When he added it all up, C.T. calculated that he had been left at least twenty-nine thousand pounds, enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life. But that was not what he had in mind for the money. For two years now, he had been sure of what he wanted to do when he received the inheritance—he wanted to give the money to Christian charities. He thanked God that he was in Chungking, because he needed a British official to sign the papers giving his brother Kinny the necessary authority to dispose of the money.
Later that day C.T. found Mr. Bourne in his study.
“May I come in?” he asked.
“By all means, my good man. What can I help you with?” Mr. Bourne asked.
C.T. got straight to the point. “I received mail this morning. It was information about my inheritance, which I had almost forgotten about. Would you be able to draw up and sign some papers so that my brother can have power of attorney over the money? I wish him to give it away on my behalf.”
C.T. watched as Mr. Bourne’s face turned white. Mr. Bourne caught his breath and then spluttered, “But…but it would be quite a sum of money, wouldn’t it? I mean, your father was a wealthy man.”
“He was,” C.T. agreed, “but he found the Lord just two years before he died, and I am sure he would approve of my giving it away. More important, I know my heavenly Father approves. There is no safer place for my money than in ‘God’s bank.’ He offers one-hundredfold increase. Do you know anyone who offers better interest than that?”
“You…I…no!” the consul replied. “I won’t let you do it. You need to think about this in the cold light of day.” Then he softened his tone. “You will always need food and a roof over your head, and you might marry one day and have children. Think ahead a little. After all, you may like being a missionary now, but ten years from now, who can tell?”
C.T. was shocked. He never imagined that he would have to fight with his host to get him to sign the papers.
“But it’s your duty to sign them,” he said. “I am a British subject, and you are the resident consul.”
Mr. Bourne threw up his hands and sighed. “Very well, but I am going to insist on this: take two weeks to think it over, and if you haven’t changed your mind—and I am sure that when you think seriously about it, you will—then I will sign the documents for you.”
C.T. went away satisfied that he had to wait only two weeks before he could carry out his plan.
In the following days C.T. settled on how the money should be divided up. He decided on four allotments of five thousand pounds each. The first allotment was for Dwight L. Moody, the man who had converted his father. C.T. wanted Moody to use the money to start a gospel work in Tirhoot, North India, where his father had made his fortune producing indigo dye.
The second allotment was for George Müller, a Prussian man who had emigrated to England and now ran Christian orphanages for the poorest children in Bristol.
C.T. chose George Holland to receive the third allotment. Holland was a zealous preacher who worked with the poor in Whitechapel, London.
The fourth allotment was to go to Commissioner Frederick Booth-Tucker, General William Booth’s son-in-law, who had advanced the Salvation Army into India.
C.T. divided the rest of the money up among other missions and Christian charities he admired.
Two weeks later C.T. was back in Mr. Bourne’s office, asking him to draw up the papers. Although the consul was not happy about it, he agreed that C.T. had waited the agreed-upon two weeks.
On January 13, 1887, C.T. sent off the paperwork, glad that his money was now safely deposited in the “Bank of Heaven,” as he called it.
Within a month some of the veteran missionaries who had worked in Chungking before the riots began to trickle back into town, and C.T. decided that it was time to head back to Shanghai. He had heard that his brother George would be traveling through the port sometime in spring, and he was anxious to see him again. He did not know that this trip would change the course of his life.
Chapter 6
He Had Never Met a Woman Like Priscilla
In April 1887 C.T. arrived back in Shanghai. The trip had been long and arduous, but he enjoyed every moment of it. By now he had come to savor rice three times a day and had gotten used to the hard, brick beds in the local inns. He marveled that he now felt as much at home in China as he had in England.
Three other English people were staying at the CIM guest house in Shanghai, and C.T. enjoyed their company. The three were Miss Black, an elderly spinster who was the hostess of the guest house; Mr. Stevenson, the deputy director of CIM who was passing through Shanghai; and Priscilla Stewart, a young Irish woman who had recently arrived and was too ill with heart problems to travel inland.
Several letters were waiting for C.T. in Shanghai. One was from Dwight L. Moody, thanking C.T. for his generous gift and explaining that he was not ready to start a work in India yet. Instead he hoped that C.T. would approve of the money going toward starting the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, where young men and women would be trained as missionaries and sent around the world. C.T. was satisfied with this outcome. Another letter was from Frederick Booth-Tucker in India. Booth-Tucker informed C.T. that his gift had enabled General Booth to send fifty Salvation Army officers from England to the subcontinent of India. These new officers were causing quite a stir there, and many lower-caste Indians were responding to the gospel.
C.T. asked Mr. Stevenson if he could read an excerpt from Booth-Tucker’s letter at devotions the following morning. On his way to devotions the next morning, he bounded down the stairs two at a time. As he turned to walk into the front room, he caught a glimpse of Priscilla Stewart at the top of the stairs. Priscilla looked frail and sickly as she edged her way along the banister. C.T. could not bear to watch her descend the stairs, so he hurried in to join the others in the front room.
“That woman has made a real mistake in coming to China!” C.T. exclaimed to Mr. Stevenson. “It seems as if the life has been sucked from her, and I’m sure that she could never stand the rigors of the interior.”
“You could be right,” Mr. Stevenson agreed. “Even the smallest task seems to take a great amount of effort for her.”
Priscilla walked into the room, and C.T. fished around in his pocket for the letter. The small group sang a couple of hymns, and then Mr. Stevenson asked C.T. to read the letter. The letter began with thanks for C.T.’s donation and then went on to say,
We opened at Kandy, the capital of Ceylon, on Christmas Eve. It has a population of about 30,000. We sent a simple Scottish lass and a rough native servant girl. The former is quite uneducated. Her orthography is—well, peculiar. She has been slow to learn the language, and after three months’ hard work could only speak a few sentences, giving her testimony, leading the meetings, etc. Her lieutenant knew no English. Yet the two went bravely and took charge of a hall to hold about 250.… The result—in the course of about two months they had at least 100 souls and were able to enroll about fifty regular soldiers, several of whom have already been taken into the work as officers. Never before have native women been known to speak in public, but now there is a good band of them testifying nightly on the platform.
C.T. stopped reading for a moment, and Priscilla Stewart spoke.
“How wonderful what the Lord is able to do with even the most humble of His servants!” she exclaimed.
Priscilla’s eyes glowed as she spoke, and C.T. felt ashamed of what he had said to Mr. Stevenson. Perhaps, he chastised himself, his judgement of this young woman had been too hasty.
Later that day, C.T. and Priscilla found themselves alone on the veranda of the guest house, and Priscilla began to tell C.T. why she had come to China.
“It began,” she said forthrightly, “when two of my uncles were converted and became extremely active in the Lord’s work. The rest of the family, including me, was embarrassed by this turn of events. After all, we were a prominent family in Belfast—good Anglicans, but not the type of people who felt it good manners to delve into the personal matter of another person’s soul.”
As she stopped to take a sip of tea, C.T. marveled at the similarity of their upbringings. They were both rich and privileged and leading good lives until someone in the family was converted.
Priscilla’s voice broke into C.T.’s thoughts. “I was happy just the way I was, especially when I was allowed to start going to balls at eighteen. I had a wonderful time at my first one, but that night I had a terrifying dream. In it Jesus came to me and He did not recognize me. Instead he said, ‘Depart from Me. I never knew you.’ I tried everything I could to get those words out of my mind, but as the years went by they would not go away.
“Then, when I was twenty-two, I went to stay with a friend of my mother. It turned out that she had been recently converted, and she and her father took me along to a Salvation Army meeting. Oh, I will never forget how uncomfortable I felt that night. I sat on the platform with my hostess, with hundreds of Salvation Army lassies all around me. Their stiff collars and studs creaked as they moved, and they took their tambourines and flapped them around my head! I was in a state, but I got away, and thankfully no one asked about my soul.
“When I arrived home, my hostess drew my attention to a pamphlet written by General Booth describing a terrible vision he had had of a lot of people shipwrecked. You could see the people with their heads above the water and their hands stretching out, and some of them on the rocks. Someone was telling how Jesus would return suddenly, and then the same awful state was going to overtake the unsaved.
“Suddenly I realized that I had been very wrong. I would have given anything to get to God, but I could not. My heart was as black as the worst sinner’s on earth. I was so convicted of unbelief, mocking, and scoffing, that I was the most hell-deserving sinner that ever lived. I fell to my knees and waited. I saw a vision of Jesus on the cross. When it finally faded, I realized that I had been on my knees for two hours. My hostess said, ‘What have you seen?’ and I replied, ‘I have seen Calvary, and forever Jesus will be my Lord and my God.’”
“So you joined the Salvation Army after that?” C.T. asked.
“Yes. I found their meetings a great joy. Those were such grand days. I would march with them, and people would throw rotten eggs, stones, and even old boots at us, but I didn’t care. I was marching for Jesus. Then God called me to China to work with CIM, and I obeyed His command.”
The pair sat in silence for a while. C.T. was too astonished to speak. He had expected Priscilla Stewart to be as timid as her walking steps, but when she spoke, her words burned into his soul. C.T. knew that he wanted to spend more time with this amazing young woman, and he was glad it was still two weeks before George was expected in Shanghai.
Although C.T. spoke reasonable Chinese, he spoke a western dialect and had a hard time making himself understood in Shanghai. Instead of preaching to the Chinese, he filled in the time running evangelistic meetings for English sailors. As soon as Priscilla heard what C.T. was doing, she insisted on joining him. C.T. led the meetings, but it was Priscilla’s fiery testimony that brought about the conversion of a number of burly sailors. As C.T. watched Priscilla speak, her eyes flashed with an intensity he found irresistible. He had to admit to himself that he had never before met a woman like Priscilla Stewart.
In due course George Studd arrived in Shanghai, and he and C.T. had a wonderful reunion. George brought news of the family. Kinny was the proud father of a new son, and their sister, Dora, had recently married Willie Bradshaw, a family friend.
Eventually Priscilla’s health improved, and she was cleared to begin the journey to the inland mission station she had been assigned to. C.T. was sorry to see her leave, but soon afterward he set off for northern China to preach in small towns and villages. George, who had not come to be a missionary himself, went along with C.T. as his unofficial assistant. C.T. was glad for the company, but even so, he found his thoughts often turned to Priscilla. Finally he decided he had to do something about the situation. After praying and fasting for eight days, he made a decision: he would ask Priscilla to marry him.
