The year 1873 witnessed a great diminution of the number of the missionaries of the Presbyterian Board. In January the Rev. S. C. George, after eleven years’ service as teacher, preacher and translator, left with Mrs. George, as has been already stated. February 8th the Rev. S. G. McFarland and his wife, after twelve and a half years of faithful and exhausting but successful labor for this heathen people’s good, sought their much-needed and well-earned rest in their native land. April 19th the Rev. D. McGilvary of the Laos mission, who had been nearly fifteen years in the field, sailed from Bangkok with his family to revisit his friends and the churches in the United States. By the same steamer Miss Dickey also left, to find in the North China mission a more congenial climate. Aug. 12th, Dr. Vrooman sailed, having withdrawn from the Laos mission in June. Aug. 25th the Arthurs embarked for the United States, Mrs. Arthur’s health having failed entirely.
But the great loss to Siam this year was by the death of the missionary of longest service in the field—the Rev. D. B. Bradley, M. D., who rested from his unceasing and varied labors for Siam and the Siamese, continued for thirty-nine years with undiminished faith and zeal, on the 23d of June.
During the months of June and July the cholera prevailed, carrying off in twenty days over five thousand victims, among them the eldest son of Mr. McDonald. In November, Maa Tuan, the eldest daughter of Quakieng, the former Chinese assistant, was received to church membership; two of his sons were afterward admitted. A translation of Pilgrim’s Progress, made by the native elder of the Bangkok church, was printed this year and was in large demand.
The recoronation of the king took place in November, he having now obtained his majority. On taking the reins of government into his own hands, prompted by his own noble instincts, his inherited love of progress and sincere desire for the good of his people, he boldly ventured upon reforms that were startling to his old courtiers, and indeed to all who had known Old Siam. His coronation-day was marked by the abolition of the degrading custom practiced for centuries of requiring those of inferior rank to crouch and crawl on all fours like spaniels in the presence of their superiors. A still more remarkable change he sought to introduce was the giving up of some of his absolute power as sovereign, by creating a council of state and also a privy council, before whom all public measures were to be brought and discussed and approved before they could be decreed by the king as laws. In carrying out these and other well-planned reforms he received, however, but little sympathy from the old ex-regent and his party.
In 1874, to the great regret of all, the Rev. C. B. Bradley was compelled to leave the, to him, debilitating climate of Siam. With his family he embarked for California March 8th. Upon his departure the American Missionary Association withdrew altogether from the field, making over to the family of Dr. Bradley the mission premises and the printing-establishment. This last, in fact, had been built up by the energy and skill and labor of Dr. Bradley, and its earnings had for many years more than paid all the expenses of the mission.
The Presbyterian Board was now the only Board left to provide for the spiritual needs of the Siamese people. Would that the Church whose agent that Board is could be made to realize the blessedness of the privilege committed to her if improved, and the responsibility she incurs if unfaithful to her duty to these myriads of dying men and women!
Mr. Carrington too was forced by protracted illness in his family to take his final leave of Siam.
In the fall of 1874, Mr. and Mrs. McGilvary of the Laos mission, returning from their visit to America, arrived in Bangkok, and, being joined by Marion A. Cheek, M. D., the newly-appointed medical missionary to these people, who came out by a later steamer early in 1875, embarked for their remote post at Cheung Mai.
Under Dr. Cheek’s escort Miss Mary L. Cort and Miss Susie D. Grimstead had come to join the Siam mission. Both were assigned to the station at Petchaburee. There Miss Cort has remained ever since, in labors abundant and manifold and with zeal and courage untiring.
Among the converts reported in 1875 was one long in the employ of the different missions as a printer, who had hardened his heart against the truths he had through the press helped make known to others, and grown old in sin, now constrained to yield to those truths and enter on a Christian life. Two sons of the old native Chinese assistant, Quakieng, who died in 1859, were also received, and the younger became a candidate for the ministry.