CRICKETER FOR CHRIST

C.T. Studd (1860 – 1931)

Comfort

Charles Studd was raised in great privilege in England. From his earliest years he was involved in sports, particularly fox-hunting, horse racing and cricket. Charles, along with his two elder brothers, received the most exclusive education in the country at Eton, where they excelled at cricket, creating a record when each brother captained the Eton cricket team in succession.

Conversion

Life was very pleasant, comfortable and promising for the boys, until their father, Edward Studd, heard D.L. Moody. Nothing was the same after Edward Studd became a Christian. He gave up all his questionable pursuits, particularly gambling. He invested his immense wealth and influence into winning others for Christ. As Charles wrote: “Everyone in the house had a dog’s life of it until they were converted!”

Cricket

Charles became the captain of the Cambridge University cricket team that defeated the Australians and was selected to play for England. His fame grew and he was twice declared to be “the best all-round cricket player” in England. Charles Studd had the world at his feet. While on a cricket tour in Australia, his brother George came close to death through a severe illness, and this affected Charles.

Consecration

Attending a meeting of D.L. Moody, C.T. Studd was brought to a position of full surrender to Christ. From this point on, his life was never the same and he was possessed by a consuming passion to lead people to Christ. Charles now regarded the first six years of his Christian experience as “being in a backslidden condition”. Now, he yearned to be absolute in his service of the Lord.

Called

He met Hudson Taylor and answered the call to be a missionary to China. In this, he was joined by six other Cambridge students, who made a huge impact on the secular and religious world, becoming religious celebrities known as“The Cambridge Seven.” These seven young aristocrats, two of them famous athletes and another two military officers, forsaking the comforts of England to work with an, until then, unknown missionary society in the hinterland of China, was a story that the press could not pass up.

Cambridge Seven

The Cambridge Seven helped catapult the China Inland Mission from obscurity to “embarrassing prominence”, and inspired hundreds of other recruits for CIM and other missionary societies. Stanley Peregrine-Smith was the captain of the Cambridge rowing team and thus one of the most famous men in England. He was also converted in one of D.L. Moody’s revivals and helped found the Cambridge Christian Union. Stanley Smith was the orator of the seven. Dixon Hoste, the son of a major-general, was an officer in the Royal Artillery and was also converted during the Moody campaign. He gave himself to Christ as completely as he had given himself to soldiering. Cecil Polhill-Turner was an officer in the Royal Dragoons, and his brother Arthur was studying to become a minister. William Wharton Cassels was an ordained Church of England minister, and Charles Studd was the most famous of all, as the unbeatable cricket captain, “the most brilliant member of a well known cricketing family!”

Confidence

With much fanfare, these missionary celebrities toured the British Isles, attracting huge crowds and much media coverage. Perhaps some of this went to their heads, because on the long boat trip to China, they refused to study and prayed to receive the Chinese language supernaturally! Hudson Taylor warned them that this was one of “Satan’s devices to keep the Chinese ignorant of the Gospel!” When they finally reached China, in 1885, and the Chinese language didn’t miraculously descend upon them, they finally knuckled down to study.

China

In China they were immediately struck by the degradation that opium had dragged so much of the population down to. Many people sold everything to satisfy their craving: their wives and children into slavery, furniture, roof tiles and agricultural tools! One of the strategies of the Cambridge Seven was to seek to reach these opium addicts for Christ. They established opium refuges, where addicts could come to stay for three to six weeks, and find deliverance from this addiction.

Conflict

Each of the seven reacted very differently to China. William Cassels, the ordained clergyman, was appalled by the lack of Church rules and within a year, he and Arthur Polhill-Turner left CIM to found a Church of England Diocese in Szechwan. Cecil Polhill-Turner also left after a year and became a wandering missionary with a goal of being the first missionary to Tibet.

Confusion

Stanley Smith was soon casting out demons and offended the local Chinese Christians, abandoned the unobtrusive style of CIM evangelism and began parading through the villages with banners and gongs like a Salvation Army band. He eventually embraced a Buddhist ideal of “the larger hope” that all humanity will somehow be saved! Ultimately, Smith departed from the doctrinal foundations of the CIM so seriously that he was compelled to resign.

Consistency

Dixon Hoste was the most stable and successful of the seven – staying the course as a wise and patient missionary, serving the Chinese with great distinction and earning their love and trust. Dixon in fact succeeded Hudson Taylor as Director of CIM.

Complete Dedication

Charles Studd married an Irish Salvation Army officer, Priscilla Stuart. From the beginning they suffered severe persecution and he later reported that for the first five years in China, every time they stepped out of doors, they were greeted with curses. Nevertheless, Charles saw many people converted and numerous opium addicts delivered. His total dedication to CIM’s principle of living by faith was seen when he inherited a fortune of over £25000 (which would be several million dollars today) which he promptly invested in “the Bank of Heaven.” He gave to Charles Müller’s orphanage, enabled D.L. Moody to build the Moody Bible Institute and to General William Booth, to send 50 Salvation Army missionaries to India.

In spite of his physical strength as an athlete, Charles did not enjoy good health in the field, and in 1893 he almost died and was forced to return to England with his wife and four daughters. He travelled around Britain stirring up interest in missions, and in 1896 was invited to the United States to help launch the Student Volunteer Missionary Union, out of which grew the Student Christian Movement. He stayed in the USA for 18 months, sometimes addressing as many as six meetings a day. Many hundreds offered themselves for missions as a result.

Colonial Ministry

In 1900, C.T. Studd travelled to India, where he pastored a Church for six years. He also joined a cricket tour in order to have more opportunities to preach to soldiers. In India, he had the privilege of baptising his four daughters. One of those present was Amy Carmichael.

Change

Ill health again forced him to return to England, where his sporting fame still enabled him to draw large crowds, whom he addressed in his usual blunt manner: “I once had another religion, mincing, lisping, baited breath, proper, hunting the Bible for hidden truths, but no obedience, no sacrifice. Then came the change. The real thing came before me.Soft speech became crude salt. The parlour game with the nurses became real cricket on the public ground. Words became deeds. The commands of Christ became not merely Sunday recitations, but battle calls to be obeyed, unless one would lose one’s self-respect and manhood. Assent to creed was born again into decisive action of obedience.”

Cannibals want Missionaries

In 1908, in Liverpool, a notice caught his eye: “Cannibals want missionaries.” Charles laughed “for more reasons than one!” C.T. Studd determined to take up the challenge. His doctors were against it, his wife was against it. His financial circumstances were against it, but he was convinced that God was for it – and that was enough.

Crusade

In 1910 at age 50, he left alone for Southern Sudan to explore the possibilities in Equatorial Africa, joining CMS missionary, Bishop Llewellyn Gwynne. Out of 29 donkeys that went on his expedition, 25 died. Out of this journey, the vision for the Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade (W.E.C.) was born.

Chocolate Soldier

He came back to England as a man on fire. Once more students were aroused by his meetings and he wrote booklets in his usual, hard-hitting, straight-from-the-shoulder style, including“The Chocolate Soldier.”

Congo

In 1913 he set out again, for Central Africa, this time accompanied by his youngest daughter’s fiancé, a young Cambridge graduate, Alfred Buxton. Together they were the pioneers of the Heart of Africa Mission. They followed in the footsteps of Henry Morton Stanley through Kenya and Uganda to North-Eastern Congo. Their first baptisms took place in a crocodile-infested river, and while the missionaries were baptising the candidates, they were also having to fire into the water to keep the crocodiles at bay!

Chapel Bell

As he suffered malaria and other attacks, he wrote:“Some like to live within the sound of Church or Chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.”

New Recruits

In 1916, he left England for the last time, taking with him a party of eight missionaries, including his young daughter Edith, who was coming out to marry her fiancé, Alfred Buxton. Another daughter, Pauline, with her husband Norman Grubb, joined the mission. Soon the number of missionaries had grown to 40.

Relentless

To the end, Charles maintained a strenuous routine. He worked an 18-hour day. He undertook long journeys, preaching sometimes to congregations of 2000. He read the Bible for hours each day and poured his heart into prayer. When he was approaching 70, he set himself the task of translating the New Testament. Then the news arrived that his wife, who had been left behind in England because of ill health, had died. Charles now suffered several heart attacks and gallstones.

Called to Higher Service

In July 1931, this gallant and unconventional cricketer’s innings came to an end.

Controversial

In assessing this incredible, bold, abrasive and controversial missionary, his co-workers, including his sons in-law, Buxton and Grubb, recognised that his energy, earnestness and single-mindedness made him a most difficult person to work with. He was stubborn and inflexible in what he required and demanded of others. He was eccentric. He wrote a booklet in which he said he “didn’t care a damn” about anything, except to serve Christ and to save souls. This kind of language was most offensive and unacceptable to many at that time. “I can’t abide cowardice. I refuse to make my God and Saviour a nonentity.”

Inflexible

He was ruthless in the standards he set for himself and others, and he interpreted leisure and recreation as idleness. He laid a powerful emphasis on the need for “holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.” People were not sure what to make of a man, who in his 50s, could leave behind an ailing wife, while he went to be a missionary in the most inaccessible part of earth. His love for Jesus Christ was supreme, and to many of his contemporaries, he was a fanatic.

Challenge

The mission he founded, W.E.C., has grown to be one of the largest missions in the world today. The life of C.T. Studd will always remain a challenge to those who seek an easier path. As C.T. Studd wrote: “Christ’s call is to capture men from the devil’s clutches and snatch them from the very jaws of hell, to enlist and train them for Jesus and make them a mighty army of God. But this can only be accomplished by red-hot, unconventional, unfettered Holy Spirit religion ...by reckless sacrifice and heroism in the foremost trenches.”

Dr. Peter Hammond
The Reformation Society
P.O. Box 74 Newlands 7725
Cape Town South Africa
Tel: 021-689-4480
Fax: 021-685-5884
Email: mission@frontline.org.za
Website: www.ReformationSA.org