Life Out Of Death

Life Out Of Death

“The truth is, a kernel of wheat must be planted in the soil. Unless it dies it will be alone—a single seed. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives” (John 12:24).

OCTOBER 24, 1851, was the funeral of Archibald Alexander, the first professor of Princeton Theological Seminary. Under his leadership the school had become the leading seminary in the nation. The funeral was held in Princeton’s First Presbyterian Church. The funeral procession then passed in front of Nassau Hall, where the college was located, before following Witherspoon Street to the cemetery. Leading the procession were the 250 students and the professors of the college.

One of the college students there that day was Robert Hamill Nassau, a young man with dreams of becoming a great orator or a famous soldier. To his surprise, the funeral produced in him a great longing for spiritual peace and purpose in life. A few weeks later, alone in a field near Princeton, he committed his life to Jesus Christ.

Nassau had taken an odd route to Princeton. He took the freshman-year course at Lafayette College, where his father was a professor. Apparently he was not ready for college, because the next year he attended the high school at Lawrenceville, New Jersey, which was run by his mother’s brothers just down the road from Princeton. The following year he entered the College of New Jersey, as Princeton University was known at the time.

After graduating in 1854 at the age of nineteen, he taught for a year at Lawrenceville and then entered Princeton Theological Seminary. On Sundays, Nassau taught Sunday school at the town’s black Presbyterian church. His first summer he asked the Presbyterian Board of Publication for the most difficult field in America—being a colporteur, a person who travels around distributing Bibles and Christian literature—and was given Missouri and Kansas. He spent his second summer as a missionary to the boatmen working along the Pennsylvania Canal.

During the school year he joined the “Brotherhood,” a secret organization composed of students planning to go to the mission field. During Nassau’s seminary days the twelve active members kept the challenge of foreign missions before the rest of the student body.

Upon graduating from the seminary in 1859, Nassau asked the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions to send him to the most difficult field they had. They appointed him to their Corisco Mission in present-day Equatorial Guinea on the coast of West Africa. Nassau wrote in his journal, “Many of my acquaintances protested to me. And one said, ‘What a fool you are, Nassau, to go to Africa to die! Nassau added, “I quietly determined not to die.”

To prepare himself further, Nassau received his M.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1861. He was ordained in July of that year and in September was on Corisco Island off the coast of West Africa.

Nassau spent the next forty-five years in missionary service, mastering several African languages and establishing several mission stations. Somewhat conventional in his personal religious faith, he was anything but conventional in his missionary methodology. His well-loved Winchester rifle is referred to frequently in his journals, and he was a pioneer in using industrial training for evangelistic purposes. Most important, he helped translate the Old Testament and part of the New Testament into Benga, a dialect of Bantu.

Robert Nassau was a fruit of the life of Archibald Alexander. The death of Alexander was used by God to bring new life to Nassau, who in turn passed it on to hundreds in West Africa.

Reflection

We never know how we will affect those around us. The words shared at the funeral of Archibald Alexander were used by God to transform the life of one young man, whom God in turn used to transform the lives of many others. Remember the old familiar children’s song “This little light of mine. I’m going to let it shine”? Let’s do it.

Don’t hide your light under a basket! Instead, put it on a stand and let it shine for all.

Matthew 5:15