A traveller in China two years ago remarked that whenever Henry. Hodgkin's name was mentioned by anyone, "a deep and satisfying peacefulness" "seemed to fall upon the company, a sort of radiance. Tt is a remarkable tribute to a man who only spent 42 years in this land, four of them in ihe remoteness (or it then was) of West China.
The story of his life as revealed in this interesting memoir is the story of a big man passing across a large and crowded stage. Born into a Quaker family of standing in the orth of England (1877) he went to JLeighton Park School, Reading. and King's College, Cambridge, qualifying in medicine at St. Thomas' Hospital. But he surrendered a medical career to the claims of a life for which his special gifts fitted him. The four ryears'in Chengtu were spent in work among students and in helping to build the West China Union University (1905-1910). Hodgkin was then talied back to London to become seretary of the Friends' Foreign Mis—sionary Association, administrative work which involved travels to Madagascar and India, with several visits to the United States. But the pull of China and the urge to give expression to his gift for speaking and lecturing brought him back once more this country in 1921, and for six years (from 923-1829) he was on the staff of the National Christian Council here, making Shanghai his headquarters but travelling to all parts of China, Visits to Japan made him well Known to many' Christin leaders in that land. In 1990 he took up work in America, at Pendle Hill, which afforded him the opportunity of mak ing an experiment in graduate education, But less than two years passed before he developed the disease to which he finally succumbed in Dublin, in 1033, at the age of 58.
Channels for the Church On the world stage where he cut so distinguished and distinguishable a JSgure, Henry Hodgkin played many parts.' To those whose mental plc-{ura of a missionary is derived from cartoons or the smoking-room of a Hiner, this book will come as a revelation. He saw that the funda mental message of the Church can and must be expressed not only by reaching and platform addresses, in which he himself excelled, - but through the medium of medicine and education. More than that, the Christian message must be expressed fu terms of men's relationships with one another, in the economic order and in commerce and industry. Hodgkin's work in China at that point was the work of a pioneer. There are still too few of us who see these Issues clearer, though the conference at Oxford last July (on Church, Stale and Community) will bring them to our attention once more.
An International Friend But it was in the relations between men of different nations that his influence has perhaps been most fa reaching, not only la the Far East but in the West. At the memorial service held in Shanghai in May, 1933, men and women of many nations' bore witness to his work and the love they. had for him. "A group of Japanese Were present and claimed him as their friend. He was a delegate at one of the earlier conferences of the insti" tute of Pacific Relations and addressed the Royal Institute of International Affairs of which he was a keen member. But the greatest monument his work is found in the Fellow~ ship of Reconciliation. The account of his share in the foundation of this movement during the days of the Great War, a movement which has obtained a large membership Americ, "Britain and European countries as well as in the Far East, will be read with peculiar interest.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.