Student life at seminary quickly settled into a routine. Sam was assigned to room 32 in Hertzog Hall along with several other young men from the Midwest. It was comforting for him that other students also came from small towns.
Sam set right to work on his two priorities, studying and preparing himself for the mission field. From the first day, he committed himself to spending his lunch hour, between twelve and one o’clock, reading his Bible and praying. Soon the idea caught on, and other students joined him. Sam joined the nearby Suydam Street Reformed Church, where he sang in the choir and taught Sunday school. He also immersed himself in the missionary opportunities the seminary provided. In October, just one month after arriving, Sam was a delegate to the Inter-Seminary Missionary Alliance held in Alexandria, Virginia. Attending the gathering and meeting with so many other young people with a call to missionary service inspired him even more.
Sam prayed hard about his next steps and came to the conclusion that it would be useful to understand medicine as well as theology. However, since New Brunswick Seminary did not offer courses in medicine, Sam decided to read through a copy of Gray’s Anatomy on his own. He took lots of notes as he read, and when he had finished the book, he found another medical textbook to continue his personal study.
On January 24, 1888, Sam preached his first sermon. The act of preaching came naturally to him, since he had heard thousands of sermons by his father and older brothers. After giving the sermon, which was on missionary work, Sam had an inspired idea. He wondered whether the seminary students and faculty would be willing to sponsor their own missionary. By eleven o’clock that night, he had $150 pledged toward the support of a missionary, and by the end of the week, he had raised the astonishing sum of $700. The Reverend Louis Scudder, a doctor from India, was chosen to receive the money.
Besides reading books for his course work, Sam read a wide range of missionary biographies. He was struck by one about George Müller, a German man who had gone to England and cared for thousands of orphan children. When he had finished the biography, Sam wrote, “George Müller’s life of trust makes one feel the power of prayer. Why can we not all live in that way?”
Sam determined to do his best to live the kind of life that George Müller had been living. He prayed that God would show him the specific place where he should be a missionary. Slowly Sam felt his heart warm toward the people of Arabia. The life of a young man named Ion Keith-Falconer inspired him in this. Ion was the son of a wealthy Scottish earl and had been a popular figure in the British Isles. In addition to being a scholar in Arabic, he was a world champion cyclist and a devout Christian. Ion and his new bride had moved to Sheikh Othman, near Aden in South Arabia, to help with a Free Church of Scotland medical clinic and to open an orphanage. Less than a year after going to Arabia, Ion had died from malaria. That had been only six months ago. Ion’s willingness to leave fame and fortune at home in the British Isles and sacrifice his life to spread the gospel had a profound impact on Sam.
Ion’s story underscored just how difficult working in Arabia would be. Not only was the Arabic language difficult to learn, but missionaries had also largely ignored the region. As a result only a few missionary stations were situated around Arabia, and most of those had been established in the previous twenty years. Deadly diseases and the hatred that many Muslims had for Christians combined to make the area a mission field for which few volunteered.
Sam was not the only student at the seminary who felt a call to Arabia. Two other young men, James Cantine and Philip Phelps—both set to graduate a year ahead of Sam—also wanted to go there as missionaries. The three students began meeting together weekly to pray about their joint calling. James Cantine, or Jim, as everyone called him, and Sam soon discovered how different their backgrounds were. Although both came from homes that were steeped in Dutch Reformed traditions, Jim had been raised on a farm in Ulster County, New York. He had graduated from Union College as a civil engineer and after three years of working in the field, resigned to train to become a pastor.
Jim had not felt any kind of call to missionary service until he attended Dr. John Lansing’s classes at the seminary. Dr. Lansing was New Brunswick’s Hebrew and Arabic professor. His father, Dr. Julian Lansing, was a well-known scholar and missionary in Syria and Egypt. Because John Lansing had been born in Egypt and spent much of his early life in the Middle East, he was able to bring the cultures of the region to life in his classes. His descriptions of the needs in Arabia moved not only Jim but also Sam and Philip.
Soon Sam, Jim, and Philip took up the study of Arabic. Sam found the language easier than did his two companions. He credited this to the fact that he had been exposed to several languages as a young child. Still, Arabic was challenging. Dr. Lansing called it the “language of angels,” and the three students joked that that was because no human could master it.
In his second year at New Brunswick, Sam’s younger brother Peter began studying at the seminary. The two brothers continued their close relationship, praying and studying together. Sam also took his medical training one step further. He wasn’t yet sure where in Arabia God was calling him, but he had a definite sense that wherever it was it would involve medical work. Because of this, Sam arranged to spend his weekends in New York City helping out at the Bleecker Street Mission. This mission welcomed all sorts of people, from young girls trying to make a living on the streets to old immigrant couples who had nowhere to live.
Sam soon struck up a friendship with William Wanless, a dedicated young physician who worked at the mission and had his sights set on missionary work in India. The two men often talked about missions as they filled prescriptions for drugs. William wrote the prescriptions while Sam counted pills into the bottles. The Bleecker Street Mission had a firm tradition of pasting a printed Bible verse on each bottle of medicine it dispensed. In a moment of inattention, Sam upset one very sick patient when he pasted the verse, “Prepare to meet thy God” onto a bottle. From then on Sam read every Bible verse before sticking it onto a medicine bottle.
At the same time, Sam was in demand as a preacher in the Student Volunteer Movement. He gave as much time as he could to the cause. On September 11, 1888, while in the Midwest visiting his family, he spoke at a large Christian rally at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. At this rally thirteen students signed declaration cards to become foreign missionaries. Nothing pleased Sam more than having played a role in their decision.
In November 1888, Sam, Jim, and Philip confided in John Lansing that they wanted to set up a mission in Arabia. The professor was delighted to hear the news and quickly rallied to help the three students get started on their new venture. The first step was to get the Reformed Church Mission Board to accept them as their missionaries. This was no easy task, but Dr. Lansing was a respected and well-connected man who was sure he could influence his colleagues to accept the challenge of a missionary thrust into Arabia.
By the spring of 1889, Sam had high hopes that the mission board would soon accept him and his two friends as missionaries. Dr. Lansing attended the General Synod meeting that was held in Catskill, New York. The men at the General Synod shook their heads when the idea of a new mission in Arabia was raised. As far as they were concerned, the church’s missionary arm was already in serious debt, and many mission fields, especially China, were understaffed. It did not seem to them like the right time to open up another mission station.
Sam and his two friends were disappointed when Dr. Lansing told them that they would not be accepted as Reformed Church missionaries, but they refused to be defeated. They felt God had called them to be missionaries to Arabia, and set out to find another way to do just that.
Three months later the young men had their own meeting in Catskill with Dr. Lansing. It was a time of soul-searching and commitment. Philip had a serious family situation that he felt stopped him from continuing with plans to go overseas, but he pledged to do all he could to help the mission from within the United States. Sam and Jim were more determined than ever, though Jim reported that he was encountering opposition from his family. His mother was over seventy years old, and his sisters were urging him not to go overseas until she died. Nonetheless, Jim pressed on with his plans, though Sam could tell the lack of family support was making it difficult.
At the meeting with Dr. Lansing, plans were set in motion to form an independent, nondenominational mission to the Arabs. Everyone hoped that such a mission would be taken over by the Reformed Church of America once it was up and running. For now, the three students and their professor were responsible to set it up. They began outlining the new mission’s aim, its name, and how it would raise and distribute funds. The title for the mission was the easy part: the Arabian Mission. The aim of the mission was clear to everyone from the start: to reach Muslims in Arabia with the gospel.
The most difficult challenge would be raising the money to get started. Jim was a year ahead of Sam and due to graduate. The group hoped that he could be sent out right away as the Arabian Mission’s first missionary, with Sam to follow the next year.
The four men decided to form a syndicate that would ask for donations of between five dollars and two hundred dollars a year. One person or a group of people could give that amount, or even a group of churches could come together to pledge a certain amount. The money would be spent on sending out and providing the salary for a missionary, while everyone else associated with the mission would be a volunteer.
Now all the Arabian Mission lacked was a logo, a motto, and a song, all of which were decided on quickly. The logo became a wheel with three spokes, with each spoke representing the three students who had started the mission: Jim, Sam, and Philip.
The motto came from a prayer Dr. Lansing had often repeated at earlier prayer meetings: the prayer of Abraham. “O that Ishmael might live before thee!” This was selected because according to the biblical record, the people of Arabia were largely descendants of Abraham through his firstborn son Ishmael.
For the song, Dr. Lansing composed a hymn to encompass the new mission’s aims and beliefs. When Sam heard him sing it for the first time, it brought tears to his eyes.
There’s a land long since neglected,
There is a people still rejected,
But of truth and grace elected,
In His love for them.
Softer than their night winds fleeting,
Richer than their starry tenting,
Stronger than their sands protecting,
Is His love for them.
By the time Sam left the meeting in Catskill, he believed the Arabian Mission would become a reality. The syndicate funding approach, which they named the Wheel Syndicate Plan, soon appeared in many church newsletters and created a lot of interest. Almost immediately Sam set out to raise money and prayer support among the churches in the Midwest. Jim did the same in the East while preparing for his own departure to Beirut, Lebanon, where he planned to spend his first year improving his Arabic language skills.
Wherever Sam traveled, he made friends and found people interested in his new mission endeavor. On the train to Syracuse, New York, he spoke with Bishop Foster of the Methodist Church. The bishop was so impressed by all Sam told him that he asked for a copy of the Wheel Syndicate Plan to publish in the Methodists’ Christian Advocate magazine.
From September 2 to October 6, 1889, Sam worked tirelessly representing the new mission. He wrote in his diary, “It may be of interest to give the list of churches where offerings were given or syndicates started: Free Grace, Orange City, Newkirk, Sioux Center, Alton, Milwaukee, Alto, Zeeland, Holland, Overisel, Graafschap, and several churches in Grand Rapids.” The total amount of money collected was only about three hundred dollars, but most of the churches signed up as part of the syndicate, which meant they committed to giving the same amount each year.
