Standing True at Cambridge

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Before the war I had had five years at Marlborough College, an English “public school” of 600 boys, in which we were all boarders. When war
broke out in August 1914, I had just obtained a classical exhibition (grant) to Sidney Sussex College of Cambridge University, entitling me to residence there at reduced fees. Now after five years of war, the university made it easy for us who had been previously accepted as
undergraduates to take a short course of two years and obtain a “pass” degree of B.A., or stay longer for an “honors” degree.

With my calling fixed to join C.T. Studd in the heart of Africa, and now being engaged to his daughter Pauline, I was accepted as an
undergraduate at Trinity College, instead of Sidney Sussex. Thus I attended the same college in which the Studd brothers had their notable
years as captains of cricket and where D.L. Moody was brought by daring invitation for a first evangelistic mission.

Because of my wounded leg, I could not play “Rugger,” the Rugby football I was accustomed to and liked. So I spent my afternoons in what was my real love: knocking at the door of men’s dormitory rooms (there were no women in Trinity), speaking a word to them about Jesus Christ, and inviting them to our Cambridge evangelical union (known as the CICCU, or Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union).

The CICCU had dwindled down to a dozen men in the war years. But various ones of us were zealously reviving it, and I was secretary. We used
to meet daily at midday for our DPM (daily prayer meeting) in the Henry Martyn Hall, given lo the CICCU in memory of the great Henry Martyn, missionary to Persia. We would also hold “open airs” in the Cambridge parks and an evening evangelistic service. All men, we were a small and insignificant company.

Also at the university there was a much larger, popular Christian society called the SCM (Student Christian Movement). They were not so
particular in bringing the gospel to the undergraduates. Instead, they would invite famous political speakers or notable war generals, who
would speak on social and moral principles rather than on the need of a personal Savior.

But leaders among the SCM sensed our evangelical zeal and suggested that we join them as a spear point of Christian witness. So two of us—our
CICCU president and I—agreed to meet their committee members in a room at Trinity. As we talked together, I became increasingly uneasy
about their main emphasis. I asked their secretary, Rollo Pelly, “Do you put the atoning blood of Jesus Christ central in your message?” Rollo
hesitated and then said, “Well, we admit it, but not as necessarily central.”

So then both Dan Dick and I arose and said that fusion with them was an impossibility, even though they reached the mass of students and we
apparently a mere few. That was a vital meeting in re-establishing the pure stream of gospel and Bible witness in the university, at the price of
being the contemptible, narrow few. But we little knew then that that decision was to have worldwide repercussions in the universities and
colleges of the whole world.

Then a surprising and disturbing conviction of a personal call came to me. I was nearing the end of my first year, with only another few months to complete this really easily acquired B.A. degree. But out in the heart of Africa, C.T. Studd and his then five co-workers had been practically
isolated in those war years. The strong conviction came to me that, in their need of reinforcements and fresh workers, I should drop getting this Cambridge degree and go straight out to join them in the Congo.

Yet, if I dropped out, I could not return later; and it only meant those few months delay to get that degree. I asked advice from others, and all
advised to wait those extra months. I wanted to agree with them, but it was really just worthless ambition. In the end, the personal pressure of
the Spirit on me won the day. I decided to “go down and leave the university. It was a real death for me—a “dying of the Lord Jesus” which
has lasted till today, in the absence of those easily obtained B.A. and M.A. degrees.