Faith
Studd's wealthy father Edward Studd became a Christian during a Moody-Sankey campaign in England, and a visiting preacher to the Studd household converted C.T. and his three brothers to the faith while they were students at Eton. According to his conversion narrative, the preacher asked him if he believed God's promises, and as Charles' answer was not convincing enough, the guest pressed the point. Charles later recalled the moment:
- "I got down on my knees and I did say 'thank you' to God. And right then and there joy and peace came into my soul. I knew then what it was to be 'born again,' and the Bible which had been so dry to me before, became everything."
Studd continued from Eton to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1883. In 1884 after his brother George was taken seriously ill Charles was confronted by the question, "What is all the fame and flattery worth ... when a man comes to face eternity?" He had to admit that since his conversion six years earlier he had been in "an unhappy backslidden state." As a result of the experience he said, "I know that cricket would not last, and honour would not last, and nothing in this world would last, but it was worthwhile living for the world to come."
Studd emphasised the life of faith, believing that God would provide for a Christian's needs. His father died while he was in China, and he gave away his inheritance of £29,000, specifying £5,000 to be used for the Moody Bible Institute, £5,000 for George Muller mission work and his orphans, £5,000 for George Holland's work with England's poor in Whitechapel, and £5,000 to Commissioner Booth Tucker for the Salvation Army in India.
Studd believed that God's purposes could be confirmed through providential coincidences, such as a sum of money being donated spontaneously at just the right moment. He encouraged Christians to take risks in planning missionary ventures, trusting in God to provide. His spirituality was intense, and he mostly read only the Bible. Another work that influenced him was The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life. Although he believed that God sometimes healed physical illnesses through prayer and the anointing of oil, he also accepted that some ailments were chronic, and in his last years he regularly took morphine, causing some controversy. Studd also believed in plain speaking and muscular Christianity, and his call for Christians to embrace a "Don't Care a Damn" (DCD) attitude to worldly things caused some scandal. He believed that missionary work was urgent, and that those who were unevangelised would be condemned to hell.
Studd wrote several books, including "The Chocolate Soldier" and "Christ's Etcetera's".
Read more about this topic: Charles Studd
Famous quotes containing the word faith:
“How strange a scene is this in which we are such shifting figures, pictures, shadows. The mystery of our existence—I have no faith in any attempted explanation of it. It is all a dark, unfathomed profound.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“And in spite of all the dishonour,
The broken standards, the broken lives,
The broken faith in one place or another,
here was something left that was more than the tales
Of old men on winter evenings.
Only the faith could have done what was good of it....”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Of the best rulers The people only know that they exist; The next best they love and praise The next they fear; And the next they revile. When they do not command the people’s faith, Some will lose faith in them, And then they resort to oaths! But of the best when their task is accomplished, their work done, The people all remark, “We have done it ourselves.””
—Lao-Tzu (6th century B.C.)