An ardent spirit dwells with Christian love,
The eagle’s vigour in the pitying dove.’—Crabbe.
‘A man with a Conviction is worth twelve men with
interests.’— J.S. Mill.
‘The lion and the lamb lay down together in the
heart of John Eliot.’
The world’s final judgment would be, "He was a man,"
and the Church would add, "of God." ‘—From an
Appreciation of Joseph Parker.
‘The record of a great and pure personality is the
best bequest of time.—J.H.H. Meyers.
WE shall now try to reach the heart
behind the manifold activities recorded in these pages, so that the man
may not be buried in the details of his work. Souls, like flowers, have a
perfume of their own. Alas, it does not readily cleave to the printed
page, and the biographer can offer only the faint perfume which lingers in
the fading leaves.
It has been said that generosity of
language and economy of action are political twins. In Stewart generosity
of action and economy of language were united. It was not his habit to use
emotional language. Even among his intimate friends he had an almost
morbid aversion to speaking about himself. It is probable that his
experience of oblique self-flattery in others had effectually warned him
against this frequent infirmity. Hence many thought him shy and reserved.
The Rev. R. W. Barbour wrote: ‘The sight of him always touches me—and
never more than this time. He is so true, and so noble, and so lonely, as
all the truest and noblest souls must ever be.’ His was the isolation of
the intense thinker and the overdriven worker.
His Journals are eminently
self-revealing. His life cannot be understood at all apart from that
faith, which made a proselyte of his heart in boyhood, claimed all his
powers while it lasted, and enabled him to redeem the promise of his
youth. ‘The just shall live by faith,’ that is, he shall make a
Life
of it. Stewart did so, and during sixty
consenting years his faith was unchanged, except in its mellowness and
maturity. Much that is set down for faith may be merely the outcome of
natural buoyancy, splendid health, and joy in successful activity. All
through life Stewart had a large experience of the win-flowing fan. His
faith, especially in his pioneering days, was very severely tested, and it
stood every test.
He was a great Christian, but not of
any conventional type, and he did not employ the conventional language of
religion. His inner life was cultivated with great care, fearing lest his
censer should hold old ashes instead of fresh incense. His religion was
intense but not morbid, and it was thoroughly Biblical: the Gospels were
followed by the Acts. He seems to have been always afraid that his words
might outrun his convictions and feelings.
All the roots of his life lay deep
in Christ, and the inner life was at least as high as the outer. At the
centre of all his activities we find a man on his knees praying for the
consecrated frame and the undivided surrender. ‘Soon our time will come,’
he wrote to Mrs. Stewart, ‘and then only what we have done for Christ will
be a satisfaction to us.’ Remembering that his work was to be tried by a
juster judge than here, he was not too anxious about others’ judgments. He
was not easily disturbed by what people might say against himself, but he
was roused when Love-dale was assailed. He had a reverent curiosity about
the future. To a friend he wrote: ‘Making all deductions needful and
inevitable, on account of one’s own personal unworthiness and wrong-doing,
the thought of a new life in a new world is almost exhilarating. It is
something like the prospect of going to a new country, even with all the
inseparable dread which belongs to the time when the great mystery will be
solved.’
His courage, physical and moral,
entitle him to a very high place among heroes of the faith. This courage
was the growth of a natural endowment purified and fortified by a living
faith. Fearing God, he knew no other fear. Dauntless and daring, he
marched right on, believing that only chained lions were in the path of
duty. The strongest men, like John the Baptist in prison, have fainting
fits now and again; but if Stewart had these, they were never allowed to
arrest his work. The Scriptural grace of patience, the power of holding on
and holding out, was his in an eminent degree.
We have found in him many contrasted
qualities which are not often united. The highest ideals which he never
dismissed or lowered, were linked to the humblest tasks; his intense
individuality did not lapse into egotism or singularity. To power of
vision he added an extraordinary practical capacity which enabled him to
see the true dimensions of common things: firmly grasping the real while
swayed by the ideal, he lived both in the present and in the future. He
preserved a fine balance of fearlessness and prudence: he had an instinct
for great things alongside of wonderful patience in the meanest details:
he was a pioneer with none of the spirit of an adventurer or self-seeker:
he had great success both as an administrator and an originator. Like
Joseph, he was a dreamer and a doer, and both in a very high degree; and,
like Joseph, he witnessed the fulfilment of his grandest dreams. But the
likeness ends there. For the fulfilment came to Joseph by a surprise of
providence, while it came to Stewart as the slow fruit of wonderful
intuitions and after many years of enormous and ceaseless toil. Students
of biography will probably regard this as the unique and perhaps
unparalleled distinction of his career.
‘This one thing I do,’ was the motto
of his life, but how many distinct things did that one thing embrace! In
this astonishing complexity of endeavours we discover no complexity of
motive, no duality or schism, no mysterious actions out of keeping with
his avowed aims. His life had no water-tight, uncommunicating
compartments. His absolute sincerity was the secret of his great
influence, and of the unusual financial support he received from widely
different men.
‘No man that I have ever met,’
writes one of his yoke-fellows, ‘took a more modest view of his own
achievements.’ The words ‘I’ and ‘my’ seldom intruded into his
conversation. His private letters reveal an exceptionally keen
consciousness of defects and failings, and he often blames himself for not
thinking more of others! In his Moderator’s opening address he said: ‘I
know I myself have made mistakes enough to make my days uneasy, and to
fill my nights with evil and troubled dreams. I suppose most missionaries
will admit that the work requires more moral strength and spiritual force
than most of us naturally possess, and that in this lies our greatest
failure.’
He could not endure the soft incense
of flattery, and cut short the speech of him who offered it. His estimates
of the work of others were generous. Few men ever had a heartier
appreciation of kindness and small services. In this he approached closely
to the apostle Paul.
No portrait of him can be just
unless it gives great prominence to the union in him of a giant’s strength
with the tenderness of a saintly woman. ‘Out of the strong came forth
sweetness,’ and the sweetness was as the strength, for strong natures when
gentle are the gentlest. His extraordinary kindness had been rehearsed and
predicted in both his parents. But his energy, his ceaseless
preoccupations with his work, his determination, his impatience with
delays, his eagerness in urging his proposals, his ‘indomitable eyes ‘—all
these disposed many to think that he was a hard man, or, as one put it, a
‘man of iron.’ Never was ‘judgment according to the outward appearance’
more mistaken. It is true that, for the reason stated, his face usually
wore a fixed and severe expression—till he smiled. A military illustration
may help us to understand the two sides of his character. It seems that
when he had to act, he at once ordered to the front all his reserves of
strength, and, for the time being, sent his emotions to the rear. But in
presence of suffering, he reversed the process, and hurried forward all
his power of sympathy to meet the emergency. He was indeed one of the most
benevolent of men, and his benevolence was ever shaping itself into
beneficence, for he had a physician’s scorn for the weak emotion that does
not go beyond itself. Tenderness of heart in him rose to genius, and it
was not chilled by years or by cruel disappointments. His sympathies
overflowed and went down beneath man to the animal world. A man or beast
in misery was to him a sacred thing. He could not pass unheeded a beggar,
an old man or woman, or poor little children. [Poor children with wretched
mothers in Glasgow greatly distressed him. If he saw any one about
Lovedale handling a child roughly, he would interfere, and sometimes take
the child to his own house.] However busy—and he was always in a whirlpool
of work—he had endless patience with sufferers. They got money, and might
have got his coat also. He would rather go without dinner than see a poor
man starving. Slow to suspect men, his heart often outran his judgment,
and he was exploited by self-seekers. His largeness of heart lent itself
to imposition; he was generous to a fault; and he was very loath to give
up any man he had once helped. His friends would say that great as he was
in action, he was greater still in sympathy. [Here is one story out of
many. It is given in a letter from Lovedale. An old native man was living
under the trees near Lovedale. He was a leper, cast out by his family, and
almost starving. Stewart had a little hut built for him, and sent him food
daily from his own house. The hut was carried away by a flood. Stewart
took a truck, put the old man on it, and, with the aid of a boy, carried
him to an outhouse near his own, where he lived for several years. He was
a heathen, but either Stewart or a native student read and prayed with him
almost daily. Light dawned upon his soul. ‘I used to hear him pray
nightly,’ says the writer.]
The natives had good reason for
calling him ‘Umfundisi Wohiobo Lokugala,’ an expressive Kafir phrase which
means a missionary of the most princely order. The feminine and masculine
virtues were so wedded in him, that one might with equal justice impute to
him the defects of excessive strength and excessive tenderness. This
prodigality of sympathy was fostered by the peculiarities of his theology.
In his student days, as we have seen, he could not tolerate any theology
which impoverished human sympathies. No patience had he with those who
discuss the fall and forget the fallen. The faith in which he believed was
fruitful in all the humanities of Jesus Christ, and it made him entirely
free from a cynical or satirical tone. All his life he was in presence of
the downtrodden, and thus his parentage, theology, and experience combined
to make him one of the most tender-hearted of men.
The Rev. Mr. Hanesworth of Fort
Beaufort writes:
‘Dr. Stewart, whom I knew well for
twenty-four years, joined to a nature of royal strength a wealth of
sympathy and kindness such as is rarely manifested in this world. There
was scarcely a limit to his generosity and consideration where there were
suffering and bereavement, whatever might be the state of his own health
or the labours and distractions then engaging him. In his views he was
broad and liberal, and his judgments were those of charity. He was grandly
strenuous, and there always shone in him the fervour of an apostle and the
spirit of a gentleman.’
Dr. Roberts writes: ‘He was full of
sympathy towards those who needed his help. Some have traced this
outstanding feature in Dr. Stewart’s character to his first journey
through Central Africa, when the awful horrors of the slave-trade made
such a lasting impression on his mind. But this is not so Dr. Stewart’s
sensible, helpful sympathy was not begotten by any series of
circumstances. It was part of his being. He could not help helping people
Whether it was a poor slave who sought his protection, or a widow woman in
distress, or a sick man who needed nourishment, Dr. Stewart’s aid was
theirs. And his deeds of mercy and charity were done with a quiet and fine
courtesy that was characteristic of the man. There was about all his
generous deeds the grace and charm of spontaneousness. It came from the
man’s heart.
‘It was the knowledge of his
sympathy with them in all their troubles that gave Stewart such a hold
over his natives and pupils. They knew that they could go to him at any
hour of the day, and he would listen as patiently to their little tales of
distress as if it were a matter of mighty moment. His sympathy kept him
from being impatient with those less gifted than himself. Stewart was full
of patience towards the boys and girls who were gathered together at
Lovedale.
‘It is no wonder that they sought
him frequently, and that not even his sickness was a hindrance to their
approach.
‘As his weakness increased, a guard
had to be placed at his door, so insistent in their affectionate reliance
and regard were many of the students in trying to reach him.
‘It was oftentimes pathetic to see
how both Principal and pupil tried to evade the sentinel watchfulness on
the part of the household.’
If Bacon be right when he says that
‘the noblest mind is that which has most objects of compassion,’ James
Stewart was most noble.
While the failings and limitations
in the best of men forbid us to claim perfection for the imperfect, or
place any one on a pedestal beyond the reach of his fellows, it becomes us
gladly to recognise the grace of God in the life and work of our friend.
Here is a man in a
mammon-worshipping age and community, who, it is believed, might have
earned place, fame, and fortune in almost any sphere of life. In him is no
taint of worldliness: ‘in him,’ as one of his intimates said, ‘no meanness
could live’: he desires not to be ministered unto, but to minister. It is
plain to all that he was ‘more bent to raise the wretched than to rise.’
From all the fields of secular ambition he deliberately turns to one of
the obscurest corners of Christ’s harvest-field. His native land is very
dear to him, but he forgoes the hope of spending in it the evening of his
life. In his youth, he, with his young wife, nails his flag to the mast of
Africa, and chooses to live, die, and be buried among the races for whom
he toiled with a great yearning pity till his right hand forgot its
cunning. Others hope to make, he is content to spend, a fortune in the
land of his adoption. A knight of Christ, all his energies are devoted to
the uplifting of the downtrodden. With a reversed ambition, he aspires to
descend, puts the last first, and finds attractions in the most degraded
races. Not one word of self-pity escapes his lips, for he scorns the idea
that he is making sacrifices. His employments are not in one sphere and
his enjoyments in another, for his work yields him deep delight in the
morning, meridian, and evening of his days. No gifts seem to him
too precious to be laid upon the altar of coloured humanity, and fifty
years of toil have not damped his zeal.
The real wealth of nations lies in
things moral and spiritual. Noble lives are the best assets and dowries of
any people. God’s greatest gifts are gifts of men fitted for the needs of
their age, and a life like this does more to enrich a land than mines of
gold and diamonds can. It is a rebuke and an inspiration to the average
man, and it should increase our respect for our race and for the faith to
which James Stewart owed all his noblest qualities and achievements.