His Individuality—His
Stepmother—His Comrades—His Club—‘Stewart Africanus’—At Erlangen—The
Cotton Famine—His first two Books.
Ideals are prophesies that
work out their own fulfilment.’—Bishop
Lightfoot.
‘Who climbs keeps one foot firm on
fact
Ere hazarding the next step. ‘—Browning.
‘Pectus facit theologum’
(The heart makes the theologian).—Amesius.
(The motto of Tholuck and Neander.)
STEWART
took the ordinary course of four
sessions in the New College, Edinburgh, the Divinity Hall of the Free
Church of Scotland. His relation to his studies there was the same as it
had been in the Universities of St. Andrews and Edinburgh. His energies,
not confined within the customary bounds, overflowed upon the adjoining
fields of knowledge. So far as is known, he did not call any of his
professors ‘my master,’ in the classical, exclusive and rich sense of that
term. But in the middle of his Divinity course he found his master and
lifelong hero.
Here is the image of Stewart which
lives in the memories of his surviving fellow-students.—Healthy in body,
mind, and soul, he had a passion for fact and reality. Though a zealous
idealist, he did not look at present things through the stained glass of
the imagination. He was a good, whole-hearted, practical Christian man,
and free from every petty feeling. Sometimes he seemed to be
over-masterful, and he did not always moderate his language in conference
and controversy. On the Godward side he had an exacting conscience, and
sternly took himself to task for his failings. The devout life was
diligently cultivated, and he cherished an intense aversion to a wooden
orthodoxy, and a tottering morality in alliance with a Christian
profession. He wished a thoroughly practical theology which he could
transmit to the heathen, and which would move him to transmit it. In every
part of his life he was profoundly Christian. ‘I have an impression,’ one
of his fellow-students writes, ‘of his manly, forcible, upright, and
generous Christian character.’
His social nature—’ which needed a
little development’—was enriched in two directions. As his father had died
during his university course, for some years he lived with his stepmother,
to whom he was warmly attached. The comradeship of these two was greatly
admired. It was like the relation of an affectionate elder sister to a
devoted younger brother. The care of her was a sacred duty to him, and not
till he had laid her body in the grave, could he say, ‘I am now free to go
to Africa.’ ‘I cannot tell you,’ he then wrote, ‘how this has affected me.
What a world of affection that woman lavished upon me. Now I can never
repay her. My interest in things has suddenly diminished within the last
few hours.’ He adds—’ I had formed what, no doubt, was a rash resolution,
not to go abroad while she lived. . . . This event removed my self-made
difficulty and set me strangely free, as I had then neither father nor
mother, sister nor brother alive, though of the latter there were at one
time five.’ Some time after the death of his stepmother, writing to an
intimate friend, he said, ‘For the first few weeks I dozed over the fire
and did nothing. I hardly thought that a man in ordinary tolerable health
could be so stupefied with one stroke as to forget half the things he had
to do, and only half do what remained. . . . I was asked to come here
(Selkirk) and was glad to go where I must work. It will be no fault
of mine, I hope, if our friendship is not perpetuated. I feel more every
day the need of holding to those old friends for whom I care, and for whom
those who are no longer amongst us really cared, so let us understand that
I wish the bond to be made, if possible, stronger. You say "God has had
some wise end in view." I believe He has, though I do not yet understand
it. You must not think I am complaining. I have felt as never in my life
before that it is good that a man should suffer, yet these poor hearts of
ours will have their say. I had often wished for a few years in which to
have repaid my mother for all her surprising love. In the last letter I
wrote to her from Paris, I told her of this. I wanted to provide a quiet
home for her, but— Despite all my
infirmity of temper, sometimes, too often alas, overcoming me, I loved my
mother and she knew it. I loved her as if she had been my own mother, but
it seems to me I did not love her half enough, and God has sent His
rebuke. I must wait therefore till I meet her in Heaven, and tell her of
my repentance on earth after she left it. It seems also that I have a tie
now there, and a real piece of work to be done when I get there, that I
never had before.’
To Free Church students of Divinity,
the New College was their Alma Mater. The smaller number was favourable to
comradeship, and unity of conviction and aims created an added sense of
brotherhood. In such an atmosphere are formed the friendships which last
throughout life and enrich it.
Stewart took a prominent part in the
theological and missionary societies of the New College, of which he was
an affectionate alumnus. He had even then the mysterious power of
leadership and a fertile initiative. Several of his St. Andrews
fellow-students were with him at the New College. He formed them into the
S.A.S.C.—the St. Andrews Students’ Club, with the St. Andrew’s Cross for
their symbol. They had a very beautiful coat of arms with two mottoes:
‘One in Christ’ (in Greek), and ‘To lose a friend is the greatest of
losses’ (in Latin). By frequent correspondence, friendship was fostered
among the clubmen after they had left Edinburgh, and they all agreed to do
their utmost to support the mission to which the founder of their club had
devoted his life. Stewart carefully kept these memories alive, for, like
the fuel in the hearth, they preserved and radiated upon him the sunshine
of the past.
In after days, his memory fondly
reverted to this society, and he maintained a fraternal correspondence
with several of its members, and was a loyal and devoted friend.
They met once a week in each other’s
rooms, had a devotional meeting every Saturday evening, and engaged in
Home Mission work. Stewart wrote a booklet to be circulated by the
members. It was based upon the story of Felix, and entitled
Thoughts on an Ancient Narrative, or, Circumstances and
the Soul’s Salvation. With him, as with
Strafford, thorough was his motto in all he did. This booklet is
carefully written, closely reasoned, and well fitted for its purpose.
In 1857 he received his second great
epoch-making impulse. The first came to him between the stilts of the
plough; the second, from the pages of a book. The Rev. J. Macknight of
Whit-burn writes: ‘One Saturday afternoon in 1857 I had a walk in the
country with James Stewart. He then told me that he had just read
Livingstone’s travels. He was so fascinated with the book that he was busy
tabulating its contents. Chapter i. in his notes was headed "Dr.
Livingstone as a Botanist," and in the later chapters he dealt with
Livingstone as a zoologist—a geologist—a medical man—an explorer—a
missionary—and a Christian. Under the several heads he had summed up quite
an array of references, giving the subject and the page. Livingstone’s
many-sidedness had amazed him, also the extraordinary wisdom and clearness
with which every topic was handled, and especially the new world of Africa
which just then was dawning upon us. It would have required a prophet to
foretell the issue of young Stewart’s enthusiasm, but looking back to it
now, across all that he has since done and been, we can see that he had
already found his hero and his function. If that old notebook of his can
be traced, it should be deposited in some missionary museum, as a sacred
memorial of our honoured friend.’
After this, ‘long Stewart ‘—as he
was called in the easy colloquial of the college, to distinguish him from
another whose name was ‘short Stuart’—was known as ‘Africa Stewart’ or
‘Stewart Africanus.’ He was cherishing visions and dreaming dreams about
missions in the heart of Africa. Some were disposed to regard him as a
dreamer and a visionary. They could not know that the first love of his
boyhood had then become a well-defined, overmastering passion, which would
create for him one of the most notable missionary careers of the century.
Dr. Wallace thus recalls these days:
‘Along with some others and myself he spent part of the summer session of
1858 at the University of Erlangen. [In Bavaria, then one of the most
famous schools of theology, as among its professors were Delitzsch, Von
Hofmann, Thomasius, Ebrard and Herzog. Stewart knew German well and could
converse in it.] The German students sampled us Scotchers and labelled us.
He was known as "der Schotte mit dem grossen Stock" (the Scotchman with
the big stick). At that time he sported a walking-stick of formidable
size, which rather astonished the Germans. They gave a more correct
picture of the man than they knew. He was essentially a born traveller and
a pioneer, a man of strong independence and firm resolution, leaning on
his own stick, and that a pretty sturdy one, prepared to encounter
difficulties and to surmount them. For such a role he was well fitted both
by bodily physique and mental courage. He knew that he had in himself a
reserve of fitness and strength, which he had a right to use, which it was
in fact his duty to use for the glory of God and the good of mankind.
There was something in him which made one feel that, however unreasonable
his aim might seem to be, he himself must have good reasons for it, and
that nothing on his part would be lacking to bring about a successful
issue. Let no one, however, suppose that he was moved by the mere love of
adventure or by the desire to do something uncommon, so that he might get
credit for originality. The springs of action in his soul were connected
with a higher source. He sought to hear the voice of God calling him to
duty. Those who knew him best knew how earnestly he longed to serve God in
any sphere to which he might be called. He did not wear his religion on
his sleeve where all could see it, but he hid the word of God in his heart
that he might be ready for obedience in the spirit of the Apostle Paul
when he asked, " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"’
About the time when he formed the
resolve to do his utmost to plant a mission in the districts opened up by
Livingstone, his sympathies were drawn forth to the myriads of
mill-workers in England who were suffering from the cotton famine caused
by the war in the United States. As he had embraced with his whole heart
the idea of industrial missions, he had the hope that he might establish
cotton-fields in the valleys of the Zambesi and the Shire, and thus help
to secure work and bread for the starving at home. This hope strengthened
his resolution to visit these regions. He afterwards discovered that that
part of Africa was admirably suited for the better varieties of the
cotton-plant, but that it was impossible to cultivate it as long as
slave-raiding lasted.
‘More than most men I have known,’
Dr. Wallace writes, ‘he was characterised by decision and self-reliance.
He seemed to be always looking ahead, and to know what he meant to be at.
It was sometimes disconcerting, in the course of that kind of talk in
which things are said with little meaning, to be pulled up by him with
such questions as, "What do you mean by that?" or, "What do you intend to
accomplish thereby?" His self-reliance was, of course, of the nature
indicated by the Apostle Paul, when he says, "Our sufficiency is of God."
"I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me." Sometimes it
was almost provoking to find him so sure of himself, especially when one
was not prepared to adopt his views. For in truth he was not always
disposed to allow to others the same independence of judgment which he
claimed for himself. He was so .absorbed in looking at things from his own
point of view as scarcely to realise that there was another point of view.
But this was part of the strength of the man, and enabled him to
accomplish a life work equalled by few, though I believe it sometimes
deprived him of the help which others would have given as far as they were
able, though they could not go as far as he expected.’
When describing his New College
days, Stewart wrote, ‘I had also travelled a good deal, first, at my own
expense, and a second time through a great part of Europe, including
Greece and Turkey, with two young Cambridge students.’ One of these
writes: ‘We had the greatest regard for him and a very vivid recollection
of his sincerity, kindness, and abilities. I have always followed his
distinguished and self-sacrificing career with the greatest interest.’
It is fitting here to notice two
books by James Stewart, as they were the fruitage of his by-studies while
a student. One is a quarto and undated. Its title is: A Synopsis of
Structural and Physiological Botany, presenting an outline of the Forms
and Functions of Vegetable Life. It has as its motto these words:
‘There are many, even among the educated classes, who are in the habit of
regarding the botanist as a dealer in barbarous Latin names, as a man who
plucks flowers, names them, dries them, and wraps them up in paper, and
whose whole wisdom is expended in the determination and classification of
this ingeniously collected hay.’ (The Plant, a Biography, by
Schleiden.) His introduction closes with these words: ‘Above all, we shall
be more frequently reminded, not less by the tiniest moss and spreading
lichen, than by the magnificent palm, and still mightier pine, of the
power, the wisdom, and the benevolence of the Great Creator.’
The other book is a folio, with the
title Botanical Diagrams, illustrating the elementary tissues,
nutritive organs, inflorescence, and general classification. It bears the
date of 1857. He was then half-way through his theological studies. Its
motto is, ‘Matter is made for mind, and mind for truth and God.’ In the
introduction he says: ‘Much shall have been gained if any by the
examination of these sheets may be enabled to look with more intelligence
or fresh pleasure on the matter of the vegetable world, moulded as it is
into so many forms of varied beauty by the finger of the Almighty.’ Both
are published by Reynolds, London, and only one bears the name of James
Stewart. They show wide reading, and among the authorities quoted are many
French and German authors. The pictures are very numerous, artistically
drawn, and beautifully coloured. They illustrate all the parts of plant
life. The cost of producing these volumes must have been great. They were
evidently a labour of love, and they were used as text-books in Scottish
schools and colleges for many years. One of them at least was sanctioned
by the Board of Education for use in their schools.
James Stewart, like Carey, added to
the love of Christ the love of all things beautiful in God’s world. He
revelled in the poetry of earth, sea, and sky, adoring God, the Father
Almighty, ‘the Poet of heaven and earth.’ |