Stories of Christian Martyrs: James Chalmers

He loved the sea, this rebellious Scottish lad. The fishing village
of Ardrishaig was his home, and the fishermen his friends. The
sea was wild when the wind blew strong, like young Chalmers
himself. He breathed the sea air and wondered what lay beyond the rolling waves. Later, when God’s call to missionary service touched his
heart, he spent many perilous days on the sea, searching out peoples who
had never heard God’s story.

Chalmers was eighteen when he converted to Christ in an evangelistic meeting led by two preachers from Ireland. Chalmers had come with
friends to break up the meeting, to mock the zealots, to make sport of
the timid who sought their peace in religion. Perhaps the heavy rain that
night dampened the youths’ recklessness, but Chalmers listened and
believed. The message was from Revelation 22:17: “The Spirit and the
Bride say, ‘Come.’” It was an invitation to make his heart’s home in God;
Chalmers gladly accepted. “I was thirsty, and I came,” he said later.
A few years later he received pastoral training and a commission by
the London Missionary Society to serve in the Pacific Islands. Chalmers
and his wife, Jane Hercus, were standing at water’s edge in New Guinea.
Suddenly a mob of painted warriors surrounded them, demanding gifts
and weapons.

Chalmers knew the danger, for he had come to a part of the world
where killing was honored, where warriors bit off the noses of their
victims as a sign of triumph, and where eating human flesh was common.
Were those dangers not enough, the waters were infested with snakes
and crocodiles, and the entire area filled with malaria and fevers.
“Give us tomahawks, knives, and beads or we kill you, your wife,
your teachers and their wives,” the leader said, ready to strike with his
stone club.

“You may kill us,” Chalmers replied, “but we never give presents to
persons threatening us. Remember we have only come to do you good.”
The mob retreated, threatening to return at dawn’s light. Missionaries came to New Guinea with daily prayers for survival and converts.
But on this particular evening, waiting for dawn, survival was the small
group’s chief concern.

Inside their quarters, Chalmers asked the group, “What shall we do?
Men stay, women escape? The boat is too small for all of us.” Jane
replied, “We have come here to preach the Gospel. We will stay together.”
The teachers’ wives agreed, “We live together or die together.” They
prayed, and gradually fell asleep. Chalmers wrote that night in his journal: “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ We came at thy bidding to
this land to point these wretched people to the same cleansing, refreshing,
healing Fountain. Protect us, that we may fulfill the mission.” And God
did protect them.

For ten years Chalmers and Jane helped build the church on
Rarotonga, training pastors and teachers. They constantly reached
beyond the established churches and schools to uncover new peoples
not yet reached.

In the fall of 1877, they moved to New Guinea, where they found
villages filled with disease, sorcery, filth, treachery, and weapons. Slowly,
patiently, they told the Gospel story and made God’s invitation plain.
Often they slept as guests in a village’s dubu—the main lodge and trophy
room of human skulls. Most of the people they met had never seen white
skin. Chalmers would introduce himself by taking off his black boots,
revealing then his white arms and chest to the laughter of some and the
shrieks of others. His name there was Tamate, the closest sound the
natives could make to Chalmers. Wherever Tamate went, the threat of
the warrior with the stone club was never far away.

Jane grew sick in 1878 and sought recovery in Australia. Five months
later she died. Chalmers, who had remained in New Guinea, was devastated. He wrote in the journal: “Oh to dwell at His cross and to abound in blessed sympathy with His great work! I want the heathen for Christ!”

In 1886, Chalmers returned to England to tell his stories of twenty
years. There he married Sarah Harrison, who would also die of fever
later in the Pacific after remarkable and courageous service. And Chalmers turned down a government appointment that would have guaranteed his safety as a missionary-diplomat. His position: “Gospel and commerce, yes. But remember this: it must be the gospel first.”

Chalmers returned to New Guinea in the fall of 1887. He was never
content to manage a mission station; he wanted new contacts, far up the
unmapped rivers, down the inland trails. On one such journey a year
after Sarah’s death, warriors armed for piracy and murder surrounded
his boat near shore. Chalmers decided, as was his custom, to demand a
meeting with the local chief as the best way to escape the mob. His young
colleague, Oliver Tomkins, insisted on accompanying the sixty-year-old
veteran.

Together they approached the village dubu, hoping for a council and
anticipating a shared meal. Once inside, however, the stone clubs fell,
the strangers’ heads were severed and their bodies cooked, mixed with
sago, and eaten. The day was April 8, 1901, at the dawn of what was
then called the “Christian Century.”

Chalmers, two heroic wives, and many co-workers and their families
gave their lives to bring the Spirit and Bride’s invitation to Pacific Island
peoples. “Let him that is athirst come,” read the words in Chalmers’
Bible, “and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”

This story is an excerpt from Foxe: Voices of the Martyrs. You can get your own copy free with any donation to The Voice of the Martyrs.