Many Beautiful Things

Today my attention was drawn to a film that features the story of Victorian missionary, Lilias Trotter.

SPIRITUAL COUNSELLOR

In her early twenties, Lilias joined the volunteer force that counselled inquiriers during the London campaign meetings of American evangelist D. L. Moody.

She was an exceptionally gifted artist. Art critic John Ruskin told her that if she would devote herself to her art, "she would be the greatest living painter and do things that would be immortal."

Although Lilias found the prospect of a life in art attractive, in May 1879 she decided that she could not give herself, "to painting and continue still to 'seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness'." She became active in the YWCA, served as secretary, engaged in teaching and fearlessly canvassed the streets alone at night near Victoria Station for prostitutes who might be persuaded to train for an employable skill or to simply spend a night in a hostel.

MISSIONARY TO ALGERIA

Trotter felt an impulse toward missionary work in non-Christian lands, even telling one of her friends that, "whenever she prayed, the words 'North Africa' sounded in her soul as though a voice were calling her."

In May 1887, when a missionary to North Africa asked at a religious meeting if God was calling anyone to North Africa, Trotter rose and said, "He is calling me." On 14 July, her thirty-fourth birthday, she applied as a candidate to the North African Mission, and although her application was rejected because she was unable to pass its health examination, the Mission decided to allow her to "work in harmony" with the society without being an official member. Nine months later, in March 1888, Trotter and two other financially independent women – including Blanche Haworth – arrived in Algiers.

Trotter recalled, "Three of us stood there, looking at our battle-field, none of us fit to pass a doctor for any society, not knowing a soul in the place, or a sentence of Arabic or a clue for beginning work on untouched ground; we only knew we had to come. Truly if God needed weakness, He had it!"

Lilias spent 40 years in Algeria. Beginning the work was incredibly difficult, but by 1920, there were thirty full-time workers and fifteen preaching stations. Trotter became the reluctant, but unchallenged, leader of the group, which in 1907 was named the Algiers Mission Band.

Trotter was a "prodigious writer," filling a journal page nearly every day for forty years and illustrating the world around her with sketches and watercolors. From these efforts came several books of somewhat flowery and mystical prose, including Parables of the Cross and Parables of the Christ-life. Though she considered orthodox Islam "dry as the dune, hard as the gravel," she responded to the "sincere hunger for things of the spirit" in the Sufi mystics and wrote for them The Way of the Sevenfold Secret as a devotional guide based on the seven "I am" statements found in the Gospel of John.

Confined to bed during her last years, Trotter devoted herself to prayer, writing, and sketching while continuing to manage the affairs of the Algiers Mission Band as best she could. As her body failed, her mind remained clear, even at the end asking prayer for the strength to dictate a letter to Amy Carmichael of India, with whom she had regular correspondence. While attendants sang a hymn, she exclaimed, "A chariot and six horses."

"You are seeing beautiful things," someone asked. "Yes," she said, "many, many beautiful things."

DOCUMENTARY FILM

In 2015, Oxvision Films released a feature-length documentary, Many Beautiful Things: The Life and Vision of Lilias Trotter, starring Michelle Dockery as the voice of Lilias Trotter and John Rhys-Davies as the voice of her mentor John Ruskin.