Born 1848. Died 1915.
It would take too long to tell even briefly how Mary Slessor won her way into the hearts of the people of Okoyong and how she won the hearts of very many of them for Christ. How in the early days of her stay there she had gone, at the risk of her life, to attend the chief of a distant tribe who was thought to be dying and who sent for her. She had never seen him and his tribe were much feared by those among whom she dwelt. Her own chief was much opposed to her going. She never hesitated where duty called her; and she had the joy and satisfaction of seeing him recover; and of winning the confidence and friendship of him and his people. At another time she nursed a whole village that were down with smallpox, and many of them died.
When she first went to Okoyong it was the rainy season, and she found her hat and shoe an encumbrance, so discarded them for all time. She would tramp for miles through the bush in her bare feet and was never known to have anything the matter with them, although the bush paths abounded with snakes, jigger; and poisonous plants.
She never boiled or filtered her water or used mosquito netting, precautions which other Europeans consider essential to the preservation of health in that deadly climate.
Does it seem as if we were watching the career of a woman of hard, self-reliant, and masculine character, capable of living by herself and preferring it, unconscious of the natural weakness of her sex? In reality Mary was a winsome soul, womanly in all her ways, tremulous with feeling and sympathy, loving love and companionship and not unacquainted with nervousness and fear. Her womanly sympathy and tenderness were never better exhibited than in her relations with her dark sisters about her. She entered into their lives as few have been able to do. She treated them as human beings, saw the romance and tragedy in their patient lives, wept over their trials, and rejoiced in their joys.
When people saw, or heard of her toiling with her hands and of all the work she would undertake and accomplish, they were apt to imagine she possessed a constitution of iron, never realizing that her life was one long martyrdom, for she was seldom free from illness and pain. Still she seemed able to do things that would have proved fatal to other people. She had deliberately given up everything for her Master, and she accepted all the consequences that the renunciation involved. What she did was for Him, and as she was not her own and had taken Him at His word, and believed that He would care for her if she kept in line with His will, she went forward without fear, knowing that she might, through inadvertence, incur suffering, but willing to bear it for His sake and His cause. Her faith and devotion led her into strange situations, and these shaped the character of her outward life and habits.
At times the loneliness and isolation of the life would seem more unbearable than at others, especially when suffering much in body; but she wrote: “My one great consolation and rest is in prayer.” So invariably was she comforted: so invariably was she preserved from harm and hurt, that her reliance upon God became an instinctive habit, and it conquered her natural nervousness and apprehension.
She had frequently to take journeys through the forest with the leopards swarming around her. “I did not use to believe the story of Daniel in the lions’ den,” she often said, “until I had to take some of those awful marches, and then I knew it was true, and that it had been written for my comfort. Many a time I walked along praying, ‘O God of Daniel shut their mouths,’ and He did.”
And yet naturally, she was as timid as a child. Once when at home in Scotland on furlough, she was walking with a friend and could on no account be persuaded to take a short cut through a field because there was a cow in it.
At one time she was traveling on the river in a native canoe when they were overtaken by a tornado. At another time their canoe was attacked by a savage hippopotamus. In each case the native paddlers were overcome by fear and it was only her courage and quick wits that saved their lives.
The dangers and difficulties of the work were innumerable and in her letters to her friends at home was the repeated appeal, “Pray for us here; pray in a business-like fashion, earnestly, definitely, statedly.”
At intervals is was necessary for her to return to Scotland to regain her health. The effects of the climate and repeated attacks of Malaria would completely exhaust her. It was always a joy and a delight to her to be in the homeland among her loved ones and dear friends. But as soon as her health would permit the Mission Board would arrange to have her address meetings in different places to stir the interest of the people in the work, and this was always a special trial to her, for she was naturally very diffident. On no account would she address a meeting if gentlemen were present, although they often listened from concealed positions, so eager were they to hear her. But there was often, expressed disappointment when instead of telling of the thrilling experiences of her life in Africa, she would give an evangelistic address. She, however, deprecated surface interest and would say, “If the heart was right and the life consecrated mission work would be well supported.”
She said it often grieved her when at home to find so little depth and so little of God’s Word in the speeches and addresses she heard. She believed that the only way to reach souls, whether at home or in heathen lands, whether high or low, was a thorough knowledge of the Bible as a whole, and to know Christ as the object of the heart’s affection. To tell the love of Christ was her passion, and this was the secret of her power. To gain this power one needs to be much alone with Him. As another has said, “What secrets we get from the Lord in the wilderness with Himself; and if we care not for the secret of His presence, what cares He for all our boasted service. It is ourselves He wants, and it is only service flowing out of the joy of His presence that is worthy of the name. It is only such service that will stand the fire of the judgment, (1 Cor. 3:11-1511For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; 13Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. 14If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. 15If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire. (1 Corinthians 3:11‑15)), and bring joy in the day of Christ that we have not run in vain, neither labored in vain.”
Few have labored so long and so faithfully as Mary Slessor, nor under more trying conditions, and yet she often felt discouraged when she thought of the great needs of that vast country, and of how little she felt she was able to do to relieve their darkness and suffering. The appeals in her letters to friends at home, for others to enter the fields that were white unto harvest, were very touching. To one she wrote, “When Sir Herbert Kitchener, going on to conquer the Soudan required help, thousands of the brightest of our young men were ready. Where are the soldiers of the Cross? In a recent war in Africa, in a region with the same climate and the same Malarial swamp as Calabar there were hundreds of officers and men offering their services, and a Royal Prince went out. But the banner of the Cross goes a-begging. Why should the Queen have good soldiers and not the King of kings?”
At another time in describing the kind of women needed for such a work, she said, “They should be consecrated, affectionate women who were not afraid of work, or of filth of any kind, moral or material. Women who can take everything to Jesus and there get strength to smile and persevere and pull on under any circumstances.” And from time to time not a few such men and women did go to that difficult field and of their work Miss Slessor speaks in warm appreciation. It always vexed her to have her work lauded and she always insisted that she did no more than any of the others. But we know from “the others” that what she undertook and accomplished was simply gigantic.
A Government doctor who visited her soon after she had moved to a new station, writes, “What a picture it presented, a native hut with a few of the barest necessities of furniture. She was sitting on a chair rocking a tiny baby while five others were quietly sleeping in other parts of the room, wrapped in bits of brown paper or newspapers. How she managed to look after all the children, and do the colossal work she did passes my comprehension.”
She was missionary, teacher, doctor, nurse, mother and even judge of the people among whom she labored. Another writes, “Her power is amazing—she is really their queen.” “When visitors arrived they usually found her with a baby in her arms and a swarm of children about her—or on the roof nailing down the sheet iron which the tornado had shifted, or holding “a palaver” from the verandah or sitting in court—but always busy and always rejoicing in her work.”
She always had a wonderful vision of what the power of the gospel could make of the most degraded, and she proved more and more as the years went on that she had a true vision. Her fame had spread far and wide and deputations of chief men would come long distances, sometimes a hundred miles to get her to settle their disputes, or to beg her to send them a teacher.
As soon as it was possible for the Board to send two lady missionaries to occupy her post at Okoyong, she set out to do pioneer work, traveling long distances and seeking out the best places to open a school, and here she would leave one of her boys or girls in charge. On returning to one of these places a few months later one of the women came to her and said, “Ma, I’ve been so frightened you would take our teacher away because we are so unworthy. I think I could not live again in darkness. I pray all the time. I lay my basket down and just pray on the road.”
This woman sometimes prayed in the meetings and electrified the audience, and she had begun to have devotions in her own home, though her husband laughed at her.
Calls came every day from other regions, and they would plead, “Give us even a boy!” Another brought a message from an old chief, “It is not book I want; it is God!” And most pathetic of all, one night, late, while she was reading by the light of a candle, a blaze of light shone through the cracks of the house, and fifteen young men from Okoyong appeared before her to say that the young ladies who had come to take her place there, were already gone, and they were left without a “Ma.” She sent them to a shelter for the night, and spent the hours in prayer.
“O, Britain!” she exclaimed, “surfeited with privilege; tired of sabbath and church, would that you could send over to us what you are throwing away!”
When two deputies were sent out by the church in Scotland to visit the Mission stations and report on the work being done, the people crowded to the meetings and said, “Take our compliments to the people of your country and tell them our need is great, and that we are in darkness and waiting for the light.”
(Continued from page 36).
(To be continued).