The house connected with my Green Street Church, was now offered to me for a Manse, and any reasonable salary that I cared to ask (as against the promised £120 per annum for the far-off and dangerous New Hebrides), on condition that I would remain at home. I cannot honestly say that such offers or opposing influences proved a heavy trial to me; they rather tended to confirm my determination that the path of duty was to go abroad. Amongst many who sought to deter me, was one dear old Christian gentleman, whose crowning argument always was,—
“The Cannibals! you will be eaten by Cannibals!”
At last I replied, “Mr. Dickson, you are advanced in years now, and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms; I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving and honouring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by Cannibals or by worms; and in the Great Day my resurrection body will arise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer.”
The old gentleman, raising his hands in a deprecating attitude, left the room exclaiming,—
“After that I have nothing more to say!”
My dear Green Street people grieved excessively at the thought of my leaving them, and daily pled with me to remain. Indeed, the opposition was so strong from nearly all, and many of them warm Christian friends, that I was sorely tempted to question whether I was carrying out the Divine will, or only some headstrong wish of my own. This also caused me much anxiety, and drove me close to God in prayer. But again every doubt would vanish, when I clearly saw that all at home had free access to the Bible and the means of grace, with Gospel light shining all around them, while the poor Heathen were perishing, without even the chance of knowing all God’s love and mercy to men. Conscience said louder and clearer every day, “Leave all these results with Jesus your Lord, who said, ‘Go ye into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature, and lo! I am with you alway.’” These words kept ringing in my ears; these were our marching orders.
Some retorted upon me, “There are Heathen at home; let us seek and save, first of all, the lost ones perishing at our doors.” This I felt to be most true, and an appalling fact; but I unfailingly observed that those who made this retort neglected these home Heathen themselves; and so the objection, as from them, lost all its power. They would ungrudgingly spend more on a fashionable party at dinner or tea, on concert or ball or theatre, or on some ostentatious display, or worldly and selfish indulgence, ten times more, perhaps in a single day, than they would give in a year, or in half a lifetime, for the conversion of the whole Heathen World, either at home or abroad. Objections from all such people must, of course, always count for nothing among men to whom spiritual things are realities. For these people themselves,—I do, and always did, only pity them, as God’s stewards, making such a miserable use of time and money entrusted to their care.
On meeting with so many obstructing influences, I again laid the whole matter before my dear parents, and their reply was to this effect:—“Heretofore we feared to bias you, but now we must tell you why we praise God for the decision to which you have been led. Your father’s heart was set upon being a Minister, but other claims forced him to give it up. When you were given to them, your father and mother laid you upon the altar, their first-born, to be consecrated, if God saw fit, as a Missionary of the Cross; and it has been their constant prayer that you might be prepared, qualified, and led to this very decision; and we pray with all our heart that the Lord may accept your offering, long spare you, and give you many souls from the Heathen World for your hire.” From that moment, every doubt as to my path of duty for ever vanished. I saw the hand of God very visibly, not only preparing me for, but now leading me to, the Foreign Mission field.
Well did I know that the sympathy and prayers of my dear parents were warmly with me in all my studies and in all my Mission work; but for my education they could, of course, give me no money help. All through, on the contrary, it was my pride and joy to help them, being the eldest in a family of eleven. First, I assisted them to purchase the family cow, without whose invaluable aid my ever-memorable mother never could have reared and fed her numerous flock; then, I paid for them the house-rent and the cow’s grass on the Bank Hill, till some of the others grew up and relieved me by paying these in my stead; and finally, I helped to pay the school-fees, to provide clothing—in short I gave, and gladly, what could possibly be saved out of my City Mission salary of £40, ultimately advanced to £45 per annum. Self-educated thus, and without the help of one shilling from any other source, readers will easily imagine that I had many a staggering difficulty to overcome in my long curriculum in Arts, Divinity, and Medicine; but God so guided me, and blessed all my little arrangements, that I never incurred one farthing of personal debt. There was, however, a heavy burden always pressing upon me, and crushing my spirit from the day I left my home, which had been thus incurred.
The late owner of the Dalswinton estate allowed, as a prize, the cottager who had the tidiest house and most beautiful flower-garden to sit rent free. For several years in succession, my old sea-faring grandfather won this prize, partly by his own handy skill, partly by his wife’s joy in flowers. Unfortunately no clearance-receipt had been asked or given for these rents—the proprietor and his cottars treating each other as friends rather than as men of business. The new heir, unexpectedly succeeding, found himself in need of money, and threatened prosecution for such rents as arrears. The money had to be borrowed. A money-lending lawyer gave it at usurious interest, on condition of my father also becoming responsible for interest and principal. This burden hung like a millstone around my grandfather’s neck till the day of his death; and it then became suspended round my father’s neck alone. The lawyer, on hearing of my giving up trade and entering upon study, threatened to prosecute my father for the capital, unless my name were given along with his for security. Every shilling that I or any of us could save, all through these ten years of my preparatory classes, went to pay off that interest and gradually to reduce the capital; and this burden we managed, amongst us, to extinguish just on the eve of my departure for the South Seas. Indeed, one of the purest joys connected with that time was that I received my first Foreign Mission salary and outfit money in advance, and could send home a sum sufficient to wipe out the last penny of a claim by that money-lender or by any one else against my beloved parents, in connection with the noble struggle they had made in rearing so large a family in thorough Scottish independence. And that joy was hallowed by the knowledge that my other brothers and sisters were now all willing and able to do what I had been doing—for we stuck to each other and to the old folks like burs, and had all things “in common,” as a family in Christ—and I knew that never again, howsoever long they might be spared through a peaceful autumn of life, would the dear old father and mother lack any joy or comfort that the willing hands and loving hearts of all their children could singly or unitedly provide. For all this I did praise the Lord. It consoled me, beyond description, in parting from them, probably for ever in this world at least.