Page:Distinguished Churchmen.djvu/147

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PREBENDARY HENRY ELLIOTT FOX, M.A.
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handful of European troops, but they had as Christian men the courage of their convictions. They encouraged missionary enterprise, and contributed liberally to plant missions among the very people with whom we had been at war. Now, for comparison, you may take Lord Kitchener's opinion that the missions are only calculated to inflame the Moslems on the one side, and on the other the opinion of Sir William Lockhart, to whom I went after the Tirah campaign. I asked Sir William to allow the C.M.S. to permit mission stations on the frontier. He listened to my request with great courtesy, and, though himself sceptical as to the probability of our convincing any of the Afghans or Pathans of the truth of the Gospel, he expressed his cordial approval of medical missions as a pacifying and conciliatory agency; and he readily assented to my request, and assured me that he would recommend it to the Indian Government. In six weeks I got their consent. So you see military men as well as doctors differ! The result to-day is that our medical missionaries have been able to reach some of the most bitterly hostile of our former enemies, and to repay them with the best revenge which a Christian knows—the kindness and love of a Christian heart. I have a son-in-law who is a medical missionary, and he has a dispensary right on top of the Khyber Pass. His wife and he have gone into Afghan villages, and have been welcomed. That son-in-law, by the way, met with a curious