The Call to Service

Perhaps the most famous missionary family to India is the Scudder family, of whom Dr. John Scudder was the progenitor. Dr. Scudder’s call came in the following way: He was a successful physician in New York.

One night he was watching beside the bed of a dying child. He sat there until the child was dead and as he rose from his seat, his eyes were attracted to a little chart which had dots on it, each dot representing a doctor in India. The chart revealed in a ghastly way how few physicians there were among the three hundred and fifty millions in India and how many thousands were dying in that land of poverty and ignorance. Beneath the chart was the question, “Who will go to help?”

The question formed in his mind, “Why shouldn’t I respond?” Dr. Scudder went home and spoke to his wife about it. Since she was a lovely Christian woman, she responded in the words of Ruth, “Where thou goest I will go and where thou lodgest I will lodge, and thy God shall be my God.”

Next he spoke to his father about it. His father flew into a rage and said, “Why, John, have you lost your senses? Where did you get this nonsense?” The upshot of the angry interview was the statement of the son, “Well, father, I’m sorry to have offended you.

Let’s drop the subject.” But a week later the conviction was so strong within him that he ought to go to India to help the poor in the name of Jesus that he spoke to his father again and said, “Father, I’m going to India.”

His father replied, “Never mention that subject to me again,” and that ended the interview. Possibly a month had passed and this time the son was obliged to announce to his father his decision to go to India. Then the unexpected blow fell.

The father sternly declared, “The day you go to India I disown you as my son.” It was a heavy cross to carry, but the son went to India and faithfully wrote a letter every month to his father in New York.

Every letter, when it came, went into the wastebasket unopened. The father remained unreconciled. As might be expected, the mother rescued the letters from the wastebasket, sometimes reading them aloud. Dr.

Scudder did such a great work in India and was so much sought after on his furloughs in America that at long last his father awakened to the discovery that his son was living a great life and was reconciled. But think what finally happened from this Christlike consecration.

Nine children of that first Dr. John Scudder gave their lives to missionary service in India, and grandchildren still are giving. The Scudders who came from that one young man’s consecration have given more than 1,000 years of missionary service in India.