God Made Them Great

Estimating greatness not by the usual standards of judgment, John Tallach retells the story of five lives: a German missionary in England who gave his life to the orphans of Bristol’s slums; a Canadian girl who served the Lisu of China and died of cancer in 1957, recommending ‘a peerless Master’; a rough Cornishman who came to ‘say, sing and dance glory, glory’, and left an unforgettable testimony to cheerful Christianity; a Yale undergraduate who lived to ‘arrest the flow of Indian souls rushing on to a lost eternity’; and, finally, a Scot who wandered the earth before he came to love Christ and the poor of Dundee more than he loved all else, and who died saving the life of a boy who fell into the city harbour.

These Christians are unrecorded in the world’s annals of fame, but if the true principle of living Christianity is simple dependence upon God, and child-like faith, then their lives are eminent among those ‘of whom the world is not worthy’. Living in different countries and at different times, they each became ‘like little children’, and God made them great.

While writing with youth particularly in view, the interest of his presentation will hold the attention of all ages.