On April 12, the annual Easter baptismal service included nine students from Scarlett’s class. In a letter to friends, Eric wrote, “This Easter Service, and the seeing of all these students taking their allegiance to our Saviour, was like a ray of light penetrating the darkness of the days we had passed through.”[41]
In May, Mr. and Mrs. Hugh MacKenzie officially announced the engagement of their daughter to Mr. Eric Liddell. Shortly after, Florence and Eric said a painful good-bye as she and Margaret left China with another missionary family, heading first to Great Britain, where they would visit with Eric’s family in Scotland, and then on to Canada.
Eric could and would write to her, of course, and she to him. But it would be a good, long time before they saw each other again or held each other in their arms.
Another separation, which Eric had become all too familiar with . . . but this time—even more than all the times before—drove a deeper sense of distance into his heart.
[38] Ellen Caughey, Run to Glory: The Story of Eric Liddell (Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour, 2017), e-book.
[39] Eric Liddell, circular letter, 1928, Eric Liddell Centre, accessed September 19, 2017, http://www.ericliddell.org/about-us/eric-liddell/personal-correspondence-of-eric-liddell/.
[40] David McCasland, Eric Liddell: Pure Gold: A New Biography of the Olympic Champion Who Inspired Chariots of Fire (Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House, 2001), 149.
[41] Ibid.
CHAPTER 12
ONWARD AND UPWARD
Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away.
Song of Solomon 8:7, NIV
Autumn 1930
Eric and Rob, shirt sleeves cuffed to just under their elbows, stood in the Tientsin home of their parents, carefully wrapping and boxing the items their parents had written to them about.
Eric held a crystal figurine up to the sunshine bursting through a nearby window to watch the light play within the prisms. “Mother always fancied this,” he said, then looked at Rob, who raised his brow in agreement.
“I still can’t believe we’re doing this,” Rob noted. “When they left for Scotland, I felt sure they’d return soon enough.”
Eric nodded as he wrapped the figurine in a sheet of paper before nestling it in the packing box at his feet. Recent news that the LMS medical council had determined their father no longer physically able to return to China had come to them in an ink-stained letter. Along with the shock of it all had been the request that their oft-left sons sell their furnishings and send the rest to Scotland.
“Look at this,” Rob now said, holding up a tiny framed photo of baby Eric swathed in a white christening gown.
Eric crossed the room and took the photo from his brother, who punched him lightly. “Sweet thing that you were,” Rob teased.
Eric chuckled, then studied the colorized photo a final time—the blond of his hair, the blue of his eyes, the rose in his cheeks—before handing it back to Rob.
He couldn’t remember the day, of course, but he’d heard his mother and father tell the story so many times he often felt as though he could.
“Eric Henry Liddell,” his father had said as he poured water over his head, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” James had spoken the blessing over his newest son, splashing his forehead the appropriate three times and, in doing so, uniting Eric in the eternal grace of Christ. James had told Eric that as a missionary, he delighted in sharing the joys of baptism with anyone. “But baptizing my own children . . . I savored those opportunities.”
GLOBAL DEPRESSION CAME in more ways than one. Voices of opposition arose in Britain stating that the Chinese should teach themselves or that the college was too expensive and the missionaries should simply engage individuals on a one-on-one basis.
The opposition came from China as well. Earlier in the year Eric had taken a piece of London Missionary Society stationery from his father’s desk. After crossing out his father’s initials and replacing them with his own carefully penned E. H., Eric began a letter to Effie Hardie:
We have just had our half yearly exams and broken up for the Chinese New Year holidays. We are not meant to have a holiday this year as it is against the government regulations. Still they cannot stop an old custom like that so easily. An order went out saying that all the little shops were to stop selling the usual little new year gifts & of course that meant absolute ruin to them. Some of the little shop owners committed suicide so that a petition went from Tientsin asking the government to withdraw the regulation. Fortunately they did. . . . Since then it has been increasingly hard not because the students are definitely making trouble but just because of the absolute slackness & indifference. I see that a College at Chi Nan has had to close altogether because the Provincial leader is against Christianity. I suppose we are getting some of the feeling from there.[42]
If Effie Hardie could not sense the foreboding in Eric’s words then, she surely understood it later. He ended the letter with a note that he would be in Scotland by August.
Instead, by August, Eric had buried his friend Eric Scarlett, had notified the board that he would not return to Great Britain as planned, had seen Florence off at the train depot, and he and Rob—who lived and worked two hundred miles away in Siaochang—had packed up their parents’ home.
As for Florence, she and Margaret had traveled from China to Scotland, where they’d been welcomed by the family
