Padre Sahib

The young missionary, newly arrived in India, had hoped to bring the Gospel to some remote village. Instead, the Northern Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions sent him to Allahabad Christian College, 70 miles from Benares, and there he got his orders. "Higginbottom," said the principal, "you will have to teach economics." Higginbottom knew little of economics, but he did as he was told. He also did as he was told when the principal said: "The new missionary always has charge of the leper colony. Higginbottom, that is your job now." Thus, at the turn of the century, Sam Higginbottom began his life's work.

It was not all spent with lepers, but in one way or another, most of it has been spent teaching. In time, as founder of the Allahabad Agricultural Institute, Sam Higginbottom became famous. Maharajas called him in for advice; the Viceroy invited him to tea; both high- and low-caste Indians became his students. Last week, in a rambling autobiography--Sam Higginbottom, Farmer (Scribner; $3)--the 74-year-old missionary tells his story.

"Not for Sam." As a youth in Wales, Sam Higginbottom was sure that the last thing he wanted to be was a missionary ("Not for Sam Higginbottom--no, sir"). All the same, he read his Bible carefully and decided that "the attitude of Jesus was strict and uncompromising. He would not accept the position of being Lord of half my life--He wanted it all . . . I argued and tried to think of some way to get around this demand, but whichever way I turned, there He was . . . At long last I concluded that there would be no peace of mind for me unless I yielded to Him without reservation."

Sam's brother had become such a good preacher in America that his father decided to send Sam, too. He studied at Dwight L. Moody's Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, spent two years on a scholarship at Amherst, and earned his B.A. at Princeton. Finally, in 1903, he set sail for India. A year later, in Bombay, he married Ethelind Cody, a cousin of Buffalo Bill.

He was shocked by conditions he saw in India: the opium dens of Calcutta, the wandering lepers crying "Baksheesh," the filth and poverty of the villages. "I learned that one meal a day was all the majority of the people could count on . . . In those villages it took no effort to die."

In 1909, while in the U.S. on furlough, Sam Higginbottom decided that he could best help India after making a serious study of agriculture. Three years later, armed with a degree in agriculture from Ohio State University, he returned to teach the Indians how to farm.

"Send the Man Away." At first, his institute was only a single bungalow. "Our front verandah served as classroom and laboratory, our back verandah as dining room and dairy." But the news of what was done there soon began to spread. The big, smiling "Padre Sahib" had turned barren and eroded acres into rich meadows of wheat. He taught the villagers how to plow and irrigate their crops. He set up a department of agricultural chemistry, and a home economics course for women.

Some people objected to his progress. When the Maharaja of Gwalior asked his help, Hindu priests protested. "We hear," cried one of them, "that this foreigner will spread bone manure in the fields. It will defile the land. The goddess will be very angry and calamities will follow. Please send the man away . . ." Some of Higginbottom's own colleagues feared that the other missionaries might become too "Higginbottomised." "Why," said one, "if I could have had for evangelistic work the money that Higginbottom has wasted, think of how many I could have reached."

Nevertheless, the institute grew. Today it owns 600 acres, has 250 students, and so many applicants that it can take only one out of every seven. Retired now and back in the U.S., Sam Higginbottom is sure of one thing: "Whatever has been accomplished has been possible because God gave me the sense to commit my life to Him to use as He saw fit . . . How Ethelind and I would rejoice if we could give ourselves to India and her beloved people for another 40-year life."

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