Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary | Page 8

distinction and her power.

V. SELF-CULTURE
For fourteen years, and these the freshest and fairest years of her life,
she toiled in the factory for ten hours each full day, while she also gave
faithful service in the mission. And yet she continued to find time for
the sedulous culture of her mind. She was always borrowing books and
extracting what was best in them. Not all were profitable. One was The
Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul by Philip Doddridge, a
volume much pondered then in Scottish homes. A friend who noticed
that she was somewhat cast down said to her, "Why, Mary, what's the
matter? You look very glum." "I canna do it," she replied. "Canna do
what?" "I canna meditate, and Doddridge says it is necessary for the
soul. If I try to meditate my mind just goes a' roads." "Well, never mind
meditation," her friend said. "Go and work, for that's what God means
us to do," and she followed his advice. Of her introduction to the fields
of higher literature we have one reminiscence. Her spirit was so eager,
she read so much and so quickly, that a friend sought to test her by
lending her Sartor Resartus. She carried it home, and when next he met
her he asked quizzically how she had got on with Carlyle. "It is grand!"
she replied. "I sat up reading it, and was so interested that I did not
know what the time was, until I heard the factory bells calling me to
work in the morning!"
There was no restraining her after that. She broadened and deepened in
thought and outlook, and gradually acquired the art of expressing
herself, both in speech and writing, in language that was deft, lucid, and
vigorous, Her style was formed insensibly from her constant reading of
the Bible, and had then a grave dignity and balance unlike the more
picturesque, if looser, touch of later years. The papers that were read
from her at the Fellowship Association were marked by a felicity of
phrase as well as an insight and spiritual fervour unusual in a girl. Her
alertness of intellect often astonished those who heard her engaged in
argument with the agnostics and freethinkers whom she encountered in
the course of her visiting. She spoke simply, but with a directness and
sincerity that arrested attention. Often asked to address meetings in
other parts of Dundee, she shrank from the ordeal. On one occasion a

friend went with her, but she could not be persuaded to go on the
platform. She sat in the middle of the hall and had a quiet talk on the
words, "The common people heard Him gladly." "And," writes her
friend, "the common people heard her gladly, and crowded round her
and pleaded that she should come again."

VI. A TRAGIC LAND
There was never a time when Mary was not interested in foreign
missions. The story of Calabar had impressed her imagination when a
child, and all through the years her eyes had been fixed on the great
struggle going on between the forces of light and darkness in the sphere
of heathenism. The United Presbyterian Church in which she was
brought up placed the work abroad in the forefront of its activity; it had
missions in India, China, Jamaica, Calabar, and Kaffraria; and reports
of the operations were given month by month in its Missionary Record,
and read in practically all the homes of its members. It was pioneer
work, and the missionaries were perpetually in the midst of adventure
and peril. Their letters and narratives were eagerly looked for; they
gave to people who had never travelled visions of strange lands; they
brought to them the scent and colour of the Orient and the tropics; and
they introduced into the quietude of orderly homes the din of the bazaar
and harem and kraal. These men and women in the far outposts became
heroic figures to the Church, and whenever they returned on furlough
the people thronged to their meetings to see for themselves the actors in
such amazing happenings, and to hear from their own lips the story of
their difficulties and triumphs.
Mrs. Slessor never missed hearing those who came to Dundee, and
once she was so much moved by an address from the Rev. William
Anderson as to the needs of Old Calabar that she longed to dedicate her
son John to the work. He was a gentle lad, much loved by Mary.
Apprenticed to a blacksmith, his health began to fail, and a change of
climate became imperative. He emigrated to New Zealand, but died a
week after landing. His mother felt the blow to her hopes even more
than his death. To Mary the event was a