In Memoriam

John Hansford Rowe

Died of pneumonia, in Ni on Oka, Gotemba, August 12th, I929

(After twenty-three years of consecrated labor in this mission field.)

The year, 1929, goes down in the history of our Mission shadowed by a great sorrow. "God

moves is a mysterious way, his wonders to perform", and every event is meaningful could we but

read the meaning in it. There are those of us. however, who, although more than half a year

has passed since it occurred, fail even yet to clearly see what God meant for us to see in the death

of John R,owe. Loss is what it chiefly signifies to us, I am afraid, loss of friend and co-worker,

dearly loved, deeply revered, and valued above others, loss of the finest type of Christian leader-

ship, unselfish, trustworthy, Christlike. llut surely, surely, God means for us to find some other

significance in an ennt of such far-reaching consequences!

In the summer of 1929, the gathering of Southern Baptist missionaries for the annual Mission

meeting presented a pitiful enough aspect at the opening of the conference, so few were they in

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So quiet was his going, so unheralded was the final journey from that summer retreat in the

mountains to a grave in a hillside cemetery in Yokohama, that only a few people, comparatively

speaking, marked his passing. I3ut for those of us to whom it was given to know the measure of

his soul, it is not difficult to imagine the splendor of the reception accorded him by the Great

King!

As we write these words we are aware of the nearness of Easter. At the thought, triumphant

words wing ·their way into one's mind, words so pregnant with mystery and wonder that one's

fingers tremble in writing them down: "He that liveth and believeth-He that liveth and believeth

on me-shall never die''.

In the lives of Virginia, Harper, Melvin, John and Mary Elizabeth, his five children; in the

lives of hundreds of Japanese girls who will go out from the school which (God grant!) will

always hear the impress of His character; in churches from whose pulpits, on innumerable

occasions, his voice rang out in glad pro::lamation of the saving gospel ;-in these, and in other

ways, so many ways, will he live and speak through the years.

I3ut we miss him in our small Mission family! Our throats are choked and our eyes are blind

with tears as we recall the sweetness of his smile, the warmth of his hand-clasp, the brotherliness he

always radiated! We lay upon the hearts of our friends in America the burden of our loneliness

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number. Yet, before that conference closed, in less than a week, a mortal illness had laid its

destroying touch on one of our fittest and best, and our slender ranks were further depleted.

His g·oing from it would have weakend to an alarming degree the strongest group; in the case of

our little Mission it almost meant ruin. Is it any wonder that we are asking, why? What is "the

hand\Yridng on the wall" trying to reveal to us? We must, somehow, know the answer to that

question, or else the taking of one of the choicest of "the flock" will be proved a fruitless

sacrifice and vain.

Perhaps we can find the answer in a thoughtful consideration of the burdens he laid down at

his death, his own immediate responsibilities: Principalship of a growing school; charge of a great

evangelistic field, great in area, in population, in diffir.ulties, in promise; chairmanship of the

Mission; and all of the innumerable tasks and duties that devolve upon able and faithful members

of uwlerm;~nnecl Mission bodies! Small wonder that he should have selected as his text for the open-

ing clevotion;~l meeting of the conference, the words of One who better than anyone else understood

the limitations of our strength-" Come ye apart and rest a while". Small wonder that a fellow-

missionary and seminary classmate should call to mind the athlete he was in the early years, the

great strong body to be too soon used up in unstinted service. Small wonder that a Japanese

colleegue should have referred to him as one who had gone to a "martyr's death", adding that he

had "walked to that death by a path more difficult than many that were more spectacular".

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and our need. We clare you· to forget, if you can, the three words last heard from the lips of

John Rowe-they were these "The Evangelistic Work".

Doubtless he would say, as do the dead in another cause,

"To you from falling hands we throw the torch,

Be yours to hold it high--"

and hold it high we must for none of us clare

"Break with those who die! "

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Florence Walne

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