Portraits of Courage – C. T. Studd

It is a Christian biography of Charles Thomas Studd (1860–1931). It follows him from a wealthy family home and the cricket fields of Eton, Cambridge and the Oval, through his conversion and restoration, the Cambridge Seven of 1885, the gift of his inheritance, nine years in Shanxi with his wife Priscilla, America and India, to the Heart of Africa Mission he founded in 1913 and his death at Ibambi, in the Belgian Congo, in July 1931.

He was an England Test cricketer who became a missionary with the China Inland Mission as one of the Cambridge Seven, gave away a fortune reported at £25,000 to £29,000, served as a pastor at Ootacamund in India, and at the age of fifty-two went to the north-eastern Congo. The mission he founded there became the Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade, now WEC International, and the Congolese church that grew from it, CECCA 16, counts its members and adherents in the hundreds of thousands.

He played for England in the only Test of the 1882 Australian tour, at the Oval on 28–29 August. He was bowled by Spofforth for 0 in the first innings and was left not out, without facing a ball, when the last wicket fell and Australia won by seven runs. The mock obituary of English cricket that followed gave the series its name, and that winter he toured Australia with Ivo Bligh’s team, which went to win the Ashes back.

Probably not. He loved the couplet and is recorded as quoting it to his grandchildren in a farewell letter in 1931, but the longer poem printed under his name says its author first heard the couplet from someone else, and no evidence has been found that he wrote them. The book also notes that the saying traditionally attributed to him, “If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great,” and the “rescue shop” rhyme credited to him have not been traced to anything he published.

Plainly and fairly. It tells of his conflicts with colleagues, his dismissal of his son-in-law Alfred Buxton, the offence caused by his 1928 D.C.D. booklet, his regular use of morphine for pain in his last years, the twelve years of separation from his wife Priscilla, and the crisis of 1931 in which the home committee tried to remove him and the mission split. It neither hides these things nor lets them erase the courage and fruit of his life.

As agents, not as scenery. It describes the Chinese Christians who led the churches of Shanxi, the colonial setting of the Congo after the Free State, the burdens of tax and forced labour, and the Congolese evangelists who carried the gospel through the Uele and Ituri forests in their own languages and at their own cost. Where the names of Congolese believers have not survived in the sources, the book says so rather than inventing them.

Each chapter opens with a passage from the American Standard Version (1901) that carries its theme, from “I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord” to “Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone.” Further passages are woven through the story, including Paul’s warning that giving everything without love profits nothing. Every quotation was checked against the ASV text.

At the beginning. The preface and introduction explain the sources and which famous stories and sayings can be trusted; the chapters then follow his life in order, from Tedworth and the Oval to China, India and the Congo. Appendix A gathers lessons from his life, Appendix B is a study guide for groups, Appendix C a chronology, and Appendix D a note on sources and method.