AN HEROIC BISHOP   THE LIFE-STORY OF FRENCH OF LAHORE     BY EUGENE STOCK             HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON   NEW YORK   TORONTO

Pictures

Chapter I. The Man
Chapter II. His First Pioneer Work: The Agra College
Chapter III. His Second Pioneer Work: The Frontier Mission
Chapter IV. At Home
Chapter V. His Third Pioneer Work: The Divinity College
Chapter VI. His Fourth Pioneer Work: The Lahore Bishopric
Chapter VII. His Position as a Churchman
Chapter VIII. Journeys and Visits, East and West
Chapter IX. Among the Eastern Churches
Chapter X. His Fifth Pioneer Work: Arabia
Chapter XI. The Home Call--and After

PREFACE

AMONG the many distinguished men who have been sent forth by the Church of England as Bishops into the mission-field, very few can be compared, for ripe scholarship, large-heartedness and breadth of view, entire sacrifice of self, and length of service, with Thomas Valpy French. Yet, for some unaccountable reason, few of the leading names are less well known. Writers and orators ring the changes of their eulogies on Heber and Cotton, Gray and Mackenzie, Selwyn and Patteson, Steere and Hannington--great men, all of them,--and entirely ignore French, worthy as he really is of a place among the foremost. The admirable biography of him by the Rev. H. A. Birks, in two substantial volumes, is long only because his career was so lengthened and of such varied interest, and because his letters, or rather the relatively small selection of them printed, are so delightful; and it is now out of print.

In the following pages an attempt is made to tell the story of French's life in briefer form, in the hope that in this way the name and the work of one of the noblest of modern missionaries may become more familiar to the Christian public, and that one more brilliant example of self-sacrificing devotion may be added to the many that have stirred the heart of the Church.

When French was appointed to the new Bishopric of Lahore, Dr. Westcott, then Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, wrote of the "joy and confident hope" such an appointment inspired; and when, after a ten years' episcopate, he was resigning his office in order to resume the life of a pioneer missionary, Archbishop Benson wrote to him, "Your very presence [at Lahore] has lifted, and daily lifts, the mission cause into its true position for the first time." Such testimonies justify the present attempt to make Thomas Valpy French better known as one of the Church's heroes.

E. S.

N.B.--Any profits accruing to the author will be devoted to missionary work at Agra or Lahore.

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