The college flourished, even during extreme adversity.
By February, Eric had a firm footing in his work and took the time to respond to Miss Hardie and her Sunday school class back in Edinburgh. After referencing all the students by name, Eric delighted them with a unique tale of the circumstances around his work during the holidays:
Just at Christmas time Tientsin was being attacked and for two weeks we could hear the guns going just about five or ten miles away. Slowly the attackers were winning their way until on the 23rd of December the fighting was going on in a part of the Tientsin city. Then on the 24th Tientsin was taken. It was all quite exciting with the fighting so near. Of course we were all safe as we live in a part that is ruled by the French. . . . I wonder how you would like a battle like that to go on just outside Edinburgh? . . .
This has just been a very short glimpse of some things here. All the while it changes quickly, later on I may be able to give some idea of Tientsin.
With all the best of wishes to each one in your class,
Yours sincerely,
Eric H. Liddell[34]
The ensuing year flew by with fierceness. Success had never taken long to blossom for Eric in Britain; China appeared no different. He established himself among the faculty at the college, in the classroom with the students, on the sports field with the greater community, and at Union Church with its members. Eric acted as the superintendent of the Sunday school, taught a class for the boys there, and facilitated Bible studies in some of the area’s Chinese congregations. And as though he had more hours in the day than everyone else, he volunteered as chaplain to British troops rotating through their station in Tientsin port.
With every focus, Eric aimed for excellence and measured results. This way of life and faith had always worked for him, which was, of course, a hard point for anyone to criticize. Eric steered a ship of legalistic theology, which his family and surrounding institutions bolstered for him. His thinking and his convictions were strict, but not unyielding. He kept this nuanced tension in mind, as he would occasionally catch wind of straying theological tendencies from his Congregational denomination in Scotland. Consequently, Eric felt conflict over the direction the Congregationalists had begun to steer regarding the interpretation of Scripture.
Eric was a missionary, but not a theologically skilled, church-planting missionary. Church politics had never been a strong interest for Eric, nor had the arguments and divisiveness they created. As he grew deeper spiritually, Eric’s own opinions developed, but he kept them tamed. His primary interest lay in sharing Christ with those who had never heard of him. If there was anything he could do to assist or aid someone in the assurance of their eternal salvation, he helped, and happily so.
Another LMS teacher joined Eric in early 1926.
Eric Scarlett and his wife, Dorothy, were initially sent to Tientsin to fill in for a few months at the college. But Scarlett’s vibrant personality made him impossible to release when the time came. Together, the two Erics worked in the science department and developed an exciting course in practical physics.
That summer, Jenny Liddell announced her engagement to a businessman named Frank Turner, but a few months later she called the engagement off. Again unattached, Jenny often accompanied her equally unattached brother to various social events, sometimes to help ward off Tientsin’s single women who were interested in Eric.
By late summer 1926, another missionary couple—the MacKenzies, of Canada—returned from furlough along with their children: Florence, Margaret, Norman, Esther, Finlay, Kenneth, and Agnes Louise.
Like Eric, Florence MacKenzie, who attended the Sunday school class Eric taught, tended to be more athletic than academic, and she was known for her wit and love of life. Without knowing it—and perhaps without Eric meaning for it to happen—the young Florence caught Eric’s eye in a way he had not experienced before, which left Eric with a profound problem.
Eric was twenty-four years old.
Florence was only fifteen.
[33] David McCasland, Eric Liddell: Pure Gold: A New Biography of the Olympic Champion Who Inspired Chariots of Fire (Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House, 2001), 125–26.
[34] Eric Liddell to Effie Hardie, February 19, 1926, Eric Liddell Centre, accessed September 21, 2017, http://www.ericliddell.org/about-us/eric-liddell/personal-correspondence-of-eric-liddell/.
CHAPTER 10
A SLOW BLOOM
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
1 Corinthians 13:4-6
Autumn 1928
Eric sat hunched over his classroom desk holding two pages of unfolded stationery—one in his right hand that he’d already read, the nearly read second page in his left.
The door to his classroom rattled open, and he looked up to see Cullen stroll in. “Thought you’d be gone by now,” he said by way of greeting.
Eric waved the paper in his right hand. “A letter from Annie,” he said. “I brought it to read during lunch but had other issues to deal with instead.”
Cullen smiled, his cheeks rising to the round spectacles resting on the bridge of his nose. “Ah, Annie.” He slid into one of the front row desks and crossed his legs. “What does our favorite nurse have to say for herself?”
Like Eric and Cullen, Annie Buchan—Nurse Annie to most—had come to China from Scotland to serve on the mission field. She’d arrived in Pei Tai Ho for a brief vacation shortly after Eric arrived back in China, and
