1912. AGE 24
The Master said, “Come, follow” ―
That was all.
Earth’s joys grew dim,
My soul went after Him;
I rose and followed—
That was all.
Will you not follow if you hear His call?
―Selected
COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES were especially memorable the year that Borden graduated from Princeton, as they coincided with the Centennial celebrations of the Seminary. From all over the world came congratulatory messages, for Princeton—the oldest seminary of the Presbyterian Church in America—had graduated almost six thousand students, over four hundred of whom had gone abroad as missionaries. Many distinguished visitors were there for the occasion and the Borden home was full of guests.
“President Patton was at his best,” William wrote, “and preached a tremendous sermon on ‘The faith once for all delivered to the saints.’”
Dr. Speer’s missionary address was equally inspiring. After recalling the devoted lives of Princeton graduates in many a field, he continued:
We owe it to the fathers who went before us to stand afraid at no opportunity and flinch at no call. They taught us the glory of unswerving fidelity. The men who have gone, out from these halls have always known the duty of staying by duty until the sun went down. They were taught that God is patient and that His servants need not be anxious or afraid.
The world situation which confronts us in these days he spoke of as God’s gift to us, and not God’s gift only, but God’s test of our worthiness to be the heirs and executors of such a past.
The Seminary has always sought to breed in her sons a dauntless and unfearing supernaturalism. The missionary enterprise is too vast for a mere human will to sustain. Its difficulties, its necessities, its problems, its ideals call for God. Its sufficiency is in Him alone. Here, men learn that God was in the beginning and that God stands back of the end. With God and for God such men have dared all things, and have not fainted nor grown weary.
In the midst of the celebrations came the granting of diplomas to the graduating students. In his Line-A-Day journal, Borden noted:
May 6, 1912
Got our diplomas in Alexandria Hall. The academic procession was quite brilliant. Four fine addresses in the afternoon. Speer’s was best, on Princeton in the Mission Field.
And the following day:
Had our final prayer meeting of the Benham Club.
Little more than six months remained for Borden of life in his own land, but how full they were of far-reaching activities? “He fulfilled a great time in a short time,” as was said of Keith Falconer. He was running a race, and his eye was on the goal.
The very day that he had taken this last examination at Princeton, for example, found him in New York with Dr. John R. Mott, deep in plans for the work he was to take up in the fall in connection with the Student Volunteer Movement. A three months’ schedule had been made out for visits to many colleges. He was to speak especially on the need of the Moslem world, before sailing himself for Egypt on his way to China. It was felt that a few months at Cairo, in the language school, would be of advantage, not only for the study of Arabic and the Koran but of Mohammedanism generally, before attempting to meet it in its strongholds in Western China.
Released from his responsibilities in Mr. Shelton’s office, Borden had spent a few weeks in Switzerland, climbing the Jungfrau and the Wetterhorn, and had returned to New York refreshed for his work in the colleges. Then came his ordination, which took place in the Moody Church, Chicago, as its elders recorded:
He was one of our boys. This was the church of his childhood.... Here he returned for ordination after completing his Seminary course, and as we examined him in view of that step his testimony rang true as steel to every cardinal doctrine of Holy Writ.
On September 9, 1912, we set him apart to the ministry of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in a foreign land, little thinking that his ministry was to be to our Lord himself in the better land.
The service was simple but impressive, marked by contrasts that gave the daily papers a good deal to say at the time. That a man of his age and prospects should turn away from all the world could offer and devote himself to a life of loneliness and hardship in a remote province in China, “the darkest and meanest section of the Orient,” as one paper seriously said, became a nine days’ wonder. But another Chicago daily gave an account of the proceedings that must have arrested attention, printing in full on its front page the hymn that seemed to sum up all there was to be said:
When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of Glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss
And pour contempt on all my pride.
Were the whole realm of nature mine.
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my life, my soul, my all.
Borden did not see the papers. That side of the matter was painful to him. In a circular letter to twelve Princeton classmates who kept up a correspondence, he mentioned the fact of his ordination, adding:
I am sorry there was such unnecessary publicity, and hope you fellows will discount what was said very liberally.
The real impressiveness of the service lay in the love and sympathy of the great assembly for one who had grown up among them, whose consecration to Christ they knew full well; in the sermon by Dr. James Gray, Dean of the Bible Institute, and the charge given by Dr. John Timothy Stone, Pastor of the Fourth Presbyterian Church, and in the prayers with which Borden was committed to the Lord, on the spot from which Moody had so often preached, as the ministers and elders gathered round him:
We set him apart for the work to which he was called. The hands of the lowly were laid upon his head. The Holy Spirit filled him. The grace of the Omnipotent was in his life.
That grace was very real in his mother’s experience as well, in the hour which was to her the climax of her sacrifice. From his childhood she had consecrated him to the Lord, and his call to missionary work had come as an answer to her many prayers. Yeti since his father’s death, she had learned to lean upon him in everything, and the very thought of separation seemed at times unbearable. Firm as a rock, there had been no wavering in his purpose. He knew as well as she did that her deepest desire was one with his own. They stood together, and his strength had helped her no less than his tenderness. But the separation had hitherto been prospective. Now it was coming near. His ordination meant, as Mrs. Borden realized, that they were committed to the sacrifice that seemed as if it must cost her very life.
And then―there is no explaining it apart from the presence of the Lord Himself―as in that hour she held back nothing, a wonderful peace filled her heart. Physical weakness, even, was replaced by strength, so that she was able to meet all the demands of the dreaded situation when it came, with gladness. For there is a fellowship with Christ which infinitely compensates any cost at which it is won.
To a friend who expressed surprise, about this time, that he was “throwing himself away as a missionary,” Borden replied: “You have not seen heathenism.”
He had; and the constraining love of Christ made him, as one of his Princeton classmates put it, “a missionary, first, last and all the time.”
“No one would have known from Borden’s life and talk that he was a millionaire,” wrote another, “but no one could have helped knowing that he was a Christian and alive for missions.”
Yet, to him, souls were just as precious in America as across the ocean, and his responsibility as great for all whom he could reach. His friend, Mr. Hugh Monro, Treasurer of the National Bible Institute, said in this connection:
Not a few of us, under the influence of evangelistic services, or some other spiritual tonic, are filled with zeal for the salvation of others. At certain seasons, when we have given ourselves specially to prayer, perhaps, and the study of God’s Word, we are awakened to a new concern about the spiritual welfare of those around us. But there was nothing spasmodic about Borden’s zeal. He had that unique thing, an abiding passion for the souls of men. It was his constant thought; it seemed never absent from his mind.
Most of us look for occasions which may afford a suitable opportunity for soul-winning, and excuse our lack of devotion and diligence because we feel that such an opportunity is not present. We continually hesitate to broach the subject of another’s salvation, lest the occasion should not be favorable. Yet Borden found such opportunities continually.
Visiting with his mother, for example, in the home of some relatives, he became concerned about the butler, who was giving way to drink. At dinner one evening, when not sober, he let some ice cream slip off a plate, almost ruining a Worth gown. Learning that he had been dismissed, Mrs. Borden mentioned the matter to William. It was not their responsibility, maybe, but the following Sunday his mother’s maid, walking in the direction of the butler’s house, heard quick steps behind her and found William at her side.
“Melanie,” he said, “I am going to inquire for—. Couldn’t we have prayer together that God will speak to him today?”
“So we stopped right there on the street,” his old friend recalled. “Then Mr. William went on to the house, and the butler truly turned to the Lord that day. Only a fortnight later, he took pneumonia and died.”
Did Borden regret the effort he had made to see him?
It was not easy in his busy life to make time for correspondence, but did he regret the letters he wrote, at some sacrifice, to a poor fellow in jail to whom, apparently, he was a stranger?
“I think of you a great deal,” came the answer from a Connecticut prison, “and I am more than thankful for what you have done for me. I have had a hard time getting back to faith, but with your help and the help of God I can call myself a Christian again.... I have received a letter from my wife saying that you have sent her a copy of St. John’s Gospel. She is very thankful to you for it, also for what you have done for me. You cannot imagine how much the brute I feel when I think of having done what I have―leaving my wife and baby, to be locked up in a felon’s cell.... I hope with the help of God that henceforth I will be a better man.”
The real test for fitness for missionary work abroad is not so much a high educational standard as the faith and love, the prayer and devotedness, that win men at home.
Borden’s message in the colleges was of the sort to appeal to a strong type of personality. Fuller knowledge had but deepened his conviction that the two hundred millions of the Moslem world offered by far the hardest as well as the most neglected field for missionary enterprise. The very difficulties attracted him.
Kansu, for example―that lonely, far-off province in Northwest China, with its three million Moslems among a hardy population of Mongols, Tibetans and Chinese―was the sphere in which he hoped to labor. Peking was much more central, strategic, some would have said. There were not a few mosques in the capital, and a post as organizing secretary for work among Mohammedans throughout China could easily have been arranged. But Borden was looking for a harder billet. Just because Kansu was isolated, thrust out between Mongolia and Tibet, because the missionaries were few and the work difficult, because the people he longed to reach were there in multitudes, and no one was set apart for work among them, Kansu was the place of his choice.
Ho-chow was there with its bigoted, proud race of Moslems, Arabs by descent. There, too, were the Tung-hsiang, remnants of the old Hun tribes in the mountains, long since converted to Islam at the point of the sword. And there were the Salas from distant Samarkand, with their Turkish speech and faces, Moslem exiles who had tramped across Central Asia, hundreds of years ago, to find a home beside the Yellow River. And these virile, dominating sons of Islam were mingled in the western part of the province with Tibetans from the border marches and Mongols from north of the Great Wall. More than this, the Great Road running through the province—itself a thousand miles from east to west—led on across the Gobi Desert to the Moslem heart of Central Asia, linking up city after city in which no missionary had ever labored, and giving access to the mingled peoples of that vast region, one of the most neglected. from the missionary point of view, in the world. That waiting heart of Asia, how it appealed to him, just because so few were willing to lay down their lives that these, too, might have the message of redeeming love!
A handful of brave men and women were there, representing the two missions working in the province, and forty days’ journey westward, two lonely pioneers, almost as far from the nearest missionaries on the other side. More than sixty cities in Kansu itself without a witness for Christ; four-fifths of its population still unreached; three million Moslems for whom no one could be spared, because the inadequate staff was absorbed in work among the Chinese; no doctor, no hospital in the entire province, and those vast lands beyond with millions more for whom there were so few to care—that was the sphere that attracted Borden. And that is the sphere that with but little change as regards its Mohammedan population is waiting still.
With a background of such thoughts and purposes, Borden brought to his work in the colleges a reality that could not but be felt. The joy and inspiration of a great task possessed him, and he could not speak of missionary work, even in its hardest phases, as sacrifice. To him it was privilege of the highest order, the privilege that comes not to angels but to men, and to us once only, now, in this fleeting life.
Two books were his traveling companions at this time, and give some idea as to his talks in the colleges―one, the mission study book for the year, Dr. Zwemer’s Unoccupied Mission Fields of Africa and Asia, full of facts that were the strongest arguments, and the other a little paper-covered volume so worn and marked as to tell its own story. Many a journey it had taken with him, and its truths were being wrought into his deepest life. The little book cannot be purchased but it can be obtained as a gift from the author, and in that way is in keeping with its theme, “The Threefold Secret of the Spirit.” Divided into three parts, it deals first with the secret of the incoming of the Holy Spirit; then with the secret of His fullness; and lastly with the secret of His constant manifestation in our lives. Borden’s copy is marked in the way he had with all his best-loved books, one sentence standing out as meaning much to him:
The supreme human condition of the fullness of the Spirit is a life wholly surrendered to God to do His will.
“To do His will”: nothing greater or more glorious could be desired, and Borden knew of nothing that brought deeper satisfaction. Life was not, to him, a question of being or having this or that; it was simply a question of the will of God—knowing it, doing it, loving it. And such a life, he knew, was possible even in college, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. So his message was one of gladness and power.
Beginning at Schenectady, New York, in September, he managed to visit no fewer than thirty colleges and seminaries before sailing for Egypt in December. One to three days in a place gave opportunity for interviews as well as meetings, and his time was so filled that it was with difficulty he got away on his twenty-fifth birthday to spend the evening with his mother.
In many an interview Mr. Robert Wilder’s question came to his mind, and with the background of his experience at sea he would ask:
“Are you steering or drifting?”
The question served to open up the subject of a student’s choices in life. The danger of drifting was manifest. If a man said he was steering, it was easy to go on:
“What is your goal, and Who is with you on board?”
To cut out indecision was what Borden urged. In a Greek Testament given to a friend he had written: “If any man wills to do his will, he shall know...” (John 7:1717If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. (John 7:17)).
“It was a favorite passage of his,” wrote the classmate, “and one upon which his own Christian activities were built up. Like his Master, he realized that it was nearly always a question of whether a man wanted to or not. Bill always referred the matter back to the will. In talking over a Bible group which was failing, the leader having grown lax, I remember Bill’s saying that it might have been the best group in our class if the leader had been willing to pay the price.”
The uttermost for the utmost was the price as he saw it―the uttermost of surrender on our part for the utmost of what God will do in and through us. It was a high ideal. Often Borden would meet one to whom it seemed too high with another question:
“Are you willing to be made willing?”
“I remember that to some of us this directness of appeal seemed at times to lack sympathy with the other person’s point of view,” continued his friend. “But it was the sort of thing to draw out the best that was in a man, and gather to itself those who were willing.”
One thing evident to all was that the speaker himself was paying the price and finding it a wonderful exchange. And this gave force to the missionary side of his message, which consisted chiefly in a clear presentation of facts. For Borden felt with Dr. Zwemer that we do not need to plead the cause of missions. The case is there. All we ask is a verdict.
“If ten men are carrying a log,” he said, at Andover, “nine of them on the little end and one at the heavy end, and you want to help, which end will you lift on?”
Difficulties he spoke of as a challenge to faith and consecration, and while not minimizing them, especially in presenting the situation in Moslem lands, he laid but the more emphasis on our Lord’s own words: “The things that are impossible with men are possible with God.”
Of his own spirit in this work and the impression he made on students and others, something may be gathered from the following letters. Mrs. Henry W. Frost wrote of his visit to Philadelphia:
While in and near the city we had asked him to stay with us. One morning I met him in the hall, just starting for one of the theological schools. He stopped hesitatingly, and then said: “Mrs. Frost, would you have a little prayer with me before I go? I don’t think they want me very much, as my invitation comes from quite a small group of students.”
We had prayer together, and I said, “Will you be back to luncheon, William?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” was his reply: and then laughingly, “They may not want me any longed”
As a matter of fact he stayed all day and had a very interesting time.
An intimate friend heard him when he addressed the German department of the Rochester Theological Seminary.
After the address, he said that if there were any questions they cared to ask, though he would not promise to answer them all, he would be glad to try. Many questions followed―wise and otherwise―and I marveled at his unfailing patience and complete lack of pride or self-consciousness, though he, the teacher, was probably the youngest of them all. During the months since I had seen him, a wonderful grace and sweetness had come into his life, but there was not one whit less of strength or humor.
And a Yale classmate, who attempted to draw him out on the subject of marriage, wrote from New Brunswick:
At the end of November, when Bill was here to give a talk in the Seminary, he came to my room and lay down on the couch, having caught a feverish cold. We talked over many matters. In a joking way I asked him when he was going to marry. He replied seriously that he thought it was cruel for a man who was going into one of the most difficult of missionary fields to ask any girl to go with him, because the woman always fared the worst, often succumbing when the man survived; that he had no intention of marrying―it would be wrong to the girl and would hinder his highest efficiency in the field he had in view. Bill’s thorough-going decision on this question, which is so hard for many to settle, is another indication of his complete surrender of himself to the great work to which he was called.
Borden strongly approved the rule of the China Inland Mission with regard to outgoing missionaries, whether men or women, that they should remain unmarried for the first two years in China, so as to give undivided attention to the study of the language and have the best opportunity of becoming acclimatized and getting into touch with the people. It hardly needed the experience of the Mission to prove that this was wise and helpful. To him it seemed common sense, and an obvious application of the Master’s words: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God....”
His own problem extended, however, far beyond the two years. What about the period, long or short, when he would be practically homeless and exposed to no little hardship and danger? In one of his much-read books he had marked the lines from Meyer’s St. Paul:
Yes, without cheer of sister or of daughter,
Yes, without stay of father or of son,
Lone on the land and homeless on the water
Pass I in patience till the work be done.
After his last meeting in December, concluding his three months’ work in the colleges, he was dining with Dr. and Mrs. Angell in Rochester, and the latter wrote of being “deeply impressed with the fire and ardor of his faith.”
As he sat at table with us, talking of all he hoped to do for and in China, his face became glorified, his eyes shone with a light which only divine things can awaken. At the same time there was a poise, a dignity and balance which showed that his was not the mind of a fanatic. He was one who had counted the cost but never flinched for a moment.
“Those were fruitful months,” wrote Mr. Fennell P. Turner, General Secretary of the Student Volunteer Movement. “William was used to lead students in many colleges and universities to give their lives to foreign missionary service. The last letter I received from him enclosed the ‘declaration card’ of a Student Volunteer who had signed it after his visit, and sent it on to him in Cairo. In years to come there will be missionaries in many fields who owe their decision, under God, to William’s unselfish service during his last months in this country.”
One cannot wonder that the leaders of the Volunteer Movement desired the continuance of such a strong effective work. But Borden had last arrangements to make before leaving for Egypt and felt that his departure should not be delayed. It was like him not to put off going until after Christmas even. His work in the colleges did not end until the tenth of December, and it would have seemed natural to take the Christmas vacation at home and set out early in the new year. But the S.S.
Mauretania was sailing on the seventeenth and was due to reach Port Said on New Year’s Day. It meant only one week for packing and final preparations, but two or three weeks longer at the other end. Time was to Borden one of his most important stewardships. His mother did not hold him back, so it was a foregone conclusion. To him could never be imputed “the ungirt loin and the untrimmed lamp.”
One last touch there had been with Yale classmates, of which his friend Campbell wrote:
On November twenty-eight, Bill was usher at my sister’s wedding to Louis G. Audette. Other Yale fellows were there. We had a jolly time and Bill was in for all the fun. The wedding was an evening affair, after which Bill packed off to the city to be with his mother, as the days before he sailed were getting few.
He had kept up his visits to the Yale Hope Mission through all his other engagements and had provided, financially, for its being carried on under the care of Mr. Don O. Shelton of the National Bible Institute. Even in December he managed to run down again to New Haven, giving a Sunday evening to the dear old work. His love for it was just the same as when he had gone into it with all the hopes and fears of a beginner, six years previously. Bernhardt had been called to a larger sphere, but his place was ably filled by Mr. and Mrs. William Ellis, the later saved, himself, from the depths of sin and misery. “Bill Ellis” and “Bill Borden” were a great combination when they could be together in the meetings.
“What has impressed you most since you came to America?” Dr. Henry W. Frost asked a much-traveled visitor.
Without hesitation came the reply: “The sight of that young millionaire kneeling with his arm around a ‘bum’ in the Yale Hope Mission.”
The last Sunday of all William spent quietly with his mother Georgia.
They went to church together in the morning, little thinking it was for the last time, and on the following day he took part in the meeting held regularly in their home for prayer for the Moslem world. Several friends came to dinner that evening, including Dr. and Mrs. Frost and Mr. Shelton. William was leaving the next day, and by common consent the five or six men with whom he had been most closely associated in work for God foregathered in his room for a last hour of prayer and fellowship. It was Mr. Shelton who wrote:
We prayed that our beloved friend might be kept in safety throughout his long journey, and guided and upheld in all his ways. And then he prayed for us, and for the work we represented. He was so strong and vigorous in body and mind that night that we anticipated for him long and useful service. And in less than four months...
But happily they did not know it then.
In the quiet of her room that night, weary and worn and sad, Mrs. Borden fell asleep, asking herself again and again, “Is it, after all, worthwhile?” In the morning as she awoke to consciousness, the still small voice was speaking in her heart, answering the question with these words: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son...”
“It was strength for the day,” she said, “and for all the days to come.”
From childhood, William’s constant prayer with his mother had been that the will of God might be done in his life, and as they parted on the Mauretania it was still the same. Did it come back to him afterward, as it did to her, that their last petition together was that he might be taken to China and made a blessing among its Moslem millions—but only, “if it be Thy will”?
To the companion of his first long journey, Mr. Walter Erdman, Borden wrote after leaving: It is not easy. There are many temptations and adversaries. Pray for me that I may have strength.
Among the Christmas letters opened in England was a faded sheet bearing a Christmas carol, with the refrain:
Glory in the highest and goodwill to men.
Peace on earth, peace on earth.
Beneath the verses and on the back of the page Mrs. Borden had written:
Darling, a blessed Christmas to you! This is one of our old song sheets used at “89,” years and years ago, when we were all together. Never did I realize so clearly the missionary meaning of Luke 2:1010And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. (Luke 2:10) as I did yesterday morning while sitting by your side in church.
Just one word more: I will never cease to be grateful for the rich blessing you have been to me, Dear, a comfort and a strength all your years to your devoted mother. What a rich New Year is unfolding before you! It was so beautiful having you with us in our little prayer circle―just one more of the loving touches God has put to these last days.