Account of the Mission Tour of the Rev G.C. Grubb

A collection was made at the 1899 Keswick Convention which paid for a Special Mission tour by the Rev. G.C. Grubb and three companions who travelled to Sri Lanka, South India, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The purpose of the tour was to visit and encourage the missionaries serving in those countries.

My thanks to Redcliffe College for providing a copy of this public domain book for digitisation.

Edward Candish Millard [1862-1900], What God Hath Wrought. An Account of the Mission Tour of the Rev G.C. Grubb, M.A. (1889-1890). Chiefly From the Diary Kept by E.C. Millard, One of His Companions in Ceylon, South India, Australia, New Zealand, Cape Colony. London: E. Marlborough & Co., [1891]. Hbk. pp.382. [Click to visit the download page for this title]

Contents

• Preface

1. London to Colombo
2. Colombo anbd Districts
3. Cotta
4. Negombo and District
5. Kandy
6. Hatton and Nuwara Eliya
7. Dimbula—Maskeliya—Bogawantalawa
8. Kurunegala
9. To Jaffna
10. Pallai—Jungle—Anaradhapura—Jungle—Talawa—Dampool—Colomobo
11. Balampitimodara—Bategama—Galle—Kaltura—Colombo
12. Colombo Mission
13. Tuticorin—Palamcottah
14. Menganapuram
15. Colombo to Australia
16. Auckland—Wellington—Nelson
17. Nelson—Takaka—Wakapuaka—Bellgrove—Longford—Westport
18. Westport-—Blenheim—Napier
19. Journey Homje—Napier to Keswick
20. Journey to Cape of Good Hope
21. Cape Town toWynberg
22. Kalk Bay—Mowbray
23. Cathedral Mission—Wellington—Port Elizabeth
24. Robertson—Cape Town
25. The Journey Home

• Appendix

Preface

I gladly accede to the request of the writer of these journals that I should furnish a few prefatory lines to accompany them. They are a remarkable record of “modern miracles,” – miracles of grace in the hearts of men. I hope they may be read by many Christian people who may not find themselves entirely in sympathy with the tone and language adopted or with all the sentiments expressed, but who will thankfully recognise the hand of the Lord in the journeys taken and the ·work done. I do not envy the man who can read unmoved the chapter which narrates the incidents of the voyage from Colombo to Melbourne, with the jockeys and the theatrical troupe on board. The glimpses of the mission fields of Ceylon and Tinnevelly also are of extreme interest.

The circumstances which led to the Special Mission described in these pages are worthy of note. At the Keswick Convention of 1888, Foreign Missions were for the first time officially recognised in the programme. At the great missionary meeting on the Saturday, a slip of paper was sent up to the chairman, offering £10 towards sending out a “Keswick missionary.” No sooner was this announced than money and promises poured in from all parts of the tent, and within half an hour some hundreds of pounds were contributed. The original donor’s name did not transpire, and it was not until the Convention of the following year that he became known, and then, I believe, only to two persons, – the late Mr. Bowker and myself. He is now a C.M.S. missionary in the foreign field. Meanwhile the leaders of the Convention had resolved to use the money, and any that might be given at the subsequent yearly gatherings, in the first place, to sending evangelists to professing Christians rather than to the heathen, and thus by God’s grace to infuse fresh life into existing Missions rather than to found new ones, – this being regarded as a peculiarly appropriate work to be done under the auspices of the Keswick Convention. The first Special Mission undertaken in accordance with this design was that of the Rev. G. C. Grubb and Messrs. Campbell, Millard, and Richardson, to Ceylon, South India and New Zealand, which is the subject of the greater part of these pages.

Pages v-vi