• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 3790 0

prospects,' his mother warned, but he was adamant, assuring his family that when he reported to the training headquarters at Gosport, not far from Salisbury, he would not be required to convert to the rebellious faith. 'I'll serve my time with Jesus overseas and come back to Salisbury,' but even as he promised this he announced that he was not going to be a part-time missionary but one wholly dedicated to the cause: 'I've elected to go for a complete theological education, terminating with ordination as a full-fledged minister.' His father, now in Parliament and a resident of London, encouraged him in this decision: 'In for a penny, in for a pound. Choose the highest possible, because one day, when this missionary foolishness is over, your mother and I expect to see you dean of Salisbury Cathedral.' At tea one afternoon, during the later stages of his training, his mother said, 'Hilary, you must discharge your duties quickly, because the Proprietor has promised most faithfully that when you're through and safely back in the Church of England, he plans to exert every influence for your assignment as dean of the cathedral.'

Hilary's brothers approved heartily: 'We could sit here under the oaks and look across the meadows and tell each other, "That cathedral's in good hands." Do hurry and finish with the savages, wherever you go.'

He would have made a flawless dean, tall, slightly stoop-shouldered, his head bent a little forward as he walked along the cloisters, as if he were looking for something a few yards ahead, diffident, rather brilliant in his studies and of deep conviction religiously. He should have stayed at home, progressing from one small living to another until his reputation as a sound young man was established, then moving into the larger positions from which he would write two incomprehensible books. Such books were a prudent step in English advancement; no one bothered to read them, but one's superiors were gratified that the effort had been made. And in due course, fortified with credentials from the noble houses of the county, including the Proprietor's, he would move on to professor at Oriel and then the deanship.

What had interrupted this pleasant, routine progression? Hilary Salt-wood had religious insights far deeper than those of the ordinary Oxford graduate, and he had paid attention to those ringing commandments of Paul in the New Testament in which young men were charged with the duty of spreading the gospel. Indeed, his favorite book in the Bible was Acts, in which the birth of a new religion, and especially of a new church, was portrayed so vividly. With Paul he had traveled the Holy Lands and penetrated to those surrounding nations which knew not Jesus and where Christianity began as an organized religion.

He felt a deep affinity with Paul, and a thorough knowledge of Acts prepared him for the Pauline letters that outlined the next steps in the spread of Christianity. His own discovery of Christ was less dramatic than Saul's conversion into Paul on the road to Damascus, but it had been real. He was not, like others he knew, turning to religion because as a second son he had nowhere else to turn; the church was by no means his secondary choice. Long before his father had been nominated for Parliament he had been on the verge of announcing his commitment to Jesus, and would have done so regardless of his family's fortunes.

His conversion was deep if not spectacular, and he enjoyed the opening months of his ministerial education; the London Missionary Society, as it was being called in some quarters, was becoming famous in various parts of the world, even though it had been in existence for barely a decade. Its stern, intense young devotees, coupled with the older, practical artisans, had penetrated to remote areas, often serving as the cutting edge of civilization as it reached unsettled lands. The LMS was a revolutionary force of the most persistent power, but in his early months at Gosport, Hilary did not discover this.

Instruction was principally in the propagational theories of the New