CHAPTER II. THE MISSIONARY CALL AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF INDIA. 'Now what I ask of you is carefully to search and examine, that it may not be through unfaithfulness that you decline to enter on an apostle's work. Fox to French, 1848. Few men ever attracted me more. He was a true apostle.'-BISHOP WESTCOTT of Bishop French, 1892. The world sits at the feet of Christ It will be plain already that the idea of missionary service was no new thought to French. But there is often a wide. gulf between the general desire to be a missionary some day and the determined resolution to enlist at once. Many pious men, who are doing excellent work in England, have at one time or another had their thoughts turned strongly to the mission-field: but, quite apart from any cooling ardour, health or home claims or some plain overruling Providence has thwarted their desires. In the case, however, of Thomas French, the vague yearnings of childhood to teach the little black boys about Jesus were realized in what he felt to be God's one clear call to him. He himself used often to refer to a speech of Bishop Wilberforce as being the deciding point with him. It was a strong appeal to Oxford men for service in the foreign field. He talked and prayed over the matter with a friend, Arthur Lea of Wadham, and they determined to give themselves to missionary work. Either at this time or earlier French had become collector in his College for the C. M. S., an undertaking which, owing to his natural reserve, proved an especial burden. On his first return to Oxford after the next vacation he was met by the intelligence that his friend Arthur Lea1 had been in a railway accident, and was lying at Swindon seriously injured. He went there at once and watched by him till he died. The death of his friend naturally deepened his impressions. The one was taken and the other left, and so their mutual vows of consecration appeared to him as doubly binding. He seems at once to have put himself into communication with the C. M. S. secretaries, though his intentions were not publicly declared: he was resolved (it is said) that if in two years he did not receive a College tutorship, he would seek educational missionary work. But whatever his precise determination was, there is no doubt that this was the one rival claim that really weighed with him, and that the actual offer of the tutorship was made to him within two or three days after he had sent in his final application to the C. M. S., but then having put his hand to the plough he would not think of looking back. Another influence was that of Fox, the Rugby missionary. It has been already mentioned that French had met him at 1 The late Rev. F. S. Lea, Arthur's cousin, gives the following particulars:-French's friendship for Arthur was formed at the St. Ebbe's gatherings, which were held successively by Bishops Baring and Waldegrave. It had been arranged that he should be curate to Mr. Peter French when he was twenty-three. The accident took place at Shrivenham, May 10, 1848. The railway authorities sent the report to Wadham, and provided a special train to Swindon, where Arthur Lea was lying. French, I think, accompanied me by this train; in any case he was with me almost immediately on my arrival, and he remained with me till Arthur's death on May 13. We slept in the waiting-rooms, or where we could, for the Station Hotel was full with the injured. French was the only Oxford friend who was with him besides myself, and his presence was of the greatest value, for Arthur was conscious and able to speak to us for the first day after the accident. French's sympathy and affection was the greatest possible support to me. Arthur Lea's parents had both died when he was very young, and my father was his guardian.' HENRY FOX OF RUGBY 17 Oxford; and when Fox returned to India he wrote to French in 1847, appealing for his services. Through the kindness of the Rev. A. H. Frost the following extract from this letter is given: "The gospel is thoroughly preached through all England (I do not speak of those few, 100,000 or so, in our large towns who are in really heathen darkness; you are probably not contemplating a mission among them, and therefore they do not enter into com petition with the Hindu heathens), and more than this the Bible does not lead us to look for; the mass of every country will still be at Christ's coming a faithful counterpart of Sodom and the world in Noah's time, viz. God's own people a little scattered flock, the mass full of worldly-mindedness and ungodliness. 'However, Christ has promised that the gospel shall be preached for a witness in India, China, Persia, and all the world before He comes, and oh! how is He straitened until this His great work is accomplished, His work which with His last words He committed to His Church for ever. "Through one form of unfaithfulness or other, our land-rather, those who are His true servants in our land, whom He has by His unmistakable Providence marked out to be the evangelizers of the world, and peculiarly India-have neglected, and are continuing to neglect, to do His great work. Now what I ask of you is carefully to search and examine, that it may not be through unfaithfulness that you decline to enter on an apostle's work'. "The excuse of the wants of England as an objection to becoming a missionary seems to me one of the most unfaithful excuses a Christian can give; it implies a direct unbelief in God's promise of blessing the liberal. If God's promise be true, the more men come out the more men will He raise up to bless the Church with, which out of its poverty gives its best to His cause. . . 'I often think of the deliciousness of Oxford at this season, its soft meadows, its cool rivers, and its fresh foliage, and the flowers which are so soon to adorn them all. Here we are just beginning to pant and parch for the next two months; nevertheless, the "coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt" is just as true one way as another, and we can be just as happy or happier here than in the green hawthorn lanes or shady avenues of dear old England. 'An apostle's work.' The word was ever a favourite with Bishop French, and it reminds the writer of a note that he received from Bishop Westcott about this memoir-You have a noble subject. Few men ever attracted me more. He was, like the Bishop of Minnesota, a true apostle.' In the presence of Christ is the fulness of joy, and we can't have or want more than fulness, yet Christ gives His presence more as we need the more. May you have it also, whether in India or England. I think that my own experience teaches me that the fewer outward sources of happiness a Christian has, the greater and richer are his spiritual joys; yet, knowing this, the fleshly heart still seeks and longs for the outward comforts. 'In referring to the early part of my letter, I asked you to consider for some months the missionary question. I would further ask you during that time to devote a portion of it to reading on missions. With the wants of England before your eyes, and often in your ears, you cannot view the two fields impartially if you do not at the same time dwell on missionary scenes. Even if this reading should sometimes stand in the way of other reading, I would still urge it, for surely it is no less important for a clergyman to be familiar with modern and present than with ancient ecclesiastical history. If you do not come out yourself, then let me ask you not to cease stirring up others till you have been the means of sending out at least one. You have as much interest in the work as I have. It is the hastening of the day of Christ.' Mr. Frost adds: "This letter seemed to decide him to go out. I remember walking up and down his father's garden when he was trying to see his way. He told me various things that held him back, the chief being his growing influence in Oxford, where he was getting widely known, and letters had begun to come to him, saying So-and-So, a son or brother, was coming up to Oxford, and asking him to take a father's or elder brother's place towards them by counsel or words in season. I could see that Fox's appeal to him was outweighing all such home weights, and felt sure what his decision. would be.' Perhaps it was Fox's death in October, 1848, that led French thus to bring out once again this former letter, and added to the force of its appeal by making it come to him like a voice from the dead. And so in April, 1850, the momentous application was sent in; Oxford was given up for India, and his father, not without pain and sorrow, as a letter of the year preceding shows, submitted to the call. MY DEAREST SON, Feb. 22, 1849. Your letter of this morning cost your dear mother and me many tears. Of course nature, poor weak fainting nature, shrinks from the idea of parting with a beloved child for a distant land, and APPOINTMENT TO AGRA 19 would not have it so; but he that engages to take up the cross and follow his Master, however feebly, must be content to forego his own will, and to say, 'Thy will, O Lord, be done.' . . . We should of course desire your continuance among us, but we know that if we were guilty of thwarting the disposition of Divine Providence, we might be scourged in a thousand ways, and, instead of peace in our gourd, have plenteous bitterness and leanness of soul withal. We therefore commend you to God and His gracious guidance, direction, and blessing, and if He order your steps differently from the track we had fondly marked out for you, may He be glorified and you abundantly blessed! God's ways are, indeed, past finding out. We know nothing, but must how in reverent submission. It had seemed that your position in Oxford, with your desire to be useful there, pointed out that sphere as your appropriate field of labour. But if God decide otherwise, we must submit. Man is only what God is pleased to make him anywhere, and He can do as well without us as with us if He pleases. God bless you, my dearest fellow. Believe me, your ever affectionate father, PETER FRENCH His application to the Church Missionary Society was accepted on April 16, 1850, and at the same time he was assigned the duty of superintending the educational establishment which was to be founded at Agra under the auspices of the Society. A month later, Edward Craig Stuart, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, then seeking ordination, was accepted by the Society as his colleague. In a farewell sermon preached at Burton in April, 1850 (the first he ever published), he gives the reasons that had attracted him especially to Agra. There Abdul Masih, Martyn's only convert, had worked successfully; but on his death the work had been allowed through lack of reinforcements to fall into decay. 'Have we not cause,' says French, 'to mingle sorrow with our joy, and shame with our boasting? Looking back upon the generation that is passing away, can it be said that England has spoken with the faith and boldness of the Apostle-"I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ "?" Thus Martyn's work was carried on by Abdul Masih; lest Abdul Masih's work should fail, French threw his energies for forty years into the same great field. And now his place |