From the January-March 2010 Issue
BOOKSHELF
Gary Brady
They Were Pilgrims By Sir Marcus L. Loane Banner of Truth 2006, Hardcover, 272 pp. ISBN 9780851519289
The death earlier this year of former Archbishop of Sydney, Marcus Loane, marked the end of a life of varied service in the cause of Christ. Among his enduring legacies are several books, especially those of the biographical variety. Most, though not all, of these deal with characters from various periods of Protestant history in brief compass.
The volume They Were Pilgrims was first published in 1970, revised in 1984 and is still available today. It looks at four remarkable heroes of the faith – David Brainerd, Henry Martyn, Robert Murray M’Cheyne and the lesser known Hon. Ion Grant Neville Keith-Falconer. The four, who flourished between 1718 and 1887, are given 40-70 pages each and are designated The Guide to the Delawares, A Star in the Orient, An Heir of the Covenant and A Friend of the Bedouin respectively. If you have read more comprehensive biographies of some of these men, you will find this volume a good refresher and a good stimulus to zeal for mission. If not, the book is also a good introduction to some great men that you should know about. Further, as the author himself suggested, there is “special value in placing the records of their lives side by side”.
As the least known of the four, the story of Keith-Falconer will be of special interest to many. There is something rather introspective, sober, even forbidding perhaps about the first three, but as for the privileged Keith-Falconer, he breezes in and out at the end, showing that there is no room for stereotyping in the kingdom of God. Loane deftly charts his aristocratic and privileged upbringing, his conversion, his great gift for eastern languages, his exploits as a champion cyclist, his zeal for witness, his travels in Arabia, the beginnings of mission and his premature death. The obvious thing that links the four is an early death – none of them lived beyond the age of 31. Indeed, their periods of active service only add up to 21 years and the few months that Keith-Falconer was on the field altogether! More significant, however, is their missionary zeal – Brainerd for Native Americans, M’Cheyne for Scotland and the Jews, Martyn and Keith-Falconer for the Muslim world. “They had the same ardent, patriotic feeling for a kingdom which is not of this world, and their eyes were toward that great city whose maker and builder is God.”
Martyn and Keith-Falconer were amazing linguists, while Brainerd and M’Cheyne were not without gifts in this area either. Each one was a rare jewel of intellectual brilliance, deep spiritual experience and great energy in whatever he turned his hand to. An identical “secret force and driving motive” propelled them all. They made a spiritual impact on their own generations altogether out of the ordinary. Such biographies serve not so much as models to aspire to but as inspiring stories of what individuals can do, even in a limited space of time, if God takes hold of them.