No one answered.
The following week the three Studd brothers were glad to attend chapel at Eton. It all seemed so normal after their strange religious encounter of the weekend before.
As the weeks went by, C.T. tried to forget about his father’s conversion, but in the back of his mind he knew he would have to go home for the summer and face the religious meetings that his father held at the family’s estate in Tedworth every weekend. Slowly, as news spread around Eton that Mr. Studd had been converted, many of the other boys came to offer C.T. their sympathy. They could not imagine anything worse than having an evangelical father.
Thankfully, C.T. and his brothers had their cricket careers to concentrate on. Not only did Eton manage to beat its archrival, Harrow, with them on the team, but in one game Kinny scored 52 runs, C.T. 53, and George 54. It was a rare achievement.
Finally summer arrived, and C.T. and his brothers packed their belongings into trunks and headed for home. Tedworth House, with its huge, white columns and curved, two-story exterior, looked just as imposing as ever, but for the first time, C.T. was nervous about going inside. Sure enough, just as his father had said, the marble-floored dance hall had been outfitted with chairs and benches, and hymnals and Bibles were piled high by the door.
Mr. and Mrs. Studd warmly greeted their returning sons while C.T.’s three younger brothers, Peter, Herbert, and Reginald, and his little sister, Dora, all crowded around to welcome the “big” boys home. The younger siblings talked about some of the events they had planned for the summer—picnics, cricket matches, and hunting parties—but most of all they talked about the weekend meetings that drew several hundred people. C.T. cringed as he thought of his childhood friends and their families being invited to such meetings.
Things did not go well from the start. C.T. did his best to avoid his father. Whenever they were together, Edward Studd turned the conversation to religious matters and often asked C.T. if he wanted to get saved. He even came into his son’s room at night to sit on the end of the bed and explain why becoming a Christian would be a wonderful thing to do. This was all too much for C.T., who felt hounded in his own house. Often when he heard his father coming into his room at night, he pretended to be asleep, and he sneaked around the house, making sure that his father was not already in a room before he entered it.
The weekends were the worst of all, when the house was filled with Christians. The visitors sang, not just in the meetings but all the time. Sometimes C.T. would hear them singing and even praying in the garden or the dining room. And they talked of little else besides Jesus Christ, until C.T. and his brothers could not stand it anymore.
When a Mr. Weatherby, a thin, humorless man, arrived to preach for the weekend, it was the last straw. The three older Studd boys decided it was time to do something. Old Weatherby, as they called him, had to go!
“I’ve seen Old Weatherby on a horse,” C.T. confided in his brothers on Saturday morning, “and he’s not much of a horseman. Let’s ask him if he wants to come with us for a leisurely ride. He can ride Father’s horse. We’ll start off slowly and then set our horses to race. Father’s horse won’t be able to resist, and we’ll see how long Old Weatherby can stay in the saddle!”
Everything went as planned. Kinny, George, and C.T. trotted their horses out of the stable and waited for Mr. Weatherby to mount the fourth horse. Riding was in C.T.’s blood. In fact, all of the Studd boys had been on horses for as long as they could remember. Their mother had dressed them in matching red riding outfits, and their father had tied them to the saddle and taught each boy to jump before his sixth birthday.
Soon the four were out in the fields around Tedworth House. It was a scene C.T. loved, especially the sheep grazing lazily between the hedgerows. The three boys started out slowly, and then with a raised eyebrow, C.T. signaled for them to canter. He looked behind him to see Mr. Weatherby’s startled look as his horse took off at a gallop after the other three horses. Mr. Weatherby clung to the saddle, a grim look of determination fixed across his face.
The boys’ horses raced faster, jumping effortlessly over a gate, but the preacher stayed right behind them. They tried another jump and then another, but nothing would unseat Old Weatherby. Eventually the boys slowed their horses to a trot, and Mr. Weatherby came up beside them. C.T. expected him to be angry, but he merely said, “Nice day for a ride, isn’t it?” and smiled.
For the first time, C.T. felt a little ashamed of the trick he and his brothers had played on their father’s guest. But the feeling did not last long, and C.T. spent the rest of the day avoiding Mr. Weatherby, until toward evening he rounded a corner of the house and came face-to-face with the man.
“Can you spare me a few minutes, C.T.?” Mr. Weatherby asked.
The last thing C.T. wanted to do was to be alone with Old Weatherby, but he did feel he owed him a little courtesy after the trick they had played on him that morning.
“I have a little time,” he replied.
“Good,” Mr. Weatherby replied. “Why don’t we sit down on these lawn chairs and have a chat.”
C.T. obediently sat down, and Old Weatherby started in right away.
“Are you a Christian, C.T.?” the preacher asked.
C.T. felt cornered. He did not know what to say. After a long silence he did the best he could. “I am not what you would call a Christian. But I have believed in Jesus Christ since I was knee-high.” He tried not to look Mr. Weatherby in the eye. “And, of course, I believe in the church, too,” he added, hoping that that would be enough to satisfy the man, but it was not.
“Look here, C.T. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Now, do you believe Jesus Christ died?”
C.T. hesitated for a moment. He did not want to get caught in a trap, but he decided to answer as honestly as he could.
“Yes, I believe that,” he said.
“Well, do you believe He died for you?” Mr. Weatherby persisted.
“Yes,” C.T. mumbled.
“Good. And do you believe the other half of the verse, that you shall have everlasting life?”
“Not exactly,” C.T. answered. “I find that very hard to believe.”
“Isn’t it inconsistent to believe one half of the verse and not the other?” Mr. Weatherby asked.
“I suppose so,” C.T. replied.
“And are you always going to be inconsistent in what you believe?”
“Not always,” C.T. said. “One day I will work it all out.”
“Why not now? Today?” Mr. Weatherby pressed.
As C.T. thought about it, he realized it was a reasonable question. How could he believe one half of a Bible verse and not the other? He sighed and then spoke. “I suppose I am ready to be consistent in what I believe.”
“Wonderful! Don’t you see that eternal life is a gift? And if someone offers you a gift at Christmastime, what do you do?” Mr. Weatherby did not wait for an answer; he patted C.T. on the back and continued. “You take it and say thank you, don’t you? Now why don’t you take the gift of eternal life and say thank you to God for it?”
Put that way, it made sense to C.T., and since no one else was around, C.T. got down on his knees and mumbled his thanks to God.
Much to his surprise, when he got to his feet, C.T. felt quite different—joyful and light. Mr. Weatherby talked to him for a few more minutes about praying and reading his Bible regularly, and then the two of them parted.
As C.T. walked off in the direction of the cricket pitch, he decided two things. First, it was not so awful being a Christian after all, and second, he was not going to tell a soul about what he had done.
Chapter 3
A Star Cricketer
Now back at Eton, C.T. Studd sat at the breakfast table with his two brothers. C.T. had kept his promise to himself not to tell anyone that he had become a Christian, with one exception. When he got back to Eton, he had written a letter he had marked “Private” to his father, explaining his conversion. He hoped this would make his father happy.
That morning the servant brought in a letter and handed it to Kinny. The letter was addressed to all three boys, and Kinny read it first. Without saying a word, he handed it to George, who in turn read it silently and then gave it to C.T.
As C.T. read the letter, he could hardly believe what it said. His father was congratulating each of the boys on becoming a Christian on the same day, each as the result of talking to Mr. Weatherby!
C.T. looked at his brothers, who seemed as shocked as he was. Evidently each of them had made the same decision not to tell anyone else what he had done.
“The cat’s out of the bag now, isn’t it?” Kinny laughed. “Did you mean it when you talked to Old Weatherby?”
“Yes,” C.T. replied. “I just didn’t want to make a public song and dance about it. You know how Father is about such things these days.”
“I felt the same way,” George agreed. “But I have been reading my Bible and praying every day, and I must say, chapel service has been making a great deal more sense to me.”
“Me, too,” Kinny said. “I can hardly believe it! I have been praying for both of you, and here you are already Christians.”
The three boys talked through breakfast, marveling at how each of them had been converted on the same day after resisting it for nearly a year. They also decided to start a group Bible study with some of their close friends.
Things went smoothly for C.T. that year. He dedicated most of his time to cricket, but he did go to the Bible studies that Kinny led. And things were easier at home now that Mr. Studd was satisfied that his boys were headed in the right direction.
At the end of the year, Kinny went off to Trinity College at Cambridge, and the following year George joined him, leaving C.T. alone at Eton, where he was named the captain of the first eleven cricket team.
During the 1879–1880 school year, C.T. threw himself into all kinds of sports. He was a natural athlete, and he felt that cross training would benefit his cricket game. He was particularly good at racquets and successfully represented Eton in this sport.
He was still living a “good life” as far as he could, but without his brothers’ support, C.T. stopped going to Bible studies, and the joy he had once felt drifted away. But he was so busy he hardly noticed.
Then one day in November 1879 C.T. was called to the headmaster’s office. As he knocked on the door, he wondered what could be so serious for him to be summoned from Latin class. He soon found out. His father was dead! The headmaster had already called a carriage to take C.T. home. It was almost too much for C.T. to take in. The last time he had seen him, his father was healthy and fit. All the way back to Tedworth House, C.T. wondered what could have possibly happened. Once he arrived home, he learned the details from his mother.
“It was so like your father,” his mother began as she dabbed her tears with a handkerchief. “We were on our way to a mission meeting last night, and he suddenly stopped the carriage. He said he had forgotten to invite one of the grooms to come along with us. I tried to tell him that we could invite him to the next meeting, but he insisted that the carriage go on while he went back to the house. He would find the groom, and the two of them would ride to the meeting on horseback. He didn’t make it to the meeting, and when I got home, I found him lying on the couch. Apparently he had run all the way home and broken a blood vessel in his leg. I called the doctor, of course, but there was little he could do, and your father died this morning.”
C.T. put his arm around his mother, but he did not know what to say to comfort her.
The following day at the funeral service, the minister told the huge crowd that Mr. Studd had done more for God in the two years he had been a Christian than most Christians do in twenty years. However, it was the coachman who C.T. thought said it best. “When Mr. Studd became religious, we didn’t know much about it except that though there was the same skin on the outside, there was a new man inside.”
