Appendix D: Notes on Sources and Method

“it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee in order … that thou mightest know the certainty concerning the things wherein thou wast instructed.”

— Luke 1:3-4, ASV

This appendix explains where the story told in this book comes from, how the sources were weighed, and which popular claims about John Hyde have been corrected. It is written for readers who want to check the story for themselves, and for anyone who will retell it.

The Two Memoirs of 1923

Nearly everything vivid about Hyde’s inner life comes from two books published in 1923, eleven years after his death.

A Present-Day Challenge to Prayer, edited by Captain E. G. Carré, was published by the S.P.C.K. Depository in Madras. A London edition titled Praying Hyde was later published by Pickering & Inglis (1931). It gathers two series of reminiscences that first appeared month by month in The Remembrancer, the prayer circular of the Bengal and Assam Prayer Union. Part One is by the Rev. J. Pengwern Jones of the Welsh Presbyterian Mission, the circular’s editor. Part Two, “A Master Fisher for Souls,” is by the Rev. R. McCheyne Paterson of the Punjab. Carré insists that he only arranged the articles into chapters and gave them “practically word for word.” Jones wrote from close friendship. He shared rooms with Hyde at Sialkot and Murree, and Hyde stayed with him in Wales in 1911. Paterson was Hyde’s closest companion in prayer.

Praying Hyde, by Francis A. McGaw, was published by the Sunday School Times Company in Philadelphia. McGaw, a Presbyterian minister in Akron, Ohio, had known the Hyde family in Carthage. He describes himself as a compiler, not an author. His acknowledgements thank Paterson, Jones, W. B. Anderson, F. Kehl of Calcutta, officials of the Presbyterian Board, Hyde’s sisters, and others. Much of his account of the Sialkot years is Paterson’s testimony, sometimes in the first person. McGaw does not name the narrator of most of his Sialkot passages, “a brother” or “I”. Some of those passages match Paterson’s chapters in Carré almost word for word, so this book treats the narrator as almost certainly Paterson. Some stories appear in both books in almost identical words.

Both books are sincere and in many details precise. Both were written to inspire prayer rather than to record history. They rarely give dates. They sometimes place the same event differently. They report numbers without saying where they come from. They sometimes interpret events in ways that go beyond what their witnesses could know. This book has used them throughout, and has tried in the text to say which of them each story comes from.

Independent Records

The following sources are independent of the memoirs and were written close to the events:

General Catalogue of the McCormick Theological Seminary (Chicago, 1912). This gives Hyde’s birth date and place, college, seminary course, ordination, station (“Ferozepore, India, ‘92-’12”), and date and place of death. It also records his brother Edmund.

Woman’s Work for Woman, later Woman’s Work, the magazine of the Presbyterian women’s boards of foreign missions. Its monthly columns record Hyde’s sailings and arrivals (1892, 1901, 1902, 1911), his death, a brief tribute noting his words “Thank God for pain, thank God for everything!”, and the report of 685 baptisms at Moga in 1910.

H. D. Griswold, “Obituary: The Man Who Never Sleeps,” The Assembly Herald, April 1912. This is the single most valuable document for an honest biography. It was written by a colleague who admired Hyde but did not idealise him.

The President’s Report on the Work of the Punjab Mission (Ludhiana Mission Press, 1907). It records Hyde’s superintendence of the Moga circle and quotes his observations and his method of village work.

W. B. Anderson and C. R. Watson, Far North in India (1909). The history of the United Presbyterian mission includes Andrew Gordon’s account of Ditt and the mission’s official report of the 1905 Sialkot Convention. That report independently confirms the scene in which the appointed speaker had “no message” and the chairman gave the meeting to the Holy Spirit.

J. Wilbur Chapman, When Home Is Heaven (1917), and Ford C. Ottman, J. Wilbur Chapman: A Biography (1920). These give Chapman’s own printed account of Hyde’s prayer at Shrewsbury and the dates of the mission.

J. Waskom Pickett, Christian Mass Movements in India (1933), and the published Punjab census figures, as analysed by later historians of Punjabi Christianity. They supply the context of the mass movement.

Hyde’s Own Words

Hyde wrote very little that survives. The following are the passages in which we come closest to his own voice:

His account of the letter on the voyage, quoted by McGaw from “an Indian publication,” and a fuller version told to Pengwern Jones in conversation.

His account of the open-air meeting and his besetting sin, as told to Jones.

An extract from his 1896 address “The Life on Wings,” reprinted by Carré.

His observations on village work and his method (“Begin the day in prayer and praise with your helpers …”), quoted in the mission report of 1907.

A sentence from a letter of 9 May 1907 about political unrest, quoted in Woman’s Work.

A passage from his last class letter to his seminary classmates (“over a thousand the past two years …”), quoted by McGaw.

His notes on Psalm 22, from a letter to his sister Mary, printed by McGaw with some rearrangement.

A postcard to his sister dated 27 October 1911, quoted by McGaw.

Many sayings reported by friends, such as “First things first,” “What about that one?”, “That is your work … that is my work,” and “It’s just victory, victory, victory.” These are memories of speech, not transcripts.

Corrections to the Popular Story

The following popular claims have been corrected or qualified in this book:

Place and date of death. Hyde died on 17 February 1912 at his sister’s home in Northampton, Massachusetts. He did not die at Clifton Springs, New York, where he had been treated. Three independent Presbyterian sources agree.

Age at death. He was forty-six, not forty-seven as Griswold and McGaw say.

His station. Sialkot was the United Presbyterian mission’s town, not Hyde’s. His station was Ferozepore, and from 1907 he superintended the Moga circle of the Ludhiana district.

Founding the convention and the prayer union. The early sources call Hyde one of the “moving spirits” of the Punjab Prayer Union and name him among the leaders of the Sialkot Convention. No independent record names him as the founder of either. Griswold says he was closely associated with the convention from its beginning.

The soul-a-day figures. The figures of four hundred in 1908 and eight hundred between the 1909 and 1910 conventions appear only in McGaw. The independent record shows steadily increasing baptisms in the Moga district, 685 in 1910, and Hyde’s own report of “over a thousand the past two years” for his team.

The displaced heart. The report comes from a friend’s memory of one doctor’s examination. The claim that prayer moved Hyde’s heart is an interpretation. A heart on the right side may be congenital (dextrocardia) or the result of chest disease (dextroposition).

Chapman at Shrewsbury. The dramatic version, with the locked door and the five-minute silences, comes from an undated letter printed in both memoirs. Chapman’s own published account (1917) is quieter. Both agree on the turning of the mission and on Chapman’s lesson in intercession.

Last words. Griswold records that Hyde’s last words were in Punjabi. W. B. Anderson gives them as “Bol, Yisu Masih, ki jai!”, a phrase whose spelling and translation vary. Griswold also records that he said to his sister, “It’s just victory, victory, victory.”

Inferences Offered With Caution

Two suggestions in this book go slightly beyond the sources and are offered as probable, not proven. First, Jones states in passing that the friend who wrote the letter on the ship was the man “preparing a short account of Hyde,” which suggests that the letter-writer was Francis McGaw himself. Second, the unnamed speaker in the official report of the 1905 convention is identified with Hyde because the memoirs tell the same story about him.

Later Books

Many later books about Hyde exist, including popular biographies from the 1940s onward and modern compilations of his supposed letters. This book has not relied on them. Where they add details not found in the 1923 memoirs or the contemporary records, those details could not be verified.

Where More May Be Found

The records of the Punjab Mission and of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, held at the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia, may contain letters and reports by Hyde that have not been published. Local newspapers in Illinois and Massachusetts from February 1912 may contain further obituaries. A future biographer with access to those archives may be able to answer questions this book has had to leave open.

Scripture

All Scripture quotations are from the American Standard Version of 1901, checked against its published text. Where Hyde or his friends quoted another version, such as the King James or the Revised Version, their wording has been kept and marked, and the ASV has been used for the book’s own quotations.