CHAPTER XII.
A HOLIDAY WITHOUT REST.
When it became known in Scotland that Dr. Duff declined going home to become Divinity Professor, he was urged at least to return for a limited time. There was so much work to be done in Britain; so much good, it was truly said, might result to the Missionary cause by Dr. Duff's pleading for it again, as he had pleaded before. It is doubtful whether Dr. Duff would have consented even to this, had he had health, after ten years of hard labour in this second visit to India, to remain without a change. But the doctor urged him to go home for a while after work which had "evidently shattered his constitution," and Dr. Duff submitted to what he felt to be the Will of the Lord. He gathered all the information which he could regarding missions in various parts of India to make use of in his addresses at home, and in May 1850 found himself in his native land, and in the bosom of his family once more.
Again what might have been called the Missionary's holiday was employed in the most earnest labours. In hurrying from place to place, from meeting to meeting, the Missionary perhaps endured as much fatigue as from the heavy work in India. Thus he wrote in the bitterly cold month of November, when on one of his numerous journeys.
"Since I left the pulpit on Sunday I have scarcely yet got into anything like warmth, either by night or day. I have felt as if the cold were oozing through my whole body from head to foot . . . And what with unseasoned rooms and unseasoned beds and frosty air, and chills after full meetings, I feel as if it were a kind of living martyrdom to be encountering all this . . . But most gladly would I bear all, and a great deal more, if possible, for the sake of Him who so loved us as to lay down His very life for us, were I to behold substantial fruit to His praise and glory. I must however leave all to Him. My own shortcomings are ever before me . . .
"Nothing sustains me but the divine assurance that the blood of Jesus cleanseth from all sin. Blessed Saviour! Who would not cheerfully toil and suffer for Thee!"
Dr. Duff, exhausted, yet struggling on still, thus wrote to his wife when he was engaged on one of his preaching tours.
"It is some relief to the mind to get disburdened, and to whom can I disburden it if not to you, the partner of my joys and sorrows for nearly a quarter of a century. No one can over fully know how much I often suffer both in mind and body in the midst of these frequent, prolonged, and violent exertions: and to none but yourself can I ever moot the subject except in the vaguest and most general terms. In the excitement of speaking, the spirit forgets the fragility of the body, and therefore people think me strong. Oh! if they could see me in my solitary chamber all alone . . . the whole frame feverish, the whole nervous system from the brain downwards in a state of total unrest. The very tendency to sleep gone. Going to bed, as this morning, at half past one, not from sleepiness but from inability to sit up longer from exhaustion. Turning and tossing from side to side, and longing for sleep . . . Getting up, disquieted and unrefreshed, to meet a company at breakfast, with aching head besides and sorish throat . . . Yet, the Lord be praised; in the midst of all this I have intervals of real spiritual enjoyment, indeed, when most weak and pained often is that enjoyment proportionally increased. And then the favour which the Lord shows me in the sight of His people, and the good so often unexpectedly achieved, all this makes me feel that what I suffer is the discipline of a Father's rod to keep me humble in walking before him."
Exhausted as the Missionary was, he could not refuse what he felt to be a call from God to visit America, as he was earnestly entreated to do.
"We want to be stirred up there; there is plenty of material there, we need only to be stirred up," was the appeal which Dr. Duff could not resist.
He knew that in two mighty countries of the West, the United States and Canada, embers, as it were, of Christian love were smouldering that might be stirred up into a glorious blaze to illumine half the world. Duff's own heart was glowing with zeal, he must go, by God's grace, to infuse his own warmth into others. The Missionary embarked on the twenty-eighth January, 1854, for the United States of America.
Again was Dr. Duff to meet with tempest and tribulation, though not this time with shipwreck. Such a gale came that, in the Missionary's own words,—
"It looked at one time as if the vessel could not possibly survive it . . . On Thursday morning the spectacle presented by the vessel was most extraordinary. Though it still blew hard, the sky cleared with intense frosty air, exhibiting the ship as if one huge mass of ice. The deck was covered with it, several inches thick, the ropes, spars, and rigging; the masts up to their sails, all well encrusted in ice from two to six inches thick."
[Illustration: NEW YORK, UNITED STATES.]
It was doubtless a wondrous and beautiful sight that of a large ship turned, as it seemed, into ice. But not only must the great cold have destroyed anything like comfort, but the weight of the quantities of ice sank the ship nine inches deeper in the water. Of course the hard crust had to be knocked away, all hands were set to work to break off the glittering masses; and we may hope that the violent exercise served to warm the chilled crew of the ice-mantled ship.
When the vessel had almost reached the harbour, Dr. Duff thus wrote to his wife.
"To the Lord do I give thanks. He hath brought us at last over the stormy billows into a quiet haven. Nor has all this trial been in vain. When downright ill, the mind was utterly incapable of thought, but there were intervals when, in spite of the sick sensations, the mind could variously exert itself. The whole of the past came up in review before me, all the way in which the Lord hath led me. And Oh! how humbling the retrospection as regards myself! The loving-kindnesses of the Lord how manifold; my own shortcomings in every way how manifold . . . In the end I had no consolation whatever but in clinging as with a death grasp to the precious assurance that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin . . . I thought that if never heard of any more, and our vessel founder amid the stormy Atlantic waves, the Lord might, in one way or other, overrule my death to the good of the souls of the members of my family and raise up friends to them, and ensure the furtherance of His own cause. On these points I came at times to a serene feeling of resignation to His holy will. But, if spared, Oh! how I longed to be a new burnished instrument in His hands. I wait for guidance, I wait for light in the path of duty. Oh! for simple single-heartedness, and self-denying devotion to Him that loveth us!"
I will not attempt to give a detailed account of Dr. Duff's very interesting visit to that grand country, the United States. He was welcomed with a warmth and enthusiasm which quite astonished the Missionary.
"Each one (in a large meeting) shook hands with me," he wrote, "as if I were an old familiar friend, as if he knew all about me, and hailed me as a brother in the Lord . . . I was lost in wonder, adoring gratitude, and love. I approached these shores with much anxiety, in much fear and trembling. I felt an oppressive uneasiness of spirit which I could not shake off. My only relief was in casting myself entirely on the Lord, and in praying His will might be done, and His only . . . Surely, I felt, this unparalleled reception must be a first smile of Jehovah."
Indeed the loving kindness, the generous enthusiasm which Dr. Duff met as he passed from city to city, and held crowded meeting after meeting in the United States and the Dominion of Canada, was marvellous to behold. If ever a man was half killed with kindness, that man was Dr. Duff. Every one was so eager to hear him, so impatient to see him, that his small remaining stock of strength was utterly overtaxed. He wrote,—
"I am driven in spite of myself, to do more than I know I can well stand . . . If I could multiply myself into a hundred bodies, each with the strength of a Hercules, and the mental and moral energy of a Paul, I could not overtake the calls and demands made on me here, and from many other quarters since my arrival . . . All very delightful, if I had the needful strength. But no strength of any man that ever lived would stand out all this . . . As regards this place I have abundant satisfaction in already knowing that I have not come here in vain."
No, indeed, Dr. Duff had not come to the West in vain, his labours bore rich and varied fruit. When he embarked again for home, a letter was put into his hand containing £3000, or at least 30,000 rupees for the missionary cause from New York and Philadelphia. Canada also gave her cheerful aid, and this though Dr. Duff "had nowhere pleaded for money," and had only spoken of his own special work in India when pressed to do so at social meetings. Nor were large subscriptions from various quarters all the results of that memorable visit; American love for missions had been stirred up to a blaze which has never since died out. The United States still give some of their noblest sons and daughters to work for the Lord in India, side by side with their brethren and sisters from England and Scotland.
On the morning of his embarkation, Dr. Duff preached for the last time in America to multitudes assembled to see him depart. With a loving grateful heart he gave the people his solemn blessing, and all the congregation rose to receive it. Then leaving the pulpit, and making his way through crowds who pressed forward to have one more grasp of his hand, the Missionary passed on to the steamer.
"There," wrote an eye-witness, "the scene defied description. The wharf and the noble 'Pacific' were crowded with Christians assembled to bid him farewell. Many could only take him by the hand, weep and pass on. Never did any man leave our shores so encompassed with Christian sympathy and affection."
Dr. Duff's visit to America had been a glorious success, but a heavy price was to be paid for it by the exhausted Missionary. After his return home, Dr. Duff became fearfully ill. Congestion of the brain, followed by utter prostration of the over-worked mind, made the once powerful and talented man helpless as a little child. It was a cause of deep thankfulness, after a long space of time had elapsed, to find that the grand mind was not permanently impaired, that the brain was recovering its power.
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