From the archive: Faithful lives
Janet Scott describes the personal stories of some Friends in 1918
What does it mean to be a Quaker? Since we believe that religion is not about what we say but about how we live, we can illustrate the meaning of our faith through telling stories of Friends who, in different ways and different circumstances, have led lives of faithful commitment. In the autumn of 1918, the Friend had several of these stories.
Lucy Harris
Lucy Harris was a doctor who went to the mission field in China. Her letters from Tung Chwan, reported in the 23 August edition of the Friend, say that she had over 300 outpatients in a week, many of them soldiers or connected with the military:
Fighting was still going on in the district which brought more wounded soldiers for treatment… These new patients belonged to the opposite side to the ones treated before, so the care they received showed that the doctor was ready to help either side indiscriminately.
Benjamin and Florence Jackson
On 4 October the torpedoing of the ship Hirano Maru off the coast of Ireland caused the death of two missionaries: Benjamin Herbert Jackson, who was returning to China, and James Ryan, returning to Madagascar. The Friend on 1 November contained appreciations of their lives. W Henry Davidson and his wife sailed for China at the same time as Benjamin and Florence Jackson. Henry Davidson wrote:
We went out with the light-heartedness of inexperience, but none of us ever looked back with regret…
We spent the first two years together at Chungking, after which B. and F. Jackson took up work in the new station at Tungliang… Occasionally we visited them, and these were always visits to be remembered, cut off, as they were, for the greater part of the year from European companionship. They gave themselves to the service of those who but partially understood their motives and whose response came slowly. The courage and hopefulness with which they carried on their work are beyond all praise. The frequent separations, when B. Jackson visited out-stations, were trying to both, but I do not remember hearing from either the least suggestion that they thought it hard.
Henry Davidson went on to describe how, on a final visit:
We sat long into the night, and I listened to the stories of my friend’s experiences, his disappointments, his failures, his hopes and successes, how he laboured and planned for the people whom he loved… and his great faith in the power of Christ to save them.
James and Beatrice Ryan
Charles E Stansfield, also in the Friend’s 1 November edition, wrote movingly about James Ryan and his widow, Beatrice:
…in Tananarive we discussed with James Ryan and his wife our plans for their future service on the west coast. A mission on Quaker lines, with no paid preachers or evangelists, but just the power of two Christian lives to influence a circle of young men and women who should be taught gardening and wood work and the simple duties of housekeeping and the rearing of children, and then return to their homes to communicate the ideas they had learned…
They faced a task requiring the greatest self-sacrifice and endurance. Before their own house arrived from Europe they lived for months in a native hut, without privacy… a prey all the time to swarming mosquitoes and in overpowering heat.
Another Friend, A T Alexander, added:
I do not think that our friend was much concerned with theological questions, but his faith shone in his life, and he seemed to go on from strength to strength just doing diligently and with his might the work that came to him to do wherever he was… His life is another story added to the many that adorn the annals of Christian history and missions of one called from the humble working home with but few advantages other then the test of hard experience to be a messenger of the Gospel.
Edward Fry
A long obituary published in the Friend on 25 October detailed Edward Fry’s long career as a barrister, a judge, and after his retirement, a chair of many commissions:
The crowning distinction… came to him when in his 80th year, he was appointed… [to] the Second Hague Peace Conference in 1907. In his address to the Conference, Sir Edward Fry spoke… of the dream of a golden age long cherished by all noble and inspired minds, an age of universal peace, and pointed to the disastrous way of ever-increasing armaments along which the European nations were then travelling. It was his privilege… to make the offer from the British Government of steps which might lead to mutual international arrangements for reduction of armaments. Such proposals, alas, never reached fruition…
He also proposed an international court of justice.
Joseph A Woods
The Friend, again in the 1 November edition, reported an acknowledgement in the House of Commons of Joseph A Woods and his wife who:
…without remuneration afforded dental treatment to all our prisoners interned in Switzerland who needed his services.
In two years Joseph Woods treated more than 1,200 prisoners. The Friend observed that:
Joseph Woods courteously declined the decoration offered him by the Government.
A J Manasseh and Daniel Oliver
Early in October British and French troops entered the Lebanon, ending four years of silence, during which the country had been almost completely cut off from the West. Friends were at last able to hear reports from workers who had remained in the area through a period of intense starvation. The following appeared in the Friend on 20 December:
[Dr Manasseh] told us of his work early on in Brummana and of his starting a soup kitchen. Then of his three months in Damascus, caring for Armenians who had been deported there, and afterwards of his time in Baalbek running practically three Institutions, his Military Hospital, Orphanage, and Home for the Civilian Sick; living crowded days with awful need all round and little chance of finding food or clothing sufficient for all who were coming to him.
With the British advance he was taken prisoner and transferred to a camp for prisoners of war. Shortly after his arrival he resumed his medical work. The same issue of the Friend noted that:
Daniel Oliver has continued at his post at Ras-el-Metn throughout the war. He wrote… “We have an orphanage here… where we are taking only absolutely destitute boys; and I have also undertaken on behalf of Friends, the support of the destitute boys in the Hospices in Brummana… It is estimated that half the population have perished from hunger and disease… [The pressing] need is for money to buy bread.
Martha Allen
A Quaker life does not have to be lived in faraway places. On 22 November, under the title ‘An Ordinary Life’, the Friend reported:
Few will know the name of Martha Allen who passed away on the last day of October, at Brigflatts meeting-house, which she had cared for during several years. Yet in any modern list of servants of the Church she deserves a place…
A quarter of a century ago… already a widow… [she lived] on one of the slopes of Whernside. There she managed a small farm, turning out in early morning, summer and winter, to milk, feed the calves and pigs and care for the poultry. If a neighbour was ill, she was ready to help before being called upon to do so. She never had control of more than a sufficiency of this world’s goods, but what she had she shared, with that simple kindness which multiplies a gift an hundredfold…
I used to say that if anyone wanted to know how Christianity worked they should be sent to Martha Allen’s house! I have seen her in great trouble as well as in much happiness; when I called upon her last July she was lying in weariness and pain, but in full possession of faith, hope and love, and rejoicing in Him who enabled her to transmit these great Christian qualities to others.
Truly Martha Allen was a direct descendant of those noble men and women who made of Brigflatts a holy place. She felt the spirit of Jesus ever drawing near, and thus strengthened and inspired, she nobly performed life’s many duties.
