Thomas Bridges 1887

(An excerpt from Joseph Parker)

(devotional June 2005) (4 Min.’s)

In 1832 the most celebrated naturalist in the world, our illustrious countryman Charles Darwin, went round the world in a ship called the Beagle. The diary of the circumnavigation is full of abiding interest. The great naturalist called at Tierra del Fuego on the South American coast. His description of the people of that part of the world is full of horror, he says he never saw such people. They represented the very lowest type he had ever seen of humanity. They were savages of the worst degree and quality. No civilized man dare approach that awful place, the figures of the people were shocking to behold, their habits were not to be described in language. The naturalist left them supposing them to be beyond the reach of civilization. This is the testimony, not of a missionary, but of a naturalist – a man supposed to be without religious emotion.

One day a little babe was found lying on the streets of Bristol, in very deed a foundling, without known father or mother, or friends, a little crying thing in all the wilderness of life. “Oh, it was pitiful! Near a whole city full, home it had none”. The day on which it was found by a constable, was St. Thomas’s Day, so the infant was called by the name of the dead Thomas. The child was found in a place which lay between two bridges of the city, so was called Thomas Bridges. The little foundling was lodged in the workhouse, and brought up on the public bounty. Years came and went, and the boy, now a young man, longed to be a missionary. He offered his services to the Church Missionary Society, having special work in that part of the world which we have just described in the language of Darwin, he went out, not fearing what might befall him. The gospel is heroic, it has never been terrified.

He went amongst the people, lived amongst them, heard their curious vocal tones, put them into shape, created a language for the people, interested them in these forms which he had traced with his own hand, taught them to read the forms and understand them, – every day living in peril of his life. He translated part of the story of the Saviour’s life, and got the people to read it in the Yah-gang tongue. They read it, understood a little of it, were melted by it, and they wanted to read still further, and the missionary translated more of the blessed Word into the tongue which he may be said to have created, and the people read, and were subdued and civilized and christianized, and the facts were brought before the great English naturalist, and he-honest fearless soul, pure and noble in every instinct – instantly subscribed to the Missionary Society, one of whose agents had wrought, under God, the stupendous change.

The english Admiralty had issued orders that that part of the coast was not to be approached by their ships, hearing of the change that had taken place, the orders were recalled, ships were allowed to go and trade there. What wrought that mighty, wondrous change? Let us be honest, let us be fearless. It was the Gospel of Christ. Agnosticism did not do it, Secularism did not do it, Rationalism did not do it: the heroic Cross did it, Christ did it. It was impracticable as to it’s mechanical arrangements, laughable, absurd, contemptible, but it was done.

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