Some Reminiscences

SOME REMINISCENCES

by Stuart E. Mc Nair (1954)

Casa Editora Evangélica

Teresópolis, Estado do Rio, Brazil

O Lord, that I could waste my life for others
With no ends of my own!
That I could pour myself into my brothers
And live for them alone! 

Such was the life Thou triedst, self-abjuring,
Thine own pains never easing,
Our burdens bearing, our just doom enduring:
A life without self-pleasing.

Frederick W. Faber

Some things are better forgotten. Many others are hardly worth remembering. A few shine as high-lights of memory across the years, and are recalled with both pleasure and profit, and with the conviction that the record of them may be of interest to others both now and for a long time to come. Since many precious memories have faded into forgetfulness, that is all the more reason why what remains should be written down while there is yet time. At 87 plus, while much that is past is gone for ever, one's remembrance of some long-ago incidents remains surprisingly vivid.

It was in 1882, in my home town of Croydon, at Church Path Schoolroom, that for the first and last time I met J. N. Darby. It was one Sunday afternoon, at a Bible Reading, and before the meeting I saw a stout sister bringing along a large “Windsor” chair so that the old man—he was 82, and in the last year of his life—might be comfortably seated throughout the meeting. I was 14 years old, and looked and listened with much interest. It was a rather learned Reading, and those who had Greek testaments with them asked for alternative readings of some of the words. Probably they all knew that J. N. D. had already translated the Bible into French, German and English, and the New Testament into Italian. I watched, almost fascinated, the fine old face: serene, intellectual, spiritual, and wished that J. N. D. had allowed himself to be photographed at least once for the record, instead of leaving posterity to the mercy of sketches made surreptitiously during meetings.

After the meeting, as the great man (he was of middle height) moved slowly down the central aisle, he was surrounded by all and sundry, each one ambitious to at least shake hands with such a celebrity. Half-way down I, being a mere boy, got out of the way amongst the benches, to make room for the moving crowd. As he passed my row J. N. D. left the throng, took a couple of steps towards me and shook hands, then turned again to the crowd. At the time, boy-like, I did not think much of the incident, but long after I thought it a characteristic gesture. J. N. D. had a heart for young people, and he was not going to overlook a boy who was too shy to push himself forward.

No doubt there are many apocryphal stories about J. N. Darby, but the above has at least the merit of being a true one. Another, with at least verisimilitude, is his answer to the sister who asked him what books he read. "Bad books and the Bible" is the alleged answer, and no doubt when he read bad books he often refuted them very ably. But one wonders whether he ever read the good books of his day, such as “Christ our Example” by Caroline Fry, and “Ecce Homo” by Prof. Seeley. In my later teens I read through all the three large volumes of his Letters, and was impressed by his spiritual insight and love of the truth. But I do not remember him ever recommending any book written by those who “followed not with us”. In this his letters contrast with the writings of C. H. Spurgeon, which abound in recommendations of the works of past and present theologians.

My next recollection is of C. H. Mackintosh in Dublin, some six years later. I had been sent there by my employer to lay down a small electric tramway around a distillery at the suburb of Clontarf, and though I stayed there only eight months it was long enough to prove the abounding hospitality of the Irish believers. I was asked out to tea over a hundred times.

C. H. M. told me to come to tea whenever I liked, so I liked once a fortnight, and each occasion was a delightful experience. Mr. Mackintosh was the embodiment of brotherly love, and his kindness was almost overwhelming. One day he remarked: "Dear Stuart! How kind of you to come so far to see me!" to which I replied: "Well, Mr. Mackintosh, you know I only come for what I can get." One day he opened the door himself when I rang the bell, and there in the hall I told him that I believed the Lord was calling me to serve Him in South America. Then and there he put his hands on my head and prayed for God's blessing on my future service: a prayer which I think I may say has been abundantly answered. So now when people ask me if I believe in the "laying on of hands" I answer "Yes I do: and I have received it."

At that time there was in Dublin an elderly and inconspicuous brother named Knox, whose line of service was to gain the confidence of teen-age boys and help them with their difficulties and temptations. He had a Sunday afternoon Bible Class for young men at which the conversation was intimate and confidential, and the teaching was greatly valued by those who attended. Then someone suggested that the young women should also be admitted, and immediately the profit was halved. The Class limped along for a few weeks until someone proposed that all should be welcomed, both old and young—and that was the finishing touch. The attendance dwindled right away, and the meetings ended. And I learnt a lesson: "when things are going well with meetings for a special class, be careful how you change, for instead of doing better you may do worse."

Among my Christian friends in Dublin was the General Manager of the Northern Railway, and he offered me a trip to Sligo with a free pass. There I saw a tiny waterfall at, I think, a place called Glencar. The strange thing was that the little cascade sometimes came down and sometimes went up just according to the way of the wind. So the water either irrigated the lowlands or the top of the cliff, and I thought I saw in that a picture of the over-flow of a Spirit-filled life, sometimes flowing down in ministry to men, and sometimes rising up in worship to God.

In 1891 I answered an advertisement for "An engineering draughtsman wanted in Lisbon" and obtained the situation, boarding there with the widow of the well-known Bible teacher Richard Holden for the next five years.

To live with such a Christian as Mrs. Holden was an education in itself, and from her I learnt valuable lessons in the spiritual life. She was a believer tried and tested in almost every possible way, but always serenely cheerful, so that the neighbour opposite once asked her what was the secret of her happiness? She was tireless in Christian service, in visiting, holding meetings for young women, and also for the neighbouring ragged children. In spite of her piety she must have had some sense of humour. An English friend commented once on a particularly ragged little boy in her class, and remarked that his trousers were badly torn.  "Do you call them trousers?" asked Mrs. Holden. "I call it an apron."

It was at Mrs. Holden's house that I first met the Christian industrialist F. M. Bostock, of Stafford, of whom I shall have something to say further on. He spent a few weeks with us in Lisbon, and that was the beginning of a friendship which continued until his death.

On one of my sea trips from Southampton to Lisbon I was walking the deck one morning when I saw a distinguished-looking gentleman sitting on a chair reading a Bible.  I said to him: "That is a good book you have, Sir!" His answer was "I thought if I held up the flag, someone would respond to it."

I soon found that I was talking to Henry Maxwell Wright, whose name was even then a household word in all the Portuguese-speaking Christian world, mostly on account of the many hymns he had translated into the language. As the steamer dropped anchor in Vigo harbour, Maxwell Wright said, “There are believers here. Let us go ashore and look them up.”

Soon we were on land, and Mr. Wright was asking all and sundry “Donde están los protestantes?”  (Where are the Protestants?) The people directed us here and there until we came to a place where they pointed up a stair, and said “Go up there and you will find them.” We climbed the stairs and came right into a prayer-meeting, with about 30 believers present. There happened to be an Englishman there, a Col. Mackinley, and after a whispered conversation Col. M. said “We have with us to-night Enrique Maxwell Wright, sometimes called ‘the Portuguese nightingale,’ so we will ask him to teach us a chorus,” which he immediately did.

My friendship with Maxwell Wright continued for some 20 years, right to the end of his life. During the three years I spent at the university city of Coimbra he came to my flat almost every month for a meeting and also became very intimate with my fellow-worker there Dr. Joaquim Leite Junior, but what I most like to remember about H. M. W. is that, during all the years of our friendship, I never got to know what denomination he belonged to. He never said and I never asked. But wherever he went the Lord's interests were his interests and the Lord's people his brethren in Christ. Much as I respected and admired him, in one thing I shall never follow his example: when he died (childless, Mrs. Wright having pre-deceased him) he left £50,000 to his heirs.

Maxwell Wright told me two stories which are worth recording. One day, in Portugal, he was travelling in the train with a R. C. priest, and the following conversation ensued:
H. M. W. “Your reverence, there is a question I have often wished to ask, and I do not think I shall find a better opportunity than this: The Christ you eat in the Mass, is He a living Christ or a dead?”
The priest. “Living or dead? Living or dead? What do you say, Sir?”
H. M. W. “I do not say anything. I am asking for information. If you eat a living Christ, well, I never heard of anyone eating a living man. But if you eat a dead Christ, why the Christ in whom I believe is not dead but living, so the problem presents a difficulty.”
I have no record of how the conversation ended.

H. M. W. evangelized for years in the Azores, and built a Gospel Hall at his own expense. There was great opposition to the Gospel, and one day the sub-delegado (chief of police) called on him to say there must not be a meeting that night, as he was advised there would be a riot.

“I shall not be making a riot,” said Mr. Wright. “Perhaps you had better go to the parties who intend to do so, and bind them over to keep the peace.” This was done, with satisfactory results.

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Since 1891 I have only visited Britain for short periods, and the most outstanding high-light of memory is my interview with Evan Roberts, by appointment, at the Penn-Lewis's house at Leicester. I cannot remember the date, but it was some time after the Welsh Revival of 1905. Perhaps it was in 1907. During the Revival in Wales bishops had waited in vain to get even a five minutes interview with him, but at that time he had consistently refused interviews of any sort, lest his spiritual work should be hindered. But when I visited him he was no longer sought after, being quite out of the limelight, and almost forgotten.

I reached the house at the appointed hour and Roberts rode up on his bicycle a moment later. He looked very young, and my impression was that I had never seen such a radiant face. Was Moses like that when he came down from the mount?

We spent an hour together in his study. At first I sensed a constraint, an apprehension. Perhaps he thought I was going to launch out in praise of his great revival work, but that subject never came up at all. After some fifteen minutes of general conversation I told him of my thought of taking up residence at the university city of Coimbra (Portugal) in hope of reaching the students with the Gospel, and I asked if he could give me any advice, whether or no?

He was quite silent for perhaps five minutes, and then said suddenly: “Let us pray”, so we knelt together at the sofa. We were kneeling for some 20 minutes, and I prayed aloud three times. He never spoke at all, but I sensed that he was in prayer all the time. We rose from our knees, and I felt some assurance that I should go to Coimbra, where I went soon after and stayed for three years. From there I used to cycle to markets and fairs within a radius of 20 miles, selling Gospels for a halfpenny each. Dr. Joaquim Leite was the most active worker in Coimbra, preaching the Gospel two or three nights each week in his own house. There was little to show at the time in the way of conversions. I had another flat at Aveiro, half way between Coimbra and Oporto, and used to spend half the week there, trying to get in touch with the people by teaching English. After I left, the brother John Opie carried on the work for some years.

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I remember paying an all-too-brief visit to the first "Palestine in London" exhibition. I (regretfully) missed Dr. Alfred Schofield's lecture on the huge relief map of Palestine, but I remember hearing a missionary from the East, dressed as a Bedouin shepherd, explain why an Eastern shepherd-boy may sometimes carry a sling. No: it is not to defend the sheep against wild beasts, which are not so common as all that, but the sling and the stones help him to care for the flock.

Do you see that wandering sheep, straying all the time farther away from the flock? If the shepherd sends his dog after it, that may drive it still farther away. But as it browses all unconscious on the hillside: Crack! a stone explodes on the rock just beyond it, and the silly sheep gives a jump, and looks back towards the flock. “Crack!” another stone explodes just behind it, and the sheep begins trotting towards the flock, stimulated by the explosions to rearward.
“But”, you say, “is that not cruel? That last stone nearly hit the poor animal”.
“Yes: Nearly, but not quite.  And it brought the sheep back to the fold. And you say: That last affliction nearly crushed me. It quite shook my faith”.
“Maybe it did: nearly. But not quite; and perhaps it was just that which brought you back to the flock and to the Shepherd”.
Well, I have treasured that little gem for half a century before putting it into print. And I hope the reader will remember it for another half century, and pass it on for the benefit of many others.

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I was lunching one day at the Edinburgh home of the celebrated evangelist Dr. W. T. P. Wolston, whose house was called "The Brethren's Hotel" because of his abounding hospitality, when the remark was made that more people are killed every year by eating than by drinking. One of the guests was Col. Jacob, who remarked that if there were only one dish, as with the Indians and their rice, no one would eat too much of it.

This paragraph, which adds ten lines to the length of my manuscript, may add ten years to the life of some of my readers.

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The most outstanding event during the Coimbra period was the visit of Dr. John R. Mott, to speak to the university students. Meetings were arranged in the theatre for three consecutive afternoons at 3 o'clock. For the first meeting 200 or 300 students came together, and just as the speaking began a fire alarm sounded and the fire engines galloped down the road, with their bells ringing. I suppose there is nothing that draws Coimbra students like a fire, and two or three of them ran out. I felt that if ever a fire was of the devil, that one was. Had the students stampeded the meeting would have been a fiasco, for they would have been too ashamed to return. But two or three leading students "hushed" them.

In a word, Dr. Mott's subject was "Temptation". In his first address he said that every young man has to face temptation, and the way he reacts to it determines his character and his destiny. He went on to say that there are just three ways in which students react to temptation. In the first class are those (few, but fine) who live a victorious life; in the second class are a much greater number, who mean well, but have to confess to frequent failure. In the third class are those who (as he worded it) are going to pieces morally, spiritually and physically.

He held the students spell-bound, but never once named Christ until right at the end of the third address. And then the NAME fell on them like a bomb-shell. From memory I can give almost verbatim his closing words: “Many of you will have read one of Victor Hugo's novels in which he tells of a young man who, walking along by the sea, became engulfed in a quicksand. He was all alone, or he might have been saved. But there was no one who could grasp his hand ere it sank beneath the sands. No one to answer his last cry for help before the sands silenced him. No one on whom his last glance could rest before he was blinded for ever”.

“Now, what would have saved that young man? Had there been beside him a rock on which he could have rested one finger, he would not have been lost”.

Then came the great climax: “Young men, I say to you today, not in the language of a narrow dogmatism, but with the most intense conviction, that the one thing that can save a young man who is sinking beneath the quicksands of temptation is THE LIVING CHRIST. Lay hold on Him, young men, and you too will be saved”. His interpreter was the talented Methodist minister Rev. Alfredo de Silva, and amongst those present were Henry Maxwell Wright and the well-known Rio industrialist Fernandes Braga.

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I forget how many times I have visited Barcelona. Perhaps 4 or 5. Once I spent five months there printing gospel tracts in Spanish, and in the middle of the work I felt that it would be better if the quantities were doubled. I was slightly acquainted with a very rich brother in Liverpool, with large estates in the Argentine, who might be willing to help with the needed funds. So I wrote to J. Alfred Trench, who knew him intimately, asking if he would write Mr. G. to know if he could contribute £100 for printing the tracts. J. A. Trench answered by return, enclosing a cheque for £100 and saying that he did not care to ask another to do what he might do himself.

During those five months in Barcelona I was visited by no less than five young priests, all professing their readiness to leave the Church of Rome if I could tell them of some way to earn a living. I do not think any of them were converted. I tried to give work to two or three, correcting translations, but they were too poorly educated to be of much use. In translation work I got the best possible help from an evangelical medico, a Dr. Armengol, who was a master of Castilian Spanish, and an enthusiast. He even went so far as to regret that the protestant pastors learnt English, which he thought tended to contaminate their style. I showed him a copy of the translation of "Safety, Certainty and Enjoyment" published in London, and his comment was “Well, it is grammatical, but it isn't Spanish,” by which he meant that it was not idiomatic. I offered to print an edition of it in Barcelona if he would make a translation with me. He did, and I did. I regret that of all the tracts I printed in Barcelona, now, after 50 years, I have not one single copy remaining.

I think it was during my first stay in Barcelona that I twice visited Majorca and got in touch with some believers who were followers of a Mr. Lowe, and, as I was not, they did not welcome me. Of course I might have told them that I knew Mr. Lowe, having attended a Bible reading with him at Colchester when I was a boy of 16, but I thought it better to let them alone. I wonder if any of them survived the Spanish civil war, which I believe almost destroyed Palma, the capital.

When I was printing tracts in Spanish I had one of them done into the Catalan language, and was about to have one printed in Mallorquim (as spoken in Majorca) when someone said to me: “Though the Majorca people speak Mallorquim among themselves, they read only Spanish; the only language taught in the schools”. I remembered this when I heard of a Polyglot Bible Institute in the U. S. A. which claims that there are 400 languages spoken in South America, into all of which the scriptures ought to be translated. But the fact is that all who can read in S. America read either Spanish or Portuguese. And it occurs to me to wonder: Is there a Bible printed in Irish?

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Amongst my good friends of long ago the most unforgettable are J. C. Morgan and Col. S. L. Jacob, both of them keen Christians of outstanding ability, and both deeply interested in foreign missionary work.

Mr. Morgan, of Clevedon, was probably born in Brazil (his mother was Brazilian) and he was at one time British vice-consul in Bahia. I first came in contact with him when he was collecting funds for printing Portuguese tracts. Some years later he and Mrs. Morgan stayed with Mrs. Holden in Lisbon, and later still spent a month at Petropolis, Brazil, taking a keen interest in the Gospel work there. Our close friendship continued to the end of his life.

With Col. Jacob I had even closer relations. For many years I looked up to him as a sort of spiritual father, and greatly valued his help and counsel. Like many young men I had met with intellectual difficulties and problems, and I remember writing about them to a prominent Bible teacher, only to have him denounce my wickedness in having any doubts and difficulties at all. But when I brought the problems to Col. Jacob I found he had faced them long before, could listen to them sympathetically, and solve them satisfactorily.

Some thought it strange that a military man should be a prominent Bible teacher, but S. L. J. sometimes said that he was a man of peace. As a Colonel of the Royal Engineers in India he saved many thousands of lives every year through the vast irrigation works under his control. Just as a side line he cared for a small orphanage in India, in which I believe his widowed daughter, Mrs. Allen, still takes a very active interest. Something of the loss I felt with the passing of Col. Jacob has been compensated by the close friendship of his son Alexis Jacob, whose service to the mission field has continued that of his father.

Of the good counsel I received from Col. Jacob two items I have never forgotten. He wrote to me once: “Go on with all that is of Christ in whoever you meet, and with nothing that is not of Christ in any.” When I showed him something I had written on an ecclesiastical subject, his comment was: “You should give more attention to LIFE.”

There must be very few now living who have any remembrance of John Macdonald, of Crieff, and yet some memory of his best days may be recorded. Perhaps he was at the zenith of his powerful ministry when I heard him at Portsmouth. My friend B. F. Caws had written to me from there: "You must come down (from London) this week-end to hear Macdonald. It will be the experience of a lifetime." J. M. was a man of middle height and middle age, thick-set, with a black beard. He was not an orator, but he was the most powerful preacher I had ever heard. He held his audience of young men enthralled from start to finish. It was a pouring wet Sunday afternoon, but even so there were quite 300 young men gathered to hear him in what I think was called the Albert Hall, at Portsmouth. His style was unique and arresting. He began: “Well, young men, I am glad to see so many of you at this meeting. NEVER LET THE WEATHER KEEP YOU AWAY. It only kept me from a meeting once, and then I stuck in a snow-drift half way. But I did not stick by the fireside.” A little later on he said something like this: “Young men, there are two things that go together, but not three. The bed and the blankets go together, but not the bed, the blankets and the Bible. If you want to get on you will have to get up....” 

Perhaps the most arresting thing I heard that afternoon was the following: “Young man, does a blush ever come to your cheek when you confess to a companion that you pray? Speak to him about prayer in such a way that a blush comes to his cheek when he admits that he doesn't pray (a pause, and a few silent steps along the platform, then, suddenly facing the audience again): SWING THE TABLES ROUND ON THEM!” Twas like an electric shock, and I think every one of the 300 young men was enthused, and prepared to face a thousand adversaries. This will probably have been in 1887, when I was 20 years old.

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Amongst the outstanding Bible teachers I met in my youth I can never forget F. E. Raven, of Greenwich. I was then an engineering apprentice at Deptford, and walked across to Greenwich every Thursday to attend the Bible Reading there. Mr. Raven had said "Come to tea whenever you like" so once again I interpreted the invitation to mean “fortnightly”, and after tea we walked together to the Hall where the reading was held. Living alone all the week in my Deptford lodging, I tried to improve the occasion when, once a fortnight, I had the opportunity of a tête-à-tête with such a gifted Bible teacher.

We had almost reached the Hall, but I thought there was time for one more question. “Mr. Raven,” I asked, “do you think it possible for anyone to live a day without sinning?” His reply was immediate and positive: “I think it would be a sin to attempt it,” and we passed through the entrance. I have often wondered just what he meant by that. At that time the heresy-hunters were in full cry after F. E. Raven, and he was denounced by some who had neither seen nor heard him. But at Greenwich they understood him better, and valued his teaching. Some fantastic accusations were floating around, and I thought I would check up on one of them. “Mr. Raven”, I said, “I am told that you teach that all our blessings are negative. Is that true?”
“I could hardly be such a goose as to say that”, he answered.
“Well, Mr. Raven, what have you said that might have been twisted into that?”
“Perhaps someone heard me say that proper Christian blessings are abstract”.
“And what does that mean, Mr. Raven?”
“I mean that the Christian is not blessed like the Jew in the storehouse and the barn. Indeed it may even be that one who lives godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution, and seem rather worse off than better off than his neighbours”.
“Now I quite understand. You mean that our blessings are spiritual rather than material”.

Heresy-hunting is too often just an outcropping of the censorious spirit that has wrought so much mischief amongst brethren. Some have been all too prone to ask: «What is wrong about that teacher? instead of asking if he has any message from God which many might hear with pleasure and profit.

F. E. Raven found his brethren all too glibly quoting Bible phrases, and he was concerned to discover whether they knew anything of the spiritual realities which the phrases connote. Someone would say to him: “I believe, and have got eternal life: isn't that wonderful?” and he would answer: “Perhaps. Now tell me something about what you have got, because when you get a thing you can surely give some account of it”.

He did not publish much, and I doubt that anyone reads his writings now. The finest of them is a pamphlet called “Grace”, а copy of which I obtained in New York in 1912 after much searching.

Once, many years ago, I visited C. A. Coates at Bradford, and found that J. B. Stoney was staying at the house. After tea, as we all walked to the prayer meeting, J. B. Stoney was my companion, and one remark of his has remained with me ever since: “The Bible does not give me anything”, he said, “but it tells me all that God has for me. It must all be made good to me by the Spirit”. 

Perhaps 200 were at the prayer meeting, and there were no long pauses. I remember a white-hot prayer for the Gospel by J. T. Mawson, and how the words of one of his sentences rang out “... and that souls may be saved on the spot”. Then J. B. S. prayed for the believers. What a prayer! I had never heard anything like it. One item after another, each petition had some urgent need. Each blessing prayed for a “must have”. I have been at some notable prayer meetings, including four days and one night in Edinburgh, where the Persian brother Dr. Mersa Saed was one of the pray-ers, but nothing surpassed that evening at Bradford.

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One of the most noteworthy Christians in Lisbon long ago was the Spanish widow Donna Manuela Nunes. She was a tireless worker, and often visited the Military Hospital there to evangelize the young soldiers. A comet is distinguished from the stars of heaven by its tail, and, similarly, Donna Manuela, when she entered a Gospel meeting in the Lisbon suburb of Alcantara (the preacher being George Howes) would often be followed by a tail of eight or ten people whom she had invited to the meeting. I remember that on one occasion a man who was one of those invited was saying, as he entered the Hall: “Now it seems to me that what God ought to do is...”. “Yes, Sir”, interrupted Donna Manuela, in her high-pitched voice, “I meet a lot of people who are willing to tell us what God ought to do, but I think it is more important for us to listen to what God has declared that we ought to do”.

Donna Manuela attended the Gospel meetings in Almada, on the south bank of the Tagus, and a bunch of young workers from the neighbouring cork factory often formed part of the audience. They were very restless and disorderly; I once noticed a row of five on the same bench, whispering and laughing, so much as almost to interrupt George Howes' preaching. At that moment Donna Ma-nuela, who had been sitting further back, came very quietly and stood at the end of the bench where the youths were seated. They watched her with sidelong glances, their effervescence evaporating while they waited for her to say something which would give them an opportunity for protests and excuses. But she merely looked at them silently, and when they were quite quiet sat down on the seat immediately behind them.

One day I was talking with George Howes in the Largo do Rato (Lisbon) about the weekly prayer meeting so dull, so long-winded, so “usual”, when Donna Manuela passed, and we spoke to her about it. She seemed to feel it even more intensely than we did, so we said to her, Might we not come to her house at noon the next day for a time of real prayer? A couple of good sisters happened to be visiting her, and the five of us had a time of prayer together such as I had never known before. Prayers, intercessions, supplications, tears. We felt so near to God that we agreed to come together again the next day, and for some days following. Then there was a suggestion to invite others, and I remember Donna Manuela saying: “I do not want to invite anyone who has not the same pain that I feel”. One of the sisters then present is still living.

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Whenever I visited Barcelona I stayed with the widow of a missionary named Banyard (an Englishman who had married a Spaniard) and her elderly daughter. Her flat was in the Paseo de Celon, overlooking the harbour. Meetings were held regularly there.

The most outstanding believer I met in Spain was Carlos Campo de Arbe, a small young man with a large heart and the courage of a lion. He is still living (aged 79) and I had a letter from him today. Immediately after his conversion he came from Lerida to Barcelona and found work in a boot factory. But he stayed there only a short time because they expected him to work on Sundays (at that time quite a percentage of believers consented to Sunday work without much protest). He then began working independently, on repair jobs. But the close, cramped attitude injured his health, and, a spinal vertebra becoming diseased, it was compressed, and affected a nerve, so that he became paralyzed from the waist down.

It was just then that I arrived once more in Barcelona. I found Carlos being cared for in the flat of the widow Banyard, where I also steyed. The doctor had told him that he would never walk again. I asked what he would do if his health were restored to him? His answer was that he had only one wish: to devote his life to God's service. “In that case we may pray with the more confidence for God's healing grace”, I answered. Our faith was rewarded, for before I left Barcelona I saw Carlos not only walk but run to catch a tram. Soon afterwards he gave his whole time to colportage, and visited many places in the Peninsula.

After a time Carlos, selling Bibles, reached the village of Val de Olivas, in the province of Cuenca, in the centre of Spain, where he stayed for some weeks and gained a number of interested people. I was still in Barcelona, and when Carlos wrote to me telling of the interest I decided to go to Val de Olivas and help him with the Gospel work. I took three days to reach the remote village, but remained only three hours before we were both chased out of the place by a howling mob, shouting «Muerte a los protestantes! (Death to the Protestants).

The alcalde (local chief of police) came into the house where we were staying and said we must leave at once that he could not control the mob: they would burn the house down, and he had only six soldiers at his orders etc. etc.

Carlos Campo de Arbe said to him very quietly: You are the authority here. You are well able to control the people, but you do not do it because you do not want to. The truth, no doubt, but scarcely discreet.

I saw that our delay would make matters all the worse for the master of the house, who was by no means an experienced believer. We went out as night came on, in the midst of a deafening uproar, and closely surrounded by the six soldiers. We set off, accompanied by all the people of the village, yelling from time to time “Muerte a los protestantes!” and at a certain place someone shouted “Let us kill them here, where So-and-So was assassinated”.

We were making for the next village, but when we drew near it seemed as if all the inhabitants came out to forbid our entrance. So we changed our direction, and at last the Val de Olivas mob became tired of walking - it was already night - and, persuaded by the soldiers, went back to their village. Only a youth accompanied us, and he guided us to a great water-mill where several men were resting, waiting to have their corn ground. There, lying on empty sacks, we slept with difficulty, the mill groaning and creaking all the time, and the noise was translated in my dreams into “Muerte a los protestantes”. Next day our guide led us to a distant town, where news of the riot had not yet reached.

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At one time when I made the train journey from Lisbon to Barcelona there was a delay of 15 minutes at the junction of Ariza, between Madrid and Saragossa. It was 3 am. and very cold, and all the passengers alighted to drink soup at the restaurant, and I also. Not wishing to leave my portmanteau in the train I brought it with me as far as a seat outside the restaurant, and went in to get the soup. On coming out I found that the portmanteau had disap-peared. I called the two soldiers (guarda civiles) who in those days rode on every train in Spain, and they searched all the carriages without result. On reaching Barcelona I wrote to the police at Ariza, and not long afterwards got a reply saying that the portman-teau had been found, thrown into a ditch.

On my return journey to Lisbon I stopped at Ariza to claim the baggage, which was handed to me - empty. The only officials I found at the police station were the “judge” and his secretary. The judge was an agreeable young man, but as he could neither read nor write the secretary was a necessary help.

Then a difficulty transpired. For their records, the judge wanted a letter from Barcelona, saying that I had duly received his official communication. I was quite willing to write the letter, but said I could not date it from Barcelona because I was no longer there but in Ariza.

They assured me that this was of no importance. That the letter would be a mere formality. That I might without a scruple date the letter as coming from Barcelona, etc.

I regretted that my reluctance should cause any difficulty, but I found it impossible to sign a declaration not in accord with the facts. As I happened to be in Ariza, how could I declare in writing that I was in Barcelona?

It seemed an insoluble problem, but the judge was resource-ful. He sent for the priest, a short, stout old man, and he easily disposed of the matter. He exonerated me completely. I might sign such a letter without hesitation. The apparent falsehood was of no importance, etc. etc. The only one to remain unconvinced was myself. The priest went away, and, if I remember rightly, the secretary wrote something for me to sign, and then filled in place and date at his own discretion.

I thought the incident was at an end, but found that it was not so. I asked the judge to direct me to an inn where I could pass the night.
“No, indeed, Sir”, he said. “You will sleep at my house”.

I protested, but he insisted. So I went to his house, and the secretary went there also. During the evening (the secretary having discreetly withdrawn) the judge said to me that when I gave the secretary his tip, would I do it in his, the judge's, presence, so as to avoid the possibility of his saying that he had received nothing? I confess the idea was new to me, but, dissembling my surprise, I asked how much I had better give him, and the secretary, returning opportunely, duly received his compensation in the presence of the judge.

Next day they both accompanied me to the railway station, and there (the judge having discreetly withdrawn) the secretary whispered to me that I had forgotten to pay for the lodging. (I had merely made the judge a present of a small leather-bound testament when thanking him for his hospitality).

“Yes, I had forgotten”, I answered without much enthusiasm. “What do I owe?” The secretary suggested the price of a good hotel in Saragossa, and, the judge having opportunely returned, I paid for the lodging, and observed with much interest the approach of the train, hoping to get away without any further expenses.

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My first stay in Brazil began in May of 1896 and lasted for two or three years. I was met on board the steamer by the young brother Daniel Faria, who for a long time was to be my host whenever I was in Rio de Janeiro. The family then consisted of himself, his wife and one baby, and his old mother. Their very modest house was situated on the Morro do Livramento, I think, at number 46. My room was a wooden shed in the back garden, with a galvanized iron roof, in which shed the temperature often rose to 100 F. on a sunny day.

Daniel Faria was keen in personal Gospel work and was a gifted conversationalist, but was never outstanding as a preacher. His chief antipathy was the spiritist propaganda, and I remember how that one day, standing with him on the railway platform at S. José do Rio Preto, a spiritist got arguing with him. Suddenly Daniel opened his Bible and thrust it into the man's hands, saying: “Where is it written, man, where is it written?” The spiritist, unaccustomed to using a Bible, could only slink away, silenced.

Before reaching Brazil I had some correspondence with brethren there, the remains of a work begun by Richard Holden 24 several years previously. When I arrived in 1896 that work was cared for by a brother named J.F. Barbosa, a watchmaker, small, middle-aged, with a Jewish aspect, and a most plausible manner. When I arrived in 1896 that work was cared for by a brother named J.F. Barbosa, a watchmaker, small, middle-aged, with a Jewish aspect, and a most plausible manner. He was a gifted and persuasive speaker, and in the Pati do Alferes district got hundreds if not thousands of converts (or adherents) amongst the simple country people who could neither read nor write. One striking thing I heard him say more than once when preaching the Gospel: “Whether you are willing to acknowledge Christ or not, your cheque is not worth the paper it is written on unless its date bears witness to the Incarnation”.

I wish I could think of his work as having been spiritually helpful, but his ministry seemed always to appeal to the intellect rather than to the heart. For instance, before ever I came to Brazil they wrote me that the brethren had spent three Bible readings discussing whether the Lord really passed three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, until brother Barbosa settled the matter to the satisfaction of all with the extraordinary teaching that our Lord “had been three days and three nights buried in the earthly hearts of the unbelieving disciples”. Surely a most ingenious exposition, but hardly a satisfactory one!

Amongst the names remembered from those early days in Rio de Janeiro are João and Antonio Millan, Spanish youths, musically gifted. Later on João Millan was sought by various Rio 25 congregations for service as choir-leader. Antonio, even more gifted musically, died young of tuberculosis.

A notable sister at that time was Mme. Cecilia Choiseau, who for most of her life had been governess in some of the first families in Rio. White-haired and distinguished-looking (she had the air of a duchess) she had been prominent in spiritist circles, and had an extraordinary gift of healing, together with a childlike faith in God. She always told people that she could not heal them but that God could, and would if they trusted Him. But her last cure gave her rather a shock. She laid her hands on a young woman with fever, and went back a few days after to see how the patient was getting on. The young woman said: “I got well at once, and went to the theatre the same evening”. Sister Choiseau was horrified to think that she had enabled her patient to go to such a place.

When George Howes joined me in the Brazilian work we boarded with this good sister, and owed much to her kindly care. She was of the French aristocracy, and after her conversion made a pilgrimage to Paris to look for her relations, but on her return said that she found them all in the cemetery. Her last months were spent in the Evangelical Hospital in Rio, of which she was one of the founders. Like some others, she seemed born for emergencies, but was not at her best in the routine of life. During one of the frequent armed revolts in the early days of the Republic she went to the Minister of War and offered to take charge of a field hospital, and the offer was accepted. When a young brother was down with yellow fever, with no one to care for him, she went right away to his lodging and nursed him till he recovered.

A brother dating right back to Richard Holden's days was a fine old Frenchman, Henrique Salembier. I had known him in Lisbon since 1891 and met him again in Rio in 1896. Even since Holden's time Hen-rique's life had been under a cloud, and intellectual problems baffled him. In Rio I kept in touch with him, and he sometimes came to the meetings, but his spiritual life never revived. Now that he has passed on we may hope that he has found in Christ the solution to all his problems. Both in Lisbon and in Rio he had a fine business in watch-makers' supplies. Those who end their course triumphantly command our admiration, and those who finish under a cloud call for our sympathy.

At one time George Howes and I, though lodging in Rio with Mme. Choiseau, found a more congenial sphere of service right outside that city, going every week-end for some nine months to Paracamby (then named Macacos) and Mendes. At Mendes some young men were converted, the most outstanding being Antonio Pernes, a youth of singular charm and spirituality. About that time I used occasionally to invite some young brother to go with me to country places where we took photographs during the day, to keep ourselves busy and to cover expenses, and had gospel meetings in the evenings. Antonio Pernes was my companion in this way at Petropolis, where we lodged with the João Millan family, then resident there. It was then that I learnt to pay especial attention to the context of James 5:14.

Antonio, after the first fortnight, had a mysterious illness. Two doctors were puzzled. The Sunday noon meeting was held in 27 the same house, and I asked Antonio if he would like to call the elders of the church to pray for him? He said Yes, and when we came together I read James 5:14-16 and asked if he had any sins to confess before we prayed? He said that he had many short-comings, but nothing particular to confess. We prayed without much assurance and without much result.

The next Sunday was an exact repetition, but on the follow-ing Tuesday, early, he called us to his room and confessed a very grievous misdemeanour. He said that he had repented of the sin and confessed it many times to God, but now God was telling him THAT WAS NOT ENOUGH. He must confess the sin to his brethren as well. Then we prayed again, this time with much more confidence. He recovered slowly, and was well again in three or four weeks. He witnessed a good confession for a few more years and then died of tuberculosis.

Since then I have never forgotten the context of James 5:14, and have remembered the striking way the confession of sins is linked in that chapter with prayer for the sick, and is, indeed, a key to the right use of the scripture.

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In those early days denominationalism was already deeply rooted in Brazil, and the converts everywhere accepted some party name as a matter of course. Now the situation is a little different, as there are several missions of an undenominational character, and their converts are just believers. I remember a conversation I had more than half a century ago with a Presbyterian pastor in Pernambuco, which went more or less as follows:
He. If you are staying in Pernambuco you will need to join one of the denominations there.
I. Which one?
He. It might be the Presbyterian. It is a very good church.
I. But that is impossible, for in so doing I should separate myself from my Baptist brethren.
He. Well, if you prefer the Baptists you can join them.
I. I cannot do that, since by so doing I should be separating from my Presbyterian brethren. Might I not join both churches and become a Presbyterian-Baptist or a Baptist-Methodist?
He. That would never do. It must be either one thing or the other.
I. In that case I think it will have to be neither. 
He. Well, what do you propose to do? 
I. There may be some way to solve the problem. You belong to the Church of God, do you not?
He. Certainly.
I. And the Baptists: do they belong to the Church of God?
He. Of course. 
I. And I, who am also a believer in Christ. Do not I belong to the same Church? 
He. Naturally.
I. Then I think the best way is for me to keep what you have in common, and avoid what separates you. We all belong to the Church of God, and that unites us. You belong also to other churches, and that separates you. I must content myself with what is of God, so that I may feel myself one with all His people everywhere. If I am mistaken in this He will show me my error.

************

I can just remember that, in the days of long ago, I found a black believer (consumptive, and in poor circumstances) living in the city of Santos, who I think was named Dewsbury. As he spoke English very well he probably came from the West Indies. He was a man of exceptional intelligence, and I have never forgotten one remark he made. Referring to the colour question, he said, “I can quite understand the antipathy which unconverted whites naturally have to blacks, but what I do think strange is the difficulty even Christian people seem to have in reconciling themselves to the work of God”. I never saw this brother again, but I have never forgotten his striking presentation of the colour question.

Throughout Brazil colour is nowhere reckoned a barrier (except, perhaps, in the matter of matrimony). Perhaps not more than 50% of the population is of pure white (Portuguese) descent, and in the State of Bahia not more than 25%. Many of the brethren who addict themselves to the ministry are half-castes, but one of the most gifted of all, Gerson Antunes (one of E. Percy Ellis' converts. from Bahia) was quite black. Gerson, whose picture appears in the Bible School group, on p. 39, was a notable brother, beloved by all. He was a gifted speaker, a beautiful singer, a first-rate choir-leader, and a gracious, humble-minded personality. For some years he was the Director of a Bible School in Carangola, but was not entirely successful in that work as he was not gifted as a leader.

In the early days in Rio there was a young darkie brother named William Douglin who was addicted to the ministry, and a very pleasing personality. He invited me to visit a new work at Santa Barbara in the State of S. Paulo, and from there I went to Piracicaba, where I met the gifted brother Antonio Martins, who earned a good living as a plow-maker, and who devoted his spare time and his spiritual gifts to Gospel work. Only eternity will reveal the number of his converts in Piracicaba and other parts of the State of S. Paulo. I shall always cherish the memory of his serene and cheerful spirit and his Christian conversation. He was a tall man of attractive appearance, of German descent, greatly esteemed by all in the city of Piracicaba, both by believers and unbelievers. His was one of the notable Christian families in Brazil. There were half a dozen handsome boys in the home when I first stayed there, most of whom have proved worth-while spiritually, and one at least, Samuel Martins, is an able and energetic Christian worker, though not one who will cast his gifted father into the shade.

When thinking of Christian families in Brazil one remembers at once that of the talented schoolmaster Alfredo Filgueiras, who for more than half a century has been prominent in Christian work.

I first met Alfredo Filgueiras when he had a small private school in a remote country part, but even in those early days he was notable as a teacher, as well as being a gifted and acceptable preacher, with many converts. I occasionally saw three or four farmers sitting in his small school-room, they having dropped in for a while to see Alfredo Filgueiras teaching his class. Later he moved his private school to the little town of Faria Lemos, and I found him there teaching four boys. That was the beginning, but when he finished at Faria Lemos the school had grown to 200 boys, with 60 of them boarders.

Then, needing more scope, he began all over again at Victoria, the capital of the State of Espirito Santo, where he bought a large estate and started the best school in the city. There also he was active in Christian work for many years. When he at last retired from active teaching his school had about 400 pupils. Some Christian school-teachers keep their faith discreetly in the background. Sr. Alfredo, having nothing to hide, had “family prayers” with the whole school. One day I was visiting the school at Faria Lemos, and he invited me to conduct the "Culto Domestico" (Family Worship). I said I thought he would do it better: and he did. It was masterly the way he expounded and applied the portion read. Straight to the point, from the heart of the teacher to the hearts of the great crowd of boys.

The last time I listened in his class was a grammar lesson. I heard the following:
Teacher. "Patient."  What part of speech is that word? 
Boy. An adjective.
Teacher. Quite right. Now join a substantive to the adjective. 
Boy. "Patient teacher." 
Teacher. Very good. Do you know one?
Boy. (remembering that a negative is usually safer than an affirmative). "No Sir."

A pause. Then loud laughter. And the boy looks mystified, and wonders what he has said wrong.

Yet another Christian family were the Belos (beautiful by nature as well as by name). They were half-castes, 4 or 5 sons of the widow donna Adelaide, and workers on a coffee estate at S. José do Rio Preto. Manoel Belo was the most outstanding of the young men, and he was tireless in evangelizing. After a time the Belos moved to the Carangola district where they continued to evangelize with remarkable success.

A little later I visited that district with the youth Antonio Pernes, and we were told that the Belo family lived at Cachoeira do Boi (“Waterfall of the Ox”) a league and a half from Carangola. We walked all the way to the waterfall, and, finding that the family lived on the other side, we crossed the falls, jumping from rock to rock, I with the more care, as I was carrying a camera.

From there I was invited to go yet further inland, to S. Domingos de Guandú, in the State of Espirito Santo, a journey of some eight days on horseback, across mountains and forests. I agreed, and asked who would be my guide? 

“It will be this youth”, they said, pointing to a boy, small and good looking, very quiet, named Manoel Machado.

I felt a little alarmed: could I trust myself to the care of a youngster so small, so silent...? 

However, I ventured, and I never had a better or more capable companion. As we had to beg for lodging each night, no one could have done it better than he. The country people in those days were a timid folk, suspicious of strangers, and I have travelled with more energetic and forceful companions to whom they have refused lodging, frightened by their loquacity. But Manoel knocked at the doors so softly, spoke so low, looked so humble (and so young) that no one took fright, and he always got the lodging at a first request. I felt a real affection for this boy, who was also a true Christian (I had him in mind when I drew the character of the youth “Osmar” in my book “The Browns in Brazil”). He died some years afterwards.

On that journey our host not far from Guandu would not accept any payment for the lodging. So I made him a present of a New Testament, and wrote in it “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me”. The man could not read, but he got someone to read the book to him, and was converted. I visited him some years after, and found that the whole family were believers.

I several times visited the Carangola district where the Belos were working, but after a while returned to Portugal to work in Lisbon and Coimbra, and stayed for some years. Then I received a letter from a Syrian brother, Miguel Mattar, living in Maranhão, Brazil, saying he was expecting a visit from me and enclosing a cheque for £16 to cover the cost of the ocean passage. I had not been thinking of revisiting Brazil, and hardly knew what to do. At the time I had a flat rented in Coimbra and another at Aveiro, and was trying to help with the Gospel work at both places. Also I was publishing a monthly periodical in Coimbra in order to evangelize the university students. However I thought it possible to achieve a rapid visit to Maranhão, with an excursion to the States of Rio and Minas at the end.

I found that Miguel Mattar had heard the Gospel in Syria where the work was undenominational, and he wished to get in touch with similar work in Brazil. He was a middle-aged brother, with a teen-age daughter. I stayed with them over a month (and improved, the occasion by taking lessons in Arabic with the daughter), and then went South and soon reached the Carangola district once more. They fetched me from the city early on a Sunday morning, and we rode to the fazenda of the Barcelos family, arriving about noon, and found the house filled with the usual weekly meeting for the Breaking of Bread. Staircase, sala, bed-rooms were all crowded with people, and about 50 took part in the Lord's Supper. As I had been the first to preach the Gospel in that house some eight years previously, I was impressed by the progress made, and remarked on it to Manoel Belo. “Oh”, he answered, "this is nothing. There are five or six assemblies in this district where you will find similar numbers”. And this was before any Casa de Oração (House of Prayer) had been built in the district. The first C. de O. was built not far away on land given by Leandro Barcelos, and a photograph was taken during the opening meetings. Some years later I made a list of some 40 Casas de Oração in Minas and Espirito Santo, but since then have lost count. 

After filling the Carangola district with centres of regular Christian work, the Belo family moved to the Rio Doce district and did the same thing there. Since their time the work has spread far and wide, up and down the Rio Doce and far beyond it towards Bahia. One of the original Belos is still living (1953) and one of the original Barcelos family, Faustino Barcelos, sometimes called “the Giant”, a fine Christian man, though not “addicted to the ministry”. I cannot remember when I first visited the Paty do Alferes district (in the State of Rio) but my companion was Cassiano Figueira, of Recreio, famous as the father of 20 children. Paty had been the scene, years before, of J. F. Barbosa's work, with his wholesale conversions of the illiterate, most of whom embraced his extreme views of faith healing. I remember finding one family with all the children suffering from scabies. I suggested a remedy, but they answered positively: “We only use prayer. We do not need any medicines”. Since scabies is almost always the result of a lack of cleanliness, I thought to myself that, with a sufficient use of soap and water, all that suffering might have been avoided without the need for special prayer and anointing with oil. Soon afterwards Albert Clayton arrived from Portugal and took up residence in the Paty district, and since then the Gospel has progressed and school teaching has spread in the district.

From 1914, with Conceição de Carangola as a centre, I travelled widely all around, visiting each year centres of interest north and south of the Rio Doce, and reaching Itauba, Baixo Guandu, S. Domingos de Guandu etc. I had different companions from time George Howes, Albert Storrie, W. Anglin, Harold St. John and W. J. Goldsmith. For weeks at a time my companion was the tireless worker Pedro J. F. de Rezende, with the gift of both pastor and evangelist. His manner of speaking was both vernacular and racy, for he made frequent use of the proverbial sayings which appeal so strongly to the country people, such as “When a man sees his neighbour's whiskers alight, he puts his own to soak”, or “The owner of the corpse takes the head” (when someone complains that the hardest task has been left to him). Some thirty years ago Pedro Rezende felt an urge to revisit his native district in the centre of the Minas State and evangelize his many relatives there. Some of the big landowners were converted, and the Gospel has spread there ever since.

Perhaps the best testimonial to Pedro Rezende reached us near the end of his life. After his only visit to Teresopolis he was told where he might spend the night on his return journey. A few days later came a letter from his host: “If you have any more like Pedro Rezende you may send them along. We were all charmed by his Christian conversation…” How rarely does a casual visitor leave such an impression behind him!

I should add that after seeing again the vastness of the Brazilian field, I had no thought of returning to Portugal, where also George Howes was very effectively caring for the work in Lisbon. My last visit to Lisbon was for three months in 1931 when I went there to help with the revision of the Hymnal “Hinos e Cânticos” (now in its 17th. edition). George Howes was still living, though in frail health. José Ilidio Freire was then active in the work both in Lisbon and other parts of Portugal, as he is to this day (1954).

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I have visited the Argentine Republic eight times, the last visit but one being for some months in 1912, while I printed another edition of “Canciones Espirituales”, a Spanish Hymnal which makes use of many adaptations from the Portuguese “Hinos e Cânticos”. 

From Argentina I travelled on in the same year to the Falkland Islands, staying about a month at Port Stanley with the Captain of the Port. The place seemed very like an English fishing village, and the people were very, very British. I attended the Union Church there, and was invited to speak a few times. From there I went on to Valparaiso (Chile) for a few days, where I made a few Christian contacts.

I have always been interested to link up with the past, whenever such a link is possible. In my early teens I used to see the printed “Letters of Interest” from abroad, circulated privately by Frank Cavenagh. In them I read a few letters from a Mr. Scouler, of Valparaiso, and when I got there I made a search and found him, and his companion Mr. Lawson, an ex-navy man, who was still carrying on what remained of Mr. Scouler's school for British children.

During the years I had heard vague reports of Mr. Scouler. He was said to have developed heretical ideas, but I was keen to meet him. I found an old man, in very frail health - subject to epileptic fits - and I enjoyed a precious time of Christian fellowship with him. He was all alone, except for his wife and Mr. Lawson, and had no followers, nor, so far as I could discover, any contact with the English-speaking missionaries at Valparaiso. Evidently he was one of those rare men, a profound Bible student. As we spent the evening together he poured out a flood of Bible truth as only one of the great masters of the Word could do. Just what his “heresy” was I can no longer remember - and perhaps that is just as well, as I might give a garbled account of it - but I felt I was talking with one who loved the Lord and feasted on the Word. I deeply regret that I failed to keep in touch with him by correspondence - though I believe I did write to him once on my return to Rio some months later. No doubt both he and Mr. Lawson have long since passed on, as my visit was in 1912.

After Valparaiso I spent a few days in Peru (at Callao and Lima) and crossed the Panama Canal (in construction) going on to Honduras, Guatemala, New Orleans and New York, but as all this travel is described in my book “Round South America on the King's Business” I need not repeat it here.

On returning to Rio de Janeiro (after a stay at Pará and Recife) I settled at Carangola (Minas) in 1913, and, later on, after I had built a house at Conceição de Carangola, was joined by the St. John family when they left the Argentine for work in Brazil.

An interesting feature of the work at that time were the three residential Bible Schools which we held there, for five, three and three months respectively.

Our idea and ideal was to train young men for the work of the Gospel without taking them out of their accustomed way of life, which, in those parts, was farming and coffee planting. We made a point of having two hours of field work every day, so that the youths should not lose the custom of working with their hands.

I am increasingly assured that, while many keen Christians can minister the Word very acceptably once or twice a week, only a very small percentage have such an abounding gift that they ought to give their whole time to the ministry, and live of the Gospel. Only one who has the spiritual capacity to devote his whole time every day to Bible study in the home land will be able to do the same thing profitably abroad. Also the routine of what is called secular work is good and profitable for most of us, and in certain places where the missionary cannot earn his living, such as in Central Africa, he usually finds an abundance of secular work building his houses and repairing his fences. In my own experience I found it profitable in every sense of the word to spend some time occasionally earning expenses by photography. I stayed a month in Pará and earned enough by photographing schools to pay my steamer fare down to Rio de Janeiro; and in Aimorés, on the Rio Doce, I stayed four days in the hotel and earned enough to pay the train fare to Rio. But I confess that I had not the spiritual capacity to pray or preach all day long. So with our Bible schools our ambition was not to train full-time ministers of the Word, but to make each young Christian more intelligent in Bible study and more useful in ministry. 

At our Bible Schools perhaps we made a mistake when we took the students without making any charge for board, lodging or teaching. Another time I think I would make a charge to cover all expenses, and say that an excellent way would be for the student's local church to arrange to raise the amount - if the brethren had confidence that he was worth the outlay. That would ensure getting only students who were really worthwhile. However I think our groups turned out very well, and each youth became increasingly useful in his local assembly.

Before settling at Teresopolis my sister and I had passed some years at Carangola, Portões (Mutum), Divisa, Barreiro, and Divisório (Muriahé), building houses at each place, since in such remote country parts no civilized dwellings are available. Usually we had some sort of Bible School (with Reading, Writing and Arithmetic as a side line) either residential, for students from a distance, or for the youth of the neighbourhood, four evenings each week.

A special feature of the work at Portões were the medical consultations, averaging from 30 to 40 daily, when my sister prescribed homeopathic medicines for patients who came from far and near. The consultations began at 2 pm. but patients arrived any time after 10 am. Small boys from the neighbourhood did a good business selling them buns and coffee while they waited. Before the consultations there was a fifteen minutes Gospel talk, with a hymn, accompanied by the organ.

Here again it seemed a mistake to give advice and medicine gratis, as sometimes hefty young women would come and consult for imaginary complaints or just for the fun of it; or to prove that they were quite as ill as their companion. However sister soon found a short way of dealing with that sort. “Do you sleep well?” (Yes). “Do you eat well?” (Yes). “Then there is nothing much the matter with you. Who comes next?”.

*********

I told a friend the following anecdote about H. M. Wright, and he thought it so good that it ought to be included in the list of my Reminiscences: I was talking one day with H. M. W. and expressing my admiration for George Muller and his great work of faith with his orphanages. Maxwell Wright's comment was in entire approval of Muller and his great work of faith, but he added: “However, do not let your admiration of Muller and his work of faith, lead you to disapprove of Dr. Barnardo and his appeals for funds in all the evangelical publications. Muller set out to prove that God is entirely sufficient to provide for every legitimate need. Barnardo felt led to give his whole life to the care of orphans, but he felt free to invite others to take a minor share in the great work by sending in their contributions. Muller and Barnardo served God with equal faithfulness but in very different ways”.

**********

I must tell something about the beginning of the Casa Editora Evangélica in Teresópolis. Our periodical Boletim Evangelico had been printed in various establishments with more or less unsatisfactory results. At last I decided to buy the type and compose it at home, getting the local newspaper to print it for me. The only unsatisfactory thing seemed to be the price asked by the local printer for his work. So I considered the possibility of getting a small hand press, of the sort that prints when you pull a lever, and I went to Rio to ask about prices. The dealer showed me a few models, but he said: “You will not be satisfied with one of these presses”.
“Well, what ought I to buy?” I asked.
“What you should get is a treadle press”, was the answer, and that I found would cost £ 76, while the amount I had available was only £ 17. And then I remembered a remark F. M. Bostock had made casually one day when I was staying at his house at Stafford “If you want help at any time in your work, you might let me know”. So now, while lunching with E. P. Ellis in the city, I told him about the printing press project, and said: “How would it do to send a cable to Mr Bostock and ask for £ 59 to buy a treadle press?” 

His comment was: “It seems a pity to ask for so little”, so after lunch I sent the cable, and by noon the next day had bought the press.

In the building just finished at Teresópolis for a Gospel Hall and Residence I had included a small room for a printing shop, and from that cramped beginning the premises gradually expanded until almost the whole available land was covered, and yet today the overcrowding is acute, and, though only evangelical printing is done, it seems impossible to keep pace with the demand. Much of this is for reprints, edition after edition being sold out. Of the Hymnal “Hinos e Cânticos” ten editions have been printed since 1934. Some years ago, feeling the approach of old age, I transferred the Casa Editora to the Evangelical Union of South America, a Society willing to continue the publication work on undenominational lines. Development has been continuous, and the first pedal machine was long ago replaced by the most modern style of automatic cylinder press. But finality has not yet been reached.

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Someone may complain that all the reminiscences in this collection are of long ago, so I will now add one that is not even ten years old. I first knew Abednego de Assis as a small boy at Carangola, who, playing with another small boy who had a chopper, lost three of the fingers of his right hand while they played. Later on he came under William Anglin’ s observation as a bigger (and better?) boy, very well-behaved, intelligent and industrious. Still later, when he was about 18, he came here to Teresopolis, to be interned in my sister’s Nursing Home for consumptive youths, he then being rather notable for his fine Christian character.

After about three years he was discharged, cured, and found employment at the Casa Editora Evangelica, in the binding department. This continued for nearly three years, during which time Abednego endeared himself to all who knew him by his consistent Christian life, his willing service to the Lord’s interests, and his exemplary conduct. He did not take a prominent part in the meetings, but I sometimes noticed that his face was radiant though his voice was silent. 

Then the end came suddenly. An aneurysm. Frequent haemorrhage. He was taken at once to the Nursing Home, where Sister Lottie cared for him night and day till the end. When arrangements were being made for the funeral, a prominent and well-to-do brother said: “We shall not need to hire the hearse. All the brethren will count it a privilege to carry his body to the cemetery”. The only unsuccessful thing about the interment was the attempt to sing a hymn. A wave of emotion made it impossible. 

Various of our fellow-workers at the Casa Editora have left for one reason or another, but Abednego was the only one whose passing was commemorated by a memorial card, which was printed by the managing director himself (David Glass) in gold lettering.

Nor was even that reckoned quite enough. The local church felt the loss so keenly that they wished to keep his name always in remembrance, so they bought a pulpit Bible, and on the cover they had embossed in gold the words: “ln memory of Abednego Francisco de Assis” Which Bible is in use to this day.

During his last months Abednego kept company with a’young sister so noticeably that after his death someone asked her if they were engaged to be married ? The answer was : “He never talked about that sort of thing”.

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May one attempt to summarise some of the lessons learnt during a long life on the mission field?

(1) When one’s light is a small glow it may be used to better advantage where there is much darkness than where larger luminaries are blazing.

(2) That “God gives the increase” when the work has His approval. When I disembarked at Rio de Janeiro in 1896 I never dreamed that the work begun on the Morro do Livramento there would spread to so very many centres throughout the country.

(3) That the method of “each believer a worker” is the best way to spread the Gospel and build up the spiritual life of the Church. How often I have visited denominational centres and found them languishing because they could not progress without the visit of an ordained minister! Sincere believers have been deprived for months at a time of the Lord’s Supper, because there was no one in the locality licensed to administer it. On the other hand I have known small undenominational local churches with no gifted preachers in their number which have prospered and increased month after month because, in all simplicity, they have met together each first day of the week for the Breaking of Bread, and edified each other with such ministry as was available, according to the teaching of 1. Cor. chapter 14.

As one looks backward on nearing the end of a long life it is not with any satisfaction because of great achievements, but rather with a sense of much coming short of what “might have been” had the all-sufficient grace of God’s enabling been more constantly claimed in prayer, and had abounding opportunities for Christian service has been used more effectively.

One sometimes tries to imagine how fruitful one’s life might have been all through the years had one’s contact with God and man has been more constant and consecrated. 

Stuart Mc Nair

If I covet one high grace
It is this — upon my face
Just to show the inner light
To illumine others’ night.
Give me such a look — so high
That the saddest passer by
On a sudden, glad shall say —
“Somewhere shines the sun to-day”.

Anon.