Basil Mathews - The Book of Missionary Heroes

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[Transcriber's note: Some Footnotes in this text contain special
characters, including a, e, and o with superior macron, represented by
[=a], [=e], and [=o], and a and u with superior breve, represented by
[)a] and [)u], to indicate pronunciation of native-language words.]

THE BOOK OF MISSIONARY HEROES

BY

BASIL MATHEWS, M.A.

_Author of "The Argonauts of Faith,"
"The Riddle of Nearer Asia,"
etc._

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

_Copyright, 1922,_

_By George H. Doran Company_

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

PAGE

PROLOGUE THE RELAY RACE 9

BOOK I: THE PIONEERS

CHAPTER
I THE HERO OF THE LONG TRAIL (_St. Paul_) 19
II THE MEN ON THE SHINGLE BEACH (_Wilfrid of Sussex_) 30
III THE KNIGHT OF A NEW CRUSADE (_Raymond Lull_) 36
IV FRANCIS COEUR-DE-LION (_St. Francis of Assisi_) 47

BOOK II: THE ISLAND ADVENTURERS

V THE ADVENTUROUS SHIP (_The Duff_) 65
VI THE ISLAND BEACON FIRES (_Papeiha_) 72
VII THE DAYBREAK CALL (_John Williams_) 80
VIII KAPIOLANI, THE HEROINE OF HAWAII (_Kapiolani_) 86
IX THE CANOE OF ADVENTURE (_Elikana_) 92
X THE ARROWS OF SANTA CRUZ (_Patteson_) 103
XI FIVE KNOTS IN A PALM LEAF (_Patteson_) 108
XII THE BOY OF THE ADVENTUROUS HEART (_Chalmers_) 113
XIII THE SCOUT OF PAPUA (_Chalmers_) 118
XIV A SOUTH SEA SAMARITAN (_Ruatoka_) 126

BOOK III: THE PATHFINDERS OF AFRICA

XV THE MAN WHO WOULD GO ON (_Livingstone_) 131
XVI A BLACK PRINCE OF AFRICA (_Khama_) 136
XVII THE KNIGHT OF THE SLAVE GIRLS (_George Grenfell_) 150
XVIII "A MAN WHO CAN TURN HIS HAND TO ANYTHING" (_Mackay_) 158
XIX THE ROADMAKER (_Mackay_) 164
XX FIGHTING THE SLAVE TRADE (_Mackay_) 172
XXI THE BLACK APOSTLE OF THE LONELY LAKE (_Shomolakae_) 186
XXII THE WOMAN WHO CONQUERED CANNIBALS (_Mary Slessor_) 196

BOOK IV: HEROINES AND HEROES OF PLATEAU AND DESERT

XXIII SONS OF THE DESERT (_Abdallah and Sabat_) 213
XXIV A RACE AGAINST TIME (_Henry Martyn_) 224
XXV THE MOSES OF THE ASSYRIANS (_Dr. Shedd_) 236
XXVI AN AMERICAN NURSE IN THE GREAT WAR (_E.D. Cushman_) 249
XXVII ON THE DESERT CAMEL TRAIL (_Archibald Forder_) 260
XXVIII THE FRIEND OF THE ARAB (_Archibald Forder_) 271

THE BOOK OF MISSIONARY HEROES

PROLOGUE

THE RELAY-RACE

The shining blue waters of two wonderful gulfs were busy with fishing
boats and little ships. The vessels came under their square sails and
were driven by galley-slaves with great oars.

A Greek boy standing, two thousand years ago, on the wonderful
mountain of the Acro-Corinth that leaps suddenly from the plain above
Corinth to a pinnacle over a thousand feet high, could see the boats
come sailing from the east, where they hailed from the Piraeus and
Ephesus and the marble islands of the AEgean Sea. Turning round he
could watch them also coming from the West up the Gulf of Corinth
from the harbours of the Gulf and even from the Adriatic Sea and
Brundusium.

In between the two gulfs lay the Isthmus of Corinth to which the men
on the ships were sailing and rowing.

The people were all in holiday dress for the great athletic sports
were to be held on that day and the next,--the sports that drew, in
those ancient days, over thirty thousand Greeks from all the country
round; from the towns on the shores of the two gulfs and from the
mountain-lands of Greece,--from Parnassus and Helicon and Delphi,
from Athens and the villages on the slopes of Hymettus and even from
Sparta.

These sports, which were some of the finest ever held in the whole
world, were called--because they were held on this isthmus--the
Isthmian Games.

The athletes wrestled. They boxed with iron-studded leather
straps over their knuckles. They fought lions brought across the
Mediterranean (the Great Sea as they called it) from Africa, and
tigers carried up the Khyber Pass across Persia from India. They flung
spears, threw quoits and ran foot-races. Amid the wild cheering of
thirty thousand throats the charioteers drove their frenzied horses,
lathered with foam, around the roaring stadium.

One of the most beautiful of these races has a strange hold on the
imagination. It was a relay-race. This is how it was run.

Men bearing torches stood in a line at the starting point. Each man
belonged to a separate team. Away in the distance stood another row of
men waiting. Each of these was the comrade of one of those men at the
starting point. Farther on still, out of sight, stood another row and
then another and another.

At the word "Go" the men at the starting point leapt forward, their
torches burning. They ran at top speed towards the waiting men and
then gasping for breath, each passed his torch to his comrade in the
next row. He, in turn, seizing the flaming torch, leapt forward and
dashed along the course toward the next relay, who again raced on and
on till at last one man dashed past the winning post with his torch
burning ahead of all the others, amid the applauding cheers of the
multitude.

The Greeks, who were very fond of this race, coined a proverbial
phrase from it. Translated it runs:

"Let the torch-bearers hand on the flame to the others" or "Let those
who have the light pass it on."

* * * * *

That relay-race of torch-bearers is a living picture of the wonderful
relay-race of heroes who, right through the centuries, have, with
dauntless courage and a scorn of danger and difficulty, passed through
thrilling adventures in order to carry the Light across the continents
and oceans of the world.

The torch-bearers! The long race of those who have borne, and still
carry the torches, passing them on from hand to hand, runs before us.
A little ship puts out from Seleucia, bearing a man who had caught
the fire in a blinding blaze of light on the road to Damascus. Paul
crosses the sea and then threads his way through the cities of Cyprus
and Asia Minor, passes over the blue AEgean to answer the call from
Macedonia. We see the light quicken, flicker and glow to a steady
blaze in centre after centre of life, till at last the torch-bearer
reaches his goal in Rome.

"Yes, without cheer of sister or of daughter,
Yes, without stay of father or of son,
Lone on the land and homeless on the water
Pass I in patience till the work be done."

Centuries pass and men of another age, taking the light that Paul had
brought, carry the torch over Apennine and Alp, through dense forests
where wild beasts and wilder savages roam, till they cross the North
Sea and the light reaches the fair-haired Angles of Britain, on whose
name Augustine had exercised his punning humour, when he said, "Not
Angles, but Angels." From North and South, through Columba and Aidan,
Wilfred of Sussex and Bertha of Kent, the light came to Britain.

"Is not our life," said the aged seer to the Mercian heathen king as
the Missionary waited for permission to lead them to Christ, "like a
sparrow that flies from the darkness through the open window into this
hall and flutters about in the torchlight for a few moments to fly out
again into the darkness of the night. Even so we know not whence our
life comes nor whither it goes. This man can tell us. Shall we not
receive his teaching?" So the English, through these torch-bearers,
come into the light.

The centuries pass by and in 1620 the little _Mayflower_, bearing
Christian descendants of those heathen Angles--new torch-bearers,
struggles through frightful tempests to plant on the American
Continent the New England that was indeed to become the forerunner of
a New World.[1]

A century and a half passes and down the estuary of the Thames creeps
another sailing ship.

The Government officer shouts his challenge:

"What ship is that and what is her cargo?"

"The _Duff_," rings back the answer, "under Captain Wilson, bearing
Missionaries to the South Sea."

The puzzled official has never heard of such beings! But the little
ship passes on and after adventures and tempests in many seas at last
reaches the far Pacific. There the torch-bearers pass from island
to island and the light flames like a beacon fire across many a blue
lagoon and coral reef.

One after another the great heroes sail out across strange seas and
penetrate hidden continents each with a torch in his hand.

Livingstone, the lion-hearted pathfinder in Africa, goes out as the
fearless explorer, the dauntless and resourceful missionary, faced by
poisoned arrows and the guns of Arabs and marched with only his black
companions for thousands of miles through marsh and forest, over
mountain pass and across river swamps, in loneliness and hunger, often
with bleeding feet, on and on to the little hut in old Chitambo's
village in Ilala, where he crossed the river. Livingstone is the
Coeur-de-Lion of our Great Crusade.

John Williams, who, in his own words, could "never be content with
the limits of a single reef," built with his own hands and almost
without any tools on a cannibal island the wonderful little ship _The
Messenger of Peace_ in which he sailed many thousands of miles from
island to island across the Pacific Ocean.

These are only two examples of the men whose adventures are more
thrilling than those of our story books and yet are absolutely true,
and we find them in every country and in each of the centuries.

So--as we look across the ages we

"See the race of hero-spirits
Pass the torch from hand to hand."

In this book the stories of a few of them are told as yarns to boys
and girls round a camp-fire. Every one of the tales is historically
true, and is accurate in detail.

In that ancient Greek relay-race the prize to each winner was simply a
wreath of leaves cut by a priest with a golden knife from trees in the
sacred grove near the Sea,--the grove where the Temple of Neptune, the
god of the Ocean, stood. It was just a crown of wild olive that would
wither away. Yet no man would have changed it for its weight in gold.

For when the proud winner in the race went back to his little city,
set among the hills, with his already withering wreath, all the people
would come and hail him a victor and wave ribbons in the air. A great
sculptor would carve a statue of him in imperishable marble and it
would be set up in the city. And on the head of the statue of the
young athlete was carved a wreath.

In the great relay-race of the world many athletes--men and
women--have won great fame by the speed and skill and daring with
which they carried forward the torch and, themselves dropping in their
tracks, have passed the flame on to the next runner; Paul, Francis,
Penn, Livingstone, Mackay, Florence Nightingale, and a host of others.
And many who have run just as bravely and swiftly have won no fame
at all though their work was just as great. But the fame or the
forgetting really does not matter. The fact is that the race is still
running; _it has not yet been won_. Whose team will win? That is what
matters.

The world is the stadium. Teams of evil run rapidly and teams of good
too.

The great heroes and heroines whose story is told in this book have
run across the centuries over the world to us. Some of them are alive
to-day, as heroic as those who have gone. But all of them say the same
thing to us of the new world who are coming after them:

"Take the torch."

The greatest of them all, when he came to the very end of his days, as
he fell and passed on the Torch to others, said:

"I have run my course."

But to us who are coming on as Torch-bearers after him he spoke in
urgent words--written to the people at Corinth where the Isthmian
races were run:

"Do you not know that they which run in a race all run, but one wins
the prize?
So run, that ye may be victors."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: See "The Argonauts of Faith" by Basil Mathews. (Doran.)]

Book One: THE PIONEERS

CHAPTER I

THE HERO OF THE LONG TRAIL

_St. Paul_

(Dates, b. A.D. 6, d. A.D. 67[2])

_The Three Comrades._

The purple shadows of three men moved ahead of them on the tawny
stones of the Roman road on the high plateau of Asia Minor one bright,
fresh morning.[3] They had just come out under the arched gateway
through the thick walls of the Roman city of Antioch-in-Pisidia. The
great aqueduct of stone that brought the water to the city from the
mountains on their right[4] looked like a string of giant camels
turned to stone.

Of the three men, one was little more than a boy. He had the oval face
of his Greek father and the glossy dark hair of his Jewish mother.
The older men, whose long tunics were caught up under their girdles
to give their legs free play in walking, were brown, grizzled, sturdy
travellers. They had walked a hundred leagues together from the
hot plains of Syria, through the snow-swept passes of the Taurus
mountains, and over the sun-scorched levels of the high plateau.[5]
Their muscles were as tireless as whipcord. Their courage had not
quailed before robber or blizzard, the night yells of the hyena or the
stones of angry mobs.

For the youth this was his first adventure out into the glorious,
unknown world. He was on the open road with the glow of the sun on his
cheek and the sting of the breeze in his face; a strong staff in his
hand; with his wallet stuffed with food--cheese, olives, and some
flat slabs of bread; and by his side his own great hero, Paul. Their
sandals rang on the stone pavement of the road which ran straight as
a strung bowline from the city, Antioch-in-Pisidia, away to the west.
The boy carried over his shoulder the cloak of Paul, and carried that
cloak as though it had been the royal purple garment of the Roman
Emperor himself instead of the worn, faded, travel-stained cloak of a
wandering tent-maker.

The two older men, whose names were Paul the Tarsian and Silas, had
trudged six hundred miles. Their younger companion, whose name was
"Fear God," or Timothy as we say, with his Greek fondness for perfect
athletic fitness of the body, proudly felt the taut, wiry muscles
working under his skin.

On they walked for day after day, from dawn when the sun rose behind
them to the hour when the sun glowed over the hills in their faces.
They turned northwest and at last dropped down from the highlands of
this plateau of Asia Minor, through a long broad valley, until they
looked down across the Plain of Troy to the bluest sea in the world.

Timothy's eyes opened with astonishment as he looked down on such a
city as he had never seen--the great Roman seaport of Troy. The marble
Stadium, where the chariots raced and the gladiators fought, gleamed
in the afternoon light.

The three companions could not stop long to gaze. They swung easily
down the hill-sides and across the plain into Troy, where they took
lodgings.

They had not been in Troy long when they met a doctor named Luke. We
do not know whether one of them was ill and the doctor helped him; we
do not know whether Doctor Luke (who was a Greek) worshipped, when
he met them, AEsculapius, the god of healing of the Greek people. The
doctor did not live in Troy, but was himself a visitor.

"I live across the sea," Luke told his three friends--Paul, Silas and
Timothy--stretching his hand out towards the north. "I live," he would
say proudly, "in the greatest city of all Macedonia--Philippi. It is
called after the great ruler Philip of Macedonia."

Then Paul in his turn would be sure to tell Doctor Luke what it was
that had brought him across a thousand miles of plain and mountain
pass, hill and valley, to Troy. This is how he would tell the story in
such words as he used again and again:

"I used to think," he said, "that I ought to do many things to oppose
the name of Jesus of Nazareth. I had many of His disciples put into
prison and even voted for their being put to death. I became so
exceedingly mad against them that I even pursued them to foreign
cities.

"Then as I was journeying[6] to Damascus, with the authority of the
chief priests themselves, at mid-day I saw on the way a light from the
sky, brighter than the blaze of the sun, shining round about me and my
companions. And, as we were all fallen on to the road, I heard a voice
saying to me:

"'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick
against the goad.'

"And I said, 'Who are you, Lord?'

"The answer came: 'I am Jesus, whom you persecute.'"

Then Paul went on:

"I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision; but I told those in
Damascus and in Jerusalem and in all Judaea, aye! and the foreign
nations also, that they should repent and turn to God.

"Later on," said Paul, "I fell into a trance, and Jesus came again
to me and said, 'Go, I will send you afar to the Nations.' That (Paul
would say to Luke) is why I walk among perils in the city; in perils
in the wilderness; in perils in the sea; in labour and work; in hunger
and thirst and cold, to tell people everywhere of the love of God
shown in Jesus Christ."[7]

_The Call to Cross the Sea._

One night, after one of these talks, as Paul was asleep in Troy, he
seemed to see a figure standing by him. Surely it was the dream-figure
of Luke, the doctor from Macedonia, holding out his hands and pleading
with Paul, saying, "Come over into Macedonia and help us."

Now neither Paul nor Silas nor Timothy had ever been across the sea
into the land that we now call Europe. But in the morning, when Paul
told his companions about the dream that he had had, they all agreed
that God had called them to go and deliver the good news of the
Kingdom to the people in Luke's city of Philippi and in the other
cities of Macedonia.

So they went down into the busy harbour of Troy, where the singing
sailor-men were bumping bales of goods from the backs of camels into
the holds of the ships, and they took a passage in a little coasting
ship. She hove anchor and was rowed out through the entrance between
the ends of the granite piers of the harbour. The seamen hoisting the
sails, the little ship went gaily out into the AEgean Sea.

All day they ran before the breeze and at night anchored under the lee
of an island. At dawn they sailed northward again with a good wind,
till they saw land. Behind the coast on high ground the columns of
a temple glowed in the sunlight. They ran into a spacious bay and
anchored in the harbour of a new city--Neapolis as it was called--the
port of Philippi.

Landing from the little ship, Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke climbed
from the harbour by a glen to the crest of the hill, and then on, for
three or four hours of hard walking, till their sandals rang on
the pavement under the marble arch of the gate through the wall of
Philippi.

_Flogging and Prison._

As Paul and his friends walked about in the city they talked with
people; for instance, with a woman called Lydia, who also had come
across the sea from Asia Minor where she was born. She and her
children and slaves all became Christians. So the men and women of
Philippi soon began to talk about these strange teachers from the
East. One day Paul and Silas met a slave girl dressed in a flowing,
coloured tunic. She was a fortune-teller, who earned money for her
masters by looking at people and trying to see at a glance what they
were like so that she might tell their fortunes. The fortune-telling
girl saw Paul and Silas going along, and she stopped and called out
loud so that everyone who went by might hear: "These men are the
slaves of the Most High God. They tell you the way of Salvation."

The people stood and gaped with astonishment, and still the girl
called out the same thing, until a crowd began to come round. Then
Paul turned round and with sternness in his voice spoke to the evil
spirit in the girl and said: "In the Name of Jesus Christ, I order you
out of her."

From that day the girl lost her power to tell people's fortunes, so
that the money that used to come to her masters stopped flowing. They
were very angry and stirred up everybody to attack Paul and Silas. A
mob collected and searched through the streets until they found them.
Then they clutched hold of their arms and robes, shouting: "To the
praetors! To the praetors!" The praetors were great officials who sat in
marble chairs in the Forum, the central square of the city.

The masters of the slave girl dragged Paul and Silas along. At
their heels came the shouting mob and when they came in front of the
praetors, the men cried out:

"See these fellows! Jews as they are, they are upsetting everything in
the city. They tell people to take up customs that are against the Law
for us as Romans to accept."

"Yes! Yes!" yelled the crowd. "Flog them! Flog them!"

The praetors, without asking Paul or Silas a single question as to
whether this was true, or allowing them to make any defence, were
fussily eager to show their Roman patriotism. Standing up they gave
their orders:

"Strip them, flog them."

The slaves of the praetors seized Paul and Silas and took their robes
from their backs. They were tied by their hands to the whipping-post.
The crowd gathered round to see the foreigners thrashed.

The lictors--that is the soldier-servants of the praetors--untied their
bundles of rods. Then each lictor brought down his rod with cruel
strokes on Paul and Silas. The rods cut into the flesh and the blood
flowed down.

Then their robes were thrown over their shoulders, and the two men,
with their tortured backs bleeding, were led into the black darkness
of the cell of the city prison; shackles were snapped on to their
arms, and their feet were clapped into stocks. Their bodies ached; the
other prisoners groaned and cursed; the filthy place stank; sleep was
impossible.

But Paul and Silas did not groan. They sang the songs of their own
people, such as the verses that Paul had learned--as all Jewish
children did--when he was a boy at school. For instance--

God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change,
And though the mountains be moved in the heart of the seas;
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled,
Though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.

As they sang there came a noise as though the mountains really were
shaking. The ground rocked; the walls shook; the chains were loosened
from the stones; the stocks were wrenched apart; their hands and feet
were free; the heavy doors crashed open. It was an earthquake.

The jailor leapt to the entrance of the prison. The moonlight shone on
his sword as he was about to kill himself, thinking his prisoners had
escaped.

"Do not harm yourself," shouted Paul. "We are all here."

"Torches! Torches!" yelled the jailor.

The jailor, like all the people of his land, believed that earthquakes
were sent by God. He thought he was lost. He turned to Paul and Silas
who, he knew, were teachers about God.

"Sirs," he said, falling in fear on the ground, "what must I do to be
saved?"

"Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ," they replied, "and you and your
household will all be saved."

The jailor's wife then brought some oil and water, and the jailor
washed the poor wounded backs of Paul and Silas and rubbed healing oil
into them.

The night was now passing and the sun began to rise. There was a tramp
of feet. The lictors who had thrashed Paul and Silas marched to
the door of the prison with an order to free them. The jailor was
delighted.

"The praetors have sent to set you free," he said. "Come out then and
go in peace."

He had the greatest surprise in his life when, instead of going, Paul
turned and said:

"No, indeed! The praetors flogged us in public in the Forum and without
a trial--flogged Roman citizens! They threw us publicly into prison,
and now they are going to get rid of us secretly. Let the praetors come
here themselves and take us out!"

Surely it was the boldest message ever sent to the powerful praetors.
But Paul knew what he was doing, and when the Roman praetors heard the
message they knew that he was right. They would be ruined if it were
reported at Rome that they had publicly flogged Roman citizens without
trial.

Their prisoner, Paul, was now their judge. They climbed down from
their marble seats and walked on foot to the prison to plead with Paul
and Silas to leave the prison and not to tell against them what had
happened.

"Will you go away from the city?" they asked. "We are afraid of other
riots."

So Paul and Silas consented. But they went to the house where Lydia
lived--the home in which they had been staying in Philippi.

Paul cheered up the other Christian folk--Lydia and Luke and
Timothy--and told them how the jailor and his wife and family had all
become Christians.

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