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SOME GREAT LEADERS IN 
 THE WORLD MOVEMENT 
 
THE COLE LECTURES 
 
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 Some Great Leaders in the World 
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THE COL^ LECTURES 
 
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Foreword 
 
 I AM very grateful for the honour and privilege 
 of the appointment to this lectureship. Some 
 of life's best friendships have been with men of 
 this University and of this Department of the Uni- 
 versity, and it is with thankful remembrance of them 
 that I propose to speak of some of the great leaders 
 who preceded them and whose wide thoughts and 
 high spirit this University has sought to perpetuate. 
 
 R B. S. 
 
 New York City. 
 
Contents 
 
 I. Raymond Lull, The Christian Cru- 
 
 sader AND His Conquest . . ii 
 
 II. William Carey, The Christian Pio- 
 
 neer AND His Problems . . -55 
 
 III. Alexander Duff, The Christian 
 
 Student and the World's Educa- 
 tion lOI 
 
 IV. George Bowen, The Christian Mys- 
 
 tic AND THE Ascetic Ideal . .153 
 
 V. John Lawrence, The Christian 
 
 Statesman and the Problem of 
 Religion and Politics . . -197 
 
 VI. Charles George Gordon, The Chris- 
 
 tian Knight Errant and the 
 Power of Pure Devotion . . 245 
 
LECTURE I 
 
 RAYMOND LULL, THE CHRISTIAN 
 CRUSADER AND HIS CONQUEST 
 
LECTURE I 
 
 RAYMOND LULL, THE CHRISTIAN CRU- 
 SADER AND HIS CONQUEST 
 
 TH H; two most powerful forces in tlie world 
 are principles and personalities. It is by 
 these that the living movements of the 
 world are advanced, by the truth which they embody 
 and the men who embody them. We who are here 
 to-day do not hold to the philosophy that the truth 
 in such movements is the creation of the men who 
 hold it. We believe that the truth is the truth 
 whether men find it or miss it, declare it or deny it, 
 and that by itself it is ever at work in the world. 
 Eight principles, we hold, exist independent of their 
 discovery and are ever operating on life by the Di- 
 vine Spirit. We believe this because we believe in 
 God Who is the Truth, Who lives in Himself and 
 not alone in man's apprehension of Him, and works 
 by Himself and not alone in the assenting wills of 
 men. But we hold, also, that God is seeking men 
 who will advance the truth by making it a part of 
 themselves, and who will give to principles a home 
 and a leverage within their personalities, and in so 
 doing recover for personality its true glory and 
 power. Indeed, it is the very glory and power of 
 God Himself that in Him principle and personality 
 are perfectly one. He is what we can only say that 
 we have. Man holds the truth. God is the Truth. 
 
 13 
 
14 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 Man does right. God is Eight. From the begin- 
 ning the self-revelation of God was a revelation of 
 principle as personality. " Who shall I say sent 
 me? " asked Moses. " Say ' I am ' hath sent you," 
 replied Jehovah, — not He "Who has power, but He 
 Who is Power ; not He Who declares truth, but He 
 Who is Truth. 
 
 The Incarnation is the central fact in history, and 
 the most powerful agency in the life of the world, 
 because it was the supreme and faultless instance of 
 the highest principle and the purest personality per- 
 fectly joined and interfused. And human personal- 
 ities have had lasting beneficent power in proportion 
 as they have resembled the Incarnate Personality and 
 have embodied eternal principles in life and contrib- 
 uted to the ceaseless effort to solve our human prob- 
 lems by ordering life according to the eternal prin- 
 ciples which are the character of God. I think, 
 accordingly, that whether we seek guidance or in- 
 spiration, needing courage for our own struggle or 
 light on the central issues of life, no study can be 
 more profitable to us than the study of such person- 
 alities as these in their wrestle with great problems 
 and their embodiment of the great principles of the 
 kingdom of Christ. 
 
 We are to consider six leaders whose lives will 
 illustrate some of these fundamental principles. But 
 they will do more than this. They will recall us to 
 the highest standards of duty and devotion. They 
 will bring us into contact with the deepest problems 
 of human progress. Prom some of them we shall 
 learn how profound and lasting an impression humble 
 men, without resources or any adventitious aids to 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 15 
 
 influence, can make upon the life of the world, and 
 others, alas, will show how, in the age-long work of 
 the Church, applying the redemption of Christ to the 
 world, the richest personal influence may appear to 
 spend itself fruitlessly, leaving no enduring im- 
 pression upon the elements which it sought to mould, 
 abiding only, as far as man may see, in a fragrance 
 of holy life and passionate love in the Church and in 
 an unanswered but immortal summons to the com- 
 pletion of what it attempted to begin. 
 
 It is a good thing for us at this time of proper zeal 
 for immediacy in the work of the kingdom of Christ, 
 to consider carefully the lives of some of these men 
 who represented the unconquerable patience of the 
 Christian spirit. Bushnell has advanced as one of 
 the characteristics of Jesus, forbidding His classifica- 
 tion with men, the quality of faith which enabled 
 Him to sit down in quietness before a perpetual 
 project. The spirit of a human institution, or the 
 spirit of a man may enable the institution or the man 
 to meet with unwavering courage and determination 
 the sharpest tests of a definite campaign. But the 
 Christian movement is not a definite campaign. It 
 has lasted for centuries. It is fuU of disappointments 
 which crush the heart and break the will. If any 
 agency embarks on it in the human spirit alone, it 
 is doomed to shameful disaster. Nothing but the 
 Christian spirit has ever shown itself capable of the 
 patience and the sacrifice demanded of men who are 
 not engaged in a four inonths' or a four years' or a 
 four centuries' campaign, but in a project as per- 
 petual as the need of man and the love of Christ for 
 the lost. Whoever will do truly in the world the 
 
I6 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 work of the Church, must do it in the spirit of the 
 great but simple men whom we are to consider, who 
 followed Christ and in consequence led their fellow 
 men. 
 
 Of the six whose lives we are to review and the 
 lessons of whose leadership we are to study, two, 
 William Carey and Alexander Duff, were great mis- 
 sionaries who had the statesman's vision and power, 
 and whose names are known to all the Christian 
 Church; two, John Lawrence and "Chinese" Gor- 
 don, were great political administrators who had the 
 missionary's spirit and devotion and who appealed 
 as much as any two men of the nineteenth century to 
 all that was heroic and chivalrous in the imagination 
 of the world ; and two, Eaymond Lull and George 
 Bowen, though they stand together in the foremost 
 rank of Christian men who rose to uniqueness of 
 character and conceived and fulfilled original tasks, 
 have had but a small place in Christian literature 
 and perhaps no place at all in the thought of some of 
 us who are gathered here to-day. There is no biog- 
 raphy at all of Bowen (perhaps the greatest present 
 lack in missionary literature), and there has been 
 until recently no English life of Lull. We need to 
 become better acquainted with all of these men, espe- 
 cially with these two of whom probably we know 
 least. Such acquaintance with the greatest man who 
 ever went forth to the Mohammedans and with the 
 most holy and revered missionary in India in his 
 day, and perhaps in any day, will help each of us 
 who, realizing his own imperfectness of character, is 
 ready to learn from another what far greater things 
 are possible and how they may be attained. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 17 
 
 For after all, all worthy greatness is greatness of 
 character, and while, as the lives of Lull and Bowen 
 and Gordon, also, sadly prove, greatness of character 
 may lavish itself in vain upon those whom it seeks 
 to win, yet nothing else will succeed where it fails, 
 unless it is with a meretricious or inferior success. 
 The high and real work of the world, the work that 
 is essentially and distinctively Christian, is personal 
 influence grounded in and springing from char- 
 acter. 
 
 In the missionary propaganda, especially, the su- 
 preme element is personality. It is not linguistic 
 skill, or intellectual superiority, or fertility of method, 
 or masterfulness of organization, or physical endur- 
 ance. All these are valuable and desirable, but the 
 one vital and indispensable thing is holy personality, 
 the presence in the human agent of the divine life, 
 and the unwearied attempt to impart that life through 
 the exposure of personality, so to speak, — its living 
 contact with other living spirits, lacking as yet the 
 divine indwelling. If this mode of speech seems to 
 be mystical, it is only because Christianity cannot 
 be stated otherwise. Even Harnack, who wants no 
 mystical Christology in his Gospel, admits that "it 
 is not as a mere factor that He (Jesus) is connected 
 with the Gospel ; He was its personal realization and 
 its strength, and this He is felt to be still. Fire is 
 kindled by fire ; personal life only by personal forces. 
 . . . The Gospel nowhere says that God's mercy 
 is limited to Jesus' mission. But history shows that 
 He is the one Who brings the weary and the heavy- 
 laden to God ; and, again, that He it was "Who raised 
 mankind to the new level and His teaching is still 
 
1 8 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 the touchstone, in that it brings men to bliss and to 
 judgment. . . . For those who followed Him, 
 Jesus was Himself the strength of the Gospel. What 
 they experienced, however, and came to know in and 
 through Him, they have told the world ; and this 
 message is still a living force." It is on Harnack's 
 own showing a living force because it carries and 
 kindles a personal life. 
 
 The simple truth is that Christianity is Christ, not 
 metaphorically but really, and true Christians pro- 
 claim Christ, not metaphorically, but actually. As 
 they live truly, they live Christ and embodying in 
 themselves the divine life, they go out to communi- 
 cate it to the world. All philanthropic and educa- 
 tional aspects of Christian work are secondary. If 
 they do not flow from the inner divine life as their 
 source, they are unreliable and precarious. If the 
 inner divine spring is there, all such accessory bene- 
 fits flow forth continually. St. Paul's interpretation 
 is eternally true. "What a man is in Christ and what 
 Christ is in a man — these are the only questions of 
 any significance. It is with men in Christ and Christ 
 in men that we are to meet in these leaders in the 
 moral movement of the world. 
 
 Of all the men of his century of whom we know, 
 Eaymond Lull was most possessed by this love and 
 life of Christ and most eager, accordingly, to share 
 his possession with the world. The world sadly 
 needed it ; the Church scarcely less. It brings out 
 the greatness of Lull's character strikingly to note 
 how sharply he rose above the world and Church of 
 his day, anticipating by many centuries moral stand- 
 ards, intellectual conceptions and missionary ambi- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 19 
 
 tions to which we have grown only slowly since the 
 Eeformation. What the general state of morality 
 was, in the thirteenth century, may be gathered from 
 the character of the popes. "Gregory VII and Inno- 
 cent III were great popes and mighty reformers of a 
 corrupt priesthood, but they were exceptions in the 
 long list. One of the popes was deposed on charges 
 of incest, perjury, murder and blasphemy. Many 
 were in power through simony. Concubinage and 
 unnatural vices were rife in Eome among the 
 clergy. Innocent IV, who reigned the very year 
 Lull was born, was an outrageous tyrant. Nicholas 
 III and Martin IV were popes towards the close 
 of the century. The pontificate of the first was 
 so marked with rapacity and nepotism, that he 
 was consigned by Dante to his Inferno. The lat- 
 ter was the infamous cause of the terrible Sicilian 
 Vespers." ^ 
 
 Intellectually, as Symonds says, " there were by no 
 means lacking elements of native vigour, ready to 
 burst forth. But the courage that is born of knowl- 
 edge, the calm strength begotten of a positive attitude 
 of mind, face to face with the dominant overshadow- 
 ing sphinx of theology, were lacking. We may 
 fairly say that natural and untaught people had more 
 of the just intuition that was needed than learned folk 
 trained in the schools. Man and the universe kept 
 on reasserting their rights and claims in one way or 
 another ; but they were always being thrust back into 
 Cimmerian regions of abstractions, fictions, visions, 
 spectral hopes and fears, in the midst of which the 
 intellect somnambulistically moved upon an unknown 
 "Zwemer, " Eaymond Lull," Chapter I. 
 
20 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 way." ' It was an age of superstition coupled with 
 the fear of investigation of the world, when Eoger 
 Bacon was sent to a dungeon for too much inquiry ; 
 of superstition coupled with a passion for the inves- 
 tigation of the inner heart, when the Flagelants 
 scourged themselves over Europe and Catherine of 
 Sienna and St. Francis of Assisi saw visions. And 
 far and wide the tides of life were beginning to 
 move. 
 
 The most picturesque feature of the times and the 
 one which bore closest relation to the life and work 
 of Lull was the conflict between Christianity and 
 Islam. For nearly a century and a half, at the time 
 of Lull's birth, the Crusades had shaken Europe and 
 the Holy Land, and tide after tide of life, the best 
 and the worst, had poured out of Europe at flood, 
 only to ebb again in weakness and disaster. Here 
 and there, some earnest soul strove to save and not 
 to slaughter the Moslems. Francis of Assisi was one 
 of these. He attempted in 1219 the evangelization 
 of "the Saracen hosts, then besieged in Damietta by 
 a mass of crusading Franks. Although there was a 
 price upon every Christian's head, the missionary, in 
 his mendicant's gray robe and cord of self-denial, 
 chanting the Twenty-third Psalm, crossed over to the 
 infidels and was hurried into the Sultan's presence, 
 to whom he declared : ' I am sent not of man, but of 
 God, to show thee the way of salvation.' His cour- 
 age, which to the Oriental seemed the inspiration of 
 madness, was his safeguard ; he was dismissed with 
 honour, and he lived to induce the Sultan E"uledeen 
 
 1 " Encyclopedia Brittanioa," VoL XX, p. 383, "The Eenais- 
 sance." 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 21 
 
 to treat tlie Christian captives kindly and to give the 
 Franciscans the guardianship of the sepulchre of 
 Christ."' The preaching friars also "who started 
 into existence the early part of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, had renounced the idea of solitary life in the 
 monasteries and gone forth among the masses ; and 
 to Saracens, Moors and Hebrews, as well as to heathens 
 and professing Christians, they had carried such a 
 Gospel as they knew. ' ' ' But all this was exceptional, 
 and the general attitude of Europe towards Moslems 
 was an attitude of hatred and contempt. Christians 
 would go to trouble to kill the Mohammedans and to 
 wrest the sepulchre of Christ from them, but not to 
 save them or win them to faith in the Christ "Who had 
 occupied the sepulchre. Eaymond Lull was raised 
 up to spend a great life in attempting to teach the 
 Church a new attitude towards Islam. 
 
 He was born in 1235, in Palma, the capital of 
 Majorca, an island of the Baleiric group, wrested by 
 James I, King of Arragon, from the Saracens, Lull's 
 father serving in the army of conquest. He grew up 
 in luxury, and as he, himself, says, in sensual living. 
 Fond of pleasure, he and his young wife moved from 
 the island to the court of James II, King of Arragon, 
 and there he became Seneschal of the court. He was 
 a musician, playing the cithern with skill, a poet 
 dealing usually with the pleasures of dishonourable 
 love, and the most popular poet, too, of his age in 
 Spain, but sensual and careless. "1 see, O Lord," 
 he wrote in after life in his book on "The Contem- 
 plation of God," "that the trees every year bring 
 
 'Smith, "Short History of Chriatian Missions," p. 101 f. 
 'Walsh, "Heroes of the Mission Field," p. 146. 
 
22 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 forth flowers and fruit by which, men are refreshed 
 and nourished ; but it is not so with me a sinner. 
 For thirty years I have borne no fruit in the world ; 
 yea, rather I have injured my neighbours and friends. 
 If, therefore, the tree which is destitute of reason 
 brings forth more fruit than I have done, I must be 
 deeply ashamed and acknowledge my great guilt. ' ' 
 
 Lull was not spending all these years in pure idle- 
 ness, however. Beside his music, he was interested 
 in all sorts of subjects, in science and discovery and 
 most of all in life. He was exceedingly popular and 
 well liked, and all the qualities and training of these 
 wasted days, he was later to find of use. 
 
 At the age of thirty-two, he went back to Palma, 
 and it was there that his life was turned. As he sat 
 one evening on his couch with his cithern on his knee, 
 composing a sensual song in praise of a married 
 woman who had failed to respond to his love, he 
 looked up and saw "on his right hand the Saviour 
 hanging on His cross, the blood trickling from His 
 hands and feet and brow, looking reproachfully at 
 him." Deeply impressed. Lull laid aside his cithern 
 and lay down on his couch. Eight days later, he 
 took uj) his cithern to complete the song, and again 
 the Saviour appeared to him. It was enough. The 
 vision never again left him, and he rose up that day 
 from his life of sin and uncleanness to follow the 
 Saviour "Whom he had seen. The old life did not re- 
 lease him without a struggle, and the issue was in 
 doubt until some months after his visions of the cru- 
 cified Lord, he went on the 4th of October, 1266, 
 to the Franciscan Church in Palma, at the Festival 
 of St. Francis of Assisi. There, he heard a friar 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 23 
 
 preacher tell the story of St. Francis wlio, "son of a 
 lich. merchant, lover of pleasure and imprisoned in 
 his youth for a brawl, was suddenly arrested by the 
 Spirit of God. Hearing the voice amid the loneliness 
 of the TJmbrian Hills, 'My temple is falling into 
 ruins, restore it,' he took poverty as his bride. He 
 founded the Order of Seraphic Brethren, Minorites or 
 Greyfriars, who from their number and care for the 
 poor have been called the democracy of Chris- 
 tianity. ' ' ' Lull listened to the whole story of Francis, 
 of the stigmata of Christ, of his passion of love, of 
 the fearlessness of his missionary spirit, of his zeal 
 for the conversion of the Saracens. The flame 
 burned anew in his own soul. He decided that he 
 also would renounce the world for Christ. This was 
 his vow of consecration : " To Thee, O Lord God, I 
 offer myself, my wife, my children and all that I 
 possess. May it please Thee, Who didst so humble 
 Thyself to the death of the cross, to condescend to 
 accept all that I give and offer to Thee, that I, my 
 wife and my children may be Thy lowly servants." 
 Accordingly, he sold his property, provided for his 
 family and set out upon the hard and lonely mission 
 of his life. 
 
 " Yes, without cheer of sister or of daughter, 
 Yes, without stay of father or of son ; 
 Lone on the land, and homeless on the water, 
 Pass I in patience till the work be done." 
 
 Some biographers speak of a period of retirement, 
 lasting nine years, which he spent in a cell on Mount 
 Eoda, enjoying heavenly illumination and conclud- 
 ' Smith, "Short History of Christian Missions," p. 101. 
 
24 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 ing at tlie end of it that he was called to preach the 
 Gospel to the Mohammedans. Whether he had 
 these nine years of solitude or not, he had the 
 heavenly illumination and we could not ask any bet- 
 ter credential than the fashion of the man's life and 
 the intensity and purity of devotion with which he 
 gave himself thenceforth to the one great object of 
 his life — the evangelization of Islam. No man is 
 likely to choose that for his life-work without some 
 constraint outside of his own will. And the man 
 who gives himself to it as Lull did, is manifestly 
 guided by God. 
 
 At the same time it was most natural that Lull 
 should turn to the Mohammedan missionary problem. 
 Majorca and Minorca had but recently been in 
 Moslem hands. His family history and his racial 
 training kept the idea of the Saracens in his mind. 
 And above all, the Crusades were over and a man as 
 discerning as Lull could see that the results were 
 nothing and the method barren. " I see many 
 knights going to the Holy Land beyond the seas," he 
 said, "and thinking that they can acquire it by 
 force of arms ; but in the end, all are destroyed before 
 they attain that which they think to have. Whence 
 it seems to me that the conquest of the Holy Land 
 ought not to be attempted except in the way in which 
 Thou and Thy apostles acquired it, namely, by love 
 and prayers and the pouring out of tears and blood." 
 In this way, Eaymond Lull proposed to attempt to 
 reach the Mohammedan world. 
 
 Lull realized, as few did, the nature of his problem. 
 It is evidence of his greatness that he realized that it 
 was a problem. Most of his contemporaries were 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 25 
 
 either largely or totally ignorant of the character, 
 both of Islam and of Mohammed. They did not 
 know Arabic, were unacquainted with the Koran, 
 hated the Saracen as an enemy and recognized no 
 missionary duty towards him as a man. Lull per- 
 ceived that a radically different attitude of mind was 
 necessary and at once adopted it for himself. 
 
 His first plan was to compose a book which would 
 demonstrate to the Mohammedans the truth and 
 superiority of Christianity, but he realized that he was 
 as yet unprepared to write such a book, and un- 
 acquainted with Arabic in which it would have to be 
 written if it was to reach Moslems. He thought of 
 going to Paris to prepare himself for the great con- 
 troversy, but a Dominican kinsman persuaded him to 
 stay in Majorca and study there. His first work was 
 to master Arabic. As no other teacher was avail- 
 able, he bought a Saracen slave and for nine years 
 was engaged in the study of the language with his 
 slave. " After this long, and we may believe, suc- 
 cessful apprenticeship," says Dr. Zwemer, "with the 
 Saracen slave, a tragic Incident interrupted his 
 studies. Lull had learned the language of the 
 Moslem, but the Moslem slave had not yet learned 
 the love of Christ ; nor had his pupil. In the midst 
 of these studies on one occasion, the Saracen 
 blasphemed Christ. How we are not told ; but 
 those who are among Moslems know what cruel, 
 vulgar words can come from Moslem lips against the 
 Son of God. When Lull heard the blasphemy, he 
 struck his slave violently in the face in his strong in- 
 dignation. The Moslem, stung to the quick, drew a 
 weapon, attempted Lull's life and wounded him 
 
26 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 severely. He was seized and imprisoned. Perhaps 
 fearing the death penalty for attempted murder, the 
 Saracen slave committed suicide. It was a sad be- 
 ginning for Lull in his work of preparation. Patience 
 had not yet had its perfect work. Lull felt more 
 than ever before ' He that loves not, lives not.' The 
 vision of the thorn-crowned head came back to him ; 
 he could not forget his covenant. Although he re- 
 tired for eight days to a mountain to engage in 
 prayer and meditation, he did not falter, but per- 
 severed in his resolution." ' 
 
 If disciples are to be won in all nations, they must 
 be won by preaching the Gospel and the Gospel can 
 only be preached by men who learn the various 
 languages of the earth. Lull saw this, so obvious to 
 us, so new to men in Lull's days. "O Thou true 
 Light of all lights," he prays, "as Thy grace through 
 the true Faith has enriched Christians before unbe- 
 lievers, so they are bound to demonstrate the true 
 faith to unbelievers. . . . The holy Church, 
 which consists of the souls of just Catholic men, 
 would be far more beautiful, if there were men 
 acquainted with different languages, who would go 
 through the earth, that unrighteous and unbelieving 
 men might hear the praises of the glorious Trinity 
 and of Thy blessed humanity and of Thy painful 
 passion." 
 
 While engaged in studying Arabic, Lull was de- 
 veloping his idea of a great apologetic Christian 
 statement designed to meet the difficulties in men's 
 minds in the way of accepting Christianity ; and es- 
 pecially to convince Mohammedans of its divine 
 ' Zwemer, " Eaymond Lull," Chapter IV. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 27 
 
 truth. Either Lull or a relative of his had persuaded 
 Thomas Aquinas to write his book, " On the Catholic 
 Faith, or Summary against the Gentiles." Now Lull 
 himself undertook the task and the result was his 
 "Ars Major sine Generalis.'' "This remarkable 
 treatise," says Dr. Zwemer, " while in one sense in- 
 tended for the special work of convincing Moslems, 
 was to include ' a universal art of acquisition, demon- 
 stration, confutation ' and meant ' to cover the whole 
 field of knowledge and to supersede the inadequate 
 methods of previous schoolmen.' " Lull's aim was 
 to use the scholastic method not only in the Church, 
 but as a missionary agency, and to win the Moslem 
 and the heathen by convincing them in fair discus- 
 sion of the superiority of Christianity. " In his as- 
 sertion of the place of reason in religion, in his de- 
 mand that a rational Christianity should be presented 
 to heathendom, Lull goes far beyond the ideas and 
 the aspirations of the century in which he lived. 
 . . . In judging the character of Lull's method, 
 and hia long period of preparation, one thing must 
 not be forgotten. The strength of Islam in the age 
 of scholasticism was its philosophy. Having thor- 
 oughly entered into the spirit of Arabian philosoph- 
 ical writings and seen its errors, there was nothing 
 left for a man of Lull's intellect than to meet these 
 Saracen philosophers on their own ground. Avi- 
 cenna, Algazel and Averroes sat on the throne of 
 Moslem thought. Lull's object was to undermine 
 their influence and so reach the Moslem heart with 
 the message of salvation. For such a conflict and in 
 such an age, his weapons were well chosen." * 
 ' Zwemer, " Kaymond Lull," Chapter IV. 
 
28 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 The method of Lull became well known and his 
 art, the Lullian art, was very famous in his day. In- 
 deed, it has been said that "for two centuries, the 
 name of Baymond Lull was the best known and per- 
 haps the most influential in Europe." ' The art of 
 Lull seems very absurd and antiquated to us to-day, 
 however. It "goes beyond logic and metaphysic ; 
 as a universal topic, it provides a universal art of 
 discovery and contains the formulas to which every 
 demonstration in every science can be reduced. A 
 sort of cyclopedia of categories and syllogisms . . . 
 a mnemonic, or rather a mechanical contrivance for 
 ascertaining all possible categories that apply to a pos- 
 sible proposition. . . . This Lullian method of a 
 wheel within a wheel seems at first as perplexing as 
 the visions of Ezekiel and as puerile as the automatic 
 book-machine in ' Gulliver's Travels.' But it would 
 be unfair to say that Lull supposed ' thinking could 
 be reduced to a mere rotation of pasteboard circles' 
 or that his art enabled him ' to talk without judg- 
 ment of that which we do not know.' Lull sought 
 not to give a compendium of knowledge but a method 
 of investigation. He sought a more scientific method 
 for philosophy than the dialectic of his contempo- 
 raries. In his conception of a universal method and 
 his application of the vernacular languages to phi- 
 losophy, he was the herald of Bacon himself. He 
 perceived the possibilities (though not the limita- 
 tions) of comparative theology and the science of 
 logic as weapons for the missionary." ^ 
 
 These two great ideas of vernacular preaching to 
 
 ' Walsh, " Heroes of the Mission Field," p. 145, quoted. 
 ' Zwemer, " Eaymond Lull," Chapter VIII. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 29 
 
 heathen and Moslem and of an unanswerable apolo- 
 getic were supplemented by a third. Lull became 
 possessed with the desire to found missionary colleges 
 which would send out over the world men who would 
 be missionaries after his conception. " I find scarcely 
 any one," he says, " who out of love to Thee, O Lord, 
 is ready to suffer martyrdom, as Thou hast suffered 
 for us. It appears to me agreeable to reason, if an ordi- 
 nance to that effect could be obtained, that the monks 
 should know various languages, that they might be 
 able to go out and surrender their lives in love to Thee. 
 . . . O Lord of glory, if that blessed day should 
 ever be in which I might see Thy holy monks so 
 influenced by zeal to glorify Thee, as to go into 
 foreign lands in order to testify of Thy holy minis- 
 try, of Thy blessed incarnation, and of Thy bitter 
 sufferings, that would be a glorious day, a day in 
 which that glow of devotion would return with which 
 the holy apostles met death for their Lord Jesus 
 Christ." Lull even dreamed of monks of holy lives 
 and great wisdom, " forming institutions in order to 
 learn various languages and to be able to preach to 
 unbelievers." As he had anticipated our modern 
 missionary attitude towards the unevangelized, so he 
 anticipated here as Dr. Smith says, "the great 
 modern conception and agency of societies and 
 churches organized for foreign missions. One step 
 further, but some slight response from his Church or 
 his age, and Eaymond Lull would have anticipated 
 William Carey by exactly seven centuries." ' 
 
 The only successes with which Lull met in his 
 attempt to establish colleges were two. (1) The 
 'Smith, "Short History of Christian Missions," p. 105. 
 
30 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 king of Majorca established there a monastery in 
 which monks were "to be instructed in the Arabic 
 language and trained to become able disputants 
 among the Moslems. Lull had no narrow design for 
 this school. He wanted no dry, theoretical instruc- 
 tion. The language of the people to be reached was 
 taught and the monks were to be made familiar also 
 with the lands in which they lived. ' ' Knowledge 
 of the regions of the world," he wrote, " is strongly 
 necessary for the republic of believers and the con- 
 version of unbelievers and for withstanding infidels 
 and an ti- Christ. The man unacquainted with geog- 
 raphy is not only ignorant where he walks but 
 whither he leads. Whether he attempts the con- 
 version of infidels or works for other interests of the 
 Church, it is indispensable that he know the religions 
 and the environments of all nations." That is an 
 ideal as natural as it is unrealized in most of our 
 theological schools. Lull insisted that in his schools 
 men should be made familiar with the world in 
 which they were going to live and for which they 
 were to work. If there ever was a day when Lull's 
 ideal was not necessary for us, that day has passed 
 away. The theological school is not faithful to its 
 mission whose department of homiletics, or of 
 theology, or of church history assumes that America 
 is the sole field for the Christian minister, and that 
 its problems are either the only problems or the 
 supreme problems of the Church. (2) Beside getting 
 his school started at Majorca, Lull strove to found 
 colleges elsewhere and several times went to Eome 
 to urge his plans. But popes were busy with the 
 great issues of their day, which are too often the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 31 
 
 small issues of all days, and when there were no 
 popes, the cardinals were busy making new ones 
 and had no time to waste on projects for preaching 
 the Gospel, least of all to Mohammedans. All that 
 Lull got as the result of his long agitation was the 
 act of the Council of Vienue in 1311, decreeing that 
 professorships of Oriental languages be established 
 in the TJniTersities of Paris, Oxford and Salamanca. 
 
 I have called these the only successes which Lull 
 achieved in his scheme for educating missionaries, 
 but these were not small successes. "When one con- 
 siders the obstacles in his way they were very great 
 successes. They are significant to us, however, 
 chiefly as revealing once more the large-mindedness 
 of this solitary worker labouring for the evangeliza- 
 tion of the world and forestalling in his plans men 
 who came centuries later — but who forestalled them 
 even more by living in the thirteenth century the 
 missionary life of the nineteenth, and feeling then 
 the missionary motives to which the Church came only 
 many years afterwards. 
 
 Having learned Arabic, written his great book 
 and done his best to establish institutions in Europe 
 which would send out a constant stream of mission- 
 aries to Mohammedans, Lull gave himself with all 
 his power to a personal mission to Islam and an 
 unresting propaganda at home in support of true 
 missions to Moslems. He believed in rational proc- 
 lamation of the truth. He did not propose to trust 
 to authority, to education, to political influence, but 
 to the living power of the truth of Christ. He did 
 not fear discussion, or hesitate to compare fairly 
 other religions with Christianity. He believed that 
 
32 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 Christianity was the truth and that Christ would 
 triumph as the truth alone, by love. The spirit 
 of Christ which was in his heart enabled him to 
 realize that it was no small thing which he demanded 
 when he asked men to change their religion. His 
 position and spirit are illustrated in what he said 
 about his book, "On the Discovery of Truth," 
 written while waiting at Eome in the vain hope of 
 influencing two successive popes to adopt his mis- 
 sion : 
 
 " We have composed this treatise in order that believing 
 and devout Christians might consider that while the doc- 
 trine of no other religious sect can be proved to be true by 
 its adherents, and none of the truths of Christianity are 
 really vulnerable on the grounds of reason, the Christian 
 faith cannot only be defended from all its enemies, but 
 can also be demonstrated. And, hence, animated by the 
 glowing zeal of faith, may they consider (since nothing 
 can withstand the truth, which is mightier than all) how 
 they may be able by force of argument, through the help 
 and power of God, to lead unbelievers into the way of 
 truth, so that the blessed name of the Lord Jesus, which 
 is still unknown in most parts of the world, and among 
 most nations, may be manifested and obtain universal 
 adoration. This way of converting unbelievers is easier 
 than all others. For it must appear hard to unbelievers 
 to forsake their own faith for a foreign one ; but who is 
 there that will not feel himself compelled to surrender 
 falsehood for truth ; the self-contradictory for the neces- 
 sary ? ... Of all methods of converting unbelievers 
 and reconquering the Holy Land, this is the easiest and 
 speediest which is most congenial to love and is so much 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER" 33 
 
 mightier than all other kinds and methods, in the proportion 
 that spiritual weapons are more effective than carnal ones. 
 This treatise was finished at Rome in the year 1296, on 
 the holy evening before the Feast of John the Baptist, the 
 forerunner of our Lord Jesus Christ. May he pray our 
 Lord, that as he himself was the herald of light, and 
 pointed with his finger to Him who is the true Light, and 
 as in his time the dispensation of grace began, it may 
 please the Lord Jesus to spread a new light over the 
 world, that unbelievers may walk in the brightness of 
 this light, and be converted to join with us in meeting 
 Him, the Lord Jesus Christ ; to Whom be praise and 
 glory forever ! ' ' 
 
 In this spirit, Lull devoted the last twenty years 
 of his life to the personal proclamation of the Gospel 
 to Mohammedans and Jews. The thirteenth century 
 witnessed a great growth of hatred against the Jews. 
 At the middle of the century, they were expelled 
 from Prance and at the close, from England. They 
 were insulted and oppressed in countless humiliating 
 ways. But Lull included them in his missionary 
 purpose. He wrote books to convince them of the 
 truth of Christianity and in the interval of his visits 
 to Africa he laboured personally to win the Jews of 
 Majorca, But it was the Moslems who were most on 
 his heart. 
 
 In 1291 he left Paris, where he had been lecturing, 
 supporting Christianity and attacking Mohammedan 
 philosophy, and went to Genoa to sail for Africa, to 
 ' ' experiment whether he, himself, " as he said, ' ' could 
 not persuade some of them by conference with their 
 wise men and by manifesting to them, according to 
 
34 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 the divinely giveu method, the incarnation of the Son 
 of God and the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity 
 in the Divine Unity of the Essence." There is some- 
 thing very heroic in the lonely man who was propos- 
 ing to go out without friend or companion, without 
 support or society to meet the most implacable an- 
 tagonism Christianity has ever encountered. A ship 
 was in the harbour ready to sail and passage was en- 
 gaged and Lull's books were put on board, when as 
 Lull says, he was "overwhelmed with terror at the 
 thought of what might befall him in the country 
 whither he was going. The idea of enduring torture 
 or lifelong imprisonment presented itself with such 
 force that he could not control his emotions." His 
 books were brought back and the ship sailed without 
 him. But who can wonder at his hesitancy? As 
 Dr. Smith says: "IsTo such enterprise had been at- 
 tempted in the history of the Church. This was no 
 careless Crusader, cheered by martial glory or worldly 
 pleasure. His was not even such a task as that which 
 had called forth all the courage of the men who first 
 won over Goth and Prank, Saxon and Slav. Ray- 
 mond Lull, refused aid and sympathy by Europe, 
 was going forth alone to preach Christ to a people 
 with whom apostasy is death, who had made Chris- 
 tendom feel their prowess for centuries, who had 
 steadily advanced and rarely retreated, who up to 
 this hour have yielded the fewest converts to the 
 Gospel and have attracted the fewest missionaries to 
 attempt their evangelization, even in British India 
 where their toleration is assured. In the light of all 
 subsequent missions to the Mohammedans, Eaymond 
 Lull's first hesitation at Genoa is a small thing, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 35 
 
 and it was soon purged away by the martyr's 
 crown." ' 
 
 Lull felt keenly tlie humiliation of his retreat. He 
 felt that he had opened the Gospel and his missionary 
 enterprise to reproach. So bitter was his regret that 
 he fell into a fever. In this fever, he learned of an- 
 other ship about to sail and insisted upon his friends 
 putting him on board. Convinced that he could not 
 live, they brought him back to shore. But Eaymond 
 Lull was not a man whom either death or danger 
 could long daunt, and when a third vessel was ready 
 to sail, he insisted again upon being carried on board 
 and sailed away for Tunis. Once on board, his sick- 
 ness left him and he rose up with full strength for his 
 new undertaking. Upon landing at Tunis he im- 
 mediately acted upon his principle of free and fear- 
 less discussion and invited the Mohammedan doctors 
 to a conference, in which he proposed that they should 
 compare the evidences on each side and that then all 
 should commit themselves to whatever should be 
 demonstrated as the truth. Lull was no novice in 
 argument upon the character of Islam and he went 
 straight to the core of the question of comparative 
 worth between Christianity and Islam in presenting 
 as the two weak points of the Mohammedan concep- 
 tion of God — a lack of love in His being and a lack 
 of harmony in His attributes. "Every wise man," 
 — so Maclear summarizes his argument, which Lull 
 gives in his own writings, — "must acknowledge that 
 to be the true religion, which ascribed the greatest 
 perfection to the Supreme Being, and not only con- 
 veyed the worthiest conception of all His attributes, 
 1 Smith, " Short History of Christian Miaaions, ' ' p. 106. 
 
36 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 His goodness, power, wisdom and glory, but demon- 
 strated the harmony and equality existing between 
 them. Now their religion was defective in acknowl- 
 edging only two active principles in the Deity, His will 
 and His wisdom, while it left His goodness and great- 
 ness inoperative as though they were indolent quali- 
 ties and not called forth into active exercise. But the 
 Christian faith could not be charged with this defect. 
 In its doctrine of the Trinity, it conveys the highest 
 conception of the Deity, as the Father, the Son and 
 the Holy Spirit in one simple essence and nature. In 
 the Incarnation of the Son it evinces the harmony 
 that exists between God's goodness and His greatness ; 
 and in the person of Christ displays the true union of 
 the Creator and the creature ; while in His Passion 
 which He underwent out of His great love for man, 
 it sets forth the divine harmony of infinite goodness 
 and condescension, even the condescension of Him 
 Who for us men and our salvation and restitution to 
 our primeval state of perfection, underwent those 
 sufferings and lived and died for man." ' 
 
 Such preaching could only secure the condemnation 
 of the preacher, not the acceptance of his message. 
 There was no openness of mind to conviction in the 
 Mohammedan doctors. They had hoped to silence 
 Lull easily. They were not willing to be persuaded 
 or outreasoned, and Lull was cast into prison to await 
 deportation, one of the Moslems commending the de- 
 votion of the missionary and securing a sentence of 
 deportation rather than death. He escaped from the 
 ship, however, and lay in hiding for three months, 
 
 ' Maclear, "History o£ Christian Mossions in the Middle Ages," 
 p. 362 f. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 37 
 
 preacMng quietly and composing a new scientific 
 work. But finding any further public discussion 
 impossible, he returned to Naples where he lectured 
 and taught for several years and thence went to Eome 
 and back to Majorca. But the regions beyond were 
 still on his heart, — the people to whom Christ had 
 not been preached, and he soon pressed out upon an- 
 other itineration, going to Cyprus and on to the Ar- 
 menians in Cilicia. 
 
 Cast out of one city in Africa, however, he refused 
 to believe that Africa was closed and in 1307, at the 
 age of seventy-one, he crossed over to Bugia. There 
 were Christians in the city, but there was no Chris- 
 tian propagandism and the spirit of Islam was ortho- 
 dox and intolerant. The old code of Omar was as 
 far as possible in force. But all this could not stifle 
 the zeal of the old missionary and he went straight to 
 the market-place and preached Christ. The mob 
 would have killed him but the Mohammedan doctors 
 rescued him and put him in prison. When the chief 
 Mullah expostulated with him on the folly of his con- 
 duct, he replied, "Death has no terrors whatever for 
 a sincere servant of Christ who is labouring to bring 
 souls to a knowledge of the truth." In prison he 
 was tempted with sensual offers which the old man, 
 who had forty years before left sin for Christ, treated 
 with scorn, and he spent his time writing another 
 book in defense of Christianity against Islam. He 
 was soon deported, this time without opportunity to 
 escape. On his way back to Europe, the ship was 
 wrecked off Pisa, but Lull was rescued and came on 
 to Genoa and Paris. 
 
 Now at last surely the aged warrior had earned rest 
 
38 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 and might justly have settled down into some quiet 
 professorship or in some peaceful monastery for his 
 remaining days. But this was not the spirit of Lull. 
 "As a hungry man makes despatch and takes large 
 morsels on account of his great hunger, so Thy serv- 
 ant feels a great desire to die that he may glorify 
 Thee." This was his word to God. "He hurries 
 day and night to complete his work in order that he 
 may give up his blood and his tears to be shed for 
 Thee." And in "Contemplation," he wrote: "As 
 the needle naturally turns to the north when it is 
 touched by the magnet, so it is iitting, O Lord, that 
 Thy servant should turn to love and praise and serve 
 Thee : seeing that out of love to him Thou wast will- 
 ing to endure such previous pangs and sufferings." 
 And again, " Men are wont to die, O Lord, from old 
 age, the failure of natural warmth and excess of cold : 
 but thus if it be Thy will. Thy servant would not 
 wish to die ; he would prefer to die in the glow of 
 love, even as Thou wast willing to die for him." 
 The hunger for martyrdom grew keen in Lull's heart. 
 He could have but a few years for work ; why not 
 spend them richly in one more effort to reach the 
 Moslem and then die gloriously in the noble army of 
 the martyrs 1 
 
 Accordingly, Lull sailed once more for Africa in 
 1314, in the seventy-eighth year of his age and spent 
 a year in Bugia in seclusion, working quietly, 
 strengthening the little band of converts, gathered as 
 a result of his previous visit to the city. To these 
 and to all who would come, he preached love in love : 
 the love of his own heart pleading with men the love 
 of the heart of God. This was the supreme power of 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 39 
 
 his own faith, a noble realization of the love of God 
 in Christ. ' ' I have sought Thee on the Crucifix, ' ' he 
 writes, "and my bodily eyes could not find Thee 
 there. I have sought Thee with the eyes of my soul, 
 and as soon as I found Thee, my heart grew warmer 
 with the glow of Thy love, and my eyes began to 
 shed tears, and my mouth to praise Thee." And 
 this was his supreme argument with Moslems. "If 
 Moslems," he urged, " according to their law, affirm 
 that God loved man because He created him, en- 
 dowed him with noble faculties, and pours His bene- 
 fits upon him, then the Christians, according to their 
 law, affirm the same. But inasmuch as the Chris- 
 tians believe more than this and affirm that God so 
 loved man that He was willing to become man, to en- 
 dure poverty, ignominy, torture and death for hia 
 sake, which the Jews and Saracens do not teach con- 
 cerning Him ; therefore is the religion of the Chris- 
 tian which thus reveals a Love beyond all other love 
 superior to that of those which reveals it only in an 
 inferior degree." 
 
 For a time, Lull was able to content himself with 
 the private preaching of Christ as the divine love and 
 the evidence of the love of God ; but after a while he 
 wearied of the seclusion and the woe of St. Paul, 
 which had filled his soul for half a century, grew too 
 burdensome. So he came forth from his retirement 
 and openly proclaimed Christ to the people in the 
 public market. As he called upon the people to re- 
 nounce Mohammed and to follow Christ, he received 
 the crown for which he had longed. The infuriated 
 crowd stoned him to death on June 30, 1315, and he 
 fell asleep. The spirit of the good soldier of Thomas 
 
40 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 Puller had always been in him. " The good soldier 
 grudgeth not to get a probability of victory by the 
 certainty of his own death and fleeth from nothing so 
 much as from the mention of fleeing ; and though the 
 world call him a madman, our soldier knoweth that 
 he shall possess the reward of his valour with God in 
 heaven, and making the world his executor leave to it 
 the rich inheritance of his memory." So the old 
 warrior and saint died on the threshold of his 
 eightieth year, and the world has waited in vain for 
 a missionary to the Mohammedans who could ap- 
 proach him in ability, in energy, in fearlessness, in 
 clean discernment of the issues involved, in power of 
 argument, in passion of love. 
 
 Baymond Lull was a Protestant before the Eefor- 
 mation. He was not a Protestant in the sense of 
 separation from or opposition to the Church of Eome, 
 or to the popes of Eome. That Church was his 
 Church and though he knew well the character of 
 some of the popes of his day, and must have been 
 made sick by their irreligion and their blindness to 
 the essential character of Christianity as a missionary 
 power, he had other things to do than to reform the 
 Church or failing, to separate from it. The time had 
 not come for the Eeformation and probably the 
 thought of it did not occupy Lull's mind. But he 
 was a Protestant in the character of his religious doc- 
 trine, retaining still the personal passionate devotion 
 to Christ which has been too often sacrificed in the 
 interest of purity of theological opinion, and which was 
 the noble adornment of the best mediseval piety. 
 Speaking of Lull's conversion, Mr. Noble says : 
 "This new birth, be it noted, sprang from a passion 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 41 
 
 for Jesus. Lull's faith was not sacramental, but per- 
 sonal and vital, more Catholic than Eoman." Per- 
 haps that is the better word. He was not Protestant 
 or Eoman, but simply a Catholic Christian, but a 
 Catholic Christian rather than a Catholic church- 
 man. It was Christ not Church with him. He 
 would have thrown away his time and life if he had 
 gone to Mam with a church religion. Those rigid 
 Monotheists and individualists would have been 
 totally untouched by a doctrine of sacrament and or- 
 ganization, which submerged the sense of individual 
 duty and responsibility and obscured the solemn, 
 central truth of religion — the soul and God ; God and 
 the soul. The right religious attitude is the product 
 of psychology, as much as of theology and ecclesiology 
 and it is hard to set right limits to either one. But 
 it may be believed that no character can better serve 
 than Eaymond Lull's to indicate to us the right 
 balance of views and sympathies. Churchmen and 
 Christ-men, historical and dogmatic theologians, and 
 practical Christian missionaries, mystics and devo- 
 tionalists — all those contradictory and discordant 
 types of Christian character and opinion which fill 
 our world to-day find a common meeting place in the 
 great missionary of the thirteenth century. 
 
 The attitude of the Eoman Catholic Church to the 
 memory of Lull is confirmatory of the view that he 
 was more Catholic than the Church. His works were 
 condemned by the Inquisition, which the Council of 
 Toulouse had created in 1229 to punish a namesake 
 of his, and which was introduced into Spain 163 
 years after Lull's death to deal after the fashion of 
 the Inquisition with the Mohammedans and Jews 
 
42 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 whom Lull had lived and died to win by love. The 
 Jesuits have always been hostile to his memory, and 
 the Church has hesitated whether to regard him as a 
 heretic or a saint. He has never been canonized and 
 others who have been unworthy to unloose his shoes 
 have usurped the devotion of the Church. In his old 
 home, however, his memory lives, and Dr. Zwemer 
 quotes a letter from the present bishop of Majorca in 
 which he speaks of him as "an extraordinary man 
 with apostolic virtues and worthy of all admiration." 
 If Lull had not been so universal a character, he 
 might have stood better chance of canonization. But 
 his interests were too wide and were sure to conflict 
 at some point with established prejudices. His atti- 
 tude towards the rudimentary science of his day was 
 enough in itself to lay him open to suspicion. Arnold 
 de Villeneuve, "the alchemist and pious nobleman," 
 was one of his friends and Arnold incurred the cen- 
 sure of the Church for holding that "medicine and 
 charity were more pleasing to God than religious 
 services," and teaching that "the monks had cor- 
 rupted the doctrine of Christ and that saying masses 
 was useless ; and that the papacy is a work of man." 
 Lull, himself, was a prolific writer and an advanced 
 thinker upon natural philosophy. "One of Lull's 
 biographers states that the books written by Lull 
 numbered 4,000. In the first published edition of his 
 works (1721) 282 titles are given ; yet only forty-five 
 of these when printed took up ten large folio vol- 
 umes. To understand something of the scope and 
 ambition of this prodigious intellect," as Dr. Zwemer 
 says, "we must read the partial list of his books 
 given in the bibliography. . . . Lull was a phi- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 43 
 
 losopher, a poet, a novelist, a writer of proverbs, a 
 keen logician, a deep theologian and a fiery contro- 
 versialist. There was not a science cultivated in his 
 age but he added to it. The critical historian, "Win- 
 sor, states that in 1295 Lull wrote a handbook on 
 navigation which was not superseded by a better un- 
 til after Columbus. Dr. George Smith credits Lull 
 with the independent invention of the mariner's com- 
 pass, and not without reason, for we find frequent 
 reference to the magnetic needle in his devotional 
 books. He wrote a treatise on ' the weight of the 
 elements,' and their shape ; on the sense of smell ; on 
 astronomy, astrology, arithmetic and geometry. One 
 of his books is entitled, ' On the squaring and trian- 
 gulation of the circle.' In mediseval medicine, juris- 
 prudence and metaphysics, he was equally at home. 
 His seven volumes on medicine include one book on 
 the use of the mind in curing the sick and another 
 on the effect of climate on diseases. He was a dog- 
 matic theologian and wrote sixty-three volumes of 
 theological discussion." 
 
 And his writings did not dry out his spirit. His 
 controversial books, even where he is arguing against 
 Mohammedanism, have the irenic tenderness. He 
 would win by love. Thus he concluded one book : 
 " O Lord, my help ! till this work is completed Thy 
 servant cannot go to the land of the Saracens to 
 glorify Thy glorious Name, for I am so occupied with 
 this book which I undertake for Thine honour that I 
 can think of nothing else. For this reason, I be- 
 seech Thee for that grace, that Thou wouldst stand 
 by me that I may soon finish it and speedily depart 
 to die the death of a martyr out of love to Thee, if it 
 
44 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 shall please Thee to count me worthy of it." An- 
 other book on the logic of Christianity he closed 
 thus: "Let Christians consumed with burning love 
 for the cause of faith only consider that since nothing 
 has power to withstand truth, they can by God's help 
 and His might bring infidels back to the faith ; so 
 that the precious name of Jesus, which In most 
 regions is still unknown to most men, may be pro- 
 claimed and adored." 
 
 It is possible that, apart from the evident love of 
 Christ which possessed Lull and the admiration of 
 men for his zeal in the hopeless cause of converting 
 the Saracens, as the world regarded it, Lull may have 
 been left free for his work because he was a layman 
 and a little less subject accordingly to sharp eccle- 
 siastical surveillance. His call to follow Christ and 
 to preach to the heathen, the Jew and the Moham- 
 medan did not appear to Lull to be a call to the 
 priesthood. He sought no honour and he felt the 
 need of no ecclesiastical consecration, of no historic 
 credentials. Had he not seen Christ ? Did he not 
 have a message? Were there not millions of un- 
 reached souls, whom the attested clergy of his time 
 were leaving to their darkness and their doom ? We 
 may think of Lull in this regard as reviving the 
 ideals of the first Christian century, or as anticipat- 
 ing the ideals of the twentieth. In other words, 
 though set in a great historic institution, all that 
 Lull felt was essential was the spiritual. Church 
 order is right and necessary, but what is spiritually 
 real, accredited by the immediate anointing of the 
 living God, does not need ecclesiastical sanction. It 
 bears on its face the irrefutable evidence of life and 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 45 
 
 reality. At tlie same time, Lull was not a heedless 
 independent. For one tbing, lie was born in the 
 only Christian institution there was, and to go apart 
 from the Church would have been, unless he had 
 gone to the Waldensians or the Albigenses, to go out 
 of the company of Christian people. Lull felt also 
 the great desirability of organized missions under 
 proper Church responsibility. He strove again and 
 again to have his mission to the Moslems taken up 
 by the Church, but in vain. What his life stands 
 for is the desirability of the union between free indi- 
 vidual movement, — men seeing their own visions and 
 following their own gleams, — and such corporate 
 Church responsibility as shall leave no man to fight 
 the battle single-handed, and shall provide a larger 
 generalship than one mind can furnish, and shall 
 have another ready to catch the shield and sword as 
 they drop from the hand of the falling warrior and 
 renew the battle as an eternal strife till the victory 
 is won. 
 
 It was probably advantageous that Lull lacked the 
 technical theological education of his day. It might 
 have stifled the freedom of his mind. It certainly 
 would have tended to chill the zeal of his missionary 
 spirit, which the conventional attitude of his time 
 deemed madness. After all has been said that can 
 be said of the general liberalizing influence of edu- 
 cation and of the universities as the centres of re- 
 forming tendencies in all ages, it yet remains true 
 that the school has its peril of narrowness, of arti- 
 ficiality, of a sort of procrastination, that plays 
 with the forms of the last generation's thought, 
 when a new generation is already on the stage ; 
 
46 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 or that invents new forms so lightly that one 
 ■wonders whether the inventors realize that all such 
 changes cost blood and that that is why they are 
 neither to be resisted when they come nor forced 
 with light-heartedness to come prematurely. The 
 theological discipline of his day would have been 
 better than the school of sensuality in which he grew 
 up, but the latter left him with a mind open to new 
 sympathies, to large services, to fresh conceptions. 
 Mediaeval scholasticism would have operated severely 
 against all such. It is enough to urge that the su- 
 preme thing in missionary work in all ages is the 
 possession of a life, of the love divine that is life di- 
 vine and the full preparation Of such life for contact 
 in the most intricate and unprejudiced way with other 
 life. No school can give the life and while the pre- 
 sumption always is that the school is the best place 
 for preparation, Lull shows that it is not always so 
 and that sometimes it is better to "buy a Saracen " 
 and get ready in exceptional ways. At any rate, 
 when a man appears who has been so made ready, in- 
 stead of fearing him because of his singularity, our 
 plans should be so flexible as to open a place at once 
 for him, — for any one who has the life and would 
 give it. 
 
 And Eaymond Lull had it. Somerville, in "St. 
 Paul's Conception of Christ," points out that it was 
 "in the consciousness of what the glorified Christ 
 was to Paul in his personal life, that we are to look 
 for the genesis of his theology." It was in his inner 
 experience of the glorified Christ that we are to look 
 for the secret and source of Eaymond Lull's doctrine 
 and life, what he thought, what he was, what he suf- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 47 
 
 fered. And this must be true of all true missionaries. 
 They do not go out to Asia and to Africa to say, 
 "This is the doctrine of the Christian Church" ; or, 
 "Tour science is bad. Look through this micro- 
 scope and see for yourselves and abandon such 
 error" ; or, "Compare your condition with that of 
 America and see how much more socially beneficial 
 Christianity is than Hinduism or Confucianism or 
 Islam." Doubtless, all this has its place : the argu- 
 ment from the historic evidences of Christianity ; the 
 argument from the coherence of Christianity with the 
 facts of the universe ; the argument from fruits. 
 But it is also all secondary. The primary thing is 
 personal testimony : ' ' This I have felt. This He 
 has done for me. I preach Whom I know, that 
 which was from the beginning ; that which I have 
 heard, that which I have seen with my eyes ; that 
 which I have looked upon and my hands have 
 handled, concerning the Word of Life (and the 
 Life was manifested, and I have seen and bear 
 witness, and declare unto you the life, the eternal 
 life, which was with the Father and was mani- 
 fested unto me), that which I have seen and heard 
 declare I unto you also, that ye also may have fel- 
 lowship with me ; yea, and my fellowship is with 
 the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ." The 
 man who cannot say this may be able to change the 
 opinions of those to whom he has gone, to improve 
 their social condition, to free them from many foolish 
 errors and enslaving superstitions, but after all this, 
 the one thing which if done would of itself have at- 
 tended to these things and a thousand others may 
 be still unaccomplished, namely, the gift of life. 
 
48 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 The man who would do Paul's work or Lull's must 
 be able to preach a living Christ, tested in experience, 
 saved from all pantheistic error by the Incarnation 
 and the roots thus sunk in history, by the Eesurrec- 
 tion and the personality thus preserved in God above, 
 but a Christ here and known, lived and ready to be 
 given by life to death, that death may become life. 
 
 It would be easy to draw other parallels than this 
 between Paul and Lull, — their conversions, their sub- 
 sequent times of separation, their visions, their untir- 
 ing toil, their passion for Christ, their sufferings and 
 shipwrecks, their intellectual activity and power, 
 their martyrdoms, the rule of Christ supreme even 
 in death, supreme also in life, its thought, its pur- 
 pose, its tastes, its use, its friends, its sacrifices. But 
 the essence of all such comparisons is this— the real 
 essence of all true missionary character, namely, the 
 possession by the life of Christ as life and the ability 
 thus to give not a new doctrine only, not a new 
 truth to men, but a new life. The work of missions 
 is just this, — the going out of the Church over the 
 world ; of a body of men and women knowing Christ, 
 and therefore having life in themselves, their quiet 
 residence among the dead peoples and the resurrec- 
 tion from among these peoples of first one, then a 
 few, then more and more, who feel the life and re- 
 ceive it and live. 
 
 It will be worth while in closing to notice a few 
 characteristics of Lull in which the great life in him 
 expressed itself. 
 
 1. He sought in every way to fit himself for con- 
 tact with men so that he might reach them in the 
 deepest intricacies of their life, and be able there to 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 49 
 
 plant tlie seed of tlie divine life which he bore. 
 Therefore, he learned Arabic, becarae a master of 
 the Moslem philosophy, studied geography and the 
 heart of man. And therefore, also, he became a stu- 
 dent of comparative religion, as we would call him 
 to-day. There was a great difference between his 
 view, however, and that of a large school of modern 
 students of comparative religion. He did not study 
 other religions with the purpose of providing from 
 them ideals which Christianity was supposed to lack. 
 Nor did he propose to reduce out of all religions a 
 common fund of general principles more or less to be 
 found in all and regard this as the ultimate religion. 
 He studied other religions to find out how better to 
 reach the hearts of their followers with the Gospel, 
 itself perfect and complete, lacking nothing, needing 
 nothing from any other doctrine. "With him, there 
 was a difference between Christianity and other relig- 
 ions not in degree only, but in kind. It possesses all 
 that they lack which is desirable. It lacks all that 
 they possess which is unworthy. It alone satisfies. 
 It alone is life. They are systems of society or poli- 
 tics ; religions of books, methods, organizations. It 
 and it alone is life, personal life. Lull studied other 
 religions not to discover what they have to give to 
 Christianity, for they have nothing, but to find how 
 best he might give to those who follow them the true 
 life which is life, and which no man shall ever find 
 until he finds it in Christ. 
 
 2. Believing in life, he believed in the movement 
 of life. The great dream of his last years was a 
 mighty missionary crusade. " The Saracens write 
 books for the destruction of Christianity," he writes. 
 
50 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 " I, myself, have seen such when I was in prison. 
 . . . For one Saracen who becomes a Christian, 
 ten Christians and more become Mohammedans. It 
 becomes those in power to consider what will be the 
 end of such a state of things. God will not be 
 mocked." And one of his proposals was a union of 
 the many religious orders of the knighthood for a new, 
 a spiritual crusade. He tried to organize a Volun- 
 teer Movement, a sort of laymen's missionary crusade, 
 seven centuries before at last anything like it came. 
 But this is the way with living men. Life leaps out 
 in unlimited purposes. What we call conservatism 
 is often only life at low ebb, or life overlaid with 
 death. When the Christ, Who laid out for Himself 
 a universal project and calmly prepared for a 
 campaign to last ages, and confidently committed 
 His project at the outset to a dozen fishermen and 
 countryfolk ; Who now is planning with a patience 
 that is never ruffled and a wisdom that is never at 
 fault for the victory which is more inevitable than 
 time, — when He lives in the soul of a man, all great 
 visions will come to birth and with them the resistless 
 impulse of mighty undertakings. There is life in the 
 loom at which He weaves. " Boom for it, room ! " 
 
 3. Because the true life was in him, Eaymond 
 Lull felt and displayed the true missionary spirit. 
 He would win men personally. He rose right up 
 over the dominant notion of his day, of conversion by 
 authority. The fires of the Inquisition were just be- 
 ginning to burn and the dungeons of that thought of 
 hell to echo with the wail of old man and little child. 
 The Crusader had rejoiced over the carnage of battle 
 with Islam. But Lull taught the method of the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 51 
 
 Saviour. He closes one of his books with this 
 prayer : "Lord of heaven, Father of all times, when 
 Thou didst send Thy Son to take upon Him human 
 nature, He and His disciples lived in outward peace 
 with Jews, Pharisees and other men ; for never by 
 outward violence did they capture or slay any of the 
 unbelievers or of those who persecuted them. Of 
 this outward peace, they availed themselves to bring 
 the erring to the knowledge of the truth and to a 
 communion of spirit with themselves. And so after 
 Thy example should Christians conduct themselves 
 towards Moslems ; but since that ardour of devotion, 
 which glowed in Apostles and holy men of old, no 
 longer inspires us, love and devotion through almost 
 all the world have grown cold, and therefore do 
 Christians expend their efforts far more in the out- 
 ward than in the spiritual conflict." No sword was 
 in Lull's hand, nor any hate in his heart. The life 
 and love of Christ were there. 
 
 4. The love of Christ, because the life of Christ. 
 And what a passionate love it was ! It stopped at 
 nothing. It counted no cost. It dreamed of Christ 
 at night. It saw Him in the joys and not less in the 
 griefs of life. It filled him in all the channels of his 
 being. He wanted nothing but to love Christ more. 
 "O divine love," wrote Livingstone in his journal, 
 "I have not loved Thee deeply, tenderly enough." 
 As Francis had adored his dear Lord and bore in his 
 body His marks, Baymond Lull loved Him and bore 
 in his life evidences as real of the indwelling presence 
 of the Saviour. It was that indwelling life that led 
 him into the loving purpose of bringing, as he said, 
 "by love, by proclaiming the word of truth rather 
 
52 RAYMOND LULL 
 
 thau by force of arms," the Saracens into "that 
 kingdom which is love and peace and joy in the 
 Holy Ghost." "Crusade had succeeded crusade, 
 leaving the Saracens stronger, calling out in the Turk 
 a more terrible foe, before whom Constantinople was 
 soon to fall, and distant Vienna to tremble, and 
 plunging Europe and the Church into deeper corrup- 
 tion." That was the result of the method of hate 
 and conflict. " Eaymond Lull was raised up as if to 
 prove, in one startling case to which the eyes of 
 Christians were turned for many a day, what the 
 crusades might have become and might have done for 
 the world, had they fought for the Cross with the 
 weapons of Him Whose last words from it were for- 
 giveness and peace." ^ 
 
 5. And lastly, can we hear no call from the old 
 martyr sleeping beneath the stones at Bugia ? Shall 
 that great Mohammedan world, which he was so eager 
 to save and which we know is as dear to Christ as our 
 world is to us or to Him, awaken no sympathy in our 
 hearts ? The obstacles which Lull encountered were 
 tenfold greater than ours. He went on hard jour- 
 neys where we can travel with ease. He preached 
 Christ to Moslem people in Moslem states. Now one- 
 half the Moslem people, 125,000,000, are under Chris- 
 tian rulers, where apostasy is not treason and where 
 Christ is not crime. He was alone. Now the 
 Moslem world is girt with missions, and here and 
 there some fearless band is at work in its very citadels. 
 Then the great system was intact, save for some minor 
 schism. Now it is seamed with dissensions and 
 sapped with doubt. That the enterprise is still 
 '■ Smith, " Short History of Christian Missions," p. 103. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CRUSADER 53 
 
 perilous cannot be denied. 80 was the Incarnation. 
 Christ was crucified and He knew He would be cruci- 
 fied before He came. But alike its peril and its 
 necessity constitute our duty. For thirteen centuries, 
 the world has waited. Even Lull failed to awaken 
 the Church. "In Persia, one thousand years after 
 Islam, the first missionary came. Arabia waited 
 twelve centuries." Every other Christian enterprise 
 has won its friends and moved on, but this one waits, 
 its heralds calling still, voices in the wilderness, senti- 
 nels before the dawn. Even the Eoman Church, 
 which fears nothing, — disease, leprosy, martyrdom, 
 — since the days of Lull has passed Islam by. Will 
 the morning never break, and the spirit of Lull never 
 come to life again in men who will take up the work 
 which Lull laid down, fearless and sure and steadfast 
 in the faith of Lull' s great word : ' ' He who loves not, 
 lives not : he who lives by the Life cannot die " ? 
 
LECTURE II 
 
 WILLIAM CAREY, THE CHRISTIAN 
 PIONEER AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
LECTURE II 
 
 WILLIAM CAREY, THE CHRISTIAN 
 PIONEER AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 THE names of William Carey and Alexander 
 Duff are bound together by varied associa- 
 tions. Bach was the first missionary rep- 
 resentative of his country and his Church. They 
 laid together the foundations of missions and mission- 
 ary influence in India and in the same part of India. 
 They established certain missionary principles at the 
 beginning of the modern missionary enterprise. Each 
 left his influence on the political destiny and develop- 
 ment of the Indian government, and from the life of 
 each flowed streams of originating influence over the 
 countries from which they came and over other lands. 
 Even before they died, men discerned the true great- 
 ness of their lives and looking back now, we see them 
 overtopping scores of governors and viceroys and tak- 
 ing their places, not only beside them, — Carey beside 
 Clive as the spiritual and secular founders, and Duff 
 beside Hastings as the spiritual and secular consoli- 
 dators of the Indian Empire, as Dr. George Smith 
 says,' — but above them, by reason of their moral 
 superiority of character and the daring and originality 
 of their schemes. "Work is great or small in propor- 
 tion to the greatness of the idea it embodies and the 
 faithfulness of the spirit in which it is done. In this 
 
 > " Life o( William Carey," p. 59. 
 
 57 
 
58 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 view, no viceroy ranks above these pioneers of mis- 
 sions. 
 
 Shortly after his arrival in India, Duff went to 
 consult Carey regarding his educational plans. It 
 was only three years before Carey's death and he was 
 then " a little yellow old man in a white jacket who 
 tottered up to the visitor of whom he had already 
 often heard, and with outstretched hands solemnly 
 blessed him." ^ Only one other incident of their 
 intercourse is preserved In their biographies. It 
 was near Carey's end. 
 
 "Among those who visited him in his last illness was 
 Alexander Duff, the Scotch missionary. On one of the 
 last occasions on which he saw him — if not the very last — 
 he spent some time talking chiefly about Carey's mission- 
 ary life, till at length the dying man whispered, ' Pray.' 
 Duff knelt down and prayed, and then said good-bye. 
 As he passed from the room, he thought he heard a feeble 
 voice pronouncing his name, and turning, he found that 
 he was recalled. He stepped back, accordingly, and this 
 is what he heard, spoken with a gracious solemnity, ' Mr. 
 Duff, you have been speaking about Dr. Carey ; when I 
 am gone, say nothing about Dr. Carey — speak about Dr. 
 Carey's Saviour.' Duff went away rebuked and awed, 
 with a lesson in his heart that he never forgot. ' ' ^ 
 
 This was the spirit in which Carey had always 
 lived and worked. Probably he did not compre- 
 hend in any large measure the magnitude of the in- 
 fluence he was launching in India. He always 
 
 1 Smith, " Life of Dufl," VoL I, p. 105 f. 
 ^Culrosa, " William Carey, " quoted in Smith, " Life of "William 
 Carey," p. 365. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 59 
 
 disavowed any greatness and said once to his nephew 
 Eustace, "Eustace, if, after my removal, any one 
 should think it worth his while to write my life, I 
 will give you a criterion by which you may judge 
 of its correctness. If he gives me credit for being a 
 plodder he will describe me justly. Anything be- 
 yond this will be too much. I can plod. I can per- 
 severe in any definite pursuit. To this I owe every- 
 thing." Carey's American biographer in his quaint 
 life of the missionary justly develops Carey's own 
 estimate : 
 
 " In Dr. Carey's mind and habits of life, there was 
 nothing of the marvellous; no great and original tran- 
 scendency of intellect ; no enthusiasm and impetuosity of 
 feeling ; nothing to dazzle or surprise. Whatever of use- 
 fulness and of consequent reputation he attained to was 
 the result of an entire and patient devotion of a single 
 heart and clear intelligence to a well-defined, great, and 
 practicable object ; — an object which demanded great 
 labour, butwhich presented great attraction, and ultimate 
 success. He had nothing of the sentimental, the tasteful, 
 the speculative, or the curious in his mental constitution. 
 He had, therefore, no help from the warmth of feeling, or 
 the glow of spirits, from the fervour or the fire which 
 actuate painters and poets, and by which even some 
 zealots in religion and morals show themselves to have an 
 existence. To this want of excitement may be traced 
 many of those upbraidings of himself for his imagined in- 
 activity and want of zeal. He was often heard to say, 
 ' I think no man living ever felt inertia to so great a degree 
 as I do.' He was a man of principle, not of impulse." ' 
 > Belcher, "-William Carey," p. 237 f. 
 
6o WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 Though it may be that Carey was only a plodder 
 and no genius, yet at least he had a genius for 
 plodding, and the history of the missionary enter- 
 prise in many lands has shown the power of a long 
 tenacious service. If a good man, whatever his 
 intellectual gifts, will stay for a generation in one 
 place anywhere in the world and work, he will have 
 an abiding result. Human influence is cumulative 
 and forty years of steady honest toil will yield far 
 more of the kind of fruitage which can be built into 
 life and institution than ten years of erratic brilliance. 
 One great problem of the missionary work is how to 
 secure such continuous, indefatigable plodding as 
 Carey gave to it. 
 
 Of Carey's early life, it is difficult to say whether 
 it chiefly offered a field for the triumphant exercise 
 of inherited qualities of industry and persistence, or 
 whether it was the difficulties and discouragements 
 of these years which developed the qualities required 
 to overcome them. On the one hand, there assuredly 
 was the latent power in the weaver' s son. The family 
 line had known loftier days. " For two and a half 
 centuries, from the second Eichard to the second 
 Charles, they gave statesmen and soldiers, scholars 
 and bishops, to the service of their country." The 
 father and grandfather of William Carey had been 
 the schoolmasters and parish clerks of the village, 
 and the boy was given the ordinary education of the 
 boys of his time and condition. He grew up in 
 poverty and for years knew nothing else. "While 
 engaged in the trade of shoemaker, which provided 
 his support as a preacher, his employer died. Mr. 
 Carey took over his stock and business and mar- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 6 1 
 
 ried his sister before he had reached the age of 
 twenty. 
 
 The condition of Carey's early life and training 
 comprised three elements of missionary equipment, 
 two advantageous and one unsatisfactory. (1) He 
 had good stuff in him. No training will create what 
 does not exist in capacity. The missionary work is 
 seeking for men and women who have in them, 
 thanks to the past, the latent power to do things. 
 (2) The discipline of poverty is a good discipline to 
 the man on whom its blessings are not lost. There 
 are those whom poverty simply prepares for self- 
 indulgence and presumption when their circumstances 
 change and who are made exacting and not adaptive 
 by it. A wise and experienced missionary woman in 
 one of our oldest missions remarked that she had ob- 
 served that it was often the missionaries who had had 
 least in their home lives who demanded most on the 
 mission field, while those who had known the greatest 
 comfort and luxury were the most cheerful in dep- 
 rivation and sacrifice. Perhaps only those of the 
 rich or well-to-do who had such a spirit of self-denial 
 would venture to the mission field and some of other 
 classes might come in a different spirit. But as a rule 
 the education of frugality is the best education for all 
 services. (3) Perhaps the folly of his first marriage 
 gave to Carey's capacity for folly a pretty exhaustive 
 trial. He assuredly led a wise life afterwards and he 
 assuredly did a foolish thing when he married the 
 melancholic sister of his former employer. Whether 
 it is wise for missionaries to go out married or not, 
 as some debate, it is surely well for them to go wisely 
 married if they are to be married at all. Carey's 
 
62 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 wife was never anything but a clog to him. She 
 hindered his going and in India she merely cumbered 
 his life. No word of complaint escaped him and he 
 behaved towards her as a gentleman and a lover until 
 the end. That is more than can be said of some 
 richer and better born men in like circumstances. 
 He was married twice afterwards. When he died he 
 prescribed that his name should be cut on the same 
 gravestone with the second wife. 
 
 Poor and unadvantaged as he was, there was no 
 contraction or timidity in Carey's moral and intellec- 
 tual outlook. He opened a little school, and as he 
 taught he dreamed and his dream was great. Mr. 
 Fuller has related that, on going to his little work- 
 shop, he saw a large map suspended on the wall, 
 composed of several sheets pasted together, in which 
 he had entered every particular he had been able to 
 glean relative to the natural characteristics, the 
 population, and the religion of every country, as 
 then known. Mr. Puller, himself, who in after years 
 built up the mission at home, was startled by the 
 boldness and novelty of Carey's project, and described 
 his feelings as resembling those of the unbelieving 
 courtier in Israel: "If the Lord should make win- 
 dows in heaven, might such a thing be ! " 
 
 Novel and bold as the project seemed, it was no 
 sudden creation of Carey's brain. Streams which 
 had been running through the conscience of the 
 Church simply came to practical vital utterance in 
 the young Baptist preacher's life. In 1784, two 
 years before the meeting at Northampton, the 
 Northamptonshire association had issued a resolu- 
 tion regarding united prayer for the churches of the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 63 
 
 association, but also for wider objects : " We trust 
 you will not confine your requests to your own so- 
 cieties, or to our own immediate connection ; let the 
 whole interest of the Eedeemer be affectionately re- 
 membered and the spread of the Gospel to the most 
 distant parts of the habitable globe be the object of 
 your most fervent requests. We shall rejoice if any 
 other Christian societies of our own or other de- 
 nominations will unite with us, and we do now invite 
 them most cordially to join heart and hand in the 
 attempt. Who can tell what the consequence of such 
 a united effort in prayer may be? " 
 
 None of those concerned in the call dreamed of 
 what its issues were to be. This spirit of prayer was 
 intensified by the publication in 1789 by Mr. Sutcliff 
 of Jonathan Edwards' " Humble Attempt to Pro- 
 mote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God's 
 People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Bevival of 
 Beligion." Three years later, Carey published his 
 pamphlet, "An Enquiry into the Obligations of 
 Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the 
 Heathens, in which the Eeligious State of the Differ- 
 ent Nations of the World, the Success of Former Un- 
 dertakings, and the Practicability of Further Under- 
 takings, are considered by William Carey." 
 
 The tract is divided into five sections. The first 
 consists of an inquiry, "Whether the commission 
 given by our Lord to His disciples be not binding on 
 us?" The second contains "a short review of for- 
 mer undertakings for the conversion of the heathen." 
 The third furnishes a "survey of the present state of 
 the world." The fourth consists of "considerations 
 on the practicability of something being done more 
 
64 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 than what is done, for the conversion of the heathen." 
 The fifth embraces " an enquiry into the duty of 
 Christians in general, and what means ought to be 
 used, in order to promote this work." These are 
 fervent and united prayer, and exerting ourselves 
 in the use of means. Here he suggests the forma- 
 tion of a society such as was afterwards organized. 
 "Christians," he says, " are a body whose truest in- 
 terest lies in the exaltation of the Messiah's king- 
 dom. Their charter is very extensive, their encour- 
 agement exceedingly great, and the returns promised 
 infinitely superior to all the gains of the most lucra- 
 tive fellowship. Let, then, every one, in his station, 
 consider himself as bound to act with all his might, 
 and in every possible way, for God." He concludes 
 his pamphlet in these earnest words : " Surely it is 
 worth while to lay ourselves out, with all our might, 
 in promoting the cause and the kingdom of Christ." 
 This "Enquiry" had been circulated before the 
 meeting of the ministers' association at iNTottingham 
 in May 30, 1792, where Carey preached his great 
 sermon on Isaiah liv. 2, 3. Even after that, there was 
 hesitation. Mr. Puller said, "Some of the greatest 
 difficulties we had to encounter were the following : 
 — we were inexperienced in the work ; we knew of no 
 opening for a mission in any one part of the world 
 more than another ; we had no funds to meet the ex- 
 pense that must attend an undertaking of the kind ; 
 our situation in an inland part of the country was 
 inconvenient for foreign correspondence ; the persons 
 who would have the management would live at such 
 a distance from each other as to render frequent con- 
 sultation impracticable ; and, finally, in forming such 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 65 
 
 a society there -would be danger of its falling under 
 irreligious influence. Prom these and other consid- 
 erations, those who expected to engage in the work 
 entered upon it with much fear and trembling." 
 But Carey persisted and at the next meeting at Ket- 
 tering on October 2, 1792, the Baptist Missionary 
 Society was formed. And so the great enterprise 
 began, Carey's faith having held to it immovably 
 and his own life being offered as its embodiment. 
 
 It is interesting to recall that Carey, like Living- 
 stone, desired originally to go to some other field 
 than that to which he was sent. Tahiti or Western 
 Africa was the field of which he had the first thought. 
 The matter was decided in favour of India through 
 the availability as a companion to Carey of John 
 Thomas. He was a ship surgeon who had been em- 
 ployed in independent missionary work in Bengal. 
 He was eccentric, undependable, irascible, fluent, 
 spiritually ecstatic and generally incapable. He was 
 the means of getting Carey started in the service, but 
 he lost him the sympathy of the best men in Calcutta 
 and perhaps hindered more than he helped. But we 
 cannot say. Perhaps without him the new mission 
 might have begun even worse. In every living en- 
 terprise, you must allow a large percentage for 
 waste. 
 
 Carey was thirty-three years old when he began in 
 India. Nowadays, men seem to find it hard to learn 
 a new language at that age. But Carey learned half 
 a dozen. Undoubtedly, he did have a genius for 
 languages, or as he would have said — a will to plod 
 at them. "It is well known," as he said in the 
 "Enquiry," "to require no very extraordinary 
 
66 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 talents to learn, in the space of a year, or two at 
 most, the language of any people upon earth." He 
 first learned Bengali, then Sanskrit. When he had 
 been in India about three years, he wrote : "I am 
 now learning the Sanskrit language, that I may be 
 able to read their Shasters for myself ; and I have ac- 
 quired so much of the Hindu or Hindustani as to 
 converse in it and speak for some time intelligibly. 
 . . . Even the language of Ceylon has so much 
 af&nity with that of Bengal that out of twelve words, 
 with the little Sanskrit that I know, I can understand 
 five or six." When his son Jabez was sent as a mis- 
 sionary to Amboyna, one of the Malayan islands, at 
 the cost of the East India Company in 1814, his 
 father wrote to him: "Labour incessantly to be- 
 come a perfect master of the Malay language. In 
 order to do this, associate with the natives, walk out 
 with them, ask the name of everything you see, and 
 note it down ; visit their houses, especially when any 
 of them are sick. Every night arrange the words you 
 get in alphabetical order. Try to talk as you get a 
 few words, and be as much as possible one of them. 
 A course of kind and attentive conduct will gain 
 their esteem and confidence and give you an oppor- 
 tunity of doing much good." This counsel illustrates 
 his own spirit towards the people as well as his idea 
 of how to acquire a language. He worked over 
 grammars and dictionaries, which, for the most part, 
 he had to produce himself, but he knew that the way 
 to learn a language is to go out and talk with the 
 people and take it in through the pores. 
 
 It is one thing for a missionary to go out to India 
 BOW. It was quite a different thing for Carey. The 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 67 
 
 East India Company waa opposed to tlie presence of 
 missionaries in tlie country, and Carey lived in their 
 territories for the first years only as an indigo planter. 
 Indeed that was the only way he lived at all. He and 
 Thomas were employed aa assistants in Mr. Udny's 
 indigo factories at Malda. Each received a salary 
 equivalent to £250 a year, with the prospect of a 
 commission, and even a proprietary share. Carey's 
 remark in his journal on the day he received the offer 
 was : " This appearing to be a remarkable opening in 
 divine providence for our comfortable support, I ac- 
 cepted it. . . ." On receiving the rejoinder to 
 his acceptance of the offer, he set this down : "I am 
 resolved to write to the Society that my circumstances 
 are such that I do not need future help from them, 
 and to devote a sum monthly for the printing of the 
 Bengali Bible." "This he did, adding that it would 
 be his glory and joy to stand in the same relation to 
 the Society as if he needed support from them. He 
 hoped they would be the sooner able to send another 
 mission somewhere — to Sumatra or some of the Indian 
 Islands. From the first, he lived with such simplicity 
 that he gave one-fourth to one-third of his little in- 
 come to his own mission at Mudnabati." ^ 
 
 This idea of self-support in one form or another 
 had been in Carey's mind from the begiuDing. He 
 had embraced it in his ' ' Enquiry, ' ' where his proposal 
 was that each mission should be a little community 
 and be self-sustaining. His experience in the indigo 
 factory confirmed his view. When Mr. Udny was 
 forced to give up his business, Carey wrote to Mr. 
 Puller : 
 
 ' Smith, " Life of William Carey," p. 77. 
 
68 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 "The experience obtained here, I look upon as the very 
 thing which will tend to support the mission. I know now 
 all the methods of agriculture that are in use. I know the 
 tricks of the natives and the nature of the lowest rate of 
 housekeeping in this country. Having had a monthly al- 
 lowance, I have made all experiments on these heads, which 
 could not have been made without ruin had I not had these 
 resources, and I will now propose to you what I would rec- 
 ommend to the Society ; you will find it similar to what the 
 Moravians do. Seven or eight families can be maintained 
 for nearly the same expense as one, if this method be pur- 
 sued. I then earnestly entreat the Society to set their faces 
 this way and send out more missionaries. We ought to be 
 given seven or eight families together ; and it is absolutely 
 necessary for the wives of missionaries to be as hearty in 
 their work as their husbands. Our families should be con- 
 sidered nurseries for the mission ; and among us should be 
 a person capable of teaching school, so as to educate our 
 children. I recommend all living together, in a number of 
 little straw houses, forming a line or square, and of having 
 nothing of our own, but all general stock. One or two 
 should be elected stewards to preside over all the manage- 
 ment, which should, with respect to eating, drinking, wor- 
 ship, learning, preaching, excursions, etc., be reduced to 
 fixed rules." 
 
 In anticipation of tlie comiug of reinforcements 
 Carey purchased the indigo factory at Kidderpore 
 and made ready to realize his communistic plan, but 
 on their coming it seemed wiser to move to the 
 Danish settlement of Serampore to escape the difficul- 
 ties which were certain in the territory of the East 
 India Company. So Carey abandoned his investment 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 69 
 
 at Kidderpore. That is what missionaries always find 
 it hard to do. Many a piece of unprofitable mission- 
 ary work is maintained and many an unsatisfactory 
 station, because sometimes the courage ia lacking to 
 sacrifice what has been established for something 
 better, or because at other times the Christian spirit 
 simply will not relinquish what has once been begun. 
 The new missionaries arrived in 1799. Early the 
 following year, Carey and they agreed upon a set of 
 rules to govern their little community. 
 
 It was determined to form a common stock, to dine 
 at a common table, and to give each family a trifling al- 
 lowance — Mr. Fuller's "pocket-money" — forpersonal 
 expenses. All the missionaries were to be considered 
 on a footing of equality, and to preach and conduct 
 social devotions in turn. The superintendence of 
 domestic arrangements and expenditure was to be 
 entrusted to each missionary in rotation for a month. 
 Mr. Carey had charge of the public chest as treasurer, 
 and also of the medicine chest, for India was then 
 considered so unhealthy that a constant resort to 
 medicine was deemed essential to existence. Mr. 
 Fountain was appointed librarian. One evening in 
 the week was to be devoted to the adjustment of dif- 
 ferences and the renewal of their pledge of mutual 
 love ; and it was resolved that no one should engage 
 in any private trade, and that whatever might be 
 earned should be credited to the common stock. 
 
 The first year the brotherhood was more than self- 
 supporting. The next year it had a surplus for the 
 extension of the work, and this success continued. 
 
 There was nothing new in this idea of Christian 
 communism. As Marshman's son says in the story 
 
^0 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 of the Serampore Mission, " The Serampore mission- 
 aries, therefore, when they resolved to support them- 
 selves while labouring to spread the Gospel, simply- 
 adopted the principle on which missions had been 
 conducted before the modern missionary system was 
 organized on its present footing, and the relation be- 
 tween the missionary and the Society assumed its 
 present more secular type. The only difference in 
 their case was the adoption of the novel principle of 
 divesting themselves of all right of property in their 
 own earnings, and consecrating it exclusively to the 
 cause in which they had embarked, by the formation 
 of a common stock." ' 
 
 But this also was an old idea. The Eoman Catholic 
 orders and the monasteries and convents rested on it, 
 and it was the Moravian idea. It was a unique ex- 
 periment, however, and it has had no worthy suc- 
 cessor. It is not necessary to tell its whole story in de- 
 tail. It broke down at last not because of any inva- 
 lidity in its principles, but because of personalities. 
 " The difficulty of management here is that our union 
 is of that nature that it cannot exist until all selfish 
 and turbulent passions are subdued," said Carey in 
 1808 at one time of trial. Some of the missionaries 
 were accused of extravagance and self-indulgence. 
 Young men who joined the mission were charged with 
 wilfuUness and insubordination. The numbers grew 
 too large for as close acquaintance and constant con- 
 ference as marked the little group at Serampore. The 
 old administrators at home died and new men came in. 
 It was in part the story of the early Jerusalem Church 
 
 ' Marshman, " Life and Times of Carey, Marshman and Ward," 
 Vol. I, p. 209. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 7 1 
 
 reproduced. But there will always be those who will 
 long for the return of the day when in the Church and 
 in missions, this experiment may be repeated and ful- 
 filled, when, to the destruction of neither but to the 
 enrichment of both, individual energy and unselfish 
 love may be joined and merged. 
 
 Where the missionaries worked for their own sup- 
 port, there was less danger than in modern missions 
 where all the funds are from home, of the neglect of 
 self-support among the native Christians. One of 
 the first converts received at baptism "a new white 
 dress with six shillings ; but such a gift, beautiful in 
 itself, was soon discontinued." 
 
 In 1806 the missionaries prepared a statement, 
 setting forth their principles, both as to the self-sup- 
 port and the self -propagation of the Church. 
 
 Happy is the mission which perceives its duty in 
 such matters at the outset and forms and steadfastly 
 carries out a true and consistent policy. But it is a 
 rare thing to find such clearness of perception and 
 such persistence of policy. New men come, unaware 
 of old arrangements, and as the years pass the heavy 
 inertia of every society, even a new Christian So- 
 ciety, drags down fine ideals and constrains men 
 to acquiesce in what is inferior and unsatisfac- 
 tory. 
 
 Carey and his associates dealt with this as with 
 most problems, with good sense. The missionaries 
 rigidly refused to compromise with caste. They ar- 
 ranged for a burial in which a converted Brahman 
 and a converted Mohammedan carried the dead body 
 of another believer to his grave on their shoulders. 
 This procedure completed the destruction of caste 
 
72 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 in that Christian community. In the matter of the 
 conditions prerequisite to baptism, the Serampore 
 group took the view that "We think it right to make 
 many allowances for ignorance, and for a state of 
 mind produced by a corrupt superstition. We there- 
 fore cannot think of demanding from them, previous 
 to baptism, more than a profession of dependence on 
 Christ, from a knowledge of their need of Him, and 
 submission to Him in all things." 
 
 Their high standards broke down, however, in the 
 matter of polygamous applicants for baptism and 
 they admitted such, without requiring them to cease 
 their polygamous relationship, but kept them out of 
 church office, while " pressing on the conscience of 
 all the teaching of our Lord in Matthew xix. and of 
 Paul in 1 Corinthians vii." 
 
 Apart from the direct problems of missions arising 
 in the fulfillment of its immediate aims of the con- 
 version of souls and the creation of a native Church, 
 there are complicated questions springing from its 
 relationships. Carey and his associates had to deal 
 with these. In some cases, they had no precedents 
 and in many, the problems were very intricate and 
 perplexing. There was, first of all, the problem of 
 their spiritual relationship and responsibility in the 
 case of other foreigners. As early as 1793, the year 
 he landed in India, Carey wrote : 
 
 "A missionary must be one of the companions and 
 equals of the people to whom he is sent, and many dan- 
 gers and temptations will be in his way. In a country like 
 this, settled by Europeans, the grandeur, the customs, and 
 prejudices of the Europeans are exceedingly dangerous. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 73 
 
 They are very kind and hospitable, but even to visit them, 
 if a man keeps no table of his own, would more than ten 
 times exceed the allowance of a mission ; and all their dis- 
 course is about the vices of the natives, so that a mission- 
 ary must see thousands of people treating him with the great- 
 est kindness, but whom he must be entirely different from in 
 his life, his appearance, in everything, or it is impossible 
 for him to stand their profuse way of living, being so 
 contrary to his character and so much above his 
 ability." 
 
 But Carey realized the impossibility of a mission- 
 ary's separating Mmself from all contact with other 
 foreigners. And he saw the necessity of effort to 
 make of foreign communities in the heathen world 
 centres of pure influence rather than fountains of cor- 
 ruption. A great change was wrought during his 
 lifetime in this regard in Calcutta and in India as a 
 whole. 
 
 When Carey went to India the conditions were 
 atrocious. Here and there, an individual stood out 
 as a rare exception of conscience and purity. Charles 
 Grant was one of these. ' ' Amidst the universal scep- 
 ticism of the day, he exhibited in his principles and 
 his practice a noble specimen of the Christian char- 
 acter. While all around him, with rare exceptions, 
 were absorbed in the pursuit of wealth, he devoted 
 his attention to the moral and religious improvement 
 of the natives. At that early period, he appears to 
 have adopted the opinion subsequently enunciated by 
 Sir Charles Metcalfe, that divine providence had 
 assuredly some higher object in bestowing the empire 
 of India on England, than to facilitate the export or 
 
74 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 import of cotton-piece goods." ' The general tone, 
 however, waa dismally abased. The moral condition 
 will be sufficiently illustrated by recalling the agita- 
 tion of 1804 in Bengal over the Civil Fund question. 
 " The members of the Civil Service became anxious to 
 establish a fund for the support of their widows and 
 orphans, and the plan of a Civil Fund was drawn up 
 and circulated among them. The old gentlemen of 
 the service, who had grown gray in Indian as- 
 sociation, were desirous to extend the benefit of it to 
 their dark illegitimate children. But the younger 
 civilians connected with the college, In a number 
 between fifty and sixty, whom it had been the aim 
 of Lord Wellesley to train up in the principles of 
 virtue and religion, united with one voice in depre- 
 cating a proposal which, as they had justly observed, 
 involved ' the total violation of one of the great ordi- 
 nances of the divine law. . . .' After the discus- 
 sion had been carried on for some time, the two parties 
 formally divided. The Civil Service at that time 
 consisted of 350 members, one-half of whom voted for 
 the admission of bastards, the other half against it. 
 The question was then submitted to the arbitration 
 of Lord Wellesley, who did not hesitate for a moment 
 to limit the benefit of the fund to children born in 
 wedlock, leaving upon the 175 civilians the task of 
 providing, from their own funds, for the oflFspring of 
 the loathsome zenanas. Not disheartened by this de- 
 cision, they appealed to the Court of Directors, affirm- 
 ing that their masters would never vote with the 
 college, because they would see how ' unfriendly it 
 
 ' Marshman, "Life and Times of Carey, Marahman and Ward, " 
 Vol. I, p. 28. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 75 
 
 ■was to ancient institutions.' But the Court not only- 
 sanctioned the clause which excluded illegitimate 
 children, but endowed the fund with an annual sub- 
 scription of £2,500." 
 
 Many influences cooperated to terminate conditions 
 so disgraceful. Moral sentiment at home was steadily 
 rising. The idea that India must be governed on 
 moral principles and that England was responsible 
 for improving the condition of the people intellec- 
 tually and morally, indicated in the various revisions 
 of the charter of the East India Company, accom- 
 plished a great deal ; but on the other hand, this 
 change of view at home was largely due to the mis- 
 sionary enterprise, and in India the presence of the 
 missionaries and their example and influence operated 
 constantly as a purifying power. This was conscious 
 and aggressive as well as passive. Perilous as the 
 entanglement of missionaries with the social life of 
 other Western representatives undoubtedly is, one of 
 the great needs of the day is such a closer relation- 
 ship as will save to Christianity hosts of men from 
 Christian lands who are going to the heathen world 
 to lose their Christianity, and become paganized. If 
 the missionary enterprise cannot care for the problem 
 without injury to its own first business, some other 
 agency must be developed to loot after it. The 
 old Foreign and Christian Union did a good 
 work in this direction a generation or more ago. 
 But now, a thousand times more than then, an effort 
 is needed to save to purity and godliness the in- 
 creasing streams of ji^oung men, who are pouring 
 out from America and losing their souls in the 
 non-Christian world. This effort must be made by 
 
76 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 the Church directly and not alone through useful 
 auxiliary agencies. 
 
 Carey had to deal with this difficult relationship. 
 He had to deal also with the problem of the duty of 
 a mission in the matter of gross moral and legal 
 evils which might be removed at once by influencing 
 political authority already in existence, without 
 waiting for their slow destruction through genera- 
 tions by the reformation of individuals and the 
 education of society. And the moral conditions of 
 Hindu life were simply indescribable when Carey 
 went to India. ^ He presented memorials against 
 female infanticide, voluntary drowning and widow- 
 burning. He collected testimony and educated, 
 opinion. He antagonized slavery and made pro- 
 vision for the care of lepers. He was not of those 
 who hold it to be wrong to interfere with native 
 customs, even though evil. It was on the basis of a 
 report of his that the Governor-General ventured to 
 issue a proclamation, prohibiting the sacrifice of 
 children at the great annual festival of Gunga Saugor.' 
 Missions may easily be diverted from their own 
 business and turned into general educational or re- 
 formatory bureaus, and it is an evil thing when this 
 is allowed to happen, but there is no peril, and there 
 is much gain which it would be wrong to sacrifice 
 when missions, which have powerful headway in the 
 direction of their own supreme end, throw out their 
 energies and influences to stop all possible moral 
 evil, — the slave trade, widow-burning, tl^trafBc in 
 opium, the sale of liquor to the dependent races. The 
 
 'Smith, " Life of William Carey," pp. 60, 65(., 98. 
 'Myers, "William Carey," p. 123. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 77 
 
 destruction of all sucli evil is a duty in itself and it pre- 
 pares a better atmospliere in which to spread the truth. 
 By the methods of work which he used in missions 
 and by his own direct influence in the service of the 
 government, Carey affected greatly the development 
 of the agencies of education and improvement which 
 the new conscience, slowly coming to birth, was 
 creating in India. Long before the government 
 awoke to its educational duty, the Serampore mis- 
 sionaries were working at the problem. They had 
 propounded a great scheme, which had been sent to 
 Fuller. After its transmission, "they gradually 
 augmented the number of their schools and en- 
 deavoured to improve their character. Under the 
 new and more favourable aspect which the question 
 of education had assumed, they determined to appeal 
 to the public for the means of enlarging their efforts. 
 Under the modest title of 'Hints,' they proposed a 
 well digested system of national education, susceptible 
 of indefinite expansion, which no subsequent efforts 
 have rendered obsolete. The plan was never carried 
 out to its legitimate extent ; but there can be little 
 doubt that if the Serampore missionaries had been 
 enabled to prosecute it with their usual ardour, the 
 lower provinces of Bengal would have presented a 
 different aspect to that which they now exhibit. At 
 the end of forty years of comparative inaction, the 
 Board of Control has sanctioned a system of vernac- 
 ular education in India on an extended scale ; but 
 the germ of it is to be found in the pamphlet of 
 'Hints ' published at Serampore in the year 1816." ' 
 
 'Marshman, "Life and Times of Gary, Marshman and Ward," 
 Vol. II, p. 119 f. 
 
78 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 As we shall come to the problem again in con- 
 nection with Duff's work, it may be well now to re- 
 call j ust what the issue was at this time. Three differ- 
 ent plans were advocated at this period by three 
 parties, that of the Orientalists, the Anglicists, and 
 the Vernacularists. 
 
 ' ' The Orientalists, without repudiating in theory the val ue 
 of instruction through the medium of English, or of the 
 native tongues, contended that the patronage of the state 
 should be given primarily to the encouragement of Oriental 
 literature, Hindu and Mohammedan, that the parliamentary 
 grant was designed to promote this object, and should 
 be exclusively appropriated to it. . . . With the new 
 educational movement another party arose at this time, 
 at the head of which was Sir Edward Hyde East and the 
 Rev. T. Thomason. They considered that the intellectual 
 progress of the country would be most effectually promoted 
 by a liberal education through the exclusive medium of the 
 English language. . . . They were buoyed up with 
 the hope that by strenuous and continued exertion English 
 might come to occupy the same place in India which Latin 
 had formerly occupied in the Roman Empire. Some were 
 even so sanguine as to expect that it might in the lapse of 
 time supersede the mother tongue of India, and become 
 the general medium of communication, and thus bind the 
 people to their conquerors by the bond of a common lan- 
 guage. They maintained, moreover, that it was more 
 advisable to give a complete education to a few than an 
 imperfect education to the multitude, and to promote the 
 cultivation of a language already enriched with a noble 
 literature, than of one in which a literature had to be created. 
 The Serampore missionaries stood alone in advocating a 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 79 
 
 vernacular education as the only means by which the great 
 body of the people, who had no leisure for the acquisition of 
 a foreign language, could be rescued from the evils of igno- 
 rance and superstition. It was upon these views that the 
 ' Hints ' for native schools was based." * 
 
 Carey did not fail to appreciate the importance 
 of the English language in a land like India. As 
 Dr. Smith says : 
 
 " He had not been six months in Serampore when he 
 saw the importance of using the English language as a 
 missionary weapon, and he proposed this to Andrew 
 Fuller. The other pressing duties of a pioneer mission 
 to the people of Bengal led him to postpone immediate 
 action in this direction. . . . But meanwhile, the 
 vernacular schools, which soon numbered a hundred alto- 
 gether, were most popular, and then as now proved most 
 valuable feeders of the infant Church. • Without them,' 
 wrote the three missionaries to the Society, ' the whole plan 
 must have been nipped in the bud, since, if the natives 
 had not cheerfully sent their children, everything else 
 would have been useless. But the earnestness with which 
 they have sought these schools exceeds everything we had 
 previously expected. We are still constantly importuned 
 for more schools, although we have long gone beyond the 
 extent of our funds.' It was well that thus early in 
 schools, in books, and tracts, and in providing the literary 
 form and apparatus of the vernacular languages, Carey 
 laid the foundation of the new national or imperial civiliza- 
 
 > Marshman, •' Life and Times of Gary, Marshman and Ward," 
 Vol. II, pp. 120-122. 
 
8o WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 tion. When the time for English came, the foundations 
 were at least above the ground." ^ 
 
 In 1801, Lord Wellesley as Governor-General es- 
 tablished at Calcutta the college known as Port 
 William College for the training of civil servants, 
 a new departure and a great progressive step. The 
 college was intended to fit the young men from 
 home for their duties in India. They were to begin 
 their course by a three years' study of the vernaculars 
 which they were to use and the college was to be 
 also: "a centre of Western learning in an Eastern 
 dress for the natives of India and Southern Asia, 
 alike as students and teachers." Carey was called 
 to be professor of Bengali and Sanskrit in this college, 
 and accepted the position. His salary was £700 a 
 year and soon increased to £1800. It was turned in, 
 of course, to the common fund of the Serampore 
 brotherhood. Here Carey had an opportunity to 
 exert an even greater influence in behalf of his 
 ideals of education and administration. He gave 
 utterance to these and also avowed his missionary 
 character in his address in 1804, when the first San- 
 skrit class was graduated. This address greatly 
 pleased Lord Wellesley, and referring to its words of* 
 praise for him, as the founder of such an institution, 
 he said, "I esteem such a testimony from such a man 
 a greater honour than the applause of Courts and 
 Parliaments." 
 
 Carey had not accepted the position without 
 misgivings. When the call came to him, he 
 says : 
 
 » Smith, "Life of William Carey," p. 136. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 8 1 
 
 " I had but just time to call our brethren together, who 
 were of the opinion that for several reasons I ought to 
 accept it, provided that it did not interfere with the work 
 of the mission. I also knew myself to be incapable of 
 filling such a position with reputation and propriety. I, 
 however, went over, and honestly proposed all my fears 
 and objections. Both Mr. Brown and Mr. Buchanan were 
 of the opinion that the cause of the mission would be fur- 
 thered by it ; and I was not able to reply to their arguments. 
 I was convinced that it might. As to my ability, they 
 could not satisfy me ; but they insisted on it that they must 
 be the judges of that. I therefore consented with fear and 
 trembling. They proposed me that day, or the next, to 
 the Governor-General, who is patron and visitor of the 
 college. They told him that 1 had been a missionary in 
 the country for seven years or more ; and as a missionary I 
 was appointed to the office. . . . When I was pro- 
 posed, his lordship asked if I was well affected to the state, 
 and capable of fulfilling the duties of the station ; to which 
 
 Mr. B replied that he should never have proposed me 
 
 if he had had the smallest doubt on those heads. I wonder 
 how people can have such favourable ideas of me. I 
 certainly am not disaffected to the state ; but the other is 
 not clear to me." 
 
 His friendly relation to the government, he says, 
 was not doubtful. That was one clear point. He 
 had had occasion to speak of this to others. He 
 warned young men against meddling and political 
 pugnacity. He himself at times adopted a very mild 
 course in the face of political hindrance. But he 
 never betrayed his work. In the timid times after 
 the Vellore Mutiny, the government was extremely 
 
82 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 cautious in allowing missionary activity. The 
 Governor-General, Sir George Barlow, even ex- 
 pressed a wisli that he (Carey) should not inter- 
 fere with the prejudices of the natives by preaching 
 to them or distributing books or pamphlets amongst 
 them ; that his colleagues were to observe the same 
 line of conduct ; and further, that the converted 
 natives were not to go into the country to spread 
 Christianity among the people. Carey was no man 
 to surrender. He had gone to India in the face of the 
 East India Company's prohibition, and when at 
 various times the government set itself against his 
 work he would await a change in the government's 
 mood, but not for a moment would he yield his prin- 
 ciples. He was well disposed to the government, he 
 said, and he strove to obey it, but he was subject to 
 a higher law and when the two clashed, he knew 
 which to choose. 
 
 But being friendly and obedient to the government 
 was quite a different matter from accepting employ- 
 ment under it, and it is not surprising that Carey hesi- 
 tated. When his son Felix withdrew from his mission- 
 ary work to become the Burmese ambassador of the 
 Governor-General of India in 1814, Carey wrote, la- 
 menting the step, to Eyland : ' ' Felix is shrivelled from 
 a missionary to an ambassador." There have been 
 cases where sach a change has not been a shrivelling, 
 but Carey, himself, felt that nothing was comparable 
 with the missionary service and in his own case he was 
 a missionary all the while he held government office. 
 And in his case this fact, the sheer power of the pure 
 missionary purpose in him which robbed all accessory 
 relationships and activities of peril, and the commu- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 83 
 
 nistic principles of the Serampore Brotherhood, which 
 destroyed all danger of secularization through money, 
 saved Carey from perils which are often fatal to other 
 men who turn from their direct religious work to 
 some other service and with whom too often this 
 turning is like that of Demas. 
 
 This exaltation of the pure missionary service as 
 the noblest service in the world was characteristic 
 of Carey. In 1809, he wrote to his son William with 
 equal lowliness and spiritual nobility : 
 
 "Should you, after many years' labour, be instru- 
 mental in the conversion of only one soul, it would 
 be worth the work of a whole life. ... I am 
 not sure that I have been of real use to any one person 
 since I have been in this country, yet I dare not give 
 up the work in which I am engaged. Indeed, not- 
 withstanding all the discouragements which I feel 
 from my own unfitness for any part of it, I prefer it to 
 everything else, and consider that in the work of my 
 Eedeemer I have a rich reward." 
 
 Again he wrote to the same son : " Now, dear 
 William, what do we live for but to promote the 
 cause of our dear Eedeemer in the world 1 If that be 
 carried on, we need not wish for anything more. 
 . . . Indeed, were you never to be blessed to the 
 conversion of one soul, still the pleasure of labouring 
 in the work of the Lord is greater than that of any 
 other undertaking in the world, and is of itself suffi- 
 cient to make it the work of our choice." 
 
 " I am not sure that I have been of real use to any 
 one person since I have been in this country." What 
 a remarkable word to come from Carey after sixteen 
 years in India ! Did he not know of one soul brought 
 
84 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 to Christ by his work 1 Assuredly he knew of many, 
 and he knew of other incalculable influences which he 
 had set in motion. But he was one of those who do 
 not think highly of themselves ; who think soberly 
 and humbly and without self-esteem. No one ever 
 picked a quarrel with him over a question of personal 
 honour or precedence. How deep was his self-depre- 
 ciation is shown by the account he gave of himself 
 to Dr. Byland in 1804, when he had been a mission- 
 ary for eleven years : 
 
 "I am convinced that some sins have always attended 
 me, as if they made a part of my constitution; among 
 these I reckon pride or rather vanity, — an evil which I 
 have detected frequently, but have never been free from 
 to this day. Indolence in divine things is constitutional ; 
 few people can think what necessity I am constantly under 
 of summoning all my resolution to engage in anything 
 which God has commanded. This makes me peculiarly 
 unfit for the ministry, and much more for the office of a 
 missionary. I now doubt seriously whether persons of such 
 a constitution should be engaged in the Christian ministry. 
 This, and what I am going to mention, fill me with con- 
 tinued guilt. A want of character and firmness has always 
 predominated in me. I have not resolution enough to re- 
 prove sin, to introduce serious and evangelical conversa- 
 tion in carnal company, especially among the great, to 
 whom I have sometimes access. I sometimes labour with 
 myself long, and at last prevail sufficiently to break silence ; 
 or, if I introduce a subject, want resolution to keep it up, 
 if the company do not show a readiness thereto." 
 
 He closes the letter with the words : 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 85 
 
 "I have now only to desire of you that the above (his auto- 
 biographical sketch) may not be published ; though I have 
 no objection to your publishing any parts thereof, provided 
 you so conceal names and other allusions, as that it may 
 never be known that it is an account of me. Every publi- 
 cation of this kind, if the author be known, makes him 
 more public ; and as it is very uncertain, whether I shall 
 not dishonour the Gospel before I die, so as to bring a 
 public scandal thereupon, the less is said about me the 
 better." 
 
 One of the most familiar stories about him relates 
 to his quiet remark to a young snob from England 
 ■whom he overheard asking some one at one of the 
 Governor-Generars parties in Calcutta, whether Dr. 
 Carey had not been a shoemaker. "IsTo," said 
 Carey, turning about and replying, "only a cob- 
 bler." It was not said vindictively. It was the 
 man's natural humility of soul. When complaint 
 was made once of the absence of inscriptions in the 
 mission burying ground, he replied : " Why should 
 we be remembered ? I think when I am dead, the 
 sooner I am forgotten, the better." And on his own 
 gravestone he directed that nothing more should be 
 cut than the words : 
 
 " William Carey, born August 17, 1761, 
 died June 9, 183^. 
 
 ' ' A wretched, poor, and helpless worm, 
 On Thy kind arms 1 fall." 
 
 There was nothing insincere in all this. Carey was 
 a great man in spite of his own dif&dence and self- 
 
86 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 distrust. He drove himself to duty finding it hard 
 to do. He appealed to others to attempt great things 
 and he stirred himself to respond to his own appeal. 
 If others had only put forth a fraction of his effort, 
 great things would have been achieved. Undoubt- 
 edly, there must have been great latent talents of 
 ability and of character in him, but we must believe 
 his own account of himself. He says he had to fight 
 constantly with indolence. 
 
 "Indolence," he wrote Dr. Eyland in 1802, "is 
 my prevailing sin, and to that are now added a 
 number of avocations which I never thought of ; I 
 have also so continual a fear that I may at last fall 
 some way or other so as to dishonour the Gospel that 
 I have often desired that my name may be buried in 
 oblivion ; and indeed I have reason for those fears, 
 for I am so prone to sin that I wonder every night 
 that I have been preserved from foul crimes through 
 the day, and when I escape a temptation I esteem it 
 to be a miracle of grace which has preserved me. I 
 never was so fully persuaded as I am now that no 
 habit of religion is a security from falling into the 
 foulest crimes, and I need the immediate help of God 
 every moment. The sense of my continual danger 
 has, I confess, operated strongly upon me to induce 
 me to desire that no publication of a religious nature 
 should be published as mine whilst I am alive. An- 
 other reason is my sense of incapacity to do justice to 
 any subject, or even to write good sense. I have, it 
 is true, been obliged to publish several things, and I 
 can say that nothing but necessity could have induced 
 me to do it. They are, however, only grammatical 
 works, and certainly the very last things which I 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 87 
 
 should have written if I could have chosen for 
 myself." 
 
 The moral sensitiveness which Carey possessed is a 
 great necessity and safeguard in missionary life and 
 in all highest character. No one who has been in a 
 position to know the inner lives of good men can fail 
 to appreciate the importance of such a sense of moral 
 peril and need of supernatural help to be kept in a 
 blameless life. 
 
 How Carey overcame his indolence his life well 
 illustrates. He simply toiled. A disinclination to 
 work is no reason for not working. Any man can 
 work who will whether he has a disposition for it or 
 not. And on the mission field men must work. 
 There is no place there for drones or shirks. As 
 Mr. Ward wrote to Mr. Puller : 
 
 " It was work in which half the dissenting minis- 
 ters in England, who merely preach twice or thrice a 
 week, when people come to hear the Word, would be 
 of little use. A man who shall do good here must be 
 on his legs, or in the saddle or in his boat. In the 
 hands of a mere domesticated man, who prays at 
 home, but never goes out into the highways and 
 ditches, things die a natural death. Men must go 
 out a-fishing ; the fish will never leave their natural 
 element and walk into their nets, and they must be 
 patient, too, though they toil all night and catch 
 nothing." 
 
 Here is a specimen day during Carey's life in Cal- 
 cutta in 1807 : 
 
 " He rose at quarter before six, read a chapter in the 
 Hebrew Bible, and spent the time till seven in private 
 devotions. He then had family prayer in Bengali 
 
88 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 ■with the servants, after which he read Persian with a 
 Moonshee who was in attendance. As soon as break- 
 fast was over, he sat down to the translation of the 
 Eamayana, with a pundit till ten ; when he proceeded 
 to the college, and attended its duties till two. Be- 
 turning home, he examined a proof-sheet of the 
 Bengali translation of Jeremiah, and dined with his 
 friend, Mr. Eolt. After dinner, with the aid of the 
 chief pundit of the college, he translated a chapter of 
 Matthew into Sanskrit. At six, he sat down with 
 the Telinga pundit, to study that language, and then 
 preached an English sermon to a congregation of 
 about forty. The service being ended at nine, he sat 
 down to the translation of Ezekiel into Bengali, — he 
 had thrown aside his former version, and was now 
 translating the prophets. At eleven, the duties of 
 the day closed, and after reading a chapter in the 
 Greek Testament, and commending himself to God, 
 he retired to rest." 
 
 At the age of seventy, when the financial affairs of 
 the Serampore Brotherhood were very uncertain, one 
 of his colleagues wrote of him : "Though thus re- 
 duced in his circumstances the good man, about to 
 enter on his seventieth year, is as cheerful and happy 
 as the day is long. He rides out four or five miles 
 every morning, returning home by sunrise 5 goes 
 on with the work of translation day by day, gives 
 two lectures on divinity, and one on natural history 
 every week in the college, and takes his turn of 
 preaching both in Bengali and in English." All his 
 life, he knew how to work, even though he was indo- 
 lent. He held tenaciously to duty. He portioned 
 out time so as not to fritter it away. He knew how 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 89 
 
 to use its fragments. By devoting to some of his 
 greatest literary works mere fractions of time, lie suc- 
 ceeded in completing them. "Hence his Sanskrit 
 grammar of a thousand pages. Hence, too, his Ben- 
 gali dictionary of three quarto volumes, designed and 
 executed on a painfully elaborate plan. And hence, 
 also, his translation of the celebrated Sanskrit poem, 
 the Eamayana; which last work, to the extent of 
 several volumes, he effected by dictating to an 
 amanuensis about two hours only once in seven days. 
 By this means his Scriptural translations advanced 
 by slow, but regular degrees, until, in the course of 
 years, the work arrived at so prodigious an aggre- 
 gate as to require no ordinary effort to believe it 
 possible that any one man, let his advantages be what 
 they might, could accomplish so vast an achieve- 
 ment. But invincible patience in labour, and unceas- 
 ing constancy, secured his triumph over every ob- 
 struction. ' ' ' The world's output of good work would 
 be quadrupled if men knew this open secret of the 
 plodding cobbler. 
 
 But to call him a plodder does not explain Carey. 
 He was a great man, whatever he says of himself, 
 and yet his greatness, barring his linguistic genius, 
 was of the kind accessible to every man. Every man 
 may have his great vision. He saw far and wide. 
 We have seen how great were his dreams as the shoe- 
 maker teacher. The first years he was in India, he 
 wrote : 
 
 "I hope the Society will go on and increase, and 
 that the multitudes of heathen in the world may hear 
 the glorious words of truth. Africa is but a little 
 1 Belcher, "William Carey," p. 243. 
 
9° WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 way from England ; Madagascar but a little way 
 farther ; South America, and all the numerous and 
 large islands in the Indian and Chinese seas, I hope 
 will not be passed over." 
 
 He urged the occupation of Thibet, Afghanistan, 
 where he thinks the lost Ten Tribes are, and his eyes 
 Bweep the whole world. In 1809, he writes : 
 
 " The state of the world occupies my thoughts more and 
 more ; I mean as it relates to the spread of the Gospel. 
 The harvest truly is great and labourers bear scarcely any 
 proportion thereto. Hindustan requires ten thousand min- 
 isters of the Gospel, at the lowest calculation, China as 
 many, and you may easily calculate for the rest of the 
 world. I trust that many will eventually be raised up 
 here, but be that as it may, the demands for missionaries 
 are pressing to a degree seldom realized. England has 
 done much, but not the hundredth part of what she is 
 bound to do. In so great a want of ministers ought not 
 every church to turn its attention chiefly to the raising up 
 and maturing of spiritual gifts with the express design of 
 sending them abroad ? Should not this be a specific 
 matter of prayer, and is there not reason to labour hard to 
 infuse this spirit into the churches ? A mission into Siam 
 would be comparatively easy of introduction and support 
 on account of its vicinity to Prince of Wales Island, from 
 which vessels can often go in a few hours. A mission to 
 Pegu and another to Arakan would not be difficult of in- 
 troduction, they being both within the Burman dominions. 
 Missions to Assam and Nepal should be speedily tried. 
 Brother Robinson is going to Bhotan. I do not know 
 anything about the facility with which missions could be 
 introduced into Cochin China, Cambodia and Laos, but 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 91 
 
 were the trial made, I believe difficulties would remove. 
 It is also very desirable that the Burman mission should be 
 strengthened. There is no full liberty of conscience, and 
 several stations might be occupied ; even the borders of 
 China might be visited from that country if an easier en- 
 trance into the heart of the country could not be found. I 
 have not mentioned Sumatra, Java, the Moluccas, the 
 Philippines, or Japan, but all these countries must be sup- 
 plied with missionaries. This is a very imperfect sketch 
 of the wants of Asia only, without including the Moham- 
 medan countries ; but Africa and South America call as 
 loudly for help and the greatest part of Europe must also 
 be helped by the Protestant Churches, being nearly as 
 destitute of real godliness as any heathen country on the 
 earth. What a pressing call, then, is there for labourers 
 in the spiritual harvest, and what need that the attention 
 of all the Churches in England and America should be 
 drawn to this very object." 
 
 Suoli greatness of dream and desire as his is denied 
 no man. And all men may have his dauntless cour- 
 age and persistence in overcoming difficulties. He 
 knew little else in his early years. The whole en- 
 terprise had to be created. And he had no resource, 
 no experience, no standing, no sympathy and sup- 
 port in his own family. But he understood that ob- 
 stacles exist to be surmounted. As General S. C 
 Armstrong said, "What are Christians in the world 
 for but to do the impossible by the help of God 1" 
 Carey was like Armstrong in another regard. He 
 was a child all his days, and so was free from envy 
 and distrust, and jealous meanness and all malice. 
 Cannot every man remain or become again as a little 
 
92 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 child 1 Is there any hope of the kingdom of heaven 
 for men who cannot ? 
 
 But childlikeness was joined in him as in Arm- 
 strong with the shrewdest and most careful judgment 
 in business matters. And yet it was not so much 
 shrewdness in either case as high conscience. The 
 greatest cleverness is always righteousness. Carey's 
 views as to the expenditure of mission money will 
 suffice for illustration. He was giving Mardon and 
 Chater instructions with reference to their mission to 
 Burmah. He spoke of the language : 
 
 " With respect to the Burman language, let this 
 occupy your most precious time and your most anx- 
 ious solicitude. Do not be content with acquiring 
 this language superficially, but make it your own, 
 root and branch. To become fluent in it, you must 
 attentively listen with prying curiosity into the forms 
 of speech, the construction and accent of the natives. 
 Here all the imitative powers are wanted ; yet these 
 powers and this attention, without continued effort 
 to use all you acquire, and as fast as you acquire it, 
 will be comparatively of little use." 
 
 And he went on later to add: "In prosecuting 
 this work, there are two things to which especially 
 we would call your very close attention, viz., 
 the strictest and most rigid economy, and the cul- 
 tivation of brotherly love. Eemember that the 
 money which you will expend is neither ours nor 
 yours, for it has been consecrated to God ; and every 
 unnecessary expenditure will be robbing God, and 
 appropriating to unnecessary secular uses what is 
 sacred and consecrated to Christ and His cause. In 
 building, especially, remember that you are poor 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 93 
 
 men, and have chosen a life of poverty^and self-denial, 
 with Christ and His missionary servants. If another 
 person is profuse in expenditure, the consequence is 
 small because his property would perhaps fall into 
 hands where it might be devoted to the purpose of 
 iniquity ; but missionary funds are in their very cir- 
 cumstances the most sacred and important of anything 
 of this nature on earth. "We say not this, brethren, 
 because we suspect you, or any of our partners in 
 labour ; but we perceive that when you have done all, 
 the Eangoon mission will lie heavy upon the mission- 
 ary funds, and the field of exertion is very wide. ' ' The 
 old lesson can never be too well learned that aU such 
 trust funds should be so spent that the use to which 
 each penny is put will bear the closest scrutiny. 
 
 Carey says that in the matter of work, he had to 
 achieve his results in the face of a heavy spirit of in- 
 dolence. In other directions also he was obliged to 
 succeed against disabilities. He felt his social limi- 
 tations keenly and often complained of himself for 
 what he called his misanthropy.^ He was so humble 
 and unassuming that he lacked aggressive tact. He 
 wanted ease and elasticity in society. All this he 
 realized and yet his work called him into society and 
 he knew that the Spirit of God could enable him to 
 meet his duty there as well as in less conspicuous 
 spheres. He followed, himself, the advice he gave 
 to his son Jabez when he went to Amboyna : "Behave 
 affably and genteelly to all, but not cringingly towards 
 any. Feel that you are a man, and always act with 
 dignified sincerity and truth which will command the 
 esteem of all. Seek not the society of worldly men, 
 ' Belcher, " William Carey," p. 254. 
 
94 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 but when called to be with them, act and converse 
 with propriety and dignity. To do this, labour to 
 gain a good acquaintance with history, geography, 
 men, and things. A gentleman is the next best char- 
 acter after a Christian, and the latter includes the 
 former. Money never makes a gentleman, neither 
 does a fine appearance, but an enlarged understand- 
 ing joined to engaging manners." Living by these 
 principles, himself, Carey associated without diffi- 
 culty and with constant usefulness and the unfailing 
 respect and regard of men with governor-generals, 
 merchants, scholars, and soldiers and "was ever the 
 saint and gentleman whom it was a privilege to 
 know." ' 
 
 These characteristics and Carey's success illustrate 
 the great truth to which his whole life testifies that 
 nothing is impossible to any man in the line of his 
 duty. Whether the hindrance was an outer obstacle 
 or an inner limitation, Carey conquered it. In this, 
 he was a true pioneer of missions, and young men 
 and women of our day lose a great deal if they rest 
 on great organizations and are content with small 
 routine performances, and excuse themselves from 
 the successful effort to achieve the impossible. They 
 are no worthy followers of the uneducated cobbler, 
 who became one of the most respected scholars and 
 gentlemen in India. 
 
 And yet Carey was in India just what he was in 
 England. Men will be what they have been. He 
 became a great scholar in India because he had been 
 an earnest student at home. He had starved himself 
 to buy books. Dutch and French he taught himself. 
 'Smith, " Life of William Carey," p. 162. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 95 
 
 " He never sat on his stall without his book before 
 him, nor did he painfully toil with his wallet of new 
 made shoes to neighbouring towns or return with 
 leather, without conning over his lately acquired 
 knowledge and making it forever in orderly array 
 his own." ^ This is far superior to the mere form 
 of education in regular institutions. In China to- 
 day two of the best speakers of Mandarin are men 
 who had no collegiate training. One was a black- 
 smith and went out late in life. But they were men 
 like Carey with working minds and the power of 
 toil. Carey has been spoken of by one acquaintance 
 at least as easy going. He had said to this friend, 
 " Brother Swan, I am not fitted for discipline. I 
 never could say no, " ^ and his kindliness of disposition 
 was notable and saved him from attacks made upon 
 his associates. Bat he did not lack decision and posi- 
 tiveness of character. He revealed enough of it in 
 India and it emerged then because it had always 
 been in him. He believed in effort and effort on the 
 instant. He was no dilatory, hesitant man. When 
 he had preached his great sermon at Nottingham in 
 1792 and though every one was moved, the meeting 
 was breaking up with no practical action, Carey 
 seized Fuller by the hand " in an agony of distress," 
 and asked imploringly, "Are you after all again 
 going to do nothing'?" He was no man to dawdle 
 forever over duty. He believed in rising from sloth 
 and striking when the hour was come. 
 
 As at home he was great enough to be kind and 
 unselfish in his judgment, so he remained. He was 
 
 'Smith, " Life of William Carey," p. 23. 
 ' Belcher, " William Carey," p. 256. 
 
96 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 enough a true son of God to know how to forgive. 
 In 1810, he wrote to his son "William, who in the 
 absence of the pastor of a church had excluded two 
 members, with the result of coolness on the part of 
 the pastor, who deemed his rights invaded : 
 
 "I advise you to write to Mr. Fernandez Immediately, 
 and acknowledge that you did wrong in proceeding to the 
 exclusion of the members without having first consulted 
 with him, and state that you had no intention of hurting 
 his feelings, but acted from what you thought the urgency 
 of the case, and request of him a cordial reconciliation. I 
 should like much to see a copy of the letter you send to 
 him. I have no object in view but the good of the 
 Church, and would therefore rather see you stoop as low 
 as you can to effect a reconciliation, than avoid it through 
 any little punctilio of honour or feeling of pride. You 
 will never repent of having humbled yourself to the dust 
 that peace may be restored ; nothing will be a more in- 
 structive example to the heathen around you, nothing will 
 so completely subdue Brother Fernandez's dissatisfaction 
 and nothing will make you more respected in the Church 
 of God." 
 
 Only true Christian men can write such counsel 
 and no one gives it who does not try to practice it. 
 In the matter of such humiliation and forgiveness 
 there is little hypocrisy in the world. It was the 
 possession of this spirit that carried Carey through 
 all the bitter experiences of his missionary life. 
 Some arose from changes at home, new men suc- 
 ceeding Fuller and the older men who had held the 
 rope from the beginning : some from changes on 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 97 
 
 the field, difficulties sometimes arising in the mission, 
 but Carey came through all unscathed, because he 
 was a man of love and truth and forgiveness who 
 would not contend. 
 
 This would suffice as testimony to his greatness, 
 but there are other evidences more familiar to the 
 world because more of its kind. Even in the world's 
 measurements, he was a great man. He was great 
 in his ability as a scholar. The British and Foreign 
 Bible Society recognized this in the minute adopted 
 at his death : 
 
 "For this arduous undertaking (Bible translation) he 
 was qualified in an extraordinary degree by a singular 
 facility in acquiring languages — a faculty which he had at 
 first shown and cultivated amidst manifest disadvantages 
 in the retirement of humble life. The subsequent extent 
 of his talent as well as of his diligence and zeal may be 
 judged of by the fact that, in conjunction with his col- 
 leagues, he has been instrumental in giving to the tribes 
 of Asia the sacred Scriptures, in whole or in part, in be- 
 tween thirty and forty languages." 
 
 The Asiatic Society of Calcutta adopted the follow- 
 ing minute : 
 
 " The Asiatic Society cannot note on their proceedings 
 the death of Dr. Carey, so long an active member and orna- 
 ment of this institution, distinguished alike for his high 
 attainments in the original languages, for his eminent 
 services in opening the stores of Indian literature to the 
 knowledge of Europe, and for his extensive acquaintance 
 with the sciences, the natural history and botany of this 
 
98 WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 country, and his useful contributions in every branch, 
 towards the promotion of the objects of the society, with- 
 out placing on record this expression of their high sense 
 of his value and merits as a scholar and a man of science, 
 their esteem for the sterling and surpassing religious and 
 moral excellencies of his character and their sincere grief 
 for irreparable loss." 
 
 He was more than a scholar. He was a man 
 of practical action. He accomplished things. He 
 moved men. He altered social conditions. He en- 
 tered into all the activities of life. From the outset, 
 he was interested in agriculture and industry. He 
 founded the Agricultural Society of India. He was 
 an eminent botanist and first advocated forestry in 
 India. He introduced the first steam engine and the 
 manufacture of paper. It is not too much to say of 
 him that he was the greatest personal force outside 
 of the government — and probably greater than any 
 single individual force in the direction of reform and 
 improvement. No one did more than he towards 
 the uplifting of Indian life — the abolition of its 
 wrongs, the elevation of the character of English in- 
 fluence and the exaltation of Great Britain's ideas of 
 duty towards the millions of India. 
 
 Upon the Churches at home his reflex influence 
 was incalculable. "When he went out, the home 
 Churches were not only indifferent, they were hostile 
 to the missionary idea. In Scotland the Moderates 
 openly denounced the missionary proposal. In Par- 
 liament in 1793, when Wilberforce advocated the 
 authorization of missions in connection with the East 
 India Charter act and proposed clauses to this effect, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER 99 
 
 they were rejected and in the House of Lords the 
 Bishop of St. David's questioned the right of any 
 people to send their religion to any other nation. 
 The mission of Carey put an end to this attitude on 
 the part of the home Churches, and the modern mis- 
 sionary era began, an era in which each branch of 
 the Christian Church recognized its duty to help to 
 spread Christianity over the whole world. 
 
 Carey never returned to England. His idea of 
 missions was that missionaries should go out to 
 take permanent root in the soil, to derive their sup- 
 port thence and to live there until their death. 
 "The Serampore missionaries," says Marshman's 
 son, " had themselves relinquished every idea of ever 
 returning to England, and they resolved to make 
 India not only their own home, but the home of their 
 families." This idea of permanent stay in India was 
 entertained by Duff also. As he told his converts in 
 India when finally leaving them for home : "It was 
 when a student at college, in perusing the article on 
 India in Sir David Brewster's ' Edinburgh Encyclo- 
 pedia,' that my soul was first drawn out as by a spell- 
 like fascination towards India. And when, at a later 
 period, I was led to respond to the call to proceed to 
 India as the first missionary ever sent forth by the 
 Established N"ational Church of Scotland, my resolu- 
 tion was, if the Lord willed it, never, never to return 
 again." ' Not only did Carey never return to Eng- 
 land, but he took no vacations on the field. Hill 
 stations for vacation purposes had not been opened 
 then. The punkah had not been invented, and of 
 course there was no ice. Yet Carey stayed at his 
 1 Smith, " Lite of Dnflf, " Vol. I, p. 43 f. 
 
lOO WILLIAM CAREY 
 
 post and worked for over forty years. It is not nec- 
 essary to open the question as to whether his plan is 
 preferable to the present one of frequent furloughs. 
 The fact that the best missionaries have decided in 
 favour of the latter is sufficient evidence in its favour. 
 But it is a vital question as to how the manifest evils 
 of the present system, the interruption to the work, 
 the disarrangement of plans, the detachment from the 
 people inevitable and compensated for by improved 
 tone and vigour, can be overcome. K men have 
 Carey's spirit, they will overcome them. With that 
 spirit place and travel matter nothing. The will of 
 God and the service of man are all. But how can 
 we win and display the same spirit of devotion to 
 these high ends which William Carey won and dis- 
 played, when he went forth alone into Asia and for 
 nearly half a century remained there, supporting 
 himself and planting new missions with his surplus 
 earnings, and living and dying for the evangeli- 
 zation of India 1 In some way, we must discover and 
 retain the secret of that single and supreme devotion. 
 Or has the mould in which men are cast to-day con- 
 tracted 1 Are the resources in God which were open 
 to Carey sealed to us ? Will God do through a man 
 to-day in a world of deepened need and richer oppor- 
 tunity what He did through the plodding cobbler 
 who changed the spirit of an empire and retaughtthe 
 Church the nature of her Gospel and the glory of her 
 mission? Surely He will. Surely He will do it 
 through us if we will give Him room. 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 ALEXANDER DUFF, THE 
 CHRISTIAN STUDENT AND 
 THE WORLD'S EDUCATION 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 ALEXANDER DUFF, THE CHRISTIAN 
 
 STUDENT AND THE WORLD'S 
 
 EDUCATION 
 
 I HAVE already associated the names of Carey 
 and Duff as men who wrought together at the es- 
 tablishment of Christianity in India, and who 
 at the close of Carey's life and the beginning of Duff's 
 met personally to talk of what they were doing. 
 Alike in their spirit and aim, they were yet of com- 
 pletely different types and they represented on one 
 great problem of missionary effort and of general 
 educational policy if not divergent views, at least 
 dissimilar proportions of emphasis. 
 
 Duff went to his work with the best educational 
 preparation. Prom Kirkmichael School, whose 
 dominie ^he ever remembered with love and to whom 
 he sent a copy of every book and pamphlet which he 
 wrote, and then from the grammar school of Perth, 
 he went up to St. Andrews' University, where 
 Chalmers had taken the chair of Moral Philosophy 
 just in time to impress the raw power of this Scotch 
 boy. "Though outrageously thoughtless," writes 
 one of his old fellow students, "I was much im- 
 pressed by Duff. There was a weight and a down- 
 right earnestness about him which everybody felt. 
 He was the boast of the college and was greatly re- 
 garded by the townsfolk of St. Andrews. His ap- 
 103 
 
I04 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 pearance as he passed with hurried step is indelibly 
 photographed on my mind, and is thus put in my 
 ' Historical Antiquities ' of the city, ' That tall figure 
 crossing the street and looking thoughtfully to the 
 ground, stooped somewhat in the shoulders and his 
 hand awkwardly grasping the lappet of his coat, is 
 Alexander Duff, the pride of the college, whose mind 
 has reeeived^the impress of Chalmers' big thoughts and 
 the form of his phraseology.' Under Chalmers, he 
 was, in St. Andrews, the institutor of Sabbath schools 
 and the originator of the Students' Missionary So- 
 ciety." ' This society was a sort of mission study 
 class. Duflf was librarian. The object of its members 
 was " to study foreign missions so as to satisfy them- 
 selves of the necessities of the world outside of Chris- 
 tendom" ; and it numbered at least three beside 
 Duff who offered themselves for missionary service. 
 
 William Carey had himself awakened his Church 
 to the missionary duty and to the willingness to send 
 him. Duff found his Church already awakened and 
 went out in response to its direct call. 
 
 In recommending Duff to the assembly, the com- 
 mittee described him as " a person possessed of such 
 talents and acquirements, literary, scientific, and 
 theological, as would do honour to any station in the 
 Church ; who also combines with these the prudence 
 and discretion which are so peculiarly requisite in 
 the discharge of the duties which will devolve upon 
 him ; and is, at the same time, animated with such 
 zeal in the cause to which he devotes himself, as to 
 make him think lightly of all the advantages which 
 he foregoes in leaving his native land. ' ' These words 
 1 Smith, " Life ol Dufi," Vol. I, p. 23. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT 105 
 
 inadequately described the immense force which was 
 about to be projected into India. And even taken 
 on their level, they omitted one consideration on 
 which Duff later laid emphasis in writing home re- 
 garding some recent reinforcement : 
 
 "He does not appear to be strong, nor capable of 
 undergoing much bodily fatigue, nor exertion in 
 speech, all of which is so essential to the active dis- 
 charge of a missionary's duties. I wish the com- 
 mittee would bear in mind that a constitutional 
 vigour of body is just as requisite as a vigorous ac- 
 tivity of mind, and piety and learning. Indeed it is 
 not studying men that we want, but hard-working 
 men who have been and still are students." He met 
 his own requirements. He was a working man for 
 forty-five years, and he wrought with the energy of 
 a torrent that never subsides. 
 
 Duff instinctively gave himself before he went to 
 India to the deepening of the missionary interest at 
 home. He was the forerunner in this of the host of 
 students in our own day who realize that they ought to 
 produce, before they go out, sufficient increment of mis- 
 sionary conscience in the Church at home to provide 
 for the increased expense involved in their going. 
 With intense enthusiasm and power Duff pled the 
 cause, and his natural Scotch reserve never resisted 
 the heat of his heart in these appeals. In the old 
 kirk of Leuchars, he exclaimed : "There was a time 
 when I had no care or concern for the heathen ; that 
 was a time when I had no care or concern for my own 
 soul. When by the grace of God I was led to care 
 for my own soul, then it was I began to care for 
 the heathen abroad. In my closet, on my bended 
 
I06 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 knees, I then said to God, ' O Lord, Thou kno;west 
 that silver and gold to give to this cause I have zione ; 
 ■what I have I give unto Thee, — I offer Thee myself, 
 wilt Thou accept the gift r " 
 
 Duff was married before going out to India. An 
 old friend had questioned him on the subject. In re- 
 ply to his inquiry. Duff had told him that he had 
 been studying too hard to think of such things and 
 had not as yet met any one whom he felt he could 
 ask to go with him. "Well," said the old gentle- 
 man, "I do not approve of young men fresh from 
 college taking wives to themselves when newly mar- 
 ried to their Church, before they can possibly know 
 the requirements of their work. But your case is 
 wholly different. You go to a distant region of 
 heathenism, where you will find little sympathy 
 among your countrymen, and will need the compan- 
 ionship of one like-minded to whom you may unbosom 
 yourself. My advice to you is this, be quietly on the 
 lookout ; and if, in God's providence, you make the 
 acquaintance of one of the daughters of Zion, travers- 
 ing, like yourself, the wilderness of this world, her 
 face set thitherward, get into friendly converse with 
 her. If you find that in mind, in heart, in temper 
 and disposition you congenialize, and if God puts it 
 into her heart to be willing to forsake father and 
 mother and cast in her lot with you, regard it as a 
 token from the God of providence that you should 
 use the proper means to secure her Christian society." 
 Duff acted upon this counsel and his wife was very 
 different from the wife who reluctantly accompanied 
 William Carey to the field. 
 
 There was a world of difference also in the man- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT 107 
 
 ner of their going. Things had changed for the 
 better in India. The struggle was not over, but 
 Christianity was not the outlawed thing it had been 
 when Carey went. Duff had letters and recommen- 
 dations to Lord "William Bentinck, the Governor- 
 General, to the Earl of Dalhousie, who was com- 
 mander-in-chief of the Indian armies, and to other 
 men of influence. 
 
 On May 27, 1830, after an eight months' voyage. 
 Duff and his wife reached Calcutta and were warmly 
 welcomed, the Governor-General inviting him to 
 dinner and freely encouraging his plans. So at the 
 age of twenty-four the young Scotchman began his 
 work. 
 
 He lost no time in beginning. He had been sent 
 to establish an educational institution. It was not to 
 be in Calcutta but in the country. He visited all 
 the missionaries in or near Calcutta and at once de- 
 cided that the decision as to the location of the new 
 college was wrong. Calcutta was the place to strike. 
 The next question was as to the character of his insti- 
 tution. There were already a few colleges in Bengal. 
 Fort William College had been established as a train- 
 ing institution for the civil service and was still in 
 existence, though its work was confined to the work 
 of teaching languages to the civilians of the Bengal 
 presidency alone. The three institutions which were 
 in the class with Duff's proposed college were the 
 Hindu College, the Serampore College and the 
 Bishop's College. The first was under Hindu aus- 
 pices, though aided by the government, which ap- 
 pointed a visitor. "So far as the government was 
 concerned," Duff testified in 1853 to a committee of 
 
I08 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 the House of Commons, "their views at the outset, 
 with regard to the best mode of communicating 
 European literature and science, were somewhat pe- 
 culiar and contracted ; in other words, their views 
 seemed to be that whatever of European literature and 
 science might be conveyed to the native mind should 
 be conveyed chiefly through native media, that is to 
 say, the learned languages of India, — for the Mo- 
 hammedans, Arabic and Persian ; and for the Hin- 
 dus, Sanskrit. This was the predominant spirit and 
 intent of the British government." Still, English 
 had been introduced into the Hindu College and it 
 was opening up Western learning to the Hindus. 
 The Bishop's College was established by Bishop 
 Middleton in Calcutta in imitation of the Serampore 
 College. The Serampore College was distinctively 
 Christian. In this it differed from the Hindu Col- 
 lege which was secularist and obstructive. It taught 
 English and Sanskrit and Arabic, but it did its work 
 in the vernaculars. It rej ected the principle of Angli- 
 cism which Duff took up and it was also too far from 
 Calcutta to fill the need in the city's life which, as 
 Duff saw, presented him his great opportunity. 
 
 He believed thoroughly in the use of education as 
 a missionary agency. That was the axiom with 
 which he had come to India. He believed in it be- 
 cause of its general destructive power in dissolving 
 error and of its general illuminating power in reveal- 
 ing the truth. " While you engage in directly sepa- 
 rating as many precious atoms from the mass as the 
 stubborn resistance to ordinary appliances can ad- 
 mit," he said to missionaries engaged in other forms 
 of work, " we shall, with the blessing of God, devote 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT 109 
 
 our time and strength to the preparing of a mine, 
 and the setting of a train which shall one day explode 
 and tear up the whole from its lowest depths." Duff 
 confidently expected his educational method also to 
 produce the trained leaders who would do among 
 the people more than any foreign preacher could ever 
 hope to accomplish. But DufPs policy was not only 
 Christian education but education in English. In 
 the former he parted from the Hindu College, which 
 was secularist, and even worse, teaching Oriental lit- 
 erature and Western atheism. In the latter he pur- 
 sued a different course from the Serampore College, 
 which taught English but proceeded upon a vernac- 
 ular basis. 
 
 Duff did not ignore the importance of the vernacu- 
 lar. He explained "that while the English language 
 would thus be used as the channel of conveying all 
 higher and improved knowledge, he was determined 
 that the vernacular should be thoroughly taught to 
 the pupils at the same time, as a channel of distribu- 
 tion for the masses." 'So one was allowed to begin 
 English who could not read with ease his own ver- 
 nacular. This new study of the vernacular which 
 Duff introduced had two results of vast national im- 
 portance. "It tended," says Dr. Smith, "to the 
 enriching of the vernacular language with words, and 
 the then barren literature with pure and often spiritual 
 ideas." ' Writing later Duff said : 
 
 "I saw clearly and expressed myself strongly to the 
 effect that ultimately, in a generation or two, the Bengali, 
 by improvement, might become the fitting medium of Eu- 
 ' Smith, " Life of Duff," Vol. I, p. 128. 
 
I to ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 ropean knowledge. But at that time it was but a poor 
 language, like English before Chaucer, and had in it, 
 neither by translation nor original composition, no works 
 embodying any subjects of study beyond the merest ele- 
 ments. As a native of the Highlands, I vividly realized 
 the fact that the Gaelic language, though powerful for 
 lyric and other poetry and also for popular address, con- 
 tained no works that could possibly meet the objects of a 
 higher and comprehensive education. Hence those who 
 sought that found it in English colleges, and returned as 
 teachers and preachers to distribute the treasures of knowl- 
 edge acquired through English among the Gaelic people." 
 
 Tet there was a real issue between the Serampore 
 plan and his. At Serampore the vernacular and not 
 English was encouraged and used as the medium of 
 education. It was on the desire for English that 
 Duff built his school, and he deliberately threw all 
 his influence to increase the desire, believing that the 
 English language would be an agency of disaster to 
 error and of victory to the truth. 
 
 These were the young missionary's plans. At the 
 age of twenty-four he was to attempt single-handed 
 their realization. His school instantly became im- 
 mensely popular. The young teacher proved to be a 
 genius, a man of fascination and of resistless power. 
 One of his pupils has described his first sight of him 
 in the year 1834 : 
 
 " It was about a month after I had been admitted into 
 the institution that I caught a near view of the illustrious 
 missionary. He came into the class rOOEft while we were 
 engaged in reading the first page of the^ First Instructor,' 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT III 
 
 — the first of a series of class books compiled by himself j 
 and though forty-four years have elapsed since the occurs 
 rence of the incident, my recollection of it is as vivid as if 
 it had happened only yesterday. I cannot say he walked 
 into the class room — he rushed into it, his movements in 
 those days being exceedingly rapid. He was dressed all 
 in black and wore a beard. He scarcely stood still for a 
 single second, but kept his feet and hands moving inces- 
 santly, like a horse of high mettle. He seemed to have 
 more life in him than most men. He had his white pocket 
 handkerchief in his hand, which he was every now and 
 then j,tying round his arm, and twisting into a thousand 
 shapes. He seemed to be a living personation of perpet- 
 ual motion. ... In our lesson there occurred the 
 word ' ox' ; he took hold of that word and catechized us 
 on it for half an hour. He then left our class and went 
 into another, leaving in our minds seeds of future thoughts 
 and reflection. Such is my earliest recollection of Alex- 
 ander Duff." 1 
 
 To such a teacher and his school pupils began to 
 throng. 
 
 ''Throughout the whole progress of these prepara- 
 tory arrangem.ent8," Mr. Duff afterwards wrote, 
 "the excitement among the natives continued un- 
 abated. They pursued us along the streets. They 
 threw open the very doors of our palankeen, and 
 poured in their supplications with a pitiful earnest- 
 ness of countenance that might have softened a heart 
 of stone. . . . Such was the continued press of 
 new candidates that it was found absolutely necessary 
 to issue small written tickets for those who had suc- 
 ' Day, " EeooUeotions of Alezander DufE," pp. 49-51. 
 
112 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 ceeded ; and to station two men at tlie outer door to 
 admit only those who were of the selected number." 
 
 Under Duff's personality, the method he had devised 
 was doing its work. The students drank in his spirit 
 and as they went about made but little effort to con- 
 ceal the change of opinion through which he had led 
 them. "At length, this undaunted bearing and 
 freedom of speech began to create a general ferment 
 among the staunch adherents of the old faith. The 
 cry of 'Hinduism in danger' was fairly raised." 
 Orthodox Hinduism resisted. The Bengali paper 
 Ghundrika, which had been established to resist the 
 proposal that the government should deprive Hindu- 
 ism of the privilege of burning living widows, had 
 opened war on the college. The effects were insig- 
 nificant. The institution was now solidly established 
 and its success was already talked of far and near. 
 
 Duff followed up this success at once. He per- 
 ceived the great opportunity there was for aggressive 
 effort to reach the large body of men in Calcutta 
 whose faith In the old Hinduism had been destroyed 
 but who had nothing in its place. The Hindu col- 
 lege had produced in its students a mass of infidelity 
 regarding "all religious principles whatever." Its 
 students read licentious English plays and Paine' s 
 " Age of Eeason " was one of the books constantly 
 referred to. The conditions appalled the orthodox 
 Hindus and the government alike. Yet they were 
 the legitimate fruitage of their secular education. 
 Duff faced the situation undismayed. "We re- 
 joiced," he wrote, "in June, 1830, when, in the me- 
 tropolis of British India, we fairly came in contact with 
 a rising body of natives, who had learned to think 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT 1 13 
 
 and to discuss all subjects with unshackled freedom, 
 though that freedom was ever apt to degenerate into 
 license in attempting to demolish the claims and pre- 
 tensions of the Christian as well as every other pro- 
 fessedly revealed faith. We hailed the circumstance 
 as indicating the approach of a period for which we 
 had waited long and prayed. We hailed it as herald- 
 ing the dawn of an auspicious era, — an era that in- 
 troduced something new into the hitherto undisturbed 
 reign of a hoary and tyrannous antiquity." 
 
 A course of public lectures was arranged to meet 
 this situation. Mr. Hill, a Congregationalist, was to 
 open the course with a lecture on the moral qualifi- 
 cations necessary for investigating truth. That was 
 the only lecture given. The furore caused by the 
 idea that students of the Hindu College had attended 
 a lecture on Christianity at a missionary's house led 
 to a prohibition that such students should attend any 
 " political and religious discussion," and rabher than 
 imperil his plans. Duff gave up the course. 
 
 He soon projected another, however ; this time to 
 men whom no such prohibition could reach, and 
 weekly from forty to sixty men listened to Duff's 
 great arguments and appeals. It was in the days 
 when intellectual interests were few in India, before 
 the government service had been made accessible to 
 natives, before the telegraph, before the flood of 
 Western literature. The minds of the people were 
 just opening and Duff had a clear field. The result 
 was that four of those who heard him in the course 
 responded to his appeal and were baptized. They 
 attached themselves to different churches, but Duff 
 found no fault with that. He never proselytized 
 
114 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 himself and he cared little to what church converts 
 joined themselves. Years later, he declared: "I 
 ■would as soon leap into the Ganges as go near 
 Tinnevelli, except as a brother to see the good work 
 that is going on." And at the Conference in New 
 York he declared : "If for a moment I could wield 
 the wand of despotic power for a good purpose, I 
 would go to the heathen field and there chalk out a 
 separate district for every evangelical denomination. 
 I would say to the Baptist, do you go there ; to the 
 Episcopalian, take this field ; to the Presbyterian, 
 labour in that district ; go and convert them, and 
 then baptize them all in whatever way you think 
 best." 
 
 Indeed, he was prepared to carry his ideas of mis- 
 sionary comity much further and hoped to see a 
 closer measure of cooperation in educational work. 
 He proposed to a missionary conference in Calcutta 
 a plan by which he would take the best pupils of the 
 various missions and for a fee of ten shillings a month 
 give them the highest Christian education, but home 
 divisions prevented such cooperation upon the field, 
 and various colleges came into existence, when one 
 more powerful institution would have sufficed. 
 
 This method of argumentative lectures was kept 
 up for years by Duff and his associates. It was a 
 new method. The audiences had just been created 
 and the experience of such discussions was novel to 
 them. The alternatives presented to their minds 
 were limited to orthodox Hinduism, evangelical 
 Christianity, a Hindu TJnitarianism, and atheism. 
 The alternatives of scientific scepticism, agnosticism, 
 and an ethical theistic faith were not present. It 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT II5 
 
 was as it was later in Japan. Christianity came into 
 tke field at a time when old positions were untenable 
 and before the new positions in which men satisfy 
 themselves in the West outside of the Christian 
 Churches had become known. There is room for 
 such discussion to-day. It is going on all the time 
 and its form is often just what it was in Duff's day, 
 but the range of the discussion is immensely wider 
 and more difficult. 
 
 It is worth noting in passing that some at least 
 seem to have been drawn to Duff's institution be- 
 cause it was cheaper than the others. Nothing, how- 
 ever, was allowed to subordinate in Duff's view the 
 supreme aim of his school. Mr. Day says that in 
 spite of the advantage of the economy of education 
 at Duff's institution, "there was one serious draw- 
 back. Mr. Duff was a most zealous missionary ; he 
 made no secret of it, but publicly avowed that his 
 chief object in setting up the institution was to in- 
 struct Hindu youth in the principles of the Christian 
 religion." Attendance at the Bible classes was 
 rigorously required. Parents also were invited to 
 listen to the hour's preaching to the boys each day. 
 He believed in making the Bible itself "not only 
 the principal book but to bestow upon the teaching 
 of it the largest measure of their time and attention, 
 so long as this could be done without occasioning 
 that desertion of pupils which the more successful 
 prosecution of general literature and science in other 
 native seminaries must inevitably insure, if there 
 be not a correspondent progress in such studies in 
 the mission seminaries." ^ His aim was nothing 
 'Smith, "Life of Duff," Vol. I, p. 422. 
 
Il6 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 superficial or semi-religious. It was something 
 definite and decided. In protesting against the 
 idea that the institution would be a mere school for 
 young boys, he wrote : 
 
 " If it is to continue a mere school, then I say that 
 all the time, money and labour hitherto expended on 
 it have been thrown away for nought. Instead of 
 being an apparatus which God might bless as the 
 means of leading heathens to the way of salvation 
 through Christ, it would be much more likely to 
 become a machine for transforming superstitious 
 idolaters into rogues and infidels." 
 
 But were Duff's desires and expectations ever re- 
 alized ? Did higher English education as a mission- 
 ary method accomplish the results he hoped fori 
 (1) He conceived that he was preparing a mine and 
 setting a train which would one day explode and tear 
 up the whole of Hinduism. But it has proved, not a 
 destructive mine, but a transforming suffusion. Hin- 
 duism is not destroyed. It is adjusted. The reform 
 movements of Eam Mohun Eoy and Debendranath 
 Tagore and Keshub Ohunder Sen ceased as a move- 
 ment of separation from Hinduism. The old elastic 
 system has simply once again opened to take back 
 these elements of dissent and now makes room within 
 Itself for what in Duff's day found no comfortable 
 abiding place there. "Only use English as the 
 medium," said Duff, " and you will break the back- 
 bone of caste." This was seventy years ago. The 
 backbone of caste seems almost as rigid as it has ever 
 been. (2) Knowledge alone does not inevitably des- 
 troy error. Duff did not see how men could continue 
 to believe or practice falsehood when they knew that 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT II7 
 
 it was falsehood. But to know the truth, intellectu- 
 ally, is not to abandon the antagonistic error, espe- 
 cially in India, where as Mr. Meredith Townsend 
 contends, one of the characteristics of the Hindu 
 mind has been the failure to see any inconsistency or 
 contradiction in a life lived in moral antagonism to 
 intellectual opinion. Education does not necessarily 
 destroy superstition. It has undoubtedly done so in 
 many minds in India. That has been its net result 
 but that, as Duff contended and as we shall see, is a 
 very inadequate achievement. (3) The use of Eng- 
 lish has accomplished something of what Duff hoped 
 and, as he foresaw, some of the first opposition to its 
 use has disappeared. It was urged that to teach it 
 would be merely to supply rogues. Young men 
 would learn enough of it to put to use in some dis- 
 creditable or small commercial way and then they 
 would leave. Missions face that difficulty now in 
 China. Duff replied that this difficulty would soon 
 take care of itself, that the market for such men 
 would soon be overstocked and that then those who 
 wished to obtain better positions would have to re- 
 main longer. It is a long and expensive process, 
 however, to overstock the market. (4) The history 
 of Duff's policy suggests that it is not education as 
 such which makes men Christian or indeed in any 
 large number prepares them for the acceptance of 
 other influences, which will make them Christians. 
 Character is more a matter of feeling and will, of the 
 personality, than of opinion. Opinion enters and 
 to the extent that it does so, all processes which affect 
 opinion affect character, but men are not simple 
 thinking-machines, and they do not always see truth 
 
Il8 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 when it is presented, or recognize it when they see it, 
 or embrace it when they recognize it. To teach 
 them the truth is a duty and a service, but it can 
 only accomplish its full measure of good when to 
 the intellectual presentation of truth are added the 
 vital personal forces, which affect the whole per- 
 sonality and get for the truth a living acceptance. 
 Duff's plan included the most powerful and per- 
 sistent use of all these personal influences. He used 
 them. ' ' As the chief obj ect of the General Assembly' s 
 Institution," says Mr. Day, "was to convert the 
 students to Christianity, the course of studies pursued 
 in it was thoroughly saturated with the spirit of that 
 religion from the lowest to the highest class." And 
 Duff poured out his own life among the students 
 in his zeal for their direct conversion. There was 
 no concealment of his purpose, no indirectness, 
 no justification of his work by secondary conse- 
 quences. The result appeared in such actual con- 
 versions of young men as we do not see to-day in 
 Calcutta. The same change has been witnessed 
 in Madras. In the different missionary institutions 
 in Madras, Dr. John Murdock says there were thirty- 
 nine baptisms in 1852-1856, ten baptisms in 1856- 
 1861, five in 1862-1866, and one in 1867-1871. 
 "What produced this change? For one thing, un- 
 questionably the conditions have altered greatly, so 
 that students who hold Christian opinions can now 
 remain in Hinduism without discomfort. They are 
 not Hindus, but they feel no necessity of leaving 
 Hinduism to become real Christians. For another 
 thing, there is not the same consuming eagerness to 
 make converts. Men go out to teach in missionary 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT II9 
 
 educational institutions who do not work for the 
 conyersion of students as Duff and his associates 
 worked, who say that the burden of their other work 
 makes it impossible for them to do so. Mr. Day 
 recognizes also the change that has passed over such 
 institutions as Duff's in the matter of the supremacy 
 of their distinct missionary aim, due to the influence 
 of the government educational system, for whose 
 degrees the missionary institutions prepare their 
 students : 
 
 "As missionaries prepare their students for the degrees 
 of the university, they adopt the curriculum of studies 
 prescribed by that learned body ; they have, therefore, at 
 present, less time for the Christian and theological training 
 of their pupils than before j while the students themselves 
 naturally pay little or no attention to those studies which 
 do not pay in the university examination. The state of 
 things was different, however, in the pre-university days 
 of which I am now speaking. The students were in those 
 days thoroughly grounded in a course of natural theology, 
 a course of the evidences of Christianity, a course of sys- 
 tematic theology, a short course of ecclesiastical history, 
 besides a course of lectures on almost the whole of the 
 Holy Scriptures, from the Book of Genesis to the Book of 
 Revelation." ' 
 
 Connection with the government system has its 
 advantages. It secures certain grants in aid. It 
 brings students to the mission colleges who would not 
 come unless their course made them eligible to gov- 
 ernment degrees and so to political ofSce. It ensures 
 ' Day, "EeooUeotions of Alexander Dufi," p. 138. 
 
I20 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 a high standard of educational ■work. But in many 
 cases, it does involve a subordination of the distinctly 
 evangelistic purpose of missionary education. It has 
 done this so certainly that some leading missionary 
 educators have dropped Duff's religious emphasis 
 and justify their work on grounds wholly apart from 
 its direct influence in making men Christians and 
 leading them to baptism. 
 
 There was no such government educational system 
 when Duff came to India. In its creation and the 
 determination of some main features of its character, 
 Duff exercised a great influence. Duff began his 
 work in India just as the long struggle for a recog- 
 nition of England's duty to the moral and intellectual 
 life of India was ending. At each renewal of the 
 East India Company's charter since 1783, there had 
 been agitation as to the character of the company's 
 rule, and the charter of' 1833 completed its trans- 
 formation. It destroyed the last element of a trading 
 concern in the company and made it a purely govern- 
 ing body. It removed the last obstruction to the 
 work of the missionary and to the free movement 
 and activity of all foreigners. And it recognized the 
 duty of the company to provide for the education 
 and Improvement of the people of India. The old 
 era of subordination of Western standards and ideals 
 to Hindu superstition and immorality was over, 
 though it required the shock of the Mutiny to com- 
 plete the transformation. But the question which 
 now arose was as to the form of the educational 
 schemes which should be undertaken. As has been 
 already pointed out, there were three schools of 
 opinion : (1) The Orientalists, who believed in teach- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT 121 
 
 ing the people their own literature and perpetuating 
 the ignorance and superstition of the past, its false 
 science and geography and its moral and philo- 
 sophical error ; (2) the Vernacularists, who oc- 
 cupied the middle ground of the Serampore College, 
 who taught English but laid chief emphasis on the 
 development of the vernaculars, the translation of 
 proper books into them and their use as the chief 
 instrument, and (3) the Anglicists who indeed made 
 use of the vernacular as Duff did, but laid the chief 
 emphasis on English because it made available a 
 literature not accessible in the vernacular, was it- 
 self an instrument of enlightenment and an agency 
 of the truth, was the language of the government 
 and so useful politically as a means of communication 
 and as a bond of union, and would as a silent in- 
 fluence operate to the accomplishment of the ends of 
 improvement contemplated by the new charter. 
 
 The third party prevailed. Its victory was due to 
 three young men. The first was Duff, who was now 
 twenty-seven years of age and who had demonstrated 
 in his institution the value and success of the method 
 advocated by the Anglicists. The second was Tre- 
 velyan, a young man of twenty-eight whose character 
 and abilities and fearlessness of principle had made 
 him already one of the foremost men in India. The 
 third was Macaulay, who was thirty-three and who 
 had been the chief factor in securing the new charter 
 and was now in India as the law member of the 
 Governor-General's Council. Trevelyan knew of 
 Duffs work and had heartily accepted his principles 
 and through him Duff's view came to expression in 
 the famous minute of Macaulay which established and 
 
122 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 determined the new educational policy of England 
 in India. Trevelyan subsequently, after half a 
 century, acknowledged Duff's predominant influence. 
 
 But ignorance and falsehood do not die easily. 
 The teaching of English produced no such results as 
 Macaulay dreamed of. It has bred much deism, little 
 Christianity, and very much of what the Allahabad 
 Pioneer calls "fetichism in patent leather boots." 
 And its influence has also been far reaching for good. 
 It has penetrated the educated mind of India with 
 Christian conceptions. But popular Hinduism is 
 not dead and it remains to be seen whether several 
 centuries of English teaching, resulting some day in 
 making India a practically English-speaking land, 
 will present the phenomenon of an English-speaking 
 country worshipping idols and phallic symbols and 
 cows, in the language of the English Bible and Milton 
 and Shakespeare. 
 
 But Duffs ideal was not an ideal of English teach- 
 ing alone. He did believe that teaching English 
 would destroy error and caste, but it was only by 
 accompanying it with a powerful positive teaching 
 of religious truth in English. The new education in 
 India, however, was to be absolutely neutral in the 
 matter of religion. As a matter of fact it was not 
 neutral. It refrained from teaching Christianity, 
 but it substantially allowed the teaching of Hinduism 
 and Islam. Even the Mutiny did not make it wholly 
 neutral. Atheism and agnosticism have been freely 
 taught where Christianity has been barred. But 
 against even a purely neutral system. Duff made 
 earnest protest. 
 
 The first and last paragraphs of the decree of the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT 1 23 
 
 Governor-General in -which the new policy was 
 announced were as follows : 
 
 "His Lordship in Council is of opinion that the 
 great object of the British government ought to be 
 the promotion of European literature and science 
 among the natives of India, and that all the funds 
 appropriated for the purposes of education would be 
 best employed on English education alone. . . . 
 
 " His Lordship in Council directs that all the funds 
 which these reforms will leave at the disposal of the 
 committee be henceforth employed in imparting to 
 the native population a knowledge of English litera- 
 ture and science through the medium of the English 
 language ; and his Lordship in Council requests the 
 committee to submit to government, with all expe- 
 dition, a plan for the accomplishment of this purpose. ' ' 
 
 The educational system was to be thoroughly 
 English. In this Duff heartily concurred. He de- 
 clared his belief in it as a wise practical expedient. 
 It was what he had striven for and what now, due 
 in large measure to his influence, was settled. But 
 Duff was fundamentally and immovably opposed to 
 the exclusion of religious teaching from the govern- 
 ment schools. In his first missionary oration before 
 the General Assembly after returning to Scotland in 
 1835, he referred to this matter, urging the political 
 inexpediency of the government's plan of purely 
 secular education : 
 
 " If in that land you do give the people knowledge 
 without religion, rest assured that it is the greatest 
 blunder, politically speaking, that ever was com- 
 mitted. Having free unrestricted access to the whole 
 range of our English literature and science, they will 
 
124 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 despise and reject their own absurd systems of learn- 
 ing. Once driven out of their own systems, they 
 will inevitably become infidels in religion. And 
 shaken out of the mechanical routine of their own 
 religious observances, without moral principle to 
 balance their thoughts or guide their movements, 
 they will as certainly become discontented, restless 
 agitators, — ambitious of power and official distinc- 
 tion, and possessed of the most disloyal sentiments 
 towards that government, which, in their eye, has 
 usurped all the authority that rightfully belonged to 
 themselves. This is not theory, it is a statement of 
 fact. I myself can testify in this place, as I have 
 already done on the spot, that expressions and 
 opinions of a most rebellious nature have been known 
 to drop from some of the very prot6g4s of that 
 government, which, for its own sake, is so infatuated 
 as to insist on giving knowledge apart from religion." 
 The policy of the British government in India in 
 the matter of neutrality in its educational system it 
 is easy to understand. Historically, it is an inherit- 
 ance from the old East India Company days. Then 
 the company distinctly discouraged Christianity and 
 subsidized idolatry. When later, this became im- 
 possible, the government ceased the "endorsement 
 of error" as Duff called it but proceeded upon the 
 theory of a colourless religious influence. And of 
 course, the idea of purely secular education, neutral 
 as to all religion, is a commonplace idea with us in 
 America, where some states have even forbidden the 
 Bible or anything Christian in the schools. liTow 
 apart from what can be said about such a policy in 
 America, three things are to be said about it in 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT 1 25 
 
 India. (1) The idea of an education religiously 
 neutral is delusive. As Duff said in Ms speech to 
 the General Assembly in 1835, "Do then let me 
 crave the attention of this venerable court to the 
 grand peculiarity, that if in India you only impart 
 ordinary useful knowledge, you thereby demolish 
 what by its people is regarded as sacred. A course 
 of instruction that professes to convey truth of any 
 kind thus becomes a species of religious education in 
 such a land — all education being there regarded as 
 religious or theological." To teach the truth about 
 geography is to destroy some of the Hindu theology. 
 On the other hand, to teach agnostic philosophy or 
 materialism is to assail Christianity. Both of these 
 things were done in Indian schools. (2) No public 
 sentiment in India demanded such a course. In- 
 deed, the idea was wholly novel. As a statement to 
 one of the viceroys by the Home Department in 
 1872 declared: "That most remarkable feature in 
 Indian education, the religioas neutrality of the 
 government, is no doubt a relic of the extreme ap- 
 prehension which prevailed in 1793, and whether its 
 original declaration was a wise one or not is far too 
 deep and many sided a question to be discussed here. 
 We must accept the fact as we find it. But it is, I 
 believe, absolutely without precedent or parallel else- 
 where, besides being entirely opposed to the tradi- 
 tional idea of education current in the East." 
 (3) The results are calamitous. The statement just 
 quoted refers anxiously to this fact and during the 
 Mutiny, Duff urged that England should learn from 
 it the futility of her secular agencies for reforming 
 the character of a people : 
 
126 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 "Railways and telegraphs and irrigating canals," he 
 wrote, " and other material improvements, alone will not 
 do. Mere secular education, sharpening the intellect, and 
 leaving the heart a prey to all the foulest passions and most 
 wayward impulses, will not do. Mere legislation, which, 
 in humanely prohibiting cruel rites and barbarous usages, 
 goes greatly ahead of the darkened intelligence of the peo- 
 ple, will not do. New settlements of the revenue and landed 
 tenures, however equitable in themselves, alone will not 
 do. Ameliorations in the present monstrous system of 
 police and corrupting machinery of law courts, however 
 advantageous, alone will not suffice, A radical organic 
 change in the structure of government, such as would 
 transfer it exclusively to the Crown, would not, could not, 
 of itself furnish an adequate cure for our deep-seated 
 maladies. No, no ! Perhaps the present earthquake 
 shock which has passed over Indian society, upheaving 
 and tearing to shreds some of the noblest monuments of 
 material civilization, as well as the most improved ex- 
 pedients of legislative and administrative wisdom, has been 
 permitted to prove that all merely human plans and 
 systems, whatsoever, that exclude the life-awakening, 
 elevating, purifying doctrines of gospel grace and salva- 
 tion have impotence and failure stamped on their wrinkled 
 brows." 
 
 And the firm corroborative views of John Lawrence 
 we shall have to consider when we come to his life. 
 
 It is sufficient now to point out that the govern- 
 ment educational system, secularized against the 
 protest of Duff and later, after the Mutiny, of John 
 Lawrence, has produced the results which Duflf fore- 
 saw. " The present teaching in the government high 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT 127 
 
 schools and colleges," said Eobert Clark, a lifelong 
 resident of the Punjab, "with its so-called religious 
 neutrality is only throwing a thick veil over the land, 
 hiding from it all true light and life, whilst it is 
 sapping the foundations of all creeds and proving 
 itself to be the most destructive to morality and to 
 all good government in this life as well as all hope in 
 the world to come." " Concerning teaching in gov- 
 ernment schools," said the late Bishop Parker of the 
 Methodist Church, " the natural result of the system 
 is to destroy religion, to break down feelings of 
 moral obligation and to raise up a proud, unsatisfied, 
 discontented, complaining class." "I found," said 
 Sir W. "W. Hunter, "from taking evidence of 193 
 witnesses through India, as president of the Educa- 
 tion Commission, that those leaders were unanimous 
 in lamenting the absence of religious teaching in our 
 state schools in every province of the Indian Em- 
 pire." 
 
 Neither its English character nor its religious 
 neutrality has fulfilled the expectation of the found- 
 ers of the educational system of India. Carey was 
 wiser in his advocacy of "a permanent healthy 
 naturalization" of education by a larger use of the 
 vernacular. The Japanese have taught English and 
 German, but they are doing their educational work 
 in their own language. The Chinese, it is to be 
 hoped, will do the same. In the Philippines, where 
 the problem is more like India's, we are following 
 England's example both in English and in religious 
 neutrality. Already in the Philippines five times as 
 many people speak English as ever spoke Spanish. 
 In this we are nearer wisdom than the English 
 
128 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 were. In our colourless religious policy, we are 
 equally unwise. 
 
 Duff realized that tlie policy adopted was un- 
 changeable and exerted his influence to develop the 
 grant-in-aid scheme in the hope that it might result 
 in the transfer of the work of education from the 
 government with its neutral principles to other 
 organizations which would supply the religious 
 element which was required. This principle was 
 adopted fifty years ago. " We confidently expect," 
 said the government, "that the introduction of the 
 system of grants-in-aid will very largely increase the 
 number of schools of a superior order ; and we hope 
 that, before long, sufScient provision may be found 
 to exist in many parts of the country for the educa- 
 tion of the middle and higher classes, independent 
 of the government institutions, which may then be 
 closed." 
 
 Duff always pled for this principle. Its recogni- 
 tion has been very undulatory. Some viceroys have 
 supported it, others ignored it. Dufiferin cordially 
 approved it: "In aided schools," he said in 1887, 
 "religious instruction may, of course, be freely 
 given, and the Governor-General in Council would 
 be sincerely glad if the number of aided schools and 
 colleges in which religious instruction is prominently 
 recognized were largely increased. It is in this direc- 
 tion that the best solution of this difficult problem 
 can be found." But Lord Curzon had less zeal for 
 an increased support of such institutions, his political 
 temper inclining to a secular system under state 
 control. 
 
 Duffs influence helped to carry another useful re- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT 1 29 
 
 form, the Eomanization of writing the Indian lan- 
 guages. Sir Charles Trevelyan gives Duff the credit 
 for this. 
 
 Such services as these are directly missionary, but 
 they are also the services which are of indispensable 
 value to every agency, political and commercial, re- 
 quiring communication with the people. 
 
 After five years' work in India, Duff was ordered 
 home, on account of an attack of dysentery and the 
 prostration which ensued. He protested against go- 
 ing. He had come to India to spend his life there as 
 Carey had done. He urged that if he must leave, it 
 might be only for a short sea voyage. " I devoted 
 myself to the Lord," he urged, "to spend and be 
 spent in His service in this land." The physicians 
 were inexorable, however, and after nine months of 
 suffering from tropical disease. Duff sailed to spend 
 four years at home and to do in Scotland a work for 
 missions as great as he had wrought in India. He 
 found at first a cool welcome. For his first quiet 
 presentation of the work to a little company at a 
 private house, he was called before the Missionary 
 Committee and taken to task for the irregularity of 
 holding meetings without consulting and securing the 
 consent of the committee. This small battle he won 
 but the doors open to him were few until the meeting 
 of the General Assembly. Friends tried to dissuade 
 him from appearing before the General Assembly. 
 He was still weak. The docket of the assembly was 
 full of items of important business, — such routine 
 business as is so important here on the earth and as 
 is seen from heaven in its true pettiness. But Duff 
 knew he must win the Church and he insisted on ap- 
 
I30 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 pearing before the assembly in connection witli whafc 
 had been the merely formal affair of the presentation 
 of the report of the India Mission. He rose half sick 
 to address the assembly which waited unawares for 
 what he had to say. For between two and three 
 hours he spoke to them. Indifference gave way to 
 interest and interest to emotion. When he finished, 
 the audience was weeping. Tears rolled down the 
 cheeks of even the most callous and careless. At one 
 bound, the missionary and his cause had been lifted 
 into the front of the Church's interest and care. The 
 next day, the Scottish Guardian presented the speech 
 in full and said : "It will be long ere the assembly 
 will forget his pleading. His appearance has thrown 
 a sacredness around its meeting, and will give a 
 Christian elevation and dignity to the whole of its 
 procedure. His speech will yet tell in its moral in- 
 fluence, not only in the cottages of India, but in the 
 cottages of our own land, and will send back our 
 clergy to their homes smitten with the missionary and 
 apostolic spirit that burns with sweet fervour in the 
 breast of our devoted missionary." Indeed, the as- 
 sembly became known for that one speech of Duff's, 
 then twenty-nine years of age. The assembly ordered 
 its publication and 40,000 copies of it were scattered 
 over Great Britain and America. 
 
 Duff now had his hearing. Indeed, his first speech 
 brought upon him appeals to stay at home and work 
 there. To these he replied : " Were I to remain in 
 my native land, it would doubtless be still in my 
 power to do something by way of advocating the 
 claims of poor, benighted India. In that case, how- 
 ever, methinks my tongue would not only falter, but 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT 131 
 
 often 'cleave to the roof of my mouth.' Fearlessly 
 and unsparingly have I reprobated the indolence and 
 cowardice of those who kept lingering, lounging and 
 loitering at home, in lazy expectation of some snug, 
 peaceful settlement, instead of nobly marching forward 
 into the wide field of the world, to earn new trophies 
 for their Eedeemer, by planting His standard in 
 hitherto unconquered realms. !N"either have I sup- 
 pressed my honest indignation at the no less criminal 
 supineness of others, who, having once obtained such 
 settlements, ingeniously devise a thousand petty friv- 
 olous pretexts for continuing to wrap themselves up 
 in the congenialities and luxurious indulgences of 
 home, instead of boldly daring, though at an im- 
 measurable distance, to tread in the footsteps of 
 apostles and prophets and martyrs." From all such 
 temptations, Duff turned to fling himself into the 
 work of rousing Scotland to her missionary duty. 
 He went everywhere systematically visiting and or- 
 ganizing the Presbyteries, inaugurating spiritual re- 
 vivals ; stimulating gifts to work both at home and 
 abroad and enlarging alike the mind and the soul of 
 Scotland, and then in 1839 returned to India. 
 
 There he found the college still a great success. Its 
 work had been much advanced and its spiritual 
 agencies perfected and it was steadily directed as an 
 agency of great power to the direct winning of young 
 men to Christian faith and life. He and his four 
 associates from home constituted a band of singular 
 power and as singular unity. One of his first acts 
 was to propose a plan of reorganization, which placed 
 the work under a council made up of the missionaries 
 under the senior or whomever the home Church might 
 
132 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 recognize as the head. The spirit in which the work 
 was done is shown in Dr. Mackay's report to the 
 home committee : "Dr. Duff will tell you of our meet- 
 ing together regularly for consultation, and of what 
 we have agreed upon ; but I cannot refrain from say- 
 ing that in all our new and complicated arrangements, 
 arising out of our increased number and efficiency, 
 there has been no difference of opinion ; and we are 
 all agreed as one man. Each is satisfied with his own 
 peculiar work, and all are satisfied that everything 
 has been done for the best. In Christ we feel that we 
 have one Head, one end, and one mind ; and believ- 
 ing, we pray that we may always labour together in 
 peace, and unity and love." 
 
 Not long after this Duff felt obliged to open a pub- 
 lic criticism of Lord Auckland, the new Governor- 
 General, who had receded from Lord Bentinck's edu- 
 cational policy in the direction of Orientalism so far 
 as to renew the subsidies to what Duff called "the 
 shrines and sanctuaries of Hindu and Mohammedan 
 learning with all their idolatrous, pantheistic and 
 antichristian errors!" In publishing his letters, 
 Duff was not deceived with the thought that he 
 would accomplish anything, but he felt that he must 
 justify his position and express his condemnation of a 
 "reactionary measure of an incompetent Governor- 
 General." 
 
 "These words are penned," he wrote, "in the full 
 assurance that with your lordship and councillors they will 
 have the weight of a feather. So let it be. Here, your 
 lordship is everything. Here, politically and civilly 
 speaking, your voice is all but omnipotent. But, my lord, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT I33 
 
 I must remind you that the greater the power, the more 
 tremendous the responsibility! I must also remind you 
 that — apart from the solemnities of the great assize to which 
 the noble and mighty will be summoned, without respect of 
 persons, along with the poorest and the meanest of the 
 land — there is, even here below, another tribunal, of a 
 different frame and texture from that of an Asiatic, time- 
 serving, favour-seeking community, at whose bar the 
 appeal of a gospel minister will be heard as promptly as 
 that of the noblest lord. There is a great British public, 
 and above all, a religious public in Great Britain, which 
 heretofore hath been moved, and may readily be moved 
 again, by the addresses and expostulations of a Christian 
 missionary. A surer prospect of earning the garland of 
 victory no Christian missionary could possibly desire, 
 than the opportunity of boldly confronting, on a theme 
 like this, the mightiest of our state functionaries, in the 
 presence of a promiscuous audience of British-born free- 
 men, in any city or district from Cornwall to Shetland. 
 His march would be that of one continued conquest. The 
 might and the majesty of a great people, awakened to 
 discern the truth and import of things as they are, would 
 increasingly swell his train. And from the triumph of 
 indomitable principle in Britain would emanate, as in 
 times past, an influence which would soon cause itself to 
 be felt in the supreme councils of India, and thence ex- 
 tend, with renovating efiScacy, through all its anti-religious 
 schools and colleges." 
 
 This was characteristic of Duffs spirit. He was 
 not afraid of governors. He had declined to attend 
 a governor- general's ball in Lord Bentinck's time, 
 because tbere was to be dancing, and his attitude 
 
134 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 was appreciated ; and he and Mrs. Duff were invited 
 to dinner by Lord and Lady Bentinck. And now he 
 scored Lord Auckland for his folly and reaction. 
 He spoke once of the bold position his mission had 
 taken in the face of heathenism. He was quite as 
 bold in the face of Christians. His force and magni- 
 tude of mind delivered him from timidity before 
 strong issues or great situations. 
 
 He had to face one such soon in the problem 
 raised by the disruption of the Church in Scotland 
 and he did not hesitate. His mind, which he had 
 not felt free to express, while the issue was undecided, 
 had been already made up and when the schism at 
 home made it necessary for the missionaries to choose, 
 he at once took his place with the Free Church. 
 The property of the college which he had built up 
 and which would have had no existence but for him, 
 went to the Established Church, so that he and his 
 associates were forced to begin anew. Duff believed 
 that he was entitled to retain the institution and he 
 might have kept a spacious tract of adjoining land 
 which was held in his own name and which was 
 ample for a new institution if the old should be sur- 
 rendered to the Established Church. But Duff had 
 no mind to fight with Christian men for his rights 
 when time was needed for saving souls. 
 
 "Were any one at this moment," he wrote, "to 
 offer me, in free gift, a library and apparatus, of 
 ten times or tenfold ten times the extent of those now 
 in debate, under the contingent condition of its 
 possibly entailing, some years hence, half the loss 
 of time and vexation of spirit which, from first to 
 last, has been incurred by the present wretched 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT 135 
 
 and unedifying discussion, I would fling the offer 
 with loathing indignation away from me." And he 
 even refused to use the land he held adjoining the 
 old institution. He held to the Saviour's theory of 
 rights, — that being ours, we have a right to sur- 
 render them. You cannot very well quarrel with 
 such men. 
 
 As the Free Church was obliged to found both at 
 home and abroad new institutions of its own. Duff 
 urged that the opportunity should be improved to 
 establish in the Free Church College at home a 
 missionary chair. It was years before his ideal was 
 realized. He had written of it to Dr. Gordon in 
 1844. It was in 1865 that he revived the project 
 before the General Assembly. 
 
 " When passing through the theological curriculum 
 of St. Andrews," he said, "I was struck markedly 
 with this circumstance, that throughout the whole 
 course of the curriculum of four years not one single 
 allusion was ever made to the subject of the world's 
 evangelization — the subject which constitutes the 
 chief end of the Christian Church on earth. I felt 
 intensely that there was something wrong in this 
 omission. According to any just conception of the 
 Church of Christ, the grand function it has to dis- 
 charge in this world cannot be said to begin and end 
 in the preservation of internal purity of doctrine, 
 discipline and government. All this is merely for 
 burnishing it so as to give light not to itself but also 
 to the world. There must be an outcome of that 
 light, lest it prove useless, and thereby be lost and 
 extinguished. Why has it got that light but that it 
 should freely impart it to others ? " He succeeded in 
 
136 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 getting this Assembly of 1865 to provide that the 
 chair should be accepted by an experienced foreign 
 missionary and that the appointment should be for 
 life. To his surprise, the place was forced upon him, 
 though he succeeded in preventing the chair from 
 bearing his name and he never iised the income from 
 the endowment of £10,000, but devoted it to the 
 establishment of a Missionary Institute. 
 
 Duff's second term of service in India covered 
 eleven years. More than once during these years 
 baptisms in the college shook its patronage but not 
 its stability. In 1845, he faced a specially bitter 
 opposition ; this time due not so much to old orthodox 
 Brahmans, as to wealthy upstart Hindus allied with 
 the priests. The opposition expended itself in coarse 
 threats of personal violence and more permanently 
 in the establishment of a rival institution. 
 
 Towards the close of his second term of service in 
 India, Chalmers died. The Church at home instinc- 
 tively turned to Duff as his true successor, at the head 
 of the New College which Chalmers had founded in 
 Edinburgh. The General Assembly of 1848 formally 
 called upon him to return. After expressing his ap- 
 preciation of the honour of the great call, and of the 
 way men and the press were congratulating him upon 
 his contemplated "election" or "promotion," he 
 wrote : "I deem it, therefore, an unspeakable privi- 
 lege to have it in my power to do anything, however 
 humble, towards magnifying my much despised of- 
 fice. The conclusion of the whole matter is this, that 
 in some form or other, home or abroad, or partly 
 both, the Church of my fathers must see it to be 
 right and meet to allow me to retain, in the view of 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT 137 
 
 all men, the clearly-marked and distinguishing char- 
 acter of a missionary to the heathen abroad, labour- 
 ing directly amongst them ; at home, pleading their 
 cause among the Churches of Christendom. . . . 
 For the sake of the heathen, and especially the people 
 of India, let me cling all my days to the missionary 
 cause." 
 
 The protests which the proposal called forth from 
 various classes in India showed how powerful an 
 impression Duff had made. "His name," said one 
 appeal from eleven learned Brahmans, in Sanskrit, 
 "is in the mouth of every Hindu because of his 
 transcendent eloquence, learning and philanthropy." 
 While he declined the call from the home Church, 
 he assented to the advice of friends that he should go 
 home to do for the missionary work of the new Free 
 Church what he had done for the whole Church be- 
 fore the disruption. What he had in mind to press 
 as he came home on this errand, he set forth in a 
 letter to Dr. Tweedie on May 3, 1850. He is speak- 
 ing of the approaching General Assembly : 
 
 "Tuesday the 28th would do well for our missions. 
 Could we not get the whole day for them ? How often is 
 a whole day given to the discussion of a case of discipline ! 
 And is it too much to give to that of the greatest cause on 
 earth? There is your report; Anderson, Nesbit, perhaps 
 Rajahgopal, will speak, why not some other members of 
 Assembly ? Then I would require at least two or three 
 hours to be able to say anything at all. If the whole day 
 were given to the mission, I would prefer to have the 
 evening, so as to take up any matters that may have 
 dropped during the day, etc. For yourself alone, at pres- 
 
138 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 ent, let me state a few things that appear to me highly de- 
 sirable to be done. First, to appoint a day of humiliation 
 and prayer throughout the Church for past sins of negli- 
 gence, with reference to the Redeemer's great command 
 to evangelize the nations. This would, if done con amore, 
 go much to the root of our evils, and mellow people's 
 hearts and open the windows of heaven. Second : Sub- 
 stitute regular weekly subscriptions for the annual collec- 
 tions, as the only suitable and productive and becoming 
 source of supply for a great and permanent undertaking. 
 Third : Let the rule of proportion be better established 
 with reference to men's liberalities towards different ob- 
 jects. Fourth : Cut me off a county or a synod in which 
 to give fair trial to the new experiment. There is no other 
 way of fairly testing it. Occasional addresses and appeals 
 go for nothing. I should like to see a living machinery 
 established as a specimen somewhere." 
 
 The General Assembly approved his plans and 
 for three years and a half he "gave himself to the 
 creating of his new organization — an association for 
 prayer, information, and the quarterly collection of 
 subscriptions for the missions in every one of the 
 then seven hundred congregations of the Free Church 
 of Scotland." Dr. Smith says that "before or soon 
 after his return to Bengal, he had secured the estab- 
 lishment of five hundred associations, yielding a 
 'sure and continuous increase' of funds to meet 
 ' the requirements of a continuous expenditure.' " 
 
 In addition to his direct missionary service while 
 at home, Duff was able to do a work of great value in 
 giving form to the reorganization of the government 
 educational system in India. The last renewal of the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT 139 
 
 East India Company's charter came In 1853. The 
 Mutiny swept it away. As preceding acts of renewal 
 had steadily liberalized the charter, so this one con- 
 tinued the tradition of improvement. The civil 
 service was improved and the educational provisions 
 were changed for the better, though not to Duff's 
 satisfaction. What improvements were made, how- 
 ever, were chiefly due to his testimony and advice 
 before the Parliamentary Committee. He contended 
 for a Christianization of the government education. 
 "N'o amelioration in our legislative or judicial 
 policy," he declared, "will reach the springs of 
 some of those evils which I have attempted so inade- 
 quately to delineate. Their spring-heads are to be 
 found in those deep-rooted superstitions which work 
 so disastrously in deteriorating native society. Noth- 
 ing can suffice but a real, thorough, searching, moral- 
 izing, and I should individually say. Christianizing 
 course of instruction, which, by illumining the under- 
 standing and purifying the heart, will inspire with 
 the love of truth and rectitude, and so elevate the 
 whole tone of moral feeling and social sentiment 
 among the people." 
 
 He advocated the discontinuance of the remnant of 
 the policy of Orientalism which Lord Auckland had 
 revived, the development of the grant-in-aid scheme, 
 the establishment of universities and the introduction 
 of the Bible in the schools. 
 
 Before returning to India, Duif visited America in 
 1854-1855, at the urgent invitation of George H. 
 Stuart. His presence here was a continual ovation 
 and the great missionary was nearly killed with 
 kindness. In Philadelphia and New York he ad- 
 
I40 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 dressed great throngs. Some still living remember 
 the fervour of his oratory. One who heard him has 
 told me of the way in which he worked up his argu- 
 ment. He grew more and more intense, gathering 
 up the tails of his long frock coat under his arms, 
 until as he reached the climax, he had a tight rolled 
 bundle of coat tail under each arm and was leaping 
 up and down in his intensity. The reporters were 
 so carried away that they lost his peroration. It was 
 a style of oratory which has passed away, affluent, 
 orotund, tropical, with immense sentences and peri- 
 ods, rather destitute of humour, but wonderfully rich 
 and ample ; and warm with the transfusing love and 
 devotion of the man's soul. He would speak for 
 hours — often three — and he told one Scotch General 
 Assembly that it was easier for him to speak six 
 hours than a shorter time. But he was not all words. 
 His speech was to definite ends and in question of 
 policy he came right down to hard and elemental 
 essentials. 
 
 During his stay in New York, a missionary con- 
 ference was held attended by 300 ministers at which 
 a series of discussions dealt with various missionary 
 problems and issued in a series of resolutions offered 
 by Dr. Duff. The influence of that conference lasted 
 in 'Sew York into our own day. The men whom it 
 influenced, however, have now almost all passed 
 away. It may be doubted whether any subsequent 
 conference has produced more definite and abiding 
 results. Duff's personality dominated it. He was 
 the conference. 
 
 Duff returned to India just before the Sepoy Mutiny 
 broke. He called it the Indian Eebellion. He wrote 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT I4I 
 
 a series of letters from the midst of it and about it to 
 Dr. Tweedie wliicli were published and which though 
 coloured, of course, by the intensity of the situation, 
 are far less so than the accounts of the Peking siege 
 by those who experienced it. These letters are still 
 in many regards the best account we have of the 
 cause and character of the rebellion. Duff agreed 
 with John Lawrence in attributing the rebellion to 
 the policy of the East India Company and govern- 
 ment ; it had been a truckling, compromising policy 
 from the beginning, a policy of treason to Chris- 
 tianity and of steady resistance to the claims of 
 higher duty. The discontent which issued in the 
 Mutiny had many causes and occasions but in the 
 end the great cause was the traditional spirit of 
 trimming, of selfishness, of no principle, wrong 
 principle or half-principle. The Mutiny was the 
 reaping from a long harvest. Even when in the 
 midst of it, the Anglican Bishop appealed to the 
 Governor- General to set a day of humiliation and 
 prayer, he refused, but issued a proclamation which 
 practically disavowed Christianity by ignoring it, 
 and the same paper which published the proclama- 
 tion announced, said Duff, "the closing of all gov- 
 ernment offices for about ten days in honour of the 
 most celebrated of our idolatrous festivals — the Durga 
 Puja." Duff found in the Mutiny as others did fresh 
 evidence in support of his conviction that the Chris- 
 tianization of India was the only guarantee of the 
 endurance and peace of its political relations to 
 Great Britain. 
 
 Duff spent six years in India after the Mutiny. 
 The college continued its prosperity and its influ- 
 
142 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 ence. Yet such influences are both more and less 
 than men suppose. Indeed, here is as good a place 
 as elsewhere to suggest that Duff was far more the 
 power of his work than his method was. The 
 method itself minus such a personality as Duff's has 
 proved relatively barren. Indeed, any method will. 
 Vernacular preaching may be as futile a performance 
 as pouring water through sieves. The real power is 
 the power of personality possessed by the living Spirit 
 of God. That will accomplish results through any 
 method which provides for personal contact, and no 
 method will avail much without that. 
 
 His last work in India was in connection with the 
 University of Calcutta and the grant-in-aid system. 
 "So long as he remained in Calcutta he secured 
 fair play for the liberal and self- developing principles 
 of the education despatch of 1854. When he and 
 Dr. Wilson ceased to influence affairs and rulers, the 
 public instruction of India began to fall back into 
 the bureaucratic, anti-moral and politically danger- 
 ous system, from which Lord Halifax thought he 
 had forever rescued it." ' 
 
 He was vice-chancellor of the university, the 
 viceroy by his office being chancellor, and he was 
 its ruler while he was in India. "To his gigantic 
 mind," says Dr. Banerjea, "the successive vice- 
 chancellors paid due deference, and he was the 
 virtual governor of the university. . . . Dr. 
 Duff was the first person who insisted on education 
 in the physical sciences, and strongly urged the 
 establishment of a professorship of physical science 
 for the university." He was a Christian missionary, 
 'Smith, "Life of Dufi," Vol. II, p. 382. j 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT 143 
 
 but he Tras also a bigger man than the men about 
 him. It was he who years before had been the 
 means of introducing real medical education, when 
 the government was afraid to touch it for caste 
 prejudice. It was he now who secured for the 
 physical sciences their right place. He had never 
 been afraid of truth. Truth would never hurt truth, 
 he held, and he was sure that the truth about God 
 would never suffer from truth about His world. Sir 
 Henry Maine, who succeeded him as vice-chancellor, 
 referred to this quality in a convocation as he left 
 India : 
 
 " I am not aware that he ever desired the university to 
 refuse instruction in any subject of knowledge because he 
 considered it dangerous. Where men of feebler minds or 
 weaker faith would have shrunk from encouraging the 
 study of this or that classical language, because it en- 
 shrined the archives of some antique superstition, or 
 would have refused to stimulate proficiency in this or that 
 walk of physical science, because its conclusions were sup- 
 posed to lean to irreligious consequences, Dr. Duff, be- 
 lieving his own creed to be true, believed also that it had 
 the great characteristic of truth — that characteristic which 
 nothing else except truth possesses — that it can be recon- 
 ciled with everything else which is also true. Gentlemen, 
 if you only realize how rare this combination of qualities is 
 — how seldom the energy which springs from religious 
 conviction is found united with perfect fearlessness in en- 
 couraging the spread of knowledge, you will understand 
 what we have lost through Dr. Duff's departure, and why 
 I place it among the foremost events in the university 
 year." 
 
144 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 In 1863 at last, when he was fifty-seven, Duff 
 realized that his duty to foreign missions required 
 that he should return to Scotland to live and work 
 there. But he would not have gone even then if his 
 dysentery had not returned, and his condition of 
 health become such that a sea voyage and rest had 
 failed to restore him. His departure was the occasion 
 of such a flood of grateful expressions as no governor 
 or viceroy ever received. It took many forms, but 
 none, with his approval, inconsistent with the mis- 
 sionary character which had been so supreme with 
 him as to warrant Sir Henry Maine's words in the 
 address already referred to : "It would be easy for 
 me to enumerate the direct services which he rendered 
 to us by aiding us with unflagging assiduity, in the 
 regolation, supervision, and amendment of our course 
 of study ; but in the presence of so many native 
 students and native gentlemen who viewed him with 
 the intensest regard and admiration, although they 
 knew that his every-day wish and prayer was to over- 
 throw their ancient faith, I should be ashamed to 
 speak of him in any other character than the only 
 one which he cared to fill — the character of a mis- 
 sionary." "A few of the Scottish merchants of 
 India, Singapore, and China offered him £11,000. 
 The capital he destined for the invalided mission- 
 aries of his own Church, and for these it is now ad- 
 ministered by the surviving donors as trustees. On 
 the interest of this sum he thenceforth lived, refusing 
 all the emoluments of the offices he held. The only 
 personal gift which he was constrained to accept was 
 the house, lifo. 22 Lauder Eoad, Edinburgh, which 
 the same friends insisted on purchasing for him," 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT 145 
 
 Duff lived to lead for eleven years the missionary 
 work of the Free Church. He perfected the mission- 
 ary organization of the Church. He believed in 
 work, and the man of sixty went about with the same 
 almost tornado energy of a generation before. He 
 believed in expansion, and his administration saw 
 the establishment of new missions in India and Syria 
 and Africa and led to the mission to the Few Heb- 
 rides in the South Seas. Home administration of 
 missions is not a romantic thing and Dr. Duff did 
 not accomplish anything remarkable. Governments 
 with unlimited financial resources can plan with a 
 free hand, but even the greatest missionary adminis- 
 trators like Duff are obliged to do things patiently 
 and to be content to wait. He dealt with the diffi- 
 cult problems of missionary salaries and decided as 
 all Boards decide. But his work at home was more 
 than a work of missionary administration. He was 
 foremost in the negotiations for the union between 
 the Free and United Presbyterian Churches, which 
 has only been consummated a generation since in our 
 own day. For a second time, he was Moderator of 
 the General Assembly, and in his own land and in 
 England and on the continent, his ripened character 
 and immense powers found opportunity for activity 
 in behalf of the cause which he realized was the one 
 cause above all causes. At the age of seventy-two he 
 went peacefully on from his work here for that cause 
 to the service in its behalf which is untrammelled by 
 the limitations of earth. The whole of Edinburgh 
 shared in his burial. "For the first time in Scottish 
 ecclesiastical history, three Kirks and their Modera- 
 tors, the representatives of the English and American 
 
146 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 and Indian Churclies through their missionary so- 
 cieties and officials, trod the one funeral inarch." 
 And shortly after, Mr. Gladstone, after referring to 
 the great missionary names of the Church of England, 
 Selwyn and Patteson, and then the names of Carey, 
 Marshman and Moffatt, added : 
 
 " But we must recollect Dr. Duff as one who not only 
 stood in the first rank for intelligence, energy, devotion 
 and advancement in the inward and spiritual life among 
 those distinguished and admirable personages, but who 
 likewise so intensely laboured in the cause that he short- 
 ened the career which Providence would in all likelihood 
 have otherwise committed to him, and he has reaped his 
 reward in the world beyond the grave at an earlier date 
 than those whose earthly career is lengthened into a long 
 old age. He is one of the noble army of the confessors 
 of Christ. Let no one envy them the crown which they 
 have earned. Let every man, on the contrary, knowing 
 that they now stand in the presence and in the judgment 
 of Him before Whom we must all appear, rejoice that they 
 have fought a good fight, that they have run their race 
 manfully and nobly, and that they have laboured for the 
 glory of God and the good of man." 
 
 I have to add but a little regarding Duff's mission- 
 ary view and personal character. He is often spoken 
 of as representing the exaltation of education as a 
 missionary method above direct evangelization. But 
 his type of education was evangelization. His teach- 
 ing of secular subjects was interpenetrated and indis- 
 solubly bound by requirement to the fullest religious 
 teaching. He valued his school only as a direct 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT I47 
 
 evaugeliziug activity. He had no conception of 
 secular character. The only character of which he 
 knew was Christian character. Yet he did recognize 
 a distinction between education and itineracy. 
 
 The numerical results of both forms of work he ad- 
 mitted had been small in Bengal. Speaking of 
 Lacroix, he said, "Though he laboured far more and 
 far longer than any other man in the direct preaching 
 of the Gospel to myriads in their own vernacular 
 tongue, and though no foreigner, in this part of India, 
 ever equalled him in his power of arresting and com- 
 manding the attention of a Bengalee-speaking audi- 
 ence, yet the success vouchsafed to his faithful, 
 acceptable and untiring labours in the way of the 
 conversion of souls to God, for which he intensely 
 longed and prayed, was comparatively very small." 
 Tet as he urged upon the General Assembly of 1865 
 both services must be carried on : 
 
 "Our plan never was intended to be — and, in point 
 of fact, never actually was — a narrow, one-sided, 
 fixed, exclusive plan. . . . From the very outset 
 the two kindred and reciprocally auxiliary processes 
 of training the young for varied future usefulness, 
 and addressing the adults, through whatever lingual 
 medium might be found most effective in reaching 
 their understandings and their hearts, were simulta- 
 neously carried on, side by side." 
 
 He was an extreme advocate of centralization in 
 mission work. But he had a good mediating mind, 
 although in the matter of English higher education 
 he defended the extreme view, and doubtless he 
 would state almost as strongly as missionary experi- 
 ence would lead us to state to-day the importance of 
 
148 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 balancing strong central stations with a wide country 
 work, both to save the central stations from stag- 
 nancy and to utilize and conserve the results of their 
 institutional work. 
 
 Duff did not see as clearly as we see— our bitter 
 experience has taught us — the importance of self- 
 support and the spirit of independence in the native 
 Churches. His eyes were towards the Church at 
 home, not towards the native Church as the source of 
 support for native workers. There is a large, legiti- 
 mate and necessary employment of native workers 
 from home funds. But it is calamitous to allow a 
 native Church to grow up in the view that the choice 
 for young men qualified for Christian service must 
 be either secular service or support from mission 
 funds. 
 
 The importance of a native agency Duff saw clearly 
 from the outset. He put it vigorously in his first 
 General Assembly speech in 1835. 
 
 "Oh, there is that in the tones of a foreigner's 
 voice which falls cold and heavy on the ear of a 
 native, and seldom reaches the heart ! — whereas, 
 there is something in the genuine tones of a country- 
 man's voice, which, operating as a charm, falls 
 pleasantly on the ear, and comes home to the feelings 
 and touches the heart, and causes the tenderest cords 
 to vibrate. . . . And having the thousand ad- 
 vantages, besides, of knowing the habits, the man- 
 ners, the customs, the trains of thought and principles 
 of reasoning among the people, they can strike in 
 with arguments, and objections, and illustrations, 
 and imagery which we could never, never have con- 
 ceived. How glorious then must be the day for India 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT 149 
 
 when such qualified native agents are prepared to go 
 forth among the people, and shake and agitate and 
 rouse them from the lethargy and the slumber of 
 ages !" 
 
 The missionaries, however, were hampered by their 
 adherence to home requirements in the case of ordina- 
 tion and in several ways the practical carrying out of 
 useful plans was impeded by stiffness of policy and 
 system. In consequence some of Duff's first converts, 
 who could have been useful assistants, went off into 
 the service of other missions. 
 
 Duff's large-minded views on comity have been 
 already referred to. He was prepared for a yet 
 larger measure of cooperation and advocated joint 
 missionary activities on the part of the Presbyterian 
 Alliance. Such a plan, carried on side by side with 
 the separate missions of the various Churches, would 
 have been diflcult of operation, but it might have 
 given the Alliance an enduring life or made it the 
 central agency in the movement towards Christian 
 union. 
 
 Of Duff's character, what has been said has been 
 sufficiently illustrative — of his modesty and humility, 
 of his energy and power, of his devotion and single- 
 ness of mind, of his solidity of conviction and breadth 
 of influence, of his large comprehension and yet saga- 
 cious directness of accomplishment. To our Ameri- 
 can mind, he dreamed a little too tropically, was a 
 little too serious and universal. We play more with 
 our grave purposes. But he liked no such play. It 
 was "playing with missions" of which he accused 
 the Church and he dealt with life and his work with 
 a solemn conviction of which it were well for us to 
 
I50 ALEXANDER DUFF 
 
 have more, if we would complete the great task at 
 which he wrought with such prodigious power and 
 marked success. " It was the special glory of Alex- 
 ander Daff," said Bishop Cotton, when the great 
 missionary was leaving India for the last time, "that 
 arriving here in the midst of a great intellectual 
 movement of a completely atheistical character, he 
 at once resolved to make that character Christian. 
 "When the new generation of Bengalees and too many, 
 alas, of their European friends and teachers were 
 talking of Christianity as an obsolete superstition, 
 soon to be burned up in the pyre on which the creeds 
 of the Brahman, the Buddhist and the Mohammedan 
 were already perishing, Alexander Duff suddenly 
 burst upon the scene with his unhesitating faith, his 
 indomitable energy, his varied erudition, and his 
 never-failing stream of fervid eloquence, to teach them 
 that the Gospel was not dead or sleeping, not the ally 
 of ignorance and error, not ashamed or unable to 
 vindicate its claims to universal reverence ; but that 
 then, as always, the Gospel of Christ was marching 
 forward in the van of civilization, and that the 
 Church of Christ was still 'the light of the world.' 
 The effect of his fearless stand against the arrogance 
 of infidelity has lasted to this day ; and whether the 
 number he has baptized is small or great (some there 
 are among them whom we all know and honour) it is 
 quite certain that the work which he did in India 
 can never be undone, unless we, whom he leaves be- 
 hind, are faithless to his example." Where are the 
 men of gravity and courage who will do this work 
 in our day? Viceroys come and go in India and 
 new Pharaohs arise at home, but the need, which Alex- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT 151 
 
 ander Duff so nobly met, abides, tlie need of men who 
 can drive the religious sanctions under the institution 
 of government, who can keep the truth of God alive 
 amid the truths which men discover about God's world 
 and who can penetrate the intellectual and social life 
 of their day with the purifying and saving power of 
 the Gospel. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 GEORGE BOWEN, THE CHRISTIAN 
 MYSTIC AND THE ASCETIC IDEAL 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 GEORGE BOWEN, THE CHRISTIAN MYS- 
 TIC AND THE ASCETIC IDEAL 
 
 IF any Christian of modern times is worthy to be 
 set with Eaymond Lnll, it is George Bowen. 
 There have been missionaries who accomplished 
 more than either of these, but there have been few 
 who combined in the same unique way the spirit 
 of absolute self-sacrifice, extraordinary intellectual 
 abilities, unresting energy and a love for the personal 
 Christ as passionate as Peter's and as steadfast as 
 John's, whose faith moreover stood unshaken against 
 discouragement, and rested with confidence upon the 
 certainty of things not seen. It is less of an injustice 
 to these great men that they should be unknown to 
 our generation than it is of loss to us that we should 
 miss the courage and spiritual incentive to be found 
 in their lives ; lives, in Bowen' s case at least and we 
 may believe in Lull's also, as closely resembling the 
 earthly life of Christ as any lives that men saw in 
 their times, as any lives that we see in our time. 
 The centuries remove Lull from our personal ac- 
 quaintance but some are living who knew and loved 
 Bowen, and his influence is still so clear and charac- 
 teristic that many of us who never knew him have 
 yet felt him and in the truest sense touched his soul. 
 
 "George Bowen was born in Middlebury, Vermont, 
 April 30, 1816. His father in after years was a wholesale 
 155 
 
156 GEORGE BO WEN 
 
 merchant, an importer of dry-goods in New York. The 
 father, much attached to his family, was of a literary turn 
 of mind and collected an excellent library, by which his 
 children greatly benefited as they grew up ; but his desire 
 for George was that he should acquire a good business 
 training, succeed him in business and become a successful 
 merchant. 
 
 " At the age of twelve, George was withdrawn from 
 school and taken into his father's counting-house. After 
 that, he never attended either school or college. He read 
 with avidity the books in his father's library. At fourteen, 
 he took lessons on the piano, and when about sixteen years 
 of age a great passion for music took possession of him, 
 and for a dozen years he cared for nothing more than 
 Italian operatic music. During this period, his evenings 
 were spent in the acquisition of French, Italian and Span- 
 ish, in which languages he became quite proficient. 
 
 " About the age of eighteen, he became very much dis- 
 satisfied with the career which his father had appointed for 
 him, chafing under his repugnance to a commercial life 
 and lamenting the meagre educational advantages which 
 he had enjoyed. In October, 1854, he received his 
 father's grudgingly and ungraciously accorded permission 
 to retire from the mercantile life which he had followed 
 for nearly eight years, resolving to devote himself con 
 amore to literary pursuits. 
 
 "It was a short time before abandoning forever a mer- 
 cantile career that he became a sceptic, or, as he pre- 
 fers to call himself, a disbeliever. An enthusiastic admirer 
 of Gibbon, charmed with the dignity and suggestiveness of 
 the great historian's style, he easily persuaded himself that 
 Christianity was destitute of all well-founded claims to be 
 regarded as a divine system. In the course of a year or 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 157 
 
 two, he read the works of Volney, Voltaire, Shelley, Hume, 
 Bayle, and others of kindred minds, the result being that 
 he settled down into a calm and confident acceptance of 
 an especially cold type of Deism." ' 
 
 We have in Bo wen's reminiscences an account 
 from his own hand of these sceptical days. " There 
 was a young man," he writes, " very fond of reading, 
 who at the age of seventeen was led to doubt the 
 truth of Christianity by that chapter of Gibbon in 
 which he attempts to account for the spread of the 
 Christian religion in the world. He was acquainted 
 with several modern languages, and read in these the 
 principal works in which Christianity is assailed, — 
 Volney, Voltaire, Diderot, and a number of others. 
 He soon persuaded himself that Christianity was not 
 a revelation from God, that there was no revelation, 
 that there might be a God and probably was, but 
 there was no life to come, and there could not be a 
 more futile employment than prayer. His mind was 
 made up on the subject, remained absolutely un- 
 shaken and unwavering in unbelief for eleven years. 
 He occupied himself with literature all these years, 
 and naturally read a great deal that tallied with his 
 views ; whatever did not, made no impression upon 
 him, and he only wondered how people could be so 
 simple as to believe things so preposterous and base- 
 less. With a single exception, no one ever addressed 
 him on the subject of personal religion, it being 
 thought by those who knew him that the fixity of his 
 views was such as to make the task hopeless. To a 
 friend who once addressed him on the subject of re- 
 ' "In Memoriam, George Bowen, " pp. 11-14. 
 
158 GEORGE BOWEN 
 
 ligion, he replied by a letter the character of -which 
 may be gathered from the quotation which he placed 
 at the head of it, ' Thinkst thon that because thou art 
 virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale ? Ay, 
 by St. Anthony and ginger shall be hot in the mouth 
 too.' At a later period, Strauss came in his way, 
 and what surprised him was that the German should 
 take such prodigious pains to disprove that, the falsity 
 of which lay, as it seemed to him, on the very sur- 
 face." 1 
 
 "In the summer of 1836, George, accompanied by the 
 other members of his father's family, went to Europe, the 
 period immediately preceding having been marked by 
 sundry manifestations of his liberty-loving and enthusiastic 
 spirit. . . . Several years of wide-spread travel in 
 Europe, including a year or so of fast life in Paris, fol- 
 lowed. His journal contains extensive notices of the 
 places of interest visited. They are most attractive read- 
 ing, fascinating at times in their exquisite depictive power. 
 Freely interlarded we find reflections and philosophizings 
 of a most audacious, irreverent and ofttimes blasphemous 
 character. Here is a characteristic extract from his diary 
 of April 16, 1837: ' Saw the sea at Terracina and ru- 
 minated on the beach, cigar in mouth, over the vicissitudes 
 of human events and the nothingness and nonsense of my 
 own existence. It is a great boon that God should have 
 taken into His head to put this spirit, soul, essence of 
 mine into a human body and make a creature of me,' and 
 more in the same strain. A deep, overflowing pessimistic 
 current flows through all his writings of those unhappy 
 years of alienation from God. ' My destiny ' ! he says, 
 '■ " Daily Meditations," Preface, pp. v., vi. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 159 
 
 ' inglorious and mean ; a bubble that breaks from the flood 
 in the night-time, no sun nor moon to paint it with gay 
 hues.' About fifty pages of his journals of these years of 
 European travel are covered with notes of books, mostly 
 German and French. ... He states that he read 
 eighty German volumes in six months of 1838, some of 
 which he translated into blank verse as well as prose. 
 
 " In 1839, we find the subject of our narrative in Upper 
 Egypt, greatly delighted with all that he there saw, with 
 eyes ever open for the beautiful, the ancient and the humor- 
 ous. Later in the same year, he passed over to Palestine, 
 where he spent the months of August and September, and 
 after visiting Turkey, Greece and Italy, we find him once 
 more in Paris at the end of the year. The early part of 
 1840 welcomes him back to New York, whither his rela- 
 tives had preceded him. . . . 
 
 "In a few months, we find him commencing and 
 abandoning the study of law because of difficulties and 
 disinclination, and finally beginning the composition of a 
 work of fiction, the scene of which was Rome, the epoch 
 the early part of the sixteenth century, and the principal 
 personse the distinguished artists and literati of that day. 
 After returning to America, he continued to be an om- 
 nivorous reader. ... At this time, he became enam- 
 oured of the pantheism of Spinoza and Goethe, chiefly on 
 the ground that it shifted all the corruption of humanity 
 over upon God, naturing and natured. His poetic genius 
 found generous vent at this time also. The effusions, 
 mostly in blank verse and covering a wider range of sub- 
 jects, reveal a high order of imagination and a deep philo- 
 sophic insight into the nature of things. In 1842 Mr. 
 Bowen read no fewer than 150 large volumes, on 105 of 
 which he made extensive notes ! 
 
l6o GEORGE BOWEN 
 
 " It was in this year also, that Bowen made the ac- 
 quaintance of a lady who was destined to exercise a greater 
 influence upon him than any other living person. Beauti- 
 ful in person and endowed with rare charms of mind and 
 manner, his whole life was bound up in her. In his journal 
 for July, 1843, he speaks of four days of incomparable en- 
 joyment spent in her company, ' les plus beau jours de ma 
 vie,' and indulges in many daily flights of what he terms 
 'rhapsody and idolatry.' In December of the same year, 
 she was smitten with what proved to be a fatal sickness, 
 and he was overwhelmed with grief. . . ." ' 
 
 Bowen' a fiancee died on the morning of January 
 26, 1844, forty -four years almost to a day before his 
 own death in Bombay. He wrote in his diary, ' ' There 
 remains nothing now but the constant, perennial, 
 hourly necessity of such preparation as shall ensure 
 the earliest meeting in that exalted sphere to which 
 she has gone." On February 4th, he records that he 
 received her dying gift, a copy of the Bible, "with 
 words of benediction on the clasp and an injunction 
 from her to read it daily and also to attend the house 
 of God." He obeyed this injunction out of simple 
 devotion to her but before long the great transforma- 
 tion came to him. It will be best to let him tell the 
 whole story in his own words : 
 
 " After eleven years of profoundest infidelity [he says 
 of himself] he had his attention drawn to the career of 
 the apostles, and to the evidence afforded by the extra- 
 ordinary labours, sufferings, successes of these twelve 
 men, that Jesus of Nazareth had already risen from the 
 ' "In Memoriam, George Bowen," pp. 14-19. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC l6l 
 
 dead and ascended up on high. His attention had, how- 
 ever, been previously drawn to a remarkable fact which 
 seemed to show that the same Jesus Who was crucified 
 many centuries ago had power to accomplish things upon 
 the earth at this day which no mere man could accomplish. 
 "There was a young lady dying of consumption in a 
 certain city. She was surrounded by all that could make 
 life attractive, and it seemed, especially to the one who 
 was much bound up in her, one of the saddest conceivable 
 things that she should go down to a premature grave. She 
 herself would have gladly lived ; there was a hope in life 
 that death could not offer. There was in the same city, a 
 lady in whose school she had been a pupil ; this lady inci- 
 dentally heard that her former pupil was dying and not 
 prepared to die. She went to see her but was not allowed 
 access to the invalid ; she would not, however, be denied 
 but persisted and almost forced her way to the sick cham- 
 ber. The Lord blessed her ministrations, and she was 
 enabled to show the patient her need of the Saviour and to 
 lead her to Christ. Then was all fear of death removed ; 
 the desire to live left her ; the hopes that seemed to irradiate 
 this life shifted to the life to come, but elevated and enriched 
 a thousandfold ; a sweet peace possessed her soul, and she 
 died rejoicing in the assured conviction that she was going 
 to be with Christ. Whatever grace and beauty seemed to 
 belong to her in health were eclipsed by the spiritual grace 
 and loveliness that invested her last hours as with a halo. 
 There was one who would have given all his interest in life 
 to impart the least alleviation to her pain, to have dimin- 
 ished in the least the sting of death ; but he was made 
 most painfully conscious that this was utterly beyond his 
 power to accomplish. Now the fact that arrested his at- 
 tention was that Jesus of Nazareth Who had been so long 
 
1 62 GEORGE BOWEN 
 
 disregarded and scorned by him should come to the dying 
 one and give her peace and sweet content and joy in the 
 assurance of a blissful immortality; here was something 
 marvellous and inexplicable. He was bewildered. The 
 effect wrought corresponded only with that which only the 
 sublimest truth, in connection with a present divine power, 
 could accomplish; it was the removal of the sting from 
 death, the bringing of life and immortality to light, the 
 opening of a door into a glorious and holy heaven ; and 
 all this heightened by contrast with his own utter im- 
 potency and total penury of help. . . . 
 
 " A Bible, bequeathed to him with a dying request that 
 he would read it, he received with thankfulness and pro- 
 ceeded to obey the injunction. He read it and found 
 much to admire in it ; valued it for the comfort it had 
 bestowed upon another; but he never for a moment 
 doubted that he was right in his views regarding it, or 
 suspected that it was really a revelation from God. One 
 night, just before retiring — this was in March, 1844 — he 
 said aloud in his room, ' If there is a God that notices the 
 desire of men, I only wish that He would make known to 
 me His will, and I shall feel it my highest privilege to do 
 it at whatever cost.' He had been brought to see that 
 there was nothing more desirable than for a man to be 
 conformed to the will of an All-wise Creator, and also to 
 feel that there must be some divine guidance in order that 
 he might know that will. But immediately after that 
 ejaculation, the thought arose, ' How foolish to suppose 
 that God will occupy Himself with our desires ! ' How- 
 ever, the sequel showed that God was pleased to hear that 
 bewildered cry, — that could scarcely be called a prayer. 
 Two or three days afterwards he went to a public library 
 from which he was accustomed to take out books, asked for 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 1 63 
 
 a book, received one, put it under his arm and returned 
 home. The distance was about two miles. When nearly 
 home, he looked at the book and found to his surprise that 
 it was Paley's ' Evidences,' a very different book from the 
 one he had asked for. He could not go back to the library 
 that day, and had to keep the book until he had an oppor- 
 tunity of returning it. He would not read it. He knew all 
 about the evidences of Christianity. He had long ago finally 
 settled that question. Before putting it away, however, he 
 glanced at the first sentence and was arrested by it : 'I deem 
 it unnecessary to prove that mankind stood in need of a 
 revelation, because I have met with no serious person who 
 thinks that even under the Christian revelation we have 
 too much light or any degree of assurance that is super- 
 fluous. Let it be remembered, too, that the question lies 
 betwixt this religion and none, for if the Christian religion 
 be not credible, no one with whom we have to do will 
 support the pretensions of any other.' He read one page 
 and another and another, was pleased with the style and 
 candor of the writer, and at last sat down and read a good 
 portion of the book. To his surprise he found that he 
 was beginning to take a new view of the evidences, and 
 then shut up the book and put it aside, afraid of being 
 surprised into any change of belief. He went away for 
 a few days into the country, and on his return resolved to 
 read the book carefully and calmly, and see if there was 
 really any reason to believe the Bible to be from God. 
 When about half-way through the book he offered the 
 prayer ' Help Thou mine unbelief.' When he had reached 
 the last sentence, his doubts were all removed ; he was 
 perfectly convinced of the truth of the Scriptures. He 
 turned to Gibbon and read again the chapter which had 
 first led him astray and saw its sophistries and the weak- 
 
164 GEORGE BOWEN 
 
 ness of its arguments most clearly. The Bible was now 
 God's book, but he did not believe that it contained the 
 doctrine that men pretended to find in it ; he would read 
 it for himself, and by himself, and see what it really 
 taught. But he had had a great lesson and felt that 
 humility best became him ; he would read it in an humble 
 spirit and whatever he found there, he would receive, no 
 matter how repugnant it would be to his own ideas. 
 Day after day, alone in his room, communicating to none 
 the change he had experienced, he read it and by degrees 
 found there the very doctrine that he had so much dis- 
 liked. He found that he was a sinner, that he needed a 
 Saviour; that a Saviour was offered him. He took this 
 Saviour, yielding himself to His entire direction. He was 
 led on publicly to confess his faith in Christ, and after 
 some years he became a missionary in India." 
 
 It was within three or four weeks of his conversion 
 that Bowen fully resolved to be a foreign missionary. 
 He became an attendant at the Mercer Street Presby- 
 terian Church, of which Dr. Skinner was pastor. 
 He was not a man who delayed duty and he went on 
 at once to public baptism on profession of faith, on 
 June 9, 1844. There are great diversities among men 
 in this regard of promptitude of character. Some 
 suppose that there is virtue and especial assurance 
 of divine guidance in delinquency. A man who has 
 been moving upon one course of action preparing for 
 the practice of law or contemplating some Christian 
 service in America, regards his pursuance of this 
 course as supplying so powerful a presumption in its 
 favour that he cannot bring himself to make a change 
 without long delay. In the colleges and seminaries, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 1 65 
 
 one often hears warnings against the dangers of hasty- 
 decisions in the matter of missionary purpose ; as a 
 matter of fact the contrary danger is ten times 
 greater. After all, a decision is made in an instant. 
 It may have taken weeks or years to come up to it 
 and the consequences are eternal, but the decision 
 itself was instantaneous. Bowen was no delinquent. 
 When he saw, he did. Will instantly caught up the 
 movements of conscience and moral judgment and 
 solidified them in action. His later life in this re- 
 gard resembled the beginning. He promptly obeyed 
 every gleam of new and as it seemed to him larger 
 duty. 
 
 When he had formed his missionary purpose, 
 Bowen spoke to Dr. Skinner and others about it. 
 He had supposed at first that " there would be noth- 
 ing to hinder him from going at once just as he was, 
 with his Bible under his arm." He was advised 
 however to go to the Union Theological Seminary 
 and accepted the advice. He had had no college 
 course, so he studied Greek at once alone, and began 
 without delay active Christian work. He led a Sun- 
 day-school class, and ' ' worked a district as tract 
 distributor and earnestly sought to equip himself for 
 his life-work under the guidance of the Holy Spirit 
 and judiciously advised by kind friends." It is 
 worth while to observe George Bowen' s readiness to 
 receive help from others. All his life, he was a 
 man of positive opinions, who saw his duty for him- 
 self and did it, but he was a man amenable to reason, 
 who checked his own disposition by revelation of 
 duty through others. 
 
 About the time of his entering the seminary, he 
 
l66 GEORGE BOWEN 
 
 broke off the habit of smoking, without solicitation 
 or suggestion from any one. The habit had become 
 very firm and enthralling and he simply resolved to 
 throw it off. He succeeded in delivering himself by 
 using for a time, by set purpose, the cheapest and 
 worst tobacco. With tobacco Bowen stopped pro- 
 fanity and cut off absolutely all use of intoxicants, 
 "believing that the spirit of the Kew Testament 
 favoured total abstinence." 
 
 He was constantly drawing his life up to the 
 highest. That purpose will settle a hundred little 
 questions of habit and practical living for men. 
 Men who are of mediocre spiritual ambition can find 
 adequate reasons for petty squalor of personal habit 
 and can live with their moral self-approval on a 
 plane that would be impossible to them if they asked 
 not, "Must I give this up?" but "May I not free 
 myself from this also and enter into a larger 
 liberty?" 
 
 During his seminary course, Bowen was constantly 
 at work. He did not postpone missionary service 
 because his present sphere was not as large as the 
 sphere he contemplated. He realized that the only 
 possible preparation for many kinds of work is to do 
 them, and to be a winner of souls in India ten years 
 in the future he knew that he must be a winner of 
 souls where he was. There is no spiritual alchemy 
 in a sea voyage that will make a missionary out of a 
 man who is not already one before he goes. During 
 his summers, Bowen worked with his friend and 
 fellow student Mr. Ford, afterwards a missionary in 
 Syria, in Pike County, Pennsylvania, visiting the 
 farmers, offering books in behalf of the Bible and 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 167 
 
 Tract Societies, talking about Christ and praying 
 from house to house as there was opportunity. In 
 the seminary also, he was a Christian of the sincerest 
 type. He did not coquet with the world. He lived 
 his religion. Young men in theological seminaries 
 speak of the difficulty of maintaining warm spiritual 
 life in the atmosphere of the seminary, and there 
 have been students in such seminaries who seemed 
 to regard the deeper religious duty as irksome and 
 who evidently were postponing for a time the full 
 practice of the Christian life. Men and institutions 
 vary and one generation is worse or better than its 
 predecessor, but there is room enough still in all our 
 seminaries for men who will live as Bowen lived. 
 He was not the type of theological student that he 
 was through the calculation that he must be that 
 type if he would later exert the largest positive 
 spiritual influence, but later he was the profound 
 spiritual power that he was in India and throughout 
 the world because of that character in him which had 
 expressed itself in sincere and earnest Christian liv- 
 ing and working in the seminary. Men do what 
 they do because they are what they are. Absolute 
 freedom of the will is an untrue doctrine. We see 
 around us every day its refutation in the determinism 
 of character which we find whenever we will look in 
 ourselves and in all men. And there is no greater 
 folly than to suppose that men can prepare them- 
 selves flippantly for life and not enter life in con- 
 sequence with flippant characters, destitute of the 
 power of lofty sacrifice or spiritual sensibilities like 
 George Bowen' s. "While at the theological semi- 
 nary," says the Eev. J. E. Eobinson, "he was in 
 
1 68 GEORGE BO WEN 
 
 the truest sense a missionary, ever seeking the con- 
 version of souls in the outside world, as opportunity- 
 served, and also helping many a fellow student into 
 the full enjoyment of the gospel salvation. He was 
 the leading spirit in the prayer and experience meet- 
 ings among the students, in all things and at all times 
 seeking first the kingdom of God, while at the same 
 time a diligent and conscientious student." 
 
 In the seminary those deeper experiences of the 
 Christian life began with Bowen which were to issue 
 in the singularly powerful spiritual character of the 
 future. The 4th of December, 1845, is noted in his 
 journal as the beginning of a new era in his life and 
 spiritual experience. Of this he writes in the third 
 person. 
 
 " Nothing in heaven and earth astonished him more 
 than the discovery made on that day that Jesus was his 
 sanctification, and that all he had to do was to abide in 
 Him as the branch in the vine, and the goodness of Christ 
 would sway him moment by moment, and it would always 
 be Christ's goodness and not his own, for there is none 
 good save one, that is God. . . . When the discovery 
 was made, he was filled with wonder, love and praise, but 
 also with a sense of the need of perpetual vigilance, lest at 
 any time he should forget his absolute dependence on 
 Christ. He felt that he must watch against everything 
 which could in any way weaken his sense of dependence. 
 He felt that he was under law to Christ in eating, drinking, 
 sleeping, study and conversation ; that he must habitually 
 stand ready to cut off a right hand, to secure the continued 
 realization of Christ's love. All self-denial now became 
 easy ; the sense of God's love filled him with joy unspeak- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 169 
 
 able, and he valued nothing more than the opportunity of 
 expressing his own love in return." 
 
 On April 19, 1847, he preached for the first time in 
 the pulpit and he preached three times. He ' ' was sus- 
 tained," he writes, " but was disappointed in the re- 
 sults . . . yet favoured in one respect — freedom 
 from reflex acts." Throughout there was in him 
 a rich combination of deep introspection and of 
 calm faith in the objective facts of salvation in 
 Christ. 
 
 Having been duly accepted and appointed by the 
 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- 
 sions, Mr. Bowen left ISew York for Boston, July 27, 
 1847, and embarked from the latter port on an ice- 
 ship four days later, Mr. and Mrs. "Wood his only 
 fellow passengers, being, like himself, bound for 
 Bombay. At once he began to work among the crew, 
 earnestly seeking to lead them individually to Christ. 
 He also began the study of Marathi. These days on 
 shipboard were days of prayer and heart-searching 
 and growth in grace. God was girding him for his 
 forty years' service in Bombay. His faith was grow- 
 ing exceedingly as he learned Christ. He read many 
 works of religious biography and history during the 
 voyage. In his journal for December is a remark 
 which may be regarded as the key to his whole life. 
 "It appears to me now," he writes, "that the high- 
 est style of Christian in God's sight is one who lives 
 in the wise exercise of all his powers, sparing him- 
 self not at all, doing all to produce great and imme- 
 diate results, yet esteeming that in God's favour is 
 his life repining not, when there is no appearance of 
 
lyo GEORGE BOWEN 
 
 fruit, and -willing to be thought unprofitable by the 
 Church." 
 
 Bombay was reached January 19, 1848, after a 
 voyage of 172 days. 
 
 Bowen at once took up the language, employing 
 two pundits, each of whom gave him an hour and a 
 half daily. The spirit of the man is shown in a 
 sentence or two from his letter of March 31, 1848, to 
 his friend, the Eev. William Aikman. 
 
 "I was thinking this morning that here thirty-two 
 years of my life had rolled away, and I had not yet begun 
 to live. That is, to work — for to work is to live. All my 
 past life has been a long and strangely circuitous avenue 
 to my present position, a wandering maze whose issue 
 God alone discerned. Only to think of it, thirty-two solid 
 years cast away, and who knows whether my allotted time 
 is not comprehended in them. Surely if any individual 
 should resolve to do with might what his hand findeth to 
 do, that purpose should be mine. But after all it is not 
 time that we want so much. If the choice were now 
 offered me to live twenty-five years with my present meas- 
 ure of grace, or to live six months with that measure of 
 the Spirit's influence which I sometimes crave from God, I 
 would certainly choose the last. Yes, I believe that three 
 days with the baptism of the Holy Ghost will be of more 
 value to this unhappy world than the longest life of medi- 
 ocre piety." 
 
 Prom the beginning, Bowen' s remarkable journals 
 are full of reflections on all questions of missionary 
 policy, especially one of great interest in which Bowen 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 17I 
 
 ■was tlie forerunner of many later earnest missionariea 
 ■who felt the constraint of the same spirit. " Prom 
 the very first," he -writes of himself, "the idea of a 
 very simple style of living, approximating that of 
 the natives, was before his mind, and he freely ex- 
 pressed his conviction that one -way in which the 
 gulf between the natives and Christian missionaries 
 might be bridged was by the latter ceasing to occupy 
 in worldly respects a superior position to the former. 
 His conviction was deepened by the perusal of Ed- 
 ward Irving' s famous missionary sermon, preached 
 before the London Missionary Society some time 
 previously." 
 
 At the outset of his missionary life, however, two 
 temptations came to him to leave the work, before he 
 had opportunity to develop his theory about the 
 manner of a missionary's life. One temptation 
 sprang from the sense of duty to his mother and sis- 
 ters at home left unprovided for by the death of his 
 father, who with his two sisters had become believers 
 the same year with himself. Many men in Bo wen's 
 position would have seen in this providence a war- 
 rant for return to America, and some doubtless 
 justly ; but there are many to whom such temptations 
 come merely as trials of faith and new discipline into 
 robustness of character. Bowen felt this news to be 
 just such a temptation to him and trusting God to 
 solve the problem of the family's support, he re- 
 mained in India, saving, however, about twenty dol- 
 lars per month out of his salary to aid his mother 
 and sisters. I believe myself, not that too much is 
 made of family ties, — that would be impossible — but 
 that they are allowed too much to hamper Christian 
 
172 GEORGE BOWEN 
 
 work and that many men and women plead as an 
 evidence of exemption from missionary work claims 
 that in God's sight and the light of such high moral 
 principle as raled Bowen's life are not valid claims 
 at all. 
 
 The other temptation sprang from the condition of 
 his health. In August, 1848, he " was prostrated by 
 an affection of the liver and of the windpipe. He 
 declined very rapidly, insomuch that he was given 
 over to die by his physicians and all who saw him. 
 He himself even wrote home announcing his ap- 
 proaching death. A few days after doing so, he 
 began to mend, and his physicians urgently advised 
 that he leave the country immediately. This, how- 
 ever, he refused to do, hoping that the Lord would 
 eventually fully and permanently restore him. The 
 Lord saw fit to order it so, and the one who was de- 
 clared by able physicians, under their hands and 
 seals, to be absolutely unequal to further residence 
 and labour in India, lived and laboured with inde- 
 fatigable energy for forty years, without lengthy sea 
 voyage, furlough, residence in the hills, change of 
 climate, or other means generally considered indis- 
 pensable to prolonged stay in the tropics." The 
 various means employed for the maintenance of 
 physical health and spiritual tone in mission fields 
 such as those just mentioned are wise and necessary, 
 but they can be both under and overused, and it is a 
 good thing often to turn back to the lives of men 
 like Bowen and Judson and see how vigorously inde- 
 pendent these men were of them, and how with them 
 the work was supremely first, and puny questions of a 
 few months' extra furlough, or this or that other small 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 173 
 
 comfort, beneath their world. Bowen was right and 
 wise too, in refusing to leave lightly the work for 
 which he had been sent out, even with a physician's 
 certificate advising his return. When missionaries 
 once reach their fields, at great expense to the home 
 Church and presumably under the guidance of God, 
 no light reason should bring them home. Often there 
 must be physical readjustment, but as an old mis- 
 sionary lady in China once said to me, " Let the new 
 missionaries go slowly. They may not be as well 
 here as at home, but if they can live here at all, let 
 them stay. They will get broken in if they have pa- 
 tience and courage." Bo wen refused to leave the 
 field and he lived and worked in India for forty 
 years. 
 
 Eemaining in India, he took up the two questions 
 of the mode of life of the missionary and his spiritual 
 example and influence. He wrote in his journal, " I 
 want to have Christ walking about the streets of 
 Bombay as He did about those of Jerusalem and liv- 
 ing among this people as He did among the Jews. 
 He was emphatically the friend of the people. They 
 were His family, His home. ... I want to have 
 Jesus the Missionary in my mind's eye continually. 
 It will be a blessed day when I feel at home in these 
 streets and can linger in them without any desire 
 save to continue preaching the Word. . . ," 
 
 "It was strongly borne in upon his soul," says 
 Bishop Eobinson, "that it was his duty and privilege 
 to authenticate his divine commission to the ignorant 
 people among whom he toiled with so little success 
 by 'signs following. ' The references in his j ournal are 
 scanty and somewhat vague, but it seems that after 
 
174 GEORGE BOWEN 
 
 days and nights of prayer and study of the Word, he 
 on one occasion essayed the healing of a sick or dis- 
 abled person by a command of faith and was signally 
 unsuccessful. He was greatly humbled and con- 
 founded, but God held him in the hollow of His 
 hand, and he suffered no eclipse of faith. He never, 
 however, abandoned the conviction that the miracle- 
 working power was recoverable by the Church and 
 ought to be an adjunct for missionary labours among 
 idolatrous peoples ; but we do not find any further 
 attempts on his part to manifest or exert this power, 
 though he appears to have sought it with prayer and 
 fasting and many tears." 
 
 The practical measure which he soon came to be- 
 lieve it his duty to adopt was the surrender of his 
 salary and the attempt to live among the natives in 
 a style of simplicity and renunciation of earthly com- 
 forts to indicate the utter unworldliness of the mo- 
 tives of the missionary and the disinterestedness of 
 his aims. In January, 1849, after having been in the 
 country one year, he wrote a letter to the missionaries 
 throughout India, urging his views. It would doubt- 
 less be regarded as more presumptuous now in a mis- 
 sionary yearling to do this than it was then. The 
 body of missionary practice and precedent has grown 
 and solidified greatly in these years, but Bowen's 
 course was rash enough. His own actions, how- 
 ever, were not to be determined by what others did. 
 As he writes: "By the grace of God! I will put 
 myself in a position where all men shall see that I 
 am the disinterested servant of Christ. By the help 
 of God, I will honour the Gospel and conform myself 
 to it with all strictness." 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 1 75 
 
 In accordance with this purpose, Mr. Bowen, on 
 February 13, 1849, resigned his missionary's salary, 
 amounting then to ninety rupees per month, left the 
 mission house, and took up his abode in a little room 
 of an old pensioner's mud- walled house near Waree 
 Bunder, under HJTowrojee Hill, in the midst of a com- 
 munity composed entirely of Portuguese and natives. 
 The house has long since been swept away and the 
 whole neighbourhood altered. His journal of this 
 date has the following: "At length, thanks be to 
 God, I am in that situation which I have so long de- 
 sired to be in. The Lord did not more truly guide 
 me to India than He has guided me to this humble 
 spot. "Were the Apostle Paul in Bombay, I should 
 be far more content in receiving him where I now 
 am than where I have hitherto been. . . . On 
 opening my Bible the first text that met my eye was, 
 ' 'Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he 
 by his wisdom delivered the city.' " 
 
 In his later reminiscences, he refers quietly to this 
 self-denial, again speaking in the third person : 
 " After spending about a year in India, he was led 
 to believe that his influence would be greater if he 
 were not in the receipt of a salary from a missionary 
 society, and since January, 1849, he has received no 
 salary from any quarter. For some years he earned 
 his livelihood by giving an hour daily to private 
 tuition ; for a still longer period, he has trusted to 
 the Lord to supply his need, without such occupa- 
 tion. It is unnecessary to say that he has enough 
 and to spare." This work of private tuition lasted 
 for twelve years. Thereafter, he depended as he 
 says upon the Lord, the earnings of his editorship of 
 
176 GEORGE BOWEN 
 
 the Bombay Guardian probably not relieving tbe 
 Lord greatly ! 
 
 But what a curiously un-Christian conception this 
 is ! It was the Lord supporting Bowen through the 
 American Board as truly as through small charities 
 in Bombay. The fact that the sparrow goes out and 
 gathers his food does not in the least alter the fact 
 that it is the Lord Who feeds the sparrows. "What 
 Paul earned from the sale of his tents, it was the 
 Lord Who gave him. The use of means and effort on 
 the part of believers does not diminish at all the 
 reality or the immediacy of the Lord's influence and 
 active present care. George Bowen depended no 
 more on the Lord than Bishop Thoburn, or Dr. D. L. 
 Anderson of Soochow depended on Him. Bowen 
 may have felt that he was more directly dependent 
 upon God, but many other men may have as great a 
 feeling of dependence who yet see the Lord's hand 
 giving them what comes through the missionary 
 agency with which they are connected. Doubtless, 
 many do not depend upon the Lord who use means 
 and organization ; but the use of means and organi- 
 zation is not responsible for their want of dependence. 
 That is their inner spiritual deficiency. Dependence 
 upon the Lord makes some means unjustifiable, but 
 not the use of means. The missionary organization 
 which most emphasizes the thought of direct depend- 
 ence upon God and which shows forth the beauty 
 and sufficiency of such dependence is probably the 
 most diligent society in the world in making known 
 its work, publishing books about its history, and 
 setting forth the vast needs of the field which it is 
 endeavouring to reach. Instead of doing wrong in 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 1 77 
 
 this, it is pursuing tlie moat Christian course possible. 
 It does not believe that depending upon God requires 
 cessation of effort or disuse of means. 
 
 In Bo wen' 8 case, doubtless the surrender of all 
 regular support did help to strengthen the sense of 
 immediate dependence upon God, although it did not 
 increase at all his real dependence. He hoped also 
 that it would greatly increase his missionary influence. 
 In later years, he often confessed that he was greatly 
 disappointed as to the effect which he had expected 
 would be produced upon the natives by his course. 
 And as a general rule of missionary conduct. Bo wen's 
 plan is not practicable. "Living as the natives" is 
 not a clear proposal. "Which of the natives? In 
 mission fields iu Asia and South America, there are 
 all sorts and grades of natives. As to naked Africans, 
 the rule is obviously impossible. But as to India, it 
 is equally so, if by native is meant the poorest class. 
 The physical constitution of the Western man cannot 
 live on that level. Centuries of heredity lie back 
 of the Indian villager who lives with his family on 
 two or three dollars a month, and whose household 
 furniture and wearing apparel could be purchased 
 for five dollars. " Living on the level of the native 
 is not a matter of consecration," as one missionary 
 put it; "it is a matter of stomach," and it simply 
 cannot be done. At the other extreme, of course, 
 there are Hindus and Mohammedans in India who 
 live as princes. It is true that the missionary lives 
 far above the level of the class of natives with which 
 he associates, but that is a simple physical necessity. 
 
 Furthermore, as a rule, the effect of trying to live 
 on the level of the poorest of the Indian fakirs or 
 
1 78 GEORGE BOWEN 
 
 holy men is not what the theory assumes. Bowen, 
 who never got down to that level, admitted this. It 
 is not manner of living that wins or repels in Bombay 
 or in Nashville. It is the spirit of heart and life 
 represented in the manner of living, and Hunter 
 Corbett, living simply but as the requirements of 
 health and efficiency necessitate, draws nearer to 
 his Chinese and has won more of them to Christ than 
 Bowen did in Bombay among his Hindus and 
 Parsees. 
 
 "Living like the natives" is a much used phrase 
 among missionary critics and independent mission- 
 aries. There is a good deal of unreal fetichism about 
 it. The germ of truth which it contains is the truth 
 at the bottom of the whole missionary enterprise, the 
 truth of the Incarnation itself. To reach people, we 
 must go to them, love them, win their love, draw as 
 close to them as we can. To do this, simplicity, 
 frugality and perfect sincerity of life will be necessary. 
 That is all. And this is a lesson for us as well as for 
 the missionary. For the question of moral and 
 economic principle involved is the same here as there. 
 In America as truly as in India the doubt must often 
 come to men as to whether they should not literally 
 forsake all and follow Christ, give away their prop- 
 erty, lay up no money, adopt the practice of St. 
 Francis of Assisi and go out absolutely free, without 
 a burden or a tie, save the love of Christ. The in- 
 equalities in the distribution of wealth are so glaring 
 and so terribly unfair. The economic system is so 
 obviously unsatisfactory. The multitudes of the 
 needy are separated so widely from the affluent and 
 the luxurious. Even among the merely well-to-do 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 179 
 
 the scale of living is so overwrought and the com- 
 plexity of life so confusing. Why not cut loose from 
 it all by the one decisive surrender of asceticism 1 
 " Let us do it," said Tolstoy. Well, we cannot, for 
 a score of reasons. We have our children. We have 
 no right to exact of them the toll for our spiritual 
 and economic vagrancy. We are in an order and we 
 must redeem the order and not run away from it. 
 We have a whole world of nature and of men to save 
 and we may not go off alone to save our own souls. 
 The solution of asceticism is too selfish, too irrespon- 
 sible. But if we reject this ideal, we can do so only 
 by the more earnestly accepting the law of service 
 which sees in all that we have, not a personal pos- 
 session, but a means of human ministry and a trust 
 to be administered for Christ and for men. 
 
 Bo wen's renewed consecration of his life and his 
 effort to lay himself completely upon the divine care 
 was followed by days of anxious inquiry and earnest 
 desire for unequivocal manifestations of the power 
 of God to accompany his preaching of the Gospel to 
 the nations. "He spent hours of the nights in 
 prayer, fasted for long periods — in one instance for 
 a fortnight — and in response to a profound impres- 
 sion, made upon his mind in meditation on the char- 
 acter of Christ, he gave away every penny he had in 
 the world. The 20th of March of this year, 1849, 
 proved another important era in his spiritual life. 
 He writes of it as the greatest day in his whole life. 
 ' I entered,' he says, ' upon a religious experience far 
 higher than any before attained to. Its character- 
 istic is self-annihilation and a wonderful revelation 
 of God in the place of myself.' The immanence of 
 
l8o GEORGE BO WEN 
 
 God in his natural creation, the absolute dependence 
 of the creature upon God, the power, wisdom and 
 goodness of God as exhibited in the works of His 
 hands, were unfolded to his mind in a manner that 
 filled him with unutterable joy, peace and love." 
 
 In the spirit of this new experience, deepening year 
 by year, Boweu carried on his work in Bombay. In 
 1851, the Bombay Guardian was established with 
 Bowen as an associate editor. After three years, he 
 undertook whole charge. The paper was discon- 
 tinued for a time, but later was revived and his sin- 
 gular abilities made it a paper of great power, his con- 
 nection with it continuing through the rest of his life. 
 
 His literary work included much more than the 
 Guardian though that was enough. My friend, Mr. 
 Henry W. Eankin, in sending me a valuable set of 
 the bound volumes of the Guardian for the last ten 
 years of Bowen' s life, wrote of them, ' ' They not only 
 contain the reminiscences (of Bowen' s early life which 
 he wrote under the pseudonym of Homunculus in the 
 third person) but his invaluable editorials on an im- 
 mense range of subjects, political, philosophical, 
 ecclesiastical, discovery, the ethnic religions, the 
 Brahmo Samaj, and all other experiments of eclectic 
 religion in India. The papers contain," added Mr. 
 Bankin, "a consecutive commentary on all of John's 
 Gospel and all of Eevelation. They are crowded with 
 the richest ore of gold and seamed with beds of dia- 
 monds." 
 
 How rich Bowen' s comments on Scripture were, all 
 know who have read his three best known books, 
 "Love Eevealed," "The Amens of Christ," and 
 ' ' Daily Meditations. ' ' Many books of devotion have 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC l8l 
 
 blessed the Church, but few have blessed more hearts 
 or helped them more deeply than these sincere, noble- 
 minded outpourings of Bowen's experience of the 
 love and life of the loving and living Christ. 
 
 Beside his literary work and doubtless transcend- 
 ing it in importance, in Bowen's view, he was con- 
 stantly preaching. In 1854, he wrote to Dr. Ander- 
 son of the American Board, " I continue to preach in 
 the streets and wherever the people so congregate 
 that I can quietly talk to them. Occasionally, I am 
 maltreated or am mobbed. But I do not suffer my 
 mind to dwell on those occasional unpleasantnesses." 
 
 In 1871, William Taylor, known all over the world 
 as Bishop Taylor, began his mission in India and 
 Bowen at once gave him his hearty support, becom- 
 ing one of the leaders of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church and devoting to it his great talents thence- 
 forth until his death in 1888. Bishop Taylor re- 
 garded Bowen with deep reverence, saying once re- 
 garding him to Dr. Aikman, "George Bowen was 
 the Lamb of India." And whether or not the people 
 for whom he lived and died, always with the spirit of 
 the Lamb of God, responded to his message, they did 
 respond to his love. The editorial which appeared in 
 The Times of India, on February 11th of the year he 
 died, 1888, though coming from Englishmen and ap- 
 pearing in the leading secular English paper of 
 Bombay, yet expressed the general feeling of the 
 entire community. The editorial is too long to allow 
 the quotation of more than a few sentences. 
 
 " The death of the Rev. George Bowen, the tidings of 
 which passed rapidly through our city on the sth inst., has 
 
l82 GEORGE BOWEN 
 
 deprived this community of one of its oldest and most 
 widely honoured members. The sorrow awakened by his 
 unexpected removal is not confined to any one section of 
 the Christian Church, or to any one class of the com- 
 munity. One who has for forty years occupied a unique 
 place as a missionary among us has passed away, and the 
 sense of loss is intensified by the feeling, present doubtless 
 to the minds of all who knew him, that the place of George 
 Bowen will always remain empty. His was a work and a 
 personality sui generis, and in the ordinary acceptation of 
 the word, he can have no successor. The removal of 
 George Bowen marks the close of an epoch in the history of 
 our community. . 
 
 "George Bowen was a man of rare individuality. In 
 any community this individuality would have asserted it- 
 self, but in a community like ours, in which the conditions 
 of society so manifestly tend to the levelling down of all 
 men to the same tone of thinking and action, a man who 
 could stand alone, who could mould his life according to 
 his own high convictions of responsibility, and who felt 
 bound by no artificial standards, could not but stand forth 
 as a conspicuous personality. Hence it was that many a 
 visitor passing through our city, intent upon noting not 
 merely the outward features of our life in Western India, 
 but also the moral forces which are at work among us, 
 sought out before all things the humble dwelling of this 
 saintly man, that they might be brought in contact with 
 something of the inward movements that are silently mould- 
 ing the life of the community. . 
 
 " He retained throughout his new life all his breadth of 
 culture, and no circumstance or surroundings, however 
 humble, could dwarf the moral and spiritual dignity of the 
 man ; on the contrary, they only served to render it more 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 1 83 
 
 conspicuous. In his most humble dwelling, he could en- 
 tertain the humblest and make him feel welcome ; but in 
 the same dwelling the highest had no consciousness of the 
 exceptional surroundings and no feeling of condescension 
 in the presence of one who received them with true gentle- 
 manly courtesy and dignity. The same breadth of nature 
 was conspicuous in his relations with men and with 
 churches. . 
 
 "Mr. Bowen's whole hfe was a testimony to the disin- 
 terestedness of his aims ; but special instances of it were of 
 frequent occurrence. . . . 
 
 " The life of such a man could not fail to make a deep 
 impression on all earnest minds in this community. We 
 have no doubt that many of our native fellow citizens have 
 felt its influence, and some of them have not been slow to 
 acknowledge it. We know of many amongst our own fel- 
 low men who owe all that is best in their lives to their con- 
 tact with him and of others who were made better through 
 their reverence for his character. . . . 
 
 "Reality and self-forgetting sympathy were the most 
 marked features of his character, and these are the qualities 
 which most inspire confidence and affection. His was a 
 nature incapable of affectation and free of all self-conscious- 
 ness. . . . 
 
 "Through forty years, that life has been amongst us, 
 from its very character mingling little with the busy cur- 
 rents of public movement that have been flowing onwards, 
 guided by other aims and other plans ; and yet we cannot 
 but feel poorer that a life so rich in noble purpose and 
 lofty aim has passed away from among us. Gladly and 
 ungrudgingly, therefore, do we off'er this tribute of honour 
 to the memory of one who neither loved nor sought it 
 while he lived." 
 
1 84 GEORGE BO WEN 
 
 George Bo wen's method of life and work was not an 
 absolute method. There is nothing in the Scriptures 
 which makes it prescriptive and while the spirit of 
 his life is the right spirit for all workers for Christ 
 and for men, experience did not demonstrate that his 
 methods were the only methods or the most effective 
 methods. They were probably much more effective 
 than Bowen himself believed. He referred with some 
 despondency at times to the apparent fruitlessness of 
 his work, but at his funeral, Mr. Hume, speaking of 
 the great indirect influence he wielded over the natives 
 of Bombay, mentioned " cases which had come under 
 his own observation of heathen who had been brought 
 to Christ through the holy life of him who for forty 
 years had been before the people as a living example 
 of the saving, keeping, sanctifying power of Christ as 
 no other man had been." 
 
 Those who deny the absoluteness of Bowen' s 
 method are in a position of real peril, however. We 
 may easily turn back from such self-sacrifice into a 
 spiritual easiness and self-indulgence which are fatal 
 to the highest power. It may be feared sometimes that 
 over-reaction from the ascetic ideals of earlier days will 
 carry us too far. Those who say, "We will not fast 
 with the outward fast," easily forget that fast of the 
 heart which is the gate of God. Those who would ' ' use 
 this would without abusing it" find that road, though 
 the right road, very slippery. After all, it is better 
 to err on the side of robust sacrifice, of completeness 
 of self-denial, and to give up all literally, rather than 
 under the plea of moderation to cover over a love of 
 the world, or of pleasure, or of ease which is the death 
 of holiness and of the might of God in a man. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 185 
 
 Bo'weu was no narrow-minded ascetic recluse. ' ' It 
 is too common in these days," says Dr. Mackichan of 
 the United Free Church of Scotland, in his preface to a 
 little sketch of Mr. Bowen, ' ' to look upon every form of 
 high devotedness as the offspring of a certain one- 
 sidedness, verging on fanaticism, the result of excess 
 or defect in some emotion or faculty in minds other- 
 wise rational and well furnished. We have little 
 doubt that the popular conception of George Bowen' s 
 life ampngst those who had but slight contact with it 
 was not very different from this. The study of this 
 sketch of the life which it unfolds will show how far 
 such conceptions fall short of the realities of the 
 Christian life. It exhibits the development of a mind 
 singularly free from the enthusiasm of mere emotion, 
 broad enough to be able to assimilate the best ele- 
 ments of the culture of other times and other lands, 
 and strong enough to retain its own originality in the 
 midst of all the influences which crowded in upon it." 
 Bowen was a man of rarest intellectual and moral 
 strength of character, large natured, easy, conscious 
 of balance and poise, yet so humble and modest that 
 these qualities were continually hidden so far as their 
 possessor could hide them from conspicuous gaze. 
 "We had Bowen dining with us last night," says a 
 Bombay English civilian,^ " and I only wish some re- 
 porter had been behind the scene to take a note of 
 the 'droppings.' . . . Oh, I wish you had been 
 with us. You would have been elevated when listen- 
 ing to Bowen discoursing on these wondrous themes. 
 A meek, lowly, despised man, but oh, how happy ! 
 living in that miserable hut in the bazaar, holding 
 1 "Memorials of_Eobert Brown, Esq.," p. 268 f. 
 
1 86 GEORGE BOWEN 
 
 converse with his God. Hunter is greatly enamoured 
 of him, the more so because he is very musical. Last 
 night, before going away, he played an accompani- 
 ment on the piano to Hunter's violincello — 'Weep 
 not for sorrow.' You need not be surprised if you 
 hear of both of us taking up our quarters with Bowen 
 in the bazaar at ten rupees a month." '■ And one who 
 knew Bowen long and intimately in Bombay is quoted 
 by Dr. Hanna in his biographical preface to the 
 Scotch edition of " Daily Meditations " as writing: 
 
 " If expressions of the deepest reverence, admiration and 
 affection were all that is required, I should not be found 
 wanting ; for, taking him all in all, I have always thought 
 him the most delightful and remarkable Christian man I 
 ever met. He was at one time an infidel. Afterwards he 
 gave up friends, country, fortune (his father was a rich 
 man), and consecrated himself and his whole life to the serv- 
 ice of Christ among the heathen. You know how he has 
 laboured for so many years, night and day, in Bombay ; 
 how he preaches every day to the native population ; and 
 you also can tell how great has been his influence for good 
 on the Europeans there. For many years, he actually 
 lived in the native bazaar, and among that sadly degraded 
 population, until asked to become secretary to the Relig- 
 ious Tract Society, at whose depot he now resides, manag- 
 ing the affairs without fee or reward, in addition to his 
 other labours. Probably it has added to his weight in the 
 consideration of the English section of the community, that 
 he is a most accomplished and highly intellectual man, 
 having travelled much in Europe at one time ; knowing 
 
 'Quoted in Dr. Hanna's preface to "Daily Meditations," 
 Edinburgh, 1891._,^ 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 187 
 
 French, German, Spanish, Italian and I don't know how 
 many other European languages, in addition to Hindu- 
 stani and Marathi. Many years ago he used to try and 
 enlighten my dear brother in the mysteries of astronomy ; 
 and his musical powers are quite remarkable. It is seldom 
 any one has an opportunity of testing them ; but on meet- 
 ing him one evening quietly, after hearing him play a long 
 and difficult piece of music, I asked him for a repetition of 
 part, when I was surprised to find that the whole had been im- 
 promptu improvised as he went along. Perhaps one should 
 add that in spite of Mr. Bowen's abundant labours, little 
 visible fruit has been the result. His standard is scrupu- 
 lously high and rigid. Other missionaries have frequently 
 baptized natives instructed and impressed by his teaching. 
 I asked him once if he did not feel discouraged. ' Thank 
 God,' he said, 'I can truly say I have never experienced 
 such a feeling. This thought, "In Thy favour is life," 
 swallows up all others. It is enough for me.' I believe 
 eternity alone will reveal the amount of his unconscious in- 
 fluence and reveal the bearing his noble self-sacrificing life 
 has had on the hearts of others." 
 
 A good deal of this wider range of life in his mis- 
 sionary days was doubtless due to the manner of his 
 life in his youth. God would surely prefer to get His 
 men unmarred, but if they come marred, He takes all 
 that was innocent in their past and turns it to power. 
 It was so with Eaymond Lull and it was so with George 
 Bowen. He kept much from those early days and he 
 let much go. Mr. Eankin sent him a copy of a romance 
 which Bowen had written as a young man, entitled, 
 "The Pupil of Eaphael " and which he had published 
 through Putnam. " I am reading it," Bowen wrote, 
 
l88 GEORGE BOWEN 
 
 " but have no desire that anybody else should read it. 
 Not a single incident or a single character remained 
 in memory. There are portions of it that I regret ex- 
 ceedingly, showing the effects of Balzac's writings. 
 I am glad that the Lord so completely snuffed the 
 book out. Above all, I am grateful that He has saved 
 me from myself." 
 
 An outstanding characteristic of Bowen was his 
 reality. The Times editorial emphasized this. All 
 who knew Bowen felt it. Dr. Mackichan refers to it : 
 " George Bowen' s conversion from unbelief to faith 
 was a spiritual movement to which every part of his 
 nature gave consent, and the life which followed was 
 the harmonious expression of his whole being thus 
 raised to a higher plane by the revelation of God in 
 Christ. That reality which is referred to in this 
 sketch as the leading characteristic of all his religious 
 life, was the result of this transformation. All he 
 did in the service of the Saviour Who had revealed 
 Himself to him was done with the calmness, the 
 resolution, the rationalness of one who found in the 
 atmosphere of a consecrated Christian life his soul's 
 true element. . . . And this reality was the se- 
 cret of the joy and beauty of his self-sacrifice. There 
 is a kind of self-denial which is ever conscious of 
 itself. But his was true and beautiful in proportion 
 as it was free from this selfish taint." 
 
 No faintest shadow of uncandour, of hypocrisy, 
 of professionalism, darkened George Bowen' s life. 
 He was what he appeared. He appeared what he 
 was. And he tried to be and to appear what he 
 ought. A bad man may claim to possess the virtue 
 of reality because he is really bad. But Bowen be- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 1 89 
 
 lieved that tlie only reality of life is tlie right adjust- 
 ment of itself to God and goodness and lie strove 
 thereto. And men were influenced by him through 
 his reality. The missionary finds sincere men among 
 Mohammedans, Hindus and Buddhists, not men who 
 are living up to all the light they have, but men who 
 honestly believe what they profess and in human 
 measure live by it. The same thing in the missionary 
 will not convince them that he is right and themselves 
 wrong. His type of reality must be larger and fuller. 
 He must be sincere and honest and true but the truth 
 which he represents must be the complete truth, the 
 divine element, and his reality must mean the ad- 
 justment and coordination of his life to that. 
 
 Bowen's spiritual fervour and devotion did not blind 
 the accuracy of his intellectual judgments. There is 
 a pious goodness, which desiring to speak evil of no 
 man, is derelict in its testimony to the truth and 
 defective in its defense of righteousness. Bowen was 
 the soul of charity but he was the servant of the 
 truth and he did not sacrifice truth to amiability. 
 "I am convinced," he wrote to Mr. Eankiu, "that 
 Chunder Sen was more intent on his own glory, 
 throughout, than on that of Christ. He honoured 
 the Christ of his own conception, the Christ that 
 was plastic in his hands, to be moulded as the Hindu 
 national pride demanded. There was no uncondi- 
 tional surrender to Christ at any time. The Christ 
 that he favoured was one that would give greatness to 
 Chunder Sen." This was Bowen's spirit in the 
 study of comparative religion. He was not deceived. 
 He saw the truth clearly, unobscured by the immoral 
 tolerance of a false liberalism, and the truth he saw 
 
I go GEORGE BO WEN 
 
 he spoke. Because he was good, he was not "gul- 
 lible," to use Vivakanda's adjective in expressing 
 his judgment of the American people. All religious 
 expressions were not the same to Bowen. Some of 
 them rested as he had told his pundit at the begin- 
 ning on a foundation of untruth. There are false 
 religious elements as there are true and they are not 
 to be mixed indiscriminately. 
 
 As with all great religious leaders, so with George 
 Bowen, his doctrine grew out of his experience. I 
 have spoken of this in Lull. It was equally notice- 
 able in Bowen. " You will have seen," he writes to 
 Mr. Eankin, " that I wrote something about the 
 Trinity. The Bible does not undertake to explain it 
 to us. What it most positively teaches us is the 
 Trinity of God, and what is said about the manifesta- 
 tion of God in Christ is never treated as though it 
 conflicted with that in any way. "We get at the 
 right conception of these things not so much by 
 intellectual effort, as experimentally. As we grow 
 up into Christ, we apprehend Christ. There should 
 never be a shadow of a doubt in the mind (there 
 never has been in mine) that in honouring Christ we 
 honour the Father." On the same subject, he writes 
 later, "I have no trouble or confusion as that you 
 speak of in regard to the persons of the Godhead. I 
 conceive of God as absolutely one, yet have no diffi- 
 culty in apprehending God in Christ and God the 
 Spirit in me. Without this trifold manifestation I 
 have never known God. There is more approach to 
 a mystery in the distinguishing between the Christ 
 of God and His brethren fully redeemed, in whom 
 too is all the fullness of the Godhead. John fell at 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 191 
 
 the feet of one of these. But I suppose there will 
 be practically no diificulty. He is always the 
 Saviour and they are always the saved. John xvii. 
 and Ephesians iii., etc., show that we must get where 
 Christ was when about to ascend. The more fully 
 we are conformed to Him, the better we shall under- 
 stand all things." Bushnell solved the mystery of 
 the Trinity in the same way and in the end we shall 
 find that what theology is unlivable will be difficult 
 of permanent propagation in mission fields. Eelig- 
 ious value is not the right criterion of truth, but the 
 truth whose religious value is not known and evi- 
 denced in our own life we shall find it hard to com- 
 municate to others. 
 
 His deep Christian experience, his attempt to 
 make his Christian life real and his shrewd knowl- 
 edge of the heart, led Bowen to anticipate by many 
 years that form of Christian teaching identified now 
 largely with the Keswick convention for the deepen- 
 ing of the spiritual life held annually in the English 
 lake-country. Whatever excrescences there may be, 
 the main teaching of the Keswick conference is 
 simply the Gospel of the redeemed life in Christ. As 
 Bowen put it in his "Daily Meditations" (for De- 
 cember 30th), "Ton believe in Christ and not in 
 yourself ; in His goodness, not in yours ; in His 
 power and wisdom, not your own ; in His word, not 
 in yours ; in His work, not in yours ; in His suffer- 
 ings, not in yours ; in His prayers, not in yours. 
 When a man believes his vessel to be on the point of 
 going to pieces, and is hailed by another that is sea- 
 worthy, you will quickly find him removing all his 
 goods from the first to the other one. His faith finds 
 
192 GEORGE BOWEN 
 
 unequivocal utterance in his conduct. And he that 
 believes in Jesus Christ makes haste to get every- 
 thing that he values transferred to Him." And he 
 writes in 1880 in a personal letter : "The best use 
 ■we can make of our past sins is to turn from them to 
 Christ. Anything that diverts our attention from 
 Christ does us harm. This and that sin may appear 
 very odious to us, and are so truly, but with God 
 the most odious sin is that of not accepting His offer 
 of love. . . . There is not the slightest use in 
 trying to correct anything amiss in our mental habits 
 by direct efforts. "We get the victory by faith, i. e., 
 by ceasing to combat them and making them over to 
 Christ. Do not even be impatient with these evils. 
 Nothing so discomfits Satan as when you praise the 
 Lord (2 Ohron. xx. 20)." It is an intensely interest- 
 ing thing to see in church history how the teaching 
 of Christian men regarding the higher spiritual life 
 repeats itself from age to age and how the heresies of 
 the earlier days arise recurrently, and especially in 
 both matters in connection with missions. 
 
 The wisest and most practical attempts of to-day to 
 feed the hungry human soul, Bowen anticipated. It 
 is to be feared that sometimes the technical theolog- 
 ical schools little realize how deep the hunger is or 
 for what it longs. The summer conferences which 
 testify to its existence and attempt to allay it are too 
 often left beyond the sympathy and interest of the 
 school. But we may be sure that these conferences 
 exist because of a need and to some measure succeed 
 in meeting it. It is not so much clear theological 
 doctrine that these hearts crave as the sense of assur- 
 ance, the secret of peace, the way of a larger, life, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 1 93 
 
 something more than the conventional teaching gives, 
 or the conventional standard requires. What Bowen 
 said is just what those who attempt to meet these 
 higher spiritual demands are saying to-day. " I live 
 in hope," he writes to a correspondent, "that you 
 will send me word some day that you are believing 
 these words of God to ' whomsoever ' and banish that 
 sense of condemnation and all vain thirsting. What- 
 ever your nature really demands for its highest 
 development is in that word 'eternal life.' I wish 
 that you could make up your mind that nothing 
 more is ever to come to you from God than has come 
 to you, and give your attention to what has come to 
 you and is ignored by you. It was a blessed hour for 
 me when I lost faith in the future and began to 
 interrogate the present. I think I see a prisoner in a 
 cell. On a table a letter has been lying many days 
 which he fancies for somebody else and not for him. 
 It authorizes him to claim the right of egress and to 
 go out of his jail and to go to a comfortable dwelling 
 provided for him. But, he says, it is not for me ; if 
 it were for me, it would not leave me here. He is 
 there because he has not the faith. Why should you 
 make 'light of all that God has done to inspire you 
 with faith I Tou do this when you fail to recognize 
 what God offers you. The lying spirit of unbelief 
 will say to you, this does not suit your case. Let not 
 that spirit continue in his post of doorkeeper of your 
 heart. How glad I should be to hear that you have 
 decided to let God be true, though every man a liar. 
 All happiness is in the recognition of Him Who sita 
 upon the throne, whose nature and whose name is 
 Love, Who gives Himself and is Himself Love 
 
194 GEORGE BO WEN 
 
 Almighty' to every atom, and is excluded only by 
 man's unbelieving heart. God has never done any- 
 thing for me, or will do, that He is not offering to 
 every creature, for He offers Himself and He is Love. 
 You have only to let God be true, let Him be Him- 
 self, and you will find yourself in Paradise. The 
 New Jerusalem comes down from God out of heaven 
 when men discover this. But it is hid from them by 
 the great concern that they have for self. Do not 
 allow your heart to cheat you out of the blessings 
 contained in this truth. . . ." 
 
 Again he writes, "I deeply feel that what you 
 want is not that God should take up some new atti- 
 tude towards you or do anything, or be anything but 
 what He is, but that you should recognize Him as 
 revealed at the Cross. What makes heaven to be 
 heaven is that the truth which you fail to see is there 
 seen by all." Bo wen counselled thus out of his own 
 experience. "As you would wish your own word to 
 be honoured," he wrote (August 11, 1885), "honour 
 God's. Salvation is in that very thing. I was just 
 on the border of despair in 1845, till on the 4th of 
 December I saw that all I had been seeking in my- 
 self, I had in Christ. I had been tormenting myself 
 by looking hourly to my own heart for the dawn of 
 a brighter day, looking (if you please) for Christ in 
 my heart rather than for Christ in the Word, and I 
 found life, joy and peace when I let go my own heart 
 and looked for Christ alone, as the Israelites looked 
 to the brazen serpent." The path he urged upon 
 others he had trod himself and he knew whither it 
 led. 
 
 One supreme test George Bowen met. Little chil- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTIC 195 
 
 dren loved him and felt that in him they had a friend 
 ■without dissimulation or suggestion of distrust. Can 
 a man ask more than that? When he died, says 
 Prescott of the great William, in "The Else of the 
 Dutch Eepublic," a whole great nation mourned for 
 him and the little children cried upon the streets. 
 
 I suppose to some of you this sketch has intro- 
 duced an altogether new character. Men fall fast 
 out of memory and George Bowen would not have 
 lifted a finger to prolong his fame. But he is a 
 man whom we cannot afford to forget. In reviving 
 his story, I am conscious of the danger to which 
 Dr. Mackichan referred just after his death: "To 
 those of us who were intimately associated with the 
 departed missionary leader, the sense of loss has day 
 by day grown deeper. Christian work with which 
 he was associated and Christian assemblies which he 
 was wont to frequent, have seemed almost less Chris- 
 tian by reason of the absence of one who gave the 
 high tone of his own spirit to everything with which 
 he was identified. As we contemplate the end of his 
 conversation we are not strangers to the danger of 
 resting satisfied with a vicarious devotion. It was 
 inspiring and strengthening to know that one lived 
 and worked so nobly in the midst of us. But to 
 admire and describe this life is the least part of that 
 which it requires of us. In every department of 
 Christian service the same spirit of reality and con- 
 secration is needed, and if this brief record of his life 
 shall in any measure help to keep alive the memory 
 of this man of God, and lead those who have a part 
 in the same work to become partakers of his higher 
 faith, it wiU be contributing to the accomplishment 
 
196 GEORGE BOWEN 
 
 of no unimportant part of the work for which George 
 Bo wen lived and laboured and died." 
 
 It is easy for us to be content with looking at such 
 sacrifice and total devotion in a missionary of a past 
 generation. But there was no standard of duty or 
 ideal of character before George Bowen that is not 
 before us. If he utterly denied himself and wholly 
 sought to live unto God in all things, it was in re- 
 sponse to no call that does not also sound in our 
 hearts and summon us to the same task of the world's 
 evangelization and to the same life of Christlike 
 candour and reality. In the quiet of this hour can 
 we not hear this Voice saying to us, "And you, why 
 do you too not follow Me as he followed whom men 
 called ' The Lamb of India ' ? " 
 
LECTURE V 
 
 JOHN LAWRENCE, THE CHRISTIAN 
 STATESMAN AND THE PROBLEM 
 OF RELIGION AND POLITICS 
 
LECTURE V 
 
 JOHN LAWRENCE, THE CHRISTIAN 
 
 STATESMAN AND THE PROBLEM 
 
 OF RELIGION AND POLITICS 
 
 THE Hon. John W. Poster has remarked with 
 reference to the failure of the Americati 
 Senate to confirm President Grant's nomi- 
 nation of Caleb Gushing to be chief justice of the 
 Supreme Court, that it was not the only time the 
 American people have pronounced defect in moral 
 character a bar to the highest honours. And the 
 world has never been content to ask mere moral 
 rectitude in its greatest heroes. Many other men of 
 their generations were as honest and pure as Chinese 
 Gordon and John Lawrence, but these men smote the 
 imagination of the world with a peculiar power and 
 won its love and regard, and the unique and distinct- 
 ive thing about them was their religious character. 
 The remarkable thing is that men should so admire 
 and revere the highest religious character in their 
 heroes and so neglect its development in themselves. 
 One is tempted to ask whether men have a right to 
 praise in Gordon and Lawrence a religious principle 
 and life which are as open to every man as they were 
 to them, unless they are conscientiously following after 
 these things for themselves. 
 
 There were wide differences between John Law- 
 rence and Chinese Gordon, as will appear, but in this 
 
 199 
 
200 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 one thing they were alike. They had one passion. 
 It was to do their duty in the fear of God, and in no 
 other fear, and in the simplicity and faith of Chris- 
 tian men. On the gravestone of John's brother 
 Henry at Lucknow are the simple words prescribed 
 by Lawrence himself, "Here lies Henry Lawrence, 
 who tried to do his duty." The last words Chinese 
 Gordon wrote to his sister were the postcript to his 
 letter of December 14, 1884, "I am quite happy, 
 thank God, and with Lawrence have tried to do my 
 d.uty." "I never cared for honours," said John 
 Lawrence, as he drew near the close of his term of 
 office as Viceroy of India ; " I do not regret the resig- 
 nation of all the state, pomp, power, or patronage 
 which appertain to the office. It was a proud mo- 
 ment to me when I walked up the steps of this house, 
 feeling as I then did that, without political interest 
 or influence, I had been chosen to fill the highest 
 office under the crown, the Viceroy of the Queen. 
 But it will be a happier moment to me when I walk 
 down the steps with the feeling that I have tried to 
 do my duty." It was every man's judgment about 
 him that he had in sincerity and honour done his 
 duty his whole life through. When Sir Charles 
 "Wood resigned the Secretaryship of State for India 
 to become Lord Halifax, he wrote to Lawrence, "It 
 was a great satisfaction dealing with so honest and 
 straightforward a person as you are." "After ten 
 years' witness of his private life," said Miss Gaster, 
 his private secretary during the last years of his life, 
 "I believe from the depth of my heart that God 
 never made a purer, nobler nature than his. Faults, 
 of course, he had. But to those who knew him well 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 20I 
 
 they were only spots in the sun of his goodness, inap- 
 preciable in the warmth and life he diffused around." 
 And Lord Derby summarized the spirit of the man 
 in his words at the "Lawrence Memorial" meeting 
 at the Mansion House, " "Without claiming any special 
 intimacy with Lord Lawrence, I may say, as the 
 world goes, that I knew him well, and the impression 
 that his character always left on my mind I can only 
 describe as that of a certain heroic simplicity J' And 
 Mr. Bosworth Smith begins his biography with a 
 recognition of the man's rough humour and giant 
 vigour, but relates it as it was related in his life to 
 his fearless veracity and honour. ' ' John Lawrence, ' ' 
 says Mr. Smith, "was nothing, if he was not truth- 
 ful ; he was transparent as the day, and my highest 
 aim has been to render to so 'heroically simple' a 
 character that homage which is its due — the homage 
 of unalloyed truth. . . . He always said . . . 
 exactly what he thought. He always acted . . . 
 exactly as he spoke. He raised against himself, as 
 every strong ruler, as every vigorous reformer, as 
 every great man must inevitably do, not a few ene- 
 mies ; he attached to himself by the selfsame proc- 
 esses, and for the selfsame reasons, troops of most 
 devoted and most loyal friends. . . . The rugged 
 lineaments and the deep furrows of his grand counte- 
 nance — 
 
 For his face 
 Deep scars of thunder had entrenched, and care 
 Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows 
 Of dauntless courage — 
 
 were a picture, which he who runs may read, of the 
 grand and rugged character which lay beneath It." 
 
202 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 John Laird Mair Lawrence was born of a North/ 
 Ireland family in Bichmond in Yorkshire on March 4/ 
 1811. His father was a soldier who cherished a sensfe 
 of unjust treatment, and his mother was a daughter 
 of a Donegal clergyman named Knox, descended 
 from the great reformer. The calm religious con- 
 viction of his ancestry ran in the boy John. "I 
 should say," he wrote years later, "that on the 
 whole we derived most of our mettle from our father. 
 Both my father and mother possessed much char- 
 acter. She had great administrative qualities. She 
 kept the family together, and brought us all up on 
 very slender means. She kept the purse, and managed 
 all domestic affairs. . . . When I was coming 
 out to India, my poor old mother made me a speech 
 somewhat to the following effect : — ' I know you 
 don't like advice, so I will not give you much. But 
 pray recollect two things. Don't marry a woman 
 who had not a good mother, and don't be too ready 
 to speak your mind. It was the rock on which your 
 father shipwrecked his prospects.' " John Lawrence 
 married later the kind of wife that suited his mother, 
 but he never lacked in readiness to speak his mind, 
 and on that rock of unswerving courage of conviction 
 and the expression of conviction he won his name. 
 
 John and his older brother Henry were school- 
 mates as boys, as they were workfellows as men, and 
 they got the characteristic schooling of the day. " I 
 was flogged every day of my life at school except 
 one," said John, "and then I was flogged twice." 
 "For my part," said Henry Lawrence, "my educa- 
 tion consisted in kicks; I was never taught any- 
 thing." John was no great student, and his life was 
 
'the christian statesman 203 
 
 an ordinary boy' a life, with an nniisual amount of 
 daring and courage, perhaps, but nothing more. He 
 wanted to be a soldier and go out to fight in India 
 as his father had done but he was obliged instead to 
 go to the East India Company's college, for the 
 training of its civilian agents, and then went out to 
 India as a civilian in September, 1829, with Henry. 
 It was already foretold of Henry that he would come 
 back Sir Henry Lawrence, but no one expected great 
 things of John. J. H. Batten tells of a visit in 1859, 
 the year of the Mutiny, to Mr. Le Bas, who had been 
 principal of Haileybary College and Le Bas asked 
 him, says Mr. Batten, " 'Who is this John Lawrence 
 of whom I hear so much ? ' to which I replied, ' Don't 
 you remember a tall thin Irishman with whom I 
 much consorted, who once kept an Irish revel of 
 bonfires on the grass plot opposite to Letter C ; and 
 whom you forgave on account of his Orange zeal and 
 his fun ? ' * Aha ! ' said the old dean, ' I remember 
 the man ; not a bad sort of fellow ; ' and then he 
 burst into one of his fits of laughter, ending with the 
 dry remark, * but what has become of all our good 
 students?'" He had got, however, some training 
 in character, and he had won some friends among his 
 fellows who were later in the terrible days of the 
 Mutiny to stand solidly about him when he was to 
 be the great rock in the midst of the tempest, upon 
 whom it was to break and be broken. 
 
 The boys reached Calcutta in February, 1830. 
 Alexander Duff came in the same year. Henry Was 
 sent at once to join his company of Foot Artillery at 
 Eunol, beyond Delhi, on what was then the north- 
 west frontier. John was sent for the study of the 
 
204 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 native languages to Fort William College. He soon 
 became thoroughly sick of India ; the Calcutta 
 climate did not agree with him. He had no taste 
 for the empty social life. He longed for home, but 
 ■when he passed the language examination in Urdu 
 and Persian, and was sent off, at his request, to 
 frontier work at Delhi, " there was now no more 
 inaction, no more halting between two opinions. 
 He had put his hand to the plough and there was no 
 looking back. He shook himself, like Samson, and 
 awoke to his work. Prom the present moment to 
 the very end of his official life, we shall find no 
 parallel to the inaction of the four months spent in 
 England before leaving it for India, or to the depres- 
 sion which seems to have dominated him during the 
 ten months he spent in Calcutta before embarking in 
 his active work. There was, henceforth, no nervous 
 looking forward to what might be, or backward to 
 what might have been. To do the thing that lay be- 
 fore him, to do it thoroughly, to do it with all his 
 might, not regarding the consequences and not turn- 
 ing either to the right hand or the left — this was 
 henceforward the ruling principle of his life." This 
 is the right prescription for homesickness, for all 
 indolence — work. That is the first great missionary 
 lesson from his life. Trollope held that the best cure 
 for the disposition to shirk in writers was beeswax on 
 their chairs, and for missionaries, as for all men, no 
 medicine is so good as the medicine of stiff duty 
 crowding them hard and driving them to unselfish- 
 ness, whether they will or no. 
 
 The town and district of Delhi were under the 
 control of a British officer entitled "Eesident and 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 205 
 
 Chief Commissiouer." Lawrence's first work was aa 
 " assistant judge, magistrate and collector " of the 
 city and its environs. He was here for fonr years 
 and at once put all that he was into his work. The 
 principles of the Delhi administration were to save 
 as much of the native institutions as possible, 
 especially of the old village communities, and from 
 the outset Lawrence entered with hearty sympathy 
 into the life of the people. He had much greater 
 opportunity for this upon the close of his apprentice- 
 ship and his consequent transfer to the charge of the 
 Paniput district. In Delhi he had been associated 
 with others and had made the friendship of Charles 
 Trevelyan, one of the best men in India, to be ever 
 his friend and later his valued helper, from whom 
 even now we could learn lessons of fearless honour 
 and resolute opposition to corruption in all places 
 high and low. In Paniput, Lawrence was practically 
 alone. How he did his work is best indicated by the 
 description given by Mr. Charles Eaikes, who went 
 out to help him : 
 
 " Over some 400,000 of a population, scattered in large 
 villages through an area of 800,000 acres, John Lawrence 
 ruled supreme. He himself in those days had very much 
 the cut of a Jat, being wiry, tall, muscular, rather dark in 
 complexion, and without an ounce of superfluous fat or 
 flesh. He usually wore a sort of compromise between 
 English and Indian costume, had his arms ready at hand, 
 and led a life as primus inter pares, rather than a foreigner 
 or a despot, among the people. Yet a despot he was, as 
 any man soon discovered who was bold enough or silly 
 enough to question his legitimate authority — a despot, but 
 
2o6 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 full of kindly feelings, and devoted heart and soul to duty 
 and hard work. . . . 
 
 " First, he was at all times and in all places, even in his 
 bedroom, accessible to the people of his district. He 
 loved his joke with the sturdy farmers, his chat with the 
 city bankers, his argument with the native gentry, few and 
 far between. When out with his dogs and gun he had no 
 end of questions to ask every man he met. After a gallop 
 across country, he would rest on a charpoy, or country 
 bed, and hold an impromptu levee of all the village folk, 
 from the headman to the barber. ' Jan Larens, ' said the 
 people, 'sub janta,' that is, knows everything. For this 
 very reason he was a powerful magistrate, and, I may here 
 add, a brilliant and invaluable revenue officer. 
 
 "Secondly, he was never above his work. I have an 
 indistinct recollection of his arresting a murderer, on re- 
 ceiving intelligence of the crime, with his own hand. At 
 all events, when the report of a murder, an affray with 
 wounding, or a serious robbery came in, John Lawrence 
 was at once in the saddle and off to the spot. With greater 
 deliberation, but equal self-devotion, he proceeded to the 
 spot to investigate important disputes about land, crops, 
 water privileges, boundaries, and so forth. The Persian 
 proverb, ' Disputes about land must be settled on the land,' 
 was often on his tongue. 
 
 "Thirdly, owing to this determination to go about for 
 himself and to hear what everybody had to say about 
 everything, he shook off, nay, he utterly confounded, the 
 tribe of flatterers, sycophants, and informers who, when 
 they can get the opportunity, dog the steps of the Indian 
 ruler. What chance had an informer with a man who was 
 bent on seeing everything with his own eyes ? . . . 
 
 " I was younger than Lawrence, and had been only 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 207 
 
 three or four years in India when I went to join him at 
 Paniput. For very good reasons I shall never forget my 
 first interview with my chief. He was, I was going to say, 
 in his shirt-sleeves, only I am not sure that he wore a shirt 
 in those days — I think he had a chupkun, or native under- 
 garment — surrounded by what seemed to me a mob of na- 
 tives, with two or three dogs at his feet, talking, writing, 
 dictating — in short, doing cutcherry. . . . 
 
 "Lawrence trusted me and taught me to trust myself. 
 From that hour my fortune as a public officer was made. 
 I learned my work under the ablest of masters, and shall 
 ever gratefully remember the day which saw me installed 
 as assistant to the young magistrate and collector of 
 Paniput." 
 
 Here Lawrence found opportunity and necessity 
 alike for the complete identification of his life with, 
 tbe native people. That is the second great missionary 
 lesson from his life. He talked their language as he 
 talked Ms own. At times among them he could 
 speak their tongue even better than he could Ms own. 
 A young civilian, who went to call one day as he 
 passed tMough, reported that lie could hardly under- 
 stand Mm, Ms conversation had been so full of Per- 
 sian words and expressions. 
 
 These principles became the characteristics of the 
 school of officials whom John Lawrence raised up, who 
 were known as the Punjab School. They knew the 
 people and loved them. They made it their business 
 to understand and sympathize with their institutions 
 and ideas. In the Paniput days Lawrence began the 
 easy, familiar relations with the native people of all 
 classes which put him in a position of almost irresisti- 
 
2o8 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 ble power among them. He knew them, and they 
 knew that he knew them. 
 
 Prom Paniput Lawrence stepped down to an in- 
 ferior appointment at Gorgaon. But he was ready 
 for any service, and while he had probably more pride 
 of position than Gordon had, yet as Gordon was ready 
 to descend from a governor-generalship to be a pri- 
 vate secretary, so Lawrence wanted not honor but 
 work. From Gorgaon Lawrence was called off in 
 1838 to be settlement officer at Etawa under Eobert 
 Bird. Bird was one of those great geniuses, of rare 
 character and of rare tact and intellectual power, who 
 do great and unnoticed work in the world and die in 
 quietness unremembered. He untangled the land 
 confusion in the northwest provinces, and settled in 
 equity the most vital problems in the lives of a great 
 agricultural community like India. To be chosen 
 by Bird as one of his helpers was considered by men 
 a form of advancement and mark of honour. As- 
 sociated with him was James Thomason, another of 
 the greatest and best of the East India Company's 
 servants who rose to be Lieutenant-Governor of the 
 northwest provinces during Dalhousie's viceroyalty. 
 The two men were of the same Christian type. 
 Thomason wrote that he found Bird "so instructive 
 and communicative on subjects which regard another 
 world," and they discussed together how to carry out 
 their Christian principles into their daily walk as 
 public servants. 
 
 After this illness, Lawrence was ordered home for 
 a three years' furlough, and arrived in England at 
 Christmas, having risen steadily in his work in India, 
 "half a head above his fellows," as one expressed it. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 209 
 
 and yet having given no full promise of what was in 
 him and to come out of him. One of his desires on 
 furlough was to get married, to find a "calamity," 
 as he expressed it. He went to Bath, but that sum- 
 mer resort was not his style. "His manners and ap- 
 pearance," says one who was a young girl in the 
 house where he was visiting, "were utterly unlike 
 the ordinary young men we met in Bath. It was 
 difficult not to feel a little shocked at first by his 
 roughness and absence of conventionality ; still there 
 was so much force and originality apparent in his 
 whole character that one soon forgot the defects of 
 manner, and became interested in his conversation. 
 As I remember him he seemed to me to embody 
 Prof. Henry Morley's notion of the qualities which 
 have given to Englishmen their proud position in the 
 world, namely, 'the determination to find out the 
 right and get it done ; find out the wrong and get 
 it undone.' " In August, 1841, he was married 
 to the sort of wife his mother had prescribed. 
 After the honeymoon he was seized with a long illness 
 which made the doctors tell him that he must give up 
 all idea of returning to India. "If I can't live in 
 India," was his reply, "I must go and die there," 
 and he sailed for Calcutta in October, 1842. 
 
 The first Afghan war, fought, as were all the Afghan 
 wars, in behalf of a principle to which he was always 
 opposed, occurred during Lawrence's furlough. When 
 he returned, his first post was as Magistrate of Delhi. 
 It was the same kind of work he had done before, 
 only in a more conspicuous place, and the man him- 
 self was grown to match. "While he held this post 
 the first Sikh War was fought, ending in the annexa- 
 
2IO JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 tion of the Jullundur Doab and tke location of a resi- 
 dent at Lahore, the Punjab to remain independent. 
 Henry Lawrence was sent to Lahore and John was 
 placed in charge of the territory that had been an- 
 nexed. John Lawrence plunged in with characteristic 
 energy, and during his tenure of the Jullundur Doab, 
 he set it in order, established in it a model rule and 
 hewed out those principles of administration which 
 were to prevail through the entire Punjab, and make 
 it the rock of defense and deliverance in the storm of 
 the Mutiny. It was under these men that John 
 Lawrence's school — Montgomery, McLeod, Thorn- 
 ton and others — was formed. They were men who 
 did not separate, as one of our great public characters 
 had bidden us to do, their religious faith from their 
 public service. 
 
 Lawrence never spoke slightingly of any post of 
 duty to which he was assigned, save in the case of 
 Etawa, — " that hole Etawa," he called it. His bi- 
 ographer is sure that this was " not because it brought 
 him too much discomfort or difficulty or work, but 
 because it brought him too little." In connection 
 with Lawrence's work at Etawa, several incidents are 
 related illustrative of his capacity for anger and his 
 iron will. 
 
 "Like Cromwell, John Lawrence was rough and down- 
 right in all he said and did. Like Cromwell, he cared 
 naught for appearances, spoke his mind freely, swept all 
 cobwebs out of his path, worked like a horse himself, and 
 insisted on hard work in others. The natives, if they did 
 not love him, regarded him with veneration and with trust, 
 at all events, as somebody to be obeyed. They respect a 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 211 
 
 man who will be down upon them in a moment for any- 
 thing that is wrong, provided only that he is scrupulously 
 just, and this John Lawrence always was. His voice was 
 loud, his presence commanding ; his gray eye, deep-set and 
 kindly as it was, glared terribly when it was aroused by 
 anything mean or cowardly or wrong. His temper — the 
 Lawrences were all naturally quick-tempered — was gener- 
 ally well under control ; but when he felt, like Jonah, ' that 
 he did well to be angry,' there was no mistake at all 
 about it."' 
 
 In 1839 lie fell seriously ill of jungle fever. 
 
 " He had often been heard to say, in the abounding and 
 jubilant strength of his youth, that he was sure that many 
 a man need not die, if he made up his mind not to do so. 
 But he was now rapidly becoming worse and appeared to 
 be in a state of collapse. One day the doctor who had 
 been attending him told him that he feared he could hardly 
 live till the following morning, and took leave of him ac- 
 cordingly. No sooner was he gone than his patient roused 
 himself to the emergency. Now was the chance of putting 
 his favourite maxim to the test. He determined not to 
 die, and bade his servant give him a bottle of burgundy 
 which lay in a box beneath his bed. He drank it off, and 
 next day when the doctor called, by way of form, expect- 
 ing to find that all was over, he found John Lawrence sit- 
 ting up at his desk, clothed and in his right mind, and ac- 
 tually casting up his settlement accounts." ^ 
 
 There may be some who will think that such exhi- 
 bitions of wrath and self-will poorly show forth the 
 
 •Smith, " Life of Lord Lawrence," Vol. I, p. 101. 
 ' Ibid., p. 112. 
 
212 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 Christian character of Eobert Bird's disciple. But 
 such power is better for God's use than tame im- 
 becility. 
 
 " He as He wills shall solder and shall sunder 
 Slay in a day and quicken in an hour 
 Tune Him a music from the sons of thunder 
 Forge and transform my passion into power. 
 
 " So with the Lord : He takes and He refuses 
 Finds Him ambassadors whom men deny 
 Wise ones nor mighty for His saints He chooseSj 
 No such as John, or Gideon, or I." 
 
 Lawrence ruled the JuUundur Doab with a just 
 hand but it was very strong. The infanticide, suttee, 
 and living burial of lepers and punishment for witch- 
 craft he put down, and it was no easy task. He did 
 all the other things which he had done at Pauiput 
 but these things especially I refer to because we have 
 heard so many smooth Swamis and soft Americana 
 declaring that the tales of infanticide and suttee in 
 India came from missionary slanders. 
 
 " So wholesale," says Mr. Bosworth Smith, " was the 
 destruction of female infant life that, when the attention of 
 philanthropists was first directed to it, whole village com- 
 munities were found to be without a single girl. 
 Nor was the practice confined to the Rajputs. It was still 
 more universal among the Bedis, who were a subdivision 
 of the Khuttri caste and traced back their descent to the 
 Guru Nanuk. They had never allowed a single female 
 child to live, and when the Bedi of Oona, the head of the 
 tribe — in fact, the spiritual head of the Sikh religion — was 
 warned by John Lawrence that he must forbid infanticide 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 213 
 
 throughout his jagheer, he replied that if the Sahib so 
 willed it he would never enter his harem again, and would 
 influence, so far as he could rightly do so, others to do the 
 same, but it was impossible for him to command his 
 dependents to give up so treasured a custom. ' You must 
 do it or give up your lands,' rejoined John, and the stiff- 
 necked old Levite acquiesced in the lesser of two evils, and 
 did give up — his lands. Those who have never seen John 
 Lawrence, but have accompanied me thus far in my efforts 
 to reproduce the living man, can imagine the grim patience 
 with which he would listen to a solemn deputation from the 
 whole priestly race whose most cherished practice he was 
 thus rudely threatening, and who based their petition on 
 the proclamation issued by the Governor-General that all 
 their rights and customs would be respected. ' These 
 Bedis,' he writes to a friend, 'are an extraordinary people. 
 You will scarcely believe it when I tell you that they 
 publicly petitioned me for permission to destroy all their 
 female children ; which it seems they have hitherto invari- 
 ably done. I sent for some of the most respectable of 
 them, and set forth the enormity of the crime, and our 
 detestation of the practice, before some hundreds of peo- 
 ple, and ended by telling them that government would not 
 only never consent to such a villainous crime being per- 
 petuated under its rule, but that we should certainly hang 
 every man who was convicted of such a murder." ' 
 
 At the time such conduct was denounced by many 
 as an unwarranted interference with the religions of 
 the people. ITow that the practices are stopped by 
 such measures as John Lawrence used, it is denied 
 that they ever existed. If it had not been for such a 
 i.Smith, "Life of Lord Lawrence," Vol. I, p. 184 f. 
 
214 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 strong hand in India, those practices deep seated in 
 the religion of India would be going on to-day. The 
 special patron of female infanticide in the Punjab was 
 the Sikh high priest, Bedi Bikrama Sing. 
 
 John Lawrence used plain speech in other matters 
 than the suppression of the slaughter of baby girls. 
 He spoke his mind to British officials as well as to 
 native offenders. Indeed his practice was to speak 
 his praise behind a man's back, but his reproof or 
 condemnation to his face. "I have received your 
 letter," he writes in one case. " As I do not agree in 
 any respect with the views you there lay down, I 
 think it kinder and fairer to write to you privately 
 on the subject before I take any public notice of the 
 matter." He was as plain with native chiefs. 
 
 And he would speak as plainly to his friends. 
 Writing once to Lord Canning, he said, "Your lord- 
 ship may depend that I will write nothing but the 
 truth. My feelings are so strongly enlisted in my 
 public duties, that I may almost say that I have no 
 friends independent of such considerations. My best 
 friends are the oificers of whom I think best in my 
 public relations." This was a pretty high claim, but 
 it was not undeserved, and on just this account he 
 had the firmest and best friends, men whose friend- 
 ship rested on solid grounds beyond the reach of all 
 self-interest and who loved him the more because he 
 was a man who would never "job for his friends, 
 who never failed to tell them of their shortcomings, 
 however ready he may be to bear with them ; who is 
 chary of his praise to their face, however lavish he 
 may be of it behind their backs ; who thinks nothing 
 done while aught remains undone ; who regards the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 215 
 
 performance of duty by himself and by others aa a 
 matter of course, rather than as requiring ' generous 
 recognition.' " He would have laughed at that melo- 
 dramatic jeweliy known as the Carnegie medal. 
 
 Lawrence's work in the JuUundur Doab melted 
 into his larger work in the Punjab. He had to act 
 for his brother in Lahore but wanted to go back to 
 his own work ; " I am ready to do what government 
 wants," he writes, "but, personally, I prefer my 
 work there. It is a new country, and my assistants 
 need looking after ; and I want to put my stamp on 
 it, that in after times people may look back and re- 
 call my Eaj with satisfaction, No portion of our 
 empire promises better than it does." 
 
 He put his stamp on JuUundur, and on all north- 
 western India, and on all India and on the English 
 race ; for the second Sikh War led to the annexation 
 of the Punjab, and to the establishment by Lord 
 Dalhousie of a Board of Three Commissioners to 
 govern it. Henry Lawrence was chairman and John 
 was one of the two other members. "What this Board 
 accomplished in the three years of its existence is one 
 of the wonders of wise and capable administration. 
 The directors of the East India Company were " good 
 masters but very chary of precious words," but even 
 they were warm in their appreciation of what had 
 been done. 
 
 Perhaps the best aspect of the work the Lawrences 
 did was the recognition of the rights and spirit of the 
 native races. Henry Lawrence was ever the champion 
 of the native chiefs and people, and lived and died 
 probably the best beloved Englishman who has ever 
 worked in India. He and John developed the sense 
 
2 1 6 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 of local responsibility and self-government, and be- 
 gan the work of riveting the Punjab to the British 
 rule which was carried forward under John Law- 
 rence's firm hand until it bore the terrific strain 
 which fell on it in the Mutiny. 
 
 After the" Board of Commissioners was dissolved, 
 for seven years John Lawrence ruled the Punjab 
 as Chief Commissioner. At the very end he was 
 given the title of Lieutenant-Governor, but for all these 
 years he had been its actual governor and great and 
 assertive as Dalhousie was, he did not overshadow 
 John Lawrence or destroy the force of his personality 
 or the grip of his distinct influence in the Punjab. 
 And the one word that best characterizes Lawrence 
 and his work in the Punjab is, truth : true work, true 
 dealing with men and true motive and aim. 
 
 In the first place he was a terrific worker. He 
 wrought like an engine himself and he expected the 
 same thing in others. He wrote to Edwardes : 
 
 "Our officers should be young men, rough-and- 
 ready fellows, fit to put their hands to any work 
 against time and tide. I cannot believe that the 
 treasury can take up the time of one officer. If I 
 were deputy-commissioner I would be bound to prove 
 that it did not take up one-half his time. I don't 
 speak without cause ; I had charge of a treasury for 
 six years, unaided, and the time it occupied was 
 hardly appreciable. For instance, if I had to see 
 money counted, I took my work to the treasury, and 
 while my ears were hearing reports and cases, my 
 eyes were looking at money being counted. I signed 
 and checked bills while evidence was being taken by 
 my side. Half an hour a day sufficed to look over the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 21 7 
 
 accounts, with perhaps a couple of days' extra work 
 in a couple of months. ' ' What would such a man say 
 of some of our puttering half men? He despised 
 procrastination. When he was Governor- General of 
 all India he got through each day's work before he 
 went to bed. Delay was the one blemish he saw in 
 Donald McLeod, the " Cunctator " as he called him, 
 of whom he complained that he spent too much time 
 on polishing work that was no better done by reason 
 of the polishing, and he wrote frankly to McLeod : 
 
 "If you only firmly resolve to postpone nothing 
 that can be disposed of at the time, daily getting 
 through what comes before you, there will be nothing 
 further to desire. You do not, I think, give yourself 
 fair play. You are like a racer who, instead of start- 
 ing off directly the signal is given, waits until the 
 others have got well ahead before he commences his 
 running ; or, perhaps, what is nearer the mark, you 
 only consent to make play when you have packed a 
 good mound of traps on your back. Now pray excuse 
 these ungracious remarks. There is no man who re- 
 gards and respects you more than I do, or who could 
 be better pleased to have you as a colleague. I see 
 but one speck on your official escutcheon, and, like an 
 officious friend, desire to rub it out." 
 
 In his work he never thought of his own ease or 
 pleasure. He was no friend of indolence and for some 
 years in the Punjab no vacation at all was allowed. 
 Lord Dalhousie hinted at a leave for a relative of his, 
 employed in the Punjab. Lawrence replied : "He 
 has to stay ... for the public interest." This 
 was an emergency, of course, but it represented his 
 l)rinciple, — work before all things else. 
 
/ 
 
 2l8 JOHN LAWRENCE / 
 
 And he was very simple and frugal. "JdwajB 
 liberal with his private funds," said his wifiS, "and 
 ready to help others, my husband spent ^s little 
 as possible on himself, and was ever sparing of 
 the public money, anxiously impressing on every one 
 the necessity of strict economy in the management of 
 the new province." And his private secretary, at the 
 end of his life, tells of his going into a fruit shop in 
 London when ill, to ask about some tempting straw- 
 berries which were displayed. When told the 
 price he exclaimed, "Spend ten shillings on myself 
 for such a purpose ! I never did such a thing 
 in my life," and he marched out without them. He 
 did his work in truth and he handled men in 
 truth. 
 
 " John," said Sir Henry Daly, " never deserted 
 any friend of Henry's if he could possibly keep him, 
 and hence his wonderful forbearance with Nicholson. 
 He knew perfectly well that Mcholson did not like 
 him, and spoke against him. But such things never 
 made the slightest difference in his behaviour to him 
 or to any one else. He had nothing mean or small in 
 his nature ; no spite or malice. He was the biggest 
 man I have ever known. We used to call him ' King 
 John ' on the frontier, and it is as such that I still 
 love to think of him." 
 
 He was stern and strong towards men, fearless in 
 speaking his mind to them but no cross-grained or 
 imperious character. " I had, in my imagination, 
 pictured Lawrence," says Sir Eichard Temple of their 
 first meeting, " as an iron-looking man, somewhat 
 severe in tone and aspect, with a massive brow, 
 straight features, and compressed lips, uttering few 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 219 
 
 words, and tliose only of a dry and practical import. 
 His conversation, I expected, would tend towards 
 statecraft or political economy, and would proceed to 
 the point and nothing but the point. Great was my 
 surprise, then, on finding that he had an open coun- 
 tenance, an expansive forehead, a frank, genial bear- 
 ing, and a vivacious manner of conversation. The 
 lips, so far from being closely set, were parted con- 
 stantly by smiles and laughter." He handled men 
 by commanding their respect and by revealing a 
 superior sense of duty and strength in its perform- 
 ance. 
 
 And once again he had the true motive and aim. 
 He loved the people and ruled for their good. That 
 was his ambition. His last word on leaving India 
 was, "Be just and kind to the natives." We are 
 told nowadays that we ought not to call the people of 
 any mission land natives, much less heathen. The 
 word "native" can be spoken meanly, but it is a 
 good word. No one resented it on John Lawrence's 
 lips. On one occasion, when he was "Viceroy, "a 
 young officer in the army, who was talking, after the 
 manner of his kind, contemptuously of the natives, 
 happened, in Sir John's hearing, to speak of them 
 as 'those niggers.' 'I beg your pardon,' said Sir 
 John, ' of what people were you speaking ? '" The 
 rebuke did its work. Lawrence, like Gordon, was 
 able to trust men of whom others would have been 
 afraid. The mutiny was put down by native troops 
 whom Lawrence organized, calling in even old Sikh 
 leaders who had been among the greatest sufferers 
 from the Sikh wars. He did not despise the race he 
 ruled. No man can really help and win the love of 
 
220 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 those whom he does not respect, whether he be states- 
 man or missionary. 
 
 And in the larger problem of British government 
 in India Lawrence kept his head and followed true 
 ends. He was opposed to the Afghan wars and was 
 no Eussophobist. He believed that Peshawar was 
 the right limit of India to the northwest, and that 
 India should be governed by itself, for its own good, 
 not for British aggrandizement or as a base for British 
 dominion over Asia. And for all his great services 
 he sought no reward. He accepted quietly such 
 honours as came to him, all belated, the K. C. B. for 
 his great services in the Punjab and the baronetcy for 
 his work in the Mutiny, and the peerage when at last 
 his work in India was done. And he went on, the 
 same frugal, simple, straight working man as before. 
 
 The time has come to speak a little more fully of 
 the Mutiny. Its causes were varied and complex; 
 the annexation of Oudh and the consequent discon- 
 tent of the Sepoys, almost all of whom were from 
 Oudh and who lost by the annexation some of their 
 most valued privileges, the plotting of dissatisfied 
 Mohammedan leaders, unrest at the settlement of land 
 problems, fear of enforced conversion to Christianity 
 due to the greased cartridge scare and other things 
 which had preceded it, longing for the old days of 
 easy going government and disorder and Oriental 
 corruption, the dictatorialness of the British rule, the 
 slow absorption of the native states and the destruc- 
 tion of native rights and above all the truckling com- 
 promisingness of the government — these were among 
 the principal reasons for the Mutiny. As a matter of 
 fact, the Madras and Bombay Sepoys did not mutiny 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 221 
 
 and there was little trouble in Bengal. The difficulty 
 waa in the Northwest Provinces, as they were then 
 called, the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh as 
 they are called now. The insurrection cut off Calcutta 
 from the Punjab and left John Lawrence practical 
 ruler of northern India, and from the Punjab, which 
 his work had made secure and his strong arm held in 
 quietness, he poured out the men, British and native, 
 who retook Delhi, which was the storm centre of the 
 Mutiny and thus broke the insurrection at its heart. 
 It is a very wonderful story worth reading in all its 
 detail, but it only shows John Lawrence in a time of 
 great crisis as the man we have already found him to 
 be in times of quietness. He was in the mighty 
 hour of trial what he had been in the calm and or- 
 derly work of administration for eighteen years. The 
 Mutiny found him at Eawal Pendi. It struck the 
 mass of British officials dumb, but not John Law- 
 rence. It released the measureless power of the man. 
 He left details at Lahore and other points to the men 
 he could trust, and like an eagle from its eyrie he 
 looked out over the whole field and sent his enkin- 
 dling messages everywhere while he drove the ma- 
 chinery of his government like a giant. He did not 
 fear scanty resources. "It is want of action rather 
 than want of means," he wrote to Edwardes, "which 
 may prove disastrous to us." When the commander- 
 in-chief hesitated and was going into entrenchments 
 at Ambala, he telegraphed to him, "Clubs, not 
 spades are trumps ; when in doubt, take the trick," 
 and wrote in a long letter, "Pray only reflect on the 
 whole history of India. "When have we failed when 
 we acted vigorously ? When have we succeeded when 
 
222 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 guided by timid councils?" The whole Punjab 
 thriUed with Lawrence's zeal, and steady but impetu- 
 ous resolution. ' ' I like issuing orders by telegraph, ' ' 
 he said, "because they cannot give me their reason, 
 nor ask me for mine." When others faltered he was 
 firm ; when others were restless he was calm and 
 patient. When others were confused, he saw with 
 clear vision, and holding unwaveringly to the in- 
 trepid policy he had originated, he swung the great 
 cause through to success. The world recognized when 
 the Mutiny was put down that it was Lawrence who 
 had done it. "There remains," said the Viceroy, 
 Lord Canning, in his minute on the services of civil 
 officers and others during the Mutiny, "the large and 
 important province of the Punj ab. The merits of the 
 officers to whose courage and ability the preserva- 
 tion of that country is due have been set forth by 
 their distinguished chief, Sir John Lawrence, with a 
 fullness which leaves little to be added. Of what is 
 due to Sir John Lawrence himself no man is ignorant. 
 Through him Delhi fell, and the Punjab, no longer a 
 weakness, became a source of strength. But for him, 
 the hold of England over Upper India would have 
 had to be recovered at a cost of English blood and 
 treasure which defies calculation. It is difficult to 
 exaggerate the value of such ability, vigilance, and 
 energy at such a time." 
 
 When the Mutiny was over Lawrence was given 
 charge of Delhi as well as the Punjab, and pacified 
 and consolidated what had been the violent centre of 
 the tempest. He sided with Canning in the policy of 
 clemency towards the people who had been involved. 
 He loathed the spirit of revenge and cruelty with 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 223 
 
 which British sentiment in India and at home urged 
 that the mutineers should be hunted down. We for- 
 get in our judgment of the Eastern people that their 
 atrocities have been matched, at a distance, at least, 
 by ours, and that if they have been guilty of massacre 
 and violence, we have had no small part in schooling 
 them to regard wrong and injustice as proper qualities 
 of international intercourse. 
 
 For two years after the Mutiny, John Lawrence 
 continued his work in India and then in 1859 went 
 home with no purpose of ever returning again. He 
 had done a real work. He had left his stamp not on 
 the Jullundur Doab alone, not on the Punjab alone, 
 but on the whole of India. 
 
 Temple was the secretary who wrote his reports. 
 Asked years later whether the reports of the Board 
 at Lahore were not too highly coloured, he replied, 
 "There is not a word in the Punjab reports which I 
 would wish unwritten. On the contrary, I should 
 feel justified in speaking now even more strongly of 
 the achievements of the Board than I did then. I 
 have borne since that time a part in the government 
 of nearly every province in India, and now, looking 
 back upon them all, I declare to you that I have 
 seen no government to be compared with that of the 
 Lawrences in the Punjab." 
 
 When Sir John Lawrence left the Punjab for home 
 he received a long address signed by two hundred 
 and eighty-two civilians, four hundred and seventy- 
 four military and naval officers, fifteen clergymen and 
 eighty-three gentlemen unconnected with the govern- 
 ment, in which these men who had known him well 
 declared : 
 
224 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 "All of us, of whatsoever class or profession, are 
 conscious of the untiring energy, unflinching firm- 
 ness, unswerving honesty of purpose, with which you 
 have devoted yourself to promote the public service. 
 We all believe, from personal knowledge or common 
 fame, that you have been an instrument in the hand 
 of Providence for the preservation of British rule in 
 Upper India, by your good management and resolute 
 bearing during a period of unexampled difficulty." 
 
 The address was a testimony which few other men 
 who have ever ruled their own or other races could 
 have received. But Lawrence had only done what 
 he saw was his duty. That was his spirit and the 
 atmosphere which he created around him. Eobert 
 Napier described this in a noble picture of the Punjab 
 as it was under the two men of God who have left 
 their stamp on it forever : 
 
 "There was a glow of work and duty round us all 
 in the Punjab in those days, such as I have never 
 felt before or since. I well remember the reaction 
 of feeling when I went on furlough to England, the 
 want of pressure of any kind, the self-seeking, the 
 want of high aims which seemed to dull and dwarf 
 you. Tou went back again lowered several pegs, 
 saddened altogether. The atmosphere was differ- 
 ent." 
 
 And now Lawrence went home to the meaner 
 atmosphere. He found, as Lord Stanley had written 
 him he should, his name and service in every one's 
 mouth. Oxford and Cambridge each gave him a 
 D. 0. L. The Queen and the nobility made a lion 
 of him, but nothing could spoil his plain simplicity 
 or make him other than the free and frugal man he 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 225 
 
 had always been. For the next four years he served 
 in the Indian Council at home. Our own Civil War 
 broke out during this period and John Lawrence was 
 one of the Englishmen who from the first firmly de- 
 sired the preservation of the Union. 
 
 Lawrence's work for India in India, however, was 
 not yet done, and in 1864 he was sent back as Viceroy 
 to the land where as an unknown Irish lad he had 
 begun his work thirty-four years before. The con- 
 dition of the viceroyalty had greatly changed since 
 Lawrence went to India. The telegraph had brought 
 Calcutta into immediate contact with London, and 
 the Mutiny had resulted in the destruction of the 
 East India Company and the absorption of India 
 under the British crown. These changes took away 
 from the Viceroy his old imperial power, and gave 
 Lawrence as Governor- General no such free hand as 
 he had had in his old days in the Punjab as a com- 
 missioner. But he did not lose his character and 
 reputation. He bent all his energies to carry on the 
 great works which Dalhousie had originated. The 
 railway and telegraph systems were largely extended ; 
 sanitary reforms were pushed forward, in the teeth 
 of much native prejudice ; barracks fit for British 
 troops were erected on a large scale, with reading- 
 rooms, workshops, gardens and prayer-rooms ; educa- 
 tion was vigorously fostered, especially for the poor 
 villagers who most needed it. Dr. George Smith, 
 then the leading editor in India, often criticized 
 Lawrence's political views ; but of these measures 
 for the benefit of the people he wrote : " He is great 
 in the work he has done ; he is great in the moral 
 spirit in which he has done every act ; in the lofty 
 
226 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 principle which has guided him ; in his noble private 
 character, which towers above that of any of his 
 predecessors." ' 
 
 As Viceroy of India, Lawrence was the same un- 
 conventional, unresting character as ever. He 
 worked in his shirt-sleeves. He contemptuously 
 trod upon the slaveries of viceregal etiquette. He 
 toiled on the "double barrelled principle of 'no 
 arrears,' and ' what you do, do thoroughly.' " And 
 the great Durbars at which he spoke to the native 
 chiefs in their own language — a thing no other 
 Governor-General has ever been able to do — showed 
 that he could put on the viceregal clothes when he 
 wanted to show the viceregal character, which he 
 never needed to put on because he wore it always. 
 And after five years of noble service, as great prob- 
 ably as any man could have rendered under the con- 
 ditions which prevailed, he went home for the 
 remaining ten years of his life. 
 
 Within a few weeks of his return to England, the 
 long delayed elevation to the peerage which was his 
 due came to him, and amid cheers from both sides 
 he made his maiden speech in the House of Lords on 
 April 19, 1869. He served two years as chairman 
 of the London School Board with Huxley, putting 
 himself into this work as he had ever done in all his 
 work. He took a large part in settling the question 
 of religious instruction, and while he was on the 
 Board the resolution was adopted "that the Bible 
 should be read, and that there should be given such 
 explanations and such instructions therefrom on the 
 principles of morality and religion, as are suited to 
 
 ! " History of the Church Missionary Society," Vol. II, p. 484. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 227 
 
 the capacities of children." His eyesight failed him 
 towards the close and his secretary had to read to 
 him, but he was full of activity and love, of firm 
 principle and tenderness to the end. 
 
 He had some last work to do in fearlessly warring 
 against the government's policy in Afghanistan, 
 which later events sufficiently condemned, confirm- 
 ing the old sage's every judgment and prediction, 
 and then on June 25, 1879, he passed on. "Do you 
 know me ? " whispered his wife. ' ' To my last gasp, 
 my darling," he replied quite audibly ; and as she 
 bent down to give him her last kiss, and felt the last 
 pressure of his lips and hands : " I am so weary," he 
 said. Such were the words which those who stood 
 around his bed heard him murmuring to himself as 
 he was entering the land where the weary are at rest. 
 So lived and so died John Lawrence. 
 
 1 have said enough about John Lawrence's char- 
 acter and methods, and their lessons to missionaries 
 and all workers in the living movement of the world 
 are sufficiently obvious. It remains to say some- 
 thing, first, about his religious nature ; secondly, his 
 attitude to the non-Christian religions, and thirdly, 
 his relation to the missionary work. 
 
 1. John Lawrence and the Punjab School were 
 men of devout and uncompromising Christian life. 
 They were such in their private character. "And it 
 is to be remembered," says Mr. Bosworth Smith, 
 " that in India the private character of a public man 
 is a more important element in estimating his general 
 influence even than it is in England. Indeed, I ques- 
 tion whether the example set to his countrymen at 
 large in this respect by Sir John Lawrence, and I 
 
228 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 might add, in their measure, by all the members of 
 the Lawrence School, is not among the most valuable 
 of all the services which he and they rendered to 
 India. Throughout his life, even in the early Delhi 
 and Punjab days, John Lawrence had set his face 
 strongly against practices which it is easier to under- 
 stand than to describe, and which were then all too 
 common among our countrymen in India. No one 
 whose character was not above suspicion in these 
 respects could hope to stand well with him, even in 
 early times. Still less could he have obtained ac- 
 cess now to his viceregal court. Vice of all kinds 
 stood abashed in his presence. Men, aye, women too, 
 'saw how awful goodness was.' The gambler, the 
 profane, the profligate, the flippant, the self-indul- 
 gent, felt that his court was no place for them. No 
 one ever dropped an impure word or made an im- 
 pure allusion in his presence. No one ever scoffed 
 at religion, whether his own or that of the natives. 
 No one ever spoke contemptuously or harshly of the 
 natives themselves without receiving from him a 
 stern, and sometimes a sledge-hammer rebuke. On 
 one occasion a lady who was sitting at the viceregal 
 table allowed herself to sneer at the Bible. Sir John 
 Lawrence looked sternly on her and said, with all his 
 dignity, but with more of sorrow than of anger in 
 his words, ' How can you speak like that of God and 
 of God's Book in the presence of these young men? ' 
 The next minute he was talking with her of other 
 subjects as if nothing had happened. But the re- 
 buke had done its work on her and on the assembled 
 company." ' 
 
 'Smith, " Life of Lord Lawrence," Vol. II, p. 511. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 229 
 
 "Amidst his great successes," says Mr. Gust, "and 
 his unparallelled good fortune, he had the grace given 
 him to remember the Hand that gave, and while 
 mindful of things temporal, not to forget the things 
 eternal. He set the example of a bold, independ- 
 ent, and yet Christian ruler, an uncrowned king of 
 men by grace and election." 
 
 When he became Lord Lawrence, both Lord Shaftes- 
 bury and the Duke and Duchess of Argyle used the 
 name of God in congratulating him. He and they 
 were living unto Him. 
 
 " From the earliest period of my acquaintance with 
 him," says Captain Eastwick, "he was a decided 
 Christian ; a simple, God-fearing man, who, to the 
 best of his ability, translated into daily practice the 
 precepts of the Bible, of which sacred volume he was, 
 to my certain knowledge, a daily assiduous and medi- 
 tative reader. I have often seen him, when his sight 
 had grown too dim to allow of his reading other 
 books, spelling out slowly, with his finger on the 
 page, a few verses from a New Testament printed in 
 large type." 
 
 He believed in prayer and prayed. As Viceroy, 
 he instituted family prayers in government house, 
 and gave orders that the servants and others con- 
 nected with it should, as far as possible, be released 
 from labour on Sundays. 
 
 " He never omitted having family prayers for the 
 household ; and he and I hardly ever missed our 
 daily reading of the Bible together, even when he 
 was at his busiest," said his wife. And when he was 
 losing his sight, his wife says "his gentle patience 
 never failed," and she recalled "how earnestly he 
 
230 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 prayed witli me that God would help him to submit 
 ■with resignation to His will." 
 
 He ever observed Sunday, as the whole Punjab 
 School did. At the great Durbars at Lahore and 
 Agra all festivities ceased on Sunday, and there were 
 only the quiet ordinary services of the church. In 
 his speech to the Lahore Durbar he openly recognized 
 God. 
 
 "I will now only add," he said in closing, " that I 
 pray the great God, who is the God of all the races 
 and all the people of this world, that He may guard 
 and protect you, and teach you all to love justice and 
 hate oppression, and enable you, each in his sev- 
 eral ways, to do all the good in his power. May He 
 give you all that is for your real benefit." 
 
 He was not a Viceroy after the style of some who 
 went before and came after him. His simple pres- 
 ence at the head of the government was a help to all 
 missions and a preaching of the Christian Gospel by 
 character and act and word also from the highest 
 pulpit in India. 
 
 2. John Lawrence was never soft in his thoughts 
 or words about the immoralities or superstitions of 
 the Indian religions. He spent a deal of strength 
 fighting the practice of infanticide which was im- 
 bedded in the native religion, and in those same ear- 
 lier days he was wont to chaff the people upon their 
 foolish beliefs. "When he was Viceroy the Hindus 
 were forbidden to throw their dead bodies into the 
 Hoogly, and after the first Sikh War he declined to 
 continue feudatory arrangements in support of tem- 
 ples, converting all such into money payments. 
 After the Mutiny, however, he refused to allow any 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 23 1 
 
 injustice. When it was proposed to destroy mosques 
 or temples, "I will on no account consent to it," he 
 said. ' ' We should lawfully abstain from the destruc- 
 tion of religious edifices, either to favour friends or to 
 annoy foes." And he insisted on the restoration of 
 temples and mosques to the people for their original 
 uses " He did not appear to have turned his atten- 
 tion," says Temple, "towards the philosophical, 
 ideal, and metaphysical phases of Hindu thought. 
 Bat of the priestly and fanatical classes among Mo- 
 hammedans he had a vivid and exact appreciation, 
 which he would embody in forcible language." 
 
 The great problem in this sphere, however, on 
 which the position of Lawrence is most interesting 
 was the question of religious neutrality on the part 
 of the government. The East India Company had 
 started out by opposing Christianity and fostering 
 the native religion, idolatry and immorality and all. 
 Gradually it was forced by public opinion at home, 
 and the character of some of its agents in India, to 
 discontinue all its support of the heathen religion, 
 but varying views prevailed as to what government 
 officers might or might not do in supporting Chris- 
 tianity in their personal capacities. In the Punjab 
 Lawrence, Edwardes and their school had always been 
 perfectly fearless in their position, supporting Chris- 
 tian missions and living and avowing their Christian 
 principles. When the Mutiny broke out it was real- 
 ized that if the Sepoys had known what Christianity 
 was they would never have been played upon as they 
 were. As a matter of fact, the Sepoy armies in which 
 there were Christians did not mutiny. It was only 
 the Bengal Sepoys among whom the government had 
 
232 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 practically prohibited Christianity. After the Mn- 
 tiuy, accordingly, there were many who argued that 
 the time had come for the government to be openly 
 and avowedly Christian. Some held that the Mutiny 
 was a judgment of God for England's perfidy to 
 Christianity in the past. Among the most outspoken 
 advocates of a Christian policy was Sir Herbert Ed- 
 wardes. He addressed to Lawrence a long and able 
 " Memorandum on the Elimination of all Unchristian 
 Principles from the Government of India/' to which 
 through his secretary Lawrence made a reply of 
 which the following were the concluding paragraphs : 
 
 "The various points named for discussion have now 
 been reviewed. Before concluding this letter I am to state 
 that Sir J. Lawrence has been led, in common with others, 
 since the occurrence of the awful events of 1857, to pon- 
 der deeply on what may be the faults and shortcomings of 
 the British as a Christian nation in India. In considering 
 topics such as those treated of in this despatch he would 
 solely endeavour to ascertain what is our Christian duty. 
 Having ascertained that according to our erring lights and 
 conscience, he would follow it out to the uttermost, unde- 
 terred by any consideration. If we address ourselves to 
 this task, it may, with the blessing of Providence, not prove 
 too difficult for us. Measures have, indeed, been proposed 
 as essential to be adopted by a Christian government which 
 would be truly difficult or impossible of execution. But 
 on closer consideration, it will be found that such measures 
 are not enjoined by Christianity, but are contrary to its 
 spirit. Sir John Lawrence does, I am to state, entertain 
 the earnest belief that all those measures which are really 
 and truly Christian can be carried out in India, not only 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 233 
 
 without danger to British rule, but on the contrary with 
 every advantage to its stability. Christian things done in 
 a Christian way will never, the chief commissioner is con- 
 vinced, alienate the heathen. About such things there are 
 qualities which do not provoke nor excite distrust, nor 
 harden to resistance. It is when unchristian things are 
 done in the name of Christianity, or when Christian things 
 are done in an unchristian way, that mischief and danger 
 are occasioned. The difficulty is, amid the political com- 
 plications, the conflicting social considerations, the fears 
 and hopes of self-interest which are so apt to mislead hu- 
 man judgment, to discern clearly what is imposed upon us 
 by Christian duty and what is not. Having discerned 
 this, we have but to put it into practice. Sir John Law- 
 rence is satisfied that within the territories committed to 
 his charge he can carry out all those measures which are 
 really matters of Christian duty on the part of the govern- 
 ment. And, further, he believes that such measures will 
 arouse no danger ; will conciliate instead of provoking ; 
 and will subserve the ultimate diffusion of the truth among 
 the people. 
 
 "Finally, the chief commissioner would recommend that 
 such measures and policy, having been deliberately de- 
 termined on by the supreme government, be openly avowed 
 and universally acted upon throughout the empire ; so that 
 there may be no diversities of practice, no isolated, tenta- 
 tive, or conflicting efforts, which are, indeed, the surest 
 means of exciting distrust ; so that the people may see that 
 we have no sudden or sinister designs ; and so that we may 
 exhibit that harmony and uniformity of conduct which be- 
 fits a Christian nation striving to do its duty." 
 
 Although this reply did not accept Edwardes' po- 
 
234 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 sitions, it went far towards doing so. Edwardes 
 wrote of it : " It is a noble expression of the duty of 
 the Indian government to do whatever Christianity 
 requires, at whatever cost ; and it only differs from 
 mine as to what Christianity does demand of us, and 
 what it does not." In other words, the principles 
 were identical, but the application of them different. 
 Again he wrote, " It is a fine manifesto, and I rejoice 
 to have elicited it." Of a paper by Donald McLeod, 
 with which Lawrence agreed, Edwardes generously 
 said, "I rejoice to have fulfilled the of&ce of a pump, 
 and drawn so much sweet water to the surface." 
 
 Lawrence's view was not a negation of any positive 
 change. He was strongly in favour of a positive 
 course of action on the part of the government. 
 
 "There is now," he wrote to Trevelyan, "a great 
 dispute growing np as to whether the Bible shall be 
 introduced into our schools or not. I think that it 
 should, and that — provided only it be done with 
 prudence and tact — the people will never raise an ob- 
 jection. All that we have to do is to take care that 
 the study of the Bible be optional with the children." 
 
 And to his friend, "William Arnold, a son of Dr. 
 Arnold of Eugby, and the able Director of Public 
 Instruction in the Punjab, who took strongly the op- 
 posite view, and argued that the Pounder of Chris- 
 tianity would Himself have disapproved of the meas- 
 ure, he writes as follows : 
 
 "I believe that, provided neither force nor fraud were 
 used, Christ would assuredly approve of the introduction 
 of the Bible. We believe that the Bible is true, that it is 
 the only means of salvation. Surely we should lend our 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 235 
 
 influence in making it known to our subjects. ... As 
 a matter of policy, I advocate the introduction of the Bible 
 quite as much as a matter of duty. I believe that, pro- 
 vided we do it wisely and judiciously, the people will grad- 
 ually read that book. I have reason to suppose this be- 
 cause the missionaries are successful. On the other hand, 
 nothing will more surely conduce to the strength of our 
 power in India than the spread of Christianity. You seem 
 to think that we violate the principles of toleration by at- 
 tempting to convert the people. I think you might just as 
 well assume that we violate such principles by preferring 
 in a public office a respectable man to a reprobate, a wise 
 man to a fool, and an industrious man to a lazy one. The 
 whole question seems to me to resolve itself into what is the 
 just interpretation of the term toleration. I consider that 
 it means 'forbearance.' That is to say, that we are to 
 bear with and not to persecute mankind for their religious 
 opinions. But this cannot mean that we should not strive 
 by gentle means to lead those in the right way whom we 
 see to be going wrong. ' ' 
 
 In answer to the strong objection of Arnold, Law- 
 rence wrote a despatch to the Governor-General, 
 curiously omitted from his biography, whicli is de- 
 ficient in its knowledge of Lawrence's religious life 
 and activity. In this despatch lie said : 
 
 " Our government is, as all other governments are, or 
 ought to be, established for the good of the people. But 
 while with other governments the popular will is generally 
 the criterion of the public good, such is not always the case 
 with us in India. If, by being trustees for the people, we 
 are supposed to be bound invariably by the will of the 
 
236 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 people, then we are not, the chief commissioner thinks, 
 trustees in that sense. We have not been elected or placed 
 in power by the people, but we are here through our moral 
 ■ superiority, by the force of circumstances, by the will of 
 Providence. This alone constitutes our charter to govern 
 India. 
 
 " In doing the best we can for the people, we are bound 
 by our conscience, and not by theirs. Believing that the 
 study of the Bible is fraught with the highest blessings, we, 
 of course, do desire to communicate those blessings to them 
 if we can. We desire this not only as individuals, but as 
 a government ; for Christianity does truly go hand in hand 
 with all those subjects for which British rule exists in India. 
 But this can only be effected by moral influences volun- 
 tarily received. Anything like ' proselytism ' or ' quiet 
 persecution ' of any kind, or the application of secular 
 motives, direct or indirect, is, in the first place, absolutely 
 forbidden by the very religion we profess, and, in the sec- 
 ond place, would be worse than useless for the object in 
 view. 
 
 " Therefore, we have nothing to do with such means. 
 Nor do we, as a government, undertake to found and 
 maintain Christian missions, because the thing can be done 
 better by private effort, and because our doing so might 
 tend to introduce those secular means for propagation of 
 Christianity which we wish to avoid. But, as we have 
 schools, their arises a fair opportunity of offering the Bible 
 to those who may choose to receive it ; and, in the chief 
 commissioner's opinion, it is just, politic, and right that we 
 should avail ourselves of that opportunity. Such, brieily 
 stated, is the real argument for the formation of Bible 
 classes in government schools. 
 
 " To say that we have no right to offer Christian teach- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 237 
 
 ing to government schools because we do not allow the 
 native religions to be taught there, is to misapprehend the 
 fundamental relation that in this country subsists between 
 the government and the people. We are to do the best we 
 can for them, according to our lights ; and they are to 
 obey us. Mr. Arnold writes : ' What answer am I to give 
 to Hindus and Mohammedans if they say that, after hav- 
 ing excluded their religions, I have introduced my own? 
 Shall I say that I am master, that I am the officer of a 
 conquering government, and will do as I please ? ' That 
 answer would indeed be arbitrary. The proper answer 
 would be thus : ' We offer you the Bible in our government 
 schools because we believe it to be for your inestimable 
 good, if you choose to listen to it. We do not wish you 
 to study it unless you do so voluntarily. But you cannot 
 expect us to help in teaching your religion, which we do 
 not believe to be true. That you can do for yourselves.' " ^ 
 
 Lawrence never abandoned this view. Let those 
 who oppose it be sure that they can speak with Law- 
 rence's authority, his knowledge of the people and 
 his honest Christian character. It is a very different 
 attitude of mind from that of General Kitchener 
 when he forbade missionary work in the Soudan, and 
 proposed that the Gordon Memorial College should 
 be absolutely non- Christian. Well might the House 
 of Laymen of the province of Canterbury reply to 
 such proposals : 
 
 " That this House, while welcoming the noble effort now 
 making to elevate and instruct the people of the Soudan 
 and Upper Egypt through the means of the Gordon Col- 
 
 * "History of the Church Missionary Society, " Vol, II, p. 250 f. 
 
238 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 lege at Khartoum, is nevertheless of opinion that no effort 
 to perpetuate the memory of General Gordon can be con- 
 sidered adequate which does not include the direct procla- 
 mation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all the races in- 
 habiting the upper basin of the Nile, which has recently 
 been brought under the control of England. They would 
 express their earnest hope that at the earliest moment con- 
 sistent with public safety the government of the Soudan 
 will remove the restrictions at present existing upon the 
 entrance of missionaries to Khartoum." 
 
 In the course of the debate over this proposal, the 
 duty of the Church of Christ to preach the Gospel to 
 every creature, including Mohammedans, was in- 
 sisted on by Lord Cranborne, eldest son of Lord 
 Salisbury, with the eloquence of genuine conviction. 
 And Sir Eichard Temple, one of the last representa- 
 tives of the Punjab school of Christian officers and 
 statesmen, expressed his surprise that any British 
 ruler should put any obstacle in the way of a Chris- 
 tian mission. "I cannot understand it," he said. 
 The policy of Lawrence and Bdwardes and Mont- 
 gomery, who so soon as cities like Peshawar and 
 Lucknow were occupied, Mohammedan cities then aa 
 dangerous as Khartoum now, encouraged missionaries 
 to come in and preach openly to the Moslem popula- 
 tion, was a nobler and higher policy than that now 
 enunciated. But it needs a man of rare faith and 
 Christian experience to adopt such a policy and act 
 upon it fearlessly ; and judging from the lower 
 standpoint of the average Christianity of England, 
 the caution of Lord Kitchener in present circum- 
 stances cannot be pronounced unreasonable. Never- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 239 
 
 tlielesa, Herbert Edwardes' never-to-be-forgotten 
 words remain supremely true: ^^ Above all, we may 
 be quite sure that we are much safer if we do our duty 
 (to proclaim Christ as the Saviour) than if we neglect it ; 
 and that He who has brought us here, with Sis won right 
 arm, will shield and bless us, if, in simple reliance upon 
 Him, we try to do His will." That also was Jolm 
 Lawrence's view. 
 
 3. It remains, accordingly, to say just a word upon 
 his attitude and relation to missions. In this matter, 
 as in his Christian character, he undoubtedly learned 
 and grew with time. The first reference to mission- 
 ary work in his biography occurs during his stay at 
 Etawa. 
 
 " They (the people) had often heard me laugh at dif- 
 ferent absurdities of their religion, on which occasions I 
 had reasoned with them, but in vain. 'No, no,' they 
 said ; ' you English are very wise, we will allow, but you 
 do not understand our religion.' In fact, as far as my ex- 
 perience goes, time and labour are utterly lost in such dis- 
 cussions. The only way that will ever bring the natives 
 to truer and more enlightened ideas is the gradual prog- 
 ress of infant education. The attempts to change the 
 faith of the adult population have hitherto failed, and will, 
 I am afraid, continue to fail." 
 
 On his first furlough, Caroline Fox reports in her 
 diary that in a tali about India, 
 
 "Lawrence spoke of the stationary kind of progress 
 which Christianity was making amongst them. When a 
 native embraces this new creed, he retains his old in- 
 
240 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 veterate prejudices and superadds only the liberty of the 
 new faith. This Lawrence has repeatedly proved, so much 
 so that he would on no account take one of these converts 
 into his service. All his hope is in the education of the 
 children, who are bright and intelligent. The Indians 
 will, from politeness, believe all you tell them, and if you 
 speak of any of Christ's miracles, they make no difiSculty, 
 but directly detail one more marvellous of which Mo- 
 hammed was the author, and expect your civility of 
 credence to keep pace with theirs. If you try to convince 
 them of any absurdities or inconsistencies in the Koran, 
 they stop you with, ' Do you think that such an one as I 
 should presume to understand it?' " 
 
 But in later years lie had grown far beyond this 
 superficial view. At the Lahore Durbar the one 
 prince who received the order of the Star of India was 
 a Christian, the Eajah of Kaparthala. Lawrence ex- 
 onerated missionaries from any blame for the Mutiny, 
 in reply to arguments which preceded by half a 
 century the arguments which laid the Boxer uprising 
 at the door of missionaries. He always spoke of mis- 
 sionaries with respect. "When he was Viceroy he 
 invited a Moravian missionary to come and visit him 
 at Simla. " You have given us life and health," the 
 man said as he went away loaded with presents. 
 Lawrence was not a neutral in any sense. He be- 
 lieved in toleration not neutrality on the part of the 
 government, and he believed in earnest aggression 
 on the part of the Churches. When he returned to 
 England he became a member of the Committee of 
 the Church Missionary Society, and at a meeting of 
 the "Wesleyan Missionary Society he declared ; 
 
^ THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 24 1 
 
 "I believe, notwithstanding all that the English people 
 have done to benefit that country, the missionaries have 
 done more than all other agencies combined. They have 
 had arduous and up-hill work, often receiving no en- 
 couragement, and sometimes a great deal of discourage- 
 ment from their own countrymen, and have had to bear 
 the taunts and obloquy of those who despised and disliked 
 their preaching ; but such has been the effect of their 
 earnest zeal, untiring devotion, and of the excellent ex- 
 ample which they have, I may say, universally shown to 
 the people, that I have no doubt whatever that, in spite of 
 the great masses of the people being intensely opposed to 
 their doctrine, they are, as a body, remarkably popular in 
 the country. ... It seems to me that, year by year 
 and cycle by cycle, the influence of these missionaries 
 must increase, and that, in God's good-will, the time may 
 be expected to come when large masses of the people, 
 having lost all faith in their own, and feeling the want of 
 a religion which is pure and true and holy, will be con- 
 verted and profess the Christian religion, and having pro- 
 fessed it, live in accordance with its precepts. ... I 
 have a great reverence and regard for them (the mission- 
 aries) both personally, and for the sake of the great cause 
 in which they are engaged ; and I feel it to be a pleasure 
 and a privilege to do anything I can in the last years of 
 my life to further the great work for which they have done 
 so much." 
 
 And Lawrence saw nothing wrong in such a posi- 
 tion. His firm conviction was that the men best 
 served Christian governments who were most Chris- 
 tian in their own lives, and who most unfalteringly 
 supported the religion in which they and their fa- 
 
242 JOHN LAWRENCE 
 
 thers believed, and the event showed that he was 
 right. Lord Northbrook once emphatically ex- 
 pressed his opinion that the natives of India respect 
 an Englishman who is not ashamed of his religion, 
 and have no fear of his infringing the principles of 
 religious equality 
 
 " I believe that they do not honour a man the less, or 
 love him the less, because they see that he is in earnest in 
 his own religious convictions. If proof were wanted of 
 this, it would be sufficient to recall to your recollection 
 that some of the noblest deeds that had been done in 
 British India had been done not only by earnest Christian 
 men who never for a moment concealed their zeal in favour 
 of the spread of Christianity. It is only necessary to 
 mention the names of Herbert Edwardes and Lord Law- 
 rence to prove that what I have said is true. I will add 
 one thing more. Among those whom I have known in 
 high ofi&ce in India there are none who have so conciliated 
 the respect and affection of the people of India as those 
 very men who have never concealed their desire to extend 
 the Christian religion. I will mention Sir Donald McLeod, 
 Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, Sir William Muir, 
 who is now present, and my friend Sir Richard Temple, 
 now Governor of Bombay, and one of the men who was 
 foremost on all occasions to join in everything which he 
 considered to be of advantage to the welfare of the 
 Church of England, and the spread of the Christian re- 
 ligion in India."' 
 
 And then he pronounced a hearty eulogy on the mis- 
 sionaries. "They are worthy," he said, "of all 
 support, encouragement, and admiration." 
 
 ' "History of the Church Missionary Society," Vol. Ill, p. 70. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 243 
 
 When will the day come that we may hope to have 
 such men representing our nation abroad and their 
 spirit ruling our public life ? Are we sure that we our- 
 selves are such men, and that our religious profes- 
 sion and Christian service rest upon as great a reality 
 of faith and character as all men felt in the warm 
 heart and the granite wiU of John, first Lord Law- 
 rence of the Punjab? 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON, THE 
 CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT AND 
 THE POWER OF PURE DEVOTION 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON, THE CHRIS- 
 TIAN KNIGHT ERRANT AND THE 
 POWER OF PURE DEVOTION 
 
 FOUE of the five men whom we have thus far 
 considered were professionally related to the 
 missionary cause. The other one of the five 
 and the one whom we are to consider now belonged 
 to a class of men who have done as much as many 
 missionaries have been able to do, soldiers, adminis- 
 trators and diplomatists, who have themselves fol- 
 lowed Christ, who have done their work in His 
 Spirit and lived their lives by His principles, and 
 have advanced the mission cause through their open 
 sympathy with its aims and their cordial support of 
 its enterprises, and not less through their recognition 
 of the missionary ideal as the right ideal in all con- 
 tact, political and commercial as well as religious, 
 between the advanced and the backward peoples. 
 A sad proportion of the secular representatives of 
 the West have not belonged to this class. A steady 
 stream of merchants and soldiers and political agents 
 has moved across Asia and Africa and South America, 
 and the men in it who have lived the aggressive 
 Christian life, and sought to advance the Christian 
 cause have been the honourable minority. 
 In this minority, however, have been the greatest 
 247 
 
248 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 men of their time, and they have been great by their 
 Christian character and Christian purpose not less 
 than by their governing genius, their military power 
 or their diplomatic skill. I have spoken of one of 
 these and am now to speak of another, Charles 
 George Gordon, the most heroic character of his day. 
 "There was no figure during our generation," said 
 Lord Salisbury, ' ' to which the popular feeling and 
 sympathy were so attached." " The most restless 
 spirit of the nineteenth century," Sir William Butler 
 calls him, — "the bravest, the purest and the most 
 truthful Englishman of his time." "The marvel- 
 lous career is now ended," said the London Times, on 
 the news of his death. ' ' The life is over. . . . 
 That life has done much for this generation. It has 
 served conspicuously to remind us that the age of 
 chivalry is not dead ; that chivalry in the highest 
 sense is rare, indeed, but that its influence is as great 
 and as far reaching as of old. . . . If we cannot 
 but deeply mourn the untimely end of so much genius 
 and so much devotion, it is some consolation to feel 
 that Gordon's heroic death has lifted him to a height 
 of glory which renders him the most conspicuous 
 Englishman of our time." He and Charles Darwin, 
 Mr. Huxley said, were the two greatest men he had 
 ever met. There was about him an unselfishness that 
 was more than human, and a faith lived in him 
 which even Huxley wished he might share. And 
 above all these tributes and explaining them, he was, 
 Mr. Lawrence Olyphant wrote of him to his sister, 
 "the most Christlike man I ever knew." 
 
 We are more concerned in these studies with the 
 character and principles of men than with the in- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 249 
 
 cidenta of their life, but it is the latter which give 
 us our understandiug of the former, and Gordon's 
 life was a knight errant' s if ever a knight errant 
 lived. 
 
 He was born at Woolwich, January 28, 1833. For 
 a hundred and fifty years his fathers had been fight- 
 ing men. His Highlander great grandfather had 
 been taken prisoner at Prestonpans, and his military 
 soul, as well as his independent will, came to him out 
 of his father's loins, who "spent a long life in the 
 service, and like his son, was less fitted to obey than 
 to command. More than once, well as he knew the 
 value of discipline, it was his to resist his superiors, 
 and to protest against dictates which he would hold 
 to be superfluous and unjust." ' His mother was an 
 Enderby, whose father, Samuel Enderby, owned 
 whaling ships which wandered everywhere over the 
 world. Their owner's name is left on remote lands, 
 and two of them were the vessels from which the tea 
 was thrown overboard in Boston Harbour. The lad 
 came naturally by the disposition that made him easy 
 in any land. He never needed a long preparation 
 to move. 
 
 He was educated at Taunton and at the Eoyal 
 Military Academy at Woolwich. He had a temper 
 and a free mind then as always. "Once during his 
 cadetship at the academy he was rebuked for incom- 
 petence, and told that he would never make an 
 officer ; whereupon he tore the epaulets from his 
 shoulders and flung them at his superior's feet." 
 IsTot a nice story by itself And his father knew the 
 explosives wrapped up in the boy. "While he is 
 'Hake, "The Story of Chinese Gordon," p. 7. 
 
250 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 in the academy," he said, "I feel I am like one 
 sitting on a powder barrel." "Then after "Wool- 
 wich," says General Butler, "came Chatham, where 
 the young officer was still further to learn the lessons 
 of the Master of the Art of Defense, bo great in greater 
 things than siege or safe-keeping of cities. Perhaps 
 in the library of the barracks or on the old lines of 
 Brompton the young sapper read the lesson that 
 Vauban has left in his letter to Louvois — a lesson of 
 deeper meaning in the safe-keeping of the citadel of 
 self than any of his famous 'systems.' . 'For I dare 
 plainly to tell you,' wrote the veteran (marshal of 
 Prance at last after his fifty-three sieges) to the all- 
 powerful minister, 'that in a question of strictest 
 honesty and sincere fidelity I fear neither the king, 
 nor you, nor all the human race together. Fortune 
 had me born the poorest gentleman in France, but in 
 requital she honoured me with an honest heart, so 
 free from all sorts of swindles that it cannot bear 
 even the thought of them without a shudder.' " ' 
 
 In 1852 he got his commission as a second lieuten- 
 ant of engineers. At the outbreak of the Crimean 
 War he was in garrison at Pembroke Dock employed 
 in drawing plans for the forts and defenses of the 
 haven, but at the end of 1854 he was ordered to 
 Sebastopol, and arrived at Balaklava on New Year's 
 Day, 1855. This was his first schooling in war, but 
 he had already achieved such victory over himself, 
 as Milton said of Cromwell, that he was a practiced 
 warrior before ever he came to the battle-field. "One 
 day in going the round of the trenches, he heard a 
 corporal and a sapper of engineers in violent alterca- 
 'Sir WiUiam Butler, " Gordon," p. 14. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 25 1 
 
 tion. He stopped to ask what was the matter, when 
 he was told that the men were engaged placing some 
 fresh gabions in the battery, and that the corporal 
 had ordered the sapper to stand up on the parapet, 
 where he was exposed to the enemy's fire, while the 
 former, in the full shelter of the battery, handed the 
 baskets up to him. Gordon at once jumped up to 
 the parapet, ordering the corporal to join him, while 
 the sapper handed them the gabions. When the 
 work was done, and done under the fire of the watch- 
 ful Eussian gunners, Gordon turned to the corporal 
 and said, 'Never order a man to do anything you are 
 afraid to do yourself.' " ' He already had become a 
 gravely religious man who did not believe in chance, 
 and his prescience as well as his utter fearlessness 
 was discerned. "He attracted the notice of his 
 superiors," said Colonel Chesney, "not merely by 
 his energy and activity, but by a special aptitude for 
 war ; developing itself, amid the trench-work before 
 Sebastopol, in a personal knowledge of the enemy's 
 movements, such as no other officer attained. We 
 used to send him to find out what new move the 
 Bussians were making." 
 
 After the Crimean War he was occupied for two 
 years on boundary commissions In Bessarabia and 
 Armenia and the Caucasus. In 1859 he was stationed 
 at Chatham as Field Work Instructor and Adjutant, 
 and In 1860 was sent to North China, to join the 
 British force then engaged with the French in war 
 with China. He was present at the wanton destruc- 
 tion of the Summer Palace upon the capture of 
 Peking. Those who speak of missionary loot in 
 ' Macaulay, "Gordon Anecdotes," p. 29 f. 
 
25,2 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 connection with the capture of Peking in 1900, and 
 who think the missionary disregardful of the tradi- 
 tions and treasures of the Asiatic people, should read 
 Gordon's description of this vandalism. 
 
 This poor war over, Gordon was occupied at 
 Shanghai in a military survey of the surrounding 
 country, and from that work was loaned by the 
 British government to China to take command of 
 the " Ever- victorious Army," of foreign adventurers 
 and Chinese, which had been organized by an 
 American named Ward who had been killed, and 
 indeed to assume direction of the independent 
 Chinese force endeavouring to suppress the Taiping 
 Bebellion. The biographies of Gordon describe the 
 Taipings in the blackest colours, and account for the 
 monster movement by the most fantastic explana- 
 tions, unless, like Sir W. Butler, they pass the mat- 
 ter over by stating, which is not the fact, that its 
 origin "lies still in oblivion." There is wide dif- 
 ference of opinion at to whether it would have been 
 desirable to have the Taipings overthrow the present 
 Manchu dynasty. The general judgment of students 
 is against the Taipings. Gordon, who had no per- 
 sonal knowledge of their leaders and no acquaintance 
 with China, its history and institutions, and none but 
 the Shanghai highly interested view of the Taipings 
 as disturbers of commerce, and who saw that the re- 
 bellion had dragged on for years, and that it might 
 go on for years to come, felt that he was justified in 
 endeavouring to suppress the disorder and reestablish 
 the authority of the central government. As he ac- 
 cepted the position offered to him, he wrote home, 
 "I have taken the step in consideration. I think 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 253 
 
 that any one who contributes to putting down this 
 rebellion fulfills a humane task, and I also think 
 tends a great deal to open China to civilization." 
 Perhaps if Gordon had known Hung Siu-tsuen and 
 the rebellion in its early years, and had seen the 
 better elements in its leaders and its principles, his 
 knight errant spirit might have led him to feel that 
 he fulfilled a humane task who let the movement 
 alone, or who sought to correct and direct rather than 
 to suppress it. Grif6th-John, who knew the move- 
 ment well, told me once that he deemed this the great 
 error of Gordon's career. 
 
 But he acted as always on the impulse of his con- 
 science, and the four years which he spent in China 
 in the repression of the rebellion constitute one of the 
 most wonderful stories of military genius, personal 
 power and high-minded unselfishness and courage of 
 which the world knows. In summing up the lessons 
 of his service in China, Sir William Butler says : 
 
 " Indomitable resolution, inexhaustible resource, sleep- 
 less activity, were his master qualities. The distrust of 
 English leadership, which previous experience or prejudice 
 had engendered in the minds of his officers and men, soon 
 gave place to complete confidence, and, no matter how 
 difficult the labour or how stubborn the resistance, the be- 
 lief in the final triumph of the undertaking which their 
 leader had conceived never wavered. The indirect ad- 
 vantages to China which the presence of Gordon as a 
 leader gave were scarcely less important to the cause of 
 order. The scandal of the sale of English munitions of 
 war to the rebels received a check, and although it would 
 have been too much to expect that a commercial activity 
 
254 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 which had for its chief commodity the sale of a slow-con- 
 suming poison would have drawn the line of conscience 
 strictly at any more sudden form of death, still there can 
 be no doubt that the open supply of the rebels with arms 
 and ammunition became, in the latter stage of the Taiping 
 war, at least an unfashionable form of commerce. But 
 the lesson of this brilliant episode was neither to China nor 
 to Gordon, it was to us. China might well be trusted to 
 go on its way for two thousand years. Gordon knew him- 
 self and his .qualities before he ever pointed with bamboo 
 cane the road of victory to his army, but to us the revela- 
 tion was given that there was among us a man gifted with 
 all the faculties of true kingship, a leader of men and a 
 master, a veritable ' spear,' sharp and swift and self- wield- 
 ing, and with a flash in its steel that could kindle the 
 light of battle in ten thousand duller weapons. It was but 
 a few years since, for the want of such a leader, that we 
 had lost everything but honour on the plateau above Seb- 
 astopol, and now, having found this captain, it was for us 
 to guard him with safe-keeping, to hold him for the evil 
 day as the most precious of our treasures. Assuredly it 
 was from no plethora of such possession that we could 
 afford to waste or spend him in distant outside enterprise." 
 
 From China he returned to England, and from 1865 
 to 1871 was engaged at Gravesend in the direction of 
 works connected with the defense of the Thames. It 
 was a time of panic in England, worked up by the 
 imaginary fear of French invasion. It was a time 
 also of transition in military science, and defenses of 
 one year were antiquated the next. Immense sums of 
 money were being spent and wasted and Gordon 
 chafed under it bitterly. The six years at Gravesend 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 255 
 
 were, however, as he said, among the happiest of his 
 life. 
 
 " To the world, his life at Gravesend," says Mr. Hake, 
 one of his biographers, " was a life of self- suppression and 
 self-denial ; to himself it was one of happiness and pure 
 peace. He lived wholly for others. His house was 
 school and hospital and almshouse in turn, and was more 
 like the abode of a missionary than of a colonel of engi- 
 neers. . . . He always took a great delight in chil- 
 dren, but especially in boys employed on the river or the 
 sea. Many he rescued from the gutter; cleansed them 
 and clothed them, and kept them for weeks in his home. 
 For their benefit he established evening classes, over which 
 he himself presided, reading to and teaching the lads with 
 as much ardour as if he were leading them to victory. 
 He called them his ' kings,' and for many of them he got 
 berths on board ship. One day a friend asked him why 
 there were so many pins stuck into the map of the 
 world over his mantelpiece; he was told that they 
 marked and followed the course of the boys on their voy- 
 ages — that they were moved from point to point as his 
 youngsters advanced, and that he prayed for them as they 
 went, day by day." 
 
 "His benevolence embraced all," writes one who saw 
 much of him at this time. " Misery was quite sufficient 
 claim for him. . . . 
 
 " We used to say he had no self — ^in that following his 
 Divine Master. He would never talk of himself and his 
 doings. Therefore his life never can and never will be 
 written. 
 
256 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 " It was in these years that the first book about him 
 came out. He allowed the author to come and stay at 
 Fort House, and gave him every facility towards bringing 
 out his book (all the particulars about the Taiping Rebel- 
 lion) even to lending him his diary. Then, from some- 
 thing that was said, he discovered that personal acts of his 
 own (bravery, possibly) were described, and he asked to 
 see what had been written. Then he tore out page after 
 page — the parts about himself — to the poor author's 
 chagrin, who told him he had spoiled his book. I tried 
 to get at the bottom of this feeling of his, telling him he 
 might be justly proud of these things ; but was answered 
 that no man has a right to be proud of anything, inas- 
 much as he has no native good in him — he has received 
 it all." 
 
 It would be easy to gather many anecdotes about 
 these days. The great Christian was unfolding his 
 own rare and original reality here and preparing, not 
 for greater, but for more conspicuous service. In- 
 deed, it is here really that his wonderful letters to 
 his sister begin ; not one is presented from the 
 Taiping war period of his life. He himself never 
 was deluded by confusion as to small and great. 
 " Napoleon," he writes to his sister, " in a book lent 
 me by Watson, says, 'The smallest trifles produce 
 the greatest results.' " Again he writes to her, " In 
 ' Gold Dust ' is this paragraph, ' May I pass through 
 this world unnoticed.' " 
 
 From the unnoticed years at Gravesend he went 
 out in 1871 as the English member of the Interna- 
 tional Commission for regulating the navigation of 
 the mouths of the Danube. On this service he met 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 257 
 
 Nubar Pasha, the ablest of the ministers of the 
 Khedive Ismail who was at once attracted to the man 
 and secured his appointment as Governor of the 
 Equatorial Provinces of Egypt, succeeding Sir 
 Samuel Baker. Gordon accepted, refusing to take 
 more than one-fifth the salary of his predecessor. To 
 his office as Governor of the Equatorial Provinces was 
 added later the charge of the Soudan. Here Gor- 
 don's career was more wonderful even than in China 
 and the magic of the man's personality worked like 
 a spell over the turbulence of the land. 
 
 "His rule in the Soudan was glorious to himself, 
 satisfactory even to the Khedive and gratifying to 
 Englishmen, as a practical demonstration of the qual- 
 ities which they must wish to see most common 
 among their countrymen. . . . 
 
 " When at Khartoum he was on one occasion in- 
 stalled with a royal salute and an address was pre- 
 sented, and in return he was expected to make a 
 speech. His speech was as follows : ' "With the help 
 of God, I will hold the balance level.' The people 
 were delighted, for a level balance was to them an 
 unknown boon. And he held it level all through his 
 long and glorious reign, which lasted, with one small 
 break, from February, 1874, until August, 1879." 
 
 The man's great work during the governorship was 
 a work of personal inspiration, of the taming of men 
 by love and trust and justice. He collided with 
 falsehood and selfishness at every step and hated at 
 times the very contact with civilization because it 
 meant fresh warfare between his principles and those 
 of schemers and self-seekers and conventionalists 
 who were not serving a living God and His world. 
 
258 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 Mr. Hake is not too enthusiastic in his description 
 of Gordon's work, written while Gordon was living 
 in Palestine. 
 
 " The work he had begun and was bent on finishing was 
 fraught with peculiar perils. It demanded a tact, an 
 energy, and a force of will almost superhuman. He had 
 to deal not only with worthless and often mutinous govern- 
 ors of provinces, but with wild and desperate tribesmen 
 as well ; he had to disband 6,000 Bashi-Bazouks, who 
 were used as frontier guards, but who winked at slave- 
 hunting and robbed the tribes on their own account ; he 
 had to subdue and bring to order and rule the vast prov- 
 ince of the Bahr Gazelle, but now beneath the sway of the 
 great slaver Sebehr. It was a stupendous task : to give 
 peace to a country quick with war ; to suppress slavery 
 among a people to whom the trade in human flesh was 
 life and honour and fortune ; to make an army out of per- 
 haps the worst material ever seen ; to grow a flourishing 
 trade and a fair revenue in the wildest anarchy in the 
 world. The immensity of the undertaking ; the infinity 
 of details involved in a single step towards the end ; the 
 countless odds to be faced; the many pests — the deadly 
 climate, the horrible vermin, the ghastly itch, the nighfly 
 and daily alternation of overpowering heat and bitter cold 
 — to be endured and overcome ; the environment of bestial 
 savagery and ruthless fanaticism— all these combine to 
 make the achievement unique in human history. . . . 
 Like the adventurer in Browning's magnificent allegory, 
 he had everything against him, and he was utterly alone, 
 but he stood for God and the right, and he would not 
 flinch. There stood the tower of evil — the grim ruined 
 land, the awful presences, the hopeless task, the anarchy 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 259 
 
 of wickedness and despair and wrath. He knew, he felt, 
 he recognized it all ; and yet — 
 
 " And yet 
 Dauntless the stag-horn to my lips I set 
 And blew: Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." 
 
 Undismayed, Gordon did his work, and then when 
 he felt that he had done it and that he had got as far 
 as the opposition of the world with which he was 
 always fighting would allow, he laid it down. 
 
 In 1880 he was in Ireland and there his restless, 
 sympathetic, penetrating mind devised his remedy 
 for the Irish problem ; but neither his remedy, nor 
 what was more valuable, the man, was employed on 
 that six century old entanglement, and the next year 
 receiving no appointment in his own profession and 
 chafing at being unoccupied, he accepted the post of 
 private secretary to Lord Eipon, the new Governor- 
 General of India. Before he reached India he had 
 resigned, not because he felt it was a humiliation to 
 descend from a Governor-Generalship to be a private 
 secretary, but because he realized he could never 
 stand what he deemed the horrors of British life in 
 India. 
 
 M'ot once, but many times in his life, Gordon made 
 changes like this. During the Taiping Eebellion he 
 once resigned his position in justified anger and dis- 
 gust, but reconsidered. In the Soudan he resigned 
 his place and reconsidered his resignation. And now 
 he left England as private secretary to the Indian 
 Governor-General and resigned in Bombay. This 
 was not vacillation. It was the ingenuous child 
 nature at work in him. It was response to the sen- 
 
26o CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 sitive discernment of duty plus that moral courage 
 ■which, whatever he says, he never lacked. He was 
 not the sort who feared to move, to change, lest he 
 should lose his bread and butter. When he heard 
 his call or saw his gleam he rose up straightway and 
 followed. To those people whose ethics are derived 
 from their daily bread he was a very fanciful man. 
 
 The next three years Gordon spent in China advis- 
 ing the Chinese government not to go to war with 
 Eussia and what to do with its armies to prepare for 
 war ; in Mauritius, where he went because a fellow 
 of&cer assigned there did not want to go ; in South 
 Africa where he seemed utterly impracticable to the 
 Cape Colony officials because he was so fantastically 
 upright and honest and just in his dealings with the 
 Basutos, and in the Holy Land where with his Bible 
 in his hand he studied the holy places and meditated 
 upon the truth of God, and on his return to England 
 he was asked by the King of the Belgians to go to the 
 Congo as Governor of the territory occupied by the 
 International Association. He accepted this call and 
 went to Brussels to receive final instructions. A 
 friend has told me of meeting him there at the time, 
 a little, quiet, very quick and living man. How 
 different the history of the Congo Free State would 
 have been if he had gone, but he was called back to 
 London to consider the proposition that he should 
 return to the Soudan. After his preceding service 
 there Eaouf Pasha had been appointed Governor and 
 the old abuses had returned. Corruption in govern- 
 ment, connivance at slavery, incapacity and cruelty 
 on one hand and the Mahdi uprising on the other 
 had made a hell of the Soudan. Either it would 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 261 
 
 have to be subdued at great expense of money and 
 life or it would have to be abandoned. The British 
 government chose the latter course and selected 
 Gordon to go up and withdraw the garrisons, bring 
 down to Egypt all who wished to come, and leave 
 the land to the old ways. But this was easier said 
 than done. What were its old ways ? Was it to be 
 abandoned to the Mahdi who was making anarchy, 
 or to be returned to the old chiefs who had ruled 
 before Egypt had taken over the country ? There is 
 no use, however, in entering the controversy as to 
 whether Gordon disobeyed his instructions. Lord 
 Cromer has stated the case against him. But some- 
 thing more can be said. It is argued on the other 
 side that there was suflcient disagreement and con- 
 flict between Egypt and England, and inside the 
 British government, between the permanent depart- 
 mental government and the temporary liberal min- 
 isterial government to account for the pulling and 
 backing. The firm, true man at Khartoum was going 
 to do his duty as he saw it, whatever his orders might 
 be. Whether he disobeyed his instructions or not, 
 he was entirely capable of doing so, and would have 
 done so in an instant if he had thought that God and 
 the Soudan required him to do so, and he would have 
 taken the consequences, as he would have put it, 
 " without a twitter." 
 
 The end, as every one knows, was that he was killed 
 in Khartoum on January 26th, three days before the 
 relief expedition reached the city. He was the only 
 Englishman left. He had already come to feel that 
 there would have to be some such atonement made 
 for the sins of England against Egypt and the 
 
262 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 Soudan. "I feel that all these wrongs can only be 
 washed out in blood," he wrote from Jerusalem in 
 1883, and after reaching Khartoum he wrote on 
 March 4, 1884 : " May our Lord not visit us as a 
 nation for our sins, but may His wrath fall on me, 
 hid in Christ. This is my frequent prayer, and may 
 He spare these people, and bring them to peace." 
 And beyond this he felt that he must bear the sins 
 of the poor Soudanese, too. Four days after this 
 last letter he wrote to some friends in Jerusalem : 
 
 " I am ever interceding for you and yours ; for when 
 Job (xlii. lo) prayed for his friends, God turned his cap- 
 tivity. Make little Julia ask our Lord to help me. In 
 vain, indeed, is the help of man. Yet I have dared to 
 ask that the sins of these peoples fall on me, hid in Christ. 
 
 . . . Good-bye. Many thanks to you and Mr. 
 
 for your prayers." 
 
 His last letter to Ms sister was dated December 
 14, 1884 : 
 
 " This may be the last letter you will receive from me, 
 for we are on our last legs, owing to the delay of the 
 expedition. However, God rules all, and, as He will 
 rule to His glory and our welfare. His will be done. I 
 fear, owing to circumstances, that my affairs pecuniarily 
 are not over-bright." 
 
 And so ' ' the purest Englishman of his time, " " the 
 most restless spirit of the nineteenth century " died 
 alone ; save that God was with him. 
 
 This hasty sketch of Gordon's life has already 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 263 
 
 iudicated some of his qualities of character. It has 
 suggested that he was a religious man. I say "sug- 
 gested," because no account of the man could do full 
 justice to the depth and earnestness and permeating 
 reality of his religious faith. The best expression of 
 it is in his " Letters to His Sister." He himself was 
 very fond of k Kempis' " Imitation of Christ," and 
 in one of his last letters thanks his sister for some 
 copies she had ordered for him. But for us his own 
 letters are as good and stimulating a manual of devo- 
 tion as a Kempis. These published letters are almost 
 altogether on religioi^. They show no perfunctory 
 and conventional religious life but a man of fearless 
 and original spiritual experience. 
 
 He calls himself, quite frankly, " a religious fa- 
 natic." Eeligion was real to him: "To be like 
 Christ : what a deal it means, and how very feebly 
 the mass of the world realize it ! . . . "What an 
 unsatisfactory religion it is that takes God's promises 
 as mere talk ! " On his road once to the slave den 
 at Shaka he wrote: "I do not believe in you all. 
 . . . The Christianity of the mass is a vapid, 
 tasteless thing, and of no use to anybody. The peo- 
 ple of England care more for their dinners than they 
 do for anything else, and you may depend on it, 
 it is only an active few whom God pushes on to take 
 an interest in the slave question. ' It is very shock- 
 ing ! Will you take some more salmon ? ' " 
 
 His religion was the absorbing thing in life. He 
 believed in God the Father Almighty and in Jesus 
 Christ His only Son our Lord. And this faith was 
 so complete that many regarded him as a fatalist and 
 indeed he never sought to tone down his language. 
 
264 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 He believed in the sovereignty of God and the war 
 between soul and flesh. 
 
 "Man's happiness," he wrote to his Bister, "con- 
 sists in present peace even in the midst of the greatest 
 trials, and in more than hope of a glorious future. 
 It comes by trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, by realiz- 
 ing that His atonement, as Head, suffices for the 
 members of His body, and cannot be cancelled by 
 any acts or affected by any merit of theirs, and that 
 it is a finished work for the past as well as for the 
 future. This being the foundation of peaceful happi- 
 ness, it is experienced according as the sovereignty 
 of God is acknowledged in everything even our sins." 
 
 Elsewhere he writes to her, — and it would be easy 
 to find illogical and contradictory things in his the- 
 ology : 
 
 "I do not believe in man's free will; therefore, if my 
 actions are right, they are His actions ; if evil, they are 
 the inevitable produce of the corrupt body in which I am 
 placed by Him. 
 
 " My opinion is that the Brussels Conference is doomed 
 to fail. It is too mighty for God to use in His work. He 
 never has done any of His great works by great men. 
 
 " Those who hold by man's free will must consequently 
 be more or less elated if they do well. Now, if you ac- 
 cepted what I think is the truth, namely, that man has no 
 free will, you would never be elated, for you would not 
 arrogate to yourself your actions ; neither would you be 
 depressed by your evil acts. To the one you would say, 
 ' Thanks to God for that ' ; and to the other, ' This is 
 nothing more than the outcomings of my corrupt nature.' 
 Paul says this in his ' Wretched man that [ am /' I feel 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 265 
 
 sure no one can be happy till he has come to this knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 "You and I are flies on the wheel; try and realize 
 this, that you do not move the wheel." ' 
 
 And again from the Soudan in 1875 : 
 
 " The moral I draw . . . is that my earthly shrine 
 is ordained to certain evil works, and my spiritual shrine 
 is ordained to certain good works ; that neither in one 
 case nor the other can I alter the decree." ^ 
 
 And the same year : 
 
 " I consider we have not the least ground for supposing 
 our clever thoughts are from ourselves, and, in spite of my 
 feelings, I think we are in reality only spectators of the un- 
 rolling of the record of events."^ 
 
 He loved especially, of course, to dwell on the 
 strengthening conviction that God was ruling things, 
 and that he needed only to believe on Him as his 
 " Governor-General." 
 
 " No man ever had a harder task than I, unaided, have 
 before me," he said during his first period in the Soudan, 
 "but it sets as a feather on me. As Solomon asked, I ask 
 wisdom to govern this great people ; and not only will He 
 give me it, but all else besides. And why? Because I 
 value not the ' all besides.' I am quite alone and like it. 
 I have become what people call a great fatalist, viz. : I 
 trust God will pull me through every difficulty. The soli- 
 tary grandeur of the desert makes one feel how vain is the 
 
 ' ' ' Letters to His Sister, " p. 114 f . ' IMd. , p. 85. » lUd. , p. 85. 
 
266 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON / 
 
 effort of man. This carries me through my troubles/and 
 enables me to look on death as a coming relief, wheri it is 
 His will. . . . It is only my firm conviction /that I 
 am only an instrument put in use for a time that enables 
 me to bear up ; and in my present state, during my long, 
 hot, weary rides, I think my thoughts better and clearer 
 than I should with a companion." ' 
 
 On the way to the Soudan he had written to his 
 
 sister : 
 
 "Even really religious people are more or less infidels. 
 . . . I have a Bank, and on that I can draw ; He is 
 richer than the Khedive, and knows more of the country 
 than any one ; I will trust Him to help me out of money 
 or any other difficulties." ^ 
 
 His rest on God did not make him inactive. His 
 notion was that we could not say God had ordained 
 until the thing was done. 
 
 "It is a delightful thing to be a fatalist, not as that 
 word is generally employed, but to accept that, when things 
 happen and not before, God has for some wise reason so 
 ordained them to happen — all things, not only the great 
 things, but all the circumstances of life ; that is what is 
 meant to me by the words ' you are dead ' in St. Paul to 
 Colossians." Again: "We have nothing further to do 
 when the scroll of events is unrolled than to accept them as 
 being for the best. Before it is unrolled it is another mat- 
 ter ; and you could not say I sat still and let things happen 
 with this belief. All I can say is, that amidst troubles and 
 
 •Hake, "The Story of Chinese Gordon," p. 403 f. 
 2 "Letters to His Sister," p. 62 f. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 267 
 
 worries no one can have peace till he thus stays upon his 
 God ; it gives a man a superhuman strength. 
 
 "Everything that happens to-day, good or evil, is settled 
 and fixed, and it is no use fretting over it. The quiet, peace- 
 ful life of our Lord was solely due to His submission to 
 God's will. There will be times when a strain will come 
 on one; and as the strain, so will your strength be." * 
 
 And it was strengtli and action to Gordon. 
 
 "The people were amazed by his daring, his firmness, 
 his irresistible energy. To tell a lazy functionary that if 
 he did not get on with his work the Governor-General 
 would be after him, was better than the whip itself. Every- 
 where the cry, ' The Pasha is coming,' became a signal 
 for action. At such a pace did he traverse the continent 
 he ruled that his camels, which under another rider could 
 have gone for ten days, gave in at the sixth. More than 
 once, when the sun was at its fiercest, they dropped dead 
 beneath him. When this happened, he took a new mount 
 and rode on."' 
 
 This faith, or fatalism, as you please, delivered him 
 from the fear of death or other harm. "I would 
 that all could look on death as a cheerful friend who 
 takes us from a world of trial to our real home." He 
 once told Huxley that death would only be an incident 
 to him, that it would simply mean a larger govern- 
 ment to administer. 
 
 "I wish, I wish," he wrote from the Soudan in 
 1878, "the King would come again and put things 
 
 1 Hake, " The Story of Chinese Gordon," p. 404 1. 
 'Hid., p. 326. 
 
268 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 right on earth ; but Hia coming is far off, for the 
 whole world must long for Him ere He comes, and I 
 really believe that there are but very, very few who 
 would wish Him to appear, for to do so is to desire 
 death, and how few do this ! Not that we really ever 
 die ; we only change our sheaths." ' So he carried no 
 weapons. He did shoot men at times with his own 
 hand, but his idea of warrior's work was not destruc- 
 tion but constructive government, and he would not 
 have men killed if it could be helped. He con- 
 stantly released those whom ordinary principles of 
 warfare would have removed. In China he simply 
 carried a little wand of bamboo in his hand and when 
 he went to the Soudan in 1884 among his first acts 
 were the removal of the whips and the release of the 
 prisoners. He governed by loftier means. " I do not 
 carry arms," he wrote in his playful way from Africa, 
 " as I ought to do, for my whole attention is devoted 
 to defending the nape of my neck from mosquitoes." 
 But if he did not carry weapons he did carry his 
 Bible. 
 
 " The chief proof, after all," he said, " that the Bible is 
 good food is the eating of it ; the healing efficacy of a 
 medicine, when it is used, is a demonstration that it is 
 good. I believe the origin of evil is disclosed in the Bible, 
 and I have notes on it but it is not yet clear to me. ' He 
 that is of God heareth God's words : ye therefore hear 
 them not, because ye are not of God ' (John vii. 47). I like 
 my religion ; it is a greatcoat to me." ^ 
 
 "Why then," he writes in a letter from Mauritius in 
 1881, " do we not progress ? It is because we do not look 
 
 1 " Letters to His Sister, " p. 135. a lUi., p. xii. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 269 
 
 for the answer to our prayers — we pray and leave it ; we 
 read the Scriptures and do not follow the connection be- 
 tween prayer and this reading, between our request and its 
 answer ; so we are barren, lame and dull. Now God has 
 opened my eyes to the truth, that it is by the Scriptures 
 that He will speak to man, and rarely will He speak in any 
 other way ; I would almost say never. Any one who asked 
 a favour or help from a fellow man, and who, through ig- 
 norance or carelessness, did not trouble himself to listen to 
 the answer, would be considered wanting in worldly 
 wisdom." ^ 
 
 And his letters are full of comments on the Bible 
 and of exegesis, -which, however fanciful, at least was 
 authenticated by his own life. Fanciful exegesis 
 lived in the life is better than the sound exegesis of 
 spiritual death. The Bible used at Gravesend, on 
 the Danube, and in his first stay in the Soudan, was 
 presented by his sister to Queen Victoria, who wrote 
 in the warmest gratitude in reply. It was a well- 
 worn book. Gordon found time to read his Bible. 
 As he said : 
 
 " There is a material, actual study of the Scriptures 
 necessary in order to know them, which we cannot have if 
 we do not give the time to such actual study, which few of 
 us do." ^ 
 
 And sixteen years before he had written to her : 
 
 " Make Him your Guide ; you do not want any other. 
 He has said, ' I will teach you all things ' ; and, depend 
 on it, you will find it the shortest course to pursue. 
 
 ' " Letters to His Sister, " p. 177 f. ^ Hid., p. 266. 
 
270 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 " You say you have little time to read ;'you have from six 
 to eight every morning. I own it is not pleasant to flesh 
 and blood ; but, if this trouble is much, the corresponding 
 growth in grace is far greater. We must not deceive our- 
 selves ; we have plenty and plenty of time during the day 
 for ourselves. If we aspire to walk in the power of the 
 new life, we must cast away all hindrances, and it must 
 cost something we really value. 
 
 " I own it is dull when we do not feel much in common 
 with those we pray for, but after a time it will grow into 
 love, and at any rate it is honouring to God and keeps us 
 from thinking of things of no import ; it also tends to make 
 us less selfish. Take the Holy Spirit for your teacher, 
 and you will never want another word from man on ques- 
 tions of doctrine." ' 
 
 He had no high opinion of systematic theology. 
 
 " I think the veil is thickened," he said, "by the doc- 
 trines of men, and that to rend it is more difficult when 
 these doctrines have been accepted and found inefficient. 
 Had you not been imbued with them — had God not willed 
 it in His wisdom — you would not have had such suffering 
 in learning the truth. 
 
 " I believe when we begin life we are far more capable 
 of accepting those truths than afterwards ; when we have 
 imbibed man's doctrine we must unlearn and then learn 
 again — a child has only to learn. 
 
 " I feel sure that no study without trial is of avail ; life 
 must be lived to learn these truths. I believe, if a man 
 knows his Bible fairly and then goes forth into the world, 
 God will show him His works." ' 
 
 ' "Letters to His Sister," p. 14 f. 'lUd., pp. 95, 97. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 27 1 
 
 I think we begin to see that this was a rare sort of 
 warrior and Governor-General. "We have never 
 known much of this sort of Governor- General. We 
 had such warriors in Stonewall Jackson and Eobert E. 
 Lee and O. O. Howard and S. 0. Armstrong. There 
 was a good deal of Gordon's quality in General Arm- 
 strong, more "patient continuance in well doing," 
 and as much of the child faith. 
 
 Gordon was both a mystic and a man of prayer. 
 Prom the Cape he wrote in 1882 : 
 
 "How different things look now that we see that union 
 with God is rest, disunion is unrest ! that is the whole 
 secret ; it is not what we do or leave undone, it is not this 
 or that sin, all is summed up in union or disunion." ^ 
 
 From Jerusalem in 1883 : 
 
 " There is no doubt, I think, that very many know the 
 fact of the indwelling of God, but how little do they 
 meditate on what that indwelling is ! I would fain attain 
 to the realization of Christ as sitting by me." ' 
 
 And the same year from Jaffa : 
 
 " There is nothing that may not be perverted ; the 
 Sacrament, reading the Bible, intercessory prayer, all may 
 be made gods of — of this there is no doubt. We tend to 
 make gods of everything we do. If we can, as it were, 
 get a pull over our neighbours, then we think we are bet- 
 ter than they. We should look on everything as a means 
 of realizing His indwelling ; the Scriptures only do that, 
 the Sacrament only does that, intercessory prayer only 
 does that." 
 
 » " Letters to His Siater, " p. 209. » lUd., p. 235. 
 
272 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 Prayer did it with him. Prom Gravesend he 
 ■wrote: "Prayer is spiritual labour." So Armstrong 
 regarded it as "the best work he ever did." 
 Gordon's letters are full of references to prayer, dis- 
 cussions of prayer, requests for prayer. In Khartoum 
 he gave to the correspondent of the London Times 
 whom he liked, his copy of Newman's "Dream of 
 Gerontius." This was his only possession which 
 came out of Khartoum. It was worn and under- 
 lined, and these were some of the marked lines : 
 
 " Pray for me, oh, my friends." 
 
 " 'Tis death, oh, loving friends, your prayers, 
 
 'tis he." 
 " So pray for me, my friends, who have not 
 
 strength to pray." 
 " Use well the interval." 
 "Prepare to meet thy God." 
 
 On his last journey to Khartoum, meeting the Eoman 
 Catholic Bishop Sogaro, he said to him, " Do not for- 
 get me in your prayers." And as he coveted prayer 
 in his behalf, so he was himself ever praying for 
 others. 
 
 " Praying for the people ahead of me whom I am about 
 to visit," he wrote from the Soudan, "gives me much 
 strength, and it is wonderful how something seems already 
 to have passed between us when I meet a chief (for whom 
 I have prayed) for the first time. On this I base my hopes 
 of a triumphant march to Fascher. I have really no troops 
 with me,, but I have the Shekinah, and I do like trusting 
 to Him and not to men. Remember, unless He gave me 
 the confidence and encouraged me to trust Him, I could 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 273 
 
 not have it ; and so I consider that I have the earnest of 
 success in this confidence." ' 
 
 And he knew well the purifying power of prayer. 
 "I pray for those I envy," he wrote, "and the feel- 
 ing leaves me at once." 
 
 A man who had such an inner life as this of course 
 uttered it in his conversation. Gordon was not a 
 reticent soul who never spoke of those things in which 
 he most deeply believed. His letters to his sister 
 were a prolonged unfolding of his religious ideas and 
 his spiritual life. 
 
 He lamented that so few people took any interest 
 in the subjects of conversation that were most worth 
 while to Mm. He, nevertheless, always fearlessly 
 spoke his own mind. He told Huxley his opinion 
 about personal immortality. He concealed his re- 
 ligious opinions from no one. And when he could 
 he worked for Christ. 
 
 "I hope, D. v.," he wrote to his sister in 1881, "to 
 put myself in communication with some of our Scripture- 
 reading people, and shall try and visit Christ who is in the 
 East end in the flesh (Matthew xxv. 34). I feel this is 
 what I shall like ; these truths were not given to make a 
 man idle."" 
 
 "Addresses in vague terms from the pulpit," he said, 
 " do not arrest attention ; it is only by direct attack in 
 simple, plain words ; and to do that we must use a bold- 
 ness not of our own but of the Holy Spirit in Whose name 
 we would speak. Let us strive to make those around us 
 
 ' Hake, "The Story of Chinese Gordon," p. 298. 
 » " Letters to His Sister," p. 163. 
 
274 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 know that truth, and the way to do so is to live in it our- 
 selves, for ' if ye abide in Me ye shall ask what ye will 
 and it shall be done.' " ' 
 
 He felt the temptation to envious and evil speech. 
 He was no untempted saint. ' ' We are all dreadfully 
 prone to evil speaking, but God is all-powerful 
 against it ; it is opposed to His nature, so He hates 
 it" From Jerusalem in 1883 he wrote : 
 
 " Sins in act are not nearly so frequent as sins in word ; 
 both are sequences of the breach of communion, of the 
 non-realization of the indwelling of God. 
 
 "Comfort yourself as to the actual fact of death; I 
 have a great desire for it. " ^ 
 
 "Most people," he complained, "only nibble at 
 these great subjects." And again, "This is one 
 great reason why I never desire to enter social life, 
 for there is very great difaculty in knowing people 
 and not discussing others." 
 
 And he knew more about temptation and sin than 
 this : 
 
 "Who could bear to be known as God knows us? 
 When all is quiet, our friends agree that ' in the flesh 
 dwelleth no good thing ' ; but if a fall takes place, they 
 belie by their acts what they have said in words, and they 
 are surprised, showing that they do not really believe it 
 practically, but only theoretically." ' 
 
 > " Letters to His Sister," p. 15. "^ lUi., p. 240 f. 
 
 »/6iU, p. 27. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 275 
 
 Again, 
 
 " We are all lepers. Some have their leprosy covered 
 with silk, some with tattered rags ; take off the silk and 
 take off the rags, there are the lepers 1 Cover the face and 
 cry, • Unclean, unclean ! ' The leper in rags shows more 
 to the fleshly eye of his leprosy than the leper in silk." ' 
 
 And again, 
 
 " Every one who pretends to be better than his fellow 
 is a hypocrite (Isa. ix. 17)." 
 
 He lived resolutely at his life, however. As he 
 grew in knowledge of Christ, he grew, of course, in 
 knowledge of his own shortcomings. 
 
 "One thing I find is that, as we advance in union with 
 Christ, we get more and more sensitive to our deficiencies ; 
 this is only natural, but it certainly does keep one very 
 much alive — I expect, because one is unused to the frame 
 of mind. "^ 
 
 As he discovered temptations he attended to them. 
 Erom the Soudan in 1874, he wrote : 
 
 "Keep me from writing and talking, and then I am 
 humanly safe. As a rule. Christians are really more in- 
 consistent than 'worldlings.' They talk truths, and do 
 not act on them. They allow that ' God is the God of 
 the widows and orphans,' yet they look in trouble to the 
 gods of silver and gold : either He can help altogether, or 
 not at all. He will not be served in conjunction with 
 idols of any sort." ' 
 
 1 " Letters to His Sister," p. 44. ' liid.rP. 199. 
 
 ^bid., p. 70. 
 
276 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 And from Mauritius in 1882 : 
 
 " I have come to a conclusion j may God give me 
 strength to keep it ! Stop all the newspapers. It is no 
 use mincing the matter j as the disease is dire, so also 
 must be the remedy. 
 
 •' These are the words which have done this : ' My 
 son, unglue thyself from the world and its vanities. Put 
 on the Lord Jesus Christ, find Him thy wisdom, righteous- 
 ness, redemption, thy riches, thy strength, thy glory ' 
 (' Christ Mystical '). Somehow I thought it must come to 
 this ere long. If I ever need to know, or give my opinion 
 on any subject, then Christ will give me the necessary wis- 
 dom. Newspapers feed a passion I have for giving my 
 opinion ; therefore, as we have no right to judge and have 
 nothing to do with this world (of which we are not) this 
 feeding must be cut short." ^ 
 
 He did not attempt to escape from life by any seclu- 
 sion. He realized that in the open we must do our 
 work and learn our lesson. 
 
 "The giving up the papers," he says, "may cause the 
 starvation of my passion for politics, and that scab may 
 drop off. God has shown me what the scabs are : — Evil 
 speaking, lying, slandering, backbiting, scoffing, self-con- 
 ceit, boasting, silly talking, and some few more. 
 
 " I would not wish to be rid of these, unless God so 
 willed it, for they keep me down, and prevent my tread- 
 ing on my weaker brethren, which I should be sure to do 
 if I was rid of them. The Canaanites (Ex. xxiii. 28, 29) 
 are good, for otherwise the beasts will increase. So that 
 
 ' " Letters to His Sister," p. 193. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 277 
 
 I cannot say, any more than Israel could, what I shall do 
 or where I shall go. I believe I shall not be confounded. 
 I asked to know Christ's life ; it may be, it is being taught 
 me, in actual experience as far as my measure. We would 
 like to know Christ's life in our rooms, from the Bible ; 
 God teaches it to us actually by the trials of this life." ' 
 
 " And yet," wrote he, " it is quite impossible to be with 
 the world and to be spiritually minded ; the conflict, when 
 one tries to do so, is enough to rend one in two." '^ 
 
 The world calls such a man a fanatic, but at the 
 same time it erects him into its noblest hero because 
 of his fearlessness, his unselfishness, his sincerity. 
 He was a religious man through and through but as 
 human and unconventional as man could be. Pear- 
 son, of the party of Ohurcli Missionary Society mis- 
 sionaries who went in 1878 to Uganda by way of 
 Khartoum, wrote of these qualities in Gordon in his 
 account of their interview : 
 
 "August 8, 1878. — On going to the palace at two 
 o'clock, of course the guard turned out, and several 
 kavasses ushered us up-stairs, and in a large corridor we 
 saw a table laid for lunch, and a little man in his shirt- 
 sleeves walking about. I took him for the butler. On 
 looking through the open doors opposite saw a very 
 splendid divan with a round table in the middle, on 
 which was a bunch of flowers; several looking-glasses on the 
 walls. But on catching sight of us the ' butler ' rushed up 
 and said, 'How d'ye do? So glad to see you; excuse 
 
 » ' ' Letters to His Sister, " p . 194. ^ Ibid., p. 161. 
 
278 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 shirt-sleeves, so hot I awful long voyage. I'll make a tow 
 about it. Are you very angry with me ? ' " ' 
 
 He hated formality and fuss. "When he first went to 
 Khartoum, " to his disgust he had to live in a palace 
 as large as Marlborough House. Some two hundred 
 servants and orderlies were in attendance ; they 
 added to his discomfort by obliging him to live 
 according to the niceties of an inflexible code of 
 etiquette. He was sternly forbidden to rise to re- 
 ceive a guest, or to offer a chair ; if he rose, every 
 one else did the same ; he ' was guarded like an ingot 
 of gold.' This formality was detestable to him ; but 
 he made a good deal of fun of it, and more than once, 
 while certain solemnities were proceeding, he would 
 delight the great chiefs, his visitors, by remarking 
 in English (of which they knew nothing), ' Now, old 
 bird, it is time for you to go.' " ' 
 
 His journals and letters show his very real humanity. 
 
 "A very real and human man he was," says Mr. Stan- 
 nard in his personal recollections of him, — " as great, as 
 good, and as true as any have described him; not a 
 colourless saint without a flaw or fault to retrieve his good- 
 ness from monotony — as some would apparently have us 
 conceive him — but a man whose genius was too brilliant, 
 and whose parts were too strong to be without correspond- 
 ing weaknesses, and prejudices almost as marked as his 
 talents. If I describe his peculiarities as well as his good- 
 ness, it will not be to detract from his reputation, but 
 
 ' "History of Church Missionary Society," Vol. Ill, p. 103. 
 = Hake, "The Story of Chinese Gordon," p. 293, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 279 
 
 rather to enhance it] for who could have loved Gordon as 
 we did if he had been nothing more than a model of all 
 the virtues ? " ^ 
 
 Well, he was model enough, of the virtue of plain 
 speaking, untrimming veracity. These "were his 
 principles in that matter as he wrote them to his 
 sister in 1869 : 
 
 " I cannot say what very quiet, relying comfort there 
 is in doing everything quite openly and irrespective of the 
 consequences. We are weak and uncomfortable when we 
 act for man's view of things ; it is humbugging God in 
 reality, not man, and as surely as we do that we shall reap 
 the reward. The things may be comparatively small, but 
 a very immense principle is involved in them. It is most 
 wonderful what power and strength are given to us by 
 living for God's view and not man's. I do many things 
 which are wrong, and I can say truly that, thanks to God, 
 I am comforted in all the troubles, because I do not con- 
 ceal them from Him. He is my Master, and to Him 
 alone am I accountable. If I own in my heart that I am 
 culpable, I have such comfort that I do not care what my 
 fellow man says. We are most awful liars, every one of 
 us, utterly false ; it is no use mincing it. ' Trust in the 
 Lord with all your hearts and lean not on your own un- 
 understanding.' 
 
 " A lie is told either to gain something or to conceal 
 something. By telHng it the person trusts more to what he 
 may say having an effect on the person he addresses, than 
 he does to the fact that God knows what is in his heart 
 and can actuate as He wills the heart of the hearer. He 
 
 > "Gordon Anecdotes," p. 141. 
 
28o CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 reasons thus : ' There is no God ; I am quite free, and it 
 is in ray power to saj' this or that. . . .' 
 
 " If you tell the truth, you have infinite power support- 
 ing you ; but, if not, you have infinite power against you. 
 The children of kings should be above all deceit, for they 
 have a mighty and a jealous Protector. We go to other 
 gods — Baal, etc., — when we lie; we rely on other than 
 God. We may for a time seem to humbug men, but not 
 God. It is indeed worldly silliness to be deceitful. Who 
 can stand against the honest, ' I did it, and I am sorry it 
 has vexed you ' ? Who is then the highest, the judge or 
 the culprit ? The latter may say in his heart, ' A Higher 
 than thou hath forgiven me, and I care not what thou. His 
 subject, may do.' Oh ! be open in all your ways. It 
 is a girdle around your loins, strengthening you in all your 
 wayfarings. 
 
 " Do not ignore the Third Person's presence. Where 
 there are two gathered together for whatever purpose, 
 there is He also, ready to help to the uttermost, and more 
 than willing. Let people tell lies of you. He will blunt 
 the shafts. . . . 
 
 "Do you want to be loved, respected, and trusted ? Then 
 ignore the likes and dislikes of man in regard to your 
 actions ; do to them as you would have them do to you, 
 leave their love for God, taking Him only ; you will find 
 that, as you do so, men will like you ; they may despise 
 some things in you, but they will lean on you and trust 
 you, and He will give you the spirit of comforting them. 
 But try to please men and ignore God, you will fail miser- 
 ably and get nothing but disappointment. 
 
 " The ninety-first Psalm is a mountain of strength to all 
 believers, as is also the twentieth verse of the thirty-first 
 Psalm. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 28 1 
 
 "If a man speaks well of me, divide it by millions and 
 then ii will be millions of times too favourable. If a man 
 speaks evil of me, multiply it by millions and it will be 
 millions of times too favourable. Man is disguised, as far 
 as his neighbour is concerned ; this disguise is his outward 
 goodness. . . . Nothing evil was ever said of any 
 man which was not true ; his worst enemies could not say 
 a thousandth part of the evil that is in him." ' 
 
 And this fearless righteousuess was the girdle of 
 his loins. Prom the Soudan in 1876 he wrote : 
 
 " The more one acts from principle and not from feel- 
 ings, the straighter is our course. No one can be perfectly 
 honest, but the nearer one can be so the stronger one is, 
 and the wish is accepted as the deed. To deceive when 
 you have knowledge of the fact is a lie to all intents and 
 purposes. (Footnote — ' The willful suppression of truth 
 is a lie.' — Latin adage.)" " 
 
 And in 1877 : 
 
 "I thank God He has given me strength to avoid all 
 tricks ; to tell them (the slave-dealers) that I would no 
 longer allow their goings on, and to speak to them truth- 
 fully." ' 
 
 And as he sought nothing but the truth, he feared 
 nothing from the opposition or criticism of others. 
 He would say, as his letter about lies indicates, that 
 no one could abuse him too much. To claim to be 
 
 ' " Letters to His Sister," pp. 23-26. ' Ibid., p. 98. 
 
 "Ibid., p. 112. 
 
282 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 superior to others he called hypocrisy. So he was 
 regardless of what others thought about him. " Do 
 not think I am ill-tempered," he wrote after the 
 Taiping war, "but I do not care one jot about my 
 promotions or what people may say." He hated 
 conventional society, and felt sure as we have seen 
 that if Christ came back to it He would be "alto- 
 gether outr6." 
 
 " You may think I am cantankerous," he wrote to his 
 sister from the Soudan in 1875 ; " so I am, but it is on 
 principle. I will not cater to this world's appetites, nor be 
 drawn into its coteries and squabbles. What have we in 
 common ? They think men deserve credit for this or that. 
 I do not think so. Am I to agree with them ? " ' 
 
 God deserves all the credit for what men do. 
 
 "I do not believe," he said, " in the foresight of 
 Napoleon or the Duke. People made out the talent 
 and foresight after the thing was done. God gives 
 the thought, man carries it out, for the thought is 
 given so strongly as to force him to act thus." " 
 When he resigned the secretaryship to Lord Eipon, 
 he wrote, "I am glad to have cast off every anchor 
 I had to attach me to this world." From Mauritius, 
 "How I hate society! How society hates me ! " 
 And after the unpleasant experience in South Africa : 
 
 "Whether men praise you, it does not make you better, 
 or whether they blame you, it does not make you worse. 
 God judges by motives, men by actions (Thomas a 
 Kempis). When I went to the Cape, I prayed for glory to 
 
 1 " Letters to His Sister," p. 88 f. « Ibid., p. 128. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 283 
 
 God and the welfare of the people, so I am glad / got no 
 glory out of it." ^ 
 
 The world had no dominion over such a man, — 
 "the man whom other men fear and yet trust," — 
 those are the words about him written in the copy of 
 Hake's "Story of Chinese Gordon " which I have 
 read, by an old man who was one of the best students 
 of character I ever knew. 
 
 Of a piece with this freedom and independence of 
 mind, and springing from the same source, was Gor- 
 don's modesty. To the illustrations already given of 
 it, I would add several. Prom Mauritius he wrote 
 in 1882 : 
 
 " I have to thank God for several precious working 
 truths — ' God forbid that I should glory ' is one. It is 
 connected with idols in one's heart. One hugs a thought 
 of some sort or another about politics or such like. God 
 shoots an arrow at it and it becomes dust. Again, the 
 only way to fight Anak is to keep in union with God in 
 Christ — when one goes out or in, when one writes or re- 
 ceives a letter, meets or speaks to any one. This is what 
 is meant by the jealousy of God ; He will be partners with 
 us entirely in all we do or think. 
 
 " He also has been gracious enough to let me see the 
 benefits derived from earthly snubs ; they are reminders of 
 Him, like the iron belt or hair shirt of the old monks ; one 
 is so very forgetful that one needs these thorns, though 
 they are no longer thorns when they give this benefit, but 
 are healthful lancet stabs. 
 
 " Another truth God gave me is that the Holy Ghost 
 
 ' " Letters to His Sister," p. 210. 
 
284 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 must participate in our Scripture reading j that we must in 
 mind keep in union with Christ. Thank God also, I can 
 now pray and wish that every one in the world were holier 
 than I am, — higher than I in the future world." ^ 
 
 " When he went to Gravesend, he used to take his place 
 in the gallery of the parish church among the poor. No- 
 body in the town knew anything about his history, and he 
 was allowed to keep to this place in the gallery, until by 
 and by it began to leak out that he was no other than the 
 leader of the ' Ever-victorious Army ' in China. Then 
 the church wardens approached the stranger, and graciously 
 asked him to come down and occupy a place in the luxu- 
 rious seats in the area appointed for the grandees. Gordon 
 thanked them, but declined, preferring to keep the seat in 
 which he had so long sat unnoticed and unknown." ^ 
 
 I have related the story of his tearing out page 
 after page from the biography which has been written 
 of him. One who saw much of him at that time and 
 who relates that incident, adds : 
 
 " I tried to get at the bottom of this feeling of his, tell- 
 ing him he might be justly proud of these things ; but was 
 answered that no man has a right to be proud of anything, 
 inasmuch as he has no native good in him — he has re- 
 ceived it all ; and he maintained that there was deep 
 cause for intense humiliation on the part of every one, that 
 all wearing of medals, adorning the body, or any form of 
 self-glorification, was quite out of place. Also, he said, 
 he had no right to possess anything, having once given 
 himself to God. 
 
 » " Letters to His Sister," p. 191. 
 « " Gordon Anecdotes," p. 106. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 285 
 
 " He had a great number of medals, for which he cared 
 nothing. There was a gold one, however, given to him 
 by the Empress of China, with a special inscription en- 
 graved upon it, for which he had a great liking. But it 
 suddenly disappeared; no one knew where or how. 
 Years afterwards it was found out, by a curious accident, 
 that Gordon had erased the inscription, and sent the 
 medal anonymously to Canon Miller for the relief of the 
 sufferers from the cotton famine at Manchester. ' ' ^ 
 
 The disinterestedness of soiil, the devotion to duty 
 for its own sake alone was the dominant character- 
 istic of the man. It greatly impressed the world. 
 To him it was only a matter of course that men should 
 do their duty and die for it without concern. Salary 
 was no consideration whatever to him. He would 
 often refuse what was offered. When he was called 
 to China in 1881 he telegraphed, " As for conditions, 
 Gordon indifferent." He did not require that Ms 
 calls should stipulate the wages. He gave away his 
 money constantly to relieve human need. After the 
 capture of Soochow during the Taiping Eebellion, 
 the Chinese government ordered that he be given a 
 donation of 10,000 taels and a decoration of the first 
 class. Gordon was still indignant at the treachery of 
 Li Hung Chang in murdering the Taiping leaders after 
 having promised to preserve their lives, and when the 
 treasure-bearers entered his presence, with bowls of 
 bullion on their heads, he flogged them from the 
 chamber with his "magic wand." When the Ee- 
 bellion was over, he stipulated for ample rewards for 
 his officers and men, but refused to take anything 
 •Hake, "The Story of Chinese Gordon," p. 226 £. 
 
286 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 himself. His salary daring the war he had spent in 
 comforts for his army aiid in the relief of the Chinese. 
 His conduct was a revelation to the Chinese. The 
 day before Bruce was leaving for England, Prince 
 Kung, the Eegent of China, came to him and said : 
 "Tou will be astonished to see me again, but I felt 
 I could not allow you to leave without coming to see 
 you about Gordon. "We do not know what to do. 
 He will not receive money from us." 
 
 This was the motive and spirit in which Gordon 
 gave his service. He went out into the world as the 
 missionary goes, not to get but to give, content with 
 a bare living and eager only to do work for the good 
 of men, to fight lies, to establish truth, to erect 
 righteousness. "If you take the case of this man," 
 said Mr. Gladstone after his death, "pursue him 
 into privacy, investigate his heart and his mind, and 
 you will find that he proposed to himself not any 
 ideal of wealth and power, or even fame, but to do 
 good was the object he proposed to himself in his 
 whole life, and on that one object it was his desire to 
 spend his existence." 
 
 Before he left for the Soudan in 1873 he wrote : 
 
 "I have been more or less acted on by sharks, who 
 want to go with me for money. I have told them that, if 
 it is in my power to employ them, they must belong to the 
 A class — /. e., those who come for the occupation and 
 interest it may give them, and who are content if they are 
 fairly reimbursed their expenses ; not the B class, who go 
 for the salary only and who want to make a good thing 
 of it. 
 
 " My object is to show the Khedive and his people that 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 287 
 
 gold and silver idols are not worshipped by all the world. 
 They are very powerful gods, but not so powerful as our 
 God ; so, I refuse a large sum ; you — ^and I am responsible 
 alone — will not be angry at my doing so. From whom 
 does all the money come ? From poor miserable creatures 
 who are ground down to produce it. Of course, these 
 ideas are outrageous. ' Pillage the Egyptians ! ' is still the 
 cry." 1 
 
 He hated the pillaging of the weak, and all selfish 
 exploitation of men. He held to the old-fashioned 
 notions of honour and sincerity and unselfishness, 
 and he sought simply to ameliorate the lot of the 
 people whom God gave him opportunity to help. He 
 sought to do this, not as a matter of political prin- 
 ciple, but as a moral duty and privilege, and he 
 sought to do it, not by political espedients only but 
 by the glorious power of a Christlike life. How dif- 
 ferent the influence of Christianity in Asia and Africa 
 and South America would have been if all our repre- 
 sentatives from the East had been such men. The 
 trouble is that our movement upon the non- Christian 
 world is a contradiction in itself. "We preach a pure 
 religion and we too often show the non-Christian 
 nations an immoral life, commercial greed, and an 
 unjust political code. A great part of the influence 
 of Eastern diplomacy and commerce, judged by 
 Gordon's standard, has been sheer treason alike to 
 Christianity and to the interests of the less privileged 
 nations. Chinese Gordon is a standing illustration 
 of the missionary character of the true representative 
 of a Christian nation wherever he goes. 
 1 " Letters to His Sister," p. 69. 
 
288 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 The people to whom Gordon went always discovered 
 what he was. He invariably entered with deepest 
 sympathy into their lives. Thus he writes from the 
 Soudan in 1877 : "I confess to being somewhat tired 
 of the length of these negotiations, etc., etc. ; but it is 
 better to be tired and worn than that one poor black 
 skin should have a bullet-hole in it." ^ 
 
 " I feel strongly," he wrote years later from Jaffa 
 in 1883, " that the grace God gave me to pray for my 
 enemies in the Soudan led to my success." He made 
 men love him with a great love. During the Taiping 
 Eebellion he drew about him captured Taipings, so 
 that at the last his personal body-guard was made up 
 of his former enemies. He had a simply magic gift 
 of inspiring confidence, even in the hearts of savages. 
 Mr. Power, the London Times correspondent, wrote 
 of his influence in Khartoum : 
 
 " Gordon is a most lovable character — quiet, mild, 
 gentle and strong; he is so humble, too. The way he 
 pats you on the shoulder when he says, ' Look here, dear 
 fellow, now what do you advise ? ' would make you love 
 him. When he goes out-of-doors, there are always crowds 
 of Arab men and women at the gate to kiss his feet, and 
 twice to-day the furious women, wishing to lift his feet to 
 kiss them, threw him over. Numbers of women flock here 
 every day to ask him to touch their children, to cure them ; 
 they call him the 'father and the saviour of the Soudan.' 
 He has found me badly up in Thomas a Kempis, which 
 he reads every day, and has given me an ' Imitation of 
 Christ.' He is, indeed, I believe, the greatest and best 
 man of this century." 
 
 ' "Letters to His Sister, " p. 112f. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 289 
 
 Again he writes : 
 
 "I like Gordon more and more every day ; he has a 
 most lovable manner and disposition, and is so kind to 
 me. He is glad if you would show the smallest desire to 
 help him in his great trouble. How one man could have 
 dared to attempt his task I wonder. One day of his work 
 and bother would kill any other man, yet he is so cheer- 
 ful at breakfast, lunch, and dinner ; but I know he suffers 
 fearfully from low spirits. I hear him walking up and 
 down his room all night (it is next to mine). It is only 
 his great piety carries him through." 
 
 He handled men with the most daring freedom. 
 He would trust when others would imprison. He 
 would march among hosts of armed foes and manage 
 them as he would. He did not do it by duplicity or 
 diplomacy but by straightforwardness and truth. 
 The boy Capsune, whom Gordon rescued from slavery 
 one day, said that he was " quite sure Gordon Pasha 
 could see quite well in the dark, because he had the 
 light inside him." "Have nothing to do with the 
 Turk," he once said to General Butler. "I know 
 him well. He is hopeless." But he would not have 
 been hopeless in Gordon's hands. His faith and love 
 would never have abandoned any people. 
 
 To dwell further on Gordon's energy, vigour, love 
 of hard tasks, ceaseless activity, patience in duty and 
 restless impatience until duty was done, his thought 
 of detail and his wrath at mere routine and its petty 
 mechanicalism, the thoroughgoing honesty of his 
 work, would be but to draw out the great warm 
 living qualities which I am sure we have already felt 
 in the man. I have only in bringing this study to a 
 
290 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 close to deal a little more directly with his mission- 
 ary relations. 
 
 But one great missionary lesson of his life and char- 
 acter has been already drawn, — the lesson, namely, 
 of the right character and the right purpose in the 
 secular representation of what we call Christian 
 civilization. What a worthless thing it is to send 
 men, who know nothing about the Christianity from 
 which civilization springs and which is its very 
 guarantee, out to the non-Christian world as its am- 
 bassadors ! But a more direct lesson for us is the 
 lesson of Christian character, of relationship to 
 Christ, of joyful devotion to duty, of contempt for 
 hardship and sacrifice and death as parts of the 
 game, "as a matter of course," of sympathy and 
 understanding, as all essential to the religious mis- 
 sionary. We cannot all have Chinese Gordon's per- 
 sonality, but every Christian man should study his 
 life and resort to its secret springs. Would that we 
 had more — thank God we have so many — men of the 
 same high type, men of the old chivalry, prepared 
 and tuned to our own day's duty who still go forth 
 with the knightly Spirit, reverencing conscience as 
 king, to war against evil and to give help to all that 
 calls them and to serve the Lord Christ. 
 
 But Gordon sustained also some interesting direct 
 relations to the organized missionary enterprise. It 
 was his work on the upper Mle that led, with Stanley's 
 letter regarding Uganda, to the establishment of the 
 Church Missionary Society Mission in Eastern Equa- 
 torial Africa, now become perhaps the most remark- 
 able foreign mission in the world. When the second 
 party was sent out it went, on Gordon's offer of as- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 291 
 
 sistance, via Khartoum. "When he heard of the 
 murder of the first missionaries he wrote to the 
 Church Missionary Society : "I will engage to send 
 up safe any persons you may wish to send, to secure 
 you free passage for letters, etc., and to do this free 
 of cost within my government. , . . Don't send 
 ' lukewarms.' " And when the party came he sent it 
 on by his steamer and at his personal expense right 
 up to the frontier of Uganda. 
 
 He had strong notions as to the kind of men needed 
 in Africa for mission work, and he had characteristic 
 opinions as to this work in the region of which he 
 knew. He had the greatest admiration for Living- 
 stone as a ,'missionary. He rejoiced at all the mis- 
 sionary effort made for all these countries, but his 
 ideals were as high for it as they were for himself. 
 Thus he wrote to a party of missionaries on their way 
 to the interior of Africa : 
 
 " I want you to like my people, not to look upon them 
 as utterly evil. Mr. Wright has, I dare say, told you my 
 views about missionaries. They must hate father, mother 
 and their own life also. You are sure to succeed if you 
 will entirely trust Him. Shut your eyes to Stanley, to 
 Egyptian government, to all things, and nothing will go 
 wrong, and you must succeed, though it may not be as 
 you would think the best way. You have counted the 
 cost and embarked in this work for His sake, and, though 
 inferior far, for our nation's sake. You must go through 
 with it. Are you missionaries? So am I. The letter 
 must be one which he who runs can read — the life." ' 
 
 He did not care greatly for sky-scraping missionary 
 1 " Gordon Anecdotes, " p. 152. 
 
292 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 enterprises. He was very outspoken in his comments 
 and criticisms on what he considered wrong in the 
 spirit in which missionary work was entered upon. 
 
 There is one letter to his sister written from Mas- 
 eowah in 1878, in which he writes freely about mis- 
 sion work in North Africa : 
 
 " What you ask requires me to be plain-spoken. There 
 is not the least doubt that there is an immense virgin field 
 for an apostle in these countries among the black tribes. 
 They are virgin to my behef, and the apostle would have 
 nothing to contend with in the fanaticism of the Arabs. 
 But where will you find an apostle ? I will explain what 
 I mean by that term. He must be a man who has died 
 entirely to the world ; who has no ties of any sort ; who 
 longs for death when it may please God to take him ; who 
 can bear the intense dullness of these countries ; who seeks 
 for few letters ; and who can bear the thought of dying 
 deserted. Now, there are few, very, very few men who can 
 accept this post. But no half-measures will do. . . . 
 
 "A man must give up everything, understand every- 
 thing, everything, to do anything for Christ here. No half 
 nor three-quarter measures will do. And yet, what a 
 field! . . ." 
 
 Such men Gordon wanted for himself, such he 
 thought missions ought to have. In 1877 he had 
 written on his road to Shaka : 
 
 " Find me the man and I will take him as my help, who 
 utterly despises money, name, glory, honour; one who 
 never wishes to see his home again ; one who looks to God 
 as the source of good and the controller of evil ; one who 
 has a healthy body and energetic spirit, and who looks on 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 293 
 
 death as a release from misery j and if you cannot find him 
 then leave me alone. To carry myself is enough for me — 
 I want no other baggage." ^ 
 
 What would not a score of such men accomplish in 
 any cause which might win them f 
 
 I have already said that Gordon was no impec- 
 cable, faultlessly regular man. He was like the 
 winds of spring. They blow where they list and you 
 cannot tell whence they come or whither they go. 
 No, not just so, for you know he came from God and 
 went to God. Here he saw many things and lived 
 them. He felt and lived the enigmas of which life is 
 full and he did not suppress the paradoxes, the in- 
 consistencies. 
 
 But he wrought for the truth as he saw it, and his 
 consolation in the midst of opposition and failure 
 and at last in death was that " everything is for the 
 best." That was ever his philosophy. God was un- 
 folding His will. Let man be stiU. In life and 
 death this satisfied him. 
 
 "Man must die," he wrote from the Holy Land, "to 
 the things of the world before he can produce any fruit ; 
 this is certain. What is death to the things of the world ? 
 It is to be counted an idiot, an idealist, an impossible sort 
 of person, a theorist, an indiscreet person, an (apparent) 
 condoner of evil, an enthusiast, a mean-spirited person, 
 etc., etc. It is not prayer-meetings, or churchgoing, or 
 parish-visiting. 
 
 " I speak of myself. In my spiritual nature, I despise 
 the world, its praise or blame. I know of nothing to be 
 
 > Butler, "Gordon," p. 136. 
 
294 CHARLES GEORGE GORDON 
 
 admired in my body or its actions from my birth to this 
 day. The world's praises are satires on me ; its blame is 
 just, though not from right motives. In my bodily nature 
 I scheme and work as if everything depended on my send- 
 ing this or that telegram, or my ordering this or that j but, 
 thank God, my spiritual nature rules, and I can, when ex- 
 posed to rebuffs, fall back on that spiritual nature and be 
 comforted." ' 
 
 So -while lie lived he rested on the living God whose 
 home above all worlds was yet within his own heart, 
 and now that he has died, it is as he said, just as 
 though the grain had escaped the sheath, the sword 
 were from its scabbard drawn. The servant who had 
 ruled well here has gone on, and there in the bound- 
 less countries of God has received " a greater govern- 
 ment to administer." 
 
 Three monuments have been erected to his memory. 
 One is the statue in Trafalgar Square of the solitary 
 figure looking out for the relief that did not come. 
 The second is the great tablet in St. Paul's with its 
 noble inscription : 
 
 Major General Charles George Gordon, 0. B. 
 wJio at all times and everywhere gave Ms strength to 
 the wealc, his substance to the poor, his sympathy to 
 the suffering, his heart to God 
 Born at Woolwich 28 Jan., 18SS 
 Slain at Khartoum 26 Jan. , 1885 
 He saved an empire by his warlike genius, he ruled 
 vast provinces with justice, wisdom and power ; and 
 lastly, otedient to his sovereign's command, he died 
 in the heroic attempt to save men, women and chil- 
 dren from imminent and deadly peril. Greater 
 love hath no man than this, that a man lay down 
 his life for his friends. 
 
 ' " Letters to His Sister," p. 274. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT ERRANT 295 
 
 And the third and noblest of all is the statue of Gor- 
 don on a dromedary in the public square at Khar- 
 toum. The man and the dromedary are not facing 
 the river by which he might at any time have 
 escaped, nor the palace where he ruled and fell, but 
 they are gazing out over the desert, the great desert 
 with its hopeless tribes, whose mute cry for help he 
 alone heard and in whose sob he caught the accents 
 of the voice of God. This, at the end, as through all 
 his days, had been the secret of his power. 
 
 " For this man was not great 
 By wealth or kingly state 
 
 By bright sword or knowledge of earth's wonder, 
 But more than all his race 
 He saw life face to face, 
 And heard the still small Voice above its thunder." 
 
 I pray that in our study of him and of these other 
 leaders In the great movement which is slowly work- 
 ing out the purpose of God in the world, some one 
 here also may have been enabled to look life full in 
 the face and to hear whispering above it the heavenly 
 call to the wider ministry of man and the deeper 
 service of God. 
 
By Robert E. Speer 
 
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