BISHOP STUART'S RETURN TO PERSIA.

Waiapu Church Times, Volume I, Issue 2, 1 August 1907, Page 12

BISHOP STUART'S RETURN TO PERSIA.

The .return once more to Persia of . the honored veteran, Bishop Stuart, at the age of eighty, is an event which may well put to shame not a few who hold back from the mission-field after hearing the call to go out. It is well-nigh fiftyseven years, as the Bishop reminded the Committee on March 5, when they bade him farewell, since Thomas Valpy French and he were first taken leave of m a little room m Islington. Very touchingly he spoke of the joy he felt, m looking back over his long connection with the Society, that m its principles and policy, and especially m its re-' liance on God-, he had found no change. Such a testimony from such lips and at such a moment — when the Bishop pathetically said this leave-taking would, humanly speaking, certainly be his last—was specially p-rateful for the Committee, to hear. .And not less so was it to observe the sanguine , spirit m which the veteran set his face towards the Persian battle-field. The doctors had held him back or he would have been there six months ago, / -

and now their opposition had only yielded to his own fervent desire. But if the aged limbs tottered, the heart was strong and courageous. He had seen great things wrought by the Gospel, and he expected to see greater still. When he went to Julfa m 1894 that was the only C.M.S. station m the Shah's dominions, and it was an Armenian station outside the Moslem citadel. Now Ispahan itself is occupied, and so are Yezd and Kerman and Shiraz— all ancient and important cities — and there are bands of converts m all of them. Over a hundred adult converts have been baptised m Persia since the new century commenced. In Ispahan last Christmas Day some sixty converts knelt together at the Lord's Supper—a sight to cheer the heart indeed, to see converts from Mohammedanism, Babiism, Parsiism, kneeling side by side with Armenians and Europeans and receiving the tokens of the Saviour's dying love, and especially so when it was remembered how they had formerly been animated with mutual internecine hatred, while now there was neither Greek nor Jew, neither Barbarian nor Scythian, neither bond nor free, all were one m Christ Jesus.