The British public had also heard of their plans to marry, and as news spread westward, most received the eyebrow-raising news with joy. Certainly, Eric’s family was among them. And after a brief vacation with them, Florence and Margaret continued on to Toronto where, oceans away from her love, Flo began the rigors of nursing school.
While Florence spent special days with Eric’s family, Eric received the extended benefit of that treatment from her family in Tientsin. While he was not one to openly gush about his feelings in front of friends, no one in the MacKenzie household minded him bubbling over while talking about Florence. And Eric didn’t mind the extra stories about his fiancée that only her young brothers could gleefully tell. While such delightful anecdotes never seemed to receive distribution in wide release, Eric playfully reminded Florence in their private letters.
Eric knew their fledgling flame of love needed fuel to burn and glow, but he also knew that too much yearning too soon would not be helpful for either of them. They would be separated not weeks or months but years before they joined together as man and wife. This time of long farewells had been the formula of his childhood and young adulthood. Time and again he had said good-bye to family members. In some ways, he’d grown accustomed to this type of lifestyle. But Florence had not experienced such, and Eric had never been separated from someone he planned an intimate life of marriage with.
As Mary Liddell had modeled for her sons all those years previously, Eric put his heart down on paper to Florence—under the letterhead of the Tientsin Anglo-Chinese College stationery, which bore the insignia “Onward and Upward”—as often as he could. In turn, Florence shared with Eric her excruciating schedule as a student nurse. Each week she spent nearly sixty hours between her clinical work and time in the classroom. Her day began each morning by five forty-five and went nearly nonstop until ten o’clock at night. More than anything, she kept her eyes on the calendar. With each day that passed, she and Eric drew closer to the day when they would see each other again, and closer still to the day when they would marry.
Life in China marched—as the letterhead stated—onward and upward.
Eric developed an appreciation of Dr. Lavington Hart’s vision for the TACC, and his concept of Christian education fit Eric’s ideals perfectly. Variant methods of missionary activity had been scrutinized to produce results. As Eric expressed in his letter to Effie Hardie, some argued against too much proselytizing and felt that Christians should simply live passively in their context, allowing God to do the work of bringing people to faith. This thinking fit well with the anti-Western sentiment of the Chinese. But Eric was an active missionary, which came out in how he thought, spoke, wrote, and lived. He constantly concerned himself with the salvation of others, especially his students. He designed daily readings for them, hoping to introduce them to walking in the Word and in prayer every single day.
Eric loved sharing his faith with the students in all facets of life, not simply in short bursts of contrived opportunity or random conversations. Devotions, classroom teaching, out-of-class study sessions, fellowship groups, sports activities, and private outings and gatherings fostered the growth of relationships. Eric especially appreciated the tutor model that Dr. Hart had established before his retirement. The current British missionaries—A. P. Cullen, Carl Longman, Gerald Luxon, and Eric Liddell—each served as a tutor-mentor for a particular class through that class’s duration at the college. Over the course of four years, Eric had gotten to know a good majority of his students quite well.
During the years Eric served as a teacher, one of his greatest delights was the occasional invitation to Dr. Hart’s office, where he would witness a handful of students who, toward the end of their time at the college, confessed their faith in Christ.
Eric expressed this passion to Miss Effie Hardie in a letter dated February 19, 1929:
This is the last day with my class, as they leave in June. I am hoping some of them will definitely come out for Christ before that time and would be glad for your prayers definitely for them. What a work lies before them if only they get to know a living personal every day Saviour. Their work can be far greater than ours out here in their own land.[43]
Often on Sunday afternoons Eric invited students over to his study for tea. He aimed at learning more about each of them—their families, their homes, their interests—as well as conveying to them that he was interested in being not only their teacher but also their friend. This created a doorway of opportunity to share what Jesus had done for him, was doing for him, and promised to do for him—and for everyone.
Eric did his best to encourage his students to examine the Bible daily and suggested that they meditate on it. He found, like a farmer tending his crops, that not all the sown seeds would sprout or grow at the same pace. Tending to each student on an individual basis proved to be an intricate challenge.
The passing days didn’t ease Eric’s missing his friend and colleague Eric Scarlett. They had enjoyed batting around evangelical thought and experience as it played out in the daily lives of their students. Eric recalled how, only the year before, they had dined with the Chinese students at lunchtime. Now, Eric continued the tradition alone,
