The following message was given at Emmanuel Baptist Church, Coconut Creek, Florida. Good morning. It's a very great pleasure to be with you over this weekend. I want to speak to you this morning about these seven men on the screen. Before I introduce them to you, does anyone know who they are? I've got a special title. Okay. It's the 4th of February, 1885. We're in London. It's the evening and it's pouring rain. But in spite of the weather, the Exeter Hall on the Strand, one of the largest halls in London, is packed. So much so that, as one report puts it, it appeared to be a living mass of human beings. Over 3,000 in the hall itself, 500 in the overflow, hundreds more turned away. They are there for a missionary meeting. Years later, someone would write, no such missionary meeting had ever been known as the gathering at Exeter Hall on February 4th, 1885. On the platform were 40 undergraduates of the University of Cambridge, all of them planning to be missionaries. It was a time, says one writer, when the rising tide of a spiritual revival was quickening the Christian world, with the result that a great impetus was given to foreign mission enterprise. It was no very unusual sight to see young men and women leaving home and loved ones, renouncing much that life holds dear in order to go and preach Christ among the heathen. And here were 40 young men who were planning to do just that. Amazing as it is, however, to think about 40 students from one university, all prospective missionaries, this meeting in the Exeter Hall was not about them. It was about seven others, seven young men who were slightly older than these undergraduates who were heading off the very next day to China to serve for the China Inland Mission. They had been dubbed the Cambridge Seven. And this great meeting at Exeter Hall had been convened to say farewell to them, and these are the seven. Now, unfortunately, I don't have my little key with me to tell me exactly which ones are which. I do know, however, that the back row from the left, that is C.T. Montague Beauchamp and Stanley Smith, and I'll be speaking about them in a little. One man in is DE Host, I think that is William Castles, and there are two brothers, the Polehill brothers, the Cambridge These were the seven young men, all in their early to mid-twenties, on whom all eyes that evening were set. And one after another they came forward and spoke about how they came to Christ and their call to missionary service in China. A sight to stir the blood," said one of the periodicals of the day, and a striking testimony to the power of the uplifted Christ to draw to Himself not the weak, the emotional, the illiterate only, but all that is noblest in strength and finest in culture. Now more than anything else, the story of the Cambridge Seven is the story of them going to China. The principal source for this address is a little book by J.C. Pollock called The Cambridge Seven. It's 112 pages long, and it's not until we reach page 106 that the Seven actually arrive in China. The story of what they did there as missionaries is compressed into an epilogue of seven pages. Now that's not to underplay the significance of their work in China, and in C.T. Studd's case, in Africa as well. These men were all lifelong missionaries, and each did a great work for Christ. There are biographies of three of them, Dixon Host, Charlie Studd, and William Castles, in which their subsequent work is traced out at length. But it was their going that caused the sensation. Some of these men were household names on account of their athletic ability and achievements. All of them were well-off, well-educated, and of good social position. It was an age in which these things taken together counted for much, and there were seven of them. seven young men with the world at their feet and all of them together heading for China. It deeply impacted many lives and would lead in turn to others giving themselves to missionary service. Well, in a moment or two, I want to introduce two of the seven, Dixon Host and Charlie Studd, and I'll say a little bit about a third, Stanley Smith. But before we do that, we need to take a brief trip to China and glance at this country to which these seven young men were heading and at the mission with which they were going to be serving. Less than 20 years earlier, in 1866, the China Inland Mission was founded by a Yorkshireman by the name of Hudson Taylor. Great. By the 1880s, it was still the only Protestant mission to have penetrated China's interior. A booklet by Hudson Taylor called China, Its Spiritual Needs and Claims gives some sobering statistics. At the time of its publication, it was Taylor's estimate that if the people of China could be, and I quote, marshaled in rank and file, allowing one yard between man and man, they would encircle the globe more than 10 times at its equator. If they were to march past in single file, more than 23 and a half years would elapse before the last individual had passed by. Contrast that with the number of converts of all the Protestant missions in China together, estimated at a mere 3,000. The whole of them would pass by in less than an hour and a half. China's needs. 400 millions of souls having no hope and without God in the world. And on at least one of these young men, D.E. Host, that booklet made a profound impression. But China was not only a desperately needy place, it was also a very difficult place for missionaries to serve, and Hudson Taylor made no secret of that. When Dixon Host had his first interview with him, Taylor was very frank with him about the dangers and difficulties of missionary work in China. There was, for example, the isolation on account of being separated, often by many weeks' journey, from fellow workers. There were the privations, hard living conditions, and lack of privacy. there were the suspicions with which foreigners were regarded by Chinese people and the humiliations to which missionaries had to be prepared to submit. And not the least difficult thing to endure, said Taylor, was the contempt with which fellow countrymen, that is British people, regarded the Englishman who identified with the Chinese by living among them as one of themselves. This picture is of the seven in Chinese dress. That was mission policy. To overcome prejudice, Chinese clothes had to be worn. And sadly that, together with the acceptance of Chinese living conditions, made the missionaries objects of contempt to their spiritually unsympathetic fellow countrymen. And you had to be prepared for that. No consular protection could be given. No fixed stipend was offered. No funds would be solicited. The dangers and difficulties, said Hudson Taylor, will be neither few nor small. Over against that, his strong conviction was, and I quote, with Jesus for our leader, we may safely follow on. depend upon it, and some of you may be familiar with these words, depend upon it, Taylor would say, God's work done in God's way will never lack supporters. And that was proved again and again in the mission history over years of steady growth. One last thing before we return to Britain and the China, the Cambridge Seven. Prayer. Pollock's book, The Cambridge Seven, begins with a very moving story of Harold Schofield. Like The Cambridge Seven, he was a young man. He was a brilliant doctor, and he had come out to China at the beginning of the 1880s to do medical missionary work with the China Inland Mission. He was deeply burdened for China. It pained him. that so few were ready to leave the comfort and security of Britain to bring the gospel to China. And of those who had come and had penetrated inland, scarcely one was a university man trained in mind and body for leadership. Schofield knew from his own experience how greatly such men were needed. And so he prayed. It became the great burden of his heart that God would waken the church to China's claims, that He would raise up men to preach His Word above all, says Pollock, that He would touch the universities and call men of talent and ability and consecrate them to His work in China. Sadly and mysteriously, Harold Schofield would not live to see the answer, the amazing answer, to his prayer in the calling and the sending of the Cambridge Seven. But on the day of his death, in July 1883, at mission headquarters in London, an application was received from one of the Seven. Dixon host offering himself as a candidate for mission work in China. Well, let's come back to the Cambridge Seven. I said that I would introduce you to two of them and touch briefly on a third. It would take too long and it would become too confusing if I were to introduce you at this point to all seven, but I will say a little at the end about the other four. Well, let's begin with Dixon Horses in the front row, one in from the left. This was a young man whose application for missionary service was received by the CIM on the very day that Dr. Harold Schofield died in China. Dixon Hose was born on the 23rd of July, 1861, and he lived till 1946. His connection with China lasted for 60 years. And for 35 of these years, from 1900 to 1935, he served as Hudson Taylor's successor as General Director of the China Inland Mission. There's an excellent biography of D.E. Host by Phyllis Thompson called D.E. Host, A Prince with God. Strangely enough, though, the seven young men who went out in 1885 to China were known as the Cambridge Seven. Not all of them had studied at Cambridge. Six of them did. One didn't, and that was Dixon Host. But he did have a connection with Cambridge. His brother, William, studied at Cambridge and was a friend to some of the other six. More importantly, William had a key role to play in Dixon's conversion. The boys had grown up in a Christian home, but Christianity was not for Dixon. He came from a military family, and at the age of 18, he was given a commission in his father's regiment. the Royal Artillery as a lieutenant. And for three years, he led a completely irreligious life, entirely indifferent, to use his own words, to the claims of God. By 1882, he's now 21, things are beginning to change. He has come to feel a growing dissatisfaction with his life, while at the same time, resistant still to Christ. He knew full well, says this biographer, what was involved in becoming a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. It meant a complete and unreserved surrender of the whole life. It meant placing himself absolutely at the disposal of God, and he wasn't having it. He felt that the cost was greater than he was prepared to pay. And then he heard an American evangelist by the name of D.L. Moody preach. Moody had been to Cambridge, and there, over the course of a one week's mission, an extraordinary impact had been made upon the student body. And now he had come to Brighton, where Dixon was staying with his parents. Well, his mother wanted him to come and hear this American evangelist, but he wouldn't. But his brother William succeeded where his mother failed, and with momentous consequences. Here is how Dixon recalled it in later years. As Mr. Moody with intense earnestness and directness preached the solemn truths concerning God's judgment of the impenitent and ungodly, and seriously warned his hearers to flee from the wrath to come, a deep sense of my sinful and perilous state laid hold of my soul with great power. The next two weeks were agony as he wrestled with the cost of it. And then came the final night of the mission. As Moody began to preach, says Pollock, a sense of the sinfulness of his pettily selfish life grew until it was overwhelming. He became convinced that if he prevaricated further, he was lost. He knew that his need here and in eternity outweighed the cost of decision. And when Murray's address was over and the whole congregation knelt in prayer, Host took his heart in his hands, threw doubts aside, and gave himself, guilty sinner, unreservedly to Christ. It appears to have been through another of the Cambridge Seven, Montague Beauchamp, who's in the middle of the back row. Through contact with him, the DE host first had his attention drawn to the China Inland Mission. From the time of his conversion, he wanted to resign his commission and give himself to missionary work. His father was opposed, not because he wasn't sympathetic, but because he wanted his son to be sure that he really knew what he was doing. The China Inland Mission itself held him at arm's length for a while for the same reason, but eventually, His father's commission was given, he resigned his commission, and eventually, too, the mission accepted him as a candidate. And the upshot of it was that amongst those seven young men on the platform of Exeter Hall on the 4th of February, 1885, Dixon Host, destined to serve the China Inland Mission for 35 years as its general director and to exercise an extraordinary influence by his prayerfulness and wisdom. Let me introduce you now to a second of the seven, Charlie Studd, or C.T. Studd, as he's better known. He's on the far left of the back row. And here, as with D.E. Hose, there is a Moody connection, though in this case, not with C.T. directly, but through Moody's influence on his father, Edward Studd. Edward Studd had made his fortune in India as a tea planter and had retired to England. His great passion was horse racing until one night, by a friend, he was taken to hear D.L. Moody. Apparently, he never took his eyes off Moody until he had finished his address, and then he said, I will come and hear this man again. He has just told me everything I have ever done. And he did, until he was soundly converted. The change in Edward Studd was very striking. A guest on one occasion said to his coachman that he had heard that Mr. Studd had become religious or something. Well, sir, we don't know about that, but all I can say is that though there's the same skin, there's a new man inside. Edward set to work at once on his three oldest sons. Charlie later recalled everyone in the house had a dog's life of it until they were converted. I was not altogether pleased with him. He used to come into my room at night and ask if I was converted. After a time, I used to sham sleep when I saw the door open. And in the day, I crept round the other side of the house when I saw him coming. While in the mercy of God, Charlie's time came too, and through the witness of one of his father's friends, he turned to Christ. This guest, this is a great little anecdote, this guest actually spoke individually that day to all three of Edward Studd's oldest boys, and each, without the knowledge of the other, that day put his trust in Christ. Well, C.T. Studd was to become the leading cricketer of his day and a household name and a hero to boys on account of it. His Cambridge career has been described as one long blaze of cricketing glory. He afterwards regretted that he had allowed cricket to become an idol, but he never regretted having played the game. By applying himself to it, since his son-in-law and biographer, he learned lessons of courage, self-denial, and endurance, which after his life had been fully consecrated to Christ, were used in his service. The man who went all out to be an expert cricket player, and he did go all out, he set himself to get to the top, the same man later went all out to glorify his savior and extend his kingdom. That, however, was not until his restoration from six years of backsliding, and again D.L. Moody has a key part to play in it. The near death of a beloved brother awakened Charlie to the worthlessness of fame and flattery and wealth. And then, hearing Moody, the Lord met me again and restored to me the joy of his salvation. Still further, and what was better than all, he set me to work for him. I found that I had something infinitely better than cricket. I wanted to win souls for the Lord. Not only so, but the Lord gave him a willingness to go wherever he would be sent. One night his friend Stanley Smith, who's on the right side of the back row, came and took him to the China Inland Mission headquarters in London. John McCarthy, one of the founder members of the CIM, was about to return to China, and this was his farewell. He spoke about his call nearly 20 years before, and the vastness of the spiritual needs of China, thousands of souls perishing every day and night without even the knowledge of the Lord Jesus. There and then, a sense of the divine leading to give himself to China was implanted in C.T.' 's heart. And the upshot of it was that among the seven on that memorable night in Exeter Hall, there was C.T.' 's stud. Outstanding cricketer, the heir of a vast fortune, setting off the next day for missionary service in China. Many said he was making a huge mistake. Think about the influence you could have over the young men of England. But he had heard the call of God, and there was no looking back. He was to remain in China for only nine years, returning home in 1894 on account of ill health. But his life to the end was a life of missionary service, and eventually, some of you may know this, he spent many years in Africa. A word or two about Stanley Smith, who's on the far right of the back row. Along with C.T. Studd, Stanley Smith had outstanding athletic ability, though in his case, not in cricketing, but in rowing. And once again, the name of D.L. Moody enters into the picture. It was during a moody mission in 1874 that Stanley Smith, then only a boy of 13, had heard the gospel. Writing later, he says, I was by grace enabled to receive Christ. Well, as the years progressed, there was a weakening in his commitment to the Savior. We've seen that that's how it was with C.T. Studd. So was Stanley Smith. It was the same with another of the Cambridge Seven, Montague Beauchamp. In 1880, there was a decided change for the better. But still, for a number of years, his spiritual life swung backwards and forwards. In 1882, for example, we find him confessing, I'm afraid my soul has suffered a good deal during the training for the boat race. That is the great annual boat race between the universities of Cambridge and Oxford. But the Lord was unquestioningly or unquestionably working in his heart and preparing him for future ministry. He was known throughout Cambridge as a Christian, and both his prowess at the oar and the charm of his manner gave him many opportunities for sharing the gospel with his fellow students. After his graduation, he gave himself with all his heart to evangelism. His health had been fragile in the past. Now, he could travel long distances with apparently inexhaustible energy, taking every opportunity. If he had someone alone with him to speak about Christ. Pollock tells us that his prayers and interests had long followed the China Inland Mission. On the morning of 4th of January, 1884, 13 months before the Cambridge Seven set sail for China, he called on Hudson Taylor. Stayed till 8 p.m., he wrote later in his diary. Had tea there and a nice long talk about China. I hope to labor for God there soon. And the upshot of it was that among these seven young men on the platform of Exeter Hall on the 4th of February, 1885, there was this outstanding athlete, this prominent oarsman, Stanley Smith. Toward the end of the previous year, 1884, just a couple of months before they set sail, C.T. Studd and Stanley Smith undertook a series of remarkable student missions. The prime mover in this was an evangelist by the name of Reginald Radcliffe, who was a close friend of Hudson Taylor. He had noted Studd and Smith's influence on students and was especially keen for them to visit Scotland. While they did so, Late November, early December, 1884, speaking in Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh. Of the Edinburgh visit, his host would later report, I have been praying for years that God would incline the hearts of my boys to become ministers of the gospel, and he has given me more than I asked. Two of them have since that visit decided to become missionaries. In Edinburgh, Where it was feared that there might be trouble from rowdy students, the opposite was the case. After the benediction, there was a stampede of students to the platform, but it wasn't to cause trouble. They were crowding round stud and smiths, as one report, to hear more about China and to hear more about Christ. Deep earnestness written on the faces of many. It was so evidently the work of the Holy Spirit. The two were back in Edinburgh in January 85, just weeks before leaving for China, and this time there was an even greater work of the Spirit. Three or four hundred young men staying to an after-meeting. At 10.30 in the evening, the floor still covered with men, anxiously inquiring, what must I do to be saved? And as they headed for London, stopping at various cities in the north of England, Liverpool, Manchester and others, it was the same. Pollock writes that young men of all classes flocked to hear them. In the early 1880s, wealth and position could command a respect untinged with bitterness, while the testimony of the greatest all-round cricketer in England, supported by a prominent oarsman, could impress where other men's words fell flat. And so it went on until this climax on the 4th of February, 1885 in the Exeter Hall in London. Now, it will give you some idea of just how widespread and deep missionary zeal was at that time. If I tell you what Handley Moule was having to do, Handley Moule, later the saintly Bishop of Durham, at that time Principal of Ridley Hall in Cambridge. He was finding it, and I quote, constantly my duty at Ridley Hall to press urgently on men the claims of the home field. So almost universal was the longing to serve the Lord in the ends of the un-evangelized world. Imagine it. Principal of Ridley Hall, these young men, training for gospel ministry, and he has to press on them the claims of the home field. because there was such a burden to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. Well, the going of the Cambridge Seven was both an effect of that widespread zeal and, as you would expect, a contributing factor. And if you ask, as we ought, in what did this widespread missionary zeal originate, The principal part of the answer lies in the revival that attended the preaching of D.L. Moody, and especially that remarkable one-week student mission in the University of Cambridge in 1882. So the seven left for China, heading off the very next day, 5th of February, 1885. And on their voyage to China, they were just as active evangelistically as they were before they left. But passing on from that, I need to spend the last few moments thinking about what happened after they arrived, about the work that they went on to do, and then some lessons that perhaps we can take from this. I've said a little about the subsequent labors of D.E. Host and C.T. Studd. Host going on to become the General Director of the C.I.M. Stud eventually going to Africa where he died in 1931. Over a thousand natives seeing him to his grave. What about the others? Stanley Smith, there he is, top row, right hand side, spent his life in North China. He became a fine linguist and as fluent a preacher in Chinese as in English. He died the same year as C.T. Studd, 1931. Montague Beauchamp, who is the figure in the middle of the back row, he remained in China till 1900 when, along with many other missionaries, he was evacuated at the Boxer Rebellion. He returned in 1902 and remained till 1911, visiting periodically afterwards. His son was a missionary in China as well, and Montague actually died at his son's station in October 1939. He is described as the itinerant member of the seven. He loved the hard evangelistic journeys. With Hudson Taylor, he once went, in his own words, about 1,000 miles in intense heat, walking through market towns and villages, living in Chinese inns, and preaching the gospel to crowds day by day. A word or two about the two brothers among the seven. And I think they are the two, the bottom here, moving in. Arthur and Cecil Polehill, or Polehill-Turner, as they were known earlier. Arthur was ordained in China in 1888 and he remained till 1928 when he returned to Great Britain at the age of 66. He died in 1935. Like the others, he gave himself to evangelism. His brother Cecil was deeply burdened for Tibet and spent many years with his wife at various stations on the Tibetan border. At the time of the Boxer, rising in 1900, he was invalided home and forbidden to return permanently. But he did, however, make no fewer than seven prolonged missionary visits, dying in 1938 in his 80th year. His prayer, the Lord make us to be inextinguishable firebrands so that no matter how cold the reception of our message, the fire may burn on and on. And then finally, William Castles, who I believe is the figure on the far left here at the front. He was an ordained minister before he left for China. And in 1895, he was consecrated at the age of 36, Bishop of West China. He remained in China apart from infrequent furloughs until his death in 1925. He was the first of the seven to die. Well, what can I say in closing? First of all, in the Cambridge Seven, we are face-to-face with the challenge to live consecrated lives. Lives, that is, that are wholly given up. without reserve to the King of kings and Lord of lords. It's one of the things that comes through so clearly in the narrative, the strength of the devotion of these young men to Jesus Christ. Now, that may not take you young men and women here to foreign mission fields, though it may. But it is our duty. Our great Savior deserves no less. And it is certainly the pathway to fruitful Christian service. Now unquestionably there is a cost for these seven young men, all the cost of leaving their homelands and setting sail for China far away and all of the things that they suffered and endured there. But now listen to this. This is November 1884, a week-long mission is being held in Cambridge on behalf of the China Inland Mission and other parts of the foreign field. C.T. Studd and Stanley Smith were there, and Pollock says, as the men listened to these spiritual millionaires, as one undergraduate described them, the very content of the word sacrifice seemed reversed. And each man wondered whether he could afford the cost, not of utter devotion and worldly loss, but the cost of compromise and the loss of spiritual power and joy. There is a cost involved in wholehearted, unreserved commitment to Jesus Christ, but there's a greater cost if we refrain from that, all that we lose if we will not give Christ our all. Well, moving on, we see the impact that an evangelist can have. Pray for evangelists. An evangelist was very much at the heart of this spiritual movement. We see the blessed influence of revival. Again, this flourishing of missionary zeal came through the impact of revival in student bodies and wider afield. We see, too, and I'm having to be rapid, how our lives can tell on others for good. Time constraints have meant that I have not been able to take up the subject of the friendships of these seven young men with one another, and how their consecration to Christ and zeal for the gospel and prayerfulness for one another impacted Well, I love it, but that's no small part of the story of the Cambridge Seven, and it's especially a lesson for the younger people here, younger Christians, as you go off to college or university, or as you're returning. Be out and out for Jesus Christ. There is no telling the fellow students whom you may impact, and through them, the impact potentially you may have on the world. That's the story of the Cambridge Seven. And lastly, the last lesson, the inestimable importance of prayer. I mentioned the prayers of Dr. Harold Schofield, this young medical missionary in China who died before the Cambridge Seven arrived. God answered his prayer. But that's not the whole of it. You read the history of the Cambridge Seven themselves and you will find other references to prayer, praying parents, others who prayed for these young men. Jesus instructs us to pray the Lord of the harvest, to send out laborers into his harvest field. The story of the Cambridge Seven encourages us to see how wonderfully God can answer such prayer. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for the Cambridge Seven. We thank you for their calling. We thank you for their consecration to Christ. We thank you for what they were enabled to do. We thank you for the inspiration of their example right to our day. Lord, work in our hearts to bless the young people especially who are here this morning. Let them be on fire for Jesus Christ. and ask what you would have them to do. And we pray that through them, you will do great things. Hear our prayers as in fellowship with your people all around the world, we cry to you, the Lord of the harvest, to send out laborers into your harvest field. Amen. We hope you were edified by this message. For additional sermons, as well as information on giving to the ministry of Emmanuel Baptist Church and on our current building project, you can visit us online at ebcfl.org. That's ebcfl.org.