The call, p.10
The Call, page 10
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OF WHAT happened in the next few days we have four accounts from David. What is fascinating in these documents is not that they confirm each other, but just the opposite: their inconsistencies, their contradictions. David even seems to have been confused as to what person was the actual agent of his conversion, and he attaches the identical image of a sunbeam-induced “halo” to two quite different men.
The first piece is “My Pledge,” the story David wrote down at the time for no eyes but his own (unless, in some dim way, considering his ambition, also for posterity’s). The second is a letter to his parents written a few days later. The third is a “letter of testimony” he sent during his third year in China to members of the Syracuse Christian Association, who were in large part the financial sponsors of his mission. And the fourth is the passage in “Search,” many years later, about this experience.
Parts of the documents follow:
I
MY PLEDGE
…I was resistant. The speaker that afternoon was an old Moody-style Bible thumper, Bishop Sutphen of Kentucky. No theology; no hellfire. The one great sin was to hold back from Jesus. The practiced vibrato of the voice and the orotund southern accents were all wrong for me. I was, or thought I was, dead to his appeal. “The moment will come when Jesus will touch your eyelids with his fingertips, and the scales will melt away and you will see, yes, see the good hope that there is for humanity, see the open door and the father’s house and the welcome of the prodigal, and the feasting, and see standing over against you the dear son with his thorn-crowned head and nail-pierced hands, and see the rejoicing of the sinners” and so on and so on and so on. It was like that, all of it, tired old pulpit phrases strung together. I went home deeply dejected….
The next afternoon was quite different. We had an electrifying spectacle. The Reverend Dr. Azariah Dudley Morton of Boston was speaking. “You must become God-intoxicated! God yearns for that sort of man today, men inebriated with the Holy Ghost, men that may be called moon-crazed sometimes because of the divine enthusiasm of their zeal and earnestness.” At that moment a young man I had never seen before, I do not believe he was a Syracuse student, jumped out into the aisle and shouted, “The trumpet blows for you, sir!” He had a revolver in his hand, which he raised and aimed at the minister. Dr. Morton quickly stepped down off the platform and approached the muzzle of the gun, undoing his gown, his cutaway, his shirt, and even his B.V.D.s to the bare skin. “Here, here, here, here,” he said, “is my heart. Take it if you wish. Take it by storm, take it in love. It beats for you, my young friend. The Lord have mercy on you, and on me. We are bound together in danger and in love.” The young man first looked overcome with astonishment, then dropped to his knees as the gun clattered on the floor. There were tears on his cheeks. Dr. Morton put his hands on the man’s head and began to pray….
I was a bit late for the 4 o’c evangelistic meeting on Wednesday. The talk had already begun. The speaker was one of the handsomest men I have ever seen, the famous All-Scotland rugby scrum half named Jock Terrum. His unruly auburn hair was struck by a beam of the sun through one of the tall windows, and I thought it a kind of halo. His voice was modest and low. He was not one to “work the sheep up to bleating.” I was no sooner seated than I heard him speak three quiet sentences which changed my life. “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth. For many are called, but few are chosen.”
The soft tones of these words seemed to pierce my chest. It was almost not their meaning that entered into me but only their sound waves. My heart began to race, but I was not afraid. I felt a delicious coolness of my hands and feet, as if a sweet liquor were running through them. My vision was unusually clear and vivid. Relief! Relief! Relief! All my ‘heaviness’ was gone, my soreness, my throat was tight with joy. I cannot remember a single further word Jock Terrum spoke. After the meeting Cook tried to accost me, but I brushed him aside and literally ran to my room.
I struggled all night. What had happened to me? Such joy could not be real. I went out walking as soon as it was light. A freezing rain had fallen in the night but now the sky was clear, and as the sun rose the snow glistened under a crust of ice and all the twigs of the trees were made of rainbow-shot glass. I cannot describe my ecstasy. Shallow of heart, I mistrusted it. I cut all my classes. At half past two I cranked up my courage and knocked on the door of the room where Terrum was staying. He sat at a table, quietly reading his Bible. I begged him to tell me what to make of these transports of happiness that he—or Jesus—had let loose in me. He was calm. Do not listen to anyone’s dogma, he said. Study the New Testament. Seek a personal intimacy with Christ, who will give you all the guidance you need….
The revival has ticked on: preachings, individuals starting for Christ, Bible classes, a fund drive for foreign missions, social evenings—I soar above them all on wings of gladness. A number of us pray every night with Jock Terrum….
I have just come from Jock, and I wish now in solemn black and white on the page to make this pledge:
‘This first day of March, 1903, I, David Treadup, do of my own free will give myself, all that I am and have and will be, entirely unreservedly and unqualifiedly, to him, whom having not seen I love, in whom, though now I see him not, I believe.’
II
Syracuse University,
10 March 1903
Loved Ones:
I rejoice within, because I have the most momentous news to give you.
Inspired, as you know, by my teacher Absolom Carter, I first came to Syracuse with an overwhelming desire to “make my mark” in the large arenas of finance or of the legal profession or of academe, but I was not easy in my mind about such worldly hopes, and I was dashed down, you remember, into a wandering and defeatist time.
Beginning in New Bedford and especially since my return to college I have had an ever growing urge to give what talent and vigor I have to the service of the Lamb of God. For weeks I fought off this magnetic attraction. But like a lodestone it pulled and pulled at my heavy iron heart. I was logy. I was numb. Until at last I decided it was time to cut lines and drift toward my desire, even though I could not clearly perceive what that desire really was.
Shortly after the autumn term began I picked up again with a friend from freshman year, Forman Cook by name, who was, so to speak, going my way. He, too, was restless in spirit. We went deep with each other, frankly bared our hearts. We read some sermons aloud to each other, and also the Bible. But I felt on dead center, nothing moved. So then I went straight to God in prayer. Night after night, I played infinite variations upon a prayer of Benjamin Franklin’s that particularly appealed to me:
‘O powerful goodness! bountiful Father! merciful Guide! Increase in me that wisdom which discovers my truest interests; strengthen my resolution to perform what that wisdom dictates.’
The New Year came and went; God seemed to have turned a deaf ear to me. The month of March arrived; no messages. Last Thursday dawned; I strained to hear, but not one word came to me, and I began to waver. After dinner that noon I went in low spirits to my room to study with Cook.
I must tell you a word about this friend. He is a senior now, of course, but he draws no social lines. He is a fine athlete—a halfback on the varsity. He is one of the handsomest men I have ever seen. As he sat in my room his unruly auburn hair was struck by a beam of light from my window and I thought it a kind of halo. His voice is modest and low. He has the rare faculty of being able both to talk and to listen.
Although I needed all my wits to master the next day’s lesson in logic, I found myself looping back with Cook to what had been nagging at us both for so long. We never even cracked our books. We tested each other. We went at each other like bearcats, to tell truth. I had never been keyed up to such a pitch of ‘waiting.’ It was like putting a fishing line down near the bottom and then watching the bob-float for the slightest tremble of a nibble. Nothing. Finally we resorted to silence. We sat there like dumb animals. Then suddenly we went down on our knees, and I remember crying out loud: “O merciful father! Give me some sign!” And he did. I heard his voice ‘within’ Cook’s soft tones. He, God crouching within Forman Cook, spoke to me, and told me that I must work for the rest of my life not for my interests but in his vineyard.
O dear Mother and Father, what a weight dropped off me then! Everything that had oppressed me for so long was lifted from my shoulders. My vigor, so long lethargic and dim, has returned. My fight ahead is to wash my heart and shore up my imperfections. But I am on a straight course. I know what I am and will be.
Your devoted son,
David
III
Kuling, Central China,
10 April 1908
Dear Association Members:
I have received your letter telling me of your intention to hold a revival at Syracuse and asking for my testimony as to when and how and in what manner the missionary sponsored by Syracuse University first “saw the light,” and I am most glad to respond, for it was precisely in a revival at Syracuse that this great joy fell on me. After something more than two years of active work here in close contact with heathenism I am humbly aware of how influences and forces acting through human lives radiate from such revivals to the hearths and school desks of the whole world. I am glad that such a revival destined me to be here and to have a part in God’s plan for China.
In the late winter of 1902-1903 a group of us organized a fortnight of revival meetings on the campus. Although I was among the originators and movers of the revival I had not yet verily been reborn, I had not yet given myself over to Christ. I had had a Christian upraising, of course, and I ‘thought’ I was a Christian, but a great surprise was in wait for me. The fact is that I was in despair. I could not hide from myself my thoroughgoing sinfulness. Oh my sins were “minor,” for I was not a murderer, arsonist, rapist—except I think in the most secret places of my heart. Outwardly my sins were: Lust. A foul mouth. Lying. Ambition. Envy. Desecration of the Sabbath. A reckless and destructive playfulness. A wish to bend others to my will.
Consciousness of these sins had brought me very low in mind. For months I had been trying, trying, trying to open my heart to Jesus, trying by tears, by prayer, by confession. I had failed and thought I was doomed to a lifetime of failure.
Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. I was harvested on the third day of the revival.
You all know of the famous incident of the second day, Dr. Morton’s saving of the soul of his would-be assassin. The power of his faith shook me to the core. It was wonder at the bullet-proof vest that Jesus wrapped over Dr. Morton’s heart which kept me awake all that night. My own heart cried out to me: “I am bare! I am exposed! I am craven! I want such a shield!”
The speaker on the third day was the internationally known rugby player from Glasgow University, Jock Terrum. I wish I could describe the beauty, inner and outer, of this youth. He was truly one of God’s fighting angels. Without wishing to blaspheme, I would say that Jesus must have had just such a sweet hurt look about his mouth. I sneaked in late to the meeting, and I had no sooner been seated than I heard a chord struck on my heartstrings by that young athlete’s grace and soft-spoken modesty when he uttered three quiet sentences which like three strokes of a bell sent shivers through my body:
“Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth. For many are called, but few are chosen.”
At that moment the miracle happened. I ‘knew.’ I had surrendered myself. I saw a blinding light. My heart pounded with joy. I was shriven. The tons of my sins were off-loaded from my aching bones. And from that moment to this I have been verily on top of the world….
In the following days I was never parted from Jock Terrum’s side. After his farewell talk on the Wednesday week after MY DAY OF JOY, a few of us held a small meeting of silent prayer, to express our thanks. Do you know the stillness when you drift in a canoe on a glassy calm lake, the only sound the water dripping off the end of the paddle? Though our tongues did not move, our souls were on pitch and in harmony—a noiseless choir of praise. But deeply sad, too. It was very hard to say good-bye to Mr. Terrum. He seemed, after days, an old friend. Each of us clasped him to his breast and gave him a loving go-with-God. I thought my heart might burst, he was so dear to me. He had saved me….
Faithfully yours,
David Treadup
IV
Excerpts from “Search” (1943)
My readings in Tientsin and in the internment camp in the last two years have brought me to realize that my conversion was no miracle but was rather a perfectly natural process of growing up, condensed, in my case, into a single sudden and rather violent episode. I have talked often with my missionary colleagues about our conversions; some were sudden, others were gradual. I have wondered: What made mine sudden?
First of all, be it said that my conversion was no illusion. It was real. That is to say, a fundamental and long-lasting change took place in me. My motor had been running badly, and from that moment on it ran well. I would say there were actual physical changes: a billion neural synapses seemed suddenly to close and remain closed, so that a sustained neurological and I would say glandular stability ensued. I doubt whether that is sound physiology but let me say this: Everything in my body “fell into place.”
For the old phrase “I found God” read “I found my adult self.” In other words, the conversion was, in my case, a precipitate realization of my inner being. In a hundred heartbeats I grew up.
As to the suddenness, I speculate about the following elements:
NEED. I had been unhappy for a very long time. I was puzzled by my misery and fearful that it would never end. For months I had been trying by every means to pull myself up from the depths of despondency. I had just about given up on myself. My soul was a vacuum. I suppose it was natural that when its seal was broken on that day, what would rush in would be the kind of love I had been brought up to believe to be both necessary and genuine, without ever having really felt it: Christian love.
HYSTERIA. Crowd psychology and suggestion were surely forces. Those audiences of two hundred or so young men and women in the gymnasium had humming in them—in their silent listening—the tension of an audience in a theater strung up to the nervous limit by dramatic suspense.
HYPNOTISM. The more I have thought about it, the more I am convinced that the Scottish rugby player whose words touched off the palpitation of my heart had a hypnotic power he may not even have known he had. He built the hysteria and then controlled it. The vibrations of his soft voice, his repetitions, everything in threes, above all his strange eyes ranging restlessly above the heads of the crowd—he could have made a cobra dance. And there was the essential element of hypnotic inducement: a concentration on a single focus. In this case, not a staring iris nor a mark on a ceiling, but a faint cameo in the mind’s eye of the figure of Jesus Christ. I had grown up from Cradle Roll days to take that image for granted as part of my life—so that at that moment it could serve, like any other spot concentrated upon, as a hypnotic focal point.
FEAR. The pistol episode had brought all our latent fears to the surface in two distilled forms: Fear of death and fear of loss of control. This was a different order of fear from the normal animal fear one feels at real physical danger, or at the sight, let us say, of blood, the sort of fear which, as I have noted earlier in these pages, always seemed to have within it, for me, an expectation of a wonderful surprise. No, this was the elemental fear of the mortality or morbidity of our most precious possession, our thinking brain. This brain-fear was where hypnotism had its perfect opening to bring hysteria to heel. Our revival followed the controlled style of Charles G. Finney’s revivals. There were to be no shrieks, no wild outbursts, no fallings and faintings, no frenzies of Bacchantes, howling of dervishes, dancing of Hassids—yet where quiet young hearts like mine were set to racing, and where dim young eyes saw sudden brightness, there was the requisite moment of overwhelming brain-fear and its sudden removal. The absence of frenzies lent great intensity to the fear and to the relief at its abeyance. Sudden faith-producing relief, because the death was not to be of the body and soul, not to be of the mind, but was to be of this brain-fear itself. That was to be the triumph and wonder of my conversion.
TRANSITION
DAVID felt the passionate happiness of the Christian saints. He took long walks in the countryside around Syracuse with a sensation of soaring. When he rowed with the Navy he dipped his oar in clouds. Everything had fallen into place. He began to succeed wherever he had thought he was failing. Study became easy. Answers came to mind. His body thrived. The personal magnetism for both sexes which once had astonished him he now took for granted. Rapidly he gained influence, power, social poise.
His ambition was still fierce, and power was much on his mind, but like everything else these old yearnings were subsumed under a new imperative in his changed state of mind. “O that I may burn brightly for him!” “My soul cries out for a larger life. May it be a controlled life of love and service.” “I want to be an ‘all round man,’ keeping the spiritual foremost.” “It is a blessed thing to have influence with others.” “I greatly desire not to be selfish in praying for the bestowment of favors.” “Am desiring and praying for power with men and with God.” “Full of longing to do God’s will. I am praying for the power of the Holy Ghost in my life.”
Clashing forces must still have been lodged in his psyche, but in his mind the light side in every instance triumphed over the dark. To his renewed perception he was brilliant, good, strong, confident, industrious, happy, and—most remarkable—both pure yet devastatingly attractive to women. He had joined the White Cross Society, pledged to “social cleanliness,” which meant something more extreme than mere chastity; yet with a brand new candor he came right out with this in his diary: “My sexual nature is particularly strong these days.” Indeed, an altogether new honesty now emerged to deal with the dark sides of the inner oppositions. He wrote sentences he never could have earlier: “Copen’s head swelling very rapidly.” “Crawford attempted to show off. He gives me a pain.”
