iaabdla Sltohit nt 
 
 BY 
 
 CLARA A. NELSON 
 
 publication (@fficc 
 
 HIonmn’a Jiforeign (HUtaaitmarg J^octetg 
 jJHciljobiai ppiacopal (Uljurclj 
 ^oaton, (iHaaaachnaEita- 
 
 Price Two Cents 
 
Isabella ®f)oburn 
 
 $ij (Elara A. Nrlamt 
 
 SABELLA THOBURN, the 
 first missionary of the 
 Woman’s Foreign Mission¬ 
 ary Society, was horn on a 
 farm near St. Clairsville, 
 Ohio, March 29, 1840. She 
 was peculiarly fortunate in 
 her ancestry — that happy mingling known 
 as Scotch-Irish — and in the influences 
 surrounding her early years. With parents 
 intelligent and strong, making the Chris¬ 
 tian life real to their children and filled 
 with the missionary spirit, she received 
 a rich inheritance of faith and the added 
 qualities of endurance and vision that 
 fitted her for the pioneer work of her mature 
 years. 
 
 Her education was begun in the local 
 district school and continued in the Female 
 Seminary of Wheeling, West Virginia. 
 After graduation she taught for a time, 
 and then returned to the seminary — which 
 had in the meantime been elevated to 
 collegiate rank — completing an advanced 
 course marked out by herself. Later she 
 studied for a year in an art school in 
 Cincinnati. Leaying school with a well 
 disciplined mind and a finely cultivated 
 literary taste, she again entered upon 
 a varied experience in teaching, filling 
 positions of increasing responsibility and 
 adding to her foundation work — the best 
 to be had at the time — the practical 
 experience that was preparing her to 
 
 2 
 
.Isabella QIl|nburrt 
 
 become our foremost educator in a foreign 
 land. 
 
 Miss Thoburn’s literary ability was of a 
 high order and the temptation to enter 
 upon this sort of a career was at one time 
 very strong. Similarly, when the Civil 
 War made its demands upon her sympa¬ 
 thies, she displayed rare skill as a nurse, 
 and thought seriously of entering upon 
 regular training. But the latter experience 
 like all others in her early life, was but 
 a preparation for what was to follow. 
 
 Although she was a deeply spiritual 
 woman. Miss Thoburn could never point 
 to the day or hour of her conversion. 
 She seems to have unfolded like a flower 
 in the sunlight of God’s love, developing 
 so gradually that she arrived at the beauty 
 of full bloom, unconscious of the change. 
 Although reared in a home where missions 
 were constantly the subject of prayer 
 and of self-sacrificing giving, and from 
 which later a brother went to India, she 
 did not early have a distinct call to for¬ 
 eign mission work. Her thought was 
 simply to fit herself as best she might for 
 the work that the Master should send 
 to her. 
 
 But the definite call was soon to come, 
 and through her brother — now one of 
 India’s four missionary bishops —in whose 
 work she was already greatly interested. 
 The peculiar disabilities of the women of 
 India, due to a long-continued system of 
 deprivation and degradation, offered a 
 difficult problem in the evangelization 
 of that great land, which no man — how¬ 
 ever able or consecrated — could solve. 
 
 3 
 
« 
 
 jfeatrrUa QJhulutnt 
 
 Writing to his sister of his desire to estab¬ 
 lish a school for women, Dr. Thoburn 
 pnt to her the question : “How would 
 you like to come out and take charge 
 of such a school ? ” He wrote almost care¬ 
 lessly, scarcely expecting an answer. What 
 was his surprise to receive by return steamer 
 the response : “I shall come as soon as 
 a way is open for me to do so.” 
 
 Isabella Thoburn’s higher call had come, 
 but with the Missionary Society of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church' actually em¬ 
 barrassed by the appearance of a woman 
 candidate for the foreign field, “the way” 
 seemed as yet scarcely open. God had 
 His own plan, however, and even then 
 was prompting the hearts of Mrs. Dr. 
 Butler and Mrs. Dr. Parker — recently 
 returned from India, and burdened with 
 the needs of India’s daughters — to find 
 “the way.’* This was nothing less than 
 the organization of a new foreign mis¬ 
 sionary society. 
 
 The dramatic story of the founding of 
 the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society 
 cannot be repeated here. Its first mission¬ 
 ary candidate, all unknown to the little 
 group of women who met that stormy 
 March day in Boston, was waiting in Ohio, 
 equally unaware that the agency that 
 should enable her to go was at hand, but 
 it was not long before the meeting took 
 place, and Miss Thoburn, with Dr. Swain — 
 divinely called at this same time to the min¬ 
 istry of healing — sailed for India, to “lay 
 broad and deep’’ the foundations of the 
 many-sided work of the Society. This was 
 in the year 1869. It is difficult to decide 
 
 4 
 
JlsabrUa uJlroliurit 
 
 which had the greater faith — the few 
 women who sent the missionaries out, 
 not knowing whence should come the 
 money for their support, or the two who 
 went forth with no path marked out, no 
 precedents to guide them, blazing their own 
 trail, like the traveler in a virgin forest. 
 
 With her remarkable grasp of the needs 
 of a situation. Miss Thoburn saw at once 
 that educational work was a fundamental 
 necessity for the women of India. But at 
 precisely this point she met with deter¬ 
 mined opposition, not only from the native 
 Hindus — to whom the idea was nothing 
 less than preposterous — but from English 
 and American residents as well, who tim¬ 
 orously feared the outcome of educating 
 the native women. 
 
 She held steadily to her conviction, 
 however, and soon opened a little school 
 in the Aminabad bazaar, Lucknow, where 
 gathered seven timid girls and the “ad¬ 
 venturous lady teacher who had coaxed 
 them to come.” This school was soon 
 transferred to a private room, and later 
 to a private house, and at length its num¬ 
 bers had so increased — and the Society 
 at home had so gained in strength — that 
 it was removed to Lai Bagh, the Rose Garden, 
 a beautiful estate purchased from its 
 Moslem owner at a cost of $7,000. 
 
 At the close of the first year in this 
 new location — the most desirable in the 
 city of Lucknow — the school was made a 
 boarding school, thus greatly enhancing 
 its possibilities and providing the home, 
 whose atmosphere of Christian love and 
 gracious hospitality was the appropriate 
 
 5 
 
SsabrUa ©tjubunt 
 
 setting for the great work of its founder. 
 The curriculum was gradually enlarged 
 and the courses made more advanced, and 
 finally, in 1887, the school became the 
 Lucknow Woman’s College — the first 
 Christian college for women in all Asia. 
 It was a glad day when this advance was 
 made, for it meant that in her unceasing 
 battle against apathy and determined 
 opposition Miss Thoburn had won the 
 victory for the education of India’s woman¬ 
 hood. That the school should later 
 bear her name was but a fitting recognition 
 of her work. 
 
 The college is affiliated with the Univer¬ 
 sity of Calcutta, and upon passing the 
 necessary examinations its graduates re¬ 
 ceive a degree and a diploma to which the 
 seal of the University is affixed. The bril¬ 
 liant record made by some of the candidates 
 attests the strength of the curriculum and 
 the efficiency of its teaching force. Merely 
 intellectual training, however, was by no 
 means Miss Thoburn’s ideal. Her girls 
 were to be trained for service, for she wisely 
 saw that only by trained native women can 
 the great mass of India’s womanhood be 
 redeemed. Phoebe Rowe, the sweet singer, 
 with her wonderful power as an evangelist, 
 and Lilavati Singh, with her brilliant 
 scholarship and devoted Christian charac¬ 
 ter, are typical exponents of the training 
 to which the Isabella Thoburn College is 
 pledged, and its graduates are making 
 themselves felt in every branch of Christian 
 work, as teachers, missionaries, physicians, 
 writers, and centers of Christian homes. 
 
 Miss Thoburn’s labors were not con- 
 
 6 
 
ilaahrUa Qlljobant 
 
 fined exclusively to the school, hut she 
 found time to establish Sunday schools, 
 to visit in the zenanas, to found the Girls’ 
 High School in Cawnpore, and to edit 
 for a time one of the zenana papers es¬ 
 tablished by the Society during the cen¬ 
 tennial year of Methodism (1883). Not 
 least of all, while on her second visit 
 to the home land — a health leave of 
 five years — she aided Mrs. Lucy Ryder 
 Meyer in establishing the Chicago Dea¬ 
 coness Training School, and, seeing the 
 great value of such work for India, she 
 took the full course herself in order that 
 she might adequately project this 
 new enterprise on her return. Later 
 she inaugurated a similar work in Cin¬ 
 cinnati. 
 
 Her third visit to America was made the 
 occasion of a plea for funds for her beloved 
 college. Accompanied by Miss Singh she 
 went up and down this broad land making 
 addresses and appeals. The call was 
 heard by many consecrated young women, 
 and the needs of the college were most 
 effectively brought home to the heart and 
 conscience of the Church. 
 
 She went back to India and was again 
 happy and busy in her work, when sud¬ 
 denly, without warning, she was not, for 
 God took her. She died as she had wished, 
 quickly, and without a long season of 
 suffering, of Asiatic cholera, the dread 
 disease through which she had nursed 
 so many. Her last day on earth was full 
 of duties lovingly performed ; had she 
 known that it was the last, she could 
 not have used it better. 
 
 • 1 
 
jlaabrlla aljiihitru 
 
 No woman in Methodism was more 
 widely known or more highly revered. 
 Her death was deplored as an irreparable 
 loss to the work in India, but she had 
 laid its foundations too deep to be shaken, 
 even by her own withdrawal, and the 
 impress of her character upon her fel¬ 
 low workers is so abiding that they feel 
 the added responsibility of doing the 
 work as she would have done it herself. 
 
 What she was to the church is well 
 known : a great leader with a far-reach¬ 
 ing vision ; with the faith that removes 
 mountains ; with the tact, insight into 
 character, broad sympathies, and strong 
 intellect that set her apart for her great 
 work. What she was to those who felt 
 the rare charm of her personality, who 
 saw the brave life, lived day by day as in 
 the sight of Him who is invisible, who 
 caught a glimpse of her own vision of 
 India redeemed, — this is too sacred for 
 words. What she was to the women of 
 India, to whom she brought education and 
 the gospel of Christ and for whom she 
 gave her life, — this will be seen more 
 and more as the years go by and the waves 
 of influence reach out farther and farther, 
 but it will never be fully known until 
 we stand in the presence of the Master 
 and see the full meaning of a life utterly 
 surrendered to His service. 
 
 Reprint 19)-