Like Richard Weaver and Duncan Matheson, Frederick Arnot and Egerton R.
Young were contemporaries. I heard them both--Fred Arnot in Exeter Hall
and Egerton Young in New Zealand. They lived and labored on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. Fred Arnot gave himself to the fierce Barotses of
Central Africa; Egerton Young set himself to win the Red Men of the
North American woods and prairies.
Arnot's life is one of the most pathetic romances that even Africa has
given to the world. He made the wildest men love him. Sir Francis de
Winton declares that Arnot made the name of Englishman fragrant amidst
the vilest habitations of cruelty. 'He lived a life of great hardship,'
says Sir Ralph Williams; 'I have seen many missionaries under varied
circumstances, but such an absolutely forlorn man, existing on from day
to day, almost homeless, without any of the appliances that make life
bearable, I have never seen.' And the secret of this great unselfish
life? The secret was the text. He was only six when he heard
Livingstone. He at once vowed that he, too, would go to Africa. When his
friends asked how he would get there, he replied that, if that were all,
he would swim. But nobody knew better than he did that the real
obstacles that stood between himself and a life like Livingstone's were
not physical but spiritual. He could not lead Africa into the kingdom of
Christ unless he had first entered that kingdom himself. As a boy of
ten, he found himself lying awake at two o'clock one morning, repeating
a text. He went over it again and again and again. _God so loved the
world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him
should not perish but have everlasting life._ 'This,' says Sir William
Robertson Nicoll, 'was Arnot's lifelong creed, and he worked in its
spirit.' 'This,' he says himself, 'was my first and chief message.' He
could imagine none greater.
Exactly so was it with Egerton Young. He tells us, for example, of the
way in which he invaded the Nelson River district and opened work among
people who had never before heard the gospel. He is surrounded by two
hundred and fifty or three hundred wild Indians. 'I read aloud,' he
says, 'those sublime words: _For God so loved the world that He gave His
only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but
have everlasting life._ They listened with the most rapt attention
whilst for four hours I talked to them of the truths of this glorious
verse. When I had finished, every eye turned towards the principal
chief. He rose, and, coming near me, delivered one of the most thrilling
addresses I have ever heard. Years have passed away since that hour, and
yet the memory of that tall, straight, impassioned Indian is as vivid as
ever. His actions were many, but all were graceful. His voice was
particularly fine and full of pathos, for he spoke from the heart.'
'"Missionary," exclaimed the stately old chief, "I have not, for a long
time, believed in our religion. I hear God in the thunder, in the
tempest and in the storm: I see His power in the lightning that shivers
the tree: I see His goodness in giving us the moose, the reindeer, the
beaver, and the bear. I see His loving-kindness in sending us, when the
south winds blow, the ducks and geese; and when the snow and ice melt
away, and our lakes and rivers are open again, I see how He fills them
with fish. I have watched all this for years, and I have felt that the
Great Spirit, so kind and watchful and loving, could not be pleased by
the beating of the conjurer's drum or the shaking of the rattle of the
medicine man. And so I have had no religion. But what you have just said
fills my heart and satisfies its longings. I am so glad you have come
with this wonderful story. Stay as long as you can!"'
Other chiefs followed in similar strains; and each such statement was
welcomed by the assembled Indians with vigorous applause. The message of
the text was the very word that they had all been waiting for.
Fred Arnot found that it was what _Africa_ was waiting for!
Egerton Young found that it was what _America_ was waiting for!
It is the word that _all the world_ is waiting for!
For that text is _Everybody's Text_!