his own house, and Hamed bin Thuwaini, a great-nephew
of the late Sultan's, was placed on the throne. He too
was friendly to the Mission, but this rapid succession of
amiable but weak men has put an end to the vigour of
the Zanzibar dynasty.

During this year Bishop Smythies gathered together
his workers for conference in Zanzibar, in a meeting
known as the second Synod of Zanzibar. First came
the Usambara workers, including Petro Limo. Then
the Rovuma group, headed by the Bishop himself. A
short retreat was first held, during which arrived Mr.
Woodward, from Magila, and then, on June 30, the
Bishop met and addressed thirteen priests and two
deacons, several lay workers being present with leave
to speak. In his address the Bishop spoke of certain
changes he desired to make. Hitherto all working at
Mkunazini, gentle and simple, men and women, had
lived with a common table, etc. It was now proposed
to establish a clergy-house, and to let the ladies have
quarters at the hospital. He said also that he feared
preaching had been rather undervalued among them, and
he quoted the Bishop of Nassau's words : " A missionary
can hardly preach too often if he has that to say which his
neighbours, dying daily, need to hear before their race is
run." Certain Acts, which will be found in the Appendix,
were then passed.

The Rev. F. R. Hodgson and Mr. A. C. Madan received



254 HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITIES' MISSION

the thanks of the Synod for their labour of love in revising
the Swahili Old and New Testaments.

An instance of the paternal (?) character of domestic
slavery in Zanzibar may be given here. A new boy
came to Kiungani partially paralyzed, as the result of
being tied up by his owner with dried grass soaked
in parafhn oil round his wrists, which was then set
alight. The bums were horrible, and the power of the
left hand was gone. If it be said that in free England
cases of cruelty are frequent, we reply that here it is
against the moral sense of the multitude, and there it is
not. If, however, real cruelty is proved in the Consular
Court, the slave gets his freedom.

Yet the native population needs to be aroused to
the heinousness of such doings by the preaching of
Christianity ; and all these years it seems hardly credible
that no regular mission was established among the towns-
people of Zanzibar. But those only who know not the
inveterate hardness of the Mohammedan heart towards
Christianity will be surprised. Dimly dreamt of by
Bishop Tozer, a small beginning actually made by
Bishop Steere in that mud hut where he preached and
disputed on Fridays ; Bishop Smythies now, at the
close of his life, saw a clearer way towards a mission
centre of work in Ng'ambo, the suburb on the other side
of the creek from Mkunazini. For some time a large
mango tree had been used by various workers as a preach-
ing station, and it had been proposed to send Mr.
and Mrs. Mercer here ; but eventually the Revs. C. R.
Tyrwhitt and W. K. Firminger took up the work
already initiated by the preaching of Yohana Abdallah,
amid a mixed population of some 30,000 Arabs and



TEN YEARS IN ZANZIBAR 255

Swahilis. The house stood away from the main thorough-
fare, so that inquirers could come quietly to hear of the
Faith, like Nicodemus of old, for fear of the Arabs. No
work needs more intense prayer from the Church at
home than this among the Mohammedans. We shall
hear of it again.

This ten years' record will not be complete without
the mention of Miss Shaw, who passed to her rest, in
England, on October 9.

" Like Miss Townshend, Miss Campbell, and Miss Bennett,
Miss Shaw brought with her, wherever she went, true
refinement and delicacy, the same unwearying energy and
devotion to work. To be idle was the only thing which
really seemed to cause her pain or discontent. Like them,
she was ready at a moment's notice to go anywhere and
do anything. But her highest capacity and chief delight
lay in her nursing, and what this was is best known to
those who feel they have owed their lives largely to her
unsleeping, indefatigable care, skill, and judgment, her
invincible cheerfulness, her motherlike tenderness. Nearly
every member of the Mission must have passed under Miss
Shaw's hands during the seven years she was attached to it,
some several times, and that when the lack of a hospital
made nursing even more arduous than it is now."

And thus again we reach the end of Bishop Smythies'
episcopate.

Surely in these latter days we read the lesson of the
transfiguration of human nature touched by .the light
of Faith, and Hope, and Love. The African has been
brought to trust, where once all was suspicion ; hope
has been given him instead of fear and despair ; and he
has something to love instead of objects of hate. " Care



256 HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITIES' MISSION

makes wrinkles enough on our foreheads at home ; what
then is the impress which centuries of African bloodshed
and insecurity are likely to have made on the human
countenance ? The face of the old chief is a scowl
enclosed in a network of misery lines, and the mere child
seems to have all the cares of his tribe upon him. But
now when we scan a group of these converts, whose
social surroundings are not materially altered, a distinct
change is visible. ' You have ironed the wrinkles out of
their faces,' was the comment made by a looker-on."

And is it not a glorious work to prepare thus for the
time when from those same faces not only wrinkles, but
even tears, shall be wiped away ?














1


iLiPi* ^






1


T^LLm^i^^ '






F













!



WILLIAM MOORE RICHARDSON.



CHAUNCY MAPLES.




FRANK WESTON.





JOHN EDWARD HINE. GERARD TROWER.

RTs^HOP.S OF THE UNIVERSITIES' MISSION. iSoS-IQOQ.



CHAPTER XVI

TWO CHIEF PASTORS

Succession of Bishops — Account of Bislaop Smythies — At Folkestone
Church Congress — -At BerUn — Last Days and Death — Chauncy
Maples' Work — Consecrated Bishop of Likoma — Consecration of
William Moore Richardson — Bishop Maples drowned — George
Atlay killed.

THE succession of Bishops who have led this Mission
is certainly remarkable in Church history.
The saintly hero who led the van, with that tender
chivalry which has won so many " to follow in his train,"
is succeeded by the quiet, hard-working man, content
with laying the hidden foundations, but bold enough to
take the right course, regardless of opposition. He
in his turn gives place to the accomplished scholar and
linguist — the wise master-builder, the very man for
reducing the East Coast language, and for shaping the
constitution of the Mission on lines of self-sacrifice and wise
adaptation to native custom. Then just when, under his
far-sighted rule, the mission field had widened, so that
a man with unbroken bodily powers was needed, came
the statesman-Bishop — the great traveller, whose per-
sonal oversight did so much for the remote parts of his
diocese, and who kept his head amid the rush of politics
and the " scramble for Africa." And when his work

257 K



258 HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITIES' MISSION

was done, with another Bishop at the extreme end of the
territory, and the need for the longest of those journeys
had ceased, he too passed away.

But if we seem to trace the purpose underlying this
aspect of the work, what shall we say of that which
is at once the oldest and the newest part of the field ?
Towards Nyasa Mackenzie had set his face as a promised
land he was never to enter ; and when once more a
Bishop was sent to the tribes dwelling around Nyasa, he
did but come and see the land, and then he had to leave
it. To him succeeded " the man seasoned and experi-
enced and beautiful in character," who was not even
to reach once more his African home before he too passed
away, leaving his staff to other hands. To this what can
we say but that God shows us here " a part of His works,"
and hides others ?

It now remains to trace the personal history of
Bishop Smythies and Bishop Maples, who have made so
much African Church history.

Charles Alan Smythies was born. at Colchester on the
Feast of the Transfiguration, 1844, his father being
Curate of St. Mary-the- Walls. His mother, early left a
widow, married again, and it was in the Dorsetshire
home of his stepfather, the Rev. G. Alston, at Studland,
that he was brought up, learning that love of natural
objects which crops up all through his life, though he was
not, strictly speaking, learned in natural history. But
his admiration of the beauty of river or mountain scenery,
of the loveliness of flowers on an African hill-top, of the
gracefulness of the flight of wild fowl at Tintagel, attest
the powers of observation trained in boyhood. Educated
at Felstead and Milton Abbas, and afterwards at Trinity



TWO CHIEF PASTORS



259



College, Cambridge, he pursued his theological studies at
Cuddesdon. But he considered that he owed most of all
to the Rev. Father Puller, under whom he worked many
years at Roath, till he succeeded him in the Vicarage.
Mention his name even now to a denizen of Roath, and
one sees the extraordinary impress he left there as curate
and vicar, where he gathered a devoted band of workers,
clerical and lay, who caught from him the fire of enthu-
siasm. He turned the iron mission church into a
beautiful building dedicated in the name of St. German ;
and it is no wonder that when, in the midst of all this life
and work, he was offered the Central African Bishopric,
he definitely declined it. But a year later, when implored
to take the still vacant see, recognizing the Divine call,
he was not disobedient to it, much as it cost him to leave
a parish to which he ever looked tenderly back. He took
his life in his hands, saying it was much better to live
nobly than to live long.

The Rev. E. F. Russell thus describes the Bishop,
as he appeared at this time : —

" Those who met the Bishop for the first time were struck
at once by his commanding presence ; not his stature only,
but his stateliness, a manner dignified and courteous and
singularly gracious. In height he stood about six feet two
or three inches, but his well proportioned limbs and body
took off all appearance of tallness or burliness.

" An American bishop who met him at the Lambeth
Conference said of him, in a sermon preached at Washington,
' He was one of the manliest men I ever looked on —
the picture of manly beauty — a face loving and gentle as
that of St. John.'

" This blending of strength and gentleness in his face
and manner has been often noticed, as for instance by Canon



26o HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITIES' MISSION

Scott Holland — who once in public spoke of his ' imperial
meekness,' his ' superb benignity.'

" Men of very varied character and views felt themselves,
at first touch, in easy, friendly, trustful relation with him.
His voice and manner and whole aspect seemed to welcome
them. None felt this more than those critics of great discern-
ment in this matter — the children. They had no awe of this
big man, and never scrupled to demand his entire attention
to their small concerns."

When Bishop Smythies reached Zanzibar, one of the
foremost men in the Mission was the Rev. Chauncy
Maples, then at Newala. He was a younger man than
the Bishop, being bom in February, 1852, at Bound's
Green, Middlesex. His mother had been a Miss Chaunc}',
and to her influence he said he owed all that was best in
him. She, in her turn, had owed much to Mr. Bennett,
of Frome (when at Portman Chapel). Educated under
the Rev. Canon Huntingford, and then at Charterhouse,
Mr. Maples passed to University College, Oxford, where
he formed friendships that lasted his life. Oxford was
very close to his heart, as may be seen from his charming
little paper, "In Two Islands," 1 with its description of
the " wide fields of breezy grass through which the
Cherwell wanders."

While at 0-xford, he heard Bishop Steere's touching
appeal for men, to which he and his friend, William
Percival Johnson, responded. From twelve years old he
had desired foreign mission work, and now the call had
come. First came a period of work in Liverpool, and then
Chauncy Maples was ordained deacon at Cuddesdon,
and served as curate to St. Mary Magdalene and St.

' Central Africa, August, 18S J.



TWO CHIEF PASTORS 261

George, Oxford, till he and his friend went to Zanzibar,
within a few months of each other, and Bishop Steere
ordained Mr. Maples priest and Mr. Johnson deacon on
Michaelmas Day. Thus, when Bishop Smythies came
to Zanzibar, these young men had already worked eight
years in Africa.

Turn we now to Bishop Smythies' own work, much
of which has been told. First, be it remembered that
when he arrived he found, besides the Zanzibar work,
on the mainland the stations of Magila, Umba, and
Mkuzi, in the Usambara country ; in the Rovuma
district, Newala, with small stations at Lindi and Mtua,
Masasi being well-nigh abandoned. One solitary mis-
sionary peregrinated round Nyasa, where no permanent
station or mission steamer existed. The European staff
for the whole mission numbered thirty-four, aided by
a dozen natives.

In four years' time Bishop Smythies came home for
the Lambeth Conference, having nearly doubled his
staff of workers and planted a settled mission on Nyasa,
having visited his whole diocese thrice, and parts of it
five times. It is said that even Livingstone had never
in any four years of his life covered more ground.

Before another four years he began to show signs
of wear and tear. Writing from Likoma in August
1891, he says he does not know how he got there, with a
bad sore on his leg, and only porters and a donkey with
him. " A year or two ago I should have thought nothing
of it ; now all the strength seems to have gone out of me."
And this is the utmost plaint ever heard from a man
who peculiarly needed little attentions, being not over
skilful at managing for himself, and who, moreover,



262 HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITIES' MISSION

dearly loved companionship ; yet he had come 450 miles
in pain and discomfort, riding and walking incessantly,
to do his duty to one part of his diocese.

This journey left its marks on him, and when he came
to England next year, all were shocked at his altered
looks. When he appeared on the platform at the anni-
versary meeting, supported by Bishop Selwyn, on a
crutch, " it was," as the latter humorously remarked,
" not a case of the blind leading the blind, but of the lame
supporting the lame." There was one moment of breath-
less silence, as people took in the havoc overwork had
wrought in that strong frame, and then a tremendous
burst of cheering, which was renewed when the chairman
(Bishop Festing), pointing to the two Bishops, said : —

" You see there soldiers who have come home from a
great campaign, bearing the marks of that campaign. . . .
I may venture to apply to Bishop Smythies and Bishop
Selwyn some of the words which St. Paul uses of himself, . . .
' bearing in his body the marks (or brands) of the Lord Jesus.'
May we not say that they bear these marks — in our eyes
very honourable marks ? "

On this occasion Dr. Laws, of the Presbyterian Mission,
who had so often ministered to the members of our staff,
was present. He spoke of the unhealthiness of the land
where their lot was cast, but added that Christ's com-
mand was clear, "Go ye into all the world," and that
none had a right to add, " provided you can live com-
fortably." But he added that, if they wished for a
heavy death-roll, they would send out few men and
women ; nothing more than overworking mission agents
filled the graves in Africa. He had often nursed the
members of the Universities' Mission as they went down



TWO CHIEF PASTORS 263

into the valley of the shadow of death, and had never
heard a murmur, but rather thankfulness. Strongly he
spoke, too, against demanding statistics of progress.
The Gospel of Christ had been a leaven altering the whole
face of the country ; and they had no right to say,
" Here is the money ; where are the baptisms ? " Was
there any New Testament authority for providing
converts at £2 los. a head ?

It was the enthusiasm roused at this meeting which
laid the foundation of the Nyasaland Bishopric ; and
the Bishop travelled up and down the length and breadth
of England, till, in six months, the £11,000 needed for
the endowment was collected.

In the Folkestone Church Congress he made the
speech of an expert on the methods of mission work : —

" The Church must not be depressed to a lower level to
meet half-way the heathenism of Africa. The Church must
embrace the African and raise him up by her sacraments and
means of grace, and spread a net-work around him, and
raise him up to her high level, not abating one jot in morality
or spirituality of what she requires of her children here at
home. Only so I believe will there be a truly healthy living
Church in Africa. Then only will she dare, as we are daring,
to try to form a native ministry."

Speaking of the danger of the missionary becoming a
chief and assuming rule over his flock, he said : —

" Every missionary has clearly to discern between the
two powers which God has placed in the world — that which
we call the power of the keys, and the power of the sword."

If Bishop Smythies refused to wield the sword of
justice and the sword of warfare, it was not for lack of



264 HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITIES' MISSION

ability ; and through ail the troubles between Germans
and natives, when a very little would have set the Ger-
mans against the EngUsh missionaries, whom they found
exercising a great — if purely spiritual — power in their
Protectorate, his tact prevented a colhsion, while his
grasp of the situation caused his advice to be sought on
all sides. He acted on the principle that " Missionaries
of the Cathohc Church, whatever other persons might do,
when they had once settled in a country and gained the
love of its people, would never abandon it."

We find Archbishop Benson, in 1890, speaking at
the S.P.G. annual meeting thus : —

" We sometimes wish we could have but one minute's
glimpse of the men who were the makers of England and the
makers of Europe. ... It impresses me that Bishop Smythies
has a part in the history of his o^^^l times. It will impress
posterity more when they look back upon the unsupported
Englishman who told the statesmen of his time that move he
M-Quld not. It was easy to make himself and his missionaries
safe, but what should he do to the sheep that he had brought
out of the wilderness ? "

Next we find the Bishop interviewed by a representa-
tive of the Pall Mall Gazette as to his views of the
European international relations in Africa ; and then, as
ever, he spoke warmly of the kindness of the Germans
to the missionaries.

Lastly, we hear of him at Berhn, holding a private
conference with the Chancellor of the German Empire,
who was most anxious to discover to what party he
belonged, and was quite satisfied on hearing he belonged
" to that large organization which we call the Church of
England." In no sense did the Bishop ask for protection.



TWO CHIEF PASTORS 265

Lord Salisbury had secured that for all citizens of the
British Empire. At a reception in the evening he was
presented to the Emperor and Empress, to the King of
the Belgians, and Duke of Connaught. The Emperor
said to him : " The Mohammedan religion is a very simple
one, and takes great hold on those who profess it. Surely,
in the face of it, there is great necessity for Christian
missionaries to act unitedly." The same idea was ex-
pressed by the Bishop in his farewell sermon, when he said
that if we persist in regarding, e.g. a Roman Catholic
missionary as just the same as a heathen, it is impossible
to avoid feuds in the face of the heathen ; but if we
consider that the truth we mutually hold is far more
important than the fringe of differences which separate
us, all difficulty would vanish.

This seems the right place to remark that by the final
adjustment of " Spheres of Influence " the Universities'
Mission stations are all left in the German Protectorate,
except those on the island of Zanzibar, the islands of
Likoma and Chizumulu, Kota Kota, and the stations at
the southern end of Nyasa, which are British ; Chitesi's,
most of our East Nyasa stations and Unangu, which
are Portuguese.

Of the work of the next year and a half we have
spoken before, and now the great Bishop was to be taken
away from the work to which he seemed so necessary.

Returning from that last Easter at Magila, the
Bishop tried, as usual, to work hard at classes, addresses,
and Swahili revisions ; but weariness became invincible.
He had to give up taking a retreat and a quiet day,
though on Sunday, April 8, he celebrated at Kiungani,
and preached there and at the Cathedral English Evensong.



266 HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITIES- MISSION

Two days later he delivered his latest address. It
was to the Nurses' Guild. On the 14th he broke down
with fever, and the next day was carried into Mkunazini
Hospital, where Miss Breay and her nurses had the
privilege of ministering to him for three weeks, through
days of utter weariness and nights of sleeplessness.
Grateful and courteous for every little attention, he had
a great fear of being impatient ; but the utmost he said
was : " If only God of His great mercy will grant me some
rest." His nurses believed that he never failed to say his
daily Office. But he grew worse rather than better,
and it was arranged that he should start on May 4, by
the French mail, accompanied by the Rev, Duncan
Travers and Nurse Brewerton.

Just before starting, he sent for two of his Kiungani
boys, Daudi Machina and Yohana Abdallah, to say
farewell. The former describes the scene : —

" The last words that he said were, ' I am going to England
to get well, but I hope God will grant me to return quickly ' ;
and when he had finished these words we knelt down, and
he laid his hands upon us for the last time, and blessed us, and
said. ' God bless you, my children, in all your work ' ; and
we thanked him ; and when he had finished, I closed the
door, and we went back to Kiungani. This was the last
time that I saw him on earth, but that blessing that he left
us, and those last words of his, I can never forget all my life,
for they were as a very great gift beyond all price."

Both these young men are now priests.

The Bishop w;as carried down to the French packet,
and felt exhausted by the farewells on board, but none
thought the end was near. On Sunday, the 6th, the
little Enghsh party said mattins and evensong together.



TWO CHIEF PASTORS 267

the Bishop being just able to give the absolution — his
last earthly ministry. They moved him to a deck cabin
for more air, but that night the watchers gave up hope,
and at 6.30 in the morning Mr. Travers made ready for
the last Communion. The Bishop was half unconscious,
but at the words, " Bishop, the Blessed Sacrament," he
looked up with a sweet smile. Three hours later his
spirit passed to that rest for which he had so earnestly
prayed.

The same evening his body was committed to the
deep, Mr. Travers reading the English Burial Office.
The French sailors who bore him to the stern had placed
a Union Jack over him.

It was a lovely evening, and the ship was held on and
off on a calm sea. The sun had just set, and the new
moon hung in the west, setting slowly ; and at the words,
" we therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned
into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body,
"vy^hen the sea shall give up her dead," the sailors lowered
their burden into that greatest and purest of all cemeteries,
among the coral rocks of the Indian Ocean ; holier to
us for the sacred charge it has received, as the body of
the martyred Patteson hallows the waters of the Pacific.
The spot was half-way between Zanzibar and Aden,
500 miles south of Cape Guardafui.

The character of such a man should only be sketched
by those who knew and watched him, and what follows
is in the words of such watchers : —

" I set first that which first impressed all who saw him —
the quiet, unassuming nobleness of the Bishop's presence.
His voice fulfilled the promise of his presence. It took the



268 HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITIES' MISSION

ear at once, and held it by its delicate quality of genial
friendliness, its frankness, its fulness, which seemed to envelop
you as a pleasant air."

" The mere thought of him — still more the sight — was an
inspiration. Whenever I picture his grand personality, the