Wellesley Bailey (1846-1937) - Founder of the Leprosy Mission
Bailey was born in 1846 in Ireland. He became a Christian shortly before he sailed to Australia 'to make his fortune'.
When he returned to Ireland, having failed in his ambition, he looked for something to do and travelled to India. He stayed at the home of a missionary and he became aware of the poverty and the needs of the people around him.
He was deeply affected by what he saw and started working with missions in the country.
Then Bailey visited a leper asylum.
Leprosy is a dangerous disease that strikes at the body and the place of a person in society.
Although leprosy is fairly easily treated these days, at the time there was no treatment for this contagious disease and the person was immediately and permanently isolated from family, friends and society.
Bailey saw the needs of these rejected and isolated people. He started spending a lot of time amongst lepers. He shared the gospel with them and he took care of their physical needs as well.
He supplied shelters, food, clothing and medical care and he saw people being transformed and baptized.
Bailey went back to Ireland in 1873 because his wife Alice was unwell.
There he shared his experiences with others and collected money to continue his work amongst the lepers. In 1875 he returned to India and set up a leprosy asylum at Chamba. Bailey campaigned effectively to care for leprosy sufferers. The work expanded rapidly and in 1889 Bailey set up a leprosy home in Burma.
Others followed in China and by 1908 there were additional homes in Japan, South Africa, South America, Sumatra and Korea. Bailey retired from the work in 1917 having successfully set up a global organization to care for leprosy sufferers worldwide.
There are still many leprosy sufferers in the world, mainly amongst poor societies.
Although treatments are available and effective, many of the sufferers do not receive treatment! The Leprosy Mission is still engaged in the battle to eradicate this evil disease.
David Brainerd (1718-1747) –
Among the first to teach North American Indians the gospel of Christ
David Brainerd was a missionary to the American Indians.
He was born in 1718 at Connecticut in America. Both of his parents had died by the time that he was fourteen. He knew that he had a call to the ministry and studied to be prepared for this calling.
He wanted to preach the gospel to the American Indians and to do that he had to go to where they were.
He was plagued by ill-health but worked zealously to bring the natives to Christ. He knew that he should give up the work or his health would fail but he persevered with his calling. At the age of twenty nine he died.
Brainerd left a diary which influenced William Carey who became a missionary to China.
William Carey (1761-1834) -
A Missionary to India
William Carey became a Baptist minister in England but his thoughts were on missionary work in India.
In 1792 he persuaded the Baptists to start the Baptist Missionary Society and Carey was their first missionary.
The start of this mission was a disaster. They were destitute, ridden with sickness and living in a shed next to a swamp. But things improved when Carey was offered a job as a planter, although they were still affected by illness and one of their children died as a result.
Then God's plan for them began to be seen. A new set of families joined Carey from England and for thirty years this group of people led the Christian work in India.
William Carey translated the whole Bible into five Indian languages and parts of it into thirty more languages. Christian converts spread throughout India. From such a discouraging start God grew His church in India.
John Foxe (1516-1587) -
Foxe's Book or Martyrs
John Foxe was born in Lincolnshire England and studied at Oxford where he held a fellowship for seven years. During this time Foxe embraced Protestantism and was soon forced to relinquish his University position.
For five years he worked for the Reformation and wrote many tracts.
He also began his history of the persecutions and martyrdom in England and Scotland.
When Queen Mary took the throne in 1553 Foxe and his family were forced to flee from England to avoid being put to death. He was able to return to England three years later when Elizabeth gained the English throne and he eventually published his book 'The Book of Martyrs'.
He died at the age of seventy one having left a legacy of the inspiration, courage and sacrifice of those Christian heroes who chose to serve God during a vital time in our Christian history.
Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) -
Prison visitor and social reformer
Elizabeth Fry was a Quaker minister who started visiting Newgate women's prison in London.
This was an appalling place, overcrowded, filthy and degrading. There were also a lot of children in there as well. She reformed the prison replacing the chaos with order and hopelessness with self respect.
She organized bible studies and made bibles available to those who wanted them.
Elizabeth Fry also changed the treatment of prisoners being transported to Botany Bay and set up organizations to care for them when they were in Australia. She worked tirelessly on behalf of those women who were condemned to death, trying to get their death sentence reprieved and dealing with their distress.
For more than twenty years this work continued, based simply on her response to what God had done for her.
However her life changed again when, in 1820, a homeless child was found frozen to death on her doorstep. She set up nightly shelters for the homeless, opened schools, started hospital reforms and began training nurses.
This was all in addition to caring for her own family of ten children!
William Hunter (1535-1555) –
The boy martyr who refused to recant his faith.
William Hunter was publicly burned in his home town of Brentwood in Essex because he was found reading the Bible in English for himself.
He was 19 years old.
William was an apprentice silk weaver in London and he was a Protestant when Mary Tudor took the English throne.
England had broken away from the Catholic Church under King Henry VIII. Edward VI had then become king but he died at a young age allowing his Catholic half-sister Mary to become queen.
She was determined to return England to the Catholic Church and a period of persecution of the Protestant believers began.
William was singled out by the authorities because he refused to attend mass despite an order having been made that everyone in the City of London had to attend the Catholic mass. By refusing to obey, William lost his job and he returned to Brentwood.
It wasn't long before William was found reading the Bible for himself.
The local priest became involved and soon established that William had a basic protestant belief which totally contradicted the Catholic doctrine. William was soon arrested and sent to be interrogated by the Bishop of London.
Again William refused to deny his faith in Jesus. By his actions he was denying the validity of the teachings of the Catholic Church.
William was imprisoned for nine months but he refused to repent his beliefs despite physical punishment, threats and bribery.
Eventually he was sent back to Brentwood to be executed.
William was burnt at the stake because of his beliefs and because he refused to deny his beliefs. It would also seem that the authorities were incensed by the spiritual maturity of someone so young. There is a monument to William Hunter in Brentwood with the following inscription:-
WILLIAM HUNTER. MARTYR.
Committed to the Flames March 26th MDLV.
Christian Reader, learn from his example to value the privilege of an open Bible.
And be careful to maintain it.
Helen Keller (1880-1968) –
Changed the way of life for the blind and the deaf
Helen Keller was born in Alabama, America on June 27, 1880.
When she was 19 months, she suffered from meningitis and became blind and deaf as a result.
Helen Keller became the first blind-deaf person to effectively communicate with a world in which vision and sound are of such importance. Her teacher, Anne Sullivan, played a vital role in this achievement.
Helen graduated from college in 1904 (an achievement in itself!) and dedicated her life to helping people with these disabilities.
Her dedication, courage and determination which was based on her Christian faith, was recognized by many people.
Winston Churchill called her "the greatest woman of our age".
Eric Liddell (1902-1945) –
Athlete with principles 'Chariots of Fire'
Eric Liddell was born to missionary parents who served in northern China and his early years were in a London Missionary Society compound.
His parents had been missionaries in Mongolia when the Boxer Rebellion had broken out. The Boxers were a group of people who wanted to kill all foreigners, especially missionaries.
Two hundred missionaries and over thirty thousand Chinese Christians were killed in the uprising.
When Eric was five years old, his family returned to Scotland and in 1908 he and his brother were sent to a boarding school in London. It was seven years before they saw their mother again and thirteen years before they saw their father again. It was 1921 before the family were together again, by which time Eric was at Edinburgh University.
Eric excelled at athletics and rugby but an event that took place in 1921 changed the direction of his life. Eric was invited to speak about his Christian faith at a public meeting. This was reported in the Scottish press and Eric started to receive many invitations to share the Gospel.
He also continued running and was getting faster and faster.
He qualified for the 1924 Olympics and gained notoriety when he refused to run in three events because they had been scheduled to be run on a Sunday.
During this time his brother qualified as a doctor and accepted a post as a missionary doctor in China. Eric also applied to be a missionary in China, where his parents were then stationed.
The 1924 Olympics took place in Paris.
Harold Abrahams won the 100 meters gold, the race that Eric had refused to run in.
Eric won a bronze in the 200 meters, a race in which he was not expected to do well. He was also in the 400 meters where there was even less chance, or so the experts thought! Eric not only won the race but he set a new world record.
Eric had gone from being a Scottish hero to a coward and traitor and back to a national hero.
Within eighteen months of the Olympics Eric Liddell had given up athletics and was on his way to China, at a time when the country was in turmoil and the communists were fighting for power. He was going as a chemistry and sports teacher.
He was married in 1934 and soon had two children.
However, in 1937 he was asked to go to an area in China that had been devastated by fighting. He was to be a village missionary in an area where three separate factions were fighting each other. The villages had been plundered and many people had been killed. The young men had been forced to join whichever group had captured the village. This was an eventful and dangerous time for Eric and it was two years before he was able to leave China, with his family, for a break.
In 1940 the family went back to China and Eric went back to Siao Chang to continue being a village missionary.
Five months later the Japanese ordered all foreigners to leave the area and Eric went back to Tientsin. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour and the America and Britain declared war on the Japanese.
All the foreigners were put under house arrest and in 1943 were interned.
Eighteen hundred internees were packed into a small compound for just over two years.
Eric's release had come six months earlier when he collapsed and died of what turned out to be a brain tumour.
Eric Liddell gave up a life of fame in this world to serve God and to obtain an eternal, glorious future.
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