to lay him down.
At last they got him to Chitambo's village, in Ilala,
where they had to put him under the eaves of a
house during a drizzling rain, until the hut they
were building should be got ready.
"Then they laid him on a rough bed in the hut,
where he spent the night. Next day he lay undis-
turbed. He asked a few wandering questions about
the country — especially about Luapula. His people
knew that the end could not be far off. Nothing oc-
curred to attract notice during the early part of the
night, but at four in the morning the boy who lay
at his door called in alarm for Susi, fearing that
their master w^as dead. By the candle still burning
they saw him, not in bed, but kneeling at the bedside
with his head buried in his hands upon the pillow.
The sad yet not unexpected truth soon became evi-
dent : he had passed away on the farthest of all his
1 6 Servants of the King
journeys, and without a single attendant. But he
had died in the act of prayer — prayer offered in that
reverential attitude about which he was always so
particular; commending his own spirit, w^ith all his
dear ones, as w^as his wont, into the hands of his
Savior; and commending Africa — his own dear Af-
rica — with all her woes and sins and wrongs, to the
Avenger of the oppressed and the Redeemer of the
lost."
His faithful African companions prepared his
body for transportation to the coast, burying his
heart and other organs at the foot of a mvida tree
in Ilala, which is now marked with a rough inscrip-
tion. The body they carried to Zanzibar. Thence
it was taken to England and buried in the Abbey
under the great slab which bears his name, and the
feelings of the whole world were expressed in the
lines in Punch:
**Droop, half-mast colors, bow, bareheaded crowds,
As this plain coffin o'er the side is slung,
To pass by woods of masts and ratlined shrouds,
As erst by Afric's trunks, liana-hung.
" 'Tis the last mile of many thousands trod
With failing strength, but never-failing will,
By the worn frame, now at its rest with God,
That never rested from its fight with ill.
"Or if the ache of travel and of toil
Would sometimes wring a short, sharp cry of pain
From agony of fever, blain, and boil,
'Twas but to crush it down and on again!
David Livingstone 17
*'He knew not that the trumpet he had blown
Out of the darkness of that dismal land,
Had reached and roused an army of its own
To strike the chains from the slave's fettered hand.
^*Now we believe, he knows, sees all is well ;
How God had stayed his will and shaped his way.
To bring the light to those that darkling dwell
With gains that life's devotion well repay.
*'Open the Abbey doors and bear him in
To sleep with king and statesman, chief and sage,
The missionary come of weaver-kin.
But great by work that brooks no lower wage.
*'He needs no epitaph to guard a name
Which men shall prize while worthy work is known ;
He lived and died for good — be that his fame :
Let marble crumble: this is Living — stone."
HENRY BENJAMIN WHIPPLE
>9
I ask only Justice for a wronged and neglected race.
— Henry Benjamin Whipple
H. <^. O^^KvVV'^^
II
HENRY BENJAMIN WHIPPLE
THERE are causes which need to be fought for.
Sometimes it is right to fight for them with
arms, though it is terrible when it is so. But wrong
is not to be allowed to flourish unopposed, and those
who oppose it must be prepared to meet it fearlessly.
Often the conflict calls for no physical strife. It is a
moral struggle. But it is a struggle, as truly as the
work Paul had done and the life he had lived seemed
to him to have been "a good fight." And Paul was
glad that he had fought manfully, had put his soul in
it, and, whatever his own fate, had prevailed. That
is the only way to wage any battle.
In the last century one of the great struggles was
for justice to the American Indian. Little by little
his lands were taken from him. He was driven west-
ward from the East and eastward from the West.
Hemmed in by the encircling and ever-contracting
lines of white encroachment, his hunting-grounds
were destroyed, the money promised him was squan-
dered before it reached him, or, if it reached him, was
21
22 Servants of the King
made an occasion of debauching him, his manhood
was ruined by the trade in liquor, vices of which
he never knew were introduced, and the solemn
treaties made with him by the government were
broken. At one of the councils between the govern-
ment representatives and the chiefs of the Sioux, an
aged Sioux, holding in his hands the treaties made
with the Sioux, said: "The first white man who
came to make a treaty promised to do certain things
for us. He was a liar." He repeated the substance
of each treaty, always ending with, "He lied." And
his accusation was true. When Red Cloud was once
asked for a toast at a public dinner, he rose and said :
"When men part they look forward to meeting
again. I hope that one day we may meet in a land
where white men are not liars."
The Indians needed a friend who would fight for
them in their struggle against the Injustice and
wrong with which they were forced to contend. And
God raised up for them a defender. He tells us that
as a small boy he had a foreshadowing of the battles
he was to fight for his "poor Indians."
"It was upon the occasion of a quarrel," he writes,
"between a boy much older than myself and another
half his size. Indignant at the unrighteousness of
an unequal fight, I rushed upon the bully and in due
season went home triumphant, but with clothes torn
and face covered with blood. My dear mother, with
Henry Benjamin Whipple 23
an expression of horror upon her fine face, ran
toward me and, putting her arms around me, cried :
'My darling boy, what has happened? Why are
you in this dreadful condition?' 'Yes, I know it's
bad,' was my answer ; 'but, mother, you ought to see
the other fellow!'"
This boy was Henry Benjamin Whipple, the fu-
ture Bishop of Minnesota, and the unwearied friend
and protector of the Indians. He was born in
Adams, Jefferson County, New York, on February
15, 1822. At ten years of age he was sent to a
boarding-school in Clinton, New York, and later to
Oberlin College, where the great Charles G. Finney
w^as then president. His health failed as a student,
and he went into business and politics, where he did
so well that when his health improved and he entered
the Episcopal ministry, Thurlow Weed, one of the
leading New York politicians, said that he "hoped
a good politician had not been spoiled to make a
poor preacher." One of his first lessons as a preacher
was from an old judge, who, after what Henry felt
was a great sermon, laid his hand on his shoulder
and said: ''Henry, no matter how long you live,
never preach that sermon again. Tell man of the
love of Jesus Christ, and then you will help him."
"It taught me," said Bishop Whipple, "that God's
message in Jesus Christ is to the heart."
His first preaching appointment was in Rome,
24 Servants of the King
New York. Then he went to Florida, and, working
as he did always and everywhere for all sorts and
conditions of men, gained a lifelong interest in the
negro. Next he went to Chicago and established
a new church there, gathering the people in from
the highways and hedges and visiting every shop
and saloon and factory within a mile of his hall.
To get hold of the railway men he studied the struc-
ture of steam-engines.
In 1859 Mr. Whipple was elected Bishop of Min-
nesota, and began his work in the fall, and imme-
diately visited the Indians, of whom 20,000 lived in
his diocese — the Chippewas, Sioux, and Winneba-
goes — and saw for himself their dark condition. At
the same time, as he said years later, he never found
an atheist among the North American Indians, and,
though the field was hard, that was the more reason
for not neglecting it.
The Bishop chose Faribault as his headquarters,
and had his first service there on February 19, i860.
It was a humble beginning in an insignificant vil-
lage. Now there are a Divinity School, with gray-
stone buildings, in a park of three acres; a Girls'
School, with pleasant grounds, and Shattuck School
for boys, with armory and elaborate buildings in a
place of 160 acres. Though often opposed, even
in Faribault, for his defense of the Indians, the
Bishop won over all foes, and when in 1895
THE 2EV. J. J. ENMEGAH30WH, A FULL-BLOOD CHIPPEWA, ORDAINED BY
BI-SHOP HENRY B. WHIPPLE
Henry Benjamin Whipple 25
the General Convention of the Protestant Epis-
copal Church met in St. Paul, the delegates visited
Faribault at the invitation of its citizens. How firm
a hold the Bishop had gained upon the affections of
the community was shown by what followed. There
could be no better test of true character. One of
the committee, a Roman Catholic, said, *There must
be a four-horse carriage for our Bishop," and when
it was suggested that the Bishop would think it un-
necessary, he exclaimed, *'The Bishop shall have a
four-horse carriage if I pay for it myself." And
when a Roman Catholic liveryman was asked how
many carriages he could furnish for the occasion, he
answered, "You can have every horse and carriage
in my stable without a dollar of expense."
The Bishop had plenty of rough-and-tumble work
to do in the early years. Among other things, he
learned early to pull teeth and to practise a little
medicine, and used his knowledge on his next visit
at White Fish Lake.
"After the service a chief came to me and, with
his hand on his cheek, said, 'Wibidakosi.' With a
not unmingled sensation I boldly answ^ered, T will
help you.^ He opened his mouth, and to my dismay
I saw that the sick tooth was a large molar on the
upper jaw. But 'in for a penny, in for a pound.' It
was a comfort to remember that Indians never show
signs of pain, no matter how great the agony. I
26 Servants of the King
followed to the letter all the good doctor's directions
and I did pull. In spite of appearances I knew it
was the 'ligaments' and not an artery that I had cut,
but I used salt as heroically as I did the forceps, and
it was with no small degree of satisfaction that I
heard the old chief telling his people that 'Kichi-
mekadewiconaye w^as a great medicine man.' "
He was lost in winter storms on the prairie, and
he roughed it to and fro across the plains and among
the frontier settlements, without any thought of
sparing himself, only rejoicing that he could preach
the real gospel to hungry hearts, which often wel-
comed it in earnest but homely ways. After a ser-
mon preached in a town, an old woman said to him,
with tears in her eyes, 'Thank God, I got a good
boost to-day." A border man once said to him,
"There are two kinds of preaching, one with the lips
and one with the life, and life-preaching doesn't rub
out."
In 1 862 and again later there were outbreaks among
the Indians in Minnesota, in which fearful outrages
were perpetrated, but which would never have oc-
curred had there been just dealing w^ith the Indians.
Bishop Whipple spoke out for fair dealing and
against all revenge. In so doing he did what was
very unpopular. He fearlessly met the hostility
which his course aroused. When urged to omit his
blackest charges against the nation for the wrongs
Henry Benjamin Whipple 27
inflicted on the Indians, he rephed : "They are true
and the nation needs to know them! And, so help
me God, I will tell them if I am shot the next min-
ute!" He made the charges before a gathering in
Cooper Union, New York City, in 1868, and it led
to the organization of the Indian Peace Commis-
sion. But, though he was firm, he was seeking not
to arouse enmity but to produce friendship, and he
had a way of winning men which led Captain Wil-
kins to say to some frontiersmen whom he heard
declare that they "must go down to Faribault and
clean out that Bishop" : "Boys, you don't know the
Bishop, but I do; he is my neighbor, and I will tell
you just what will happen when you go down to
'clean him out.' He will come on to the piazza and
talk to you five minutes, and you will wonder how
you ever made such fools of yourselves." The fron-
tiersmen went no further.
Bishop Whipple believed that it was rum which
made most havoc among the Indians. At one
Indian council he spoke very plainly against the
evils of the use of the fire-water. The head chief of
this band sometimes indulged in fire-water, and, be-
ing a cunning orator, he arose and said :
"You said to-day that the Great Spirit made the
world and all things in the world. If he did, he
made the fire-water. Surely he will not be angry
28 Servants of the King
with his red children for drinking a Httle of what
he has made."
Bishop Whipple answered :
"My red brother is a wise chief, but wise men
sometimes say foolish things. The Great Spirit did
not make the fire-water. If my brother will show
me a brook of fire-water I will drink of it with him.
The Great Spirit made the corn and the wheat, and
put into them that which makes a man strong. The
devil showed the white man how to change this good
food of God into what will make a man crazy."
The Indians shouted ''Ho ! ho ! ho !" and the chief
was silenced.
The greater part of the work of his diocese was
not among the Indians, but in the fast-growing cities
and towns of the white people. Among them for
nearly half a century Bishop Whipple went to and
fro establishing churches and building up Christian
institutions and winning men to Christ. This last
was his constant work wherever he was.
He was tactful in trying to win all men. Bishop
Whipple tells the following story in his remi-
niscences, The Lights and Shadows of a Long
Episcopate:
"In the early days of my episcopate I often trav-
eled by stage-coach, and my favorite seat was beside
the driver. On one of these journeys from St. Cloud
to Crow Wing the driver struck one of the wheel
Henry Benjamin Whipple 29
horses who was shirking his duty, accompanying the
blow with a fearful curse. There were three pas-
sengers on top of the coach, and, waiting until they
were absorbed in conversation, I leaned toward the
driver and said :
" 'Andrew, does Bob understand English ?' .
" 'What do you mean, Bishop ?' was the response.
'Are you chaffing me ?'
" 'No,' I answered. 'I really want to know why
the whip was not sufficient for Bob, or was it neces-
sary to damn him ?'
"The man laughed and answered: 'I don't say
it's right, but we stage-drivers all swear.'
" 'Do you know what it is to be a stage-driver ?'
I asked.
" 'I ought to know,' was the reply. 'I've done it
all my life; it's driving four horses.'
" 'Do you think that is all?' I asked.
" 'Well, it's all I have ever found in it,' was the
reply.
"I said : 'Andrew, there is a civil war going on
and men are fighting on the Potomac. There are
five hundred troops at Fort Ripley, and there is no
telegraph. There may be an order in this mail-bag
for these troops to go to the front. If they get there
before the next battle, w^e may win it ; if not, we may
lose it. When you go down to-morrow there may be
a draft in the mail-bag for a merchant to pay his
30 Serv^ants of the King
note in St. Paul. If the St. Paul man receives the
draft, he will pay his note in Chicago, and the Chi-
cago man in turn can pay his note in New York.
But if this draft does not go through, some one may
fail and cause other failures, and a panic may ensue.
Andrew, you are the man whom God in his provi-
dence has put here to see that all this goes straight,
and it is my opinion that you can do better than to
use his name in cursing your horses.'
"The man said nothing for some time, and then,
looking earnestly into my face, he said :
" 'Bishop, you've given me a new idea. I never
thought of the thing in that way, and, God helping
me, I will never use another oath.'
"It changed the current of the man's life and he
became an upright and respected citizen."
His work was effective with men because they
knew he loved and believed that God loved them.
He also believed in the unity and fellowship of all
who loved Christ.
"The heaviest sorrows of my heart have come
from a lack of love among brothers. When this
love shall make men take knowledge of us that we
have been with Jesus and compel them to say, 'See
how these Churchmen love one another,' we may be,
in God's hands, the instruments to heal these divi-
sions w^hich have rent the seamless robe of Christ.
And when I plead for love I plead for love to all who
Henry Benjamin Whipple 31
love Christ. Shall we not claim as our kinsman
Carey, the English cobbler, who went out as the first
missionary to India, and who translated for them
the Bible; and Morrison, the first missionary to
China ; and David Livingstone, who died for Christ
in heathen Africa; and Father Damien. who gave
his life to save lepers; and the Moravians, who of-
fered to be sold as slaves if the King of Denmark
would permit them to carry the gospel to the black
men?"
If all Christians felt this way more men would be
Christians.
In 1865 Bishop Whipple went abroad and visited
Egypt. Five years later he was in Europe again.
In 1888 he attended the Lambeth Conference of
Bishops of the Anglican Church in England and
preached the opening sermon. On this visit he was
given the degree of Doctor of Laws by Cambridge
University, and made an Indian speech which he
said "the boys cheered like mad." In 1890 his health
led him again to Europe and Egypt, and he was re-
ceived by the Queen at Windsor Castle and preached
in Westminster Abbey on his Indians. Seven years
later he was in England again, preaching and work-
ing, and, as always, commending to men the love of
their Heavenly Father. In 1899 he was back once
more, and for the last time, to represent the Protes-
32 Servants of the King
tant Episcopal Church at the Centenary of the
Church Missionary Society of England.
But, though he went to and fro, he never laid down
the work of his ow^n field, and in 1871, after no little
struggle of mind, refused to take the bishopric of
the Hawaiian Islands offered by the Archbishop of
Canterbury. It would have been a better climate for
him, but he loved Minnesota, and at that time the
Indians were a great and holy responsibility. When
his health broke he got it repaired again, and his love
of fishing, of which he was a master, and of open
life helped to keep him strong.
Bishop Whipple knew all the Presidents of the
United States from Jackson to McKinley. He was
a man of bright and hopeful spirit. He said, at the
close of his volume of reminiscences :
"My readers may think me an optimist, but a
Christian has no right to be anything else. This is
God's world, not the devil's. It is ruled by One who
is 'the Lord our Righteousness,' 'the same yester-
day and to-day, yea, and for ever.' . . . Ours is not
a forlorn hope. We may, out of the gloom of our
perplexed hearts, cry, 'Watchman, what of the
night?' But faith answers, The morning cometh.' "
Into the brightness of the city, where there is
neither evening nor morning, but light forever, arid
light without light of sun or light of moon to shine
upon it, because the glory of God alone lightens it,
Henry Benjamin Whipple 33
he passed on September 16, 1901, leaving- behind
him a great diocese as a memorial, and, what is even
more than a great diocese, a great love in the hearts
of men.
WILLIAM TAYLOR
I belong to God ^William Taylor
36
f^Cuy.^^<Si-,
Ill
WILLIAM TAYLOR
OF good old American stock which ran back to
the days before the Revolutionary War, Will-
iam Taylor was born in Rockbridge County, Vir-
ginia, May 2, 1 82 1. He was the first child in
a family of five sons and six daughters. The warm,
enthusiastic faith of the Methodist Church laid hold
on his father, and William drevv^ breath in the same
atmosphere and was marked out from boyhood for
the work of the ministry. He was sent to his first
circuit under appointment by the presiding elder
when he was twenty-one. "He is muscular and
bony," said Brother Seaver, describing his appear-
ance at Crabbottom, "tall and slender, with an im-
mense pair of shoulders on him. Being a tailor
by trade, I may be allowed to say that the man who
cut his coat ought to be sent to the penitentiary and
put to hard labor till he learns his business; and
as for the pants, all I have to say is that the widest-
toed boots I ever saw were stuck about six inches
too far through. The young man is awfully in
^7
38 Servants of the King
earnest, and preaches with power, both human and
divine, and can sing just as loud as he hkes."
He went straight at men for their Hves. At Red
Holes he joined the men in log-rolling in the woods
the afternoon of the day he was to preach. None of
them could match him, and as he invited them to
come to the meeting they exclaimed : *'He's a tre-
mendous fellow to roll logs." *'If he is as good in
the use of the Bible as he is of the handspike he'll
do." "He's the boy for the mountaineers." "He
don't belong to your Miss Nancy, soft-handed, kid-
gloved gentry." "Come on, boys, we'll hear the
new preacher to-night." "In that afternoon," said
he, "I got a grip on that people more than equivalent
to six months' hard preaching and pastoral work."
His salary at the beginning of his ministry was
$100 a year, and he did not need to spend all of
this. He lived in the saddle and in his saddle-bags,
and his one great book of study was the Bible. On
his horse, as he rode about, his sermons were pre-
pared and his great spiritual experiences came to
him. On his way to a camp-meeting on the Fin-
castle Circuit, in 1845, ^^ says: "There, on my
horse, in the road, I began to say more emphatically
than ever before : *I belong to God. Every fiber of
my being I consecrate to him. I consent to perfect
obedience !' " That was the way he ever strove to
live.
William Taylor 39
It was not long before he was sent from the
country circuits to the city, first to Georgetown and
then to Baltimore. Even here he found occasions
when his great physical strength was an advantage
to him.
''One of my class-leaders/' he said of an experi-
ence at Georgetown, "a man of great physical pro-
portions and power, teased me for a tussle. I said,
'Oh, my dear brother, I don't want a reputation of
that sort,' and put him off a number of times; but
one evening wife and I accepted an invitation to
tea at Brother Wardel's, on Bridge Street, and as
we sat conversing with the family and a few guests,
in came my big class-leader, and as I shook hands
with him he said, 'Brother Taylor, I have come to
throw you down,' and with that, pinning both my
arms in his embrace, he made a heave against me
and threw me down in the presence of the company.
I got up and said, 'Well, my dear brother, if nothing
else will satisfy 370ur curiosity you may take your
hold and give me mine, and we will see how the
game wdll go.' So, in the best temper possible, we
each got our grip ; I embraced him kindly, and with
my right wrist in the grasp of my left hand, and
my right fist clenched and set in the small of his
back, with a sudden heave from the shoulders and a
jerk of the hand-grip I sent him on a straight tum-
ble, measuring his whole length on the floor, while I
40 Servants of the King
kept my feet and in a second stood erect. I did not
utter a word, but went and sat down by my wife.
The brother arose quietly and, without a word, took
his seat. He was a grand and good man, but inno-
cently playful. I knew him intimately for many
years afterward, and there never was a discordant
note struck in our mutual friendship; but I never
alluded to our trial of strength in his presence."
While in Baltimore, Bishop Waugh asked him to
go to California to found a mission there, where
the discovery of gold was drawing many pioneers.
Years later Taylor wrote of this : 'T replied, 'Well,
Bishop Waugh, I can only say, w^hen I was ad-
mitted into the Conference the question was put to
each member of our class, "Are you willing to be
appointed to foreign missionary work in case your
services shall be needed in foreign fields?" Most of
the class put in qualifying words and conditions,
and some said emphatically ''No !" but I said "Yes."
I had not thought of such a possibility, and had
no thought of offering myself for that or any other
specified work, but I was called to preach the gospel
by the Holy Spirit, under the old commission, "Go
ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every
creature," and I suppose that includes California. I
never volunteered for any field or asked for an ap-
pointment to any particular place, but have always
been ready and am now to accept, as a "regular in
William Taylor 41
the service," an appointment under the appointing
authority of our Church to any place covered by the
great commission. It is not for me to say that I
am the man suitable for California, but leaving my-
self entirely at God's disposal, giving you wisdom to
express his will concerning me, I will cheerfully
accept your decision and abide by it.' "
He went home and consulted his wife, and in
1849 they sailed for California, via Cape Horn, tak-
ing with him a chapel 24x36 feet all ready to be put
together. Everything was costly in those days.
Rent for a shanty was $500 a month. So William
Taylor went into the woods, cut down timber,
hauled it, and built a house and made his work self-
supporting almost from the start. He preached on
the streets of San Francisco, visited the hospitals,
worked with sailors, miners, and merchants, and
dealt with tact and love with all classes of the raw
and variegated society of the new city.
After seven years in California, Taylor returned
to the East and preached over the Eastern States and
Canada. Nothing ever daunted him. "I think I
could count on my fingers," he said, "the times I
failed through a period of fifty years to keep my
appointments, and they were on account of snow-
drifts and floods well known to the people." He had
what one called ''the locomotive habit." ''He must
go and go," said Ridpath. "Of course, while he
42 Servants of the King
was speaking the demands of his nervous nature
were satisfied with that kind of expenditure. But I
think he could neither sit nor stand nor pose. We
have in physical nature w^hat is called the unstable
equiHbrium. This William Taylor had in his inner
man. I do not mean to compare this venerable
apostle of the nineteenth century with the eldest of
Jacob's sons. The instability in the case of the
bishop relates only to the excess and vehemence of
his nervous forces, demanding action, action, action."
He had a w^onderful energy of speech, and his
preaching was just direct personal conversation
fitted to the exact circumstances, and his ceaseless
aim was to save souls.
In February, 1862, he w^as preaching in Peter-
boro, Canada, and was the guest of a gentleman
who had been in Australia, and who told him of the
conditions there. He went out into the forest,
kneeled down in the snow, and asked God whether
he ought to go to Australia. He was convinced
that he ought. His family returned to California,
and he sailed August i, 1862, for Liverpool on his
way. For seven months he worked as an evangelist
in Great Britain and Ireland and then went on to
the Holy Land. There his long patriarchal beard
secured him reverential treatment from the Ori-
entals, including the Moslems, as he traveled over
the land and visited the holy places. In Australia
William Taylor 43
he carried on evangelistic campaigns for three years,
conducting great revivals. "The three annual ses-
sions of the Australian Conference/* wrote Taylor
long afterward, *'held during the period of my labors
within its bounds, covering a period of nearly three
years, reported a net increase in their churches of
over eleven thousand members."
From AustraHa Taylor planned to go on to India,
and sent for his family. The mother and three sons
came to Sydney, and Taylor was summoned there
from Melbourne by the news that the oldest of the
boys was very sick of fever.
"The steamer from Melbourne to Sydney was
packed from stem to stern with a crowd of fast
men who were on their way to a shooting-match.
They spent their evenings largely around the dining-
table, playing cards, smoking cigars, drinking
brandy, and cracking jokes. So my book on holi-
ness, which has had a circulation of about thirty
thousand copies, was mainly written in the midst
of that crowd by the same light in which they were
playing cards, with oaths from the unlucky losers.
"I had not seen my family for over four years.
I kissed my wife and wept. Ross had grown out of
my knowledge ; I took him into my arms and kissed
him and said, 'Ross, do you know me?' He said
*Yes, papa.' 'How did you come to know me?'
*My mother told me it was you.' So he received
44 Servants of the King
me by faith, based on his mother's testimony. Then
Edward, who was only two years old when I left
him, came in. I took him into my arms and kissed
him and said, 'Do you remember me?' 'Yes, papa.*
'How did you come to know me ?' 'Oh, I remember
you very well' He probably remembered me by
my photo, with which he was familiar. Our poor
son Stuart was suspended in a doubtful scale be-
tween life and death. Dr. Moffitt, an eminent phy-
sician, in consultation with another, was doing the
best he could. Ross, Edward, and I went into a
retired place in the suburbs of the city and had a
prayer-meeting for their brother. I prayed with all
the earnestness of a broken heart; Ross prayed and
Edward prayed, and the three of us wept together.
Soon Stuart began to show signs of recovery. We
were then on the eve of the hot season in Australia."
So the doctor advised their going to South Africa,
and thither they went.
In South Africa, Taylor preached to English,
Dutch, and natives, to the Dutch and natives through
interpreters, but apparently with no less power on
that account, although he had difficulty in getting
interpreters who would speak as naturally and di-
rectly as he always did and urged that others should
do. Most of his time he spent among the Kaffirs,
conducting revivals and organizing the work. He
regarded it as a military campaign, and appealed to
William Taylor 45
men to throw themselves into work for Christ as
into a great war. "Such a work would wake the
heroic elements of man's nature. How they are
brought out by the tocsin of war ! Within the last
five years nearly a million of men have laid down
their lives on the altar of patriotism. A low type
of Christianity that does not enlist and employ the
whole man sinks down to a formal secondary thing
with him, and the active elements of his nature are
carried off into other channels of enterprise. The
heroic power of man's nature, enlisted and sanctified
by the Holy Spirit, is essentially the old martyr
spirit which kept the gospel chariot moving in the
olden times. What had Garibaldi ever to offer to
his soldiers? But did he ever call in vain for an
army of heroes ready to do or die ? He knew how
to arouse the heroic element of men's hearts.
"Every passion and power of the human mind
and heart should be sanctified by the Holy Spirit
to the purposes for which they were designed.
There is no field of enterprise to which the heroic
element of our nature is better adapted or more
needed than the great battle-field for souls, enlisting
all the powers of hell on the one side and all the
powers of heaven on the other. What a heroic
record the Gospels give of the labors, sufferings,
death, and resurrection of the Captain of our sal-
vation and the noble army of martyrs trained under
46 Servants of the King
his personal ministry! Give these gospel methods
of aggression a fair trial in southern Africa.'*
In 1866 Taylor went with his family to England.
Here, as in all his work, he believed in and prac-
tised self-support. At Tunbridge Wells a gentle-
man handed him a check for a hundred pounds as
a present.
*1 thanked him for his kindness," writes Taylor
in his Story of My Life, ''but informed him it was
a principle with me not to receive presents from
anybody, and passed it back to him. He stood silent
for a few moments in apparent surprise ; he had not
been accustomed to meet men of that sort.
" 'But you sell books, do you not ?' said he.
" 'Yes, I have two methods of extending the
kingdom of Christ among men, the pulpit and the
press. I depend on the press, by means of my
books, to pay a big church indebtedness, support my
family, and meet all my traveling expenses, all on
the principle of business equivalents, and decline to
receive gifts.'
" 'Well,' said he, 'will you give me an open order
on your binder for all the books I want to buy?'
"'Yes, sir; that is business on my line.'
*'He was the only man who got a chance to help
me found the self-supporting churches in India, out
of which four Annual Conferences are being de-
veloped. I never asked him for anything, never
William Taylor 47
hinted to him that I was in need of money, but in
assisting to build houses of worship for our Indian
churches, I seldom ever felt the pressure of need that
I did not receive a check from Brother Reed on
book account."
In a few months Mrs. Taylor and the younger
children returned to San Francisco, and Mr. Taylor
went to the West Indies. The whole world was
indeed his parish. He visited and preached in Bar-
bados and British Guiana, in Trinidad, Jamaica, and
other islands. At Georgetown, Demerara, he found
the District Conference assembled and in a snarl.
One of the revivals which he stirred wherever he
went lifted the conference beyond its controversy, but
one brother kept reviving it. "So I said to him,"
wTites Taylor, * 'Brother Greathead, I want to tell
you a story," and he said "All right."
"I have heard of a man who killed an opossum.
He killed it dead and dug a hole in the ground and
buried it. A neighbor saw him go every few days
for a fortnight and dig up the opossum and give
him another mauling. He said, 'What do you mean
by digging up that opossum? You killed him dead
the first time. You keep digging him up and beat-
ing him ; what do you mean ?' Said he, *I want to
mellow him.'
"I said, 'Now, Brother Greathead, we killed and
48 Servants of the King
buried an old opossum last Sunday, and we must
let him sleep.' "
His next work was in Australia and Tasmania
again, after a short trip to Europe in 1869 and
1870, and then he began his campaign in India,
landing in Bombay on November 20, 1870, and
going up straightway to the great Methodist center
of work at Lucknow. He began at once to work
for the Eurasians, the people of mixed European
and Indian blood, who constituted a large class in
India and for whom little had been done. He urged
that their souls were as precious as any, and that
there was a great deal of strength among them which
should be in use in the evangelization of India. He
worked also among Parsees, Hindus, and Moham-
medans, and his message laid hold of them. Some
Afghan Moslem soldiers at one meeting declared,
"This preaching is all true. It has loosened a knot
in our hearts, and we are untying it." But the great
work was for the Eurasian people, and his idea was
to build up self-supporting churches. "We are not
opposed," he wrote, "to missionary societies, or to
the appropriation of missionary funds to any and
all missions which may require them. Our ground
on this point is simply this : There are resources in
India, men and money, sufficient to run at least one
great mission. If they can be rescued from worldly
waste and utilized for the soul-saving work of God,
William Taylor 49
why not do it? All admit that self-support is, or
should be, the earnest aim of every mission. If a
work in India, the same as in England or America,
can start on this healthy, sound principle, is it not
better than a long, sickly, dependent pupilage, which
in too many instances amounts to pauperism ? I am
not speaking of missionaries, but of mission churches.
We simply wish to stand on the same platform ex-
actly as our churches in America, which began poor
and worked their way up by their own industry and
liberality, without funds from the Missionary So-
ciety. The opening pioneer mission work in any
country may require, and in most cases has required
and does require, some independent resources which
the pioneer missionary brings to his new work be-
fore he can develop it or make it self-supporting.
Thus St. Paul depended on his skill as a tent-maker,
and missionaries ordinarily have to depend on mis-
sion funds. Ten times the amount of all the money
now raised for mission purposes would not be ade-
quate to send one missionary for each hundred thou-
sand of heathens now accessible."
The work in India grew greatly under his tire-
less, restless activity, and he became superintendent
of the churches which were established on the in-
dependent basis in which he believed. Long before
his death, however, the work in India and elsewhere
which he had founded passed into connection with
50 Servants of the King
the regular machinery of the Church. His work
was to give the great initial impulse.
From India he returned in 1877 to the United
States, and sailed that fall for South America. *'I
did not wish our friends to see us off," said he, "and
they didn't come. I always prefer to come in and
go out as quietly as possible; indeed, coming and
going all the time, as I have been doing more than
a quarter of a century, my friends could not an-
ticipate my changes.
"On the eve of one of my departures from London
to Australia a gentleman said, 'Mr. Taylor, what is
your address now ?'
" 'I am sojourning on the globe, at present, but
don't know how soon I shall be leaving.' "
His funds were low, and he went third-class.
"I believed," he said, "that my dignity would keep
for eighteen days in the steerage." On the West
Coast he found many foreign communities which
were willing to promise support to teachers from the
United States if Mr. Taylor would furnish them.
He saw his opportunity in this, and returned to find
the twelve men and six women he wanted. He sent
them out to support themselves and do such mis-
sionary work as they could in Chile, Peru, Ecuador,
Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Brazil.
Many of them met with great difficulties and re-
turned home. In some cases useful and influential
Pioneer
WoTKin
iain in 1875-77
=" - ■°7atjl896wltenf|C!ta£Sad
SanFran- MlssionaTyJourneys;"'
California ['Nv_c.sco Beiun at Balti
•• \N^» TwbtTourstqVX t'so; "Tfe
Missi^onary Address-
and Revival Services
„ ? Chuiches and Asie'mblies
V\ in the HOME JFIELO
^50. ^^ith ManyJoijiTneYS
^^t irou4>iout theU N ITED-
MISSIONARY JOURNEYS
OF
WILLIAM TAYLOR
1849-1897
CKMORSAW
William Taylor 51
schools were established which abide. The whole
work is now under the regular care of the Methodist
Episcopal Church through its bishops and missionary
society. The plan of self-support is often prac-
ticable, and there must be room for such free and
independent workers, but, as in the case of William
Taylor's missions, the loss and waste would be much
greater than it has been, if there were not permanent
missionary organizations which believe in self-sup-
port as earnestly as Taylor did, but which believe,
also, in the value of organized and sustained effort.
The mistake which Bishop Taylor made was in ex-
pecting the native Church to support, not only its
native workers, but also the foreign missionaries.
In 1884 the old rugged warrior, now grown gray,
was made Missionary Bishop of Africa. "I was
not a candidate for any office in the gift of that
venerable body," said Taylor, in discussing his
election. ^'Subsequently, when nominated for the
missionary episcopate of Africa, I hurriedly inquired
of a number of the leading members of that body
whether or not that meant any interference with
my self-supporting mission work; if so, I should
certainly refuse to have the nomination submitted.
They assured me that the General Conference had no
such design, but just the opposite; that they wanted
me to introduce self-supporting methods into Africa ;
52 Servants of the King
and that fact was compressed into the short sentence
of Turn him loose in Africa.' "
He went out with a company of over forty men,
women, and children. At St. Paul de Loanda one
died, and eight or ten more, sick or discouraged,
returned home. The remainder settled in Angola.
Leaving his first company there, Taylor returned to
Europe, saw the King of Portugal, in whose terri-
tory he had begun his new work, and the King of
Belgium, the head of the Congo Free State, in which
the second chain of stations was soon begun, to be
followed by an enlarged work in Liberia. The great
service which he performed for Africa was in lifting
his Church out of the narrow limits of Liberia and
committing it to a continental task. For twelve
years Bishop Taylor worked in Africa, and then in
1896 was retired from active duty. The old man
accepted his retirement like a soldier, and issued a
note in which he said :
''Many of my friends think and declare that the
action of the General Conference which kindly put
my name on the honorable list of retired heroes, such
as Bishop Bowman and Bishop Foster, was a mis-
take. No such thought ever got a night's lodging
in my head or heart. I have for fifty-four years
received my ministerial appointments from God. If
any mistakes were made, through the intervention of
human agency, they did not fall on me. For the
William Taylor 53
last twelve years God has used me in Africa as
leader of a heroic host of pioneer missionaries in
opening vast regions of heathendom to direct gospel
achievement, which will go on 'conquering and to
conquer' till the coming of the King, if no bishop
should visit them for half a century, but the General
Conference has appointed as my episcopal successor
a tried man of marvelous adaptability.
^'Bequests and deeds to mission property are made
to Bishop William Taylor or to his 'living successor/
Bishop J. C. Hartzell is now my living successor/
If he should die, or superannuate, then the episcopos
appointed by the General Conference to take his
place at the front would be my 'living successor/
I bespeak for Bishop Hartzell, on behalf of my
work and faithful workers at the front, all the lov-
ing sympathy and financial cooperation of all my
beloved patrons and partners in this great work of
God. 'And you are going to lie on the shelf?' I
am not a candidate for 'the shelf.' I am accustomed
to sleep in the open sparkling of the stars, and re-
spond to the bugle blast of early morn.
"At present
God calls me from mudsill preparation —
John the Baptist dispensation —
To proclaim more widely the Pauline story
Of our coming Lord and of his glory.
"Under this call of God I expect to lead thousands
54 Servants of the King
of Kaffirs into his fold. In an evangehzing cam-
paign of a few years through southern and eastern
Africa I will, D. V., strike the warpath of the grand
heroic leader of our Inhambane and South Zambezi
missions — Rev. E. H. Richards. I will, D. V., go
directly from New York to Cape Town, South
Africa."
And thither he went, and during fourteen months
of further labors, until his voice failed, won many
more converts to Christ.
On May i8, 1902, at Palo Alto, Cal., the old
missionary, who had preached on every continent
and founded churches in many lands, finished his
w^ork. He was one who had ideas of his own and
whose w^ork other men have had to carry forward on
other plans. But he wrought with mighty power
and unafraid of all that might oppose. He was one
"Who never turned his back, but marched breast-forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed tho' right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake."
ALICE JACKSON
55
Father, make us pure and holy,
Father, make us good;
Show us how to love each other
As we should.
— AHce Jackson
S6
IaO'UC.^C. yC^-<>'^^.yUrt-^..^
IV
ALICE JACKSON
ALICE JACKSON was bom at Styal,Cheshire,Eng-
land, on December 19, 1876. Her father, Stan-
way Jackson, was an ardent Liberal in politics, an effec-
tive party worker, and a powerful platform speaker.
He had a keen interest, which Alice inherited, in all
movements of social progress, and his interest, as
hers, sought expression in practical helpfulness. He
was a member of the Church, superintendent of the
Sunday-school, teacher of a men's Bible class, and
leader of a children's service. On her mother's side,
Alice was descended from a long line of Congrega-
tional ministers, and from both sides of the family
inherited her interest in foreign missions. Alice
was brought up by her mother and father, the latter
of whom died when she was nearly thirteen, with
the idea that work in the church and for the com-
munity was a matter of course.
Iti October, 1884, the family came to America and
made its home at Englewood, N. J., where Alice
lived until she went away to Smith College in the
57
158 Servants of the King
fall of 1894. She was, like many children, shy and
diffident, and often shrank from meeting people. In
her simple unselfishness she would think she was not
wanted in one or another company, and would re-
tire, accordingly, into the background. She had an
intense reticence of character, which always made
it hard and therefore all the more im.pressive for her
to speak of the deepest things. She was not a very
strong child, and this brought the temptation of irri-
tability, and one of her first battles was the battle
which she victoriously won for self-control. When
the shadow of a great limitation fell in later years
and she sufifered much, even her closest friends
would not have known it from any outward betrayal,
and she had learned this lesson of complete self-mas-
tery as a child.
Her childhood, as all her later life, was filled with
joyous good humor and playfulness of spirit. She
had a great desire to hear funny things to make her
laugh. As a child she would say, "Tell me some-
thing funny. I like to laugh." And in later years
she always saw the ludicrous side of things, and no
one who ever heard can forget the silvery ripple of
that laughter which lightened all her talk. She was
very fond in these early years of big words and of
pets and of all living things. She informed an older
sister one day that she knew a certain person was
engaged to be married, for she saw her wear a dia-
Alice Jackson 59
mond ring, and "so my superstitions were imme-
diately enlarged."
She was not a robust child. How serious her
physical limitations were few ever discovered, ex-
cept when she was suffering from the disease which
ended her life. She appeared to w^ork with exhaust-
less energy. During her college course, in spite of
her childhood's delicate health, she w^as exceptionally
proficient in athletic games. That w^as in part due
to her nervous energy and in part to her indomitable
purpose. What she made up her mind to do she did,
and nothing could change any purpose she had dis-
tinctly formed. She would readily give up any wish
of hers for the sake of another, but she would not
be swerved from her own conviction one hair's
breadth. Characteristic of this unswerving purpose
was her determination as a child to learn her home
lessons in the family sitting-room, where all the
older members gathered after dinner to chat. She
could not be persuaded to go into a quiet room apart.
She liked company, and she liked even then to prove
to herself that she could so concentrate her attention
as not to hear what was going on around her. Per-
haps to this self-planned discipline of mind may be
due much of her later power to accomplish work at
all times and in all surroundings. After completing
her preparation at the Dwight School in Englewood,
Alice entered Smith College in the fall of 1894.
6o Servants of the King
There she was given the nickname of Ajax. One
of her classmates wrote in the Smith College Monthly
for January, 1907, of what AUce was and did in
college :
"Unusually versatile, Alice Jackson entered into
almost every phase of our college life, and whatever
she touched became beautiful in her doing of it.
Whether in work or in play, she reached out always
for the underlying ideal, unconscious of herself save
as an instrument of service. A member of the bas-
ket-ball team, she played a wonderful game, swiftly,
quietly, efficiently, and fairly, always in the helpful
place, never grasping an opportunity for individual
glory at the expense of the team work. She grasped
the ethics of the game and never even knew there
was a selfish side. At the close of our official sopho-
more game, as we, crushed, tragic children, were
trying to grip the fact bravely that for the first time
in our college history the game had gone officially to
the freshmen, it was our Ajax who found for us the
key to the situation, *It's :fine for the freshmen.'
"So in the college honors which, as a matter of
course, came to her lot, in Alpha, Biological Society,
•Colloquium, editor of the Monthly, and as a member
of other organizations, religious, social, and intellec-
tual, she regarded her election not as a cause for self-
congratulation, not as a tribute to her own abilities,
but simply as an opportunity for further usefulness.
Alice Jackson 6i
It was in this spirit that she entered into the Shake-
speare prize essay contest, not with the desire of win-
ning the prize for herself, but in order to fill out the
necessary number of competitors. When word came
to her that the prize had been awarded to her essay,
she received the news with a burst of grief and dis-
appointment. *I thought C. would get the prize!
She worked so hard.' ''
Perhaps she grasped the class spirit so quickly be-
cause she was one of a large family of children who
had always ''done things together." Her idea of
work had always been ''team work," and a little
home incident illustrates this. An elder sister was
to be married, and the children, wishing to make the
wedding gift their very own, planned to pick black-
berries, sell them to their mother, and buy the pres-
ent with their earnings. When the contents of the
baskets were measured, Alice's proved to hold twice
as much as either of the others, and so four teacups
were bought instead of three; but the four, she in-
sisted, should be given "from us all three together."
The Christian life, which had always been the
dominant thing in her, came to full development in
college. And as college closed, the thoughts of child-
hood ripened to large missionary purposes. In a
letter written three years later she described the
growth of her Christian experience and desire for
Christian service :
62 Servants of the King
''I do not think that my Christian experience has
differed very much from that of most children of
God-fearing parents. My father and mother loved
God and trusted absolutely in him, and I grew up
to love him, too, and to see, at first through them
and then for myself, how he is indeed the lov-
ing, heavenly Father, who is always ready to help
and strengthen his children, to bring comfort in
sorrow, strength in the time of trial, to give power
to overcome all temptations, and to sanctify and
purify and beautify all life.
"During my senior year at college I was asked
to serve as the chairman of our class prayer-meet-
ing committee, and I think that at that time, in plan-
ning the work and in prayer for a deeper spiritual
life in the college, I came closer to God than ever
before. It seems strange that just after graduating
from college, doubts as to whether there really was
a God should arise. It seemed for the moment that
the whole story of the Christ and of the Father
might be a most beautiful legend, and one which I
longed to believe, but had no right to do so unless
I really knew it to be true. I determined to pray to
God just the same, trusting that if there really was a
God he would answer my prayer and give me a
clearer vision of himself, and soon the doubts and
troubles cleared away.
"Since that time Christ has seemed nearer and
Alice Jackson 63
more real than ever before, and I know and feel that
he is indeed the truest and dearest of friends, who is
always near and ready to help and to sympathize. I
think that I long now with an ever-deepening desire
to do God's will and to live as Christ did, a life of
loving, unselfish service.
*'Ever since a small child I have always longed to
go and live among the poor and unhappy. At first
not from any idea of doing missionary work, but
simply because my own life had had so much happi-
ness in it that I could not bear to think of any one
else being unhappy. I wanted to share my joy with
them.
"I always had a great admiration for missionaries,
but their lives seemed to me to be so set apart, so
far above my life or anything that I could ever be-
come, that I never thought that I myself might one
day be a missionary. It was not until the summer
of 1898, when I was asked if I was not willing to
go abroad as a missionary, that the possibility of
really being able to do so came to me with any force.
At Northfield, that same summer, I was taught that
God can use our lives, and, working through us, can
teach us how to bring others into his kingdom. Since
that time I have longed to be a missionary, that I
may not only share the joy that has come into my
life with others, but that I may tell them of the love
64 Servants of the King
of God, believing that through him they may be
brought into hves of happiness and usefulness."
But before she offered herself for missionary ser-
vice, she turned to the opportunities and responsibili-
ties near at hand which called to her, and which of-
fered the best preparation for the work to which she
looked forward. And, as it turned out, she never
went abroad and her life-work was as a missionary
at home. She took up work in the New York School
of Pedagogy, teaching at the same time, first in
Brooklyn and then in Miss Audubon's school in
New York, and working as a volunteer worker in
the Christodora House. The following two years,
1 899- 1 90 1, she was secretary of the Girls' Club at
Greenfield, Mass. It was at this time that she of-
fered herself for work in China.
"About China," she wrote, "1 do long to go there
more deeply than to any other place, and especially
in the interior or to northern China. Mother wTote me
the other day that I could not go to China next year.
I think that the only reason is the danger, and I feel
that when I can talk to her myself about it she may
be willing to let me go in the autumn. At the same
time, though my greatest desire is centered in China,
I want to go wherever my life is going to be the most
useful, and I don't want to let any personal desires
come in. So, if it is really not best for me to go
there, it will be a great joy to go to some other coun-
Alice Jackson 65
try. I really do want to go or to stay, whichever is
best, only I cannot help hoping that I may be fitted
for a life abroad. As I have written you, I long to
go as soon as possible (if I shall prove to be fitted for
such work), but I do want to have the best prepara-
tion and so be really useful."
The mission board's medical adviser declined to
approve Alice's appointment, and informed the
board and told her that probably she could never go
to the mission field. He discovered that she was suf-
fering from an ailment (diabetes) from which she
could not hope to recover. She refused to be daunted,
however, and, though she left the Girls' Club at
Greenfield, went steadfastly on in her work at home,
at the same time that she sought to carry out faith-
fully all the advice of the physician, whom, as with all
whom she ever met, she made her fast friend. Noth-
ing could disturb her serene and joyful confidence
that if it was God's will she would get to China.
The summer of 1901 she spent at the Christodora
House in New York City, a Christian social settle-
ment on Avenue B, near Tenth Street. She had
worked there before, and always went back when
she could. She founded the Mothers' Club, begin-
ning by asking the mothers of some of the children in
the clubs to come and drink coffee and sing German
songs once a week at the House. The club from its
beginning of six German women, who met to talk
66 Servants of the King
over their children and to sew, is now going on with
a membership of thirty. She had clubs for girls, the
"Loyalty" and the "Steadfast," and also a club for
boys, which bore the name of "The Young Patriots'
Club." She regularly taught the boys politeness, and
greatly enjoyed the fact that the secretary of her
"Young Patriots' Club" solemnly announced to an
assembled audience at Cooper Union that the boys
had spent the year in the study of "history, manners,
and other relics." She wrote a little song for the
children which became a great favorite :
A PRAYER
Father, hear thy little children
As to thee we pray,
Asking for thy loving blessing
On this day.
Father, make us pure and holy;
Father, make us good.
Show us how to love each other
As we should.
Through the day, O loving Savior,
Alay we grow like thee,
In the beauty all about us
Thy reflection see.
When at length the evening cometh
And we fall asleep,
In thy arms of love, thy children
Safely keep.
Father, hear thy little children
While to thee we pray,
Asking for thy loving guidance
All this day.
Alice Jackson 67
The little children still sing the song every Sun-
day afternoon.
In the fall of 1902 Alice went back to Northamp-
ton, Massachusetts, to become secretary of the Smith
College Association for Christian Work, and re-
mained till the summer of 1904. No years could
be filled more full of rich and loving service than
Alice Jackson filled these two years at Smith. What
she had regarded as her limitations in childhood —
her sensitiveness and her reserve — had developed
into the very sources of her power. She was able
to win every one, and there was no one whom she
was not seeking to help and no work which she was
not eager to do.
No girls were left out of Alice's thought and plan-
ning, and she sought especially, and with the most
tactful sympathy, to help the Roman Catholic
girls. In this she had the cordial help of Father
Gallen of the Catholic church in Florence, a village
near Northampton. Father Gallen has kindly writ-
ten, with warm Christian sympathy, of his impres-
sions of her and his estimate of her work :
'Trom my knowledge of the splendid results that
followed years of self-sacrificing labor I am con-
vinced that the Christian workers of Smith College
found the leader they needed so much in the person
of Miss Alice Jackson. She enabled them to direct
their best energies with good results in a spiritual
68 Servants of the King
way to themselves and others. All the churches ben-
efited by her work, and especially my own. She sent
me teachers for the Sunday-school — faithful, self-
denying college girls. The distance from the col-
lege to my church is two miles, and some of these
girls, because of our early services on Sunday, were
forced to leave their houses before the breakfast hour
and to fast until noon.
"I have always felt that Alice Jackson had splen-
did natural powers for Christian work. She was
most gentle, yet persistent, in pursuing her object.
In voice and manner there was a sympathetic quality
so winning as to be irresistible. There seemed to be
a perfect consonance between her charming person-
ality and the beautiful teachings of the Master she
served and loved so well. However, I like to think
that her great success in her life-work was due to
the grace supernatural bestowed by a loving Father
in the light of whose presence I trust she may ever
dwell."
In the fall of 1904 Alice went to Ludlow, Massa-
chusetts, as secretary of the Welfare Work of the
Manufacturing Associates. The factories made
coarse textiles and employed 2,000 people, mostly
unskilled foreign labor and largely women and chil-
dren. The company had built and owned most of
the village, streets, also the water and electric light
service. They had some 300 houses, mostly single
Alice Jackson 69
cottages with small grounds about them. The town
authorities manage the schools, which contained over
600 children; but no instruction was given in cook-
ing or sewing. During the year 1904-5 Alice took
charge of the work for the women and children.
All the while she was fighting her battle for
health, and even for life, but with a smile so cheerful
and an enthusiasm for others' interests so genuine
that no one but her doctor and a few of her closest
friends knew of the struggle that was going on.
In the fall of 1905 she returned to New York to
be under the doctor's closer care, but all the while to
be busily at work as industrial secretary for the New
York City Young Women's Christian Association.
The work was among the girls in the factories in
New York City and was carried on under the super-
vision of a little committee, but Alice was left free
to develop the work in accordance with her own
ideas, the aim being to improve the condition of the
girls, but more especially to improve the girls them-
selves by winning them to the Lord Jesus Christ.
During the year she taught on Sundays a class in
Sunday-school, and, of course, kept in close touch
with the work at Christodora House. She had
assisted Miss Grace H. Dodge in the summer
work of the vacation circles and so had gained an
additional opportunity for meeting self-supporting
women. ''She once remarked to me," writes one of
70 Servants of the King
her sisters, "that there was only one shop in New
York in which she did not know some of the sales-
women, and on going there was immediately ad-
dressed as a friend by one of them."
The summer of 1906 Alice spent in good part at
home in Englewood, where she found special ways
of giving loving help to friends in need. And in the
autumn she went, with the doctor's consent, to
Wellesley, Massachusetts, to teach the Bible and to
work among the girls in Miss Cooke's School, Dana
Hall.
In December what the doctor had long appre-
hended came. The disease which she had coura-
geously fought, to which she had never for one mo-
ment surrendered, closed in inexorably. Her one
thought, as always, was of others. * 'Don't let mother
know I have any pain," was her entreaty. "Don't
let mother be sad." Her suffering was not for many
days, and on December 13 she entered into the great
light for which she had longed and saw in his
beauty the King she had ever loved and served.
So she passed on, leaving behind her a trail of
glorious service. The Wednesday after her death
would have been her birthday. It was her birthday,
only not here, but in a far fairer country. There,
beyond all the pain and limitation against which she
strove bravely, she began the blessed service of eter-
nity, fitted for it by the purity and unselfishness of
Alice Jackson 71
the life which Christ had lived in her and which
she had described in verses which she wrote about
another for one Christmas Day :
"Her life was one of sweet simplicity.
Forgetting self, unconsciously each day,
She taught the lesson of that sweet denial,
The joy of those who on the altar lay
Their lives — to take them up again for others.
Who to the world deep joy and gladness bring,
Fulfilling by their daily lives the message
Which on the Christmas morn the angels sing."
GUIDO FRIDOLIN VERBECK
,73
I prefer to work on quietly and at peace with all. . ,
The name is nothing, the real results are all.
— Guido Fridolin Verbeck
74
-^C^tu^/g:^ ^,^^^G^Z^(^^^
V
GUIDO FRIDOLIN VERBECK
ON the 23d of January, 1830, at Zeist, Holland,
a little Dutch baby-boy was born. His full
name was Guido Herman Fridolin Verbeck. Sixty-
eight years later the little Dutch boy, grown to be
a man, died in Tokyo, Japan. When he died he
was not a Dutchman, and he was not a Japanese.
Indeed, he was a man without any country of his
own. Yet he was a Dutchman and a Japanese. And
he was also an American. So he had three coun-
tries at the same time that he had none. How
could such a thing be?
He was a Dutchman because he was born in
Holland and grew up as a boy in his father's com-
fortable home near Zeist. "We lived," he said,
"as Jacob did, in the free temple of nature, enjoy-
ing the garden, the fruit, the flowers, with joy, on
green benches between green hedges. And after
sunset, when the stars were sparkling, then we
brothers and sisters went lovingly arm in arm and
passed our time in garden, wood, or quiet arbor,
75
76 Servants of the King
enjoying each other's happiness and God's peace.
The winter days we spent mostly on the ice, but
toward evening in the cozy twihght we gathered
around the warm stove, to enjoy with all our heart
our happiness. Then father told us many a
story, and we sang many good and favorite songs;
after lamps were lit we all engaged in reading, ate
apples, nuts, and pears." He had colts and rabbits
and poultry and peacocks for pets, and a boat for
the canals which ran through the place and the
country round about, into one of which he fell at
the age of two years and v/as nearly drowned. He
was confirmed with a brother in the IMoravian
church at Zeist and went to school in the Moravian
Institute, where he learned Dutch and French and
German, to which he added English at home. He
and his sister took pains to teach themselves a good
English accent. They taught their tongues to say
"th" by repeating "Theophilus Thistle thrust three
thousand thistles into the thick of his thumb." So
he learned to speak English as well as any English-
man. After graduating from the Institute at Zeist
he entered the Polytechnic Institute at Utrecht and
became an engineer. For twenty-two years the old
Dutch house at Zeist was his home and then he left
Holland.
Next he became an American. In 1852 he came
to Green Bay, Wisconsin, where a sister and her
Guldo Fridolln Verbcck 77
husband were living, intending to work in a foundry
which a friend of his brother-in-law was establish-
ing there for the manufacture of machinery for
steamboats. On his way he was nearly wrecked on
Lake Erie. He reached Green Bay after a rough
journey, the last part of it by wagon and sleigh
over terrible roads, 6n\y to find that the opportunity
was disappointing. "I must see more of America,"
he said, "and be where I can improve myself. I am
determined to be a good Yankee." He found em-
ployment at Helena, Arkansas, where he was soon
busy planning bridges and engineering improve-
ments, but the climate was unfavorable and he fell
ill of fever and was wasted to a skeleton. His sick-
ness was a turning-point with him. He promised
God that if he recovered he would consecrate his
life to service in the missionary field. As soon as
he could walk again he returned to Green Bay and
took charge of the factory there. But the purpose of
Christian service had been firmly fixed, and en-
couraged and aided by a New York City business
man he went to Auburn, New York, to the theologi-
cal seminary in 1856. Just as he finished his course
the call came to the seminary for an "Americanized
Dutchm.an" for Japan. Commodore Perry had opened
the long-sealed land in 1853-4. The first generous
treaty had been negotiated in 1858. The Japanese
7^5 Servants of the King
had long been friendly to Hollanders, and were now
well-disposed to Americans, and Guido Verbeck had
clearly been prepared for this very hour. He was
all ready to go, and the Dutch lad, who had become
an American, started in 1859 as a missionary to
Japan.
He reached Nagasaki on November 4, 1859. His
vessel steamed into the bay by moonlight. "With
the first dawning of the day," he wrote, "1 cannot
describe the beauty that is before me. I have never
seen anything like it before in Europe or America.
Suppose yourself to be on the deck of a steamer with-
in a port as smooth as a mirror, about sixteen neat
vessels scattered about here and there, before you
that far-famed Deshima, and around it and beyond
an extensive city with many white-roofed and walled
houses, and again all around this city lofty hills
covered with evergreen foliage of great variety, and
in many places spotted by temples and houses. Let
the morning sun shine on this scene, and the morn-
ing dews gradually withdraw like a curtain and hide
themselves in the more elevated ravines of the sur-
rounding mountains, and you have a very faint pic-
ture of what I saw." When he landed the notice-
boards prohibiting the Christian religion were scat-
tered all over the country in city and village and by
the roadside. This is what was inscribed on them;
Guldo Fridolln Verbeck 79
"The Christian religion has been prohibited for many years.
If any one is suspected, a report mubt be made at once.
REWARDS
To the informer of a hater en (father), 500 pieces of silver.
To the informer of an iriiman (brother), 300 pieces of silver.
To the informer of a Christian who once recanted, 300 pieces
of silver.
To the informer of a Christian or catechist, 300 pieces of
silver.
"The above rewards will be given. If any one will inform
concerning his own family, he will be rewarded with 500
pieces of silver, or according to the information which he
furnishes. If any one conceals an offender, and the fact is
detected, then the head man of the village in which the con-
cealer lives, and the *five-men company' to which he belongs,
and his family and relatives will all be punished together."
Natives who associated with missionaries were
looked upon with suspicion.
"We found the nation not at all accessible touch-
ing religious matters/' wrote Dr. Verbeck long years
afterward in speaking of these early days. ''Where
such a subject was mooted in the presence of the
Japanese, his hand would alm.ost involuntarily be
applied to his throat, to indicate the extreme perilous-
ness of such a topic."
Still God had been preparing some to hear and
accept the gospel. Before the policy of exclusion
had been abandoned, and while a British fleet was
in Japanese waters, the duty of guarding the coast
at Nagasaki had been assigned to the daimio or
baron of Hizen, and he delegated one of his min-
isters, a house officer named Murata, whose title was
8o Servants of the King
Wakasa no Kami, to look after it. He was to keep
the foreigners from the fleet out of Japan, and also to
prevent Japanese from leaving the country to go
abroad. Murata frequently went out by night and
day in a boat to make sure of the success of his vari-
ous measures for fulfilling his duty, and on one of
these trips found a little book floating on the water.
His curiosity was aroused and he became more inter-
ested when he found out that it was about the
Creator and the Christian religion. He sent a man to
Shanghai and secured a translation of the book in
Chinese and took it home with him to Saga. He
was studying this book when Dr. Verbeck came to
Nagasaki, and hearing of the missionary he sent his
younger brother to get more information from him.
In 1866 he and his brother and his two sons and a
train of followers came to see Verbeck. ''Sir," said
he, "I cannot tell you my feelings when, for the first
time, I read the account of tlie character and work
of Jesus Christ. I had never seen, nor heard, nor
imagined such a person. I was filled with admira-
tion, overwhelmed with emotion, and taken captive
by the record of his nature and life.'* The conversa-
tion lasted for hours, and then, though the men
knew they were facing death in doing it, they asked
and received baptism, and twelve years after finding
the book in the water went home as Christian be-
lievers, the first converts of the young missionary.
Guido Fridolin Verbeck 8i
Already, however, great changes were passing
over Japan. The old political order was over-
thrown and a hunger for knowledge filled the land.
Dr. Verbeck was asked by the government to open a
school for foreign languages and science in Naga-
saki. It was soon filled with more than one hundred
pupils, among whom were many future statesmen of
Japan, including one prime minister and the two
sons of Prince Iwakura. From this school he sent
out the first of the large company of more than
five hundred young Japanese who came with his
introduction to study in America.
In 1868 came the great political upheaval with
the retirement of the Shogun and the resumption
of active rule by the Mikado, who took an oath in
the presence of the nobles to establish the empire
on the following principles :
1. Government based on public opinion.
2. Social and political economy to be made the
study of all classes.
3. Mutual assistance among all for the general
good.
4. Reason, not tradition, to be the guide of action.
5. Wisdom and ability to be sought after in all
quarters of the world.
In consequence of the change, Dr. Verbeck was
called from Nagasaki to Tokyo to establish a school
for the government, and he accepted the call. This
82 Servants of the King
school grew into the Imperial University. At the
same time, by force of his wide knowledge, his up-
right character, his self-obliteration, and his devotion
to the best interests of Japan, he became the great
adviser of the men who were controlling her destiny.
*'It impressed me mightily," says Dr. Griffis, who
visited him at this time, "to see what a factotum Dr.
Verbeck was, a servant of servants indeed, for I
could not help thinking how he imitated his Master.
I saw a prime minister of the empire, heads of de-
partments, and officers of various ranks, whose per-
sonal and official importance I sometimes did, and
sometimes did not, realize, coming to find out from
Dr. Verbeck matters of knowledge or to discuss
with him points and courses of action. To-day it
might be a plan of national education; to-morrow,
the engagement of foreigners to important posi-
tions; or the despatch of an envoy to Europe; the
choice of the language best suited for medical science ;
or how to act in matters of neutrality between
France and Germany, whose war vessels were in
Japanese waters; or to learn the truth about what
some foreign diplomat had asserted; or concern-
ing the persecutions of Christians ; or some serious
measure of home policy."
Perhaps the two greatest services which he ren-
dered were the translation of the Western law books,
law codes and books on political economy and in*
Guldo Fridolin Verbeck 83
ternational law, and the projection of the famous
Iwakura embassy. This was a body of the most in-
fluential men of the empire sent abroad to America
and Europe. In America Joseph Hardy Neesima,
then a student here, was attached to the embassy as
an interpreter. Dr. Verbeck's share in planning this
embassy was little known at the time, and his policy
w^as always to conceal his influence. He wrote of
this particular enterprise, however, to an old friend
in America. "All this," he said, *1 only write to you,
and not to the public; for, as I said before, publish-
ing such things would be directly contrary to my
invariable principles of operation, would ruin my
reputation, and make me lose the confidence of the
people, which it has taken me twelve years to gain
in a small degree. Besides, there is a tacit under-
standing between Iwakura and myself that I shall
leave the outward honor of initiating this embassy
to themselves. And who cares for the mere name
and honor, if they are sure to reap the benefits,
toleration and its immense consequences, partly now,
but surely after the return of this embassy? More-
over, there is quite a band of foreign ministers and
consuls who look with envy on me and my doings,
and it would not be right nor expedient wantonly to
stir up their ire. I prefer to work on quietly and
at peace with all. Each man has his sphere of
action ; I like to keep within mine, without intruding
84 Servants of the King
myself on others. The name is nothing, the real
results are all. Except to an old friend and a
brother, like you, I would not have ventured to
write the above, for fear of being misunderstood."
This embassy accomplished all that Dr. Verbeck had
hoped. The nation moved forward more rapidly
and steadily than ever, and, best of all, the notice-
boards against Christianity were taken down and
the door for missionary work began to open widely.
After starting the new school in Tokyo Dr. Ver-
beck was for five years attached to the Senate.
This was a body formed as a preparatory step to
a national constitution and parliament, and Dr.
Verbeck was adviser to it. By 1877 the new
government was well-established and had a num-
ber of foreign advisers, and Dr. Verbeck decided
to withdraw from its service and give all his time
again to direct missionary work. This he did in
1877, and to show that Japan appreciated what he
had been to her, the emperor bestowed upon him on
his withdrawal the decoration of the third class of
the Order of the Rising Sun. He later gave further
service to the government, but his remaining years
were spent directly in the work of missions.
His great reputation, his favor with the govern-
ment, his wonderful command of the Japanese lan-
guage, which brought great crowds to hear him
speak, and his unselfishness and lowliness of mind
DECORATION OF THE ORDER OF THE RISING SUN
Guido Fridolln Verbeck 85
made him one of the great Christian forces of the
empire, and he went far and wide, preaching in thea-
ters and halls and churches. He taught in one of
the theological schools and aided in the translation
of the Bible.
All this time he had been a man without a coun-
try. Leaving Holland as a minor he had lost his
Dutch nationality, and he had not been naturalized
in the United States, so that he had no American
citizenship. In Japan there was no provision for
the naturalization of foreigners, so that he could not
be a Japanese. Yet Japan was his real country, and
in 1 89 1 he applied to be made a citizen of Japan.
After explaining his situation to the Minister of
Foreign Affairs, he wrote: "If there existed in
this empire laws for the naturalization of foreigners,
I should under these circumstances gladly avail my-
self of them. But in the absence of such laws, I take
the great liberty to request of your excellency to be
so very kind, if possible, to use such means as your
excellency may deem proper and suitable to have me
placed under the protection of the supreme govern-
ment of this empire. I have but little to recommend
myself to your excellency's favor, unless I be allowed
to state, for the benefit of those who may perhaps
not know it, that I have resided and labored in this
empire for more than thirty years and spent one-
half of this long period in the service of both the
86 Servants of the King
former and the present government of Japan." The
Japanese Government granted him his request and
took him and his family under its protection and
gave him and them the right, which no other for-
eigner then enjoyed, "to travel freely throughout the
empire in the same manner as the subjects of the
same, and to sojourn and reside in any locality." The
Minister of Foreign Affairs, in sending him this
statement, wrote: "You have resided in our em-
pire for several tens of years, the ways in which you
have exerted yourself for the benefit of our empire
are by no means few, and you have been always be-
loved and respected by our ofilicials and people."
Seven years later the life so influential and beloved
came peacefully to an end in his home in Tokyo.
The city government of Tokyo presented the family
with the burial plot in which his body was laid, and
the emperor himself paid the funeral expenses, and
a representative from the emperor came to the
funeral to carry the decoration which had been
presented to the missionary and which was laid on
a cushion and placed on the casket during the funeral
services. Being a decorated man, a company of
soldiers escorted the body two mJles to the cemetery
and afterward saluted the grave with presentation
of arms and other ceremonies of honor.
.What the nation thought was expressed by the
Guido Fridolln Verbeck 87
Kokumin no Tomo (The Nation's Friend), one of
the Japanese journals :
'*By the death of Dr. Verbeck the Japanese peo-
ple have lost a benefactor, teacher, and friend. He
was born in Holland, was educated in America, and
taught in Japan. The present civilization of Japan
owes much to his services. Of the distinguished
statesmen and scholars of the present, many are those
who studied under his guidance. That during his
forty years' residence in this land he could witness
the germ, the flower, and the fruit of his labor, must
have been gratifying to him. It should be remem-
bered by our people that this benefactor, teacher,
and friend of Japan prayed for the welfare of this
empire until he breathed his last."
So the man without a nation helped to make a
nation.
ELEANOR CHESNUT
89
My life is lived so much among unlovely and unlovable
people that I have learned to have great sympathy and great
love for them.
— Eleanor Chesnut
90
"M^^^*^
VI
ELEANOR CHESNUT
On the wall of one of the rooms of the Presby-
terian Foreign Mission Board, in New York City, is
a bronze memorial tablet bearing this inscription :
In Loving Memory
of the
MISSIONARY MARTYRS
of Lien-chou, China,
ELEANOR CHESNUT, AI.D.
MRS. ELLA WOOD MACHLE
AND HER LITTLE DAUGHTER AMY
REV. JOHN ROGERS PEALE
MRS. REBECCA GILLESPIE PEALE
who, for Christ's sake, suffered cruel death at
Lien-chou, China, October 28, 1905.
"They loved not their lives unto the death."
Rev. xii. 11.
''They climbed the steep ascent of heaven
Through peril, toil, and pain:
O God, to us may grace be given
To follow in their train."
ELEANOR CHESNUT, whose name stands
first on the tablet, was born at Waterloo,
Iowa, on January 8, 1868. Her father was Irish,
91
92 Servants of the King
and her mother, whose maiden name was Cain, a
Manx woman. The father disappeared about the
time Eleanor was born and was never heard of
again, and the mother, who had the sympathy and
respect of the neighbors, died soon after, when
Eleanor was three years old. Eleanor was adopted,
but not legally, by friendly neighbors of scanty
means, who had no children of their own and found
the little girl both a comfort and a problem. Her
adopted parents did for her what they could, and
the father, looking back across the years, recalls
*'her loving, kindly ways, her obedience in the family
circle, her studious habits, and her unselfish ways."
But from the time she first understood her situation
and loneliness and poverty, the child felt it keenly
and w^as filled with inward resentment. However
tractable she appeared outwardly, she afterward
said, she was unhappy and lonely, hating control
and longing for the sympathy of a mother's love.
Her great happiness lay in her school life, but when
she was twelve it seemed that she might have to
give up school altogether. At that time she left
Waterloo and went to her aunt's in Missouri. The
home was a farm in an ignorant backwoods country
community where school privileges were of the most
primitive character, and the struggle for life in the
home was too strenuous to leave anything for the
expense of education.
Eleanor Chesnut 93
In her new home, however, she heard in a round-
about way of Park College. The knowledge of the
existence of such an institution, where she might
work her way to an education, brought a gleam of
hope into her despair. In characteristic fashion she
wrote directly to the president of the college, tell-
ing him her longings and difficulties, and he wrote
to her to come to Parkville. She entered the
academy and remained until she had completed the
full college course, usually staying there summers
as well as winters. Here she found an entirely new
and congenial environment. She entered Park Col-
lege a forlorn, unapproachable girl with many faults
of many kinds; she found in Dr. Mcx\fee a true
friend, whose patience was inexhaustible and whose
influence remained with her always. She also found
many warm friends among the students, her sur-
roundings were congenial, and she became as zeal-
ously honest as she declared she had been before
unreliable.
She was not strong physically, and in those early
days of the college, teachers and students alike knew
the strain of overwork and undernourishment. "I
do not know," writes a friend, "how her personal
expenses were met. Her eldest brother was now at
work and occasionally sent her a little money, and
Mrs. McAfee had clothes given her for needy
students, from which store Eleanor was largely
94 Servants of the King
clothed, a charity which she never could receive in
any spirit of gratitude, but which she accepted of
necessity and with bitter resentment. All these ex-
periences made her in after life full of understand-
ing, gentleness, and tact for others who were poor
and forlorn and proud." Outwardly she bore her-
self bravely and quietly, but her heart was very
lonely, and her life had not found yet the great inner
secret which brought her later the beauty and peace
of a consecrated soul.
Before she left Park College she had yielded to
the steady Christian influence of the college and be-
come a member of the Church. She had also gone
further and decided to become a missionary. As
her reason for the decision she gave simply "desire
to do good in what seems the most fitting sphere."
She left Park College in the spring of 1888, and
went to Chicago to study medicine. To one
who offered to aid her, she wrote: ''I have had
developed in me a liking for medical study, al-
though I did not seriously think of the matter
until of late. It seemed to me such an utter
impossibility to carry out the design, as I am with-
out means and without friends to assist. But I do
trust that I am by divine appointment fitted for this
work. My age — twenty-one next January. Oh!
I just do long to do this work." The strong power
of an unselfish purpose was beginning to work within
Eleanor Chesnut 95
her. In Chicago she entered the Woman's Medical
College. "During the first year," writes the friend
whom she came to know about this time and who
became her one intimate friend and correspondent,
"she lived in an attic, cooked her own meals, and
almost starved. At the close of this first year of
medical education, she decided to take a course in
nursing as well, and that spring entered the Illinois
Training School for Nurses in Chicago for the
course, which was then two years. This was a new
and trying experience. Eleanor always resented
authority which hampered her own methods, also
she was careless and inexact in her ways, and
training-school discipline was a continual thorn in
her flesh. She loved the poor and suffering pa-
tients who were under her care, and was tender
and untiring in her care, faithful to the last detail
where essentials were concerned. After leaving the
medical college, she spent a winter in the Woman's
Reformatory in South Framingham, Mass., as as-
sistant to the resident physician, a very useful and
happy experience, and then took a short course in
the Moody Bible Institute."
In 1893 she sent in her formal application for
missionary appointment, expressing a preference to
be sent to Siam : *'Am willing to be sent to what-
ever location may be deemed fittest. But being
asked if I had a preference, my thoughts turned to
96 Servants of the King
Siam. It is a specially interesting field to me since
I have always had throughout the country friends
and correspondents. If their special need and my
desire should coincide it would be for me a delightful
circumstance. I do not, however, set my heart
on any one place, but rather pray that wherever it
may be it will be the appointed one, that what
powers I possess may be used to the best advantage."
She had prepared herself carefully for the work.
She had made her own way through college, medical
school, and nurses' training-school, while she worked
as a nurse in summer vacations, having nursed Dr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes in his last illness. She had
also taken hospital training, including a good deal
of pharmaceutical work, and she had sought to make
up for what she regarded as her shortcomings in
the knowledge of the Bible and spiritual experience
by going to the Bible Institute. Those who knew
her believed that she was well fitted for the work.
She was appointed without hesitation as a medi-
cal missionary on August 7, 1893, was assigned to
South China, and sailed in the fall of 1894 on the
steamship Oceanic from San Francisco for Hong-
kong. There was quite a party of missionaries on
board. The fifth day out she wrote : "I fear there
were very few dry eyes as we caught the last glimpse
of her [the tug which had accompanied them out
of the bay] and heard the last strains of Auld Lang
Eleanor Chesnut 97
Syne. I am glad to say that thus far I have shed
no tears. It would have been easy enough, but I
know there will be enough to weep over in the
future." At the end of the journey she wrote: "I
did hate to say good-by to the Oceanic. The officers
were all so kind that I shall regard them as old
friends." As soon as possible after reaching Canton
she went on inland to her own station at Sam-kong,
a town at the head of the waterways in the north-
west corner of the province of Kuang-tung near the
border of Hu-nan. The mission station consisted
at the time of one family, one self-supporting single
woman and one single man. There were a girls'
boarding-school, three churches at Sam-kong, Lien-
chou, and Lam-mo, and wards for the medical care
of women and men, though these were very inade-
quate. Dr. Chesnut began at once upon arrival the
study of Northern Mandarin. Later she tried to
acquire also some use of local dialects, almost in-
dispensable for reaching women who know nothing
but their own village dialect.
She began her work in her own way, drawing on
the inner resources, and not making herself a de-
pendent upon others. "Every morning," she wrote
to her friend at home, 'T have a choice little time
all to my lonesome. First I read the new quotation
on the calendar, then the thought for the day in
'Daily Strength for Daily Needs' and finally play
98 Servants of the King
and sing a hymn. I enjoy my faltering attempts
at music very much. I can speak the language of
my soul quite as effectively in a simple melody as
some one else might in a grand sonata. The
Thwings have two baby organs and so have loaned
me one to have in my room. It is a good com-
panion. Whenever I get restless over Chinese
hieroglyphics or a trifle dull I play one of the few
only tunes I know. Thus far, I am thankful to say,
I ha.e been visited but little by the dread demon of
homesickness. There was a time of all-goneness
which lasted a week or two and helped to reduce my
avoirdupois. But, thank fortune, it is past. I pray
that it may not return."
A little hospital for women was prepared. Of
this she wTote : 'The little hospital is nearly
finished. I look out upon it with admiring eyes
and fancy myself within it administering 'yarbs'
and 'essences' at a great rate. I have at present
a joung girl in my charge sick with a low fever.
How I should like to remove her from her dark
room to the hospital and look after her myself.
Am afraid she will not recover, though I do hope
for her sake and for the work's sake she will.
Every patient that I lose counts so much against
the work here. I really do labor at a disadvan-
tage. Being able to talk so little, I do not get as
clear a history as I might at home. Another
Eleanor Chesnut 99
obstacle is the scarcity of drugs. When I want one
it never seems to be in the dispensary; and when it
is, sometimes I can't find it because many of the
bottles are labeled in Chinese. The horrid tin cans
instead of bottles! Oh! lots of things one never
would dream of. But I don't care for any of these
trifles if only I am well and make a success of what
I have begun."
She had reached China about the time of the anti-
foreign disturbances in the Yang-tzia Valley foment-
ed by Chou-han and his propaganda in Hu-nan.
She refers to these conditions in one of her letters :
*The missionaries here are all well and the city is
peaceful. The interior seems pretty well disturbed.
I do hope you won't be frightened by newspaper
accounts. I don't think we are in any danger, and
if we are, we might as well die suddenly in God's
work as by some long-drawn-out illness at home.
Miss Johnston writes that the Sam-kongites are
usually friendly. I think there is still much hope
for China in spite of such expressions as 'an un-
claimable lot of heathen savages.' But I am sure
that it is our duty as a Christian nation to enhghten
the Chinese, and I think very few persons at home
realize what idolatry is — how full of cruel super-
stition China is. They spend their whole existence
in fear of some devil or other, and die with it still
upon them. I feel especially sorry for the women.
100 Servants of the King
The majority don't know anything aside from comb-
ing their hair, doing a few household duties, bearing
children, and afterward hanging them upon their
backs till they are five or six years of age. They are
not expected to be intelligent, and do not expect it
themselves. Their lives seem so barren — their tasks
no higher than those of a beast of burden — vexed
with human passions and endowed with no power to
control them."
Within a year after reaching Sam-kong, Dr. Ches-
nut had an opportunity to go down on a visit to
Canton, and while there she studied the extensive
medical work of the mission hospital and also seized
every chance of rendering service to those in need.
In the spring of 1898 Dr. Chesnut removed to
Lien-chou, a miOre favorable location than Sam-kong,
the station having purchased a good site on the
river bank opposite the city. "Here I am at last,"
she wrote, "in the much-looked-forward-to Lien-
chou. Monday I had a few of the most important
things carried overland. I hear that the boats are
on their way. They have divided their cargo with
several others and are floating the hospital bed
boards and my springs. Won't they be rusty! I
only hope they won't try to float the books and the
organ. I don't mind being here alone at all." She
was living alone at this time at Lien-chou, the five
other members of the station still residing at Sam-
Eleanor Chesnut loi
kong. She was in the men's hospital, the women's
hospital having not yet been built. In the absence
of Dr. Machle, who was in charge of the men's
hospital, she was conducting all the work. In her
letter she writes :
''How many people do you suppose are tempo-
rarily in my charge ? Two day-school teachers, the
hospital preacher, janitor, scribe, doctor, watchman,
woman who helps in Sam-kong dispensary, the
woman who helps in this dispensary, and the Bible-
woman. I have to be after some one continually,
but I do hate to get after people. I am conscious
of so many failings on my own part that I don't
feel equal to attending to those of others.
"I have to perform all my operations now in
my bathroom, which was as small as the law al-
lowed before. Now with an operating table it
is decidedly full. I do not mind those incon-
veniences at all, however. I wish I could look for-
ward to as good accommodations for the work next
year.
''I really cannot find time to write much these
days. There are thirty in-patients in the hospital,
most of them fever cases. If they w^ere all of the
common class they would serve to keep one person
busy, but the fact of belonging partly to the official
class accentuates matters. The Lien-shan official,
his wife, his cousin, one child, and a whole retinue
102 Servants of the King
of servants are in the hospital, and the wife and
child of a smaller official. To-night I have a case
of dementia on hand, a Lien-chou official who has
ruined himself with opium. He is only thirty-five
years of age and has an excellent mind. He came
to me this evening to implore protection. He thinks
he is continually pursued by demons. I had no
place for him but my study. He is sometimes vio-
lent and has to be carefully watched. So I am sit-
ting here on guard now. I do hope he will recover,
but you have seen enough of these opium cases in
the hospital to know what they are like. My patient
is now seated at the table reading, but I can see that
he is decidedly fidgety. He is a fine, tall man with
a clear complexion and fine white teeth. He seems
to have a good mind, and it is a pity that he is in
this condition. I often think what a different idea
you would have of the Chinese if you could see
some of these handsome, well-dressed gentlemen.
They are so polite that one minute I am filled with
awe and the next overcome by the ludicrousness of
some child-like freak. There is the making of a
great nation in China.
"One of my patients, a wealthy man, the one
whose wife I mentioned before, has had a tablet
made for me like the one the Lien-shan official and
his cousin presented me with. The tablet is to be
sent in the morning and I am going to the feast in
Eleanor Chesnut 103
the evening. I dread the thought of it. I am so
tired. I wish I could sleep a whole day. I shall
soon be rested, however. . . . The other night
the druggist gave me a prescription which you may
find useful, though the ingredients are more diffi-
cult to procure in America than in China. You
must catch some little rats whose eyes are not yet
open, pound them to a jelly, and add lime and
peanut oil. Warranted to cure any kind of an ulcer."
How many surgeons would like to amputate a
leg without any skilled helper? Of course, it is
done, but it is not customary.
During the time above mxcntioned ]\Ir. Lingle
occasionally returned to the station from his almost
constant itineration. He came to Lien-chou just
when Dr. Chesnut was about to perform such an
operation. I believe he held the leg, but Dr. Ches-
nut did the cutting and sewing.
*The operation was very successful," wrote one
of her associates. The man not only did not die on
the table, but, better still, he recovered strength.
Several times I saw him going about on crutches
with a bright smile and good color. But Dr.
Chesnut was not satisfied with the results. The
flaps of skin which were to fold over and cover
the stump did not fully unite. She said little
about it, but one day, when she was at my place,
I observed that she walked with an appearance
104 Servants of the King
of pain. I asked if she had met with an accident,
but she said, *0h, it's nothing.' Knowing her tem-
perament, I forbore further questioning, but in a few
days took occasion to walk over to Lien-chou, and
while there made some inquiries of our good women
at the hospital. 'Yes,' said one, nodding her head.
'I should think she couldn't walk well after cutting
off so much skin from her leg to put on that boy's
leg.' She was determined, at any cost, to make it
a success. This was just like Dr. Chesnut. To
have spoken further to her about it would have been
to let her know that I knew that the flaps had not
united. Silent appreciation of her sacrifice was
best."
She did not shrink from being alone. She had
written some years before of preferring it, but she
felt the loneliness none the less, and the burden of
responsibility was very heavy for her. In due time
new missionaries came to take the place of several
who had stayed on the field but a brief time, and
older missionaries returned from furlough. The
Board did its best to keep the force full. Mean-
while she went on unflinchingly with her work far
away in the interior alone.
In 1900 the money was provided for a woman's
hospital. She had begun the building in faith with
$300 Mexican before she knew that the appropria-
tion had been made by the Board.
Eleanor Chesnut 105
The Boxer troubles in the north had sent for-
eigners in all parts of China down to the coast, but
for months Dr. Chesnut declined to go. In August,
however, the pressure from Canton became so great
that she consented to go down, though she was
without fear. In the spring, when the storm was
over, she returned. The political conditions were
full of perils, however, and the perils did not de-
crease, and little was needed to touch off a confla-
gration, as later events showed. The station had
always kept free from political entanglements, and
that w^as one great safeguard. But great care was
necessary.
In the spring of 1902 she came home on fur-
lough. She returned by way of Europe. Her
time at home was spent visiting, doing postgraduate
work in medicine, making missionary addresses, and
raising over a thousand dollars gold to supplement a
good sum raised on the field for a chapel at Lien-
chou. She declined a proposal that came to her to
go to Hu-nan to take charge of the woman's hos-
pital medical work in that new mission. *T con-
cluded," she wrote, "that it would be a mistake for
me to leave Lien-chou. I am acquainted with the
people there, their dialect, diseases, faults, virtues,
and other points. Then I am so fond of them.
I do not believe I could ez'er have quite the same
feeling of affection for any other people. All my
io6 Servants of the King
early associations in missionary life are connected
with them. Moreover, Lien-chou has been so un-
fortunate in the matter of losing its missionaries
that I fear it would be very discouraging to those
at the station. The work is increasing every year.
Before I left in the spring there was work enough
for twenty missionaries instead of five."
In the fall of 1903 she returned to Lien-chou.
Her work was never conceived by her in a narrow
sense, however, and her first letter to the Board after
her return was a clear and convincing appeal for
a building for the boys' boarding-school, from which
they were obliged to turn away boys because the old
house which was in use was too small. Her second
letter was an expression of her hope that another
doctor might be sent to take her place so that she
could go to Ham-kuang, an important town on the
river south of Lien-chou, near the abandoned mission
station of Kang-hau.
But she did not go to Ham-kuang. Her next
journey was to another city, the city "whose builder
and maker is God," and the day of her departure
was near. She had some intimation that trouble
might be coming. The talk of the streets as she
passed by was intelligible to her, and she knew that
the general condition of the country was very in-
flammable.
The new missionaries whom she had been for
Eleanor Chesnut 107
some time expecting, Mr. and Mrs. Peale and Dr.
and Mrs. Machle, who had been at Canton at the
mission meeting, arrived at the station on the eve-
ning of October 29th, 1905. It was near the close
of the Chinese celebration of Ta Tsin, or All Souls'
Day, which they were observing with the usual
idolatrous ceremonies. A mat shed connected with
the celebration had been erected on mission prop-
erty. The same thing had been done the year be-
fore, and when Dr. Machle spoke about it to the
elders of the village in which the mission property
lay, they agreed that it was improper and would
not be done again. When Dr. Machle went to the
hospital on the morning of October 28th the shed
had been erected on mission property again. He
picked up accordingly three of six small cannon
which were being fired off and carried them to the
men's hospital, less than a hundred yards away. It
was a customary Chinese w^ay of indicating that he
wished to confer with the elders. They came to
see him accordingly and matters were arranged
satisfactorily, and the cannon were returned. As
the elders went away a mob came from the opposite
direction, armed with a sword, a revolver, and sticks.
The old man carrying the cannon came back and
told the mob that everything was satisfactorily set-
tled, but the rabble had already determined upon
trouble, had indeed probably been waiting for an
io8 Servants of the King
opportunity for it, and attacked the hospital. Dr.
Chesniit had come on the scene during the discus-
sion, and on seeing the turn of affairs, instead of
going into the hospital, hurried off, pursued by part
of the mob, to report the matter to the Chinese au-
thorities. She reached the police boat on the river
and might have escaped in safety, but seeing the
peril of the others, returned to Dr. Machle's resi-
dence, where all the other missionaries, save Dr.
Machle, were assembled — Mrs. Machle, Miss Pat-
terson, Mr. and Mrs. Peale and Amy Machle, a little
girl of eleven. The mob increased. The Chinese
officials who came were unable to do anything to
restrain them, and Dr. Machle joined the other
missionaries and all fled by a back door. A ferry-
man refused to carry them across the river to Lien-
chou, and they started toward Sam-kong. The mob
pursued them so closely, however, that they sought
refuge in a Buddhist temple about a mile away,
where they hid in a cave opening into the rocks back
of the temple. Here all were caught except Dr.
Machle and Miss Patterson, who were separated
from the others and in deeper recesses of the cave.
Mrs. Machle reasoned calmly with the mob until
a blow from behind ended her life. The little girl
was flung into the river and stabbed and drowned.
Mr. and Mrs. Peale, less than forty-eight hours
at the station, were slain together. Dr. Chesnut
Eleanor Chesnut 109
was killed first. A Chinese eye-witness told of her
death :
"I arrived at the temple shortly before noon, just
in time to see the mob bringing Dr. Chesnut down
the temple steps to the foot of a large tree, and she
sat down on a mound at the side. Some young
fellows then went up to her and hit her with a piece
of wood. It was not a hard blow. Four ruffians
then rushed upon her and dragged her from the
tree, and getting behind her pushed her down the
steep bank leading to the river and threw her into
the water, where she lay as though asleep. Then
one of the men jumped into the river and stabbed
her with a trident three times — once in the neck,
once in the breast, and once in the lower part of
the abdomen. Other men jumped into the water.
She was then to all appearance dead. About ten
minutes afterward they brought the body ashore."
The last service she rendered the Chinese was
under this tree, when she noticed a boy in the crowd
who had an ugly gash in his head. Dr. Chesnut
called him to her, tore off a portion of her dress and
bound up the wound. It was her last patient. The
lad came afterward to the missionaries and showed
them the healed wound. Other Chinese boys felt
the shame and disgrace of the massacre, and one
of them wrote this letter:
no Servants of the King
"Canton Christian College,
"Canton, China,
"November 20, 1905.
"To the Family and Relatives of Dr. Eleanor Chesnut :
"We are sadly shocked and deeply chagrined to hear of the
hideous massacre at Lien-chou. It is indeed a surprise to us.
After she and the other missionaries up there have done so
much for the benefit of our people, instead of appreciating and
feeling grateful for the many kindnesses received, they repaia
them in such a cruel and brutal way. This is a shame to our
people, a shame to our race ! It is a sad and melancholy spec-
tacle to see our people become so degraded and debased men-
tally; for there is no excuse whatever for their savagery and
brutality. When we think of this our hearts break.
"We can imagine your distress and despair at the loss of
your loved ones. Believe us, you have our warmest sympathy
and prayers for God's blessing upon you all. Your loved one
has but gone up to her eternal home to be with the Savior.
She is at peace after a life of labor and toil, enjoying her
reward. And who knows but that her 'faith unto death' influ-
ence may be more to the lives of the people at Lien-chou here-
after than it has ever been before?
"Accept our deepest sympathy and heartfelt apology.
"With the utmost respect we are very sincerely,
"Students of Canton Christian College.'*
It was clear, however, that her work was done, her
life finished, and she was made ready for the higher
service of the life everlasting. All the hardness of
the early years was gone, and she was perfected in
love at last. The peculiarity and desolation of her
girlhood had been transformed into sympathy with
all who were in need and complete and Christlike
ministry to all suffering. "As a college girl," wrote
one of her classmates, "she was somewhat odd and
eccentric, but to those who really knew her she was
generous, kind-hearted, genuine, and especially true
to her friends. She was mentally one of the brightest
Eleanor Chesnut iii
girls in the class of '88. As a medical student her
eccentricities decreased and her life grew and un-
folded until, when she went to China, she went
thoroughly trained and fitted for a service of the
finest quality. One little incident seems to me to
give the key to her whole life as a missionary in
China. She heard us talking in our home of a
very unlovely old woman who was dependent on the
church and who made herself so disagreeable that
it was sometimes hard to find money for her sup-
port. In the evening she came to Dr. Mci\fee and
said : 'I want to give you this money for that un-
lovely old woman whom nobody loves. My life is
lived so much among unlovely and unlovable people
that I have learned to have great sympathy and great
love for them.' 'Not to be miinistered unto, but to
minister,' was the key-note of the life of her IMaster,
and she, too, had learned not only to minister with
no thought of return, but to love to do so, which is
a far greater thing."
^'The terrible news from China brought by our
daily papers last w^eek has indeed been sadly veri-
fied," wrote another. ^'It came with especial sad-
ness to us, because of our opportunity two years ago
to renew with Dr. Chesnut our friendship of col-
lege days in a week's visit she made us on her re-
turn journey to China. We shall always be thank-
ful for that opportunity to know the strength and
112 Servants of the King
beauty of her character as developed in those lonely
years of devoted service in China. So unassuming
and modest were the accounts she gave of her life
there, that not till she had gone did we realize the
self-sacrifice and heroism underlying those years.
How lonely her first years in China were I suppose
we at home can never know. But in them she grew
sweet and strong and wonderfully sympathetic and
Christlike. To know her was a call to higher living,
to nobler serving. She has gone home, but who can
doubt that her life will blossom and bear fruit in the
lives of many of those Chinese women to whom in
Christ's name she gave *all she had' — no mean
sacrifice ?"
All this perfected character was not lost when Dr.
Chesnut went. It was simply transferred to its own
higher and nobler sphere. She had come thus to
trust God. So also may we. On the day of her
death a letter was received from her, in the Board
rooms, in which she had quoted these lines :
'Being in doubt, I say,
Lord, make it plain !
Which is the true, safe way?
Which would be in vain?
"I am not wise to know,
Not sure of foot to go,
My blind eyes cannot see
What is so clear to thee ;
Lord, make it clear to me.
Eleanor Chesnut 113
"Being perplexed, I say,
Lord, make it right !
Night is as day to thee,
Darkness as light.
"I am afraid to touch
Things that involve so much;
My trembling hand may shake,
My skilless hand may break—
Thine can make no mistake."
MATTHEW TYSON YATES
"5
So much work, and I can't do any of it. . . . God needs
men. — Matthew Tyson Yates
ii6
^.
/
r
<l
C^^^^^~^Ma^
VII
MATTHEW TYSON YATES
ABOUT seventy-five years ag"o a group of boys
were playing about a great white oak tree
near an "old-field school" in North Carolina. An
*'old-field school" in those days was a country school
held in a schoolhouse usually situated in an old
field. This group of boys had come out for recess
and were having a lively game under the spreading
limbs of an old tree. The boys were using the ends
of its great limbs, which reached almost down to
the ground, for bases. In the midst of the game one
of them gave a challenge to get off base, and all
the fifteen or twenty boys responded and ran out
from ten to twenty feet from the tree. The sky was
overcast, but there had been neither rain nor thunder.
Just on the moment the boys were safely away from
the tree, however, it was struck twice by lightning
in two consecutive seconds and shivered into pieces.
No one was killed, but the boys were hurled to the
ground, and each boy had on his body for hours a
117
Ii8 Servants of the King
deep red spot as large as a dollar, caused by the
electricity.
On one of the boys, then twelve years old, the
incident so sudden and unexpected made a deep im-
pression. He realized in a new way the power and
presence of God, and felt that he must go off and
pray. "The next morning," said he, "when I went
into a dense forest to find a certain lot of pigs — the
daily care of w^hich had been committed to me — I
sought and found, in a thick brush, a large oak that
w^as much inclined toward the south, where I would
be protected from the rain and snow in winter.
There I erected my altar of prayer, and there, for
years, I prayed, 'God be merciful to me a sinner.'
At night, I found a place of prayer nearer home,
where I was able to pray unobserved."
This boy was Matthew Tyson Yates, the pioneer
missionary of the Southern Baptist Convention, who
was to spend forty-three years as a missionary in
Shanghai, China. He was born on January 8,
1819. His father was a North Carolina farmer, who
delighted in keeping an open home for preachers of
all denominations. It was one of these preachers,
Father Purefoy, who taught the boy the prayer he
prayed in the woods. On one of his visits he put
his hand on the boy's head, saying, "May the Lord
make a preacher of him." "This blessing," said Dr.
Yates years afterward, "made an impression upon
Matthew Tyson Yates 119
my young heart, for his manner was kind and his
tone of voice serious."
In 1836, at the camp-meeting at Mount Pisgah
Church, the boy openly confessed the Savior before
men and was baptized. On his way home sore temp-
tation befell him. The evil one told him that he had
been very foolish and had spoiled his life. The lad
turned aside to meet his adversary by prayer, throw-
ing himself down by the side of a fallen tree.
"When I had been praying I know not how long,"
he said, "I heard a great noise in the leaves on the
other side of the fallen tree, like some one approach-
ing me. It became so demonstrative that I raised
myself to see what it was. And lo, there was a
kingsnake, not more than two and a half feet long,
in deadly conflict with a very large black serpent not
less than six feet long. The noise was caused by
the struggle of the blacksnake to prevent himself
being doubled by his assailant into the form of a
rude ball. The striped little kingsnake was entwined
in and out of this ball, and in this position, by
alternate contractions, he crushed the bones of his
apparently more powerful enemy, and then extricated
himself and crawled quietly away, leaving the black-
snake dead. I felt that it was good to be there;
so I again resumed my supplication and thanksgiv-
ing, and then went on my way comforted and rejoic-
ing, feeling that this incident taught me that the Lion
120 Servants of the King
of the tribe of Judah, Jesus, was able to conquer
even the old serpent himself. And in many a con-
flict since, I have evidence of his presence to protect,
comfort, and direct me in the way I should go. That
day and night I rested in Jesus. In meditating upon
what I had done, and upon the incident of the day,
and realizing that Jesus on the cross had vanquished
Satan, I had great joy. Henceforth the burden of
my prayer at the old oak tree and elsewhere was,
'Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? Show me
my duty, and grant me grace and courage to do it.' "
He made a beginning in Christian work by get-
ting up a prayer-meeting with two other boys. The
old people came and the three boys were so
frightened that they made sorry work of the meet-
ing, but it was a beginning from which Matthew did
not turn back.
When he was nineteen he started off to the
academy and college at Wake Forest, North Caro-
lina. He had a conviction that he was not to be
a farmer and asked his father to help him to an
education. ''He regretted extremely his inability
to send all his children abroad to a good school,''
says Yates, "and said that for him to attempt to
send me would be making an invidious distinc-
tion. I then told him that when I became a free
man I intended to go to school if I had to make
brick by moonlight to pay my way, and asked him
Matthew Tyson Yates 121
if he would allow me liberty to go to school on my
own responsibility when I was nineteen, the age
at which my oldest brother had married. To this
he assented and promised to assist me some.
With desire I looked forward to the next year,
when I hoped, with the proceeds of my horse,
saddle, and bridle, to commence preparation for new
work. I felt that God had something for me to do
in the world, and that my first duty was to prepare
myself for it. As I was a full-grown man and had
not the means to accomplish what I had set before
me, the prospect seemed dark indeed. But I resolved
that, with the blessing of God, I would make a way
— that no obstacle that could be overcome by human
effort should be regarded as insurmountable. This
decision, made upon my knees, gave me courage and
afforded some relief. Thenceforth the object which
I had set before me was the center around which
all my thoughts, prayers, plans, and hopes revolved."
He made his way, in part by teaching vocal music,
for he had a remarkable voice ; in part by commend-
ing himself to the Church as a man of promise well
deserving its assistance, and in part, we may be sure,
by prayer. In college as at home he had his secret
place for meeting God. He prayed in his room fear-
lessly, but as other boarders shared his room he says,
*'I found it necessary to resort to the woods again
for an altar of prayer."
122 Servants of the King
At Wake Forest he decided quietly, after long
debate of conscience, that it was his duty to become
a minister, and this led on at once with him to the
purpose to be a foreign missionary. Indeed, he
had long thought of the work on the foreign field.
As a boy he had read the memoirs of Mrs. Judson,
and as he followed the plow or worked with his
trowel he wept, he says, for hours at the thought
of the world without Christ its Savior. His health
hindered him for a time, but not long, as he had a
powerful physique, and was resolutely determined
that he must go. He wrote to the secretary of the
Foreign Mission Board in Richmond, Virginia : "I
have, with prayerful meditation, looked over the
globe, and there is no field which seems to me so in-
viting as China. I am now resolved^, and I hope that
I have been guided by the Holy Spirit, that, let
others say what they may about rushing into danger,
I will go wheresoever God in his providence may
direct me. Since coming to this irrevocable conclu-
sion my feelings and affections seem to have winged
their way to China. This enterprise has swallowed
up every other."
On August 3, 1846, he was appointed, the first
foreign missionary to go out from the State of North
Carolina. He was married on September 27, and
on April 26, 1847, he and Mrs. Yates sailed from
Boston for Hongkong on a sailing vessel and
Matthew Tyson Yates 123
reached Shanghai, only four years before opened
to foreigners, on September 12. He knew no one
in the city. There was no foreign hotel or boarding-
house. He had a letter to the Austrian consul, but
his home was full of shipwrecked sailors. The con-
sul sent him to Bishop Boone of the Protestant Epis-
copal Church. The bishop's house, too, was full, but
Mr. and Mrs. Yates joyfully slept on the parlor floor.
With the assistance of one of the bishop's mission-
aries a large pawnbroker's establishment, which the
Chinese regarded as haunted and would not rent,
was secured. ''All the partitions above stairs," says
Dr. Yates, *'had been removed, leaving a large barn-
like hall. Here were abundant signs of the spirits
or ghosts of which we had been duly warned — rats.
Into one side of this dirty place we moved ourselves,
with sundry boxes and trunks containing our world-
ly goods. This was a time to hear words of com-
plaint from a wife, if she had not counted the cost
or fully made up her mind to share my fortune. But
from that day to the present no such word has ever
been known to pass her lips. All honor to a brave
woman! I had come provided with a box of car-
penter's tools. Bedstead, cooking-stove, crockery,
and other articles were soon unpacked, so far as to
provide for immediate necessities. And, with the
boards and nails of packing-cases, my own hands
124 Servants of the King
extemporized a partition higher than a man's head,
and so made a private room."
A servant was secured, but he knew no EngHsh,
and the new missionaries knew no Chinese. *'How-
ever, we had learned one sentence of the spoken
language: Te-ko-kiaw-saf ('What is this called f)
Thus supplied with a house, a cook, a ham, a
few vegetables (we had also a few biscuits with
us), and one sentence of the spoken language, we
commenced life in Shanghai. Moreover, our com-
bined knowledge of practical housekeeping soon
demonstrated that we had imported an ignorance
that was equivalent to paralysis.- We could not
give the cook directions about our first meal, nor
could we cook a bowl of rice ourselves. A dilemma !
But something had to be done. Hard work at
opening cases and unpacking reminded us that it
was dinner-time. The cook stood before us, grin-
ning as he waited for orders. What should I do?
I believed that I could fry a slice of ham and
scramble a few eggs. So, armed with the one
sentence, 'What is this called?' and Mrs. Yates
with blank book and pencil for taking notes, down
the ladder we crawled to the improvised kitchen,
followed by the cook, who for the time was
our teacher. I pointed at the cooking-stove, and
said, Te-ko-kiaw-saf (What is this called?) An-
swer, Tih-tsaw. 'Write that down.' Seizing a bit
Matthew Tyson Yates 125
of wood, I said, Te-ko-kiazv-saf Answer, Sza.
I struck a match, and pointing at the fire, said, Te-
ko-kiaw-saf Answer, Who. I made a fire in the
stove: Te-ko-kiaw-sa? Answer, Sang-who. In like
manner I took the carving-knife, the ham, cut the
ham, took up a frying-pan, cleaned it, fried the
ham, took some eggs, scrambled them, put them in
a dish, asking about everything and every act, Te-
ko-kiaw-saf and Mrs. Yates writing down the
answer.
''We then crawled up the ladder to our great hall,
feeling that we had accomplished something. Taking
a cloth, the lining of a box, to spread on a packing-
case (for we had no table), I said, Te-ko-kiaw-sa f
Answer, Tsz-tare. Then, placing on it all the furni-
ture necessary for our simple repast, and asking the
name of each article, I said, Te-ko-kiaw-sa f An-
swer, Batay-tsz (set the table). We partook of
ham and eggs with relish, asking no questions till
we had finished. Then I said, Te-ko-kiaw-sa f.
Answer, CWiih-van (eat rice).
'Thus we prepared and ate our first meal in our
own hired house. The character of our conversa-
tion, while we ate, I leave you to imagine; for the
way before us was dark.
''With the aid of an English-Chinese dictionary
we were able to find the words for fish, fowl, mutton,
also for some vegetables, and for hiiy. By pointing
126 Servants of the King
to these words in the dictionary we managed in our
orders to substitute one or other of these articles
ior ham, and so varied our diet a Httle."
So they began. With a teacher who knew nothing
about instructing a foreigner how to talk they com-
menced the study of the language. How different
it all is now. Yat^s said, years afterward : "A mis-
sionary arriving in Shanghai hereafter can never
know the luxury of roughing it or of digging for
the language. In most instances, a missionary friend
will know about the hour he is to arrive and meet
him at the steamboat wharf and conduct him to his
comfortable home. If he is a stranger, three runners
from good hotels will, as soon as the steamer is made
fast, present their cards and offer their services:
''Carriage at the wharf, sir ; go right up.' And when
he is rested and ready to commence the study of the
language, he will find in English and Chinese First
Lessons in Chinese, grammars, and a great variety
of books, including the Scriptures and many religious
tracts in the Shanghai dialect, both in the Roman
and Chinese characters. With these, and a will to
fit himself for work, he ought to learn the spoken
language in a much shorter time than we, who came
earlier, were able to do."
Yates learned the language quickly and accurately.
Trouble with his eyesight prevented the study from
books which he would have liked to do, but it com-
Matthew Tyson Yates 127
pelled him to mingle with the people, where his
quick ear enabled him to acquire a richness of vo-
cabulary and an accuracy of tone which made him
one of the best speakers of Chinese in Shanghai.
If he spoke where he was unseen the Chinese could
not tell that it was a foreigner.
There Avas great fear and dislike of foreigners at
that time, and the people were prejudiced against
the new teachers. But Mr. Yates soon had a large
hall for preaching services, and here great com-
panies assembled to hear the foreigner. When
interruptions came, the missionary was a match
for them. ''I remember," says he, ''preaching on
one occasion to a full house when my skill was
put to test. During my sermon I touched upon
the teachings of Confucius. Thereupon a literary
man rose to his feet, about the center of the
church, and began to speak. In order to counter-
act the effect of the point I had made against
his cherished system, he commenced repeating, from
memory, portions of the Confucius classics in the
book style. This could not be understood by any
one who had not committed to memory those por-
tions of the classics. When he took his seat, all
eyes were turned upon me, for I had remained silent
while he was talking. I felt that it was necessary
for me to meet this unexpected sally, or that what
I had gained would be lost. I had not been out of
128 Servants of the King
college so long that I could not repeat some of thf»
speeches which I had declaimed when a freshman.
So I commenced, in English, with the familiar ex-
tract from Wirt's celebrated speech, 'Who is Blen-
nerhassett?' After declaiming for a few minutes
in the most approved style, I stopped and gazed at
my man. All eyes were at once turned upon him,
as much as to say, 'What have you to say to tJiatr
After a moment's silence, he said, 'Who can under-
stand foreign talk?' I replied, 'Who can under-
stand Wenli (book-style) ? If you have anything to
say let us have it in the spoken language, so that all
can understand and be profited.' 'Yes,' said many
voices, 'speak so that we can all understand.' He
then attempted an argument, but it happened to be
a point on which I was well posted. At a single
stroke of my sledge-hammer he succumbed before
the whole audience."
As soon as possible Yates pressed out from Shang-
hai into the country. He was a great curiosity to
the people who had never seen a foreigner. A
large amount of this curiosity had to be gratified be-
fore he found it possible to get access to their minds.
This was the first missionary work that had to be
done, and is, even now, in a strange locality. It was
only after giving a sort of exhibition of himself
several times at a place that he had a chance to
preach to an attentive audience. Even then it was
Matthew Tyson Yates 129
necessary to request two or three persons to keep
barking dogs away. It is a depressing thought that
it takes a long time, in a strange locahty, for Chinese
to hear what a foreigner is saying. They may under-
stand each word that he utters, but, not apprehending
what is the subject that he is talking about and their
minds not being accustomed to thinking, they do
not leave old ruts very easily.
This country work was soon interrupted, for from
1853 to 1856 Shanghai was beset by rebels. The
T'ai-p'ing Rebellion was in progress, but the dis-
turbance at Shanghai was purely local and not con-
nected with the T'ai-p'ing insurrection. Yates'
house was in the native city and in a position of
danger. For sixteen months Mr. Yates occupied it
alone, though shot often crashed through the win-
dows or against the wall at the foot of his bed.
At last the government purchased the house to use
as a base of operation against the rebels, and he
moved out.
When the rebellion was over his health became
so much impaired that the doctor ordered him to
leave for a year. The ship on which he and his
family sailed was so nearly wrecked that they were
picked up by a Siamese ship and taken back to
Shanghai, whence, on November 17, 1857, they
started again for New York City. On the voyage
their supplies gave out and they were reduced to
130 Servants of the King
dried apples. At last, after reaching a point within
one hundred and fifty miles of New York, they
were eleven days getting in because of hard winds
and storms.
At home on furlough, some members of Mr.
Yates' old church criticized him for being dressed
too well. At length it was referred to openly in a
meeting. Then *'Mr. Yates arose with an almost
heavenly smile on his countenance. He said that
he did not dress extravagantly; that nearly every-
thing that he wore at the time had been given to
him by Brother Skinner and other brethren eleven
years before, when he went to China. The effect
was overwhelming. No one could be found who
would confess that he had said anything about Mr.
Yates' style of dress." He was always neat in his
personal appearance, but also very careful and
frugal, and he did not believe that home Christians
should delegate all the self-denial to the missionaries.
Just after his return to China the Civil War broke
out at home. He was then in the thick of the work
in Shanghai. The war destroyed the ability of the
South to maintain its missionaries, and Dr. Yates
had to find some way of self-support. The municipal
council of the foreign community and the United
States consulate offered him work as an interpreter,
and in this way he supported his family and also
the mission until the end of the war. In this posi-
Matthew Tyson Yates 131
tion he won still further the honor and respect of
the whole community. The work did not take much
of his time and it left him free to go on with his
preaching. In 1864 he visited Europe, where he
won the lasting interest of all whom he met, and
the following year returned to China, to which he
henceforth always referred as *'home." '*It seems
to be the will of the Lord that I should wear out
here/' he wrote. He began to feel now that he had
at last learned the secret of the Chinese heart. About
the methods of the work he had strong convictions,
as he said at the Shanghai Missionary Conference
in 1871 :
*'To secure an aggressive native church, there
are some things which I regard as fundamental :
"i. A converted and evangelical membership. To
admit any other element into our churches, even
though they may be persons of wealth or influence
as scholars, is to paralyze the whole church.
"2. They should be taught that when they em-
brace Christianity they become the disciples of Jesus
Christ, and not the disciples of the missionary.
**3. As they become the disciples of Jesus they
should become thoroughly acquainted with his teach-
ings in the language in which they think and speak.
They should be encouraged to commit to memory
precious and practical portions of the New Testa-
132 Servants of the King
ment In the spoken language of their particular
locality.
"4. They should be taught the individuality of
their religion, that they are personally responsible
to God ; that they can and ought to exert a personal
influence in behalf of the religion which they profess.
''We need to take hold and show them how it
should be done. This will be easy to do, for the
Chinese are good imitators, and example is a good
teacher. And at first, if they need a little aid, we
should render it, for nothing is so encouraging as
success. We should strive to avoid the depressing
influence of failure. And let it be ever borne in
mind that we need not expect our native preachers
to be as aggressive as ourselves."
With characteristic large-mindedness and courage,
Dr. Yates wrote, about thirty years ago : 'T have
surveyed and studied a line of attack for the
Southern Baptists; that is, the line of the great
River Yang-tzu to the Ssu-ch'uan Province in
the west." Later on, with more detail, he gave the
following outline of his plans and labors : 'Tn due
time, with Shanghai as a base of operations, I chose
Su-chou, on the Grand Canal, and Chin-chiang,at the
junction of the Grand Canal with the Yang-tzu
River, as the great centers for a great work, when
the men should be found to occupy them. These
three cities, from a commercial point of view, domi-
Matthew Tyson Yates 133
nate a population of more than twenty million souls.
They are situated in the form of a right-angled tri-
angle ; the Grand Canal forming one side ; an equally
grand canal from Shanghai to Su-chou forming the
other side ; while the Yang-tzu River is the hypoth-
enuse of the triangle. From Shanghai to Su-chou
is eighty-five miles; from Su-chou to Chin-chiang
is one hundred and twenty-seven miles ; from Chin-
chiang to Shanghai is one hundred and fifty-seven
miles by the river."
From constant preaching, his voice failed him.
He had overtaxed it, and for years to come his
struggle was to recover its use. He came to
America and visited Europe and went to great
doctors, and at last he was able with care to re-
sume the full activity in which he delighted. Dur-
ing these years he was for a time the American
vice-consul-general in Shanghai, using the money
he received to build chapels and advance the work,
but when offered the position of consul-general he
refused and resigned at the same time the office of
vice-consul. "I could not accept it," he said, "with-
out giving up my missionary work — my life-work.
No of^ce, no gift of the government, could induce
me to do that while I am able to preach and translate.
I resigned, therefore, the honors and the emolu-
ment."
Dr. Yates had met all difificulties triumphantly so
134 Servants of the King
far, and had turned them to good. His failure of
eyesight led him to become a master of the common
speech of the people. The failure of his voice led
him to throw burdens on the native Church which
strengthened it. The war cut off supplies from
home, and he earned more upon the field than he
had been receiving and applied it to the work. And
now he began to suffer from an affliction for which
he had nine surgical operations, so he turned to
Bible translation, and the result was the translation
of the New Testament into the spoken language of
many millions. Only his robust physique enabled
him to stand all this strain. He had always taken
care of his health. As he wrote to a missionary can-
didate : "The first qualification of a foreign mission-
ary is to be a good animal. You may be furnished
with a first-class instrument, but w^ithout physical
strength to wield it, it would be of little service to
you. Therefore, guard your health with sedulous
care as to the Lord. Live well and take regular
€xercise. Play lawn tennis, notwithstanding what
the drones may say about such sports for a candi-
date for the foreign mission field. We are not
bound to observe the austerity of life that a super-
stitious public is too ready to prescribe. The Scrip-
tures prescribe no such austerity. Exercise in the
open air is necessary to secure health of body and
mind and to preserve youthful spirits. From the
Matthew Tyson Yates 135
time I entered college until I graduated, I was in
the habit of running two miles every morning at
four o'clock. Even now, I walk my two miles a day.
I am in splendid health, for which I am profoundly
thankful."
Calls came to him from America to return to
positions of influence here, but he would not Hsten.
"I could not come down/' he wrote, "from the
position of an ambassador for Christ to an empire,
to become president of a college or to accept any
other position in the gift of the people of the United
States." He drove straight on in his own work and
sought to hearten others who were discouraged. "A
few days ago," he wrote at the age of sixty-seven,
*'I wrote to Mr. Devault, who is ill at Tung-chou,
urging him to maintain, in addition to strong con-
victions in regard to his work, an indomitable will
to do what Christ had commanded him to do, and
then leave the whole matter of health in the Lord's
hands. I gave him a prescription from my own
experience. During my first years in China, I was
so run down by ague and fever that I thought that
my work was finished. I came before the Lord in
this wise: 'O Lord, if it be thy will that my work
end now, thy will be done. If it is thy will that
my strength be restored to work for thee in this land
of darkness, behold thy servant for all time.' The
decades that have passed show that the Lord was
136 Servants of the King
only harnessing me up for a forty-year trot at the
rate of 2.20. There is Hfe and protection in strong
convictions, indomitable will, and faith in God. This
life, this protection against temptation and spiritual
deadness, is available to all Christians in every con-
dition of hfe."
But the strong life could not last forever, and
at the age of sixty-nine he died at Chin-chiang,
where he had gone to build a new chapel. "So much
work," he said as he lay sick with his last illness,
*'and I can't do any of it." ''God can have it done,"
said an associate. "But God needs men," was his
answer. After forty-one years in Shanghai God
met him and took him. "I am ready to go," he was
able to say before the end, "if God wants me. I
should like to live and work longer, but I am ready."
So he passed forward, his little church in Shanghai
mourning for him. *'We have lost our good shep-
herd," they said, "and the flock is bleating."
ISABELLA THOBURN
•37
The power of educated womanhood is simply the power of
skilled service. We are not in the world to be ministered
unto, but to minister. The world is full of need, and every
opportunity to help is a duty.
— Isabella T hob urn
z-S
cv
^y^cyU-z<y^t^t^ —
VIII
ISABELLA THOBURN
FORTY years ago a missionary was traveling
and preaching among the villages in Rohil-
khand, India. One day, when his tent was pitched
in a mango orchard, he went out for a walk in the
shade of the trees. In the broken tops of one of
the trees a vulture had built her nest, and passing
near the place the missionary picked up a quill which
had fallen from her wing. Taking out his pen-
knife he cut the quill into a pen, and as it looked
like a good pen, although it was very big, he went
into his tent to see if he could write with it. He
found that it would write very well, and he thought
it would interest his sister, far away in America, if
he wrote to her with his strange pen. So he wrote
with the vulture's quill a description of the work
he was doing in the villages, and told her of the
great need of a boarding-school at some central
place where the girls from the villages could come
and be trained for future usefulness, and then be
sent back to carry light to their darkened homes.
139
140 Servants of the King
The big pen asked, at the close of the letter, and the
question was almost thoughtless, "How would you
like to come and take charge of such a school ?" By
the first steamer which could bring a reply the sister's
answer came, that she would leave for India just
as soon as the way was opened for her to do so.
That was the way the call came to Isabella Tho-
burn. But she would not have heard it if she had
not been ready for it. Many things had been making
her ready. God had given her the right ancestry.
Her Scotch-Irish parents had come to America from
Belfast in 1825, fifteen years before Isabella was
born, and settled near St. Clairsville, Ohio, where
the five sisters and five brothers spent a happy child-
hood. Her father died when she was ten years old,
but not before his great strength of character, his
fear of God, and his courageous devotion to the right
had made a deep impression on the child. Her
mother was "a woman of clear convictions, prompt
decision, and extraordinary courage. One day, when
alone with one of her daughters, a maniac rushed
into the room, brandishing an ax in a state of great
excitement. The daughter was almost paralyzed
with terror, but the mother spoke kindly to him, con-
tinued at her work, and in a minute or two asked
him to let her take his ax, which he at once gave up,
and very soon he became docile as a child. Her
moral courage was not less marked than her physical,
Isabella Thoburn 141
and her general character was that of a strong but
tender and sympathetic woman." In all this Isabella
reproduced her mother, and when, years later, she
laid aside her work and nursed a smallpox patient
in Lucknow she justified herself by appealing to her
mother's example, who night after night had cared
for a poor neighbor sick with the same disease, with-
out one thought of fear for herself or her children.
It was a sincere and consecrated home in which the
child grew up. When the farm was at last paid for,
the father brought home the last note and two gold
eagles. One of these ''he tossed into the mother's
lap and said : That is for a new winter cloak for
you ; let us give the other as a thank-offering at the
missionary collection.' The mother handed back the
coin and said : 'Let us give both as a thank-offer-
ing; / will turn my old cloak/ "
Isabella was sent to the district school, about a
mile from her home, when she was quite young, but
she did not take a special interest in her work. In
later years she said that she had not really awakened
intellectually until she was sixteen years of age.
.When she was ten she narrowly escaped death from
a savage attack of a big dog, which a grov/n-up
brother beat off with a spade, but not before it had
fearfully lacerated her arm. At fifteen she entered
the Wheeling Female Seminary, West Virginia.
She often lamented later the time she had wasted,
142 Servants of the King
as she thought, in these years on music, for which
she had no taste. After leaving the seminary she
taught a summer school and met with success from
the beginning. Dissatisfied with her preparation,
she returned to the Wheeling seminary, added a
year of art-study in the Cincinnati Academy of De-
sign, and then returned to teaching. In March,
1859, her brother, who wrote her the letter with the
vulture's quill in 1866, and who afterward became
Bishop Thoburn, went to India as a missionary.
The seven years after her brother's going, before
his letter to her from Rohilkhand, were spent in
teaching, in caring for her invalid and widowed
sister-in-law and her three little boys, and in a gen-
eral preparation for the great work before her, of
which as yet she did not know. In 1869, however,
the official call came, and the way, for which
in 1866 she wrote that she must wait, was opened.
She and Miss Clara A. Swain, M.D., were appointed
the first missionaries of the newly established Wom-
an's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist
Episcopal Church. They sailed from New York
in the fall of 1869 in the steamer Nevada and ar-
rived in Bombay January 7, 1870. They were
just in time for the annual conference of the
Methodist missionaries. Miss Swain was assigned
to Bareilly to begin the first medical missionary
work for women by women in India, and Miss Tho-
Isabella Thoburn 143
burn was stationed at Lucknow, which was to be her
home and the seat of her greatest work. She saw
at once the bright side of the new conditions of life,
and she never wrote and seldom spoke of the dis-
comforts or "trials" of missionary work in India.
She set herself at once, in her quiet, direct, positive
way, to build up her girls' school for the training
especially of Christian girls to make them capable
of helping and teaching others. The converts were
few and most of them poor. Some people doubted
whether the time had come for Miss Thoburn's
scheme, but she resolutely began with six girls on
the morning of April 18, 1870. Two of the six
were Eurasians — half European, half Asiatic — for
the great revival due to William Taylor's visit to
India greatly enlarged the field of work among this
class. Very soon Miss Thoburn bought one of the
best properties in the city, which had been occupied
by an opponent of her plans, and had in this place,
known as Lai Bagh, or Ruby Garden, an ample home
and place for her work for all her life in India. Six
years later she started another school for English
girls at Cawnpur, forty-five miles to the west of
Lucknow, and for some time she managed both
schools, going to and fro by night.
After ten years of solid and faithful work, Miss
Thoburn came home on furlough. She had always
shrunk from speaking in public, but in Peabody,
144 Servants of the King
Kansas, she was invited to speak in a Presbyterian
church. "In her earher years," writes Bishop Tho-
burn, "she had never known or heard of such a thing
as a woman speaking in a Presbyterian church, and
now she was confronted by a request, which would
brook no denial, to deliver an address in an orthodox
church of that denomination. She could not refuse,
and yet w^ould not consent; but finally, by way of
compromise, she proposed to take a seat in front
and answer any questions which might be asked.
'I cannot give an address,' she said, 'but I am will-
ing to give information by answering questions, and
in this way I can find out exactly what you wish to
know.' This plan was followed, with the result
which might have been anticipated. Question fol-
lowed question; the replies became somewhat
lengthy, and before very long it seemed necessary
for the speaker to rise from her chair in order to
be better heard in all parts of the church. Thus it
came to pass that she found herself, almost before
she realized it, standing in a Presbyterian church
and dehvering an address to an audience on Sunday
afternoon. Before the meeting closed she realized
what had happened. She had crossed her Rubicon,
and any one who knew her would have known that
she had crossed never to return. She accepted the
new responsibility cheerfully, and said to her new
friends : Tf there is anything wrong about this,
Isabella Thoburn 145
you must bear me witness that the Presbyterians
are responsible for it.' " She was soon in demand
everywhere, and ever afterward was one of the most
acceptable and effective of missionary speakers. She
was never pretentious nor excited, but always ear-
nest, calmly intense, and so direct and practical that
no one heard her without feeling the power of her
personality. She made notable addresses at great
missionary conferences in India, and at the Ecumen-
ical Missionary Conference in New York in 1900,
and those who heard her speak will never forget her
quiet but overpowering presentation of the needs
of the women of India.
On returning to India, in 1882, she began to
develop her school into a college, and did not rest
until it became the highest-g;rade institution for
Christian women in India. ' *'In America," she said
in one of her appeals, "we realize the importance of
placing people in colleges which are under direct
Christian influence. Much more is it important in
a heathen land, where new thought awakened under
secular instruction runs toward infidelity; where the
doubts and speculations of all the ages are alive and
at war with faith; where blind belief in the false
makes the truth a stumbling-block ; and where wom-
en who are being set free from the restraints of old
customs must be surrounded by restraints of prin-
ciple, or their cause is lost, and with it the hope of
146 Servants of the King
regeneration for their people. The need of India
to-day is a leadership from among her own people ;
leadership, not of impulsive enthusiasm, or of preju-
dice, but of matured judgment and conscientious
conviction. Part of our work as missionaries is to
educate and train the character that can lead, and
it is to accomplish this that we formed our first
woman's college in the Eastern world. There are
over one hundred colleges in India for young men,
but only one for young women, and that not Chris-
tian. Think what efforts we would make if there
were only one college for women in America, and,
in some measure, let us recognize the universal sister-
hood, and make like efforts for the women of India."
Before her plans were all carried out, failing
health sent her home again in 1886. On the way
home she read The Life of Robert and Mary Moffat,
the great missionaries in South Africa whose daugh-
ter married David Livingstone. She wrote of it:
"In the light of their zeal and unfailing devotion, of
their sacrifices — which were worthy the name indeed,
though they did not call them so — of their faith in
the face of difficulties we never dream of, our poor
work seems scarcely worthy of mention, not worthy
to be compared to theirs. The book is a simple
record of real life, but it is a sacred romance,
though the principal actors never dreamed that
they were uncommon people or the heroes we see
Isabella Thoburn 147
them to be. As we close the record it is with an in-
tense longing for the true martyr spirit, that can, not
only give life for a cause or a truth, but can do more,
can give living service; nor counting anything
dear, but consecrating all and maintaining the con-
secration with unfaltering heroism, an intense long-
ing begins to be felt for an outpouring of the Holy
Spirit upon the Church, by which her sons and
daughters will be anointed with power, with true
heroism, and sent abroad over all the dark places of
the earth. We count the missionaries we have sent
out, the dollars we have given, the schools we have
opened, and then congratulate ourselves that we
have done well; but, dear sisters, in the great day,
the Svell done,' spoken to women like Mary Moffat,
will put to shame our easy service and show us what
might have been accomplished if we had 'done w^hat
we could.' "
In this spirit she threw herself into work at
home so long as she was kept there. She became
house mother of the New Deaconess Home in
Chicago, then organized similar work in Cincinnati,
and began it in Boston, always showing forth every-
where the spirit of service, which she believed was
the fundam.ental thing in Christianity, and which
she urged upon all young women as the great ideal
of life. 'The call comes to-day," she said, ''and
would that all who sit at ease, and yet long for the
148 Servants of the King
heart's rest they have not ; all who spend upon them-
selves their thought and strength ; all who build like
the insect their own houses of clay in which they
can only perish — would that all these knew the
blessedness of service to every creature for whom
Christ died, whether in African deserts or islands of
the sea! So many seek places where others crowd
in before them;, while there is room for all, far out
and far down, and there need be no Christian woman
in all this happy land who cannot find a place in
which to serve our common Master with a glad and
willing heart."
In 1890 she returned to India and was reappointed
principal of the Woman's College at Lucknow. She
took hold again with her wonted wisdom and energy.
"One of the first things she did was to give up her
own cool and quiet room for the noisy quarters of
the matron in the center of the boarding-house," says
a former pupil who was there at the time, 'Svhile
the matron was allowed to occupy a room at one
end of the same building, and to continue her work
as usual. We can now understand that this was done
to check a certain laxity in the management of the
girls, without offending any of the parties, which is
often the case in other schools when a reform is
undertaken by a new lady principal.
''When Miss Thoburn rang the rising-bell witH
her own hands, the girls did not find it hard to
Isabella Thoburn 149
rise early; when she made her own bed and dusted
the things in her room, the girls felt that their
special duty was even to sweep their rooms and
keep them neat and tidy; when she wrote her busi-
ness letters, it was the most natural thing for
everybody to be quiet, and also during the rest-
hour, and so on. The matron, too, received much
help. The storeroom was kept in good order,
and the meals of the girls were properly attended
to, because she went into the kitchen at least
once a day and peeped into the storeroom every
now and then; the sweepers were well watched, be-
cause she went around the w^hole place to see if it
was clean; the sick girls were nursed with much
care and patience, because she had the worst cases
in her own room, and sat up nights with them — and
so on through the whole routine of duty. And even
when she went back to her own room in the main
building after several months, she still kept most
of the work under her own personal supervision. In
the school building, too, there was much skill in the
methods of teaching and keeping discipline, because
Miss Thoburn herself taught the most difficult sub-
jects, and also some of the least promising classes.
All this was done with a quiet dignity which in-
spired both love and awe in all around her, and
grown-up people were struck with the wisdom which
guided her to do all things without offending." Miss
150 Servants of the King
Thoburn was not the kind to talk and expect others
to do. She led others to do by herself doing.
Her supreme qualities were her unboastful but
all-dominating love and her plain, firm sense of duty.
"Every missionary candidate should learn hy heart,
in the deepest sense," she wrote to young women
looking forward to the mission field, ''that golden
thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians." She liked
the deaconess work because it led women into sim-
ple, faithful duty-doing in Christ's service. ''Be-
fore I left India in 1886," she wrote, "I had become
convinced of two things that we have since thought
important factors in our deaconess system : first, that
while there is so much to be done in the world it is
impossible to accomplish it all, or the large part of
it, by salaried work ; and, next, that life is not long
enough, nor money plentiful enough, to spend much
of either on the clothes we wear." Her absolute
unselfishness and sincerity combined with her tire-
less energy and great practical wisdom to make her
a master missionary.
The equipment and development of the college
laid heavy burdens on her, and her last visit home,
in 1900, was to raise money for the immediate needs
of the institution. She and Miss Lilavati Singh, one
of her pupils, met with complete success on this
errand. The object-lesson of her work in India seen
in Miss Singh was itself the most convincing of
Isabella Thoburn 151
arguments. It was at a dinner in New York at the
time of the Ecumenical Conference, after Miss Singh
had spoken, that ex-President Harrison rose, with
tears on his cheeks, and said: *'If I had ever had
a million dollars and had spent it all on foreign
missions and this young woman were the only re-
sult, I should feel amply repaid for my investment."
And the crowning evidence of the reality of Miss
Thoburn's work was found in the fact that all the
praise Miss Singh received did not in the least spoil
her or turn her head.
Together they went back to India, in May, 1900.
On the way Miss Thoburn began to feel that her
work was done, and the feeling deepened after she
reached India. In a little more than two months
the end, which she knew was near, came, and she
died of cholera in Lucknow on September ist. The
life here was done, but it had achieved its victory,
"Here was a rich and powerful government," said
a missionary of another denomination, ^'anxious to
promote the cause of female education, on the one
hand, and a Christian woman without money, pres-
tige, or other resources, on the other. Both had the
same object in view and both were in the same field,
but the lone missionary worker succeeded, while the
powerful government met with comparative failure.
The w^hole case is simply a marvel. It is a picture
worthy of the most serious study." What was the
152 Servants of the King
secret? Miss Singh found it in one of Miss Tho-
burn's favorite Bible verses: 'That in all things
he might have the preeminence." "I am a poor crea-
ture/' Miss Thoburn wrote, "yet no matter; for in
Christ I can work, and if I were strong and wise
I could do nothing without him." Whoever has
learned that lesson has gained the secret of strength
and wisdom. Have we learned it?
JAMES ROBERTSON
«53
God has given us an opportunity which we dare not neglect.
—'James Robertson
154
i
C:^ ^^^.-i.-^-r^
IX
JAMES ROBERTSON
SHE was a little woman," said one of Christina
Robertson's daughters. ''There was nothing
that any woman could do that she could not do, and
when it was done it needed no second doing." James
Robertson was his mother's own son. He was born
on April 24, 1839, in the little village of Dull in
the valley of the Tay in Scotland. He was an
even-tempered boy and self-controlled, but, as his
schoolmaster said, he was a ''terrible fighter when
fighting had to be done." Whatever he once took
a grip of he never let go. When he w^as sixteen a
problem in arithmetic that had given some trouble
in the college at Edinburgh was sent down to the
master at Dull. "If any of them can solve it," said
he, "it will be Robertson." So to Robertson he gave
it, and the lad "took it home and fell upon it."
When his father was going to bed that night he said
to his boy, "Are you not comin' to your bed, lad?"
"Yes, after a while," replied the boy, hardly look-
ing up from his slate. But when next morning the
155
156 Servants of the King
father came in to light the fire, James rose from the
spot where he had been left sitting the night before,
with the solution of the problem in his hands.
The family was very poor, and all that he had
James Robertson's father lost in the terrible storm
which buried Tayside under snow in 1854 and ruined
many a small sheep farmer. The times that fol-
lowed were so hard that the family decided to leave
Scotland and try their fortune in Canada. In 1855
they sailed on the George Roger and settled in East
Oxford, Ontario. That part of Ontario was then
forest wilderness, and the family spent their fi.rst
summer in enlarging the clearing on their farm.
The following winter James and his brother chopped
cord-wood and hauled it to the neighboring village
of Woodstock, and the next summer worked again
on the farm, but for a few weeks he walked night
and morning a distance of six miles to attend school
at Woodstock. He tried at once for a teacher's
certificate, which he secured, and got a country
school at the age of eighteen. There was much
whisky-drinking in those days and James became a
firm and zealous advocate of total abstinence. He
W'as an earnest Christian boy, also walking to and
from Woodstock twice each Sunday in order to be
present at both morning and evening services and
he connected himself with the Chalmers Church in
Woodstock.
James Robertson 157
From the country school where he first taught,
Robertson went in 1859 to ^ larger school near
Innerkip. He is still remembered by those who were
his pupils there. "He was afraid of nothing,"
writes one of them, "man, beast, or devil. There
was a fractious colt on the farm where he boarded
which none of us dared to handle. Robertson
mastered him and rendered him tractable." "What
seemed to others impossible," said another, "that
was the thing that had a peculiar charm for him."
Here at Innerkip he met the young woman whom
he married. The task of winning her was not easy,
but that made it only the more uplifting to him and
he prevailed. It was twelve long years, however,
before they could be married. For three years he
taught the Innerkip school and then went off to the
University of Toronto. His clothes were not of
the latest fashion and he was a sober student, but
no one could help respecting him. As one student
said of him, "Though he wore his trousers at high-
water mark, and though his hats were wonderful to
behold and his manners abrupt and uncouth, still
*Jeemsie,' as he was dubbed by the irreverent, com-
manded the respect of the giddiest of the lot for his
fine heart and for his power of pungent speech, for
he would fire words at you hke a cannon-ball. And
for the ridicule of the boys, Jeemsie cared not a
tinker's curse." He joined the University Corps of
158 'Servants of the King
the Queen's Own Rifles and saw some fighting when
a fellow student was shot down beside him in the
Fenian Raid of 1866.
After his university course he went to Princeton
Theological Seminary, the opportunities at that time
in the States being better than in Canada. After
two years at Princeton he went to New York to
Union Seminary to finish his course and then took
charge of a downtown mission, where he made so
great a success that the committee and Dr. John Hall
tried to persuade him to stay and work in New
York, but his duty, as he saw it, led him back to his
own adopted country. After being married, Sep-
tember 2^, 1869, he settled for five years in Norwich,
Ontario. He was a fine, strong preacher and
pastor, and what was more, a fine, strong man. It
is related how on a Sabbath evening, after he had
begun his service, the fire-bell rang. At once Mr.
Robertson dismissed the congregation, for fire pro-
tection there w^as none, unless such as could be pro-
vided by the bucket-brigade. It was discovered that
a neighboring hotel was on fire. Immediately the
minister took command of the situation, organized
the crowd, and by dint of the most strenuous exer-
tions had the fire suppressed. In gratitude for his
services, and in sympathy with his exhausted con-
dition, the hotel-keeper brought him a bottle of
brandy with which to refresh himself. "Never will
James Robertson 159
I forget," writes another member of his congrega-
tion, "the manner in which he seized that brandy
bottle by the neck, swung it around his head, and
dashed it against the brick wall, exclaiming as he
did so, 'That's a fire that can never be put out.' "
Far to the west a great new country had been
opening up. At first it was thought to be a waste
land, but in 1870 the troops returning from the
suppression of the Northwest rebellion, under Louis
Riel, a half-breed Indian, "the officers who com-
manded, the politicians and shrewd business men
who followed in their wake, all came back enthusias-
tic immigration agents." Then began the tidal
waves of immigration which flooded this great
Western country with men hungry for land. And
the churches came in after them.
They did not come as fast as they should have
come, however, and at the close of the year 1873
Robertson responded to an appeal to go out to preach
in the new Knox Church in Winnipeg, the raw but
growing capital of the province of Manitoba. It was
a long, rough winter journey. There was no trans-
continental railroad in Canada and Robertson went
out by way of Detroit, Chicago, and St. Paul. From
Breckenridge, the end of the railway from St. Paul,
it took four days to get through to Winnipeg. There
he found a long, straggling street of shacks and
stores, huddled on the bleak prairie around the big
i6o Servants of the King
stone fort of the Hudson Bay Company and a great
country soon to be filled with men, and also a divided
church. He settled down to his task, and the six
months lengthened out to cover the rest of his life.
The church called him to stay, and he sent for his
family and stayed.
In the new land with its fierce winters he had
a full experience. "Once during the w^inter of
1877 he went to Stony Mountain to perform a
marriage ceremony. On his return a storm came
up with startling suddenness. The sun was shin-
ing brightly and there was no appearance of a
storm, when Mr. Robertson noticed a great white
cloud like snow rolling along near the ground, while
the sky still remained clear. In another instant the
storm was upon him, a blizzard so blinding that the
horse stopped, turned round, and left the trail. With
a great deal of difficulty he got the horse back to
the road, unhitched it from the cutter, took off the
harness and let it go, then set off himself to fight
his way through the stormi. A short distance from
Kildonan he overtook a man hauling a load of wood
who had lost his way, and who was almost insensible
from cold and fatigue. He turned the horses loose
and took the man with him to a house in Kildonan.
After half an hour's rest he set off again for Winni-
peg, for he had left his wife sick in bed and well
knew she would be in terror for him. So once more
James Robertson i6i
he faced the bhzzard, and after two hours' struggle
he reached his home."
In 1 88 1 he left the pastorate to accept the newly
created post of superintendent of home missions
for ]\Ianitoba and the Northwest. He set off at
once on his first missionary tour, driving two thou-
sand miles, at first through heat and dust and rain
and then through frosts and blizzards. He preached
where he could, and was not to be discouraged by
any situation. Once coming to a settlement late on
a Saturday evening where the largest building was
the hotel and the largest room the bar, he inquired
of the hotel man :
''Is there any place where I can hold a service
to-morrow ?"
"Service?"
*'Yes, a preaching service."
'Treaching? Oh, yes, I'll get you one," he re-
plied with genial heartiness.
Next day Air. Robertson came into the bar, which
was crowded with men.
''Well, have you found a room for my service?"
he inquired of his genial host.
"Here you are, boss, right here. Get in behind
that bar and here's your crowd. Give it to 'em.
God knows they need it."
Mr. Robertson caught the wink intended for the
boys only. Behind the bar were bottles and kegs
1 62 Servants of the King
and other implements of the trade; before it men
standing up for their drinks, chaffing, laughing,
swearing. The atmosphere could hardly be called
congenial, but the missionary was "onto his job,"
as the boys afterwards admiringly said. He gave out
a hymn. Some of the men took off their hats and
joined in the singing, one or two whistling an ac-
companiment. As he was getting into his sermon
one of the men, evidently the smart one of the com-
pany, broke in:
"Say, boss," he drawled, "I like yer nerve, but
I don't believe yer talk."
"All right," replied Mr. Robertson, "give me a
chance. When I get through you can ask any ques-
tions you like. If I can I will answer them, if I
can't I'll do my best."
The reply appealed to the sense of fair play in the
crowd. They speedily shut up their companion and
told the missionary to "fire ahead," which he did,
and to such good purpose that when he had finished
there was no one ready to gibe or question. After
the service was closed, however, one of them ob-
served earnestly:
"I believe every word you said, sir. I haven't
heard anything like that since I was a kid, from my
Sunday-school teacher. I guess I gave her a pretty
hard time. But look here, can't you send us a mis-
James Robertson 163
sionary for ourselves? We'll chip in, won't we,
boys?"
One of his first concerns was to raise a Church
and Manse Building Fund. So well did he work at
persuading money out of even the most unsympa-
thetic that, when he laid down the work twenty
years later, the fund had assisted in the erection of
419 churches, 90 manses, and 4 schoolhouses, and
had put the Church in possession of property valued
at $603,835.
The railroad had crossed the Red River and
entered Winnipeg in 1881, and thence had pressed
steadily westward. The inflowing tide of immigra-
tion had taken up the land along the road and then
pressed outward into the country on either side.
The people along the road were easily accessible, but
Robertson was not content to reach these alone.
He was after all, and he went everywhere look-
ing for them. And he took what experience came
in the way of his duty. Of one night, typical
of many, a companion wrote :
"That night was spent in 'a stopping-place,' and
Dr. Robertson and I roomed together in a small
bedroom off the sitting-room. We roomed together,
but we slept not, neither did we lie down to rest.
A hurried inspection revealed the fact that the bed
was preempted by the living pest which a man
shakes not off, as in the morning he crawls from
164 Servants of the King
under the bedclothing. We determined to keep the
lire in the sitting-room going, and so maintain a
degree of comfort during the winter night. But
some parties, by making a bed beside the sitting-
room stove, spoiled our plan and imprisoned us in
our room for the night. We walked the floor, we
jumped, and, if not very artistically, at least with
some vigor, we danced, that the temperature of the
body might be maintained at a considerably higher
degree than the temperature of the room. The night
passed, and so did the breakfast hour, and we started
on our twelve-mile drive."
"To-night," he wrote himself of another stopping-
place, "we are to lodge in a place 7x12 feet, parti-
tioned off from the stable. A lot of hay covers the
floor, a rusty stove is standing in the corner, which,
with a rickety table, constitute the furniture. We
found a lantern which will answer for a light. The
side is quite airy, the boards having shrunk a good
deal. But I have a good tuque, or nightcap, and I
hope to keep warm enough. I have two buffalo-robes,
two pairs of blankets, and other appliances that will
likely keep me comfortable. Three teams besides our
own drove in here just now, and are going to remain
all night. I think the room will afford sufficient
accommodation to enable us to lie down. To-mor-
row we expect to make Humboldt at six."
In the first five years he established on the
mv. JAMES ROBERTSON D.D.
©39 - 1302
*»ASTOa Of NORWICH iSSS - 1874
FiftST Pastor or knox Church. Winnipes
I tS74 — 1881
Sl»»f:RfNT£NDeNT Of WtSTERN Mestows
l8Bf — 1902.
JAME3 Robertson's grave ix the kildoxax churchyard, maxitoba
James Robertson 165
average one preaching station a week. His first
report showed a communicant roll of 1,355 for all
the West ; the report for 1887 showed 5,623. When
he came to his field the Presbytery of Manitoba had
knowledge of only 971 families. In a single year
he discovered 1,000 more and placed these formerly
unknown and isolated families in church homes,
and during the five years he discovered and set in
Church relation over 3,000 Presbyterian families.
W^hen he took into his hands the reins of superin-
tendency, he found in all the West some fifteen
churches. Before five years were over there were
nearly 100. In attaining these results, he wanted
men who would work and not whine.
"I rem.ember him telling me," a minister relates,
"of a student whose zeal was less than his indolence.
He was in charge of a mission somewhere near
Regina, and lived in rooms which were attached to
the church. Dr. Robertson drove over one morning,
knowing that he was due to preach in an outlying
station ten miles away at eleven o'clock.
"I knocked at the outer door at ten o'clock, sir,
and when I got no answer I concluded that he had
started on his journey. However, I opened the door
and walked in. I went upstairs and rapped on the
door of his bedroom. I heard a sleepy voice say,
'Come in/ and I opened the door and found him yet
1 66 Servants of the King
in bed. He preached that morning without his
breakfast, sir."
"Talking with a whining student one day," says
another, "who was relating what he considered hard-
ships in the way of uncomfortable beds in which
there were crawling things, and irregular meals not
always prepared in the most tasty form, the super-
intendent began very sympathetically telling some
of his own experiences. Sleeping one night in a
dugout, wrapped in his blanket on the. clay floor,
which was several feet below the surface of the
ground, he felt cold, clammy things on his back and
face. He would brush them off and turn over, and
by the time he was getting off to sleep again there
would be another visitation, and so he kept brushing
them away the w^hole night.
" 'And what were these things?' asked the won-
dering student.
"Well, you see the floor was tw^o feet below the
ground. The ground was worn away several inches
lower than the door, and the lizards would fall over
the edge of the cutting and crawl under the door, and
during the night creep over the floor. And these
lizards were enjoying a warm nest on my neck and
face.
"The poor student stood horrified. The superin-
tendent enthused for a few moments on lice and
lizards and snakes, as though encounters therewith
James Robertson 167
were as valuable as theology in a true missionary's
education, and the complaining dude subsided. His
hardships vanished into thin air."
He knew how to handle the rough elements in
the new far Western country. After a meeting in
Rossland, a British Columbia mining town then at
the height of its boom, one rough fellow exclaimed
of him: "Say, ain't he a corker?" and then sol-
emnly, after due thought, ''He's a Jim Dandy
corker."
While he was making his first trip through
Alberta and was soliciting subscriptions for the erec-
tion of a church in connection with one of his
mission stations, he came upon a young Scotchman
who rejected his appeal, asserting with an oath that
he had never known a professing Christian ''who
wasn't a blank hypocrite, anyway."
"Well," said the superintendent, "I am sorry, sir,
that you had such a poor mother."
"What do you mean, sir?" was the angry retort.
"What do you know of my mother?"
"Was she a professing Christian?"
"She was."
"And was she a good woman?"
"She was that, but," feeling his equivocal position,
"there are not many like her."
"We want to make Christians like your mother in
1 68 Servants of the King
this country, and that is why we are building this
church."
Before the interview was over he had added an-
other name to his subscription Hst.
At Fort McLeod, to which he came by the Leth-
bridge stage, driven by the stage driver Jake, famous
for his skill as a driver and for his profanity, he was
pinning up a notice of a service to be held on Sun-
day, the day following, when a young fellow came
in, read the notice, and burst into cursing. The
superintendent listened quietly till he had finished,
then said blandly :
''Is that the best you can do? You ought to hear
Jake. You go to Jake. He'll give you points."
The derisive laughter that followed completely
quenched the crestfallen young man. In the even-
ing the superintendent came upon him in the street,
got into conversation with him, found he was of
Presbyterian extraction, that he had been well
brought up, but in that wild land had fallen into
evil ways.
"Come now," said the superintendent, "own up;
you were trying to bluff me this afternoon, weren't
you?"
"Well, I guess so," was the shamefaced reply.
"But you held over me."
"Now look here," replied the superintendent,
James Robertson 169
"you get me a good meeting to-morrow afternoon,
and we'll call it square."
The young man promised, and the next day's
meeting proved him to be as good as his word.
Dr. Robertson was not only a missionary super-
intendent. He was a citizen and a patriot. He took
up the cause of the Indians and secured a reform
of the corrupt agencies which were preying upon
them. He helped to found the University of Mani-
toba. He was for years a member of the Board of
Education for Manitoba, and he was an ardent advo-
cate of the public schools. He was a great reader
on his long journeys. His general knowledge of the
Northwest was drawn upon by both the government
and the Canadian Pacific Railway. His judgment
determined the location of one of the railway's
branch lines.
In 1896 he visited Scotland, but he put all his
time and strength into speaking in the churches
about the needs of Canada and into the solicitation of
funds. He came back with nearly $12,000 and sup-
port for over forty missionaries. The next year
came the great gold rush to the Yukon. Ten thou-
sand men, some said twenty, with the rumseller, the
gambler, and all the human birds of prey, had
poured into the Klondike before a single missionary
went in. Robertson flung himself with characteris-
tic energy into the work of providing the men and
1 70 Servants of the King
the money to meet this great need. But the strain
was too great. He had gone ill to Scotland and
he came home ill. Unknown to him a dangerous
disease had fastened upon him. He kept going by
force of will, but he could not live on his will
permanently, and in 1897 the break came and he
went back at last to his family from whom he had
long been separated by his far journeys. It was
the first Christmas in sixteen years that he had spent
with them. He was soon better, and the next sum-
mer was back at his work again as hard as ever, but
he could not stand it long, and in 1900 he and his
wife went off together to Scotland and then to the
Continent. He seized all opportunities for raising
money for the Canadian work, and came back in
1 90 1 with 42 men promised and over $10,000 for
the work. He took up his task again with his old
energy. He had a fearful fall in November which
would have disabled any common man, but not
Robertson. He kept every engagement.
''I shall never forget his appearance," writes the
Rev. John Neil, *'when he came into the vestry be-
fore service. He had a bandage over one eye, and
his appearance indicated that he had been passing
through some trying experiences. He said, 'Dr.
Warden insisted upon my not coming this morning,
but when I make an engagement I am always deter-
James Robertson 171
mined, if possible, to carry it out. I hope your con-
gregation will not resent my coming in this form/ "
He succeeded so well in his appeal that he wrote :
"I am going to disable the other shoulder and get
my other eye blackened."
The end was very near now. The last Sunday
of the year 1901 he kept for his home; and from
his home, on January 4, 1902, he passed on to the
higher service. 'T am done out," he said to his
wife as he sank to sleep. So he went forward, the
^'man of heroic mold, but of tenderest heart. Char-
itable in his judgments of men, generous and sym-
pathetic in his dealings with them, he was himself
a living embodiment of that gospel which he
preached as the only hope for the individual or
the nation."
JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON
»73
How I think of those islands ! . . . Hundreds of people
are crowding upon them, naked, armed, with uncouth cries and
gestures. . . . But they are all my children now. May
God enable me to do my duty by them.
— John Coleridge Patteson
174
JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON
SIXTY-FOUR years ago, at the annual dinner
given by the cricket eleven to the eight of the
boats at Eton, when one of the boys, in accordance
with a custom which had arisen, began to sing an
objectionable song, another boy called out, ^Tf that
does not stop, I shall leave the room !" The singing
went on, so the boy who had protested rose and went
out with a few other lads as fearless and high-
minded as he was. That boy was Coleridge Patte-
son, and, not content with what he had done, he sent
word to the captain that unless an apology was made
he should leave the eleven. That would have been
no small sacrifice to him, and it would have been
a very serious loss to the eleven. Partly for that
reason, and partly because the manly feelings of the
better boys prevailed, the apology was made and the
best cricketer in the school kept his place.
The boy had grown to such power and strength
as this in a true Christian home under the influence
of the best of mothers and fathers. His father. Sir
175
1^6 Servants of the King
John Patteson, was one of the ablest judges in Eng-
land, and there was the most open and intimate affec-
tion between him and his son. In New Zealand, the
wife of the Chief Justice wrote : "He used to walk
beside my pony and tell me about 'his dear father' —
how lovingly his voice used to linger over those
words. ... I remember his bright look the first
day it became certain that we must visit England.
'Why, then you w^ill see my dear father and tell him
all about me.' "
The boy who had such a father and loved him so
was sure not to be unlike him. His mother, as
Coley's uncle wrote, was "of the most affectionate,
loving disposition, without a grain of selfishness, and
of the stoutest adherence to principle and duty. . . .
What she felt was right she insisted on, at whatever
pain to herself."
Coleridge Patteson was born in London on April
I, 1827. The poet Coleridge was his great-uncle.
He was a warmly affectionate but fiery-tempered
little boy, troublesome and dogged, but reverent,
simple-natured, and, under the loving discipline of
home and school, coming slowly into form as a stead-
fast, self-controlled, unselfish lad of the highest
honor and the most unswerving strength of char-
acter. He learned to read when he was five, and got
his first Bible on his seventh birthday. From the
beginning of his boyish purpose he thought he would
John Coleridge Patteson 177
be a clergyman. His first school was Ottery St.
Mary, in Devonshire, of which his great-grandfather
and great-uncle had both been head masters. Thither
he was sent at the age of nine, and at the age of
eleven to Eton, where he lived with his uncle, one
of the most popular and successful Eton masters.
While he was home on a vacation, the Bishop of
New Zealand, Bishop Selwyn, who had just been
made Bishop, visited his father and preached in a
neighboring church. The sermon deeply influenced
the little boy, and when the Bishop left he said, half
in earnest, half in playfulness, "Lady Patteson, will
you give me Coley?" Years after he went with the
Bishop, but the mother who would have given him
died before he had left Eton. He threw himself
into the life of the school, and never loved any place
more than he loved Eton. In a great schoolboy wel-
come to Queen Victoria, then only nineteen, he was
nearly run over by her carriage, and was only saved
by the young Queen's presence of mind in reaching
out and giving him her hand until he regained his
feet.
Another time, the Duke of Wellington came and
was separated from his company and hustled in the
crowd until, as the enthusiastic boy says : 'T was the
first to perceive him, and springing forward, pushed
back the fellows on each side, who did not know
whom they were tumbling against, and, taking off
178 Servants of the King
my hat, cheered with might and main. The crowds
hearing the cheer, turned round, and then there
was the most glorious sight I ever saw. The whole
school encircled the Duke, who stood entirely alone
in the middle for a minute or two, and I rather
think we did cheer him. At last, giving about one
touch to his hat, he began to move on, saying, 'Get
on, boys, get on.' I never saw such enthusiasm
here; the masters rushed into the crowd round him,
waving their caps and shouting like any of us. As
for myself, I was half-mad and roared myself
hoarse in about five minutes."
He was not one of the best students in Eton. He
had done well, but he was slow in coming to his full
powers. Even at Oxford, although a good student,
the hidden fire had scarcely burned out into light.
"For it was character," wrote one of his
friends, "more than special ability which marked
him out from others and made him, wher-
ever he was, whether in cricket, in which he
excelled, or in graver things, a center round which
others gathered. The impression he left on me was
of quiet, gentle strength and entire purity, a heart
that loved all things true and honest and pure, and
that would always be found on the side of these. We
did not know, probably he did not know himself, the
fire of devotion that lay within him, but that was
John Coleridge Patteson 179
soon to kindle and make him what he afterward
became."
Coleridge Patteson awoke, intellectually, when he
went to Germany to study in 1852. There he dis-
covered and developed his remarkable gift for lan-
guages. He spoke German fluently and wrote it cor-
rectly, and he studied Hebrew and Arabic and
Syriac. His boyish distaste for mental exertion
passed away, and the individuality and originality
of his mind appeared. When he returned from
Dresden to Oxford "he had become quite another
person," said Mr. Roundell. "The moral and spir-
itual power of the man were all alive." The deeper,
inner life was coming to maturity. "I believe it to
be a good thing," he wrote to his sister, "to break
off any work once or twice a day in the middle of
any reading, for meditating a little while and for
prayer." He was somewhat conscious of himself,
as most earnest young men are, and he examined his
own feelings, but not more than all devoted men
must, and he soon moved out into an active life of
unselfish service.
He left Oxford in 1853 to work at Alfington in
the parish of Ottery St. Mary. There, among the
poor and the rich, for the children of wretched
homes and among the people of his own class, he
wrought in tireless and simple-hearted love. He
opened a Boys' Home for the lads from the profli-
i8o Servants of the King
gate families, and he visited and preached as one
who would save souls. This same year he was or-
dained, and the parish opened its heart to him in
return for his loving and unresting work. But God
meant him for larger things, and the next year
Bishop Selwyn came back for the gift he had asked
of Lady Patteson thirteen years before. It was no
struggle to Coley, except to ask his father to give
him up, but Sir John faced it like the true servant
of Christ he was. As a Christian judge he weighed
the arguments for and against, dwelt on all that his
son was to him, and added to the Bishop : "But
there, what right have I to stand in his way ? How
do I know that I may live another year?" And as
the conversation ended, "Mind !" he said, "I give
him wholly, not with any thought of seeing him
again. I will not have him thinking he must come
home again to see me."
With his father's blessing, he sailed for New
Zealand with the Bishop on March 28, 1855, reach-
ing Auckland on July 5. He was soon talking to
the Maoris, as the New Zealand natives are called,
in their own language, and entering in his whole-
some, complete-hearted way into the work, realizing
deeply how much depended on right beginnings for
him and for those whom he had come to help. He
took his part in the work of the college, where the
Bishop had in training young men for teachers and
John Coleridge Patteson 181
clergymen. ''I clean, of course," he wrote, "my
room in part, make my bed, help to clear away things
after meals, etc., and am quite accustomed to do
without servants for anything but cooking."
But he learned to cook, too. "I hope you are well
suited with a housekeeper," he wrote home. "If I
were at home I could fearlessly advertise for such a
situation. I have passed through the preliminary
steps of housemaid and scullery maid, and now, hav-
ing taken to serving out stores, am quite qualified for
the post, especially after my last performance of
making bread, and even a cake."
He learned much more than this. He soon be-
came an expert sailor, able to handle the little mis-
sion schooner on which, in 1856, he went off on his
first long trip with the Bishop to the New Hebrides
Islands, visiting Aneityum, where John G. Paton
soon came to work, and many other islands. "After
nearly seventeen weeks at sea," he wrote, "we re-
turned safely on Sunday morning, the 15th, with
thirty-three Melanesians, gathered from nine islands
and speaking eight languages. Plenty of work for
me ; I can teach tolerably in three, and have a smat-
tering of one or two more. . . . We visited
sixty-six islands and landed eighty-one times, wad-
ing, swimming, etc. ; all most friendly and delight-
ful ; only two arrows shot at us, and only one went
near — so much for savages. I wonder what people
1 82 Servants of the King
ought to call sandalwood traders and slave masters
if they call my Melanesians savages."
The plan was to prepare these boys in the college
at Auckland and send them back to work among
their own people. Year by year he taught them and
sent them back, and went to and fro among the
islands, often in danger, but never afraid, and ever
more and more trusted and loved.
In 1 86 1 Patteson was consecrated Bishop of the
Melanesian Islands, Bishop Selwyn having long felt
that the work ought to be provided for in this way.
His consecration did not stiffen Coleridge Patteson's
methods of loving and simple dealing with his peo-
ple. "As for my life-work," he wrote home, "it will
be precisely the same in all respects, my external life
altered only to the extent of my wearing a broader-
brimmed and lower-crowned hat. Dear Joan is in-
vesting moneys in cutaway coats, buckles without
end, and no doubt knee-breeches and what she calls
'gambroons' (whereof I have no cognizance), none
of w^hich will be worn more than (say) four or five
times in the year. Gambroons and aprons and lawn
sleeves won't go a-voyaging, depend upon it." What
he wore for his work he had written in an earlier
letter :
"I eschewed shoes and socks, rather liking to be
paddling about all day, when not going on shore or
otherwise employed, which, of course, made up eight
FACSIMILE OF A LETTER WRITTEN BY BISHOP PATTESON FROM MELANESIA
John Coleridge Patteson 183
or ten hours of the thirteen hours of dayhght. When
I went ashore (which I did w^henever the boat
went), then I put on my shoes, and always swam in
them, for the coral would cut my feet to pieces.
Usual swimming and wading attire: flannel shirt,
dark gray trousers, cap or straw hat, shoes, basket
around my neck with fish-hooks, or perhaps an adz
or two in my hand. I enjoyed the tropical climate
very much — really warm always in the water or out
of it. On the reefs, when I waded in shallozu water,
the heat of it was literally unpleasant, more than a
tepid bath."
But whatever the dress, the true heart beat be-
neath, and the hearts of the Melanesians answered
to it.
The ten years of his bishopric were spent in cease-
less work for the Melanesian islanders. The New
Zealand climate was not good for his boys, many of
them dying there, and after considering and reject-
ing Curtis Island, near x\ustralia, he removed his
school to Norfolk Island. He hardly knew how the
people on the islands would welcome him after their
boys died in his school, but they understood and
trusted him. When he went to Mota after one of
the epidemics in the school, in which many boys had
died, he wrote :
"You should have been with me when, as I
jumped on shore at Mota, I took Paraskloi's father
184 Servants of the King
by the hand. That dear lad I baptized as he lay in
his shroud in the chapel, when the whole weight of
the trial seemed, as it were, by a sudden revelation
to manifest itself, and thoroughly overwhelmed and
unnerved me. I got through the service with the
tears streaming down my cheeks and my voice half
choked. He was his father's pride, some seventeen
years old. A girl ready chosen for his wife. *It is
all well, Bishop ; he died well. I knew you did all
you could; it is all well' He trembled all over, and
his face was wet with tears ; but he seemed strangely
drawn to us, and if he survives this present epidemic
his son's death may be to him the means in God's
hands of an eternal life. Most touching, is it not,
this entire confidence?"
He loved them and they trusted him. It was this
love that made him fearless when he landed on their
islands, always watchful for treachery, but always
bold and fearless, disarming hostility by his very con-
fidence.
Their savagery and uncleanness he strove against,
but he saw the real worth and possibility of noble-
ness in them. "The Melanesians," he said, "laugh
as you may at it, are naturally gentlemanly and
courteous and well-bred. I never saw a *gent' in
Melanesia, though not a few downright savages.
I vastly prefer the savage."
He learned their languages, so that he could
John Coleridge Patteson 185
speak to them more clearly and forcefully than they
could speak to one another. He spoke a score of
languages. He prepared grammars of twenty-five
or more. And he gave himself utterly to those be
had come to reach. He never returned to England,
refusing invitations to do so, partly because he did
not want to be lionized, partly because he was at
home among his islanders and did not like the arti-
ficial society of civilization. He had put in his life
with the Melanesians, and he would not take it out.
In 1868, after thirteen years' work, he ordained
the first native clergyman, George Sarawia, who had
been his pupil for nine years, and he could see
throughout the islands some real evidences of
changed lives, as well as of changed faith, as the re-
sult of his frequent visits and of the work of the
boys and girls whom he had trained and sent back
to their own people. On the Island of Mota alone,
on his last voyage, he baptized 289 persons. But
he would not be overconfident. "I feel satisfied of
their earnestness," he wrote, ''and I think it looks
like a stable, permanent work. Yet I need not tell
you how my old text is ever in my mind, 'Thine
heart shall fear, and be enlarged.' "
The work was permanent, but his part in it was
nearly done. In 1867 he began to be troubled over
the trade in laborers. Ships began to go about among
the islands, carrying off men to work on the plan-
1 86 Servants of the King
tations on the Fiji Islands in Queensland. At first,
and in the hands of honest sea-captains, the trade
was legitimate. The laborers were honorably em-
ployed. But soon it became a matter of kidnapping,
and the ''snatch-snatch" vessels, as the natives called
them, almost depopulated some of the islands. And
what was worse, other ships, for the sake of the tor-
toise-shell traffic, would connive at the quarrels
among different tribes and take part in their battles,
so that they came to be called the "kill-kill" ships.
Sometimes, to gain the confidence of the people be-
fore some vicious treachery, they would represent
themselves as having come from the Bishop. Pat-
teson did all that he could to stop this wicked busi-
ness, and realized that it was making great trouble
for him. How could he hope to win these people to
a Christian life when his own countrymen were mur-
dering and kidnapping all around him and some-
times implicating him in their crimes ?
At last the end came, as he feared. He was about
among the islands and came to Nukapu, where, on
September 20, 1871, he went ashore with two of the
chiefs, who had formerly been very friendly to him.
One of the ship's boats went in with him, and was
floating about, with the native canoes around it,
when suddenly, without warning, a man stood up
in one of them and calling out, "Have you any like
this?" shot off one of the yard-long arrows, and his
John Coleridge Patteson 187
companions in the other two canoes began shooting
as quickly as possible, calling out as they aimed :
"This for New Zealand man ! This for Bauro man !
This for Mota man!" The boat was pulled back
rapidly and was soon out of range, but not before
three out of the four had been struck. The crew got
back to the ship, but the Bishop did not appear on
shore. After waiting, the men manned a boat and
went in to look for him. As they drew near the
shore two canoes put out toward them and one put
the other adrift. In it they found the Bishop's body.
He had been killed by a blow on the skull with a
club. There w^ere four other wounds, and on his
breast was a branch of palm with five knots in the
long leaves, indicating that he had been killed in
revenge for five natives who had been stolen from
Nukapu. A sweet, calm smile was on his face. The
shepherd had laid down his life for his sheep.
The next morning, St. Matthew's Day, they
buried him in the waters of the Pacific, on which for
sixteen years he had made his home. His death
called attention to the atrocities of the labor trade,
but they went on for years afterward. But Cole-
ridge Patteson's life went on also. It is going on now
in every land, calling men to be true and fearless as
he was. And it will never die in the South Seas.
Such lives never end.
ION KEITH-FALCONER
189
While vast continents are shrouded in darkness, and hun-
dreds of millions suffer the horrors of heathenism or of Islam,
the burden of proof lies upon you to show that the circum-
stances in which God has placed you were meant by God to
keep you out of the foreign mission field.
— Ion Keith-Falconer
190
UiTh, ki<^-Za..6urrL£^
XI
ION KEITH-FALCONER
THERE died at the age of thirty-one in a little vil-
lage in Arabia in 1887, the year after the Stu-
dent Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions be-
gan its work among the colleges of the United States
and Canada, a young Scotchman named Ion Keith-
Falconer, whose life and death made a profound im-
pression upon the students of that day. Perhaps
that was due, in part, to his noble birth and ancestry.
It seemed a wonderful thing for a son of an Earl,
whose fathers had been among the great men of
Scotland for eight hundred years, to go off and die
just for love of men in a little Arabian village. But
perhaps the students of his time were even more im-
pressed at his going because he was such a great ath-
lete, for he was the fastest bicycle rider in the world.
Bicycles then were just coming in, and they were the
high bicycles which boys of to-day know little about.
Keith-Falconer was big and tall, six feet three inches
when he was nineteen, and rode a very high wheel,
so high that when, before one race, the step broke,
191
192 Servants of the King
he had to mount with a chair. And he had one mon-
ster wheel seven feet high, which he called "The
Leviathan," and on which he made a fearsome figure
as he flew over the country roads.
He began his bicycle riding as a boy at Harrow,
one of the great English preparatory schools, as we
should call them, and when he got to Cambridge he
was a skilled rider. He went to Cambridge in 1874
and began to win races at once. The next May he
won for Cambridge the race against Oxford, on a
fifty-mile course, and in 1876 he won the amateur
championship four-mile race at Little Bridge, in
what was the fastest time on record. In 1877 he
was elected president of the London Bicycle Club,
and that year he made new world's amateur records
in the two-mile and ten-mile races with Oxford. In
1878 he competed successfully in the two-mile race
of the National Cyclists' Union for the title of short-
distance champion, and the same year he beat John
Keen, the world's professional champion, by five
yards in a great five-mile race. He wrote an account
of this race to his friend, Isaac Pitman, the inventor
of shorthand, who had been urging him to give up
smoking :
"As for smoking, I think that the following will
gratify you. Early in the year I consented to meet
John Keen, the professional champion of the world,
Ion Keith-Falconer 193
in a five-mile race on our ground at Cambridge, on
October 21,. But I forgot all about my engagement
till I was accidentally reminded of it nine days be-
fore it was to come off.
"I immediately began to make my preparations
and to train hard. The first thing to be done was
to knock off smoking, which I did; next, to rise
early in the morning and breathe the fresh air be-
fore breakfast, which I did; next, to go to bed not
later than ten, which I did; next, to eat wholesome
food, and not too much meat or pastry, which I did ;
and finally, to take plenty of gentle exercise in the
open air, which I did.
"What was the result? I met Keen on Wednes-
day last, the 23d of October, and amid the most
deafening applause, or rather yells of delight, this
David slew the great Goliath ; to speak in plain lan-
guage, I defeated Keen by about five yards.
'The time was by far the fastest on record.
Mins. Sees.
The 1st mile was done in 2 59
The 2d mile was done in 3 i
The 3d mile Avas done in 3 7
The 4Lh mile was done in 3 12
The 5th mile was done in 2 52 2-5
Total time 15 112-
194 Servants of the King
"The last lap, that is, the last circuit, measuring
440 yards, we did in 39 seconds ; that is more than
1 1 yards per second.
"The excitement was something indescribable.
Such a neck-and-neck race was never heard of. The
pace for the last mile was terrific, as the time shows,
and when it was over I felt as fit and comfortable as
ever I felt in my life. And even when the race was
going on I thought actually that we were going
slowly and that the time would be bad, and the rea-
son was I was in such beautiful condition. I did not
perspire or ^blow' from beginning to end. The peo-
ple here are enchanted about it ; so that it is gratify-
ing to me to think that, notwithstanding my other
work and other business, I can yet beat, with posi-
tive comfort and ease, the fastest rider in the world.
'T am bound to say that smoking is bad — ^bad for
the wind and general condition."
The next year he beat John Keen again by three
inches in a two-mile race, where he made a new rec-
ord, and three days later he made a new world's
record in a twenty-mile race. He was always in
such good physical condition that he went into this
race from a four days' hard examination, without
any special preparation, and simply ran away from
his leading competitor in the last lap. His last great
race was for the amateur fifty-mile championship,
which he won in 1882, in 2 hours 43 minutes and
Ion Keith-Falconer 195
58 3-5 seconds, seven minutes better than all pre-
vious records. He was a long-distance rider, also,
riding 150 miles in one day between dawn and dark
— when this was a great feat — from Cambridge to
Bournemouth to see his family. And, what was
more notable, he was the first man to ride from
Land's End to John O'Groat's, that is, from the
southwestern corner of England to the northeastern
corner of Scotland. And he did it in thirteen days.
In his old school at Harrow they hung a big map
on the wall, and followed his course by means of
postals and telegrams which he sent, marking his
victorious course with a little red flag. He was a
clean, wholesome student, who loved sport for sport's
sake, and who found in his great competitor, John
Keen, the world's professional champion, a man
after his own soul, who was above prizes, and who
delighted, as Keith-Falconer did, in deeds of
strength and endurance for their own sake.
Many a man would be satisfied with being the best
bicycle rider in the world. But Keith-Falconer was
not. There were other things in life besides ath-
letics. One of his other great interests was short-
hand. He took it up while he was a schoolboy at
Harrow, learning it quite unaided. He made con-
stant use of it until the end of his life. For years
he kept up a correspondence with Mr. Isaac Pitman,
the inventor of phonography, and all the letters
196 Servants of the King
written to Mr. Pitman were in shorthand. Mr.
Pitman testifies that Keith-Falconer "wrote it
swiftly and accurately, and had a thorough knowl-
edge of the minutest part of the system; and that
not merely as a stenographer, but as a judge of
its values as a part of a harmonious whole." He
was the best bicycle rider in the world. He would
become one of the best shorthand writers. And
such an authority did he become that when he was
twenty-eight years of age he wrote the article on
"Shorthand" for the new edition of the Ency-
clopcedia Britannica.
But Keith-Falconer was not content with suprem-
acy in athletics and shorthand. He would be also one
of the best Arabic scholars in the world. He had al-
ways been a good student, not of the cut-and-dried
kind, studying hard only what was set before him,
but choosing for himself and writing out the things
that he believed to be permanently worth while.
The special studies which he took up at Cambridge
were theological and Biblical, and he soon got a
solid mastery of Hebrew. When he was twenty he
could write his letters in it^ readily, and he was
able to bend the old language and its scanty vocabu-
lary to the needs of every-day English thought.
The oldest Greek translation of the Old Testament,
the Septuagint, and Syriac he mastered also and
was always looking for hard points. To a friend
Ion Keith-Falconer 197
he wrote, during these Cambridge days, ''Send me
some Septuagint nuts to crack if I can." From
these things he went on to Arabic, going to Leipzig
to pursue his studies. Coming back to London in
188 1, he met General Gordon, and the two men took
at once to each other and Gordon wrote to him the
same month :
"I only wish I could put you into something that
would give you the work you need, namely, secular
and religious work, running side by side. This is
the proper work for man and I think you could
find it.
"Would you go to Stamboul as extra unpaid
attache to Lord Dufferin? If so, why not try it,
or else as private secretary to Petersburg? If you
will not, then come to me in Syria to the Her-
mitage."
But God had an even greater thing for the Scotch-
man, greater in God's eyes, and Keith-Falconer was
seeking it. "Pray constantly for me," he wrote to
a friend shortly after receiving General Gordon's
letter, "especially that I may have my path in life
more clearly marked out for me, or (which is per-
haps a better request) that I may be led along the
path intended for me."
So he worked on his Arabic, and became in that,
as in all things that he gave himself to, a leader
and authority. In reviewing a book of Keith-Fal-
198 Servants of the King
coner's, one of the foremost Oriental scholars, Pro-
fessor Noldeke, wrote : "We will look forward with
hope to meet the young Orientalist, who has so early-
stepped forward as a master." He was then twenty-
nine, and the next year was elected Lord Almoner's
Professor of Arabic at Cambridge University, to
succeed Professor Robertson Smith. Surely he
could now be content!
But from his earliest childhood deeper purposes
had stirred Keith-Falconer's heart. He had been
born a Christian. He had an innate truthfulness,
and from his first years was unvaryingly thoughtful
of others. If anything was to be shared among the
brothers and sisters, he was sure to say, "Give it to
others first. I will wait." He was full of his own
resources, generous and sincere, with the most ear-
nest and simple Christian faith. When he was seven
he had his own clear opinions about things, and went
about among the cottagers on his father's place ex-
plaining and reading the Bible to them. The tutor
who came to guide his work when he was nine
wrote :
"During the many w^alks and rambles that we had
together he would often say to me, 'I wish you would
talk to me,' which I knew meant to say. Will you
speak to me of the Savior and of the incidents in the
life of the Lord Jesus ? . . . He was a thoroughly
conscientious and noble-hearted boy."
Ion Keith-Falconer 199
When he went to Harrow, at the age of thirteen,
he was the same sort of boy. The master, in whose
home he resided, wrote of him :
**His boyish Hfe was noticeable from the first for
marked individuahty and determination. ... It
was refreshing to meet with one who was by no
means disposed to swim necessarily with the stream,
and who, though in no wise self-engrossed or un-
sociable, would not flinch for a m.oment from saying
or doing what he believed to be right, at the risk of
incurring unpopularity or being charged with eccen-
tricity. He was one of those boys, not too common,
who are not afraid to have the courage of their opin-
ions. Always high-principled and religious, he never
disguised his views. I remember how, when almost
head of my house, he displayed conspicuously on
the wall of his room a printed roll of texts from the
Bible — an open avowal of his belief, which was far
less common and more noticeable at the time I speak
of than it would be now. Not that he was anything
of a prig or a Pharisee; far from it. He was an
earnest, simple-hearted, devout. Christian boy."
He thought things out for himself and took hia
own line. He stopped, accordingly, whatever prac-
tises he thought were not the highest or such as
could not be shared with Christ, and for Christ he
wanted to work and did work. He stood against all
dishonesty and for all cheery, brotherly helpfulness.
200 Servants of the King
He lived nine years at Cambridge with one old land-
lady, who declared that during all those years "his
sole aim seemed to be to benefit all needing help,
friends or strangers." He worked for his fellow
students in his straightforward, manly way to win
them to Christ, and he took the deepest interest in
work for the laboring men in Barnwell, a suburb of
Cambridge, full of squalor and vice, and then in a
unique mission in London at Mile End. In both
cases buildings were provided largely through his
energy and zeal. He fought drunkenness and vice
with the same joy and success with which he did
other things, and he laid hold of men who were
down with a brotherliness which encouraged them
to believe in the reality of the help of Christ. When
he was gone, a poor painter whom he had got out
of prison wrote :
"He told me if, by reason of the frailty which is
in man by his evil heart of unbelief, I should fall into
sin, 'Remember sinking Peter' ; that One who raised
him to the surface of the water can give me strength
to get up again."
What more could Keith-Falconer wish for, then }
He knew the gladness of unselfishness, and surely
could not do more than go forward in the career of
usefulness and influence which seemed to lie before
him. He had married, in 1884, the daughter of
Mr. R. C. L. Bevan, a London banker. He had
KEITH-FALCONER S HOME IN SCOTLAND
RUINS OF HIS HOME IN ARABIA
Ion Keith-Falconer 201
made his home in Cambridge, where he had a posi-
tion as lecturer before his appointment as professor.
He had money and friends. Was all this not enough ?
No, it was not enough. There was something yet
more for him to do. The gifts God had given him
he had given him not for selfish enjoyment or for
partial use, but in order that they might be used to
the full. He had never been the sort of boy or man
simply to follow in the beaten track. He was ready
for the big and courageous thing. What was the
biggest and most Christian thing he could do? His
knowledge of Arabic, his fearless zeal, his tact and
judgment, his resources of many kinds, including
the money which enabled him to support the mission
himself, marked him as the man for a mission which
many felt should be undertaken to the Mohamme-
dans of southern Arabia. The evangelization of the
Mohammedans is the hardest task on earth. That
was the kind of task Keith-Falconer wanted. He
did not believe that an independent mission w^as the
best, so he arranged to have his mission connected
with the Free Church of Scotland. That the work
might be thoroughly effective he studied medicine,
so as to be able to help the doctor who was to be a
part of the mission. To plan most wisely, he went
out in 1885 on a visit to investigate the field for him-
self, and the next year returned with his wife to
settle and begin the work.
202 Servants of the King
He at once won the respect and friendship of those
about him, threw himself with all his characteristic
energy into the problem of the mission, set to work
learning some more languages and reading books by
the dozens between times, came down with fever,
but wrote, "Read Bonar's Life of Judson, and you
will see that our trials are naught," and then, after
repeated attacks of fever, was attacked in May by
a sickness from which he did not rise up. "How I
wish," he said, "that each attack of fever had
brought me nearer to Christ — nearer, nearer,
nearer." He had his wish, and in the morning of
May 10, 1887, he "passed over," as Bunyan says of
"Valiant-for-Truth," and all the trumpets sounded
for him on the other side.
Some people get enjoyment from nothing but nice
and orderly comfort. They do not care for rough-
ing it, either physically or otherwise. Keith-Fal-
coner liked the good rough work of life. The hard-
ship of the mission — and it was probably from the
effects of living in a poor house that he died — was
nothing to him. He took it all, without thinking
about it, as a matter of course. Young men and
women shrink from the missionary work because of
its trials or its uncertainties. These things were as
trivial to him as they are to the soldier. His mind
was ever upon the thing to be done, not upon any
personal hardships of his own.
Ion Keith-Falconer 203
And he did not hesitate to appeal to others to ask
themselves if they did not have the same duty which
he acknowledged for himself toward the great world.
This was the way he closed his last address to large
gatherings in Edinburgh and Glasgow on the eve of
his going forth :
"In conclusion, I wish to make an appeal. There
must be some who will read these words, or who,
having the cause of Christ at heart, have ample in-
dependent means and are not fettered by genuine
home ties. Perhaps you are content with giving an-
nual subscriptions and occasional donations and
taking a weekly class? Why not give yourselves,
money, time and all, to the foreign field ? Our own
country is bad enough, but comparatively many
must, and do, remain to work at home, while very
few are in a position to go abroad. Yet how vast
is the foreign mission field ! 'The field is the world.'
Ought you not to consider seriously what your
duty is? The heathen are in darkness and we are
asleep. Perhaps you try to think that you are meant
to remain at home and induce others to go. By sub-
scribing money, sitting on committees, speaking at
meetings and praying for missions you will be doing
the most you can to spread the gospel abroad. Not
so. By going yourself you will produce a tenfold
more powerful effect. You can give and pray for
missions wherever you are ; you can send descriptive
204 Servants of the King
letters to the missionary meetings, which will be
more effective than second-hand anecdotes gathered
by you from others, and you will help the committees
finely by sending them the results of your experi-
ence. Then, in addition, you will have added your
own personal example and taken your share of the
real w^ork. We have a great and imposing war
office, but a very small army. You have wealth
snugly vested in the funds; you are strong and
healthy; you are at liberty to live where you like
and occupy yourself as you like. While vast conti-
nents are shrouded in almost utter darkness, and
hundreds of millions suffer the horrors of heathen-
ism or of Islam, the burden of proof lies upon you
to show that the circumstances in which God has
placed you were meant by him to keep you out of
the foreign mission field."
Of those who read these words, are there none
who would like to follow in the train of the athlete
and scholar whose body lies in the lonely grave by
the Gulf of Aden, even as he followed in the train
oi the Son of God, going forth to war ?
INDEX
"><i
INDEX
Adams, Jefferson County,
New York, 23
Afghan Moslem soldiers, 48
Africa, 6-16, 44-46, 51-54
Alfington, England, 179
Ambassador for Christ, 13S
"Americanized Dutchman,"
77
Angola, 52
Arabia, 191, 201, 202
Arabic language, 179, 196-198,
201
Archbishop of Canterbury, 32
Audubon, school of Miss, 64
Austerity unadvisable, 134
Barbados, West Indies, 47
Bareilly, India, 142
Barnwell, England, 200
Barroom preaching, 161, 162
Beard, Bishop Taylor's, 42
Bicycle riding, 191-195
Bombay, 48, 142
Bonar's Life of Judson, 202
Boone, Bishop, 123
Bournemouth, England, 195
Bowman, Bishop, 52
Boxers, 105, 106, 107;
massacre, 108, 109
Boys' boarding-school atUen-
chou, 106
Brazil, 6, 50
British Guiana, 47
California, 40, 41
Cambridge, 200, 201 ;
university, 11, 31, 192, 195-
198
Canada, 41, 42;
Alberta incident, 167
Canadian Pacific Railway, 169
Canton, China, 97, 100, 105,
107
Cape Horn, 41
Cape of Good Hope, 6, 7
Capetown, 9
Carey referred to, 31
Chesnut, Eleanor, 89-113;
birth and early years, 91,
92;
educational and medical
courses, 93-95;
first medical service at
South Framingham, 95;
further training, 95, 96;
missionary appointment and
journey to China, 96, 97;
207
208
Index
opening hospital experi-
ences, 97-105 ;
return home on furlough,
105;
service again in Lien-chou
and martyrdom, 91, 106-
109;
unselfish and perfected
character, 109-112;
vivid pictures in letters, 95-
103, 112, 113
Chicago, 24
Chile, 50
China, 5, 64, 91, 96-112, 118,
122-136
Chinese, All Souls' Day, 107;
curiosity, 128;
hospital for women, 98;
men showing ability, 102;
prescription, 103;
women's sad lives, 99, 100
Chippewa Indians, 24
Chitambo's village, 15
Chonuane, Africa, 8
Christmas in Africa, Living-
stone's, 13
Christodora House, New
York City, 64, 65
Church and Manse Building
Fund, 163
Church Missionary Society, 32
Cmcinnati Academy of De-
sign, 142
Civil War, 13, 29;
effect on missionary work,
130
Clinton, New York, 23
Confucius, 127
Congo, Free State, 52;
River, 10
Cooke, school of Miss, 70
Costa Rica, 50
Crabbottom, Virginia, 37
Criticism disarmed, 130
Curtis Island, 183
Damien, Father, 31
Desecration of mission prop-
erty, 107
Details of school work in In-
dia, 148, 150
Devault, Mr., 135
Dwight School, Englewood,
59
Ecuador, 50
Edinburgh, 11
Egypt, 31
Encyclopcrdia Britannica, 196
Englewood, New Jersey, 57
Eton boys, 175
Europe, 31, 131, 170
Faribault, Minnesota, 24, 25
Fenian raid, 158
Fiji Islands, 186
Finney, C. G., 23
Fire-water, 27, 28
Foreign Mission Board, Rich-
mond, Virginia, 122
Foreign missions and mission
workers, 1-17, 44-54, yy
152, 173-204
Index
209
Fort McLeod stage-driver,
168
Fort Ripley, 29
Foster, Bishop, 52
Free Church of Scotland, 201
Gallen, Father, 67
Garibaldi, 45
Georgetown, Demarara, 47
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 13
Girls' schools at Cawnpur and
Lucknow, 143
Glasgow University, 11
God, consecration to, 38
Gordon, General, 197
Grand Canal, China, 132, 133
Green Bay, Wisconsin, 76
Greenfield, Massachusetts, 64
Griffis, Dr., 82
Gulf of Aden, 204
Gutzlaff, influence of appeal
on Livingstone, 5
Ham-kuang, China, 106
Harrison, ex-President, 151
Harrow school, England, 192,
199
Hartzell, Bishop J. C, 53
Hawaiian Islands, 32
Hindus, reached by William
Taylor, 48
Hints to candidates, 134
Hizen, Baron, 79
Hogg, David, advice of, 5
Holiness, Bishop Taylor's
book on, 43
Holmes, Dr. Oliver Wendell,
96
Home missions and mission
workers, 19-42, 55-71, H7,
153-171
Hongkong, China, 96
Hudson Bay Company, 160
Humboldt, Manitoba, 164
Ku-nan, China, 97;
conditions in, 99, 105
India, 48, 49, 139-15 1
Indians, American, 21-28 ;
championed by Bishop
Whipple, 27;
councils and treaties with,
22;
fire-water, 27, 28;
need of a friend, 22;
outbreaks among, 26;
Red Cloud's toast, 22;
wrongs inflicted on, 27
Indian Peace Commission, 27
Inhambane, Africa, 54
Iwakura, embassy, 83;
Prince, 81
Jackson, Alice, 55-71 ;
Christian experience, 62;
concentration, 59;
death, 70;
influence over others, 60,
67-70;
missionary longings, 63 ;
prayer or song for children,
66:
2IO
Index
school work, 64;
settlement work, 65, 66 ;
Y. W. C A. work in New
York, 69
Jamaica, 47
Japanese, embassy, 81, 83, 84;
students for America, 81
Judson, memoirs of Mrs., 122
Kaffir work, Taylor's, 44, 54
Kang-hau, China, 106
Keen, John, 192, 194, 195
Keith- Falconer, Ion, 189-204;
athlete and scholar, 191,
196, 204;
bicycle record, 191-195 ;
high social station, 191 ;
immense application in
studies, 195-197;
marriage, 200 ;
Mohammedan mission and
death, 201, 202;
plea for missionary conse-
cration, 203, 204
Kildonan, Manitoba, 160
King, of Belgium, 52;
of Portugal, 52
Klondike, 169
Knox Church, Winnipeg, 159
Kolobeng, Africa, 8, 9
Kuang-tung, China, 97
Kuruman, Africa, 7, 8
Lake 'Ngami, 8
Lambeth Conference, 31
Lam-mo, China, 97
Land's End to John o' Groat's,
195
Letter of Chinese students,
no
Liberia, 52
Lien-chou, China, 97, 100;
martyrs at, 91, 108-110;
men's hospital at, 105, 107;
official in, 102;
women's hospital, 98
Lien-shan official, 102
Life of Robert and Mary
Moffat, 146
Lilavati Singh, 150, 151, 152
Lingle, Mr., 103
Linyanti, Africa, 9, 10
Lions, adventures with, 7, 8
Little Bridge race, 192
Liverpool, 42
Livingstone, David, 1-17, 31 ;
birth, 3 ;
boyhood, 4;
early studies, 4-6;
interest in China and Af-
rica, 5;
main African journeys, 6-
15;
return trips to and honors
in Great Britain, 11-13;
Stanley's relief and tribute,
14;
unparalleled service, death,
and burial in Westminster
Abbey, 3, 13-17
Livingstone, Mrs., 8, 12, 146;
Robert, 13
Index
211
Loanda, see St. Paul de Lo-
anda
"Locomotive habit," 41
Log-rolling, 38
London, 11
London Bicycle Club, 192
London Missionary Society, 7
Lncknow, 48, 141, 143
Ludlow, Massachusetts, fac-
tory conditions, 68
Mabotsa, Africa, 8
McAfee, Dr., 93
Machle, Amy, 108;
Dr., loi, 107, 108;
Mrs., 108
Manitoba, 169
Melanesians, 181-187
Melbourne, Australia, 43
Memorial tablet in New York
Presbyterian Building, 91
!Methodist Episcopal Church
and William Taylor's
father, Z7
Mikado, the, 81
Mile End, London, 200
Mission schooner, 181
Moffat, Robert and Mary, 6,
8, 146, 147
Moffitt, Dr., 44
Mohammedans, mission ef-
forts for, 48, 201, 204
Moravian Institute, 76
Moravians, 31
Morrison, Robert, 31
Mota, Island of, 183, 185
Mount Pisgah Church camp-
meeting, 119
Murata, Japanese official, 79;
much impressed by Chris-
tian book found, 80
Nagasaki, 78-81
National Cyclists' Union, 192
Neesima, Joseph Hardy, 83
Neil, the Rev. John, quoted,
170
New Hebrides Islands, 181
New York Herald, 14
New York School of Peda-
gogy,- 64
New Zealand, 176-178, 180,
181
Nicaragua, 50
Noldeke, Professor, 198
Norfolk Island, 183
North Carolina's first foreign
missionary, 122
Northwest, home mission
work for the, 161
Norwich, Ontario, 158
Notice-boards in Japan, 79,
84
Nukapu, Patteson's death at,
186
Oberlin College, 2^
Oceanic, the, 96, 97
Opossum story, 47
Optimism, Bishop Whipple's,
32
Order of the Rising Sun, 84
212
Index
Ottery St. Alary school, Eng-
land, 177, 179
Ox-back and ox-wagon travel,
7
Oxford University, 11, 179,
192
Palo Alto, California, 54
Panama, 50
Park College, Parkville, Mis-
souri, 93, 94
Parsees, 48
Paton, John G., 181
Patterson, Miss, 10&
Patteson, John Coleridge,
173-187;
birth and family ties, 176;
boyhood experiences, 175-
178;
education in Germany and
at Oxford, 179;
entrance on parish and mis-
sion work, 179-181 ;
Episcopal dress and duties,
182-184;
languages acquired, 179,
181, 185;
life in the South Pacific,
180-182;
school epidemic, 183, 184;
service to the Melanesians
and death, 184-187
Patteson, Sir John, and Lady,
175-177, 180
Paul's good fight, 21
Peabody, Kansas, Presbyte-
rian Church, 143, 144
Peale, Mr. and Mrs., 91, 107,
108
Perry, Commodore, ^y
Peru, 50
Peterboro, Canada, 42
Pitman, Isaac, 192, 195
Prayer-meeting by boys, 129
Prayer or song for little
children, 66
Preaching, tact and skill in,
127;
two kinds of, 26;
William Taylor's, 45
Presidents known by Bishop
Whipple, 32
Princeton Theological Semi-
nary, 158
Protestant Episcopal General
Convention, 25
Punch, London, quoted, 16, 17
Purefoy, Father, 118
Queen Victoria, 11, 31, 177
Queensland, 186
Quilimane, Africa, 11
Pail road to Winnipeg, 163
Ked Holes, log-rolling at, 38
Reed, Brother, helps missions,
- 46
Regina student, a, 165
Richards, E. H., referred to,
54
Ridpath, quoted, 41, 42
Index
213
P-iel's rebellion, 159
Pobertson, James, 153-171 ;
birthplace, 155;
characteristics, 155, 157;
emigration of family to On-
tario, 156;
experiences as a teacher and
in college, 157, 158;
further studies in Prince-
ton and New York, 158;
Manitoba and the North-
west, 161 ;
marriage and pastorates,
157-160;
superintendent of home
missions in the North-
west, 161-170;
visits to Scotland and death,
169-171
Rohilkhand, India, 139, 142
Rome, New York, 24
Ecssland, British Columbia,
167
Royal Geographical Society,
13
St. Paul de Loanda, 10, 52
Sp.m-kong, China mission sta-
tion, 97, 98;
daily life in, 97 ;
difficulties, 98, 99
San Francisco, 41, 47, 96
Seaver, Brother, describes
William Taylor, Z7
Selwyn, Bishop, 177, 180;
his successor, 182
Senate, Japan's, 84
"Septuagint nuts to crack,"
197
Shanghai, China, 118, 126,
129;
missionary conference in,
131
Shattuck School, Faribault,
Minnesota, 24
Shire River, 12
Shorthand, 195
Shupanga, Africa, Mrs. Liv-
ingstone's death at, 12
Siam, 95
Sioux Indians. 22, 24;
treaties with, 22
Slave-trade, 9, 14
Smallpox patient, Miss Tho-
burn's, 141
Smith College, Northamp-
ton, ^Massachusetts, 57, 67
Smith, Robertson, 198
Smoking, 193
Snakes, lesson from the, 119
South Africa. 6, 8, 44-46, 54
South America, 50
South China, 96
South Zambezi Mission, 54
Southern Baptist Convention,
118
Stanley, Henry M., 14
Stony ^Mountain blizzard, 60
"Stopping - places." discom-
forts of, 163, 166
Story of My Life, William
Taylor's, 46
214
Index
Student Volunteer Movement
for Foreign Missions, 191
Styal, Cheshire, England, 57
Siisi, Livingstone's attendant,
15
Swain, Miss Clara A., 142
Swearing stage-drivers, 29,
168
Sydnej% Australia, 43
Syriac language, 179, 196
T'ai-p'ing rebellion, 129
Tasmania, 48
Taylor, William, 35-54, 143;
ancestry and birth, 2)1 \
consecration and zeal in
reaching men, 38 ;
downs a playful class-
leader, 39, 40;
experiences as a missionary
in California, 40, 41 ;
finds open doors in Canada
and Great Britain, 42;
first and second tours in
Australia and South Af-
rica, 42-48, 53, 54;
Holy Land visited, 42;
India campaign, 48-50;
"locomotive habit," 41 ;
Missionary Bishop of Af-
rica, 51-53;
South American work, 50;
West Indies, 47 ;
work completed and coro-
nation, 54
Thoburn, Isabella, 139-152;
ancestry and early life, 140,
141;
education, 141, 142;
immediate response to mis-
sionary call, 139, 142;
Lucknow and Cawnpur
schools for girls founded,
142, 143;
Presbyterian church and
other addresses, 144-147;
promotion of deaconess
work in home field, 147,
148;
school at Lucknow devel-
oped into woman's col-
lege, 145, 148-150;
wonderful executive power
and influence, 148-152;
work suddenly finished, 151
Thoburn, Bishop, quoted, 144,
145
Thwing, Mr. and Mrs., 98
Tokyo, Japan, 75, 81, 84-86
Trade in laborers in Mela-
nesia, 186;
a result, 187
Training School for Nurses,
Chicago, 95
Travel in Africa, 7-10;
in Canada in 1873, 159
IVinidad, 47
Tunbridge Wells, England,
incident, 46
Tung-chou, China, 135
Ujiji, Africa, 14
Index
215
Union Theological Seminary,
158
United States ami United
States government, 22,
-jd, 77, 85, 130, 133, 135
University of Manitoba, i6g
Utrecht Polytechnic Institute,
76
Verbeck, Guido Fridolin, 7Z-
87;
birth and happy childhood,
75, 76;
confirmed and trained in
languages and trade, 76;
emigration to United States,
7^, 77',
gives himself to missionary
service, 77 ;
goes to Japan, 78;
has remarkable success in
training national leaders
and translating books,
79-84;
later preaching and teach-
ing work, 84, 85 ;
made a citizen of Japan
and highly honored at
his death, 85-87
Victoria Falls, Africa, 11
Wake Forest, North Carolina,
120, 122
Waterloo, Iowa, 91, 92
Waugh, Bishop, 40
Weed, Thurlow, 2Z
Welfare Work, 68
Wellesley, Massachusetts, 70
Wellington, Duke of, at Eton,
177
West Indies, 47
Westminster Abbey, 3, 16, 31
Wheeling Female Seminary,
West Virginia, 141, 142
Whipple, Henry Benjamin,
19-33 ;
a good fighter for the right,
21-23 ;
birth and education, 23;
early ministerial work, 23,
24;
enters upon duties as
Bishop of Minnesota, 24;
immediate and heroic devo-
tion to the Indians, 24-28,
31, 32;
love for him of the Fari-
bault community, 24, 25 ;
methods of helping and
winning men, 25-31;
new idea converts a stage-
driver, 28-30;
optimistic spirit, 32;
receives many honors in
England, 31, 32;
reminiscences published and
close of life, 28, 32, 2)3
Wife, a missionary's, 123
Wilkins, Captain, on Bishop
Whipple, 27
Windsor Castle, 31
Winnebago Indians, 24
2l6
Index
Winnipeg journeys, 159
Woman's Foreign Missionary-
Society's first missiona-
ries, 142
Woman's Medical College,
Chicago, 95
Woman's Reformatory, South
Framingham, Massachu-
setts, 95
Woodstock, Ontario, 156
Work of a bishop, 25, 26
Yang-tzu, River, 132, 133;
Valley, 99
Yates, Matthew Tyson, 115-
136;
a providential call to serv-
ice, 117, 118;
birth and early prayer life,
118-121 ;
efforts for an education,
120, 121 ;
foreign missionary decision,
122;
marriage and voyage to
Shanghai, 122, 123 ;
mastery of the conditions
and the language, 123-
127;
meeting Interruptions skil-
fully, 127, 128;
pressing out into the coun-
try, 128, 129;
return home on furlough,
and later visit to Europe,
129-131 ;
rules for an aggressive na-
tive Church, 131, 132;
survey of a line of mission-
ary attack, 132, 133;
vice-consul-general, closing
labors, and death, 133-
136
Yukon River, 169
Zambezi River, 8, 12
Zanzibar, 16
Zeist, Holland, 75
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