“THE MAN WITH THE GENTLE HEART”
“This day thirteen years ago, while a just-arrived student at
Dartmouth College, it pleased my sovereign Maker to manifest His
everlasting love to me by inclining my heart to choose Him as my
portion, and His service as my reward.”
Such is his salutatory in the service of God, as recorded by Samuel
R. House, in his journal under date of Feb. 22, 1848. He had been
in Siam less than a year; long enough however for the novelty of
his situation to abate a little so that he had time to reflect.
Reflecting, he sees how that youthful dedication was—so far as he
was consciously concerned—the beginning of the lines of life that
led him to Siam.
Four years later, on the anniversary of his arrival in Siam,
contemplating the fruitlessness of those years and ready to
incriminate himself for “a culpable ignorance of the language,” he
again writes:
“How different doubtless am I regarded at home by
over-esteeming friends. How false a biography would that
be, some of them would write.... Let no one eulogise such
a character, such a worthless, unworthy life as mine. If a
Christian hope be the joy of my life, by the grace of God I
am what I am; but my waywardness, my inefficiency is all my
own.”
The cause of this despondency was not within himself. It was the
miasma arising from the spiritual decay around him. But as none
liveth unto himself, so none dieth to himself. The example of such
persistent faith belongs to the church; and it has too great a
value for the living to allow the judgment of a passing despondency
to prevail.
At length comes the valedictory. On the occasion of the fiftieth
anniversary of the beginning of permanent work in Siam by the
Presbyterian Church (U. S. A.) in 1897, Dr. House wrote to a friend:
“And now in my eightieth year, sole survivor of that little
band, I feel it a privilege indeed to look back and see what
God hath wrought since that day of small beginnings. Verily
the little one has become a thousand—yes thousands. I am
sure you, my friend, will congratulate me on being yet alive
this blessed day of an abundant ingathering from that long
barren mission field. How the loved ones that have entered
into rest would rejoice if they could see how their patience
of hope and labour and love have not been in vain in the
Lord. There are many in heaven to raise the song of jubilee
with them, even there.”
From that early dedication of self to God while in college,
through the years “cast down but not destroyed,” to the golden
jubilee—what a strain of human effort, what a magnificent
persistence of faith, what a glory of hope realized!