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 ^Accession 98955 Class 
 
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KNIGHTS 
 OF THE LABARUM 
 
 BEING STUDIES IN THE LIVES OF 
 
 JUDSON, DUFF, MACKENZIE AND MACKAY 
 
 •.be/ 
 
 By HARLAN P. BEACH 
 
 N 
 
 Educational Secretary of the Student Volunteer Movement 
 for Foreign Missions; formerly Missionary in China 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT 
 
 FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 1896 
 
 OF THE J 
 
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 or 
 
 Copyright, 1896, by the 
 
 Student Volunteer Movement 
 
 for Foreign Missions. 
 
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EXPLANATORY 
 
 This little book does not claim to be a collection of fin- 
 ished biographies. Like a volume on India, issued a year 
 ago, "The Cross in the Land of the Trident," it is in- 
 tended as an outline text-book for Mission Study Classes, 
 whether conducted by the Student Volunteer Movement, 
 or carried on by Young Peoples* Societies and women's 
 missionary organizations. The condensation of material 
 and the use of bold-faced type and italics are due to the de- 
 sire to facilitate the acquisition of leading facts and to sug- 
 gest topics and sub-topics for further reading. The en- 
 thusiastic approval of many among the thousands who have 
 used the similarly prepared book above mentioned, has en- 
 couraged the author to again make use of this style of writ- 
 ing, faulty though it may be from a typographical and 
 literary point of view. 
 
 The author hopes that in addition to a mastery of these 
 outline facts, the user will read the fuller, and hence more 
 living and interesting, volumes from which he has derived 
 most of his information. Several readings have been sug- 
 gested by chapter or page at the close of each chapter, and 
 in classes some of these, at least, should be read and re- 
 ported upon as valuable side-light material. Only thus 
 can the greatest profit be derived from these studies. 
 
 Leaders of classes should possess a full biography of each 
 of the lives outlined here, and the following are suggested 
 as the best now in print : "The Life of Adoniram Judson," 
 
 98955 
 
by his son, Edward Judson, 1883, A. D. F. Randolph & 
 Co., New York; the two- volume-in-one edition, published 
 by the American Tract Society of New York, of " The Life 
 of Alexander Duff, D. D., LL. D.," by George Smith, 
 LL.D., 1879; "John Kenneth Mackenzie, Medical Miss- 
 ionary to China," by Mrs Bryson, Fleming H. Revell 
 Company, New York and Chicago; and, "A. M. Mackay, 
 Pioneer Missionary of the Church Missionary Society to 
 Uganda," by his Sister, 1890, A. C. Armstrong & Son, 
 New York. 
 
 The principal reason why these four have been chosen 
 from among the many mighty men on the mission field is 
 that they represent four different lines of missionary effort, 
 as well as four different countries. A broader view of 
 missionary life is thus secured than would have been the 
 case if representatives of one land or of one phase of work 
 were studied. This will partly account for the omission 
 of some missionaries equally famous, though additional rea- 
 sons for choosing these rather than others have also been 
 operative. Thus the latter part of Livingstone's life, like 
 that of Dr Peter Parker's, was only indirectly missionary, 
 and both had severed their connection with missionary or- 
 ganizations. Again, Bishop Patteson and Dr Paton are 
 omitted, because both of them labored in a field which has 
 comparatively little connectional interest for American stu- 
 dents, while in the case of Dr Paton, an additional reason 
 for neglecting so marvelous a life is the fact that it has 
 not yet reached its completion. 
 
 September, i8g6. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Judson's Life from 1788 to 1816 . . 9 
 
 II. The Judsons' Burman Work ... 22 
 
 III. Duff's Early Life and Educational 
 
 Work ...... 36 
 
 IV. Duff as a Promoter of Missions . . 49 
 
 V. The Man Mackenzie, His Field and 
 
 People . . . . . 63 
 
 VI. Mackenzie, the Medical Missionary . 76 
 
 VII Mackay's Early Life and His African 
 
 Field ...... 89 
 
 VIII. Mackay's Parishioners and His Work . 101 
 
Xabarum, tbe sacred military standard of tbe earlv. Christian IRoman fimper* 
 ors, was first adopted bv> Constantino tbe Great after bis miraculous vision in 312. 
 • . . B Special guard of ftf tv soldiers was appointed to protect tbe sacred 
 standard.— Encyclopaedia 36rittanica. 
 
 f determined not to fcnow anything among sou, save 3esus Cbrist, and bim 
 crucified. ... II bave fougbt tbe good ftgbt, H bave flnisbed tbe course, H bare 
 Itept tbe faitb ; bencefortb tbere is laid for me tbe crown of righteousness. 
 
 -St. Paul. 
 
 Ubv, servants will pass over, everv, man tbat is armed for war, before tbe 
 Xord to battle.— "Numbers xxxii . 27. 
 
KNIGHTS OF THE LABARUM 
 
 judson's life from 1788 TO 1 816 
 
 IN MEMORIAM. REV. ADONIRAM JUDSON. BORN AUG. 9, I7S8. 
 DIED APRIL 12, 185O. MALDEN, HIS BIRTHPLACE. THE OCEAN, 
 HIS SEPULCHRE. CONVERTED BURMANS, AND THE BURMAN 
 BIBLE, HIS MONUMENT. HIS RECORD IS ON HIGH. 
 
 The above inscription, found on a marble tablet in the 
 Baptist church at Maiden, Mass., constitutes one of the 
 interesting relics of America's early missionary history. 
 Another, found in this same Boston suburb, is a wooden, 
 two-storied and dormered house embowered in trees, the 
 birthplace of " The Apostle of Burma." 
 
 Parentage. The person thus commemorated was the eld- 
 est of four children. The father, true to his Hebrew name, 
 Adoniram, "Lord of height," was more like a Hebrew 
 patriarch or Roman censor than fathers of to-day. Erect, 
 above the ordinary height, grave and taciturn, stately and 
 awe-inspiring, he occupied the lofty position of Congrega- 
 tional minister in the old-time New England community. 
 It was his to command in the parish, and especially in 
 his home, where he ruled as absolute monarch. Not am- 
 bitious for himself, he inordinately desired to see his child- 
 ren achieve greatness. To this end he largely threw the 
 son on his own resources, and constantly held before him 
 the possibility of becoming great. Christianity was to the 
 father a thing surely proven and demanding immediate 
 obedience, and any attempt to question it was tantamount 
 
IO THE JUDSONS, BURMAN PIONEERS 
 
 to rebellion. In general his life was marked by inflexible 
 integrity and uniform consistency, and called forth from the 
 young Adoniram the phrase, "honored parent," as well as 
 inspired in him self-reliance and overweening ambition. 
 Paternal influence doubtless accounts for the stately cour- 
 tesy and the dignified literary style of Judson's later years. 
 
 His mother, Abigail Brown, seconded her husband in 
 his ambitious schemes for the boy ; yet of her Augustine's 
 words are also true : " This name of my Saviour, Thy Son, 
 had my tender heart, even with my mother's milk, devoutly 
 drunk in, and deeply cherished ; and whatsoever was with- 
 out that name, though never so learned, polished, or true, 
 took not entire hold of me." 
 
 Anecdotes of His Boyhood. A sort of forcing system, 
 of which in later life Judson did not approve, made of the 
 child of three a reader in the Bible, and when four, a 
 preacher to children, his favorite hymn being, "Go preach 
 my gospel, saith the Lord." He is a philosopher and as- 
 tronomer at seven, as he lies on his back at midday en- 
 deavoring to learn, by means of a hole in his hat, through 
 which he long gazes at the sun, whether or not it moves. 
 The problem was solved, but the boy could not tell the 
 process. Later his success as riddle guesser brings him a 
 whole book full of them, an arithmetic. 
 
 Preparatory and Collegiate Education. The coming 
 of this book, which his father's praise and the fact of its 
 being difficult made delightful, began his educational career. 
 Arithmetic establishes his reputation. Navigation follows 
 at ten years, and soon thereafter his odd hat, and proficiency 
 in the classics studied at the grammar school, won him the 
 nickname, "Old Vergil dug up." For leisure hours, he 
 indulges in a melange consisting of Ben Jonson's plays, 
 novels of Richardson and Fielding, and theological works. 
 
 His studies, which he enjoyed far more than play, suf- 
 fered a prolonged and almost fatal interruption at the age 
 of fourteen, and for the first time he calmly considered the 
 meaning of life. During convalescence, castle-building 
 made him a nineteenth century Alexander weeping for un- 
 conquered worlds. Better impulses allured him to a life of 
 Christian usefulness, lived to the glory of God ; but as that 
 
LIFE FROM 178S TO l8l6 II 
 
 meant being a Christian, and as he was determined to be- 
 come a great man, these thoughts he foolishly set aside. 
 
 Providence College — the present Brown University — 
 received Adoniram at sixteen, he having entered as sopho- 
 more. President Messer has testified, in a letter to Jud- 
 son's father, to "a uniform propriety of conduct, as well as 
 an intense application to study," while a classmate had "no 
 recollection of his ever failing, or even hesitating in recita- 
 tion." Quite naturally, therefore, and in spite of six weeks 
 of teaching during senior year, he graduated with the vale- 
 dictory in 1807. Unfortunately these years brought him in 
 contact with French infidelity which so permeated educa- 
 tional centers at that time. Yielding to the flood, and es- 
 pecially to the arguments of a witty and talented upper- 
 classman, Judson became a professed deist and looked for- 
 ward to the law as an open door to political preferment, or 
 to the stage as a field for his dramatic gifts. 
 
 Teacher and Author. Two weeks after receiving his B. 
 A., Judson opened the "Plymouth Independent Academy," 
 his father being then pastor in that historic town. His 
 application during this year must have been unremitting, 
 as, in addition to his school duties, he published two text- 
 books, " The Elements of English Grammar," and " The 
 Young Ladies' Arithmetic," which, though exhibiting the 
 "ingenious literary enterprise and perseverance" of their 
 author, were of no great pedagogical value. 
 
 Judson's Conversion. In August, 1808, less than a 
 week after closing his academy, he mounted a horse and 
 set out on a tour through the North "to see the world." 
 Fulton's newly invented steamboat and the charming scen- 
 ery of the Hudson greatly interested him, but questionable 
 scenes soon followed. Arriving in New York, he joined a 
 band of strolling players in order to prepare himself for 
 dramatical writing. He said later of these experiences : 
 "We lived a reckless, vagabond life, lodging where we 
 could, and bilking the landlord when we found opportunity. 
 . Before leaving America, ... I made a second 
 tour over the same ground, carefully making amends to all 
 whom I had injured." 
 
 His Damascus came soon after leaving New York, when 
 
12 THE JUDSONS, BUHMAN PIONEERS 
 
 he returned to Connecticut for his horse. A godly young 
 minister, supplying his uncle's pulpit at Sheffield, greatly 
 impressed him. This added force to his father's severity 
 and his mother's grief, exhibited when he told them, before 
 leaving home, of his deistical beliefs. The night after leaving 
 Sheffield, his room in the inn adjoined that of a dying young 
 man whose future prospects disturbed his sleep. He tried 
 to banish " superstitious illusions" by the thought of what 
 his deistical college friend would say if he were cognizant 
 of such fears. The morning brought the news of the young 
 man's death and the crushing intelligence that the dead man 
 was no other than this same college idol. Thunder-struck, 
 Judson gave up his tour and turned Ply mouth- ward, his 
 mind deeply impressed with the need of salvation, but with 
 the scales still unremoved from his eyes. Professors Griffin 
 and Stuart of Andover Seminary advised him to enter that 
 institution. This he finally decided to do, "not as a pro- 
 fessor of religion and candidate for the ministry, but as a 
 person deeply in earnest on the subject, and desirous of ar- 
 riving at the truth." Having become somewhat proficient in 
 Hebrew, Judson was able to enter the middle class at 
 Andover, and here it was that the light came ; though it was 
 only the clearest evidence of the truth of Christianity and an 
 increasing need of the Saviour that caused the conquered 
 infidel to say, "My Lord and my God." December 2, 
 1808, was the date of this momentous decision, but not un- 
 til the following May did he unite with his father's church. 
 Andover "Divinity College" Life, 1808-1810. Judson's 
 conversion ended forever his old life of doubt and political 
 and literary ambition. His supreme desire now was to 
 know how he could order his life so as to best please God. 
 That this thought might be constantly before him, he in- 
 scribed on several constantly used articles, " Is it pleasing 
 to God? " His letters at this period glow with earnest de- 
 sires after holiness and with whole-souled consecration to 
 Christ's service. Without raising the question, he felt that 
 he must devote his life to the ministry in some form. When 
 as a student he went out to preach, his sermons were 
 " solemn, impassioned, logical and highly scriptural, with- 
 out much of the hortatory, and with no far-fetched figure or 
 
LIFE FROM I788 TO 1 8 16 1 3 
 
 studied ornament of phrase." These addresses were rarely 
 written: for, " why should I spend my time in attempting 
 the correctness and elegancies of English literature, who 
 expect to spend my days in talking to savages in vulgar 
 style? Why not cultivate extempore speaking altogether, 
 when that will soon be my only mode of preaching for 
 life?" 
 
 His interest in missions began in September of his senior 
 year, when he read Buchanan's "Star in the East." Later 
 he did not consider this sermon remarkable, but at the time 
 it produced a powerful effect on his mind, prevented his 
 studying for several days, inflamed his mind with romantic 
 ideas and sent him through the students' rooms declaiming 
 on missions. The overdrawn pictures in Syme's "Em- 
 bassay to Ava," added fuel to the flames and ended in a 
 highly wrought enthusiasm, which never died. It was some 
 time after this — in February, 1810 — that the decision was 
 reached. During a solitary walk in the woods behind the 
 seminary, the dfficulties in the way seemed so great that after 
 meditating and praying on the subject, he inclined to give it 
 up, when the force of Christ's last command so overwhelmed 
 him that he resolved "to obey it at all hazards, for the sake 
 of pleasing the Lord Jesus Christ." His "passion for 
 missions" was so great that he became a man of one idea, 
 and was soon the leading advocate of the cause at Andover. 
 
 The First American Volunteer Hovement. Most of 
 the men drawn around him were from Williams College, 
 where in a grove and under the shadow of a haystack the 
 missionary fire was kindled among American students. In 
 1808 they had signed a constitution whose first, second, 
 fifth and sixth articles pledged them to train themselves for 
 missionary service, to personally establish a mission or mis- 
 sions among the heathen, to admit none as members who 
 were under obligations preventing their going on a mission, 
 and to hold themselves ready to go when and where duty 
 might call. Judson did not sign this constitution until 181 1 , 
 but speedily allied himself with them in prayer and in an 
 active missionary propaganda in other colleges and semina- 
 ries and in the churches where called to preach. Most of 
 the members had in mind temporary service and a mission 
 
14 THE JUDSONS, BURMAN PIONEERS 
 
 to American Indians, but Mills, and especially Nott and 
 Judson, desired Asia's conversion and a lifelong service. 
 
 Judson and the A. B. C. F. M. The American Board, 
 though the first foreign missionary organization in America, 
 had its forerunners. The Massachusetts Missionary Society, 
 formed in 1799, altered its constitution so that in 1804 it 
 was free to take up work abroad. Doctors Griffin and Wor- 
 cester had urged most eloquently the claims of the heathen, 
 while several thousand dollars had been sent from America 
 to Carey and others. A missionary magazine, a predeces- 
 sor of the American Board's " Missionary Herald," was 
 published in 1803. Notwithstanding these facts, Judson 
 and his associates were the ones who were the occasion of 
 forming America's first foreign missionary organization. 
 
 In pursuance of their policy to interest influential clergy- 
 men in missions, a number of professors and ministers met 
 in Professor Stuart's house at Andover, June 25, 1810, to 
 whom their desire to enter on the work was made known. 
 Their fervent prayers and serious deliberations led the next 
 day to the formulation of a plan for a board as Doctors 
 Worcester and Spring rode in a chaise to Bradford. There 
 the representatives of the Massachusetts, New Hampshire 
 and Connecticut Congregational Associations were to meet. 
 An appeal to the Association, written out by Judson and 
 signed also by Messrs Nott, Mills and Newell, asked coun- 
 sel concerning their missionary duty, the field to be occu- 
 pied, and the organization under which they were to work. 
 Judson and the others were there to advocate the scheme. 
 On June 29, 1810, a report was adopted and the first board 
 of commissioners elected, though not until September 5, 
 was the board finally constituted. The four petitioners 
 were encouraged to go abroad as soon as possible. 
 
 To France and England. Judson, in the desire to place 
 himself and companions on missionary soil, had written in 
 April to Dr Bogue, in charge of the London Missionary So- 
 ciety's institution at Gosport, inquiring about India and Tar- 
 tary as mission fields and asking assistance in preparation 
 therefor. The Board having been formed and feeling unable 
 to proceed alone, requested Judson to go to England and 
 confer with that society concerning a co-operative work, and 
 
LIFE FROM 1788 TO lSl6 15 
 
 to secure and transmit to the Board "ample and correct 
 information relating to missionary fields, the requisite prep- 
 arations for missionary service, the most eligible methods 
 of executing missions and generally whatever may be con- 
 ducive to the missionary interest." 
 
 His voyage in the " Packet, " his capture by a French 
 privateer, imprisonment at Bayonne, escape therefrom, sev- 
 eral weeks residence in France, during which time he 
 travelled in one of Napoleon's carriages, his examination 
 of the dark side of French life, ending in a sermon at a 
 masked ball, constitute one of the exciting pages of his 
 eventful history. Its value to him in later years he grate- 
 fully records. 
 
 Arriving in England he was very cordially received by 
 the London Society, but his ardent wish to reach the field 
 made him somewhat recreant to his duty. He not only did 
 not make the investigations upon which he was to report 
 to the Board, but finding that concert between the two 
 societies was impracticable, he secured an appointment to 
 India for himself, Nott, Newell and Hall, who took Mill's 
 place in the list. At the meeting following his return, the 
 Board were practically forced to commission and support 
 the four candidates ; otherwise they might have gone out 
 under the London Society. Judson's pertinacity on this 
 occasion received a mild censure which years afterward 
 gave rise to a heated and profitless controversy, regretted in 
 his calmer moments. 
 
 Counter Currents. Mr Judson met with other obstacles 
 also. In 1809 he had received appointment as tutor in 
 Providence College and later was asked to become a col- 
 league of Dr Griffin in Park Street Church, the largest in 
 Boston. In spite of his father's disappointment and the 
 tears of mother and sister, he refused these flattering posi- 
 tions and set his face resolutely duty-ward. An apparently 
 more serious obstacle was his delicate constitution with a 
 tendency to consumption. His rigid adherence to three 
 rules of health, — frequent inhalations of large quantities of 
 air, daily sponging of the entire body in cold water, and 
 systematic and vigorous walking, — enabled him to meet the 
 health requirements of the Board and to reach a goodly age. 
 
l6 THE JUDSONS, BURMAN PIONEERS 
 
 Embarkation and Voyage. When before the General 
 Association at Bradford, Judson had been waited on by a 
 fascinating Bradford Academy graduate, and ten days later 
 an acquaintance began which ended in marriage on Feb. 5, 
 181 2. The following day he and Messrs Nott, Newell, 
 Hall and Rice were ordained in Salem, whence he sailed 
 on the 19th for Calcutta, commissioned .** to labor in Asia, 
 either in the Burman Empire, or in Surat, or in Prince of 
 Wales Island, or elsewhere. " On board the brig " Cara- 
 van " were Newell and his illustrious wife, Harriet; the 
 others sailed from Philadelphia on the ship " Harmony." 
 
 The appearance of Judson, then in his twenty-fourth 
 year, is thus described : "He was at this time small and 
 exceedingly delicate in figure, with a round, rosy face, 
 which gave him the appearance of extreme youthfulness. 
 His hair and eyes were of a dark shade of brown. 
 His voice, however, was far from what would be ex- 
 pected of such a person and usually took the listener by 
 surprise," so much so that a London minister, hearing him 
 read a hymn, said of it : "If his faith is proportioned to his 
 voice, he will drive the devil from all India." 
 
 During the voyage much time was devoted to the study of 
 baptism. This was taken up as a preparation for the time 
 when converts from heathenism with their families would 
 be in his care, and also because he wrongly supposed that 
 the Serampore Baptists, with whom he was to live for a time, 
 would attack his pedobaptist views. Careful study, which 
 in the case of many equally critical missionary students has 
 led to different conclusions, caused him to accept the Bap- 
 tist views. Hence, soon after his arrival in India, he and 
 his wife were immersed, and Judson resigned his connec- 
 tion with the American Board, its missionaries and churches, 
 — a heroic step which caused him deepest pain. Mr Rice 
 was the only one of their company who shared his views, 
 and he soon after returned to America to agitate and effect 
 by voice, as Judson did by pen, the formation of what is 
 now the American Baptist Missionary Union, one of our 
 strongest boards. This step marked the beginning of the 
 marvellous growth of that denomination. 
 
 Rejected of Hen. Compelled by conscience to leave the 
 
LIF"E FROM 1788 TO 1 8 16 1 7 
 
 American Board, he was not wholly acceptable to his Bap- 
 tist friends. Dr Carey felt that the luxurious upbringing 
 of Americans unfitted them for the privations of mission- 
 ary life, and so looked askance at him. The East India 
 Company, too, fearing that the arrival of so many recruits 
 would embarrass them in certain questionable practices, de- 
 creed their return to England, though by a kind providence 
 the Judsons were allowed to go to Mauritius. Thence, 
 two months later, they returned to Madras. They had 
 planned to start a mission on Prince of Wales Island, 
 but to avoid deportation to England, they were obliged to 
 flee, and the only vessel available was bound for Rangoon. 
 This crazy craft they regretfully boarded, as they regarded 
 a mission to that city with great horror. 
 
 Arrival at Rangoon. The voyage was dangerous, but 
 the Judsons finally reached Burma July 13, 18 13. Their 
 feelings after going ashore were among the most gloomy 
 and distressing that they had ever known. The house first+S 
 occupied was outside of the city walls near the execution^ 
 ground, the cemetery and the dumping ground, and was 
 exposed to robbers and wild beasts. Rangoon itself was j^ 
 then a poorly built, dirty, undrained city of 10,000 inhabif^ 
 tants, and was intersected by muddy creeks. Later, the}P- 
 lived within the walls, not far from Burma's most famous * J 
 temple, the Golden Dagon Dagoba, glorying in eight of \ 
 Buddha's hairs. ^ 
 
 They were not the first Bur man workers. In 1S07 
 the English Baptists sent two men thither and later two ^ 
 others, one being William Carey's son Felix. The London ,/^ 
 mission sent two men in 1808, but their work ceased within*-^ 
 a year. Mr Chater, a Baptist, had prepared a Burmese t 
 St Matthew, and Felix Carey accomplished something as i 
 linguist, vaccinator and printer. He was the only one there 
 in 18 1 3, and his subsequent wild career hindered mission- L^ 
 ary work in the Empire. ^ 
 
 The Burman Field. Burma, now an Indian province, * 
 was then an independent and absolute despotism in spite of t 
 its many councilors and kingly advisers. Its "Lord of 
 Life and Death," "Owner of the Sword," ruled a territory 
 over 1000 miles long and 600 in breadth. The Nile-like \ 
 
1 8 THE JUDSONS, BURMAN PIONEERS 
 
 plain of the Irawadi, — a future key of Asia, — the forest cov- 
 ered hills and mountains were then largely undeveloped, 
 and intercommunication was difficult save by water. Its 
 valuable timber lands were beast-infested and contained in 
 some districts still fiercer men. Its inhabitants, incorrectly 
 supposed by Judson to equal our own population at that 
 time, were the prey of their governors, the "Eaters" of 
 provinces. Law was always on the side of the largest 
 bribe, while torture and diabolical punishment awaited the 
 poor litigant. 
 
 The religion which Burma's apostle had to meet was 
 Buddhism of the southern type, unrelieved by the theistic 
 and soteriological hopes of China and Japan. Monasteries 
 were on every street, and priests were reckoned as one out 
 of thirty of the population. The doctrines most commonly 
 remembered were connected with merit, which affected 
 their transmigrations and their cheerless doctrine of Nir- 
 "vana. In spite of this atheistic atmosphere, Yule could thus 
 ^describe the Burmans : "They are cheerful and singularly 
 .alive to the ridiculous : buoyant, elastic, soon recovering 
 from personal or domestic disaster. With little feeling of 
 patriotism they are still attached to their homes, greatly so 
 to their families ; Though ignorant, they are, 
 
 when no mental exertion is required, inquisitive, and to a 
 certain extent eager for information ; . . . temperate, 
 abstemious and hardy, but idle, with neither fixedness of 
 purpose nor perseverance." Such a people might have 
 been reasonably easy to reach, as there was no hereditary 
 priesthood, caste, nor isolation of women ; but the oppo- 
 sition of rulers and the death penalty which threatened 
 those who turned from Buddhism, were tremendous obsta- 
 cles. A comparatively rich literature, a religious termi- 
 nology and compulsory primary education for boys were 
 an aid to the missionary ; but on the other hand, Burma 
 had not a few stubborn disputants who, in their extrava- 
 gant tenure of Idealism and Nihilism, would put Berkeley 
 and Hume to shame. 
 
 Plan of Campaign. Though young Carey was absent, 
 the Judsons did not confront this Gibralter alone ; for they 
 knew intimately Him in whom they believed, and placed 
 
LIFE FROM 1753 TO lSl6 1 9 
 
 themselves in His hands as implicitly as did their Seram- 
 pore brethren, who spent fifteen days in prayer over one of 
 the early steps in connection with the Burma Mission. 
 
 Mrs Judson says that at first they had but one plan, 
 that of learning the Burmese most thoroughly. Later, Jud- 
 son gained such command of the classical Pali as to fully 
 equip him for his work. This was a difficult task. No 
 English speaking teacher, dictionary nor adequate grammar 
 was at hand, so that they had to blaze their way. Bent 
 over a book-covered table beside a venerable pundit whose 
 head was wrapped in a handkerchief and his loins with a 
 cloth, the two chattered, read and took notes all day long. 
 Meanwhile Mrs Judson acquired the tongue more rapidly, 
 if less scientifically, while superintending the work of the 
 house. Carey had so impressed upon Judson the value of 
 accuracy in speech, that he delayed longer than wise, per- 
 haps, before conducting public worship and doing zayat 
 preaching. These duties did not begin until he had been 
 in Burma nearly six years, though much personal work had 
 been done from the beginning. 
 
 The language mastered, work must be planned in ac- 
 cordance with Judson' s deep-seated convictions. Bur- 
 man Buddhism taught that there was "no God to save, no 
 soul to be saved, and no sin to be saved from." The oppo- 
 site of these three doctrines he believed with his whole soul. 
 He felt, moreover, that no Burman could reach heaven who 
 did not realize his sin and flee to the Saviour. When they 
 began their work not one of Burma's millions, so far as 
 Judson knew, was a believer in Christ, nor even an earnest 
 inquirer ; and as they stood alone in that land, the crushing 
 responsibility of their position deeply solemnized them. 
 They believed, however, that here and there about them 
 was a person so led by Providence and so influenced by the 
 Spirit that if the story of salvation could reach him, he 
 would accept it. To discover such persons was their task. 
 
 Their methods were simple. Judson did not believe 
 that he was first a promoter of civilization, then an educa- 
 tor and finally a herald of salvation. The last function 
 was pre-eminently his, and to accomplish his work he 
 made large use of eye-gate and ear-gate. The Word of 
 
20 THE JUDSONS, BURMAN PIONEERS 
 
 God must, at the earliest possible moment, be accurately 
 translated into the tongue of the people, and comprehensive 
 and concrete statements of truth be sown in every promising 
 field. Burman ears must also be fiiied with the saving mes- 
 sage. Unlike many missionaries, Judson thought that the 
 most strategic point of attack was the citadel of Mansoul 
 instead of the weaker walls of Childsoul ; hence, work for 
 adults consumed most of his time. 
 
 The pair well knew that a Christian atmosphere was 
 essential to the growth of the exotic with which they were 
 entrusted. "God is love" must be taught through "I am 
 love," and their lives in home and church, in zayat and in 
 palace, must teach this, instead of relegating the duty to 
 nicely framed mottoes. Tender sensibilities, strong affec- 
 tions, undying love were the saps through which they de- 
 termined to zigzag toward Burman fortresses. 
 
 The Burman Mission in 1816. This, then, was the 
 situation at the beginning of this year. Felix Carey had 
 seceded from the mission, leaving the Judsons as the sole 
 evangelizing force in a land containing several millions of 
 Buddhists and heathen. Behind them were the Baptists of 
 America, awakened to self-consciousness and missionary 
 zeal largely through Judson. He in his twenty-eighth year 
 and his wife a year younger, they had already gained tol- 
 erable mastery of the language, but no usable tract, gram- 
 mar, dictionary, or portion of Scripture had yet been pub- 
 lished, nor was there a single Protestant convert to preach 
 through Burman lips evangelical Christianity. But God 
 was there and in them ; and their hopes, founded on His 
 sure promises, flooded the eastern horizon with prophetic 
 glory. 
 
 SUGGESTED READINGS. 
 
 Conant: The Earnest Man, (1856), Chs. i-xii. 
 
 Doivling : The Judson Offering, (1847), Pp. 1-44. 
 
 Eddy: The Three Mrs Judsons and Other Daughters of the 
 
 Cross, (i860), Pp. 43-73. 
 Encyclopaedia of Missions, (1891), Articles Adoniram and Ann 
 
 Hasseltine Judson and Burma. 
 Hervey: The Story of Baptist Missions, (1884), Chs. xn, xm. 
 
c 
 
 LIFE FROM 1788 TO l8l6 21 
 
 Johnston; Life of Adoniram Judson, (1887), Chs. i-vii. 
 
 Mrs A. H. Judson: Mission to Burmah, (1823). 
 
 Edward Judson: Notable Baptists: Adoniram Judson, (1894), 
 Chs. i-iv. 
 
 Knowles: Ann Hasseltine Judson, (1835), Chs. I-VII. 
 
 Page: Noble Workers, (1875), Pp. 201-209. 
 
 Pierson: New Acts of the Apostles, (1894), Pp. 105-110. 
 
 Piper and Maccracken : Lives of the Leaders of Our Church Uni- 
 versal, (1879), Pp. 837-842. 
 
 Pitman: Heroines of the Missionary Field, Pp. 278-293. 
 Lady Missionaries to Foreign Lands, Pp. 13-64. 
 
 Richards: Adoniram Judson, (an Epic ; 1889), Pp. 1-18. 
 
 Stuart: Lives of the Three Mrs Judsons, (1851), Pp. 13-180. 
 
 Thomson: Great Missionaries, (.1862), Pp. 281-290. 
 
 Vanguard of the Christian Army, Pp. 77-89. 
 
 Walsh: Modern Heroes of the Mission Field, (1882), Pp. 63-75. 
 
 Wyeth: Missionary Memorials : Ann H. Judson, (1894). 
 
 Yonge: Pioneers and Founders, (1890), Pp. 1 17-128. 
 
 Edward Judson: The Life of Adoniram Judson, (1883). Early 
 Years, Ch. 1. ; Consecration to Missionary Life, Ch. 11. ; Voy- 
 age to Burmah, Ch. III. ; Burmah, Ch. iv. ; Life in Rangoon, 
 Ch. v. 
 
 i.i-O St »M*t~" lf*~~t»a~- 
 
 /<?// 
 
 7 
 
II 
 
 THE JUDSONS* BURMAN WORK 
 
 His name alone is a tower of strength to the missionary cause; 
 but his name is not alone. He was the center of a family group, 
 to which, so far as I have read, no parallel can be found in ancient 
 or in modern history. Ann, Sarah and Emily Judson — all three, 
 noble, intellectual and Christian women, all three devoted and af- 
 fectionate — sympathized with and shared in all his labors, rose to 
 his height, and shine even beside him. — Rev IV. S. MacA-ay, in 
 the "Friend of India." 
 
 Story of the Years. A missionary experience, extend- 
 ing over nearly four decades, cannot be fully condensed into 
 a few pages ; yet Dr Judson has himself left a brief " Auto- 
 biographical Record of Dates and Events," which will aid 
 us in fixing on the salient points of his career, with that of 
 his devoted wives. Roughly outlined, their Burman life 
 falls into six periods. 
 
 i. At Rangoon, 1813-1823. This period has already 
 been partly described. In 18 16 Judson, being kept from 
 work by illness, prepared "Grammatical Notices of the 
 Burman Language," and his first tract, " A View of the 
 Christian Religion." In October they were reenforced by 
 the Houghs. 181 7 was marked by the completion of his 
 translation of Matthew and the beginning of a Burman dic- 
 tionary. 18 18 was a sad year for them. Dr Judson had 
 been broken down by four years of overwork on the lan- 
 guage, in translating and in book-making ; so he resolved 
 to try a sea voyage to Chittagong, the southeast point of 
 India proper, where were some Burmese-speaking converts 
 of the Serampore Mission. He purposed to reorganize that 
 scattered church and bring back helpers who could conduct 
 
BURMAN WORK 23 
 
 worship in Burmese ; but the expected short voyage was 
 lengthened to about nine months, during which time Judson 
 was driven to India and barely escaped death by fever and 
 starvation. Mrs Judson suffered equally during his ab- 
 sence. All suppposed that her husband had been lost at 
 sea. Government persecution assailed Mr Hough, who was 
 rescued by her great tact and personal influence. Then 
 cholera swept over the city and the Houghs proposed leav- 
 ing. She was temporarily expecting to go with them, but 
 at last decided that she would not desert the station while 
 there w r as the least chance of her husband's return. Two 
 new families came out in the fall. 
 
 In April of the following year public worship and zayat 
 preaching began. This was followed in June, 1819, by 
 the baptism of their first convert, Moung Nau, nearly six 
 years after beginning work in Rangoon. A number of 
 others including the philosopher, Shwa-gnong, becoming 
 inquirers, the viceroy became alarmed and the work was 
 stopped. Judson and Mr Colman resolved to go the Em- 
 peror in person and appeal for toleration, an eventful jour- 
 ney of two months resulting in nothing. Being unable to 
 secure the lives of converts, Judson determined to transport 
 them to Chittagong, where they would be under British 
 protection. Their willingness to endure persecution and 
 their request that he delay until a church of ten members 
 was formed prevailed, and he remained, though the Col- 
 mans w r ent thither to prepare a place of refuge. Mrs 
 Judson's health being shattered, they were forced to go to 
 Calcutta, where a three months' rest at Serampore was a 
 refreshing oasis in their lives. Relief was only temporary, 
 and a few months after their return home, Mrs Judson 
 was obliged to sail for England and America, where she did 
 much to create interest in the mission and to gain recruits. 
 
 During her absence he went, in 1822, with their newly 
 arrived physician to Ava. His skill in removing cataracts 
 had attracted the Emperor's notice, and an imperial sum- 
 mons brought them to the Golden Foot. Dr Price's ability 
 secured to them an invitation to reside at the capital. Af- 
 ter five months there, during which time Judson secured 
 mission premises and pressed home the claims of Christ on 
 
24 THE JUDSONS, BURMAN PIONEERS 
 
 princes, higher officials, and the Emperor himself, he re- 
 turned to Rangoon. While awaiting for ten months the 
 return of Mrs Judson, he completed on July 12, 1823, 
 his translation of the New Testament, together with an 
 epitome of the Old Testament, intended to serve as an in- 
 troduction to the New. 
 
 2. Prisoner at Ava and Oung-pen-la, 1824-1826. The 
 auspicious beginning of their life in Ava was early shrouded 
 in gloom. The war cloud between England and Burma, 
 due to the sheltering of Burman refugees in Chittagong, 
 soon burst. As all white foreigners at the capital were re- 
 garded as spies, Dr Judson was seized on June 8, 1S24, 
 and an experience began equalled in suffering only by that of 
 some early church and Catholic missionaries. His official 
 communication on the subject is as follows: " Through 
 the kind interposition of our Heavenly Father, our lives 
 have been preserved in the most imminent danger, from 
 the hand of the executioner, and in repeated instances of 
 most alarming illness during my protracted imprisonment 
 of one year and seven months — nine months in three pairs 
 of fetters, two months in five, six months in one, and two 
 months as prisoner at large. Subsequent to the latter 
 period, I spent about six weeks in the house of the north 
 governor of the palace, who petitioned for my release, 
 and took me under his charge ; and finally on the joy- 
 ful 2 1 st of February last [1826] I took leave with Mrs 
 Judson and family, of the scenes of our sufferings." No 
 mention is here made of the horror of those eleven months 
 at Ava ; of the march to Oung-pen-la, which was so severe 
 that one of their number died on the road ; no hint of the 
 suspense due to their belief that they had been removed 
 from the capital to be offered as a sacrifice to insure victory 
 over the English ; no suggestion of the filth, the heat, the 
 hunger, the thirst, the lion cage, the deathly silence of the 
 three o'clock hour, the nightly stringing on a bamboo pole, 
 the " tender mercies" of the "Father" of the prison which 
 was well named Let-ma-yoon, i. e., Hand, shrink not; no 
 such blood-curdling narratives as Mrs Judson's "The Ka- 
 thayan Slave : " no ; these details were left for others to 
 record and any who choose may find them in Gouger's 
 
BURMAN WORK 25 
 
 *' Narrative of Imprisonment in Burma." Enough for this 
 sufferer that he was privileged to bear in .his body the 
 marks of the Lord Jesus. 
 
 j. At Amherst^ 1826-182/. The war resulted, among 
 other things, in the cession of the Tenasserim Provinces, 
 and to escape Burman despotism the Judsons took the re- 
 maining four of their eighteen converts to Amherst, a new 
 British settlement selected by the Commissioner and Dr 
 Judson. Soon after arriving, he was asked to accompany 
 the British envoy to Ava to negotiate a commercial treaty. 
 This he only consented to do when assured that an effort 
 would be made to insert a clause securing religious liberty 
 to the Burmans. It was a trying experience. Ava was a 
 hell full of awful memories ; his days were filled with di- 
 plomatic wrestling which secured nothing in the way of 
 religious toleration ; and worst of all, during his absence 
 his wife died of a fever from which his presence might 
 have saved her. This terrible loss was followed just six 
 months later by his little daughter's death, whom he left 
 beside her mother underneath the hopia-tree and removed 
 to Maulmain. 
 
 4. Maulmain, 1827-1845. Amherst proved to be less 
 desirable than this new town, the headquarters of the 
 British army, and so the mission was transferred thither. 
 The years there were most useful ones. Beginning with 
 the ascetic period of his life, they were brightened by red- 
 letter days like those when Dr Judson baptized the one- 
 hundreth Karen convert, and later — twenty-two years after 
 landing in the country, — the one-hundreth Burman disci- 
 ple. They witnessed in 1S34 his second marriage, fruit- 
 ful in work and bringing to his home eight children. They 
 also saw the publication of some of his most valuable 
 works, notably the New Testament and the quarto edition 
 of the Burman Bible, and some of his best minor com- 
 positions. He did not remain all the time in Maulmain. 
 Journeys to Rangoon, Prome, Tavoy, Calcutta, a second 
 time with his family to Bengal, and later to the Isle of 
 France, resulted in improved health and new impulses to 
 work all along the line. 
 
 5. In the home land, 1845-1846. For thirty-three years 
 
26 THE JUDSONS, BURMAN PIONEERS 
 
 Judson had never seen a ship sailing out into the west with- 
 out intensely longing to fly homeward ; yet a stern regard 
 for duty had kept him at his post. Finally, as his wife's, 
 life seemed at stake, he decided to return, though he took 
 with him two Burman teachers, with whom he was to work 
 each day on his dictionary. Reaching the Isle of France^ 
 Mrs Judson was so much better that the pair heroically 
 determined to separate that he might return to his work, 
 and he actually sent the teachers back, expecting soon to 
 follow them. A relapse, however, caused him to follow 
 his original plan. On reaching Napoleon's prison island,, 
 the gentle spirit departed and the body was laid away on 
 St Helena's soil. As the bereaved hero approached Bos- 
 ton, he fell to worrying as to how to find a lodging place, 
 little dreaming that thousands of homes longed for the priv- 
 ilege of receiving him, and that the nine months of his 
 stay in America would be one continuous ovation, eagerly 
 chronicled by the press, both secular and religious. Yet 
 his presence brought some disappointment. A severe throat 
 affection prevented prolonged public speech so that he was 
 compelled to talk in a whisper to one who repeated it to 
 the immense audiences. Moreover, his third of a century 
 in Burma, had, as often happens with missionaries, unfitted 
 him for the English of the platform, and an additional dis- 
 appointment was his unwillingness to narrate his foreign 
 adventures, especially the experiences of Oung-pen-la. 
 
 Nevertheless, these months brought the freshening of 
 thought and religious life, so necessary to the missionary, 
 enkindled in all denominations a new flame of missionary 
 zeal, and more important to him, acquainted him with 
 Emily Chubbuck , whom he married June 2, 1846. Within 
 six weeks thereafter they turned their faces towards Burma, 
 accompanied by five new recruits, and were wafted onward 
 by a mighty volume of earnest prayer. 
 
 6. Sunset years, 1846-1850. On their arrival, the su- 
 perior opportunities for finishing the dictionary, as also Jud- 
 son's desire to be in the regions beyond, impelled them "to 
 leave the twilight of Maulmain in order to penetrate the 
 denser darkness of Rangoon," though "it seemed harder 
 for him to leave Maulmain for Rangoon than to leave Bos- 
 
BURMAN WORK 27 
 
 ton for Maulmain." There, in a gloomy brick structure, 
 which its many inhabitants caused them to call "Bat Cas- 
 tle," Judson worked like a galley-slave on his dictionary, 
 while his wife applied herself to Burmese and to writing 
 the story of her predecessor's life, characterized by Bishop 
 Walsh as "one of the most exquisite biographies in the 
 language." Governmental intolerance prevented any open 
 religious work and made secret meetings extremely diffi- 
 cult. Then Bat Castle became a hospital, whose sick in- 
 mates could not secure nourishing food, being reduced on 
 one occasion, though unwittingly, to a dinner of rats, which 
 in their ignorance they declared excellent. 
 
 A desire to make at Ava one more appeal for religious 
 toleration and the advantage to the dictionary from such a 
 residence, were thwarted by the awful cry at home of re- 
 trenchment and even Rangoon had, for that reason, to be 
 deserted. At Maulmain he completed the English-Burmese 
 part of his dictionary and had brought the other part well 
 on towards completion. Family joys, succeeded by his 
 wife's serious illness, were followed by a lung affection of 
 his own. Dysentery and congestive fever made a long sea- 
 voyage necessary, and he bade his wife a last adieu on 
 April 3rd. Some days of agony and then, after the fare- 
 well words, " It is done ; I am going. . . . Take care 
 of poor mistress," he fell asleep as quietly as a child, on 
 April the 12th. At eight o'clock that evening the larboard 
 port was opened and the body of him whose life had been 
 bread cast on Burman waters was committed to his much 
 loved ocean, three days distant from his adopted home. 
 
 The three i*lrs Judsons. Before considering Judson's 
 character and work, a glance should be taken at that noble 
 trio, without whom his life would have lacked much of its 
 effectiveness, and whose loss to the cause of missions would 
 have been irreparable. Only a few items can be added to 
 those already given ; the rest must be gained from their 
 excellent memoirs. 
 
 1. Ann Hasseltine, 1812-1826. Born at Bradford, 
 Mass., December 22, 1789, her early years were marked 
 by a restless, roving disposition ; moreover she was very 
 vivacious and intensely fond of society. When at sixteen 
 
28 THE JUDSONS, BURMAN PIONEERS 
 
 she was converted, she threw herself with equal ardor into 
 the service of her Master, and after graduating at Bradford, 
 while teaching for several years, her one aim was to bring 
 her pupils to Jesus. 
 
 In Burma she supplemented her husband's labors by 
 studying the language of the Siamese, thousands of whom 
 lived at Rangoon, and by translating into that tongue the Bur- 
 mese Catechism, a tract, and St Matthew. She also taught 
 schools of native girls, held women's meetings, and cultiva- 
 ted, for missionary reasons, the society of ladies of rank. As 
 sharer of her husband 's imprisonment she is best known. 
 " She followed him from prison to prison, ministering to his 
 wants, trying to soften the hearts of his keepers, to mitigate 
 his sufferings, interceding with government officials or with 
 members of the royal family. For a year and a half she thus 
 exerted herself, walking miles in feeble health, in the dark- 
 ness of the night or under a noonday sun, much of the time 
 with a babe in her arms." When forbidden to see her hus- 
 band, she would write on dough made into a cake and con- 
 cealed in a bowl of rice, or send messages of affection on a 
 roll of paper inserted in the nose of a coffeepot. The lives 
 of others besides Dr Judson' ano! many prison ameliora- 
 tions were due to her tact and importunity. In Amherst, 
 while Judson was in Ava, it was she who built their home 
 and two schoolhouses in which she taught girls and gath- 
 ered the native converts for Sabbath worship. When in her 
 thirty-seventh year she died, with no missionary near her, 
 after a sixteen days' illness. Burma was thus deprived of 
 a woman of great refinement, marked intellectual power, 
 unexampled devotion, dogged perseverance and earnest 
 piety. 
 
 2. Sarah Hill, 1834-1845. She was born at Alstead, 
 N. H., Nov. 4, 1S03. From the age of ten, when she 
 wrote a poem upon the death of Judson's first child, she 
 had a great enthusiasm for missions. Of singular beauty, 
 English friends declared her to be "the most finished and 
 faultless specimen of an American woman that they had 
 ever known." The years of wedded life made her a valued 
 assistant of her first husband, the sainted Boardman, mis- 
 sionary to the Karens, and after his death she continued for 
 
BURMAN WORK 29 
 
 three years her important work as school teacher and itiner- 
 ator through marshes and jungles and mountains. Her 
 schools were so famous that later educational appropria- 
 tions by the English Government stipulated that the schools 
 should be conducted on the plan of Mrs Boardman's at 
 Tavoy. 
 
 She was no less a treasure to Dr Judson. Her fluent 
 use of the Burmese, extending even into the difficult realm 
 of prayer, enabled her to impressively conduct women's 
 prayer meetings and Bible classes and to translate Part I of 
 "Pilgrim's Progress," several tracts, twenty of the best 
 hymns, four volumes of " Scriptural Questions for Sunday- 
 schools," and a series of Sunday cards. She likewise ac- 
 quired the Peguan and superintended the translations into 
 it of the New Testament and the best Burmese tracts. Her 
 ability as a writer of poetry was above the ordinary, as 
 is shown by her pathetic lines written shortly before her 
 death when she expected to part from her husband at the 
 Isle of France. 
 
 J. Emily Chubbuck, 1846-1850. She was born at Eaton, 
 N. Y., Aug. 22, 1S17, and died at Hamilton in the same 
 state, June 1, 1854. Few American authoresses have been 
 reared in a harder school than "Fanny Forester " whom 
 Judson first met while being vaccinated at Philadelphia. 
 The acquaintance began with his chiding her for wasting 
 her talents on books written in a lighter vein. Her defense 
 was that she did this as they were more salable, and it was a 
 necessity in order to support her family. This explanation 
 completely won his heart and he engaged her to write a life 
 of his second wife. Before it was finished, the charmed 
 watch which he sent her, as he had to Ann and Sarah, made 
 her his wife, much to the scandal of the literary world, who 
 felt that she was throwing herself away on "an old mis- 
 sionary," and of the -friends of missions, who feared the 
 effect of an alliance between the founder of the movement 
 and a writer of fiction. Aside from the debt owed her for 
 her account of Mrs Sarah Judson, she is the main source 
 of information concerning her illustrious husband, and has 
 given the world such missionary brilliants as 4 'The Kathayan. /, 
 Slave "and "Wayside Preaching." s 
 
30 THE JUDSONS, BURMAN PIONEERS 
 
 Judson's Private Life and Character. He was a man 
 
 of large intellectual power, a fact evinced by his early life 
 and by his missionary services, as well as by his contact 
 with civilians, military men and diplomats of India, among 
 whom he stood like a second Schwartz. Indeed, had he 
 wished to make money and win fame, he would have ac- 
 cepted an important government position under the Eng- 
 lish. Marked ability of this sort is naturally accompanied 
 by ambition. This striking trait of his early life remained 
 after conversion, but was sublimated into a desire to lay 
 foundations in new fields, to furnish a nation with a Bible, 
 and to secure the largest possible results from the mission's 
 work. Behind his ambition lay a will of singular strength 
 backed by indomitable perseverance. A course once ap- 
 pearing to be pleasing to God, no temptation could turn 
 him from it, least of all those connected with personal ease. 
 The possible danger connected with such traits, that of 
 self sufficiency and unwillingness to ask advice, did not in- 
 jure his usefulness. 
 
 His home life has been very attractively described. With 
 his children he was at once a mentor and a rollicking boy. 
 His letters to them are a combination of the comic and the 
 serious. No one of his wives had any reason to feel that 
 she was anything but sole possesor of his heart, and rarely 
 has the role of lover been prolonged with greater delicacy 
 and sincerity. Daily walks together, little notes pinned on 
 the curtain, to be read on awakening before his return from 
 his morning run, bright chits scribbled surreptitiously and 
 sent home when delayed beyond the usual time, were indi- 
 cations of his daily regard, while in sickness he was the 
 nurse and health-giving sunshine. 
 
 Judson was an Israel in frayer. "He asked not as a 
 duty, nor even as a pleasure, but he asked that he might 
 receive. ... It was a common thing for him to ask 
 until he received, in his own consciousness, an assurance that 
 his requests would be granted." Another writes : "His 
 best and freest time for meditation and prayer was while 
 walking rapidly in the open air. He, however, attended 
 to the duty in his room, and so well was this peculiarity 
 understood that when the children heard the somewhat 
 
BURMAN WORK 3 I 
 
 long, quick, but well-measured tread up and down the 
 room, they would say, 'Papa is praying.'" Such prayer 
 was winged by a sublime faith in God. "He believed 
 that Burma was to be converted to Christ just as much as 
 he believed that Burma existed," and in personal need his 
 trust was like Abraham's, reposeful as that of a child in its 
 father's arms. His M heavenly-mindedness" struck every 
 one who knew him. His earthly treasures were above, 
 and there dwelt his Saviour and God ; naturally, therefore, 
 his conversation, and especially his hours of meditation, 
 transported him through azure depths to heavenly mansions. 
 
 No true saint can be passive, and Judson certainly was a 
 vigorous foe to natural sin. His ambition was curbed, his 
 will brought into subjection to godly majorities, and grow- 
 ing conformity to Christ's will was attained, — but all only 
 by a strenuous struggle and persistent trust. It occasionally 
 went to an ascetic extreme, as when, after the awful strain 
 of imprisonment and his wife's death, he gave all his prop- 
 erty to the Board, burned up official letters of commenda- 
 tion, declined the degree of D. D., spent weeks among the 
 beasts in the jungle, and like a Trappist monk, sat for hours 
 beside a grave. Yet such times were exceptional and bet- 
 ter circumstances gave him renewed brightness, though he 
 never gave up the spiritual longings incited by Madame 
 Guyon's writings. 
 
 Judson's Work. Years ago the Baptist Board testified 
 that they had sent no missionary from this country who 
 yielded more implicit compliance than he to all their regu- 
 lations. Residents in the East testified, at the time of his 
 death, to his remarkable ability in various spheres. 
 
 I. Relation to fellow missionaries. Some said that 
 Judson was unsocial. As a matter of fact, his view of the 
 value of time prevented his spending much of it in stealing 
 that of his colleagues. It is true, also, that he strongly op- 
 posed the massing of missionaries at one point, and his uni- 
 form desire to scatter them over the field seemed to many 
 to mark an ascetic mind. If, however, they were in afflic- 
 tion he was their Barnabas, and thoughtful attentions, such 
 as securing portraits of absent children and presenting them 
 to their parents, showed his genuine interest in them. 
 
32 THE JUDSONS BURMAN PIONEERS 
 
 2. Attitude toward the Board. In general it was ideal ; 
 yet he often forgot that board secretaries are only the ser- 
 vants of a denomination, — oftentimes dead so far as mis- 
 sionary interest is concerned, — and his letters to them on 
 more than one occasion are not to be imitated. Thus, his 
 letter virtually denouncing them because they had not pub- 
 lished the dark side of the situation abroad, would probably 
 not have been so severe had he occupied their position. 
 So, too, his upbraiding them for the consequences of re- 
 trenchment might have been somewhat more temperate. 
 
 j. Intercourse with Europeans. It is said that Judson 
 preached but one English sermon in his thirty-seven years 
 in Burma, though when British soldiers at Maulmain were 
 seeking salvation, Judson ministered to them; He was nat- 
 urally fond of society and proved its ornament when he 
 could do so without neglecting his work. It was simply his 
 whole-hearted devotion to the Burmese that caused him to 
 abjure English preaching, teaching in English, and English 
 reading and society. If he erred it was on the safe side of a 
 subtle temptation. The same reason is his only justification 
 for opposing Trevelyanism, or the Romanization of oriental 
 tongues, which found in Duff so ardent an advocate. 
 
 4. Judson and the Government. Again and again he 
 looked toward Ava as the only human hope for Christi- 
 anity. To gain toleration he would do almost anything. So, 
 also, he rendered valuable aid to England, with the hope 
 that this Christian power might forward the cause. The 
 personal salvation of rulers was constantly on his heart and 
 to the Burman sovereign and the future king of Siam came 
 faithful words of warning and Christian counsel. While 
 he inculcated obedience to rulers when not involving sin, 
 he received secret inquirers who came to him contrary to 
 official orders. 
 
 5. Translator and author. Here Judson was almost 
 peerless. His views of translation required such a repro- 
 duction of the Bible as the English Revised Version, and, 
 thanks to such principles, rare linguistic ability, and his 
 "lust for finishing," his Bible will long be what Luther's 
 has been to Germany. Many missionaries have owed their 
 rapid and accurate progress in the language to his " Gram- 
 
BURMAN WORK 33 
 
 matical Notices of the Burman Language," — a marvel of 
 campactness and lucidity, — and more still are indebted to 
 him for his monumental dictionary. Tracts of his are not 
 of uniform value. Thus his first one, "A View of the 
 Christian Religion," if rendered into other tongues, would 
 mildew in missionary book-rooms, while "The Golden 
 Balance," written when Judson had become more Burman- 
 ized, would attract all Buddhists holding the doctrines of 
 the "Lesser Vehicle." 
 
 6. The itinerant. Unwillingly Judson was compelled 
 to forego this dangerous and fatiguing, but to him exhilar- 
 ating, form of work, indulging in it only as a health-change, 
 so to speak. He was accompanied on these tours by a 
 number of converts, who were sent off to the right and left 
 to meet and report to the missionary a few days later. 
 
 7. As preacher. Preaching was to Dr Judson a per- 
 fect delight, though much of it was conversational and be- 
 fore an audience of one. A most interesting picture of this 
 latter work is given in Mrs Judson's "Wayside Preach- 
 ing." In public address, "his preaching was concrete. 
 He did not deal in vague abstractions. Truth assumed in 
 his mind statuesque forms. . . . Behind his words 
 when he preached lay the magnet of a great character," 
 and native audiences were swayed by his words as the 
 Welsh were by Christmas Evans. 
 
 8. The pastor. This most difficult task, involving the 
 care of volunteer or paid assistants, was felicitously per- 
 formed. He had the knack of getting the utmost out of 
 church-members and helpers, and his wise leadership held 
 them to him most closely. In financial matters he shrewdly- 
 managed them, giving them differing sums at irregular in- 
 tervals, the total for a year being the amount voted by the 
 Mission ; but his way of dispensing it raised the recipients- 
 above mere expectant and fault-finding hirelings. 
 
 9. Self -propagation of the work. Judson's plan was 
 to choose promising boys and young men and personally fit 
 them by daily morning instruction for teachers and minis- 
 ters. He also favored schools of primary or practical theo- 
 logical education. He writes thus upon this subject : "I 
 am really unwilling to place young men who have just be- 
 
34 THE JUDSONS, BURMAN PIONEERS 
 
 gun to love their Saviour, under teachers who will strive 
 to carry jthem through a long course of study, until they 
 are able to unravel metaphysics, and calculate eclipses, and 
 their soul become as dry as the one and as dark as the other. 
 I want to see our young disciples thoroughly ac- 
 quainted with the Bible from beginning to end, and with 
 geography and history, so far as necessary to understand 
 the Scriptures, and to furnish them with enlarged, enlight- 
 ened minds. I would also have them carried through a 
 course of systematic theology. . . . And I would have 
 them well instructed in the art of communicating their ideas 
 by word and by writing." 
 
 General Results oi his Life. Did Judson turn from 
 the attractions of the law and the drama, from an instruc- 
 torship in Brown University and the wide usefulness of 
 the " biggest church in Boston," to throw his life away as 
 a missionary? The American and Baptist Boards, over 
 7000 converted Karens and Burmans gathered, at his death, 
 into 63 churches and cared for by 163 missionaries and 
 native assistants, a grammar and dictionary as stepping 
 ■stones to early usefulness to many, leaves of life scattered 
 widely for the healing of the nation, an entire Bible in exact 
 and perspicuous Burmese, streams of influence reaching 
 out into Siam and even to the Jews, a stalwart character 
 moulded by Christ, and a perennial example of devotion to 
 the "Greatest Work in the World," left to all the church 
 — all of these either partially or wholly the fruitage of that 
 magnificent "throwing away," are a convincing reply. 
 
 SUGGESTED READINGS. 
 
 Conant: The Earnest Man, (1856), Chs. xiv-xxvi. 
 
 Doivling: The Judson Offering, (1847), Pp. 45-294. 
 
 Eddy: The Three Mrs Judsons, (i860), Pp. 207-233, 251-270. 
 
 Encyclopaedia of Missions, (1891), Articles Adoniram, Sarah H. 
 
 and Emily C. Judson. 
 Hcrvey: The Story of Baptist Missions, (1884), Chs xiv-xvii. 
 Johnston: Life of Adoniram Judson, (1887), Chs. vm-xx. 
 Edward Judson : Notable Baptists : Adoniram Judson, (1894), Chs. 
 
 vi-xm. 
 
BURMAN WORK $$ 
 
 Mrs E. C. Judson: Sarah Boardman, (1848). 
 
 Kendrick: Emily Chubbuck Judson, (i860). Especially Chs. 
 
 XIV-XXVI. 
 
 Knowles: Ann Hasseltine Judson (1835), Chs vin-xviii. 
 Missionary Review of the World, April, 1894, Pp. 259-261. 
 Page : Noble Workers, (1875), Pp. 209-224. 
 Piper and Maccracken : Lives of the Leaders of Our Church 
 
 Universal, (1879), Pp. 842-849. 
 Pitman: Heroines of the Mission Field, Pp. 96-122. 
 Richards: Adoniram Judson, the Apostle of Burma, (an Epic, 
 
 1889), Pp. 19-103. 
 Stuart: Lives of the three Mrs Judsons, (1851), Pp. 183-356. 
 Thomson: Great Missionaries, (1862), Pp. 291-298. 
 Vanguard of the Christian Army, Pp. 87-132. 
 
 Walsh: Modern Heroes of the Mission Field, (1882), Pp. 75-94. 
 Wayland: Memoir of Rev. Dr. Judson, (1853), Vol. I., Pp. 178 
 
 to end of Vol. II.; especially I., Chs. x., xiii., and II., Chs. 
 
 II., III., VI. -x. 
 
 Wyeth: Missionary Memorials : Sarah B. and Emily C. Judson, 
 
 (1894). 
 Yonge : Pioneers and Founders, (1890), Pp 129-171. 
 Young: Modern Missions and Their Triumphs, (1888), Pp. 79-89. 
 Ed-ward Judson ; The Life of Adoniram Judson, (1883). Life in 
 
 Rangoon, Ch. vi. ; Life in Ava and Oung-pen-la, Ch. vn. ; 
 
 Life in Amherst and Maulmain, Chs. vm-x. ; Visit to America, 
 
 Ch. xi. ; Last Years, Ch. xn. ; Posthumous Influence, Ch. xiii. 
 
 y 
 
Ill 
 
 DUFF'S EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 
 
 That tall figure, crossing the street and looking thoughtfully to 
 the ground, stooped somewhat in the shoulders and his hand awk- 
 wardly grasping the lappet of his coat, is Alexander Duff, the pride 
 of the college, whose mind has received 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 Society. — Rev J. W. Tay- 
 lor, of Flisk. 
 
 Early Years. Almost at the geographical center of 
 Scotland, the home of great missionaries, lies the little 
 town of Moulin, near which was born on the twenty-fifth 
 of April, 1806, Alexander Duff, one of the foremost apos- 
 tles of this century. Scott calls Perthshire, in which Mou- 
 lin is situated, "the fairest portion of the northern king- 
 dom, " a claim made good by its forests and fertile straths, 
 its rivers and lakes, mountains and glens. And that eighty 
 by seventy mile shire was full of worthy memories also ; 
 for did it not contain the Killiecrankie, Tippermuir and 
 Sheriff muir battlefields ? and did it not possess memorials 
 of Bruce and Queen Mary and Rob Roy as well as boast of 
 connections in Scott and Wordsworth ? Of this home shire 
 Duff writes in later years : "Amid scenery of unsurpassed 
 beauty and grandeur, I acquired early tastes and impulses 
 which have animated and influenced me through life." 
 
 James Duff and Jean Rattray. James Duff, was it is 
 true, a 
 
 M dalesman, child of rock and stream;" 
 but he was as much more as Carlyle's father was more than 
 a mere stonemason. He and Jean before their marriage 
 were electrified by the new spiritual life brought one com- 
 
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 37 
 
 munion Sabbath into their services by the sainted Charles 
 Simeon, who had come up from the house top overlooking 
 the beautiful Backs between King's College and the river 
 Cam, and who changed their pastor into an evangelical 
 leaven. When Duff visited Cambridge many years after, 
 he enjoyed a long interview with this evangelical Anglican, 
 whom he considered his spiritual ancestor. 
 
 While his mother's early influence was much valued, 
 Duff wrote in later years of the powerful effect exerted 
 upon his life by his father. His Sabbath-schools and the 
 weekly meetings at his own home, when his Scripture ex- 
 positions and rapturous prayers carried the hearer to the 
 very gates of heaven, his peculiar power of winning the 
 young through the picturing of Bible truth, and especially 
 the moving manner in which he set forth the bleeding, dy- 
 ing love of the Saviour, ineffaceably impressed themselves 
 on his son. James Duff was, in turn, held by the spell of 
 his reconverted j^astor's spirit and by the silent fellowship of 
 the old divines whose works contain the "sap and marrow 
 of the gospel" and were fragrant with 4 ' the flavor of Para- 
 dise." The influence of such a father is thus testified to : 
 "In the sharpness and clearness with which he drew the 
 line between the merely expedient and the absolutely right 
 and true ; in his stern adhesion to principle at all hazards ; 
 in his ineffable loathing for temporizing and compromise, 
 in any shape or form, where the interest of 4 Zion's King and 
 Zion's cause' were concerned; in his energy of spirit, 
 promptness of decision, and unbending sturdihood of char- 
 acter ; in the Abraham-like cast of his faith, which mani- 
 fested itself in its directness, simplicity and strength, — in 
 all these and other respects he always appeared to me to 
 realize fully as much of my own beau-ideal of the ancient 
 martyr or hero of the Covenant as any other man 1 ever 
 knew. . . . Oh that a double portion of his spirit were 
 mine, and that the mantle of his graces would fall upon 
 me !" 
 
 Duff's Education. As the Moulin "dominie" spent more 
 time on watch-repairing and fishing than on instructing the 
 school children, Alexander was sent at the early age of 
 eight to a better school between Dunkeld and Perth. Three 
 
3S ALEXANDER DUFF, INDIA'S EDUCATOR 
 
 years there prepared him for the Kirkmichael school, whose 
 reputation commended it to his father. He had the good 
 fortune to live under the roof of its accomplished master, 
 Mr Macdougall, and to count among his schoolfellows some 
 prominent men of a later day. Duff as dux of the school 
 was put forward on state occasions to read the Odes of 
 Horace, and left it to afterward exclaim, " What would I 
 have been this day, had not an overruling Providence di- 
 rected me to Kirkmichael school ? " Another year at Perth 
 Grammar School, where he was again dux, had much to 
 do with his later educational work, as he here came under 
 the influence of a born teacher, Mr Moncur. This man's 
 first act as master was to summon the janitor and bid him 
 sink in the Tay the entire outfit of torturing tawse, after 
 which "he asked why the generous youths entrusted to him 
 should be treated as savages." This was the germ of Duff's 
 Indian school management and the animus lying behind the 
 address "To the Native Gentlemen of Calcutta" who had 
 in their hatred conspired to kill him. 
 
 At St. Andrews* Scotland's most venerable University, 
 Alexander was entered at fifteen. In spite of its bleakness 
 and the hermit-like isolation of its students, the future mis- 
 sionary received here the strongest impulses of his life. It 
 was not so much the fact that he sat at the feet of men like 
 Dr Hunter, the Latinist, and Dr Jackson, the scientist, nor 
 that he came off with the highest honors in Greek, Latin, 
 logic and natural philosophy, as it was contact with one of 
 the greatest of his countrymen, which made St Andrews 
 his Arabia. The captivating eloquence of Chalmers, the 
 advent of a man of genius whose presence was a liberal 
 education in itself, and the delightful freshness of his spirit- 
 ual life as it emptied itself into the Dead Sea of formal re- 
 ligion, were epoch-making elements in the life of all the 
 students. Coming from the wynds of Glasgow and his 
 miracle-working there, Duff was inspired to do like him, 
 and so organized Sabbath-schools and private circles for 
 Bible study. Before leaving the University, Duff could 
 say : " I have personally visited all the lower classes in 
 town, and did not find twenty children who were not attend- 
 ing some school or other." 
 
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 
 
 39 
 
 Other Educational Influences than those named were 
 almost equally helpful. Books were the delight of his heart. 
 In childhood the "Cloud of Witnesses" with which his 
 father saturated his mind, the "Day of Judgment" and "The 
 Skull" of Dugald Buchanan, a Perthshire Ossian, filled 
 him with mingled emotions of hatred and awe. When at 
 fifteen he left the Grammar School of Perth, he carried 
 with him Johnson's "Rambler" and, more important still, 
 a pocket copy of "Paradise Lost," the daily reading of 
 which unconsciously brought into his thought and modes 
 of expression their formative power. Thus there entered 
 into his fibre the elements so prominent in his life, — "the 
 Gaelic Buchanan and the English Milton, the Celtic fire 
 and the Puritan imagination, feeding on Scripture story and 
 classic culture, colored by such dreams and experiences, 
 and directed by such a father and teacher." 
 
 The Missionary Call. The dreams above alluded to, 
 were in a sense the precursors of his missionary decision. 
 The first vision was a personal rendering of Buchanan's 
 "Latha Bhreitheanais" in which he stood before the Judge 
 at the Last Day. The effect was such that it evoked an 
 earnest cry for pardon and led to an assurance of forgive- 
 ness through the blood of Jesus. The second was a more 
 direct intimation of the will of God, who descended in a 
 heavenly chariot and called to the Scotch laddie sleeping in 
 the blae-berries by the burn side, " Come up hither ; I have 
 work for thee to do." His father's teachings were de- 
 cidedly missionary in their tone. "Pictures of Jugganath 
 and other heathen idols he was wont to exhibit accom- 
 panying the exhibition with copious explanations, well 
 fitted to create a feeling of horror towards idolatry and of 
 compassion towards the poor blinded idolators, and inter- 
 mixing the whole with statements of the love of Jesus." 
 
 When in St Andrews this childish interest broadened 
 under the missionary enthusiasm of Dr Chalmers, and 
 through the friendship of students like Urquhart, his room- 
 mate. They and others organized the Students' Missionary 
 Society, Duff being librarian. Their object was to study 
 foreign missions with the purpose of learning of the needs 
 of the non-Christian world, Chalmers abetting their efforts 
 
40 ALEXANDER DUFF, INDIA S EDUCATOR 
 
 by a monthly lecture on missions in the town-hall. The 
 society was the parent of the most famous missionaries of 
 the country. Marshman and Yates from India and Mor- 
 rison with his story of China, added their quota by firing 
 the men with apostolic zeal. Duff not only succeeded in 
 getting missionary books read by others ; he also read much 
 himself and it was when he had perused the elaborate arti- 
 cle, " India," in Brewster's "Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, " 
 that his soul first felt the fascinating spell of a land that 
 was to bind itself around his whole being. 
 
 As the Established Church of Scotland had no mission- 
 aries in any field, — in spite of the motto of the first Con- 
 fession, " And this glaid tydingis of the kyngdome sail be 
 precheit through the haill warld for a witnes unto all 
 natiouns, and then sail the end cum," — the interest thus 
 aroused seemed likely to be ineffective. But the spirit of 
 missions was abroad and the Church awoke. Dr Inglis at 
 home and Dr Bryce in Calcutta had brought the General 
 Assembly in 1824 to agree to establish in India an educa- 
 tional work, and in 182S Duff was asked to head the enter- 
 prise. How the young student met the question is seen in 
 letters written to Dr Chalmers and to other friends. He 
 counts the cost and after deliberately weighing the cons and 
 pros he feels the weight of the latter and writes: "May 
 the former considerations not only be weakened, but be ut- 
 terly swept out of existence. O Lord, I feel their little- 
 ness, their total insignificancy, and for the sake of promot- 
 ing Thy glory among the heathen, I cordially, cheerfully 
 embrace the latter : yea, if such were thy will, I am ready 
 to go to the parched desert or the howling wilderness, to 
 live on its bitter herbs and at the mercy of its savage in- 
 habitants." 
 
 He had decided this important matter alone; for he 
 concluded that the present inquiry rested almost solely be- 
 tween himself and his Maker. His fathers' disappoi?it- 
 ment and objections were answered from his own state- 
 ments when dealing with missions as an abstract matter, 
 and he begins to pray that his son may approve himself 
 not merely a common soldier of the cross, but a cham- 
 pion. Duff overcomes his mother's natural affection thus : 
 
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 4 1 
 
 4 'Beware of making an idol of me. While you feel all 
 the tenderness of parental love, ... be earnest in 
 prayer to God that Satan may not tempt you to raise me to 
 an undue place in your affections, lest God, in his holy dis- 
 pleasure, see fit to remove me not only to India, but to the 
 land of skulls and sepulchres. Think then, ponder, pray 
 over these things, and may God Himself guide and direct 
 you into the ways of peace and heavenly resignation." But 
 the matter had its exalted aspects, and his letters, as also his 
 addresses, picture the lofty vocation of the missionary, and 
 parents and audiences forgot the sacrifice in the exceeding 
 weight of glory. 
 
 Preparation for Departure. Quaint Patrick Lawson, 
 whom Duff used to visit annually for the sake of his "rich 
 and racy biblical talk," abruptly asked him one day whether 
 he intended to marry. His negative reply elicited some 
 sage advice : "Be quietly on the look out ; and if in God's 
 providence, you make the acquaintance of one of the daugh- 
 ters of Zion, traversing, like yourself, the wilderness of 
 this world, her face set thitherward, get into friendly con- 
 verse with her." The old Bunyan's counsel was acted 
 upon, and in Edinburgh he found such a person in Anne 
 Scott Drysdale, of whom Dr Smith writes : "Never had 
 even missionary a more devoted wife. Sinking herself in 
 her husband from the very first, she gave him a new strength, 
 and left the whole fulness of his nature and his time free 
 for the one work of his life." 
 
 Conference with gentlemen who had been in India, study- 
 ing the religion and character of the Hindus, inspecting the 
 best conducted schools in the Scotch Athens, and conferring 
 with the Committee who had the Indian Mission in charge, 
 filled his days before sailing. The ordination trials over 
 and Dr Chalmer's eloquent ordination sermon delivered, 
 he and his wife sailed in October in the "Lady Holland." 
 As the result of his own preference and the ignorance of 
 the Committee, he went forth with no restrictions save one 
 — which he disregarded soon after he reached India — and 
 so was free to do what his good judgment dictated. 
 
 44 In Perils of Waters." Just off the English coast, they 
 encountered a derelict, which proved a true omen of the 
 
42 ALEXANDER DUFF, INDIA'S EDUCATOR 
 
 voyage. While taking on a cargo at Madeira, a storm 
 drove the ship to sea. A three weeks' delay gave Duff op- 
 portunity to look about the island and also to do some 
 preaching. Re-embarking, they were saved from pirates 
 by the presence of a frigate. Driven almost to the coast of 
 South America, they finally were just about rounding the 
 Cape of Good Hope, when in a heavy sea and in the dark- 
 ness the ship ran on the rocks off Dassen Island. The ex- 
 citement was intense and it was then that the effect of Duff's 
 preaching and daily morning worship became evident. 
 Through exciting experiences all were landed on a penguin 
 island by daybreak, and soon thereafter they were rescued 
 by a brig of war sent from Cape Town. The incident 
 which most affected Duff's future in connection with this 
 wreck was the destruction of his entire library of eight 
 hundred volumes, with the sole exception of his Bagster's 
 Bible and a Psalter, which were picked up by a sailor un- 
 injured though wet. His journals, notes, essays and mem- 
 oranda — the harvesting of his student days — were also lost 
 and all this produced in him the conviction that "human 
 learning must be to him a means only, not in itself an end." 
 
 Once again on the ocean, they were no less unfortunate. 
 Beaten out of their course, overcome almost by a hurricane 
 when off Mauritius, they finally reached the banks of the 
 Hooghly only to become the victims of a cyclone which a 
 second time wrecked them. A merciful deliverance brought 
 them to the land and to a heathen temple, where they were 
 allowed to rest, as they were not received in the homes of 
 the caste-ridden inhabitants. From this place of discomfort 
 they were soon removed to Calcutta, where they were hos- 
 pitably received and early met the principal residents, both 
 missionary and diplomatic. 
 
 The Calcutta of 1830. This tall and handsome man of 
 twenty-four, M with flashing eye, quivering voice, and rest- 
 less gesticulation, . . . heir of Knox and Chalmers, 
 had to begin in the heart of Hinduism what they had car- 
 ried out in the mediaevalism of Rome and the moderatism 
 of the Kirk of the eighteenth century." What were the 
 conditions obtaining when he began his work in India ? 
 
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 43 
 
 Strange to say, no one was able to accurately tell him. 
 Merchants and government officials were intent on one thing, 
 the securing at the earliest moment of a competency en- 
 abling them to return home ; and hence their knowledge of 
 the city and its inhabitants was gained in their offices or 
 stores and in their daily drive on The Course. The mis- 
 sionaries there had never 'fully defined the situation, but 
 Duff accompanied them everywhere, watching them deal 
 with the natives under most diverse circumstances. More- 
 over, he made friends with merchants, zemindars, rajahs 
 and Brahmans, and from native lips, through English and 
 Bengali, learned the problems which he must meet. 
 
 Calcutta then had a population of about half a million 
 while within a radius of ten miles was an estimated one of 
 two millions. Within the city were many young men 'who 
 wished to learn English, largely as a stepping stone to 
 mercantile or governmental employment. To meet this 
 need and higher objects, adventurers, Eurasians and Arme- 
 nians had given instruction mainly in the language alone. 
 In 181 7 David Hare and the famous Rammohun Roy es- 
 tablished the first English seminary in India, "The Hindoo 
 College of Calcutta." This had lost all its capital soon 
 after Duff's arrival, and the Calcutta School Society, asso- 
 ciated with it and intolerant of Christianity, had perished. 
 Measures providing for useful education and calculated also 
 to ' ' raise the moral character of those who partake of its 
 advantages," were proposed by the directors of the East 
 India Company, but when the medium of instruction was 
 discussed, an angry struggle took place between the advo- 
 cates of Sanskrit for the Hindus and Arabic and Persian 
 for Muhammadans, and those who desired to use English 
 as the sole medium for higher education. 
 
 Missionaries outside the city had advocated a Christian 
 and English higher education before Duff's advent, but in 
 the capital itself little Christian and educational work had 
 been accomplished. Sati, infanticide, the choking of the 
 dying with sacred mud, idolatry, caste, human sacrifice 
 and thuggery still flourished. Though The Baptist, Orissa 
 General Baptist, Church and London Missionary Societies 
 were laboring there, three years before his coming there 
 
44 ALEXANDER DUFF, INDIA'S EDUCATOR 
 
 were only fifteen converts in the city as the result of ten 
 years' work, while not more than five thousand children 
 were in school. When he landed, "not more than five 
 hundred of these learned English, and that after the strait- 
 est sect of secularists of the Tom Paine stamp." 
 
 Duff's Educational Plan. Negatively it was two-fold, 
 not to do as the Home Committee had directed him, and 
 not to imitate his predecessors in India. This decision 
 would seem presumptuous in the extreme, were it not sup- 
 ported by such exhaustive and conclusive reasoning as may 
 be found in M India and Indian Missions" and by the un- 
 anwerable argument of later results. 
 
 He states it positively and germinally in these words : 
 ''While you engage in directly separating as many precious 
 atoms from the mass as the stubborn resistance to ordinary 
 appliances can admit, we shall, with the blessing of God, 
 devote our time and strength to the preparing of a mine, 
 and the setting up of a train which shall one day explode 
 and tear up the whole from its lowest depths." More 
 specifically : 
 
 j. The object of Duff's educational project was to for- 
 ward in the best way the accomplishment of three aims : 
 preaching to adults ; educating the young ; furnishing a 
 Bible and suitable literature. Fully educated natives seemed 
 to him the key to the problem, and his institutions were to 
 furnish these. 
 
 2. The kind of schoolhesX. fitted to do such work was 
 one of high grade, but as raw material was at first lacking, 
 he was obliged to begin with a lower class of work. 
 
 J. The place for such a plant was then Calcutta, since 
 it met best his three conditions, — a dense population from 
 which to draw pupils, a desire on the part of many of these 
 people to avail themselves of western learning, and the 
 absence of hostile prepossessions against European super- 
 vision. Moreover, Calcutta was then the skull of India, and 
 its brain, rather than its heart, was what he aimed to win. 
 
 4. Pupils were to be drawn from every class, provided 
 they showed the proper ability and docility ; but Duff pre- 
 ferred to receive those of higher rank or caste, believing 
 that if he could raise up one Knox he would be worth ten 
 
. 
 
 EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 45 
 
 thousand illiterate peasants. Brahmans, so rarely sought by 
 other missionaries, he looked upon with special favor for 
 this reason. 
 
 j. Medium of instruction. No man believed more than 
 he in the value of the vernacular. Every student of his 
 must know it well ; but for advanced studies he boldly and 
 contrary to government opinion and missionary usage, de- 
 cided upon the English. Bengali was objectionable in 
 that experiment had shown that it was impossible to keep 
 students longer in such schools than was sufficient to get a 
 mere smattering of an education. Such schools, moreover, 
 attracted a poorer class of students, who were not poten- 
 tially so valuable to India. Again, Bengali was the language 
 of neither law nor religion and its terminology was too 
 meager to serve as a vehicle of western thought, even if it 
 possessed such books. Sanskrit was not chosen for the 
 following among other reasons : it was not so perfect an 
 instrument for conveying European knowledge ; it was 
 more difficult for the student to acquire than English ; be- 
 ing considered divine, three-fourths of the people were for- 
 bidden to learn it ; hardly any European works were trans- 
 lated into it ; its terminology carried with it superstitious 
 or false ideas. The very process of learning English, on 
 the other hand, brought in with the new terms new ideas 
 and truths, and opened up to the student an unsurpassed 
 literature. 
 
 6. The studies pursued were to be first the Bible, — 
 every student having some Bible work each day, — and then 
 every variety of useful knowledge, first in elementary forms, 
 but later ascending to all branches of western culture. In 
 all these studies religion was to be the animating spirit. 
 
 7. The method of instruction was then new in mission 
 schools. It was in accordance with the "Intellectual Sys- 
 tem" and is practically the method pursued in our best pub- 
 lic schools of to-day. The alphabet was taught to classes, 
 even this work being made a keen intellectual contest. " In- 
 structors," prepared by Duff and used for several decades 
 thereafter, carried the student by logical and simple steps 
 from point to point until he could study western text-books 
 as readily as students in our colleges. 
 
46 ALEXANDER DUFF, INDIA'S EDUCATOR 
 
 8. The beginning of this work occurred July 13, 1830, 
 less than seven weeks after his arrival. In a hall secured 
 for him by Rammohun Roy, five young men recommended 
 by him appeared. The plan as laid before them, approved 
 itself to them and to their friends, so that in three days one 
 hundred and five were enrolled. Expecting to classify these 
 on the following day, he was prevented by the appearance 
 of two hundred new applicants. As the hall accommo- 
 dated but one hundred and twenty, — later, accommodations 
 for two hundred and fifty were secured, — and as the number 
 of candidates increased during the next week, Duff was 
 able to sift his students and to secure a written promise 
 from parents that they would pay for the books used and 
 would see that their sons were present punctually and for a 
 prolonged period, thus doing away with the instability of 
 other mission schools. 
 
 When the institution thus organized w 'as formally opened 
 and the students were asked to read in the Bible, there was 
 danger of a revolt ; but the counsel of India's Erasmus, 
 Rammohun Roy, — himself a student of the Bible in its 
 original tongues, — and Duff's matchless persuasiveness, won 
 the day, as was also the case when the Lord's prayer was 
 first used. Lack of qualified teachers, habits of lawless- 
 ness, absence of thought so common to rote students, had 
 to be met, but St Andrews' first scholar, debater and essay- 
 ist was equal to the labor. Possibly no missionary teacher 
 has so enthused and re-created oriental students in a year 
 as did he. The result of a public exhibition of the work 
 done by them in a twelvemonth was the only thing talked 
 about in Calcutta for days thereafter, and Duff had at a 
 bound passed from his Rubicon to the chair of dictator in 
 the realm of missionary education, though Pompey was 
 still unconquered. 
 
 p. Some other results may be noted. Of Duff's first 
 students one-fourth were Brahmans and there were very few 
 of low caste. These young men were being daily influ- 
 enced to give up their false beliefs, no matter whether the 
 impulse came from the first two English letters and word 
 learned, o— x, ox, or from the reading of Paul's Canticle of 
 Love. Naturally the cry of " Hinduism in Danger!" fol- 
 
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATIONAL WORK 47 
 
 lowed and chronic boycotts, succeeded by greater triumphs, 
 were experienced. In spite of opposition Duff soon had 
 the joy of seeing four converts, one of them an exceed- 
 ingly influential Brahman. 
 
 A wider work was also being accomplished. Duff's ob- 
 ject lesson had given birth to scores of somewhat similar 
 seminaries, whose duly qualified teachers were in many 
 cases his own students. Sir Charles Trevelyan had not 
 been a week in Calcutta when, in 1 831, he threw himself 
 into Duff's ranks. His talented brother-in-law, Macaulay, 
 was the Law Member of the Council a little later, and he, 
 too, felt the spell of the young Scotchman. These three 
 men were nobly backed by Lord William Bentinck and the 
 result of the agitation was the decree of 1835, m which 
 the Governor-General sanctions in the Government institu- 
 tions Duff's system almost in its entirety, though lacking 
 its religious element. One year afterwards the Government 
 English schools were doubled in number. Sir Charles later 
 attributed much of this Renaissance to him, while a prom- 
 inent Indian writer says that Macaulay's greatest work — 
 greater even than his Warren Hastings and Clive essays, 
 — ' c was to be the legislative completion of the young Scot- 
 tish missionary's policy." 
 
 SUGGESTED READINGS. 
 
 Catholic Presbyterian, Article Alexander Duff, Vol. III. fPp.215 ff. 
 Duff: India and Indian Missions, (1840), Chs. iv, vi. 
 W. P. Duff: Memorials of Alexander Duff, D.D. 
 Encyclopaedia of Missions, (1891 ), Article Alexander Duff. 
 Free Church Record, April, 1878, Pp. 95, 96. 
 
 Good Words, Article Educational Work of Duff, Vol XIX., Pp 307 ff. 
 Lai Behari Day: Recollections of Alexander Duff, D.D., LL. D., 
 
 (1879), Chs. i-iv. 
 Pierson: New Acts of the Apostles, (1894), Pp. 128-132. 
 T. Smith: Alexander Duff, D.D., LL. D., (1883), Chs. i-iii. 
 Vermilye: The Life of Alexander Duff, (1890), Chs. i-iv. 
 
48 ALEXANDER DUFF, INDIA'S EDUCATOR 
 
 G. Smith: The Life of Alexander Duff, D. D. LL. D., (1879). 
 The Boy and Student, Vol. I., Ch. 1. ; The First Missionary 
 of the Church of Scotland, Vol. I., Ch. 11. ; The Two Ship- 
 wrecks, Vol. I., Ch. in. ; Calcutta as it Was, Vol. I., Ch. iv. ; 
 Beginning of the Work, Vol. I., Chs. v, vi. ; The Renaissance 
 in India, Vol. I., Chs. vn, vni. ; Work for Eurasians, Native 
 Christians and Europeans, Vol, I., Ch. ix. 
 
IV 
 
 DUFF AS A PROMOTER OF MISSIONS 
 
 Wherever I wander, wherever I stay, my heart is in India, in 
 deep sympathy with its multitudinous inhabitants, and in earnest 
 longings for their highest welfare in time and in eternity. — Duffs 
 latest published -words. 
 
 Other Labors in India, 1830-1834. Jungle-fever, con- 
 tracted during a journey to Takee to inspect his branch 
 school, followed by dysentery, almost as fatal as cholera 
 before ipecacuanha had been used as a specific against it, 
 gave Duff a much regretted furlough. Yet in these four 
 years in India he had accomplished much. Besides the cen- 
 tral work already mentioned, he had delivered lectures 
 which set the young mind of India thinking on religious 
 topics ; in their debating societies and elsewhere he had 
 agitated the establishment of a national system of female, 
 education ; India's first modern medical school, grown to> 
 be the largest in the world, came into existence largely be- 
 cause of testimony before the Educational Committee given 
 by Duff and his Brahman pupils, who had so imbibed his. 
 spirit that they were ready to commit the awful sacrilege of 
 dissecting a human body ; the germ of the Doveton Colleges,, 
 so helpful to despised Eurasians, was nourished by their 
 best friend, Duff ; he had proposed his masterly scheme for 
 a United Christian College, later realized in Madras for 
 Southern India, but foolishly and expensively rejected at 
 this time because of English sectarian controversy ; his ap- 
 peal for vernacular education, so sadly needed by ninety- 
 two per cent, of the children of Bengal, required for its 
 continual agitation a free organ of expression, and so the 
 " Calcutta Christian Observer " had come to birth; Trevel- 
 
50 ALEXANDER DUFF, INDIA'S EDUCATOR 
 
 yanism, or the Romanization of East Indian languages, — 
 numbering two hundred and forty-three plus a larger num- 
 ber of dialects, — was so dependent upon him that its author, 
 Sir Charles, writes : " The turning point of the controversy 
 was marked by the publication of three papers by Dr Duff, 
 in the first of which the possibility, practicability and ex- 
 pediency of substituting the Roman for the Indian alphabet 
 was discussed, and in the last two a practical scheme for 
 that purpose was worked out in detail, and objections were 
 answered. . . . They settled the system on its pres- 
 ent basis, and may be read to this day with interest and 
 advantage. ,, 
 
 From his part in this controversy and his roll of cham- 
 pion of the Anglicists, we must not imagine that he was 
 opposed to true oriental scholarship and the cultivation of 
 the vernacular in higher education. Bengali received its 
 greatest impulse at that time from Duff's institution, where 
 the despised language was enriched from contact with west- 
 ern thought and was systematically cultivated in the inter- 
 ests of Bengal's evangelization. In regard to Orientalism, 
 all that Duff criticised and opposed was a pseudo- 
 Orientalis?n, which failed to see all that was valuable in such 
 literature, and yet stoutly argued that government money 
 should be expended on costly works in oriental tongues 
 which it was necessary to pay men to learn to read. More- 
 over, he felt that a worse wrong had been done India than 
 that of waste ; heathenism had been endowed, while Christi- 
 anity had been set back by such action. The folly of Orient- 
 alism, such as was shown in the medical college contro- 
 versy, was also opposed. His high appreciation of a true 
 oriental scholarship is set forth in one of the finest para- 
 graphs of his valuable pamphlet, the "New Era of the 
 English language and English Literature in India." 
 
 But the man had been ?nore directly working for Chris- 
 tianity also. He was a staunch and aggressive worker in 
 the line of Bible and Tract distribution. When the first writ 
 of habeas corpus was served and the character of mission- 
 aries was in consequence assailed, the Highlander, rather 
 than the Bishop of Calcutta, came to the rescue. St An- 
 drew's Kirk, the official "cathedral" of the Scotch, was 
 
PROMOTER OF MISSIONS 5 1 
 
 in bad repute. Legal wars had been carried on between its 
 chaplain and the Bishop of Calcutta, concerning a steeple 
 first, then over its weather-cock, and last of all concerning 
 a second service argued for by the junior chaplain. As a 
 result it had lost its members and was a scandal to Christi- 
 anity. Dr Bryce, returning to Scotland, threw the care 
 of this church on Duff, thus giving to the city such preach- 
 ing as it had never heard before. A happy sequel to his 
 labors there was his admonition to one of his parishioners, 
 an employer of five hundred natives, who allowed them to 
 work on Sundays, as was common at that time. The result 
 of this advice was the payment of Sunday wages without 
 requiring its work to those who would make their labor on 
 other days more profitable. Thus what a bishop had failed 
 to do through a pledge to abstain from Sabbath desecration, 
 was done by the quiet advice of a missionary, and Sabbath 
 keeping began. 
 
 Before setting sail on the " John M'Lellan," Alexander 
 Duff had seen all these forces in motion and his beloved in- 
 stitution had become "tf complete Arts College, includ- 
 ing the thorough study of the Bible as well as the evidences 
 and doctrines of natural and revealed religion, " the annual 
 examinations of which were among the notable events of 
 the year. What larger work can any young man of twenty- 
 eight hope to accomplish ? 
 
 Five years in Britain, 1835-1839. During the voyage 
 the convalescent improved the opportunity thus afforded by 
 reading the entire Bible through three times. The result 
 of this comparative and repeated study was an enthusiastic 
 conviction that " missionary work is merely preparatory to 
 the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit." He did one other 
 thing of importance on the journey ; he outlined a plan for 
 reaching every presbytery with the missionary message. 
 To us this seems commonplace, but Dr Chalmers gives him 
 the credit of being the first man to present personally a 
 cause in such a manner. Of the many results of this stay in 
 the home-land, only three are here named. 
 
 i . Results coming from missionary oratory. In this di- 
 rection Dr Duff has probably had no equal, either in Europe 
 or America. Received coldly by the Committee on his 
 
52 ALEXANDER DUFF, INDIA'S EDUCATOR 
 
 return, he was first called sternly to account for presenting 
 his work before some friends in a private house. The Con- 
 vener's censure was promptly turned into victory and the 
 Scotch of London wished to hear him. He had scarcelv 
 made a beginning there when his old enemy, jungle-fever, 
 laid him low. But the General Assembly of i8jj was 
 soon to meet in Edinburgh's box-like Tron Church, and he 
 felt that he must be heard there or die. The opportunity 
 being given Duff — who was just cff from a sick-bed and 
 spoke against the advice of his physician, — he arose, and 
 after passing beyond the stage when his friends felt that he 
 would drop to the floor, gave utterance to a flood of ora- 
 tory which furnished to schools and elocutionary manuals 
 for many yeacs one of their best models. For between two 
 and three hours he held the vast audience captive beneath 
 his commanding eloquence. Callous lawyers and lords 
 of session, churchmen and laity of every degree, were 
 moved to tears, and when the tumult of emotion had sub- 
 sided, the venerable Dr Stewart said : ''Moderator, it has 
 been my privilege to hear Mr Fox and Mr Pitt speak in the 
 House of Commons, that grand focus of British eloquence, 
 when in the very zenith of their glory as statesmen and ora- 
 tors. I now solemly declare that I never heard from either 
 of them a speech similar or second to that to which we 
 have now listened, alike for its lofty tone, thought and sen- 
 timent, its close argumentative force, its transcending elo- 
 quence and overpowering impressiveness." At one blow 
 he had struck off the locks of heretofore unwilling church 
 doors and every one wished to hear this new Chrysostom. 
 Twenty thousand copies of his speech published by the As- 
 sembly's order, as well as almost every newspaper in the 
 realm, scattered broadcast the masterful oration. 
 
 Read to-day, it cannot produce the impression originally 
 felt. We live in the age of knowledge, and missionary ad- 
 dresses are not the novelty that they were then. Notwith- 
 standing, one reading now the ruins of that production, and 
 especially its peroration, is stirred with the grandeur of his 
 theme, — India, India for Christ, India through the Chris- 
 tian use of education, and all this the privilege of godly 
 Scotland ! His blood-earnestness, due to agonizing prayer 
 
PROMOTER OF MISSIONS 53 
 
 like that of Knox, save that he longed that God would give 
 him India ; periods unconsciously molded in the form of 
 early favorites of his, Chatham, Burke, Erskine and Can- 
 ning ; his prophet-like utterance and utter disregard of 
 modern laws of elocution ; the impression given that he 
 was the spokesman of his Master in behalf of perishing 
 millions ; the final supernatural effect produced by his whis- 
 pered peroration : these are some of the points which struck 
 the hearer most forcibly. And other notable efforts, like 
 that at London and his famous Vindication of the Mission 
 at the Assembly of 1837, were marked by similar traits, 
 though he later made a more liberal use of satire than in 
 his first address. 
 
 If one proof of the Athenian orator's power was the cry, 
 *' Let us go against Philip ! " Duff was a Demosthenes ; 
 for an Act was passed recommending him to the churches 
 and advising that in each congregation an agency for prayer 
 and the propagation of missionary intelligence be created. 
 Less pleasant results were calls extended to him from 
 churches of various degrees, including the famous Grey- 
 friars, and urgent requests that he give up India. It pained 
 him that people should even suppose that he would "re- 
 treat from the front of the battle into the easy and yet respec- 
 table comfort of the baggage." Aberdeen honored itself 
 and him by conferring the degree of D. D., and this to a 
 man under thirty in a land where the letters are more than 
 "semi-lunar fardels" and are never carelessly bestowed. 
 
 2. As an organizer ', even more satisfactory results were 
 secured. From the Orkneys to Solway Firth there was no 
 considerable district which he did not visit and organize, so 
 far as possible, trie presbyteries and churches into missionary 
 branches of the foreign work. The first Ladies' Society 
 in Scotland and its imitators were due to him. Financial 
 aid to the missionary work of the Church increased fourteen 
 fold during the years that this Celtic firebrand flamed on 
 Scotia's hills. 
 
 The result which seemed to him personally the most im- 
 portant, was the securing of strong recruits. His own 
 strength and the large results of his four years in India drew 
 to him some of the choicest men from the Universities, — 
 
54 ALEXANDER DUFF, INDIA'S EDUCATOR 
 
 John Anderson of Madras, and Doctors Mitchell and Smith, 
 who were to become so powerful in India, as well as those 
 almost-persuaded men who remained behind to hold the 
 ropes, such as the sainted McCheyne and the talented Guth- 
 rie. Instead of being the Church of Scotland's sole represen- 
 tative as in 1830, when he was ready to return, eight others 
 were there laboring ; the Church had in its hands his " Vin- 
 dication," which demanded of the Assembly that they send 
 out to races like the Hindus their best educated ministers 
 and ablest preachers ; and divinity students the world over 
 had material for serious meditation in his most popular 
 writing, " Missions the Chief end of the Christian Church; 
 also the Qualifications, Duties and Trials of an Indian 
 Missionary." 
 
 Back to Calcutta, 1839, 1840. Duff's journey to India 
 was a profitable one to him. Going by the Overland Route, 
 he was delayed in Egypt for a month. Besides review- 
 ing the remains of a mighty Empire, he sought an interview 
 with the Patriarch of the Coptic Church, being anxious to 
 see if * ' life could be breathed into the shriveled skeleton of 
 so fruitful and so noble a mother of churches." The Pa- 
 triarch listened with interest to suggestions concerning the 
 use of the Bible and the publication of tracts, and when 
 an institution for higher education was broached the old 
 man assented and asked Mr Lieder, the missionary accom- 
 panying him, to draft a plan for his more careful inspec- 
 tion. Duff's desire has since been partly accomplished by 
 the noble efforts of American missionaries. The corner- 
 stone of the first English Church in Alexandria, on its great 
 square, was about to be laid, and Dr Duff performed the re- 
 ligious part of the ceremonies. Later this child of the 
 Covenant and lover of Ben Nevis, went into the solitudes 
 of Sinai for a fortnight. Conversing with the monks of 
 St Catherine's Convent through Hindustani, confirming his 
 own faith through a careful study of the topography of the 
 mountain, which could be touched as his own Grampians 
 could not, ascending the peak where Moses stood when the 
 Divine Law was given him, he repeats many times on a 
 Sabbath day the Ten commandments and luxuriates in a 
 flood of sublime and spiritual reflections. 
 
PROMOTER OF MISSIONS 55 
 
 The Suez steamer came early in February, 1840, and the 
 Duffs duly reached Bombay, where they enjoyed the fel- 
 lowship of their fellow missionaries, the famous John Wil- 
 son, Robert Nesbit, his old St Andrew's fellow worker, 
 and Murray Mitchell, one of his Scotland recruits. Duff 
 comforted them in the misfortunes attending their first Parsi 
 conversions, and made a careful study of the conditions in 
 western India. Thence they took a teak-built vessel to Cal- 
 cutta, stopping on the way at Mangalore, — where a visit 
 with the eccentric Basel missionary, Hebich, kept Duff talk- 
 ing until almost dawn, and at Madras where were their 
 own recruits, Anderson and Johnson. The interest taken 
 by Duff in the conversion of old St Andrews school into 
 the germs of what is to-day the great Christian College 
 of Madras, and in John Anderson, — who with John Wil- 
 son at Bombay and himself at Calcutta constituted the basal 
 triangle of missionary educational work in India, — was 
 great and fruitful. Later they sail for the Hooghly, where 
 a May cyclone again almost destroys them. 
 
 Second Stadium in India, 1840-1850. The first decade 
 of his missionary life had laid down the lines which he af- 
 terward followed ; hence his later years can be passed over 
 more rapidly. 
 
 Duff had hardly had time to look about him on landing send 
 note English signs of native druggists and surgeons, a beau- 
 tiful Gothic church presided over by a high caste Brahman 
 brought to Christ from atheism through his efforts, and the 
 magnificent college buildings and mission house where he 
 was to live surrounded by nearly seven hundred enthusiastic 
 pupils, before he found himself plunged into a conflict with 
 the Governor- General, Lord Auckland. In his absence, 
 the liberties fought for by himself and others, which resulted 
 in the use of the English tongue and the study of western 
 science in public institutions of learning, had been taken 
 away and given to the Orientalists, and error was again en- 
 dowed. In three bold letters he arraigns his Lordship at 
 the bar of universal reason and before the Judge of Lords. 
 While the letters availed nothing, another protest against 
 the public support of heathenism and a plea for a Christian 
 education had been uttered. 
 
56 ALEXANDER DUFF, INDIA'S EDUCATOR 
 
 Though the institution under its four gifted colleagues 
 had made great progress, it was ripe for a reorganization 
 looking toward the one spiritual end of the conversion of 
 students, the ultimate overthrow of the Brahmanical system 
 and the substitution of a self-propagating native Church. 
 While at home he had been a student of the latest educa- 
 tional ideas, and to his buildings, library and apparatus, he 
 now proceeded by a normal class and by privately training 
 those already acting as instructors in the college, to raise 
 up a body of thoroughly trained teachers, — an attempt so 
 successful that the Government and missions from Burma 
 to Sindh speedily carried off his graduates. Note-books 
 were discouraged and Duff aimed to get into his students* 
 minds clear and correct conceptions with the ability to ex- 
 press them. 
 
 For three years he held a Sunday class for Bible study 
 among the clerks in public offices, with encouraging spiritual 
 results. For his old graduates who desired the elevating 
 companionship and intellectual stimulus of their old in- 
 structor, Duff held a week-day evening lecture, when works 
 of men like Guizot and John Foster were discussed. Older 
 and less favored men were aided by weekly lectures on 
 moral and religious themes. The woes of child-marriage 
 and widowhood made an appeal to his vigorous pen. The 
 Krishnaghur movement and its sect of Worshippers of the 
 Creator so interested him that he investigated the matter, 
 and two new stations were added to Takee. Meanwhile 
 at the college most of the time of the missionaries was 
 spent in teaching, conversing, preaching, translating, pre- 
 paring tracts and praying together, while Duff's nine hun- 
 dred students were receiving at their hands a thorough and 
 Christian training. 
 
 The Disruption of 1843, though it was not unexpected, 
 was a terrible blow to Duff when it came. While at home 
 he had claimed that missions lay outside the realm of party, 
 but with the formation of the Free Church, he and his col- 
 leagues felt that they must cast in their lot with the off-shoot. 
 This meant the giving up of an institution finely equipped, 
 much of it with his own private means, to the Established 
 Church and the beginning over again, with little hope of 
 
PROMOTER OF MISSIONS 57 
 
 assistance from a struggling church at home. But Dr Duff 
 was master of the hour in India. Friends were rafsed up 
 and in 1844 a hall devoted to idol revelries was secured and 
 the new institution began with a thousand pupils. His 
 magnanimity forbade his starting a work too near his old 
 institution ; hence this less central heathen hall. Similarly 
 a man who could move all Calcutta by his " Voice from the 
 Ganges," — four lectures given in the town hall on the rea- 
 sons for separating from the Established Church, — had lit- 
 tle difficulty in building a church for the members of the 
 new denomination, and when it fell down, he speedily raised 
 twice as much for a new one costing $60,000. 
 
 Other efforts of this period were the development of the 
 branch schools, by which natives were evangelizing the ru- 
 ral districts; the editorship of the liberal "Calcutta Re- 
 view" of which he was one of the three founders, — a the- 
 saurus of valuable information concerning India ; — a ser- 
 mon preached after the deadly summer of 1844, which 
 partly accounts for the largest single hospital in the world 
 and the ten others which later followed ; and raising money 
 for a Knox monument in Edinburgh and again for starving 
 Highlanders. 
 
 Personal matters were the attempt to kill one whose 
 Institution was turning out Christian graduates to the threat- 
 ened subversion of Hinduism, — an attempt met by his tact- 
 ful letter and turned to his advantage, — and the crushing 
 intelligence of the death of Thomas Chalmers, whose suc- 
 cessor he was strenuously urged to become. In spite of 
 appeals from presbyteries and the General Assembly itself, 
 Duff resolutely turned from so great an honor that he might 
 "retain in the view of all men, the clearly marked and 
 distinguishing character of a missionary to the heathen 
 abroad," — a conclusion whieh gave the utmost joy to all 
 classes of the Indian community, not excluding the Brah- 
 mans, whose appeal is a strange commentary on Duff's fas- 
 cinating power and on Brahmanical inconsistency. While 
 his colleagues agreed that he ought not to desert India, 
 they thought it wise for him to return and organize the 
 Free Church Mission scheme. Dr Duff yielded to their 
 views as well as to those of his physician and after a most 
 
5S ~ ALEXANDER DUFF, INDIA'S EDUCATOR 
 
 interesting tour through India, that he might know the sit- 
 uation and drink in inspiration from the haunts of men 
 whose life stirred his blood, he embarked and reached Edin- 
 burgh at the end of May, 1850. 
 
 Second Visit Home, 1850-1855. Financially Dr Duff 
 was sorely needed, though a week of collecting had re- 
 moved a previous deficit of $27,500. Such sporadic efforts 
 would not do. Duff had on shipboard evolved a scheme 
 which he hurried to the Assembly to advocate. Though 
 his five addresses did not secure his four points, — a day of 
 humiliation and prayer for the Church's neglect of the 
 heathen, regular weekly subscriptions for missions, a rule 
 of proportion concerning the objects aided, and a synod in 
 which to try the experiment, — he was granted a quarterly 
 Association in every congregation to forward these objects. 
 Sent forth by this "Foreign Missions Assembly," he went 
 everywhere establishing associations for prayer, informa- 
 tion and the quarterly collection of subscriptions. The re- 
 sult of this prolonged campaign, extending into all parts of 
 Scotland and into England and even Wales, — where he 
 spoke at one time to over fifteen thousand, — was the estab- 
 lishment of his far-reaching scheme in five hundred out of 
 the then seven hundred of the Free Church congregations. 
 
 The distinguished honor of being Moderator of the As- 
 sembly of 185 1 and his part in the famous Educational 
 Despatch of July, 1854, are worthy of mention. The lat- 
 ter service was of incalculable value to India. Attending 
 for hours each day sessions of the Committee with fellow- 
 witnesses like John Stuart Mill and Prof H. H. Wilson, 
 and cross-questioned on more than one occasion for five 
 hours at a stretch, in the presence of persons like Ma- 
 caulay, Disraeli and Gladstone, his educational and edi- 
 torial experience gave his words weight. The result was 
 that he and Mr Marshman worked out the educational part 
 of the Despatch of 1854. His "handiwork can be traced 
 not only in the definite orders, but in the very style of what 
 has ever since been pronounced the great educational charter 
 of the people of India." By it were secured Government 
 inspectors, universities like that of London, secondary 
 schools, improved primary and indigenous schools, grants- 
 
PROMOTER OF MISSIONS 59 
 
 in-aid of all, degrees of the same for all in any institution 
 who attain to a certain standard, normal schools, school- 
 books, scholarships, public appointments, medical, engi- 
 neering and arts, colleges, and also female schools. The 
 grants-in-aid proposal, so fruitful in good, was urged by 
 Duff "as the only just alternative, if the state persisted in 
 refusing the Bible to be taught, under a conscience clause, 
 in its colleges, as the Koran and the Vedas are taught." 
 
 In America, 1854. Interjected into this stay at home 
 came an epoch-making three months in the States and in 
 Canada. Brought here by Mr Stuart of Philadelphia, he 
 was received in a terrific snow-storm by seventy ministers 
 at eleven at night. This was a presage of the tremendous 
 enthusiasm with which he was greeted from Boston to St 
 Louis, and from Montreal to Washington. Whether preach- 
 ing before Congress or talking to a Sunday-school class, 
 he was everywhere the hero of the hour. The impression 
 left by his stay, — during which he was the animating 
 spirit of the first Union Missionary Convention held on this 
 continent, — is thus described : M Dr Duff is obviously labor- 
 ing under ill-health, and his voice, at no time very strong, 
 occasionally subsides almost into a whisper. In addition 
 to this drawback, he has none of the mere external graces 
 of oratory. His eloquence is unstudied ; his gesticulation 
 uncouth, and, but for the intense feeling, the self-absorption 
 out of which it manifestly springs, might even be consid- 
 ered grotesque. Yet he is fascinatingly eloquent. Though, 
 his words flowed out in an unbroken, unpausing torrent, 
 every eye was riveted upon him, every ear was strained to 
 catch the slightest sound. Indeed, while all that he said was 
 impressive, both in matter and manner, many passages were 
 really grand." As to the effect on our missionary spirit, 
 he stands perhaps above even our own Judson and the saint 
 of the New Hebrides, Dr Paton. 
 
 But such a nervous strain, amounting to a " living mar- 
 tydom," could not long continue, and he left America with, 
 an LL. D., money for a new college in Calcutta, and an 
 order to go to the water cure of Great Malvern. 
 
 Third Term in India, 1856-1863. A winter spent in 
 southern Europe, Syria and Palestine, a return to Edin- 
 
60 ALEXANDER DUFF, INDIA'S EDUCATOR 
 
 burgh for a glorious September, and then the Duffs again 
 leave for their field. Passing through central India, he ar- 
 rived at Calcutta in February, when the mutterings of the 
 storm which was to burst in 1857 were beginning to be 
 heard. During the awful period of the Sepoy Mutiny he 
 was the careful observer and chronicler, the man who stood 
 unmoved in the most dangerous part of the city and who 
 could say after the most critical night, "I have not enjoyed 
 such a soft, sweet, refreshing sleep for some weeks past," 
 and the preacher, who, when the danger was past, delivered 
 by request a Thanksgiving Sermon, — one of the grandest 
 oratorical efforts of his life. 
 
 Three events of special importance broke in upon the 
 routine of his college work. One was the establishment 
 of his Caste Girls' Day School, an institution of the great- 
 est worth to the higher classes. A second was the part Duff 
 played in the origin of the famous Calcutta University, 
 established by the Government. The real headship of this 
 institution lay in his fertile and wise brain, though he de- 
 clined to become its Vice-Chancellor. A third matter was 
 his withdrawal, after nearly a third of a century, to home 
 service. Not even 1 the cry "Come home to save the mis- 
 sion ! " would have -moved him, had not his old enemy, the 
 dysentery, which a voyage to China did not remove, com- 
 pelled his consent. Again Calcutta was stirred. Scholar- 
 ships were established in his name ; portraits and busts of 
 him were secured for educational institutions ; addresses 
 from different classes of the community poured in upon 
 him; and his countrymen raised a fund of $55,000, upon 
 the interest of which he afterward lived. With the well- 
 merited eulogies of Sir Henry Maine and Bishop Cotton 
 to remind India of brilliant service ringing in his ears, this 
 veteran sailed to the shores of Africa to begin at Lovedale 
 his labors as Director of the Free Church Missions. 
 
 Closing Years, 1864-1878. A dream of Duff's had been 
 a sort of Protestant Propaganda College in Scotland, and 
 now with his other duties he attempted to realize it. The 
 first step was a missionary professorship in the Free Church 
 Institution, — he had years before gotten an American Sem- 
 inary to establish one, — and when money was raised he was 
 
PROMOTER OF MISSIONS 6 1 
 
 the only person worthy to occupy it. Unfortunately he did 
 not live to see the establishment of his Missionary Institute 
 nor Missionary Quarterly, though his lectureship is giving 
 the world such books as Monier-Wi Mams' " Buddhism. " 
 
 Full of labors as professor of Evangelistic Theology, as 
 Director of the Foreign Missions of his Church, — greatly 
 to their enlargement — and as general missionary adviser to 
 America and Britain, were the fourteen years preceding 
 1878. Then, on February twelfth, from his books which 
 he loved so well, — Carlyle, De Quincey, Milton, Cowper, 
 Hooker and the rest ; — from his friends, who deemed his 
 presence an inspiration ; from his Kirk, of which he was a 
 chief ornament ; from bonnie Scotland, which he loved with 
 an undying passion ; from his Indian friends and old pu- 
 pils, with whom he lived in spirit; from a world, one of 
 whose most useful factors he had been, — God called him 
 home and he was not. 
 
 His funeral brought together about the bier magistrates 
 of various ranks, the four Universities and the Royal High 
 School, — professors and students, — and, for the first time 
 in history, the three Kirks and their Moderators, together 
 with representatives of the English, American and Indian 
 churches. Laid to rest by peer, citizen, missionary and min- 
 ister, his life furnished the theme for half of the pulpits in 
 Scotland on the following Sabbath. Well spoke a woman 
 who saw his body lowered into the grave, c 4 His coffin should 
 be covered with palm branches ;" for a Christian conqueror 
 was this Alexander, and he could in very truth sing Paul's 
 paean of victory, "I have fought the good fight, I have fin- 
 ished the course, I have kept the faith : henceforth there is 
 laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, 
 the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day." 
 
 SUGGESTED READINGS. 
 
 Catholic Presbyterian, Article Alexander Duff, Vol. III., Pp. 215, ff. 
 Duff: Indian Rebellion; Its Causes and Results, (1858). 
 
 Missionary Addresses, (1850), I., II., III. 
 
 Missions, the Chief End of the Christian Church, (1839). 
 
 New Era of the English Language and English Literature in 
 India, (1835). 
 
62 ALEXANDER DUFF, INDIA'S EDUCATOR 
 
 W. P. Duff: Memorials of Alexander Duff, D. D. Especially 
 Pp. 32-70. 
 
 Encyclopaedia of Missions, (1891 ), Article Alexander Duff. 
 
 Lai Behari Day : Recollections of Alexander Duff, D. D., LL. D., 
 (1879), Chs. v., ix., x., xvi. 
 
 London Quarterly, Article Alexander Duff, Vol. LIV., Pp. 93, ff. 
 
 Proceedings of the Union Missionary Conference, Held in New 
 York in May, 1854. 
 
 T. Smith: Alexander Duff, D. D., LL.D., (1883), Chs. iv-x. 
 
 Vermilye : The Life of Alexander Duff, (1890), Chs. vi-xvi. 
 
 G. Smith: The Life of Alexander Duff, D. D., LL. D., (1879). 
 Agitating for Missions in Britain, Vol. I., Chs. x-xn. ; Return 
 to Calcutta, Vol. I., Ch. xm. ; Second Term in India, Vol. I., 
 Ch.xiv. to Vol.11., Ch. xix. ; Second Furlough in Britain 
 and America, Vol. II., Chs. xx-xxii. ; Last Term in India, Vol. 
 II., Chs. xxiii, xxiv.* Final Years in Scotland, Vol, II., Chs. 
 xxv-xxix. 
 
THE MAN MACKENZIE, HIS FIELD AND PEOPLE. 
 
 It was not merely an enthusiasm for humanity that touched Mac- 
 kenzie's heart and made him willing to give up his life for the bene- 
 fit of the millions of China. Men have done noble deeds under the 
 stimulus of philanthropy, but a higher motive than this was the 
 mainspring of his life, and that was a consuming love for his Di- 
 vine Master. — Mrs M. F. Bryson. 
 
 Early Days. In the isle so dear to England's late poet 
 laureate and to her Queen, near its western end, lies the 
 decayed town of Yarmouth. In that out of the way, fen- 
 begirt place was born on the twenty-fifth of August, 1850, 
 John Kenneth Mackenzie, destined in after years to prove 
 one of the most important factors in the medical and mis- 
 sionary history of China. But he did not long remain in 
 that land of downs and forests and picturesque watering- 
 places ; for in infancy his parents took him to the home of 
 his boyhood and youth, the mercantile city of Bristol, sev- 
 enty miles to the northwest of his native Isle of Wight. 
 In this city, which had in 1497 sent forth John Cabot to dis- 
 cover in Nova Scctia the mainland of North America, and 
 where in 1838 was built the first trans- Atlantic steamer, 
 the boy Kenneth received those impulses which made him 
 first a Christian, then an active worker for his Master, and 
 finally a medical missionary. 
 
 The north of Scotland gave him a staunch Presbyterian 
 father, while southern Wales furnished him with a beloved 
 mother. His biographer is probably correct in saying that 
 "to his Highland blood doubtless he owed a certain reti- 
 cence of manner, combined with an intensity of feeling, 
 which in a marked degree characterized his likes and dis- 
 likes." The Welsh blood in his veins may have aided him, 
 
64 KENNETH MACKENZIE, CHINA'S PHYSICIAN 
 
 as it usually does those of that nationality, in gaining a 
 facile use of one of the most difficult tongues of the world, 
 and it very probably had much to do with that love of 
 preaching which colored his medical work. 
 
 His boyhood was passed in the helpful, Christian sur- 
 roundings of a Presbyterian elder's home, so that religion 
 was affecting him even before he was conscious of the fact. 
 Not that he was a boy saint, however ; for he had a hasty 
 temper and was outspoken in defending any position which 
 he might take, while as a pupil in Dr Stone's private school 
 he disliked study, preferring the active sports of boyhood 
 to irksome books. 
 
 At fifteen he left school and became a clerk in a mer- 
 chant's office. He now began to appreciate the opportun- 
 ities which he had hitherto partly wasted, and spent his 
 spare hours in instructive reading. He also availed him- 
 self of the advantages of the Christian Association, which 
 by its manifold activities has been so beneficial to many 
 young men. 
 
 Beginnings of His Christian Life and Usefulness. 
 The unconscious workings of the Spirit in his early years 
 became intensified on two momentous days, both of them 
 times of special interest in the Association. The first of 
 these was a certain May Sunday in 1867, when the topic of 
 the Bible-class had been "A Good Conscience." It was 
 an unusually impressive hour and at its close Mr Moody, 
 then visiting England for the first time, made an address. 
 Though he rose for prayers and dated his earnest desire 
 for a spiritual life from that day, he was not one of the 
 fifteen who then decided for Christ. Months of alternate 
 struggle and discouragement followed until the anniversary 
 of Mr Moody's address arrived. W. Hind Smith, the Lon- 
 don Y. M. C. A. Secretary, delivered the address before 
 the Association on that day, and at the solemn moment 
 when he asked the young men to openly accept or reject 
 Christ, the decisive hour for Mackenzie had struck, and 
 from that time he was Christ's. On the way home, he and 
 three companions stopped on a hill top, and like the Japa- 
 nese youths of Kumamoto, dedicated themselves to be hence- 
 forth trustful, leal-hearted followers of their Master. Four 
 
65 
 
 months later Kenneth united with the Presbyterian Church 
 of Bristol and came under the moulding influence of that 
 powerful preacher and earnest Christian, Rev Matthew 
 Dickie, to whom he became greatly attached. 
 
 Young Mackenzie did not wait long before he engaged in 
 active work ; for he could not conceive of a true Christian 
 who was not about his Father's business. First crucifying 
 his pride by distributing tracts on a crowded thoroughfare, 
 he later became leader of a band of workers who held open- 
 air services, visited lodging-houses, taught in ragged schools 
 and, as occasion offered, spoke at religious, meetings and 
 preached in outlying villages. 
 
 Mackenzie soon became conscious of his unfitness for 
 these higher forms of work, and so we see him organizing 
 a mutual Christian training school. In a broken-down 
 cow-shed, two miles out of town, a little group of them 
 would meet at five in the morning to read and criticise 
 specially prepared sermons. His discourses were of great 
 excellence, and this work, together with the ardent prayers 
 poured forth as they knelt on the earth floor of the cow- 
 house, enabled him to engage in the winter theater services. 
 His ardent soul could rest in nothing but the most active 
 service of the lowest, so that he is seen at one time win- 
 ning a notorious king of thieves, at another bringing to the 
 feet of Jesus attendants at the Midnight ^Mission." 
 
 Interest in Missions. The Christian workers with, 
 whom he came in contact were a source of rich blessing to- 
 him. One of these, Colonel Duncan, he felt a special love 
 for, and to him he confided on his way home from a theater 
 service a secret desire which had come into his heart, tx> 
 engage in foreign missionary work. This wish had been 
 begotten of the Spirit, through the reading of biographies' 
 of William Burns and Dr James Henderson, both laborers- 
 in China. Mr Duncan was very sympathetic but advised! 
 him, in view of his youth and limited education, to spend a: 
 number of years in a medical school in preparation for 
 medical service abroad. Mrs Gordon's little book, "The 
 Double Cure ; or What is a Medical Mission?" was loaned 
 him with the result that he felt that God would have him 
 give up business and study medicine. 
 
66 KENNETH MACKENZIE, CHINA'S PHYSICIAN 
 
 When he laid this proposition before his parents, he 
 found them unwilling to consent to such a plan. Going to 
 the Colonel with this obstacle, he proposed that young 
 Mackenzie, John Gordon, whose wife had written "The 
 Double Cure," a Bristol surgeon named Steele, and him- 
 self, should lay the matter before the Lord in prayer. This 
 plan had scarcely become operative before his parents' ob- 
 jections disappeared. So at the very begining of his mis- 
 sionary career, he learned one of the secrets of his fruitful 
 life, the power of prayer and the special value of united 
 supplication for definite objects. 
 
 Preparation for Medical Service. Though without the 
 basis of a college course, young Mackenzie had unusually 
 good opportunities for securing a thorough medical train- 
 ing. For four years at the Bristol Medical School, and 
 later taking special work in the Royal Opthalmic Hospital 
 in London, he passed in Edinburgh his Licentiate of the 
 Royal College of Physicians examinations, while at Lon- 
 don he obtained the diploma of Member of the Royal Col- 
 lege of Surgeons. During these years he had not intermit- 
 ted his Christian work, — though naturally it was lessened 
 in amount, — nor had his interest in missions decreased. 
 
 Appointment under the London flissionary Society. 
 Before going to Edinburgh, Mackenzie had heard a stirring 
 address from Rev Grffiith John, one of China's greatest 
 missionaries. This only increased his interest in that field, 
 and when at the Scotch capital, he interviewed Dr Lowe, 
 of the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society. Mr Bry- 
 son, Mr John's colleague, was eventually questioned and the 
 need of Hankow seemed so great that he decided for China, 
 though on the very day on which he offered himself to 
 the L. M. S., he had two appointments brought before him 
 for decision. With his early impatience and ignorance of 
 the necessary routine of missionary organizations, he fret- 
 ted because an immediate reply did not come from the So- 
 ciety. As soon as possible, however, he was gladly wel- 
 comed and appointment followed. 
 
 His conscientiousness caused him to lay every matter 
 before the Lord, so that the date of his sailing and the ques- 
 tion of marriage were both made matters of prayer. The 
 
LIFE, FIELD AND PEOPLE 67 
 
 Society rather unwisely advised his starting in April- — a 
 step which they afterward regretted because of fever con- 
 tracted in his first summer, — but he assented. Mr John's 
 advice concerning the advisability of not marrying until 
 after he had been in China for two years, that he might get 
 well grounded in the language and in his medical work 
 before the additional cares of a family came upon him, was 
 also heeded. 
 
 Journey to China. Bidding his parents a sad adieu on 
 April 8, 1875, he went up with his brother to London 
 where he had time to attend once more Mr Moody's meet- 
 ings. He had a few weeks before enjoyed a "never-to- 
 be-forgotten" interview with the great evangelist, and all 
 through his life he carried the memory of his evangelical 
 zeal and activity. 
 
 Boarding the "Glenlyon," he left London, April tenth. 
 His social nature soon gained him the friendship of sailors 
 and passengers, with whom he was equally at home as 
 quoit-player or preacher. Reading such books as Carlyle's 
 "French Revolution" and Macintosh's "Leviticus" occu- 
 pied his time, except that he meditated on the life before 
 him with deep heart-searching. Thus he writes one Sun- 
 day : "I have had sweet communion with God this even- 
 ing, and have enjoyed much comfort from the study of the 
 Word to-day. I see that there are no two courses ; it must 
 be all for Christ, or else the soul gets dead and cold. Do- 
 ing everything for His glory, and making His glory our 
 object in every matter, — then only is there joy and peace. 
 O Lord, may it be thus with me ! " 
 
 Hong Kong was reached on May twenty- fifth , Shanghai 
 on the third of June, and then after a river voyage of 600 
 miles up the Yang-tzu, he arrived on June eighth at his 
 new home in Hankow. 
 
 Life in Hankow. China welcomes are peculiarly de- 
 lightful, and in Mackenzie's case he was received into a 
 very select circle, whose crown were Mr and Mrs Griffith 
 John. As Bible translator, preacher, missionary champion 
 and author of some of the most widely useful tracts in the 
 language, Dr John was an incalculable aid to the young 
 missionary. Mrs John, too, was indefatigable in her ef- 
 
6S KENNETH MACKENZIE, CHINA'S PHYSICIAN 
 
 forts to aid all, especially the sailors on the tea-steamers 
 who are so numerous during the tea season. Into her work 
 Mackenzie entered the first Sunday after his arrival, and 
 during his three years in that city he was a large factor in 
 a work which resulted in many conversions. 
 
 His first Monday saw him settled and beginning in ear- 
 nest the study of the language, a process thus described : 
 the teacher and I "sit down together with the same book. 
 He calls over the words and I try to imitate him ; my mouth 
 is forced into all sorts of odd shapes, and I struggle on. 
 The idea is first to get the proper sound, the meaning after- 
 wards, and then — probably the most difficult — to learn the 
 characters. We go on for about three hours, until I am tired 
 of repeating sounds after him." This study was unfortu- 
 nately interfered with by the pressure of medical work, as 
 was the time for exercise, so that as the result of his own ex- 
 perience he writes to a young physician who came out years 
 later: "If I were you I would not touch medicine for at 
 least a year, but give your whole strength to the language 
 and to looking after your own health. Medical mission- 
 aries are usually forced into medical work from the begin- 
 ning, and then have to lament it ever after. Get a good 
 foundation laid in the language, and take plenty of exer- 
 cise in the open air." By utilizing spare moments, Mac- 
 kenzie was able, after two years, to say that he enjoyed a 
 Chinese sermon as much as one in English, and his biogra- 
 phy tells of times when he could get a good look into the 
 Classics and find joy in William Burns' incomparable ver- 
 sion of the "Pilgrim's Progress." In the absence of larger 
 opportunities for language study, he comforted himself in 
 the significance of his Chinese name. This in Hankow 
 was represented by three characters, Ma-kun-ge, Ma being 
 his surname, the kun meaning "root" and the ge mean- 
 ing "to relieve." It was his business, therefore, if true to 
 his root, to relieve others' woes. 
 
 The street chapel was a place which the Doctor visited as 
 often as possible, there to watch one of the most successful 
 Chinese preachers do his work. The motley company of 
 coolies, tradesmen and scholars to whom Mr John would try 
 for two hours at a time to impart one great idea, gave him a 
 
LIFE, FIELD AND PEOPLE 69 
 
 valuable lesson and made him feel that ordinary discursive 
 preaching was a sheer waste of time, and that no great results 
 were to be expected unless one were willing to settle down 
 to patient persevering work which the Spirit might use. 
 
 Mackenzie was wise enough to do what many mission- 
 aries neglect ; he tells very vividly of visits to such places 
 as the hall where the horrors of the Buddhist Hades are 
 displayed in most gruesome fashion, and other matters con- 
 nected with Chinese religion were also investigated. 
 
 An event occuring while at Hankow had its large influ- 
 ence upon Mackenzie's life. While engaged in Christian 
 work at Bristol he became acquainted with Miss Millie 
 Travers, a fellow worker, and later they were engaged. 
 In 1876 he felt that the time had come for their union, and 
 she accordingly came out to Shanghai, where they were 
 married on the ninth of January, 1S77. She was a true 
 help-meet for him, and he greatly enjoyed his home and the 
 joint work which they were now able to do. But her health 
 was an uncertain quantity and in less than two years when 
 their home had been brightened by the birth of their only 
 child, Margaret Ethel, family complications and personal 
 matters caused Mackenzie to ask to be sent to a new station 
 in Ssu Chuan. The Society decided not to establish work 
 at that place, but re-appointed him to Tientsin, the port of 
 Peking in North China. 
 
 Transfer to North China. During these three years 
 and a half Dr Mackenzie had won golden opinions for his 
 art from all classes of the community and from the native 
 Christians, who rarely see a physician so ready and anxious 
 to help in the spiritual work of the mission. It was with 
 pain, then, and in the midst of sorrowful adieus, that he left 
 the city in March, 1879. The presence of Bp Schereschew- 
 sky and a consequential Salt Commissioner, relieved the 
 tedium of the voyage, and when on the ocean they stopped 
 a little at Chefoo, thus giving Mackenzie a glimpse of Dr 
 Brereton's hospital. Thence to the bar off Taku, past its 
 mud forts and into the sinuous Pei-Ho, seeming to him 
 like a mill-stream meandering through fens, when com- 
 pared with the majestic Yang-tzu, Son of the Ocean. The 
 bund at Tientsin was reached on the twelfth and the party 
 
70 KENNETH MACKENZIE, CHINA'S PHYSICIAN 
 
 were most cordially received by members of the mission. 
 His life here is in many ways a repetition of that at Han- 
 kow, save that it was far more momentous, as will be seen 
 later. 
 
 Influences Affecting Mackenzie's Life. It may be well 
 to note here some of those influences which had a develop- 
 ing effect on his life, for with him there was constant 
 growth. 
 
 Men were his teachers very largely. Contact with earn- 
 est believers had a quickening influence upon him. The 
 Cambridge Band stopped at Tientsin on their way to Shansi 
 and their meetings and conversations gave him the greatest 
 single impulse of his life, perhaps. A brief acquaintance 
 with one of the most talented of England's young physi- 
 cians, so early to yield his saintly life to Chinese service, 
 Dr Schofield, was an experience of a life-time. So, too, 
 was converse with the hero of Mongolia, a missionary 
 Robinson Crusoe and evangelical exile, James Gilmour. 
 One cannot help seeing in his after life the deep impress 
 of these men and of Chinese Gordon, whose unique views 
 he so fully expressed to Mackenzie. 
 
 Akin to these influences were those coming from the 
 printed page. Bp Pattison, from the South Seas, inspired 
 him ; devotional writings of men like Murray were care- 
 fully digested and became part of his spiritual fibre ; but 
 above all other books, the Bible stood as the one pre- 
 eminently loved. The writer well remembers his library 
 with its rows of volumes, and the comparatively few which 
 were well worn. One of his choice souvenirs is a set of 
 old Bengel's "Gnomon," quaint and pithy, which Mac- 
 kenzie had marked copiously. As his life ripened and 
 spiritual discernment grew clearer, even Bengel and Mur- 
 ray were neglected in his absorbing love of the Word itself, 
 so that at the end he was the man of one Book. How 
 much he used this friend may be judged from the fact that a 
 new copy of the Bible which had been his but three months, 
 had been marked in every part, and in many portions care- 
 fully studied. 
 
 Providences were Mackenzie's teachers also. Nothing 
 drove him to God so effectually as obstacles. No matter 
 
LIFE, FIELD AND PEOPLE 7 1 
 
 whether the difficulty was a critical operation, money for a 
 hospital, particular kinds of cases which he preferred to 
 have in his care, the hostility of natives inflamed to hatred 
 by stories, or any other burden, his hour of weakness was 
 "the wished, the trysted hour" when he was sure his Lord 
 would fulfill his promises. The prayer-life thus engen- 
 dered was one of the marked characteristics of the man. 
 His Bible had prayer-slips in it ; his letters are full of ex- 
 hortations to prayer, or objects for which he wishes defi- 
 nite petitions offered. In one letter he proposes a plan for 
 interesting little groups of Christians at home in particular 
 Chinamen for whom prayers were needed, their interest 
 to be sustained by frequent letters of information concern- 
 ing them. The peculiar circumstances of his wife's health, 
 which bereft him of her while she still lived, had a most 
 hallowing influence over his remaining years. 
 
 It must be confessed that his last months saw the growth 
 of an ascetic element which was not quite healthful. In 
 his early years in China, he had been scrupulous about ex- 
 ercise, and after reaching Tientsin, he had attributed his ex- 
 cellent health to horse-back riding, as also to tennis, skating 
 and walking, of which he was very fond. Toward the close 
 of his life he withdrew more and more from society, — 
 having tried in vain to exercise a Christian influence in that 
 way, — and gave up games and riding. Yet he was not 
 exactly morbid ; he was rather eaten up by his zeal for 
 his work and for his Saviour, from whom he could not 
 bear to be long separated by even so thin a veil as that of 
 the Christian's daily environment. Christian friends of 
 deep spirituality had a growing value to him, and it was a 
 pleasure to spend his time with them in Bible reading and 
 prayer. 
 
 Relation to Others. To the people whom Mackenzie 
 had left in England, he looked, in the earnest hope that 
 they might be influenced to become helpers of the work 
 abroad. When in 1883 he took his only furlough home, 
 he was pained to see how little the children of God cared 
 for their lost brethren and sisters in China ; yet this did not 
 prevent his being a useful speaker to home audiences, not 
 only along missionary lines but also in the awakening or 
 
*]2 KENNETH MACKENZIE, CHINA'S PHYSICIAN 
 
 development of spiritual longings. His father's letters 
 coming to him in China were much prized and aided him 
 greatly. 
 
 Mackenzie never forgot his obligations to foreigners 
 in China. The work for crews on tea-steamers at Hankow, 
 and his temperance and evangelical efforts for the marines 
 and sailors who wintered at Tientsin constituted part of his 
 service and were very fruitful. In the latter city, Mackenzie 
 was often aided by surgeons connected with gunboats or 
 vessels, and for these some effort was made, though with 
 little success. Fellow missionaries of every denomination 
 were stimulated by his earnest prayers and by his strong 
 hold on the Bible. A special quickening like that men- 
 tioned by Mrs Bryson in his Hankow life, and the yearly 
 wave of blessing received at the Week of Prayer services at 
 Tientsin or Peking, marked upward bounds into a broader 
 and higher life. 
 
 But his students and patients were his especial burden. 
 For them his heart yearned and day and night his thought 
 was how he might be most influential in winning them for 
 Christ. The life of a genuine Christian and the truths of 
 inspired Scripture were the two things which he was anx- 
 ious to bring into heart contact with them. Few men have 
 been so happy in Bible class work as he. Deep interest in 
 the truth and the living out of this truth were the points 
 which he impressed, both of which were to be attained only 
 through the help of the Spirit. 
 
 In God's providence Dr Mackenzie was thrown into in- 
 timate contact with the real, though not nominal, Emperor 
 of China, the Viceroy Li Hu7tg Chang. To this man he 
 fearlessly testified of the truth which is in Jesus, though with 
 the result that the oriental Bismarck regarded him highly 
 for his works' sake, but esteemed him mad in matters of re- 
 ligion. Many other lesser servants in Cassar's household 
 came under his influence, but without a single conversion ; 
 indeed, no high official in China can be a consistent Chris- 
 tian since his official duties must include idolatrous worship. 
 
 Sickness and Death. While still in his full vigor, his 
 Master called him. On Monday, March 26, 1888, he was 
 smitten down with a fever, which later threatened to be- 
 
LIFE, FIELD AND PEOPLE 73 
 
 come small-pox. Less than six days of patient suffering, 
 of last farewells, especially pathetic in the case of his chief 
 native assistant, formerly a student at Philips, Andover, 
 and then on Easter morning, "very early," "when it was 
 yet dark," he ascended from his couch of pain on Chih Li's 
 cheerless plain to the Paradise of God. Tientsin, meaning 
 the Heavenly Ford, had been to him but the inn of a trav- 
 eler journeying to Jerusalem, but his passing that way had 
 drawn multitudes to him. What wonder then that when 
 this "most important man in Tientsin" died the last words 
 marked in his Bible before his sickness were fulfilled in 
 him, "And all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem 
 did him honor at his death." 
 
 Mackenzie's Field. Before passing to the considera- 
 tion of the special work which made him great, a glance 
 should be taken of his field. China, with its teeming mil- 
 lions is one of the most favorable places in the world for 
 the medical missionary. Mackenzie's first home was al- 
 most in the geographical center of the Middle Kingdom ; 
 indeed, Hankow, with its sister cities of Wuchang and Han- 
 yang, on the confluence of the Han and Yang-tzu, is known 
 as the "Heart of the Empire." There at the center of 
 its commerce and at the headquarters of anti-foreign influ- 
 ences which have been responsible for much of the rioting 
 and outbreaks of recent years, Medicine stretched forth 
 her beneficent hand to still hostility. Hankow, with its 
 750,000 inhabitants huddled together in the narrow lanes 
 characteristic of central and southern China, swept often by 
 floods, and the perpetual victim of epidemics of all sorts, 
 needed him when he came, but with that rejection of the 
 best so fatal to the Chinese, it was necessary for him to 
 earn his laurels before he wore them. Threading its nar- 
 row alleys and burrows, he was every one's friend, even 
 when deadly diseases threatened his own life. Nor did he 
 confine his labors to the great city. Frequent tours in the 
 country by boat or on foot on narrow dikes, made among 
 people who more than once stoned and beat him, as well as 
 lauded his virtues and feasted him, brought the healing 
 hand and Christ-like voice, so attractive to simple-minded 
 folk, into close contact with them. 
 
74 KENNETH MACKENZIE, CHINA'S PHYSICIAN 
 
 When summer malaria or overwork drove him from his 
 post for needed rest, he enjoyed greatly the mountain scen- 
 ery of the lovely Lu-Shan, where a foreign bungalow shel- 
 tered him, or the quiet of the lakes, and especially the 
 luxury of being at last in a place where he and his wife 
 could walk about without the following of the elsewhere 
 omnipresent, curious crowd of gaping on-lookers. 
 
 A less interesting country greeted him when he transfer- 
 red his work to the northern end of that large plain of north- 
 eastern China whose fertile fields contain a population al- 
 most three times as great as that of the United States. In 
 the winter season resembling an almost treeless expanse 
 of clay colored soil, relieved by countless groups of grave 
 mounds and frequent villages, this plain suddenly assumes 
 a tropical aspect when the rains and fiery sun of summer 
 cover it with heavy crops and abundant pools. In the 
 winter Mackenzie would occasionally don his fur cap and 
 warm Chinese foot-gear, and mounting the heavy spring- 
 less cart of the north, run out into the villages and towns 
 whence his patients had come. What cared he for the bed- 
 lam and vermin of inns and their brick beds, when he could 
 reach grateful patients, who were only too glad to receive 
 the Christain Tai-fu, Great-father !- But in the north he 
 had no beautiful Lu-Shan to which he could flee in time of 
 sickness ; instead, the mouth of the Pei-ho, with its mud 
 flats and homes of pilots, was his place of refuge and 
 furnished him with pure air and sea breezes as their only 
 attractions. 
 
 His People. We shall see in the following chapter of 
 what sort they were, medically considered. But as he met 
 them day by day they at once attracted and repelled him. 
 Their duplicity and honesty, conservatism and conservation 
 of the best as they apprehend it, cruelty and tenderness, 
 atheism and many gods, and a host of other qualities ex- 
 pressed by similar antonyms, were his constant study. His 
 general estimate of them is thus recorded: "The more I 
 know of the Chinese, especially of their educated men, the 
 more I feel that there is a mine of wealth here. The 
 leaven will take long to spread, but it is already at work. 
 The inhabitants of the Pacific Islands are rapidly influenced 
 
75 
 
 in comparison with the Chinese, but though the process 
 here will be slower, it will be far mightier in results." 
 
 SUGGESTED READINGS. 
 
 Burns: W. C. Burns, (1S70). 
 
 Coltman: The Chinese, (1891), Chs. i-vii. 
 
 Douglas: Society in China, (1894), Chs. vi, vn. 
 
 Encyclopaedia of Missions, (1891), articles J. Kenneth Mackenzie,, 
 and China, especially Pp. 255-264. 
 
 E. M. : The Chinese ; Their mental and Moral Characteris- 
 tics, (1877). 
 
 General Encyclopedias, articles Hankow and Tientsin. 
 
 Gordon: The Double Cure ; or, What is a Medical Mission? 
 
 Henry: The Cross and the Dragon, (1885), Ch. in. 
 
 Holcomb: The Real Chinaman, (1894). 
 
 James Henderson, ( 1873). 
 
 Leisure Hour, Vol. XL., Pp. 777, ff. 
 
 Robson: Griffith John, (1889). 
 
 Smith: Chinese Characteristics, (1894). 
 
 Bryson: John Kenneth Mackenzie. Early Days, Ch 1. ; Student 
 Life and Voyage to China, Ch. n. ; Life in Hankow, Ch. in. ; 
 His Northern Home, Ch. vin. ; His Inner Life, Chs. xiv., 
 xv. ; Last Things, Ch. xvi. 
 
VI 
 
 MACKENZIE, THE MEDICAL MISSIONARY 
 
 A little while for winning souls to Jesus, 
 Ere we behold His beauty face to face ; 
 A little while for healing soul diseases, 
 By telling others of a Saviour's grace. 
 
 — Lines sent Mackenzie by Dr SchofielcTs widow. 
 
 Chinese Views of fiedicine. Dr Mackenzie labored in 
 a land where medicine was studied quite widely and where 
 men of education acted as physicians. In order to appre- 
 ciate more fully the value of his work, we should glance, at 
 least, at the conditions which surrounded him in his work. 
 
 Surgery, which in so many lands has become an art 
 while medicine is still a phase of superstition, has never 
 been developed in China. "Surgical operations are chiefly 
 confined to removing a tooth, puncturing sores and tumors 
 with needles, or trying to reduce dislocations and reunite 
 fractures by pressure or bandaging. Sometimes they suc- 
 cessfully execute more difficult cases, as the amputation of a 
 finger, operation for a harelip, and insertion of false teeth. 
 Turning in of the eyelashes is a common ailment, 
 and native practitioners attempt to cure it by everting the 
 lid and fastening it in its place by two slips of bamboo 
 tightly bound on, or by a pair of tweezers, until the loose 
 fold on the edge sloughs off." From the sixth century 
 b. c, the surgeon has placed great reliance upon acupunc- 
 ture and the moxa. 
 
 Perhaps one reason why the Chinese have made so little 
 progress in surgery is the fact that they have made no use 
 of dissection and depend for their knowledge of anatomy 
 upon a copper model of a man, pierced with numerous 
 
AS MEDICAL MISSIONARY 77" 
 
 holes and inscribed in different places with the names of 
 the pulses, and upon two other anatomical figures made in 
 1027 a. d. to illustrate the art of acupuncture. 
 
 Their theory of disease might seem to us unique, did 
 we not remember more senseless theories prevalent among 
 other uncultured nations, and the further facts that in 
 Greece, "the mother-land of rational medicine," the "tem- 
 ple sleep" and its dreams were the basis of priestly prescrip- 
 tion. Hippocrates, whose name stands first in ancient 
 medicine, held tenaciously to the theoretical notions of the 
 four elements, — hot, cold, wet and dry, — and to the Hip- 
 pocratic humors. The hardly less famous Galen placed 
 great confidence in the doctrine of critical days, which he 
 believed to be influenced by the moon, and seems to have 
 relied more on amulets than on medicine. According to 
 Chinese authorities disease is due to a "disagreement of the 
 yin and the yang, [the male and female principles of Chi- 
 nese philosophy], the presence of bad humors, or the more 
 powerful agency of evil spirits, and until these agencies are 
 corrected medicines cannot exercise their full efficacy." It 
 is also supposed to be due to the onset of the five elements, 
 — water, fire, wood, metal, earth, — or to their wrong 
 reaction. 
 
 Their materia niedica presents a strange conglomera- 
 tion of useful, useless and harmful ingredients. A list of 
 442 medicinal agents shows that 71 per cent, are vegetable, 
 18 per cent, animal and 11 per cent, mineral. If one were 
 to peep into celestial gallipots he might find such surprises 
 as snake-skins, scorpion stings, rhinoceros-horn shavings, 
 moths, oyster-shells, human and silk-worm secretions, tiger 
 bones, etc. These and their effective remedies are nicely 
 accommodated to the particular one of the nine classes of 
 diseases with which the patient is afflicted. 
 
 Native Practitioners. The Chinese Dr Rhubarb does 
 not arrive at his dignities without effort. His course of 
 study is not definite, though it includes the mastery of cer- 
 tain treatises of acknowledged weight, many of them de- 
 scribed in Wylie's "Notes on Chinese Literature." The 
 prospective doctor is also suppposed to have gotten hold of 
 some manuscript medical works of a physician of repute 
 
*jS KENNETH MACKENZIE, CHINA'S PHYSICIAN 
 
 and to have looked, at least, at the diagram which presents 
 popular opinion concerning the inner economy of man, a 
 diagram much resembling the cross-section of an egg en- 
 closing a pine-cone and half a dozen angle worms. No 
 diploma is needed, the practitioner being kept in check by 
 one of the sections of the Government Code which exacts 
 various penalties, even to the beheading of the physician, 
 of him who causes the death of a patient by departing from 
 established forms. 
 
 Diagnosis is considered the main point by the doctor. 
 Coming to the patient in some state, he sees the disease, as 
 the phrase for the operation is translated. " The right hand 
 is placed upon a book to steady it and the doctor, with 
 much gravity and a learned look, places his three fingers 
 upon the pulsating vessel, pressing it alternately with each 
 finger on the inner and outer side, and then making with 
 three ringers a steady pressure for several minutes, not with 
 watch in hand, to note the frequency of its beats, but with 
 a thoughtful and calculating mind, to diagnose the disease 
 and prognosticate its issue. The fingers being removed, the 
 patient immediately stretches out the other hand, which is 
 felt in the same manner." With few questions concerning 
 his symptoms, the doctor proceeds to write out the numer- 
 ous ingredients of a prescription which is pretty sure to 
 contain decoctions measuring into the pints or quarts, be- 
 sides powders, boluses, pills or electuaries. This done and 
 the fee — "golden thanks" — received, he departs to return 
 no more unless invited. As for the victim — who is literally 
 a patient, — he may have resorted to the lot in order to learn 
 what physician to employ. If so, the same man is asked 
 to return again. In case he has bargained with a doctor to 
 cure him in a certain time, he lays aside all work and 
 ceases to eat that he may give his entire time to swallowing 
 horse doses of all sorts of concoctions. If at the expira- 
 tion of the time, he is not cured, a new physician is called 
 in and eventually the patient dies or recovers. 
 
 Chinese Hospitals. Before the introduction of Chris- 
 tianity into the Empire, these were unknown, unless one 
 considers foundling hospitals and lazarettoes as such. In 
 the latter the poor leper can secure a fairly comfortable 
 
AS MEDICAL MISSIONARY 79 
 
 close to his wretched life by the payment of a sufficiently 
 large fee. In the foundling hospitals the visitor chiefly re- 
 marks the dirt, the large mortality and the fact that the 
 babies never cry, being constantly drugged. 
 
 Hackenzie's Two Hospitals. To such a medical need 
 he had come to minister, but he was pained to find at the 
 outset a deeply-seated prejudice against foreign medicine. 
 The fact that foreign physicians ask questions of a patient 
 instead of learning his condition from the light and heavy 
 pressure on the inch, bar and cubit pulses of the two wrists, 
 as well as the stories about foreigners' gouging out native 
 eyes and hearts, with which to make medicines, telescope 
 lenses and famous elixirs, had strengthened the ever-present 
 conservatism into a virtual Chinese Wall which had first to 
 be overthrown. 
 
 1. T/ie Hankow Hospital. This was all ready to 
 hand, having been cared for since 1866 by Drs Reid and 
 Shearer. The building, erected at the joint expense of the 
 foreign community, native merchants and the London Mis- 
 sion, is thus described by Mackenzie : "The hospital is a 
 fine, substantially-built, roomy building, very well venti- 
 lated and arranged. On the ground floor at the back is the 
 chapel, seating about 250 people ; here there is preaching 
 every morning to patients and to any others who may drop 
 in from the streets. In front of the chapel is the dispensary 
 and consulting room, where the patients are seen, a vestry 
 for the missionaries, and a room in which the resident 
 assistant lives. On the upper story are two large wards, 
 two small ones, and a good- sized ward for foreigners ; the 
 naval surgeon sends his worst cases here. Outside the 
 general building is a woman's ward and two other small 
 buildings, used as schoolrooms, with the porter's lodge. 
 Trees are planted all round the building, so that it has 
 quite a pleasant appearance." 
 
 2. The Tientsin Hospital. When he arrived at this 
 port the Mission had no hospital, though a medical work 
 had been carried on since 1869, by a native dispenser, 
 trained in Peking by Dr Dudgeon. Dr Mackenzie found 
 this man without foreign drugs, and practicing much after 
 the native fashion. Himself without money to buy medi- 
 
So KENNETH MACKENZIE, CHINA'S PHYSICIAN 
 
 cines, he could only sit down and try to adjust his tongue 
 to the new dialect, while he united with his colleagues in 
 earnest prayer that God would open a door of escape from 
 their financial dilemma. These prayers resulted in the de- 
 termination to draw up a petition to Viceroy Li, M set- 
 ting forth the advantages of establishing a hospital for the 
 benefit of the Chinese, telling him what had been done else- 
 where in medical missionary enterprise, and soliciting his 
 aid." Although this memorial was written in perspicuous 
 Chinese and presented by the very influential American, 
 Mr W. N. Pethick, it received no attention. 
 
 Prayers, however, were doing their work. At the 
 prayer-meeting of the Mission on the first of August, the 
 topic was, " Ask, and it shall be given you," a promise' 
 which those present again pleaded in the matter of the me- 
 morial. As the meeting was breaking up, a courier from 
 the Viceroy arrived with the request that Mackenzie would 
 hasten with Dr Irwin to his residence, to attend his wife. 
 That morning a member of the British Legation had been 
 with the Viceroy, and noticing that he was sad, inquired 
 the cause. When informed of Lady LPs serious illness, 
 he suggested that foreign physicians be summoned. His 
 excellency objected that it would be impermissible for her 
 to be attended by a foreigner, but his good sense finally 
 overcame immemorial custom, and the two physicians were 
 called. Prayer was the more instant when so critical a 
 case was undertaken, and God was pleased to use their ef- 
 forts to the recovery of the illustrious patient. During 
 convalescence Mackenzie suggested that Miss Dr Howard, 
 then in Peking, be invited to remain at the lady's residence 
 until she had entirely recovered. This resulted in the es- 
 tablishment by Lady Li of a woman's hospital, which was 
 placed in Dr Howard's charge, and soon passed into the 
 hands of the Woman's Society of the Methodist Board 
 North. 
 
 While Mackenzie was still attending Lady Li, he and 
 the community physician, Dr Irwin, gave an exhibition 
 of foreign surgery in the presence of the Viceroy, which 
 even more favorably impressed him. He had appointed 
 these two men as physcians to his own family, and when 
 
AS MEDICAL MISSIONARY 8t 
 
 the question of salary came up, Mackenzie asked that none 
 be given him, but that instead the expense of his medical 
 work be defrayed. At first a room outside the official office 
 was set apart for medical purposes, but as this was found 
 to impede public business, a quadrangle in one of the finest 
 temples of the city was assigned him. Thither and to other 
 yamens in the city he went on a handsome pony provided 
 by the Viceroy, attended by a groom and a military official 
 appointed to escort him. The temple was three miles from 
 his house and proper religious work could not be done at 
 such a distance ; hence plans were made for a hospital 
 building on the London Mission premises. Subscriptions, 
 coming mainly from wealthy Chinese patients, enabled him 
 to erect one of the finest hospitals in North China. 
 
 This building has been thus described : "It is erected 
 in the best style of Chinese architecture, and has an ex- 
 tremely picturesque and attractive appearance. The front 
 building, standing in its own courtyard, is ascended by 
 broad stone steps, which lead from the covered gateway to 
 a verandah, w r ith massive wooden pillars running along its 
 whole length. A hall divides it into two portions. On the 
 right side and in front is a spacious dispensary, which, 
 thanks to the liberality of the Viceroy, is wanting in noth- 
 ing, rivaling any English dispensary in the abundance and 
 variety of the drugs, appliances, etc. ; behind this is a 
 roomy drug store. On the left of the hall is a large waiting- 
 room, with benches for thejconvenience of the patients, and 
 used on Sundays and other days as a preaching hall. Be- 
 hind, and to one side, is the Chinese reception-room always 
 to be found in a native building. The rooms are very lofty, . 
 without ceilings, leaving exposed the huge painted beams,, 
 many times larger than foreigners deem necessary, but the; 
 pride of the Chinese builder. 
 
 44 Running off in two parallel wings at the back are the 
 surgery and wards, the latter able to accommodate thirty- 
 six in-patients. The wards in the right wing, four in num- 
 ber, are small, intended each to receive only three patients. 
 The wards are all furnished with kangs instead of 
 beds, as is the custom in North China. These kangs are 
 built of bricks, with flues running underneath, so that in 
 
82 KENNETH MACKENZIE, CHINA'S PHYSICIAN 
 
 winter they can be heated ; the bedding is spread upon a 
 mat over the warm bricks." This building was opened in 
 the presence of the Viceroy and representatives of different 
 consulates, and the following Sabbath a thanksgiving ser- 
 vice was held there, attended by members of the various 
 Tientsin churches. , 
 
 Mackenzie's Assistants. The plant having been se- 
 cured, proper assistants were required. With so few 
 Christians to select from, it became a matter for earnest 
 prayer, just as had the erection of J:he hospital. When se- 
 cured they needed to be trained, and all this work fell upon 
 Mackenzie's shoulders. 
 
 As in every port, and especially where a river is ice- 
 bound for three months each year, thus necessitating the 
 stay in the city of surgeons of various gunboats, it was easy 
 to secure volunteer assistants. Some of these men were 
 extremely helpful medically, though as they did not know 
 the language and were in many cases not Christians, they 
 did little for the spiritual side of the work. 
 
 The First Government Medical School. A more com- 
 petent company of assistants was needed than his dispen- 
 sers constituted ; hence when the Government recalled the 
 students sent to America under Yung Wing's Educational 
 Commission, Mackenzie petitioned the Viceroy for eight of 
 them, and with them the first Government Medical School 
 began. While it was a joy to teach these bright fellows, 
 and though Mackenzie was assisted by Dr Atterbury of 
 Peking, the community physicians and the surgeons on 
 duty at Tientsin and later by two medical colleagues, the 
 brunt of the work fell on the Doctor himself. The eight 
 proved apt students, and after completing a full course, they 
 received buttons corresponding somewhat to those of civil 
 officials of the Empire. 
 
 What to do with the graduates was then the problem. 
 Receiving government appointments, they found them- 
 selves under the corrupt officials of army and navy, whose 
 peculations drained off all the medical appropriations, thus 
 leaving them only practitioners of the old sort to compete 
 with on the basis of native medicines, which were cheap and 
 so obtainable. This was a deep disappointment to them 
 
AS MEDICAL MISSIONARY 83 
 
 and to their instructor, and only a week before his death, 
 when asked about his students, Mackenzie said that it was 
 his intention to close the medical school soon. Happily 
 this was not done, as that period was the darkness before 
 dawn, and his successor was able to report a better state 
 of things. 
 
 Statement of Cases. Dr Mackenzie's general practice 
 presents the ordinary features of Chinese hospitals. Out- 
 door patients, as usual, were unsatisfactory, as medicines 
 are often taken in doses many times greater than prescribed, 
 proper care and diet are almost impossible, and the native 
 custom of running to another physician, if relief is not im- 
 mediate, militates against successful treatment. The com- 
 monest diseases thus treated were, — stated in descending or- 
 der of frequency, — dyspepsia, chronic rheumatism, asthma, 
 ringworm and bronchitis. I?i-door patients were in the 
 wards about three weeks on an average, thus securing most 
 favorable health conditions, and furnishing an admirable 
 opportunity for religious impression and instruction. Dis- 
 eases of the eye were most common, and then followed 
 those of the digestive system, of the bones and joints, of the 
 respiratory and the nervous systems. Of operations, the 
 most common were those performed on the eye, after which 
 came amputations, dislocations and fractures. This ab- 
 stract hardly gives a fair account of the diseases of China ; 
 for, like Dr Parker, who in 1834 "opened China to the 
 gospel at the point of his lancet, " Mackenzie sometimes 
 selected his patients, taking in those whom native practi- 
 tioners could not aid, and rejecting those cases which were 
 chronic or hopeless. 
 
 Opium work was made much of, though he hardly kept 
 a refuge for these unfortunates. Out of an experience with 
 nearly a thousand such patients, Mackenzie writes : " The 
 habit of opium smoking, prolonged for any length of time, 
 plays havoc with the man's natural energy, rendering him 
 indolent and enervated. Few, in this condition, can, un- 
 aided, combat the craving for opium and effectually reform. 
 The attempt is often made, but as often ends in disappoint- 
 ment. For a time they persevere, but when the intolerable 
 craving, accompanied by extreme bodily depression, with 
 
84 KENNETH MACKENZIE, CHINA'S PHYSICIAN 
 
 violent achings of the joints and muscular pains, sets in, 
 they fly to their old enemy, and drown themselves in opium 
 stupor." Concerning the treatment, he says: " There is 
 no medicinal specific guaranteed to cure ; the object aimed 
 at is to relieve symptoms as they arise, and so to help the 
 patient back to health and freedom. I always tell them the 
 medicine given them is to relieve the pain and craving, but 
 they are to pray to God and believe in Jesus, to get the de- 
 sire taken away from their hearts, and new hearts given to 
 them." 
 
 Of course unustial cases were encountered, and he 
 smiled many a time at medical incidents in native practice. 
 Thus he notices a physician pretending to remove worms 
 from teeth to cure toothache ; another thrusts a needle 
 many times into the gastric region to cure dyspepsia ; a 
 young fellow comes for treatment, from whose arm a piece 
 has been cut out and administered to a sick father as an in- 
 fallible remedy ; a girl of six is seen, upon whose stomach 
 is laid a large toad, while doses of scorpion-sting broth are 
 given. On one occasion he was called to see a man who 
 was laid out in his grave clothes, and whose daughter urged 
 him not to delay his demise, as she was ready for his death. 
 In still another case he is summoned to a man who had been 
 some time in his coffin.' He removes a tumor weighing 
 twenty-five pounds ; he gives sight to two girls blind from 
 birth because of cataract, and as a result a church of more 
 than a hundred members springs up ; he amputates a girl's 
 foot, leaving her a heel to walk on ; he attends a Taoist priest 
 who had his ears nailed for two days to his temple door to 
 raise funds for its repair ; he inserts a silver tube in a man's 
 windpipe, with the result that he gained the reputation of 
 giving men two mouths. 
 
 The Question of Fees. Mackenzie felt strongly on this 
 matter. From the poor he did not wish to receive anything, 
 and in general, to avoid the imputation that his work was 
 a mere matter of business, he refused remuneration. But 
 he made it very clear to well-to-do patients that they owed 
 a debt of gratitude for healing received, and from such he 
 received enough so that he laid by for the hospital a reserve 
 fund of over $10,000. 
 
AS MEDICAL MISSIONARY 85 
 
 Spiritual Element ;in flackenzie's Work. His one 
 
 aim in coming to China was "to make medicine the hand- 
 maid of the gospel, seeking, through the administration of 
 medical relief, to advance the cause of our Lord and Mas- 
 ter Jesus Christ, thus combining the healing of the body 
 with the curing of the soul, in accordance with the words 
 of Scripture, 4 And He sent them to preach the Kingdom 
 of God, and to heal the Sick.' " We saw in the previous 
 chapter that Mackenzie was a believer in Chaucer's doc- 
 trine that the teacher of Christ's lore and that of his apos- 
 tles must first follow it himself. Looking to other lines of 
 effort, we find the following especially emphasized. 
 
 1. He considered prayer an essential part of his 
 strength. Opium patients and others, as has been stated, 
 were bidden to pray for their double healing, while the 
 Doctor himself never attempted an important operation 
 without special prayer for the needed skill. He believed 
 that every medical missionary should be a faith healer in 
 this sense : "He should give all the attention possible to 
 his case, use every means he can think of, every agency or 
 drug that he knows of ; but he should also do so in humble 
 dependence upon God for His blessing." 
 
 2. Preaching was not merely a part of his work; it 
 was one of the most important items in the day's program. 
 He usually did some of it himself using such passages as 
 the prodigal son, the barren fig tree, blind Bartimeus and 
 the palsied borne of four, as his texts. During the entire 
 time that patients were in the waiting room, someone was 
 either talking or preaching to them. 
 
 3. But such formal work was less profitable than con- 
 versational and instructional work with individuals and 
 little groups. One looking in upon the wards any after- 
 noon might see knots of patients gathered about one or two 
 beds listening to one of the hospital helpers as he spoke of 
 the love of Jesus or tried to teach them the elements of 
 Christian truth. He writes: "Portions of gospels and 
 tracts are scattered about the wards, and as we pass from 
 patient to patient, dressing wounds and attending to the 
 wants of all, we question them upon the books by their 
 side and exhort them to think of the truths of Christianity, 
 
36 KENNETH MACKENZIE, CHINA'S PHYSICIAN 
 
 and thus have innumerable opportunities for individual 
 dealing." 
 
 4. To prepare assistants for such work, Mackenzie em- 
 phasized the Bible class. The work was very interesting 
 because made as conversational as possible. One class was 
 held daily, except Sunday, for three quarters of an hour in 
 the morning ; another, on Tuesday evening, was used to 
 gather up the work of the week and for drawing the net ; 
 a third on Friday evening was for helpers and Christians 
 only ; and still another was held on Sunday, when often 
 people from the missionary ranks would drop in to enjoy 
 his teaching. Much prayer accompanied these exercises 
 and in addition the medical students were encouraged to 
 hold private meetings by themselves. 
 
 5. The Doctor tried, also, to keep hold of patients who 
 had become impressed with the truth, but who had gone to 
 distant homes. At one time, he employed a special helper 
 to visit such cases; at another, he himself went out touring 
 to find such men, though the fear of neighbors that he had 
 come to collect money from former patients, sometimes 
 made the process of locating them difficult. Usually he 
 was received most warmly by those who regarded him as 
 their physical saviour, and as their dearest friend. 
 
 6. The propagation of this evangelical crusade con- 
 stituted one of Mackenzie's important duties. In 1886 the 
 Medical Missionary Association of China was established, 
 as also its organ, "The Medical Missionary Journal." 
 Mackenzie's work had been so intensely evangelical, that 
 it became perfectly natural to ask him to edit its evangelis- 
 tic department, and during the last fifteen months of his 
 life, he contributed often to its pages. In one of these arti- 
 cles, "The Evangelistic Side of a Medical Mission," he 
 urges every medical missionary to engage personally in 
 such work for these five reasons : he can best influence his 
 own patients ; his assistants will be, under God, largely 
 what he makes them ; unless he attends to it, the full value 
 of the medical mission as a Chistianizing agency will not 
 be developed ; his own spiritual life requires it ; and it en- 
 ables the physician to soar above the daily drudgery and the 
 depressing influences of continuous labor among dirty and 
 
AS MEDICAL MISSIONARY 8j 
 
 sin-saturated wretches who throng missionary hospitals and 
 dispensaries. 
 
 Tsung erh Yen Chih. This phrase, so often used by 
 Mackenzie, and meaning a concise summary of what has 
 been said or written, is not in his case exhausted when we 
 say of him that he was a man placed in a providential re- 
 lation to Li Hung Chang, who largely through his agency 
 adopted modern medicine for army and navy, thus giving 
 it entrance into the family of the Emperor himself, and fa- 
 vorably impressing many officials of high rank with the 
 fruits of Christianity. Another man in his position might, 
 perhaps, have done as much as he in such a direction. 
 His service to the great cause which he represents lies in 
 the magnificent object lesson of his godly life, and in the 
 bright and cheerful Christianity which he represented to his 
 medical students and to the medical missionaries of China, 
 who knew him only to admire and emulate his spiritual 
 qualities. 
 
 He has given us the gist of that successful life in these 
 words : "One of the best ways in which the medical mis- 
 sionary can influence his patients is by keeping up the spirit- 
 ual life of his assistants, encouraging them to prayer and 
 the frequent study of the Scriptures. Of course, he can 
 only aid them as he is himself abiding in Christ, and draw- 
 ing strength and life from his Saviour. He cannot give 
 what" he has not himself got. The knowledge of this should 
 stimulate us to a constant and close walk with God. It is 
 of little account for us to pray for the outpouring of the 
 Holy Spirit upon our assistants or patients until the great 
 cry of our hearts is, ' Lord, fill me ! ' and then when we are 
 full, from us will go forth streams of living water to those 
 around.'* 
 
 SUGGESTED READINGS. 
 
 Century Illustrated Magazine, August 1896, Pages 560-571. 
 China Mission Hand-Book, (1896), Medical Statistics. 
 Coltman : The Chinese, (1891), Chs, vm-x. 
 
 Creegan and Goodnovj : Great Missionaries of the Church, (1895), 
 Ch. x. 
 
88 KENNETH MACKENZIE, CHINA'S PHYSICIAN 
 
 Doolittle: Social Life of the Chinese, (1865), Vol. I., Ch. v. 
 
 Douglas: Society in China, (1894), Ch. viii. 
 
 Doivkount: Murdered Millions, (1894). 
 
 Dudgeon: The Diseases of China, (1877). 
 
 Encyclopaedia of Missions, (1891 ), Article Medical Missions. 
 
 Foster: Christian Progress in China, (1889), Pp. 162-188. 
 
 Hanbury : Science Papers. (1876), Pp. 211-277. 
 
 Henry ; The Cross and the Dragon, (1885), Ch. xiv. 
 
 Lochhart: The Medical Missionary in China, (1861), Chs. vi-x. 
 
 Lowe: Medical Missions, (1887), Ch. v. 
 
 Mabie : In brightest Asia, (1891 ), Pp. 91-95. 
 
 Missionary Review of the World, September, 1896, Pp. 664-680, 697. 
 
 Smith: Chinese Characteristics, (1894), Chs. xi., xvi. 
 
 Smith: Contributions to Chinese Materia Medica, (1871 ). 
 
 Stevens and Markwick : The Life of Peter Parker, M. D., (1896), 
 Chs. viii., ix. 
 
 Tenney: The Triumphs of the Cross, (1895), Pp. 613-617. 
 
 Williams: The Middle Kingdom (1882 ), Vol. II., Pp. 1 18-134. 
 
 Bryson : Johh Kenneth Mackenzie. Country Work and Perse- 
 cution, Ch. iv.; Overcomimg Prejudice, Chs. vi., vn. ; Medi- 
 cine and the Viceroy, Ch. ix. ; Chinese Medical Students, 
 Ch. xi. ; xii. ; Strange Phases of Chinese Life, Ch. xiii. ; 
 Medical Review of Mackenzie's Work. Appendix II. ; Spirit- 
 ual Side of His Work, Appendixes III., IV. 
 
VII 
 
 MACKAY's EARLY LIFE AND HIS AFRICAN FIELD 
 
 His beauty and extraordinary gentleness, together with his won- 
 derful aptitude for picking up all kinds of handicraft, speedily in- 
 gratiated him with the workmen, . . . When he appeared on 
 the scene he was accosted with the question, " Weel, laddie gaen to 
 gie's a sermon the day?" and the invariable reply (in which there 
 was something like prophetic instinct) was, " Please give me trowel ; 
 can preach and build same time." — Anecdote of Mackay at three 
 years. 
 
 Birth. Alexander Murdoch Mackay's sister, Mrs Har- 
 rison, vividly describes that snowy 15th of October, 1849, 
 when one of Africa's greatest benefactors first saw the light. 
 His father, — geographer, geologist and author, as well as 
 Free Church minister, — is surrounded in his study by gazet- 
 teers, atlases, and books of travel, while on a nail hangs 
 a map of Africa, and from the walls Disruption worthies 
 and stern reformers look down. The infant Alexander, 
 brought in by his nurse Annie, is unnoticed until she has 
 listened to a geographico-missionary discourse on central 
 Africa. This story is an essentially true one and ends with 
 a prophecy when the father says: "The gospel banner 
 will yet be planted at the very heart of this continent, al- 
 though not likely in your day nor mine, Annie ;" to which 
 the good nurse replied, "But may be it'll be in your son's, 
 sir ! and wha will say he'll nae hae a han' in it?" 
 
 Birthplace. Alexander spent his early years in the high- 
 lands of Scotland at the little village of Rhynie, located 
 inland in Aberdeenshire. Surrounded by the scenery of 
 the Grampians and living at the foot of picturesque Tap o' 
 Noth, the child could not but be responsive to influences 
 which have helped make pure, strong and efficient many 
 
90 ALEXANDER MACKAY, UGANDA'S ENGINEER 
 
 of his countrymen. Rhynie is a pastoral and sparsely set- 
 tled district whose inhabitants, of Pictish origin, have al- 
 ways been strongly wedded to religion. Iron was in their 
 blood, simplicity marked their lives, and independence their 
 thoughts. The Bible was their household book and God 
 their supreme and daily ruler. These Bible loving neigh- 
 bors, his pious nurse, the heathery slopes of Noth, rippling 
 burns running through the peat moss, whirring moor-cocks, 
 bleating sheep and modest flowers constituted his early and 
 helpful environment. 
 
 Parentage. Far more vital in their influence upon him 
 than these surroundings were his parents. Alexander Mac- 
 kay was to his son what James Mill was to John Stuart, 
 though happily religion was not lacking either in Mr 
 Mackay's life or in his conversation. An ardent student 
 and a born teacher, he found time in his secluded parish to 
 prepare various scientific books, but it was a greater delight 
 still to instruct his boy who until fourteen knew no other 
 teacher. He was a conservative educator, believing that 
 mathematics and the classics were the best foundation for a 
 general education. He had the rare faculty of making in- 
 struction interesting and rote-learning had to give place to 
 clear reasoning. Alexander responded to such an instruc- 
 tor with a craving for knowledge which found its keenest 
 satisfaction in long walks which were voyages of discovery 
 in the world of nature. Other studies were also included 
 in this peripatetic school, and the two often occasioned 
 wonder as they paused while the father demonstraed in the 
 sand by the roadside a geometrical proposition, or traced 
 the probable course of the Zambesi. Minute observation and 
 thoroughness were so enforced by this teacher that Mackay 
 might have echoed John Stuart Mill's boast, "Mine was 
 not an education of cram." Nor was it confined to material 
 and speculative matters ; for the cottage prayer-meetings 
 and "catechising," where the Scriptures and Shorter Cate- 
 chism were explained, gave the boy deep insight into the 
 thoughts of godly men and of God himself. 
 
 If the father was Mackay's teacher, his mother y Margaret 
 Lillie, of Huguenot descent, was the moulder of his char- 
 acter. She possessed much literary and linguistic ability, 
 
EARLY LIFE AND AFRICAN FIELD 9 1 
 
 — extending even to the Hebrew, — and so was an additional 
 aid to Alexander, who not only acquired her style, but at 
 the same time drank in tales of Disruption and Seceding 
 heroes with the same eagerness accorded to stories of 
 Huguenot martyrs. These recitals were usually followed 
 by the injunction, 
 
 " O ye who boast 
 In jour free veins the blood of sires like these, 
 Lose not their lineaments." 
 
 Mrs Mackay made Sunday the happiest day of the week. 
 After the Bible and catechism lessons were successfully 
 mastered came the reward, "a missionary story," which 
 she told most interestingly. In her childhood she had been 
 deeply moved by a missionary sermon and the account of 
 that experience gave Mackay oue of his first missionary 
 impulses. Mrs Mackay's life was saturated with Scripture 
 and Alexander imbibed it most eagerly ; though not until 
 her death in his sixteenth year, when she left him her Bags- 
 ter's Bible with the dying message to " 'Search the Scrip- 
 tures/ not to read them only, but to search, and then he 
 would meet her again in glory," did he make them the guide 
 of his life. 
 
 Boyhood. The influences already named produced their 
 natural fruitage. Intellectually he was precocious. He 
 read the New Testament fluently at three ; at seven, "Para- 
 dise Lost," Russell's "History of Modern Europe," Gib- 
 bon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," and Rob- 
 ertson's " History of the Discovery of America" were his 
 text-books, after which his reading lesson was the leading 
 article in the newspaper fully explained by his father. 
 Euler's Algebra falls into his hands when he is eight and 
 opens up a fairy world to him. D'Aubigne's "Reforma- 
 tion," and indeed every other work that he found were 
 fairly devoured. 
 
 J?t practical thiugs, also, he was an eager learner. At 
 three he imitates stone masons ; at four when told to bring 
 a heavy bar, he carries it by lifting it one end at a time and 
 going around it. At nine years he feels that he is old enough 
 to have a printing press, because Luther has said .that 
 "Printing is the latest and greatest gift by which God en- 
 
92 ALEXANDER MACKAY, UGANDA'S ENGINEER 
 
 ables us to advance the things of the Gospel ;" to which the 
 boy added : M Skill takes no room in the pocket, . 
 and some day I might find it useful." The press was bought 
 and years afterward did " advance the things of the Gos- 
 pel" on the shores of Victoria Nyanza. From eleven to 
 thirteen years of age books were thrown aside and the gar- 
 den and farm, the pony, locomotive engines, machinery and 
 handicrafts of every description, occupied his thoughts. 
 Though at fourteen he took up his books again at the Aber- 
 deen Grammar school, even there the art of photography 
 and the ship-building yard had a perfect fascination for him. 
 
 His spiritual life was always deepening, thanks to his 
 mother's care. A strong sense of rectitude, dating from his 
 fifth year and the Brig o'Bogie where nurse Annie threw the 
 leather "tawse" into the water, Sunday teachings, parish 
 catechisings, " Pilgrim's Progress* and MrsMackay's pray- 
 ers were used by the Spirit to draw him to God. 
 
 All the while that broader touch of the world, so often 
 denied country children, came to him. The best literature 
 and periodicals, which he was required to read, made him 
 a cosmopolitan, and his father's fame brought to the manse 
 men like Hugh Miller and Sirs Roderick Murchison and 
 A. Ramsay, who were greatly attracted by the boys' skill in 
 map-drawing and type-setting. Men and women of the 
 Drumtochty type also had a hardly less marked influence 
 on him, provincial though they were. 
 
 Life In Edinburgh. Mr Mackay desired his son to be 
 a minister, and the mother would gladly have seen him a 
 missionary, but to neither of these was he inclined. Ma- 
 chinery and engineering were his deepest love, and when 
 his father's financial limitations were a barrier to his enter- 
 ing on these studies, he went to Edinburgh and taught three 
 hours a day to meet his expenses while studying. Two 
 years, spent in the Free Church Training College for 
 Teachers, — where he was marked ninety per cent, on the 
 Bible, Geography, History, Arithmetic, Algebra, Geome- 
 try, Latin, Greek, School Management, Skill in Teaching 
 and Theory of Music, and where he won prizes for draw- 
 ing, — were referred to in Africa as being of great benefit. 
 The next four years were busy ones. Engineering and 
 
EARLY LIFE AND AFRICAN FIELD 93 
 
 kindred sciences were studied at the University for three 
 years and one year was devoted to Surveying and For- 
 tification. Meanwhile, besides his teaching and attendance 
 on evening lectures, he spent the afternoons at Leith en- 
 gaged in practical engineering. 
 
 Sundays were days of equal activity. At the church of 
 Dr Horatius Bonar, who fostered in him "habits of rev- 
 erent and constant fellowship with God, and daily study of 
 the Holy Scriptures," he gained weekly strength. The af- 
 ternoons found him conducting childrens' meetings or in 
 mission halls, and in the evening he was a regular teacher 
 at the Sunday-school connected with Dr Guthrie's Origi- 
 nal Ragged School. 
 
 In Germany, 1873-1876. November ist saw him en 
 route for Berlin whither he went to master the German 
 language as the key to its valuable lore, to perfect himself 
 as an engineer and, above all, to "use every opportunity of 
 diffusing scriptural truth and of winning souls for Christ." 
 He readily secured a good position as draftsman on loco- 
 motives and portable steam engines in a large engineering 
 firm, and found his fascinating employment tempting him 
 to forget God. His fellow draftsman, moreover, were infi- 
 dels and blasphemers, but he made this an occasion for do- 
 ing personal work among them, for which he seeks Mc- 
 Cheyne's equipment : " Some believers are a garden that 
 has fruit trees, and so are usful ; but we ought also to have 
 spices, and so be attractive." Soon promotion came and 
 he was made head of the locomotive department, with a 
 larger sphere of influence. 
 
 Mackay's religious life and usefulness were greatly 
 deepened and enlarged by notes of Dr Bonar's sermons, 
 sent weekly by his sister, and especially by the friendship 
 of Court Preacher Baur,who was drawn to the young Scotch- 
 man and invited him to live at his own home as his "dear 
 son." Not only did this give him exceptional opportunities 
 for learning German, but it also brought him into contact 
 with the highest Christian society of Berlin, including the 
 sister of Prince Bismarck. At the Bible readings given at 
 Dr Baur's and through the Bible Class held on Sunday 
 evenings he secured and imparted much good, especially in 
 
94 ALEXANDER MACKAY, UGANDA'S ENGINEER 
 
 connection with American students. Other activities, such 
 as personally inviting men to church and distributing tracts 
 to cabmen, rilled his leisure hours. What his life was re- 
 ligiously is described by a journal kept at this period, the 
 pages of which are filled with sentences like these: "O 
 for nearness to God ! God grant me I pray Thee, a deep 
 spirit of humility — the broken will and the contrite heart. " 
 
 " Slept in again. No time for prayer or reading 
 God's Word in the morning. Yet the Lord is gracious to 
 me." . . " Attaining day by day to a little more child- 
 like faith in Jesus, and therefore joy and peace." 
 44 Teach me, my Saviour, to speak to lost souls in love." 
 
 ''Lord, bless abundantly two or three grains of seed 
 sown. What an idle day ! " . . "Since I came to Berlin 
 I have been enabled to study much of the Word of God, 
 and to find something of the inexhaustable mine of pure 
 gold it contains. If I had been at home, surrounded by 
 so many sacred influences, the probability is I might not 
 have made so much progress. One thing above everything, 
 I must make my Christianity a practical thing. ' It is more 
 blessed to give than to receive.'" 
 
 The Missionary Call. Within six weeks after reaching 
 Germany this call came to young Mackay. For some years 
 he had not read nor thought much on missions, as his pro- 
 fessional studies had crowded the subject into the back- 
 ground. In December an address on Madagascar by Dr 
 Burns Thomson came into his hands, and this appeal, to- 
 gether with his mother's early injunction, "If the call 
 comes to you, take care that you do not neglect it," and Dr 
 Baur's deep interest in missions, so fired him with mission- 
 ary zeal that he called it "a new conversion." 
 
 Other considerations also entered in. The texts coupled 
 by his mother in his boyhood, "If ye love me, keep my 
 commandments," and, "Go ye, therefore, and teach all 
 nations ;" her quotation of Dr Duff's words, "The advance- 
 ment of the missionary cause is not only our duty and re- 
 sponsibility, but it is an enjoyment which those who have 
 once tasted would not exchange for all the treasures of the 
 Indian mines, for all the laurels of civic success, and for all 
 the glittering splendor of coronets. It is a joy rich as 
 
EARLY LIFE AND AFRICAN FIELD 95 
 
 heaven, pure as the Godhead, lasting as Eternity;" the 
 old map of Africa, with the Mountains of the Moon lying 
 like a huge caterpillar across his future field; the "Nile 
 problem" which he and his father discussed so frequently ; 
 his puzzling over the reason why the Church Missionary So- 
 ciety should secure its agents in Germany instead of in Eng- 
 land ; the charm of "Livingstone's Travels;" his Christ- 
 mas letter of 1866, in which he says, "I shrink from the 
 ministry. . . . Besides it seems to me there are al- 
 ready too many ministers. Three or four wasting their 
 energies in each little parish of Scotland may satisfy a de- 
 sire for sermon hearing, but is attended, I fear, with little 
 good;" the elaborate trivialities of modern life because of 
 which an able writer says, "His brave and active nature 
 would have beaten itself to death against the bars of Euro- 
 pean conventionality ;" above all, his sister's letter of Decem- 
 ber 11, 1873, accompanying Dr Thomson's address: — all 
 these were successive missionary impulses, culminating in 
 what he deemed the voice of God calling him to Madagascar. 
 
 To be called meant immediate action to Mackay. The 
 select Christian circle in which he moved were informed 
 of his intentions, and Dr Baur encouraged him to be an 
 engineering missionary. Licentious, drunken and infidel 
 Berlin was a training school preparing him to combat idola- 
 try. The study of Malagasy was enthusiastically, if un- 
 wisely, prosecuted. He sees clearly that "if Christianity 
 is worth anything it is worth everything," and that he will 
 be fit to win souls only so far as he attains deep spirituality 
 and abiding fellowship with his risen Saviour. In 1875 a 
 tempting professional offer came to him, which he declined 
 as one article of his creed ran : " It is not to make money that 
 I believe a Christian should live." He accepted, however, 
 an engagement at Kottbus, sixty miles southeast of Berlin, 
 and there employed his spare hours in sending to all the 
 clergy of the Empire the German version of Bonar's "Words 
 to Soul Winners," and also arranged for the translation at 
 his own expense of "Grace and Truth." 
 
 Correspondence with Missionary Societies and Ap- 
 pointment. As Mackay's interest had been aroused through 
 Madagascar, he wrote first to Dr Bonar and sought a posi- 
 
$6 ALEXANDER MACKAY, UGANDA'S ENGINEER 
 
 tion under the London Missionary Society on that island, 
 Dr Bonar thought mission work and engineering difficult 
 ideas to combine, and Secretary Mullens wrote, "that at 
 that time the island was not ripe for his assistance. " Mac- 
 kay was not daunted, for he had "one word against such a 
 problem, 4 Jehovah Jireh !' " What he wished was an op- 
 portunity to wed civilization and Christianity in Africa, to 
 execute works such as railways and mines, largely through 
 natives trained in religion and science ; in a word, he wished 
 to supplement the work of other missionaries, not to sup- 
 plant it. This desire was ultimately satisfied ; for on a bit- 
 terly cold night in December, 1875, after finishing "How 
 I Found Livingstone," his eye fell on an old copy of the 
 Edinburgh Daily Review" in which the Church Mission- 
 ary Society appealed for pioneers to go into Uganda in 
 response to King Mtesa's invitation sent home by Stanley. 
 Though after midnight, Mackay immediately wrote to the 
 Society offering his services. Having heard of this corres- 
 pondence, Dr Duff urged him to wait for an opening in 
 the African missions of the Free Church of Scotland, or 
 else to join the Established Church of Scotland's Mission 
 on Lake Nyassa. But it was too late, for in the same mail 
 came a letter from the C. M. S. Secretary accepting him as 
 their missionary to Uganda, with the understanding that he 
 was to combine industrial work with religious teaching. 
 And so he turned from the church of his fathers to the Es- 
 tablished Church of England and its society, the greatest 
 Protestant missionary organization of the world. 
 
 Preparation for Sailing. As Mackay was to sail in 
 April, the succeeding weeks were filled to the brim with 
 preparations. Captain Grant, Speke's companion in Equa- 
 torial Africa, whose birthplace was scarcely fifty miles from 
 Rhynie, gave invaluable advice, and grandly seconded by the 
 C. M. S., this youngest member of the pioneer party of eight 
 provided for his own and their needs. A boat for the Victo- 
 ria Nyanza had to be secured with an engine of his own de- 
 signing, the boiler of which was made of welded rings. 
 He must learn more of practical astronomy and the use of 
 the sextant; printing offices and photographers must be 
 visited for last lessons ; vaccination and the use of the stetho- 
 
EARLY LIFE AND AFRICAN FIELD 9^ 
 
 scope were yet to be learned, as also the details of iron- 
 puddling and coal-mining. During these weeks "there was 
 no such word as holiday in his vocabulary ; his mission was 
 to him a whole-souled passion and every hour was turned 
 to practical account in picking up useful arts" Believ- 
 ing it not at all likely that eight Englishmen starting for 
 Africa would all be alive at the end of six months and that 
 "one of us — it maybe I — will surely fall before that," but 
 assured that "it is His cause — it must prosper, whether I 
 be spared to see its consumation or not," he stepped aboard 
 the steamship " Peshawur " on April, 27, 1876, and bade a 
 last adieu to England. 
 
 En Route to Uganda. An uneventful voyage of seven 
 thousand miles brought him on May 30th to Zanzibar, and 
 soon thereafter on the main land his African career began. 
 More than two years elapsed before he reached the shores 
 of his inland sea, during which the kaleidoscope of his life 
 exhibits him in all sorts of combinations. He is first ex- 
 plorer of the rivers Wami and Kingani ; then caravan leader, 
 slave exterminator, dying man, road maker, bridge builder, 
 blacksmith, physician, ox driver, and preacher on Sunday 
 when all tools were dropped. Now he is wading chest 
 deep in a swamp : again he is burrowing through the dense 
 reed tunnels of hippo and rhinoceros trails, and a third 
 time while waiting for a rope with which to lasso a stump- 
 on the opposite side of a swift stream and so make a bridge, 
 we see him taking a copy of "Nature" out of his pocket 
 in order to master " Haeckel's Theory of Pangenesis, or the 
 undulatory theory of molecules in organic life." In salt 
 and waterless deserts, in unhealthful mangrove forests, on 
 salubrious highlands, he thirsts and feasts and starves, sleep-- 
 ing nights, after he has written up his journal, in tents,/ 
 hen-houses, huts whose floors are mire, cow pens and in 
 the open air among zebras, giraffes, leopards, lions, ele- 
 phants and more troublesome pests, such as gnats, mosqui- 
 tos, scorpions, and ants of every variety. Decamping car- 
 riers, avaricious leviers of tribute with whom one must 
 sometimes haggle for days, insolent chiefs, who for the lux- 
 ury of lighting a parlor match exact a fine of twenty-five 
 cloths, frequent thefts, a vast family speaking a babel of 
 
UN1V.V- oi i t 
 
 98 ALEXANDER MACKAY, UGANDA'S ENGINEER 
 
 tongues none of which Mackay fully understood but whose 
 mouths must be daily filled, even in the wilderness, chiefs 
 with whom he entered into brotherhood and children who 
 loved him, — these were his companions and this the pioneer 
 who opened up a road 230 miles in length toward Victoria 
 Nyanza. 
 
 When on June 13, 1878, he could shout his Thalassa ! 
 on the southern shores of the lake he was by no means 
 home. His fellow missionaries, Lieut Smith and O'Neil, 
 had been murdered on the island of Ukerewe and no one 
 dared go with him to treat with their murderer. He ac- 
 cordingly went alone and returned only after the African 
 bond of blood brotherhood had been cemented* Then kos- 
 mos must be made out of the chaos found in Kaduma's 
 huge hut where the valuable property of the expedition had 
 been piled together in hopeless confusion, — a ten days' task. 
 The Daisy must be patched and later remade, and gimbals 
 turned, on which Mackay's pocket compass may move, be- 
 fore he can set sail on a lake as large as Scotland. This 
 sea of storms wrecked their little craft within a week. 
 Two months passed before they could get away again, and 
 it was not until November 6th that he finally reached his 
 appointed field. 
 
 Uganda.* Stanley, whose challenge to Christendom 
 led to the formation of the mission, called this most influ- 
 ential native kingdom, "The Pearl of Africa," a name 
 which it deserves, as it also does that given it by the Arabs, 
 "The Land of the Grave." Lying along the northwest 
 shores of the greatest inland sea of the world next to Lake 
 Superior, it covers with its dependencies a territory as large 
 as Missouri, or as New England with an additional Connec- 
 ticut. While it lies under the equator, its altitude, — 4000 
 feet and upward above the sea level, — and frequent rains 
 
 *The natives call their country Bu-Ganda, U-Ganda being its 
 name in Suahili, the language of the coast region. Similarly they 
 call themselves Ba-Ganda (singular Mu-Ganda), and their language 
 Lu-Ganda, while in Suahili the people are known as Wa-Ganda and 
 their speech as Ki-Ganda. As the early missionaries learned Sua- 
 hili first and as it was understood at the capital, these terms are 
 often used indiscriminately. 
 
EARLY LIFE AND AFRICAN FIELD 99 
 
 make the climate cool, the annualtemperature ranging from 
 c;o° to 90 F., though it rarely rises above So°and seldom 
 sinks below 6o° at night. 
 
 The cou?ttry is described us being in some parts a plain, 
 but mainly a succession of hills, between which lie unwhole- 
 some swamps through whose masses of reeds and papyrus 
 slimy streams slowly straggle. Some of the hills have a 
 tropical appearance, due to the banana plantations. Most 
 of them, however, are covered by a tangle of elephant 
 grass fifteen feet high, impenetrable save by mice and ele- 
 phants. These jungles harbor enormous pythons and in- 
 numberable wild beasts, of which the natives most fear the 
 plantation-eating buffalo, and are vocal with the terrible 
 plague of mosquitos. One, standing on a hill top at sun- 
 set forgets, however, every disagreeable feature and is over- 
 powered by the glory and transcendent delicacy of color on 
 cloud and hill and lake. 
 
 The soil is fertile and produces indigenously plantains, 
 cotton, coffee and tobacco. It is also friendly to sweet po- 
 tatoes, beans, tomatoes, rice and Indian corn. The last, 
 which has been the principal cereal, yields from three hun- 
 dred to five hundred fold. The best time for sowing is at 
 the period of the equinoctial rains, yet as it showers nearly 
 every night, one can sow and reap on any day of the year. 
 Below the surface lie iron in abundance and inexhaustible 
 deposits of china clay. When the soil is turned up its de- 
 caying vegetation causes malaria, which disease is ever pre- 
 sent, though not so deadly as the scourge of smallpox and 
 the plague. 
 
 Early Visitors to Uganda. Speke and Grant were the 
 first Europeans to reach this land. The former resided at 
 the capital from February to July in 1862 and suggested it 
 as a possible field for missionary effort. An officer of Col 
 Gordon's again reached Uganda in 1874, but it was H. M. 
 Stanley's visit in 1875 that was most memorable. King 
 Mtesa received him hospitably, while Stanley, filled with 
 the spirit caught from Livingstone, set before the King the 
 claims of Christianity, and had written for him in Arabic 
 the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Golden 
 Rule and "Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself." 
 
IOO ALEXANDER MACK AY, UGANDA S ENGINEER 
 
 Mtesa showed his interest by observing the Christian as 
 well as the Mohammedan Sabbath and urged the explorer 
 to secure Christian teachers for his people. 
 
 In response to this monarch's request, we see standing 
 before him in November, 1S78, a Scotchman in his thirtieth 
 year, whom Stanley, eleven years later, described as a " gen- 
 tleman of small stature with a rich brown beard and brown 
 hair, dressed in white linen and a gray Tyrolese hat," . 
 44 with calm blue eyes that never winked," — "the best mis- 
 sionary since Livingstone." 
 
 SUGGESTED READINGS. 
 
 Colville: The Land of the Nile Springs, (1895), Ch. iv. 
 
 Creegan and Goodnoiv ; Great Missionaries of the Church, (1895), 
 Ch. xvii. 
 
 Drummond : Tropical Africa, (1888), Ch. 111. 
 
 Encyclopaedia of Missions, (189 1 ), Articles Africa, Church Mission- 
 ary Society, and Alexander M. Mackay. 
 
 General Encyclopaedias, Article Uganda. 
 
 Harrison: Story of the Life of Mackay of Uganda, (1891), Chs. 
 i-iv. 
 
 Lamed: History for Ready Reference, (1895), Vol. V., Article 
 Uganda. 
 
 Portal and Rodd: The British Mission to Uganda in 1893, (1894), 
 Pt. I., Ch. viii. 
 
 Stanley: Through the Dark Continent, (1878), Vol.1., Chs. ix., 
 
 XII., XVI. 
 
 Harrison: Mackay of Uganda, (1890). Boyhood, Ch. 1. ; Life in 
 Edinburgh and Berlin, Ch. II, ; On the Road, Ch. in. ; Arrives 
 in Uganda, Ch. iv. 
 
VIII 
 
 mackay's parishioners and his work 
 
 He was one of those few who look fearlessly forth and seem to see 
 the face of the living God. He never despaired of any person or 
 any thing. Quiet he was, and strong and patient, and resolute, and 
 brave ; one on whom you might depend. He endured fourteen years 
 of Africa, . . . fourteen years of contradiction of men, black 
 and white, fourteen years of dangers, fevers, sorrows, disappoint- 
 ment — and in all and through all he was steadfast, unmovable ; a 
 true missionary, always abounding in the work of the Lord." 
 
 — Rev R. P. Ashe, "Two Kings of Uganda." 
 
 The Baganda. Looking out from the temporary prem- 
 ises which had been occupied by Mr Wilson, Mackay's 
 fellow-laborer and his predecessor by sixteen months at 
 the capital, one could see on the hill-side well tilled gar- 
 dens surrounded by tall tiger-grass fences and containing the 
 beehive-shaped grass or straw huts of the Baganda. These 
 houses are described as having doors facing the ascent, 
 with clay ridges to prevent the flood of water from running 
 into them. Their roofs are double, so that there is a good 
 circulation of air. "The sleeping place is curtained off 
 with bark cloth, and bedsteads are used, consisting of a 
 framework of branches, which rests on stakes driven into 
 the ground, and which is covered with fine grass and a mat. 
 A large piece of bark cloth forms the coverlet. A square 
 is marked off by four logs in the middle of the house for a 
 fireplace, and the cooking-pot rests on three stones." Here 
 are prepared- the two meals of each day, consisting of ba- 
 nanas or plantains, beef, goat's flesh or fish, liberally suple- 
 mented by the national drink, banana cider. After the 
 hands have been washed with a banana stem sponge, these 
 meals are eaten in a little porch, around a space covered 
 with green leaves. 
 
102 ALEXANDER MACKAY, UGANDA S ENGINEER 
 
 A glance at the Baganda themselves shows us a peo- 
 ple belonging to the Bantu race, though differing widely 
 from other negroes in their habits. They are possessed of 
 some fine qualities, and exhibit considerable skill as work- 
 ers in iron, brass and copper, in dressing skins and in bas- 
 ket making. The field work is left for the women, who 
 often dress with great neatness. Their long robes are fab- 
 ricated of fig-tree bark or of calico, and ornaments of va- 
 rious sort are worn about the neck, wrists and waist. Soap, 
 made from plantain peelings, is used by the higher classes 
 and their robes are sometimes of snowy whiteness. The 
 women are the barbers, and they, as also the men and chil- 
 dren, are shaved entirely about once a month. The higher 
 classes are idle, a trait characteristic to some degree of all. 
 
 Socially these people are divided into clans, distinguished 
 by clan animals, which are practically their totems. Woman 
 occupies a subordinate position and polygamy prevails. 
 The peasants are little better than slaves, being attached to 
 some master, whom, however, they have a right to choose. 
 Slaves are possessed by all classes, even the peasants. 
 Their condition can be guessed from the preference of the 
 women of a vanquished tribe who all preferred death to 
 slavery. Different communities prey upon each other, 
 soldiers following their chiefs to battle much as in feudal 
 times. Even in neighborhoods where all are supposed to 
 be friends the weak could be openly robbed, with no redress. 
 Laws were Draconian, and even the cutting off of hands, 
 feet, ears, nose, or lips was considered a minor punish- 
 ment. Gross offences against society were avenged by 
 hacking to pieces with sharp strips of reed, or cutting off the 
 limbs, after which the luckless victim was slowly roasted. 
 
 Their religion included a belief in Katonga, a supreme 
 Creator, but as he was said to have delegated his authority 
 to spirits, lu&ares, they were most highly regarded, especially 
 Mukasa, the Lubare of the lake. Spirits of the earthquake, 
 of thunder, and of various other natural phenomena, as 
 well as of certain persons, were feared, though no worship 
 beyond the erection of roadside shrines and the suspension 
 of charms and amulets on doors or on the person seemed 
 to be given them. 
 
PARISHIONERS AND WORK IO3 
 
 Uganda's Royal Family. A legendary Kintu was the 
 reputed founder of the monarchy, though Captain Speke be- 
 lieves the government to have been established only nine 
 generations ago. The royal family are of Bahuma extrac- 
 tion. Mtesa, the first king known to the Europeans, and 
 who received Mackay, was a capricious and sometimes blood- 
 thirsty ruler, deserving his name, which Reclus translates 
 as "he who makes all tremble." The same authority says 
 that he had seven thousand wives ; but of these, as of every 
 king's harem, only two possessed regal power. These were 
 the Namasole or Queen mother, and the Lubuga or Queen- 
 sister, one of the princesses. The king appointed his own 
 chiefs and council and was more or less despotic, as was his 
 prime minister and judge, the Katikiro. On the whole, 
 Mtesa show r ed himself a man of considerable sympathy and 
 enlightenment, and helped, rather than hindered, the mis- 
 sionaries in their work. 
 
 His son, Mwanga, the present ruler, succeeded his father 
 in 1884, being then eighteen. He was vain, weak and vic- 
 ious. Subject to fits of almost demoniacal madness, the* 
 missionaries were often in danger of their life, while bloody 
 persecutions were once and again visited on their converts. 
 Mackay was the person who was most necessary to him, 
 though in July, 1887, even he was driven away to the south 
 of the Lake. Though temporarily dethroned at the time 
 of the revolution, he, more than his father, has been a vital 
 factor in the spread of Christianity in Equatorial Africa. 
 
 Summary of Hackay's Work in Central Africa. In 
 1878 Mackay begins missionary buildings. Knowing Sua- 
 hili, he prints Scripture portions in that tongue. He also 
 reads and explains them to the people, aided by Mtesa and 
 the Katikiro. . . . 187Q witnesses arrival of French 
 Catholic priests, who denounce the missionaries as liars. 
 Embassy sent by Mtesa to England. From June to Novem- 
 ber great peace, Mtesa ordering chiefs, pages and soldiers 
 to learn the alphabet, and Mackay being on visiting terms 
 with all the chiefs in the capital. In December, Mukasa, 
 representing the Spirit of the Lake, influences Mtesa to re- 
 turn to heathenism. Mackay is so active in his opposition 
 to witchcraft that he is called Anti-Mukasa. . . . 1880 
 
104 ALEXANDER MACKAY, UGANDA'S ENGINEER 
 
 is a year of great trial. Arabs circulate report that Mac- 
 kay is an insane murderer. Though missionaries are in 
 great danger, they teach lads who come to them. . 
 1881. New era begins in March, when embassay returned 
 from England. Portions of New Testament, hymns and 
 texts are tentatively translated. . . . 1882. First five 
 converts of the mission are baptized and the French priests 
 depart. . . . i88j. Mackay had now printed the Lord's 
 Prayer, Creed, Decalogue, a Text-book of Theology and 
 Selected Texts bearing on duties of subjects and sovereign, 
 as also spelling sheets in Luganda. Two of Mtesa's daugh- 
 ters learners and one is baptized. Twenty-one Christians 
 meet around communion table. Mackay builds the "Elea- 
 nor," at south end of lake, doing the work himself. 
 . 1884. Mtesa dies and trouble arises with Mwanga's 
 accession. At close of the year eighty-eight had been bap- 
 tized in all, and two of Mtesa's daughters and one grand- 
 daughter were in the church. The Lubuga, or Queen-sister, 
 a baptized Christian. . . . 1885. Beginning of perse- 
 cution, three boy converts being roasted to death. New 
 English missionaries not arriving, Mwanga invites back the 
 French priests. Bishop Hannington murdered in October. 
 Mackay's life, often in danger, is spared on account of his 
 mechanical skill. In November first sheet of Matthew in 
 Luganda printed. . . . 1886. The year of " The Great 
 Tribulation." the church in exile. In spring bitter perse- 
 cution breaks out and fifty or sixty Romanist and Protest- 
 ant converts, who die of fire or the sword, display a forti- 
 tude unsurpassed in Apostolic times. Midnight interviews 
 continue, and twenty baptisms take place within a month 
 of the martyrdom. Dr Junker, a Russian traveler, is aided 
 by Mackay to -escape from Mwanga. . . . 1887. Mac- 
 kay alone in Uganda. In March entire Luganda Matthew 
 corrected in manuscript. Expelled to south of lake and 
 never returns. Gordon takes his place at the capital. 
 . . . 1888. Year of revolutions, the first one due to 
 Mwanga's attempt to destroy Christian officers. Mwanga 
 exiled and Kiwewa king, with Romanist and Protestant as 
 two chief officers. Temporary religious freedom and pros- 
 perity broken by second rebellion — Mohammedan. Mission- 
 
PARISHIONERS AND WORK IO5 
 
 aries again expelled Uganda. Mackay offers exiled Mwanga 
 protection. . . . 1889. Romanists advise Mwanga's 
 forcible restoration. Protestants, advised by Mackay not to 
 use force, join Romanists before his reply is received. A 
 third revolution meanwhile ends in Kiwewa's death and Kal- 
 ema's enthronement. Mwanga, at first unsuccessful, as 
 a penitent suppliant, beseeches Mackay to reinstate him. 
 Christian army vanquishes Kalema and Mwanga is restored 
 as king, with Protestant Kagwa Apollo as prime minister. 
 The king appeals to British East African Company. Mac- 
 kay revises his Luganda St John, prints, constructs wagon 
 for hauling boat timber, and finally finishes its steam engine 
 and pumps. In August Stanley with Emin and 800 peo- 
 ple visits him. . . . i8po. Mwanga makes treaty with 
 Germans leading to division among Christians. Mission- 
 aries advise submission and church prospers until torn with 
 grief by news of Mackay's death which occurred in Feb- 
 ruary. A detailed account of these years is full of interest, 
 but only leading features of the master workman's charac- 
 ter and labors can be touched upon. 
 
 Some Personal Characteristics. Social qualities, so 
 necessary to a pioneer, were quite prominent in Mackay. 
 From the children who instinctively gathered about him, 
 to Lkonge, Smith and O'NeilPs murderer, and the two im- 
 perious kings of Uganda, there was not one, unless it were 
 the Arabs, who did not yield before his winning friendli- 
 ness. Mackay's bravery was equally marked, and few 
 men have been called upon to so frequently exhibit it. His 
 resolution was such that the king involuntarily exclaimed 
 at a signal exhibition of it, "Mackay, you are a man!" 
 Marvellous perseverance was his and with Carey he could 
 explain much of his success by, "I can plod." Trained 
 during the first two years in the school of patience, he 
 exhibited it when his colleagues utterly lost theirs. Dili- 
 gence is absolutely necessary where one lives in an at- 
 mosphere of interruptions, and here Mackay is a model for 
 the moment miser. Foresight, to which he attributed much 
 of his countrymen's success in engineering, characterized 
 his entire missionary life. 
 
 African experiences did not destroy his intellectuality. 
 
106 ALEXANDER MACKAY, UGANDA'S ENGINEER 
 
 ''Books! Mackay has thousands of books; in the dining- 
 room, bedroom, the church, everywhere. Books ! ah, loads 
 upon loads of them ! " is the ejaculation of a Zanzibar head- 
 man, quoted by Stanley. These volumes covered the field 
 of African discovery, the- latest scientific utterances, the 
 strongest secular periodicals, the best devotional and theo- 
 logical writings, and current religious and missionary mag- 
 zines, among which he especially values "The Missionary 
 Review of the World," — all these enlivened by produc- 
 tions as widely different as "Helen's Babies," and the plays 
 of Shakespere. Africa by its many problems marvellously 
 broadened a mind already admirably trained. 
 
 The hidden life of Mackay was deep and vital. The 
 Bible was the man of his daily counsel, and he speaks of 
 Alford's New Testament as falling to pieces in his hands. 
 An old African letter of his reads : "I feel every day that 
 it is only by prayerful reading of much of God's own Word 
 that I can in any way succeed in living as a Christian. 
 It is just as hard here as in Berlin, or anywhere 
 else, to keep in the right path." Like every missionary, he 
 learned on the field, as never at home, the power of prayer. 
 Alone often, and amid dangers that made the bravest quail, 
 he was not alone, for he communed with the Almighty in 
 the secret place, and like William of Orange, was "calm 
 in the midst of storms." His prayer life, linked on to the 
 study and teaching of the W'ord, begot in him a Paton-like 
 trust in God. 
 
 A life so dowered, and so reenforced by divine grace, 
 could only be a consecrated one. Work he must while it 
 was day ; work always and with every one, though most 
 profitably perhaps with evening Nicodemuses, despised 
 Samaritan women and youthful Davids of the court. So 
 consecrated was he to Africa that only a month before his 
 death, when it was proposed that he return to England, he 
 replied, "But what is this you write — 'Come home?' 
 Surely now, in our terrible dearth of workers, it is not the 
 time for any one to desert his post." 
 
 Mackay 's Program. The eightfold aim underlying 
 his labors seems to have been : to disarm the prejudice felt 
 by most newly visited tribes, especially in a land where 
 
PARISHIONERS AND WORK IO7 
 
 Arab slavers have terrorized the people ; to win their abid- 
 ing friendship, and, so far as possible, enter into blood- 
 brotherhood with influential chiefs ; to destroy the depend- 
 ent, beggarly spirit entertained toward the missionary ; to 
 render noble and manifestly useful manual labor, so de- 
 spised by influential Africans ; to enter perpetual protest 
 against cruel and unjust laws ; to do everything possible to 
 drive out Africa's triad of evils, rum, slavery and war; to 
 educate in everything the nation; above all and in all, to 
 win by his teachings and life, souls for Uganda and for God. 
 
 The Mechanical Missionary. As an industrial mis- 
 sionary Mackay felt that he could do his work best. It is 
 true that his letters repeatedly speak of the irksomeness of 
 such a ministry, and he even went so far as to attempt to 
 remove a disability existing in the case of laymen, by study- 
 ing for orders in the Church of England. Yet sober re- 
 flection induced him to continue in his less exalted sphere 
 labors which were so signally blest. His grimy hands, 
 whirling lathe and grindstone, marvellous machine which 
 charmed paper so that it talked, the unending application of 
 rotary motion, so largely unknown to the Baganda, were 
 object lessons which often elicited clapping of hands and 
 the chorus Makay lubarel Makay lubare dalail — Mac- 
 kay is the great spirit, he is truly the great spirit ! 
 
 The usefulness of his service commended him to king 
 and subject alike. Repaired guns, healed bodies, — for Mac- 
 kay was perforce a lay physician, — the wonderful cart upon 
 which he could with one hand move a tree that 200 men 
 had wasted their strength upon, the well on a side-hill spit- 
 ting out through a battered pump pure water, bridges and 
 roads, monster flagstaff for the king, the two royal coffins, 
 especialy the Namasole's, as large as a cottage and requiring 
 many workmen and a month of Mackay 's best strength, — 
 these and a host of other miracles wrought by the canny 
 Highlander, made him indispensable. He was not only 
 always busy, but he so often spoke to the people of the no- 
 bility of work, its utility and necessity, that they called him 
 Mzungu-iva ICazt\ white man of work. "His readiness 
 of resource in emergency (for which his training as an en- 
 gineer had peculiarly fitted him)," was most useful to the 
 
IOS ALEXANDER MACKAY, UGANDA'S ENGINEER 
 
 Mission also ; for because of it starvation was repeatedly 
 held at bay, and in times of hostility, even life was spared. 
 His labors as an industrial missionary justified — at least for 
 uncivilized lands — his thesis : " Mechanical work is prob- 
 ably as legitimate an aid to missions as medical ; nor do I 
 see why one should not be as helpful to missionary work as 
 the other, except for the difficulty of getting out of the rut 
 our ideas run in." Lovedale in South Africa conspicuously 
 emphasizes Mackay's view. 
 
 Among the People. Their presence in Mackay's house 
 or shop, by night and by day, left little time for visits 
 among them ; but when such opportunities offered he gladly 
 embraced them. Eating with them in their tiny porches, 
 journeying with friend and foe, gave him glimpses into 
 their speech and life and thought, which were denied him 
 when his foreign environment made them the questioners 
 and learners. If his companions were Christians, he was 
 in a third heaven of bliss. Their upbuilding and his joy 
 in the converts reminds one of Paul's experiences. Nor 
 could he hold his peace when heathenism was rampant, as 
 when the fleet of fourteen canoes in which he sailed robbed 
 three Buzongora canoes. His protest and threat to spear 
 the captain of the fleet unless the property was restored, 
 caused robbers and robbed to be stronger friends than be- 
 fore. This was the same fleet whose belief in potent charms 
 was shattered by the missionary who bought one, discoursed 
 on its weakness and on God's power and then proved his 
 words by burning it in a fire lighted by a small pocket lens, — 
 a good illustration of his method of teaching and preaching. 
 
 At Court. Naturally such a man was frequently called 
 to stand before kings ; though much to his relief, his col- 
 leagues, especially the witty O'Flaherty, relieved him of 
 much of this labor. Of course he was a priest of civili- 
 zation there. At one time bringing in and explaining a 
 glazier's diamond and an ox yoke, Mtesa says, " There must 
 remain nothing more for white men to know — they know 
 everything." At another, Mackay writes out a list of san- 
 itary regulations intended to prevent and stay the terri- 
 ble ravages of the plague, and Uganda suddenly begins to 
 clean house. In general he embraces every proper oppor- 
 
PARISHIONERS AND WORK IO9 
 
 tunity to amplify a text which greatly impressed the king, 
 4 'My forefathers made the wind their slave ; then they put 
 water in the chain ; next they enslaved steam ; but now 
 the terrible lightning is the white man's slave, and a 
 a capital one it is too !" 
 
 But destructive work needed to be done before the king- 
 dom was free to enter upon the higher civilization. Super - 
 stitions, especially those connected with the Neptune of the 
 lake, the great Mukasa, bound king and peasant with steel 
 fetters. Mackay boldly takes his stand on the Scriptures, 
 and as a " Servant of Almighty God," begs the king to 
 have nothing to do with the lubare. In Socratic style he 
 makes all admit that if he is a god, there are two gods in 
 Uganda, the Almighty and Mukasa ; if he is a man, — the 
 one in question was a woman, he afterwards learned, — there 
 are two kings in the land, Mtesa, whom all honor, and 
 Mukasa, who pretends to be supreme, and who practically 
 incites to rebellion. Though the witch had her way with the 
 king, the people could say nothing in answer to such logic. 
 
 Hardly less obstructive to Africa's civilization is slavery 
 and the Scotchman goes boldly before the greatest slave 
 hunter of his day where, with Huxley's plates to illustrate 
 the circulation of the blood, "he dwelt on the perfection 
 of the human body, which no man can make, nor all the 
 men in the world ; and yet the Arabs wished to buy a 
 human being with an immortal soul, for a bit of soap ! " 
 The interested king, can only add as a corollary to this 
 demonstration, "From henceforth no slave shall be sold 
 out of the country." 
 
 As a preacher of righteousness Mackay is a second 
 Paul before Agrippa. Diplomatic, fearless of death, con- 
 stantly appealing to "the Book," he illustrates and en- 
 forces the truth of God, whether it bears on subjects perse- 
 cuted for righteousness* sake, religious liberty for all faiths, 
 or kings' vices and their need of a Saviour. Adversaries 
 were at court, especially the Arabs, who regarded the mis- 
 sionary as their worst foe because opposed to slavery. Mac- 
 kay is again a Paul answering Islam's Tertullus, and right- 
 eousness and truth are vindicated. Alas that such preach- 
 ing found in Mtesa and Mwanga an Agrippa and a Felix ! 
 
IIO ALEXANDER MACKAY, UGANDA'S ENGINEER 
 
 The Wider Court. Mackay's voice was heard in Chris- 
 tian Europe. Africa's open sores and her "heart disease," 
 needed foreign physicians. Chapters xn., xiv.-xvi. of 
 " Mackay of Uganda," are wise utterances of a missionary 
 statesman, and they were heeded. Already the measures 
 pleaded for have been partially adopted, namely, limitation 
 in sales of arms, ammunition and rum, increased vigilance 
 along the coast, a cordon of police in the interior, and im- 
 proved communications with Central Africa. The railroad 
 to the Lake, 657 miles long, has already reached Dunan- 
 tabe, and cheapened transportation — which formerly cost 
 $1400 a ton and countless lives — will soon change Uganda. 
 
 Mackay has been charged with interfering with Afri- 
 can politics, but this interference was in the interests of 
 outraged humanity and international justice. Tempting^ 
 offers to become an officer under General Gordon and the 
 Imperial East African Company were not accepted, because 
 he was not so much a British citizen as an embassador of 
 the Prince of Peace appointed to Central Africa to estab- 
 lish there the Kingdom of Heaven. To this cause he sum- 
 mons Christendom's best blood in his last message. 
 
 flackay's Passing. A real king of Uganda, Carlyle's 
 canny man, had done his work. The excalibar, wrought by 
 his mechanical genius, was to disappear from the mighty 
 Lake. Chiefs and commoners — become members of his 
 Table Round, the Church Council — had caught his spirit. 
 On February 8th, 1890, the summons came to the exile at 
 Usambiro. Fever, Africa's executioner, silenced the crafts- 
 man and the expositor of John's Gospel, and after four 
 days of delirium, in which solicitude for converts, plans 
 for future work, and longings for fresh laborers found ex- 
 pression, the soul of St Paul of Uganda, flitted upward to 
 the dear home land. 
 
 "All hail the power of Jesus' name" was sung by Ba- 
 ganda boys over his open grave, and then they went back to 
 establish the 200 churches of to-day, to build a cathedral ac- 
 commodating 7000, and to invite the multitudes who are 
 now pressing into the Kingdom. Hannington wrote from 
 the northeast of the lake : "Mackay's name seems quite a 
 household word ; I constantly hear it, but of the others I 
 
PARISHIONERS AND WORK III 
 
 scarce ever hear a word." Similarly, Jephson, one of Stan- 
 ley's officers, writing of the southwestern lake region, says : 
 4 'For many days before we reached his Mission, we heard 
 from the natives of Mackay, nothing but Mackay — they 
 seemed to care for and know no one else. Such a man 
 cannot die in Africa ; and in Britain, when in May of 1895, 
 the first detachment of ladies to enter Uganda and five new 
 men were sent to reap in the fields where Mackay had sown, 
 his old letters were the clarion note which sounded the 
 charge. " He being dead yet speaketh." 
 
 SUGGESTED READINGS. 
 
 Ashe : Chronicles of Uganda, (1894), Pp. 55-143. 
 Two Kings of Uganda, (1SS9), Ch. xxm. 
 Church Misssionary Gleaner, May, 1896. 
 Church Missionary Intelligencer, April and May, 1S96. 
 Driimtnond: Tropical Africa, (18S8), Ch. iv. 
 
 Encyclopaedia of Missions, (1891 ), Articles Church Missionary So- 
 ciety and Alexander M. Mackav. 
 Harrison : Story of the Life of Mackay of Uganda, (1891), Chs. 
 
 VI-XXI, 
 
 Lamed: History for Ready Reference, (1895), Vol. V., Article 
 
 Uganda. 
 Latimer: Europe in Africa in the Nineteenth Century, (1S95), 
 
 Ch. vii. 
 Lugard: Rise of Our East African Empire, (1S93), Vol I., Chs. 
 
 VII., VIII. 
 
 Peters: New light on Dark Africa, (1890), Pp. 379, ff. 
 Recites: Universal Geography, Vol. X., Pp. 88, ff. 
 Stanley: In Darkest Africa, (1890), Vol, II., Pp, 423-431. 
 White: The Development of Africa, (1890), Chs. v., VI., ix. 
 Wilson and Felkin: Uganda, (1S82), Vol. I., v., vn., vin. 
 Harrison: Mackay of Uganda, (1890), Description of the People, 
 
 v., vii.; Tide ebbs and flows, Chs. vin. ; Tribulation, Chs. 
 
 ix-xi. j African Problems, Chs. xn., xiv-xvi. ; Last Things, 
 
 Chs. xiii., xvii. 
 
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