Forty years later a thrill of horror electrified the world when the
cables flashed from land to land the terrible tidings that James
Chalmers, the most picturesque and romantic figure in the religious life
of his time, had been killed and eaten by the Fly River cannibals. It is
the evening of Easter Sunday. It has for years been the dream of his
life to navigate the Fly River and evangelize the villages along its
banks. And now he is actually doing it at last. 'He is away up the Fly
River,' wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. 'It is a desperate venture, but he
is quite a Livingstone card!' Stevenson thought Chalmers all gold. 'He
is a rowdy, but he is a hero. You can't weary me of that fellow. He is
as big as a house and far bigger than any church. He took me fairly by
storm for the most attractive, simple, brave and interesting man in the
whole Pacific.' 'I wonder,' Stevenson wrote to Mrs. Chalmers, 'I wonder
if even _you_ know what it means to a man like _me_--a man fairly
critical, a man of the world--to meet one who represents the essential,
and who is so free from the formal, from the grimace.' But I digress. As
Stevenson says, Mr. Chalmers is away up the Fly River, a desperate
venture! But he is boisterously happy about it, and at sunset on this
Easter Sunday evening they anchor off a populous settlement just round a
bend of the river. The natives, coming off in their canoes, swarm onto
the vessel. With some difficulty, Mr. Chalmers persuades them to leave
the ship, promising them that he will himself visit them at daybreak.
The savages, bent on treachery and slaughter, pull ashore and quickly
dispatch runners with messages to all the villages around. When, early
next morning, Mr. Chalmers lands, he is surprised at finding a vast
assemblage gathered to receive him. He is accompanied by Mr.
Tomkins--his young colleague, not long out from England--and by a party
of ten native Christians. They are told that a great feast has been
prepared in their honor, and they are led to a large native house to
partake of it. But, as he enters, Mr. Chalmers is felled from behind
with a stone club, stabbed with a cassowary dagger, and instantly
beheaded. Mr. Tomkins and the native Christians are similarly massacred.
The villages around are soon the scenes of horrible cannibal orgies. 'I
cannot believe it!' exclaimed Dr. Parker from the pulpit of the City
Temple, on the day on which the tragic news reached England, 'I cannot
believe it! I do not want to believe it! Such a mystery of Providence
makes it hard for our strained faith to recover itself. Yet Jesus was
murdered. Paul was murdered. Many missionaries have been murdered. When
I think of _that_ side of the case, I cannot but feel that our honored
and noble-minded friend has joined a great assembly. James Chalmers was
one of the truly great missionaries of the world. He was, in all
respects, a noble and kingly character.' And so it was whispered from
lip to lip that James Chalmers, the Greatheart of New Guinea, was dead,
dead, dead; although John Oxenham denied it.
Greatheart is dead, they say!
Greatheart is dead, they say!
Nor dead, nor sleeping! He lives on! His name
Shall kindle many a heart to equal flame;
The fire he kindled shall burn on and on
Till all the darkness of the lands be gone,
And all the kingdoms of the earth be won,
And one!
A soul so fiery sweet can never die
But lives and loves and works through all eternity.
Yes, _lives_ and _loves_ and _works_! 'There will be much to do in
heaven,' he wrote to an old comrade in one of the last letters he ever
penned. 'I guess I shall have good mission work to do; great, brave work
for Christ! He will have to find it, for I can be nothing else than a
missionary!' And so, perchance, James Chalmers is a missionary still!