Undemonstrative Love

Undemonstrative Love

Some men are afraid to show their feelings.

ALEXANDER DUFF was born in Scotland in 1806, the son of a godly Gaelic-speaking farmer. He was raised on a spiritual diet of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and the Gaelic poetry of Dugald Buchanan.

Buchanan’s best known poem, “The Day of Judgment,” so alarmed young Alexander that he had a terrifying dream of humanity’s being summoned before God’s judgment seat. He watched terror stricken as God’s sentence was pronounced on one person after another, wondering what God’s pronouncement on him would be. He awoke trembling, but it was out of that experience that he came to an assurance of his acceptance by God through the redeeming blood of Christ.

While at St. Andrews University, Duff became interested in foreign missions and accepted the call to be the Church of Scotland’s first missionary to India.

Duff had given no thought to marriage during his university years or even after accepting his missionary call. After hearing Duff explain this, an elderly Christian gentleman replied: “Well . . . my advice to you is, be quietly on the look-out; and if, in God’s providence, you make the acquaintance of one of the daughters of Zion, traversing, like yourself, the wilderness of this world, her face set thitherward, get into friendly converse with her. If you find that in mind, in heart, in temper and disposition, you congenialise, and if God puts it into her heart to be willing to forsake father and mother and cast in her lot with you, regard it as a token from the God of providence that you should use the proper means to secure her Christian society.”

Somehow Duff grasped the meaning of this advice and on July 9, 1827, married Anne Scott Drysdale. They “congenialised” for nearly fifty years.

Duff was ordained in August 1829 and sailed with Anne for Calcutta in October. During the voyage they survived two shipwrecks, including one in which he lost his personal library—a tremendous loss for a missionary educator.

Upon arriving, Duff set about to reach the upper castes by means of higher education. His plan was to teach Western arts and sciences along with the Bible to the elite of India, and within a few months he opened his school with five students. News of the school spread like wildfire, and by the end of the week three hundred more had applied. In the school’s first decade attendance averaged eight hundred. Duff’s College, as it was known, became the largest mission school in India.

Duff was more successful educationally than evangelistically. Only thirty-three conversions were recorded among his students. Yet almost all of the converts became influential Christians in India. He also was a great missionary statesman and orator, who influenced hundreds to volunteer for missionary work and tens of thousands to contribute to their support.

Duff was a sober, humorless Presbyterian, whose achievements were made through great sacrifices by his wife and family. Yet a missionary never had a more dedicated wife than Anne. She was the family’s source of affection and joy.

We get a glimpse into the family dynamics when we read their youngest son’s description of being left behind in England as a teenager when his parents were returning to India: “I . . . well remember how my mother’s and my own heart were well nigh breaking, and how at London Bridge my father possessed himself of the morning’s Times and left us to cry our hearts out in sorrow.”

Anne Duff died in England after a brief illness in 1865. With uncharacteristic warmth, Duff wrote his son in India of his mother’s death: “The most loving, lovable, and beloved of wives and mothers is now one of the bright spirits that shines in white array in the realms above.”

Reflection

Alexander Duff was blessed with a wife who complemented his own emotional shortcomings. But had he been able to more freely express his feelings to his wife and children, family life may have been more rewarding for all of them. Do you ever have trouble showing your love? God wants us to communicate our love for one another. He sent his Son as the ultimate demonstration of his love for us.

Let us stop just saying we love each other; let us really show it by our actions.

1 John 3:18