The church at Ibambi decided to follow some but not all of C.T.’s instructions.
“Bwana Mukubwa is dead.” The news was carried via beating drums for hundreds of miles in every direction. Soon thousands of people rolled up their sleeping mats, grabbed some green bananas, and started the trek to Ibambi to see C.T.’s body as it lay in an open coffin.
At the sight of his body in the coffin, many people wept, and some touched him one last time or prayed at his feet. A storm hit around noon the next day, but despite the rain and driving wind, over two thousand people watched as C.T.’s coffin was lowered into the muddy African earth. Since no one wanted to leave when the service was over, they held a giant prayer meeting that lasted through the night and into the following day.
When word of C.T.’s death reached London, Alfred Buxton, who despite his dismissal from the mission still held his father-in-law in the highest regard, pulled out an old copy of The Chocolate Soldier and read aloud to Edith:
Every true soldier is a hero! A soldier without heroism is a Chocolate Soldier. Who has not been stirred to scorn and mirth at the very thought of a Chocolate Soldier? In peace true soldiers are captive lions, fretting in their cages. War gives them their liberty and sends them, like boys bounding out of school, to obtain their heart’s desire or perish in the attempt. Battle is the soldier’s vital breath! Peace turns him into a stooping asthmatic. War makes him a whole man again, and gives him the heart, strength, and vigor of a hero.
Every true Christian is a soldier of Christ, a hero “par excellence”! Braver than the bravest—scorning the soft seductions of peace and her oft repeated warnings against hardship, disease, danger and death, whom he counts among his bosom friends.
Alfred quietly took Edith’s hand. “One thing we know for certain,” he said softly. “C.T. Studd was no chocolate soldier.”
