II
“THE MAN WITH THE GENTLE HEART”
“This day thirteen years ago, while a just-arrived student at Dartmouth College, it pleased my sovereign Maker to manifest His everlasting love to me by inclining my heart to choose Him as my portion, and His service as my reward.”
Such is his salutatory in the service of God, as recorded by Samuel R. House, in his journal under date of Feb. 22, 1848. He had been in Siam less than a year; long enough however for the novelty of his situation to abate a little so that he had time to reflect. Reflecting, he sees how that youthful dedication was—so far as he was consciously concerned—the beginning of the lines of life that led him to Siam.
Four years later, on the anniversary of his arrival in Siam, contemplating the fruitlessness of those years and ready to incriminate himself for “a culpable ignorance of the language,” he again writes:
“How different doubtless am I regarded at home by over-esteeming friends. How false a biography would that be, some of them would write.... Let no one eulogise such a character, such a worthless, unworthy life as mine. If a Christian hope be the joy of my life, by the grace of God I am what I am; but my waywardness, my inefficiency is all my own.”
The cause of this despondency was not within himself. It was the miasma arising from the spiritual decay around him. But as none liveth unto himself, so none dieth to himself. The example of such persistent faith belongs to the church; and it has too great a value for the living to allow the judgment of a passing despondency to prevail.
At length comes the valedictory. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of permanent work in Siam by the Presbyterian Church (U. S. A.) in 1897, Dr. House wrote to a friend:
“And now in my eightieth year, sole survivor of that little band, I feel it a privilege indeed to look back and see what God hath wrought since that day of small beginnings. Verily the little one has become a thousand—yes thousands. I am sure you, my friend, will congratulate me on being yet alive this blessed day of an abundant ingathering from that long barren mission field. How the loved ones that have entered into rest would rejoice if they could see how their patience of hope and labour and love have not been in vain in the Lord. There are many in heaven to raise the song of jubilee with them, even there.”
From that early dedication of self to God while in college, through the years “cast down but not destroyed,” to the golden jubilee—what a strain of human effort, what a magnificent persistence of faith, what a glory of hope realized!
HIS CHARACTER
The man who had this notable experience would not have been singled out, even by those who knew him intimately in early manhood, as the one most likely to achieve the results which we are to review. The qualities casually observed by acquaintances were in his case those which men do not ordinarily associate with success. A study of his private journal and letters manifests traits which are corroborated by many who knew him personally. He was a man of deep piety. He was scrupulous regarding the outward appearance of religion, yet more so concerning his inner life. He was verily a man of God. His mental nature had a strong inclination to introspection, which led to self-depreciation and self-distrust. He recoiled from a new venture until he became convinced that it was the will of God; then, though still distrusting his own ability, he laid hold of the task with a simplicity of faith and a devotion to duty which made him invincible. It is an example of how the Holy Spirit, when fully occupying a man’s heart, enlarges and fortifies his native capacity until the one who is small in his own esteem becomes a giant.
That habit of introspection may have been due in part to the austere idea of religion which prevailed at the time; at any rate it gave him a somber demeanor. The solemn side of life seems mostly before him, although his associates found a playfulness and jocularity about him that offset his soberness. Only thirty years of age when he left home, yet from the first his letters to his father read more like the letters of a father to a son. But deeper and stronger than either of these traits was his tender sympathy. It was more than a sympathy of sentiment; it was a sympathy that caused him to share the sufferings of others. Concerning his medical work he said: “When I cannot relieve, I suffer.” This eagerness to relieve pain led him to a forgetfulness of his own interests which his physique marvellously endured.
Then, too, he had a timidity which at times amounted to phobism and made it difficult for him to reach a decision and even caused him to appear fickle in purpose. But fortunately, along with that weakness he had a courage which nerved him to face any hostility or danger with a daring which compelled opposition to give way; and by that quality he carried through many a venture which for a time seemed doomed to failure. Humble to a point of self-abnegation, at times he was as lordly as a monarch in the exercise of the prerogatives of the liberty of the gospel; and beyond a doubt it was his refusal to imitate oriental truculence before provincial officials which inspired that class with respect for the rights of the foreigner. Among the Siamese who still remember him, he is spoken of as “the man with the gentle heart.”
HIS PARENTAGE
Samuel Reynolds House was born in Waterford, New York, Oct. 16, 1817, being the second child of John and Abby Platt House. His parents both united with the Presbyterian Church of that village upon profession of faith, in 1810. At that time the Waterford congregation was in collegiate relation with the congregation of Lansingburgh, located eastward across the Hudson River, under the pastorate of Rev. Samuel Blatchford, D.D. In the next year John House was elected an elder in the collegiate church; and when the Waterford congregation became a separate organisation, in 1820, Mr. and Mrs. House became charter members of the new organisation, and Mr. House was continued as an elder—an office which he held till his death, April 27, 1862.
The active interest of Mr. House in the spiritual work of the church is indicated by the fact that he conducted a Sunday school for coloured children in a room in a carpenter shop, and when the young church erected a house of worship, in 1826, this Sunday school was transferred to the gallery of the church. He is also recorded as having been the superintendent of the regular Sunday school of the church after it was established. His interest in the church continued active up to the close of his life. In his later years, when the congregation was considering the construction of a new “session house” for the use of the Sunday school and prayer meeting, John House sought the privilege of erecting the building at his own expense; and that fine building, erected in 1859, remains today as a memorial to his love and zeal for the church.
Abby House was one of the original members of the “Female Cent Society” of the Waterford church, organised in 1817. The object of this society was to “afford assistance to poor and pious young men pursuing their studies in the theological seminary at Princeton.” The quaint name of this society was double with meaning. Each member was pledged to contribute one cent a week to the fund, which was then placed in the hands of the moderator of Presbytery to dispense. Later the society co-operated with the American Education Society until the General Assembly forbade that organisation to operate within the denomination in competition with the new Board of Ministerial Education. The word “female” suggests that the sex was about that period emerging into the self-consciousness of a separate work for religion and was not content to keep its labours hidden behind the mask of the male portion of the families.
If we were to seek for the motives that led young Samuel to dedicate himself to foreign missions we would not be surprised to find that the mother had some of the credit. He says that he was prompted to become a missionary because his mother dedicated him to God for foreign missions from his infancy. Out of that maternal inspiration came also the prayer of his youth:
The ambition thus early implanted was nurtured during the boyhood years by stories of missions. When in later years he visited the Hawaiian Islands on his way to Siam he recalls those stories:
“How little did I dream I was ever to see them, when that dear mother of mine used to tell me such interesting stories about the missionaries there and show me, out of her treasures kept in that always-locked drawer of her bureau, the precious bit she had of native cloth made of the bark of a tree. And when she took me to the ‘Monthly Concert,’ as she always did, how much I used to be interested in news from those far away isles.”
RELIGIOUS CONVICTIONS
Closely associated with the motives to enter the mission field are a man’s religious convictions. Those earlier missionaries were conspicuous for their lively sense of peril for impenitent souls. Dr. House had a spiritual sensitiveness which shared this feeling to the full. Frequent lamentation is to be found in his journal for the certain perdition of ones with whom he had been acquainted, and who died without an evidence of accepting the Christian faith. This was not merely a professional attitude towards the heathen. Upon news of the death of an old school mate he exclaims:
“Oh, did he die safely! What would I not give to be assured he did. But oh, I tremble. Procrastination thou art the thief of time, the murderer of souls. And conscience reproaches me with having too long postponed the sending to him that letter on the subject of the claims of personal religion, a draught of which has for years been lying in my portfolio. It might, under the blessing of the Holy One, have done him good—at any rate it was my duty, my privilege to invite him, to urge him to walk with me towards heaven. I have sinned. I have been unfaithful.”
When a Siamese lad who had been connected with the mission for a few months was suddenly carried off by the cholera, the anguish of the doctor brought him to tears of self-reproach, not because his skill had failed but because he had not been more insistent in urging the gospel upon the boy.
At this distance of time one can see that the failure of some of the Siamese to be persuaded was due to a want of concatenation in the heathen mind between the physical facts already familiar to them but not comprehended, and the spiritual truths of this new religion. Behind the sublime faith of the missionary there was a rigidity of logic which failed to take these mental difficulties into account; as for instance when a young priest proposed this dilemma: “Who was the mother of Jesus? Mary. Who made Mary? God. Was Jesus Christ God? Yes. But if Jesus Christ was God, how could He make Mary his mother before He Himself was born?” Turning from the disputant, the doctor declined to discuss the problem because he thought the man was caviling.
At one period the doctor entertained a vivid expectation of the culmination of the Christian dispensation at an early date. He had enough of the mystical in his religious nature to look for signs. Thus he writes in view of the conditions of Europe in 1848:
“All Europe, every kingdom has felt the shock of the political earthquake in France. Kingdoms, principalities and powers tremble. These are signs that herald the near approach of the Coming One. The day of the world’s redemption surely draweth nigh.”
And again two years later he writes to Dr. D. B. McCartee at Ningpo:
“Surely the world must needs wait for but few of the signs, that are to herald His coming, to be fulfilled. ‘Wars and rumors of wars,’ earthquake and pestilence and famine, the ‘running to and fro,’ the gospel preached for a witness in every nation—what signs of the ‘ends drawing nigh’ is left unfulfilled in our day—unless it be that a few countries (central Africa, New Guinea, etc.) remain still unevangelised. The last of God’s elect, however, may be born—nay, the messenger who is to call him, in Providence may have started on his errand; and who knows but that privilege is for you or me.”
But that type of speculation has its own antidote, viz., time. As his years drew out their number, the visions of youth gave way to the dreams of old men; and in reviewing what had been achieved and what remained to be accomplished the doctor displaced these speculations with the simple faith that the Lord would come again in His own time, but at a time unrevealed to men. It needs to be remembered that Dr. House had been trained in medicine, not in theology. Whatever may have been illogical in his tenets, there was in his heart the profound conviction not only that Jesus Christ was the only Saviour of the world, but that the Siamese would accept the Christian religion, if only they could be induced to examine fairly its claims.
EDUCATION
Samuel received a careful and thorough education. After elementary work in the private academy of Waterford, at the early age of twelve he spent a year or more in the “Washington Academy” of Cambridge, New York, then under the principalship of Rev. Nathaniel Scudder Prime. In later years he recalled with pleasure some of his classmates: “We read Cæsar together; John K. Meyers, David Bullions (Latin grammarian), E. D. G. Prime (editor of the New York Observer), and I recited to Samuel Irenæus.” In 1833 he entered the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, five miles from home.
In the winter term 1835 he entered Dartmouth College at Hanover, New Hampshire, but remained only till the close of that academic year. It was here that occurred the deeper spiritual experience which he recalls in the words that open this chapter; a conscious conversion during a revival which swept through the college that winter. It was following this experience that in the same year he united with the Waterford church upon profession of faith. Why he did not continue at Dartmouth does not appear; probably the difficulty of access would have been a chief factor. However, in the fall of that year he entered Union College, at Schenectady, a few miles from his home. His work at Rensselaer and Dartmouth qualified him to enter the junior class, so that he graduated in the year 1837. He received the degree A.B. in course and the honour of Φ.Β.Κ.; and following three years of post-graduate work in teaching, he received the degree M.A. from his alma mater. The three years immediately following graduation from Union were spent in teaching; one year in Virginia, a year as principal of Weston (Conn.) Academy and a year as principal of the private school “Erasmus Hall,” in Brooklyn. He now entered upon his medical course, spending the year 1841-2 in the University of Pennsylvania, and the next year in the Albany Medical College. With the lapse of a year not accounted for in the record,—probably teaching in Virginia, to which he refers in telling of some chemical experiments—he graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York with the degree M.D. in 1845.
Upon completion of his medical course he offered himself to the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions (Old School), and was commissioned in 1846. He was assigned to Siam together with his college-mate, Rev. Stephen Mattoon, of Sandy Hill, New York, (now Hudson Falls). Placing himself under the care of the Presbytery of Troy he was licensed to preach.