05 Joseph Plumb Cochran

Chapter 5 JOSEPH PLUMB COCHRAN

THERE is a tradition to the effect that, immediately after the death of Christ, the disciple Thomas went to India, following the course prepared for him by the three Wise Men. It is said that one of the stopping-places on his long journey was by the lake of Urumia, in Persia, where many people were converted to Christianity. Whether the story be truth or legend, it is certain that the group of Eastern Christians known as Nestorians claim the Apostle Thomas as their ecclesiastical ancestor. But it appears equally certain that, had he visited the Nestorians by Lake Urumia, in the nineteenth century, discovering their separation of religion from morals and their gross superstition, he would have renounced his own spiritual children, or at least have called them to repentance. In 1831, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions appointed two of its missionaries at Constantinople to visit the Nestorians, who numbered perhaps 100,000, and who lived in Persia and in the Turkish mountains. Many of the Nestorians were wild and rough; others, crushed by the warlike Kurds, were docile and desperately poor. The visitors, representing the Christians of the New World, were graciously received, with their message of peace, love, and sympathy. These first missionaries found the Nestorians illiterate. Indeed, there were no books in the spoken language, and only the ecclesiastics and one woman could be found who were able to read the ancient literature. They were poor and they were persecuted by followers of other creeds. Such were many of the people in whose midst Joseph Plumb Cochran was born, in 1855; his father and mother, Rev. and Mrs. Joseph G. Cochran, having reached Persia as missionaries in 1848.

Young Joseph spent most of his early life at Seir, the mountain home of his parents, six miles from the city of Urumia, in Persia. In its sweetness and purity that home was a veritable oasis in a moral desert, where life was wretched in many respects, and often unspeakably cruel in clashes between Kurd and Persian, Moslem and Christian; and it was always overshadowed by the unscrupulous and bloody Turk just beyond the western borders. In such a home, so close always to personal danger, young Joseph began to consider the point toward which he should work in after life.

All the conditions under which the lad was reared helped to produce a robust character. In his own Persian home and in mission circles he saw men and women who made devotion to God and service to humanity their highest ideals, scorning the dangers to which they were consequently exposed. At fifteen years of age Joseph Cochran came to America with his mother and one sister. His other sister had spent a year in Buffalo, recovering from a severe accident. Joseph at once began attending school, and by the time he was nineteen he had completed the high school course in Buffalo, N. Y.

There was nothing startling in the nature of the young man’s call to service in Persia. From his personal knowledge of missionary life, he regarded it as a privilege rather than a sacrifice, and as a path to happiness as well as to usefulness. When word came announcing the death of his father, it seemed only natural that Joseph, still at school, should qualify to follow in his father’s footsteps. As quickly as possible he took courses at Yale, at the Buffalo Medical College, and at Bellevue Medical College in New York, securing his degree from the last-named institution. He took extra courses in pharmacy and dentistry, and specialized on treatment of the eye. He spent a year, also, as house physician in the Kings County Hospital. With this complete equipment, he was appointed, in 1878, as missionary to Persia by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. This was shortly after his marriage to Miss Katharine Hale, of Minneapolis, to whom a large measure of his usefulness and success was due. He met her two years before, just after her graduation from Vassar College. They sailed for Persia, making the journey by way of England, where they visited places famous for beauty or for associations; then they crossed to Rotterdam, going up the " castled Rhine " to Cologne, whose great cathedral they wished to see. It was a brief glimpse they had of it, however, as they were obliged to hasten on to Odessa, and thence, by water, to a seaport named Poti, on the eastern edge of the Black Sea. From Poti they journeyed comfortably, by rail, to Tiflis.

Here the young wife began to realize that she was indeed in a foreign land, for an entire month was consumed in traveling the three hundred miles from Tiflis to Urumia.

Mrs. Cochran was blessed with a delightful sense of humor, for some of the discomforts of this journey are thus whimsically translated in a letter:

"Of all the methods of travel I have tried in the course of my existence that in a takht-i-ravan is a trifle the most insecure. But it is stylish, no doubt. I am considered a person of considerable importance by all whom we meet, for only great people travel in this way."

"I have a white mule in front and a black mule behind. A mounted charvador leads the procession, and another follows on foot, to keep the back mule in motion by continual beatings and yellings. I’m sorry for that back mule! Poor beast, he has to walk by faith and not by sight. All he can see in front is blank boards, and when he comes to a muddy ditch, his imagination leads him to think it is an endless sea of mire, and I don’t blame him for now and then refusing to set his foot in it, though it does make it rather unpleasant for the other mule and me."

Two weeks after their arrival in Urumia his sister, who was living there, wrote:

’ Poor Joe does not have time to breathe in the city. His dispensary is thronged. It seems as if all Urumia had become sick just as he came."

He plunged at once into work and into hard work. Although not twenty-five years old, Dr. Cochran, with his knowledge of the language of the Nestorians, the Mohammedans, and of the Turks, found himself in close relations with all classes, including high government officials, army officers, and the leaders of various religions, while multitudes of the sick came to him daily. His wife gives us this vivid little picture of Dr. Cochran’s work:

" Joe is so beset with people that he has had to lock his doors to-day while he prepared for the mail. Somehow, I never realized before how the sick thronged and crowded upon Christ during his whole life wherever he went. People do just so in this country. A few Sabbaths ago, Joe went to a village some distance from here. He had not taken off his boots before the sick began to come to the house where he was. Before and after the service it was just so. The next morning he went to another village, and as they heard of his coming, by the time he arrived the sick were all out in the streets, on beds, on donkeys, and on people’s backs. Was it not like the times of Christ? "

Although the governor and other high officials turned to Dr. Cochran for treatment, and he was decorated by the Shah, he still gave the greater part of his time and strength to humbler persons. On one occasion, five Kurds made a perilous journey of twenty-five days and reached the hospital with two dollars in money. They had heard that the doctor received persons of all nationalities and creeds, and that the poor were quite as welcome as the rich.

" The poor looked up to Dr. Cochran with a great and grateful awe," a colleague said of him, "I chanced to see, in the compound one day, a poor ragged man reverently lifting and kissing the skirt of the doctor’s frock coat, in which he had been calling upon the governor, while the doctor, oblivious of the incident, was talking to another man."

Nearly all of those who were received in the hospital were of the very poorest. On one occasion, nine leprous Nestorians, ragged and blind, traveled fifteen days to reach the hospital. They had passed through a dangerous country, principally by night, sleeping among the rocks in the daytime. Only one of the nine could be helped, and the doctor was obliged sorrowfully to tell the others that he was powerless to aid them. In a single year Dr. Cochran himself would give about 10,000 treatments, while his native assistants would give several thousand more. There would always be people waiting for him the first thing in the morning," a friend stated, " so that he did not dare show himself before breakfast or there was no knowing when he could get back." The first hospital in all Persia was simple and inexpensive, and appropriations for its maintenance were small; but within its walls the skilled medical missionary performed such remarkable operations that its fame spread even across to Turkey and into Kurdistan. Here he trained native physicians and sent them out to heal the sick.

" Persia is a brown and dreary land." This statement is true for the land in general; but wherever water touches the soil, the wilderness is made to blossom. In this it resembles the brown deserts of our own Western country. One of the most beautiful of the oases in Persia is Urumia, the home of Zoroaster. The city of Urumia is in the center of the fertile plain bearing that name; but even Urumia has suffered at times from shortage of food, while less fertile regions frequently have felt the sharp pangs of famine. At such times, starving people moved in mobs and seized food wherever it could be found, in bazaars or storehouses. A child might be sold for wheat. Beggars cried piteously and people died on the streets. In many instances, and in many lands, the missionary has been the leader, in days of famine, in calling for relief and in distributing food. On Dr. Cochran sometimes rested the chief responsibility for organizing relief forces in Urumia. In Eastern lands, where so little thought is given by the masses to hygiene and sanitation, plagues of the most deadly character frequently claim thousands of victims. Often medical missionaries are the only persons in large areas with any knowledge of measures to be adopted for the prevention, control, or cure of the plagues. One such occasion, in the life of Dr. Cochran, was when cholera was reported on the shores of the Caspian Sea and was gradually working its way westward. As the pestilence came nearer to Urumia, Dr. Cochran repeatedly urged the governor to establish quarantine, but all to no avail until it was too late. Meanwhile, the medical missionary published pamphlets in Persian and Syriac on the nature of the plague and how it was communicated. The printed advice was widely read; the native Christian teachers and preachers cooperating with the more enlightened Moslem’s, Armenians, and Nestorians in the circulation of these pamphlets and in the sale of medicines. When warnings regarding quarantine had been disregarded, and cholera appeared in the city of Urumia, Dr. Cochran and his medical students gave themselves up wholly to the care of the sick. It was estimated that ninety-five per cent of those treated recovered their health. A fine commentary on the directing medical skill!

Dr. Cochran read the medical journals as he had opportunity, and when in Europe or America, he visited the best hospitals. He realized the importance of his medical work in itself, but he was also a missionary of Christ in every aspiration. Once he said:

" The missionary physician should endeavor to be, as he indeed must be to obtain the highest success, a man consecrated to Christ’s service, ever bearing in mind that he, like his clerical brother, represents his King in this land; and everything that he does must conform to this high position, so that his every act and word and bearing shall preach his Master’s Gospel." Dr. Cochran’s aim was to lead men to Christ. In personal conversation with his patients, in religious services at the hospital, in addresses in the villages, indeed, in all his efforts, he was a true missionary of Christ. The center of the medical work was the hospital, whose first building was erected in 1880. It was one of several structures on the Mission compound, which consisted of four acres on the banks of the Urumia River, two miles from the city. Other buildings were the college and the residences for missionaries. A wall fifteen feet high enclosed the compound and afforded a measure of protection against wild tribes that hesitated at no foul deed. The staff consisted of Dr. Cochran, Dr. Emma T. Miller, and an assistant Persian physician trained by Dr. Cochran, native nurses, and a class of medical students. Patients were received regardless of race or religion, social station, or ability to pay for the attention received. " Every day there came the pitiable caravan of woe and pain." It was hardly possible for the doctor to journey to the city or to any village without being stopped by some suffering soul. In describing the hospital staff, the matron, " a mother to all who came to the hospital," must be remembered. This beloved lady, who helped to create an atmosphere of love and fellowship among the patients, was no other than the doctor’s widowed mother. For many years she devoted herself, with complete consecration, to the work of the hospital, and work of the most practical kind. When she was over seventy years old, she wrote to a friend:

" I have a great deal to do this vacation, getting sheets made for the hospital beds, getting quilts and carpets washed, and all the rooms cleaned. After attending to my duties as matron, I helped Joseph get the dispensary in order. This morning I read awhile in the women’s ward. As I arranged flowers in water, and put a little touch of prettiness here and there, the patients watched me with exclamations of delight." In these few lines the elder Mrs. Cochran has drawn a picture of herself that could not be more complete if an outsider had devoted pages to the subject.

Long journeys were required at times, and the highway robbers along the travel routes cared nothing for the medical man whose work had given him such a large place in the respect of those who knew him. It was necessary, therefore, for Dr. Cochran to travel with armed escort at times, and for members of his party to carry revolvers and guns, perhaps riding at night with hands on their firearms. Frequently chiefs or government officials, desiring medical attendance in their homes, would send soldiers to protect him. The land was full of dangers.

Soon after the young physician reached Persia, the great Kurdish chief, Sheikh Obeidullah, who, next to the Sultan himself and the Sherif of Mecca, was considered to be the holiest of all the Sunni Mohammedans, invited Dr. Cochran to visit him in Kurdistan and to prescribe for him. The Sheikh was a descendant of Mohammad, was a man of real character in some respects, and desired to establish Kurdistan as a free state and himself as governor of all the Kurds. He also desired the friendship of foreigners, which may have prompted the invitation to Dr. Cochran, who, in order to reach the home of his distinguished patient, traveled two and a half days, under the protection of a Kurdish officer and fifteen soldiers furnished by the Sheikh. At Nayris, the capital of Kurdistan, three chiefs with their retinues came out to greet the physician, one of them having been the head of a band of outlaws who had attacked Dr. Cochran’s father and attempted to kill him twenty years before. The doctor was given a royal reception by the Sheikh, whom he found to be a man well read in Persian and Arabic literature, acquainted with the Bible, and apparently a pious man, attempting to rule his people justly. He was eager to have the outside world know that in wild Kurdistan there was a government with laws superior to those of Persia and Turkey. The Sheikh was found to be quite ill, but during the doctor’s stay of one week, he desired his visitor to spend hours of each day in telling him of the wonders of the Western world. This visit was to have some exciting results in days to come.

Sheikh Obeidullah had in some way been offended by Persia. Moreover, he desired to include in his proposed free state the Kurdish section of northwestern Persia. His son was sent to Urumia to confer with the government, and, very naturally, he was entertained by Dr. Cochran. The son’s negotiations at Urumia were disappointing, and a few weeks later the Sheikh came down with an army and laid siege to the city, after taking possession of some of the coveted territory. The Kurds living in Persia, who had been sent to oppose the Sheikh, joined him in his attack. At one city where he demanded food his messengers were killed, and in retaliation he ordered his soldiers, in taking the city, to slay even women and children. The Sheikh’s friendship for Dr. Cochran gave the Mission a sense of security, but the visits exchanged, and the friendship which protected the American Mission from the Kurds, led some of the Persians in Urumia to charge Dr. Cochran with the responsibility for the war. The position of the Mission was embarrassing and perilous. Although the governor probably did not believe the stories, such talk among the people might lead to an attack on the Mission by the maddened Persians, or, even if that did not occur, enmity might be aroused which would make it impossible for the missionaries ever again to be trusted by the people whom they had come to help. Meanwhile, the Sheikh kept sending letters to Dr. Cochran, and knowledge of that fact caused Persians to believe that the two were in league. Any attempt to make explanations to the governor would have angered the Sheikh, whose forces were destroying villages on every hand.

Finally, the Sheikh’s armies defeated the Persians, and the Kurds advanced upon the city. At the request of Dr. Cochran, the Sheikh ordered his men not to molest non-combatants. A fresh Persian army was known by the government to be moving toward Urumia, but the city seemed certain to fall into the hands of the Kurds before it could arrive, since no one was left to fight except the populace. At that moment, the Sheikh sent for Dr. Cochran, while at the same time the acting-governor of the city desired him to ascertain what terms could be made with the Kurds. The Sheikh was determined to attack the city, unless the people yielded, and it seemed futile for them to resist such overwhelming forces, It appeared so useless to sacrifice the city and its people that Dr. Cochran and the British consul at first advised the acting-governor to surrender. They consented, however, to ask the Sheikh to allow the city one more day to come to terms. The Sheikh replied that, for Dr. Cochran’s sake, he would delay the attack until three o’clock the next afternoon. At three o’clock the next day, the hordes of Kurds moved upon the city, but the governor had just arrived with about two thousand men. When the Kurds were seen advancing, Dr. Cochran was importuned to go out and meet the Sheikh and request a further delay. He told them it was too late, but he would try. Upon failing to reach the Sheikh, and being told that he would not listen again, the doctor turned his horse and rode quickly towards the city.

" What shall we do? What shall we do? " cried those in authority.

" Surrender," said Dr. Cochran, " if you cannot keep the city. If you can, then fight; that is your duty." With the resistance of the army just arrived, the Sheikh found he could not force an entrance into the walled city in an hour, nor in a night. The delay of twenty-four hours had played havoc with the Sheikh’s plans. Fresh troops had quickly made the walls defensible, for at least a time. Then came the report that Turkish troops were on the border, with orders to the Sheikh, who was nominally a subject of Turkey, to abandon his invasion of Persia, The people of Urumia proclaimed Dr. Cochran the savior of their city, since he had negotiated the delay of twenty-four hours, which allowed the Persian general to bring in his army in the nick of time. On one occasion, when a man of lofty station was about to visit Urumia, Dr. Cochran went with many others to greet the potentate. In Persia, every available doctor is consulted, as a matter of course, and a proper verdict is expected, even after a casual examination of pulse and tongue. When Dr. Cochran greeted the titled visitor, the latter at once extended his wrist, expecting an exact diagnosis in consequence. Dr. Cochran, however, with his knowledge of Persian etiquette, was quite equal to the occasion. After feeling his pulse, the possible patient demanded to know " how it felt." " It feels," gravely responded the doctor, " as if royal blood were coursing through it." Did the Oriental mind detect the humor? The busy physician could secure little rest anywhere in Persia. He might close his hospital and take to the hills, but suffering humanity sought him there. After ten years of taxing service, he was compelled to seek rest in America.

" Hakim Sahib " was the name given to Dr. Cochran throughout Persia. Upon his return from a second furlough, after twenty years of missionary service, the announcement that " Hakim Sahib ’ had come back was received with enthusiasm in Urumia. Three hours’ travel from the city, a large company met him. Numerous Christian converts greeted him. The Persian governor and other dignitaries sent personal representatives to participate in the welcome. A carriage with outriders was sent by a Mohammedan nobleman for " Hakim Sahib’s " use. Later came three other carriages offered by the nobility. Three handsomely caparisoned horses were sent by Persian officers to be led in front of Dr. Cochran’s carriage. The procession grew until it included hundreds of persons as it neared the city. In a few days all the prominent noblemen near by and some Mohammedan leaders had called on him. In a letter to America the modest man merely said: " I had planned to write you by the first post after our arrival, but my time has been very fully occupied by the numerous calls from all classes and creeds. We have had a very cordial and hearty welcome back." Who would guess, from this simple statement, the honors and the goodwill that had greeted him! The gratitude of the poor people in distant villages was often very touching in its expression when they discovered "Hakim Sahib" in their midst. Once he related this incident:

" Returning from Tabriz last fall, I came to a Kurdish village. I was acquainted with the chief of the village, and knew that it would be impossible for me to make myself known to him without being delayed, and I had promised to spend that night some fifteen miles further on with a Khan [nobleman] who was ill. I had told the men who were with me that I did not wish them to inform any one about the village who I was. As I sat under one of the trees and began to eat my lunch, one elderly Kurd came up towards me, and took a seat at a little distance from me and somewhat behind me. He was inclined to be very sociable and full of inquiries, while I was reserved. He finally asked me if my head comprehended any medicine; and I replied that it depended upon the gravity of the case that he wished to report to me. He told me of the symptoms of his son’s illness, and said, ’ Oh, if I could only get him to that American doctor that lives in Urumia, and have him kept in the hospital a little while, I know he would get well, for I was treated there myself for pneumonia about twenty years ago; and, aside from being cured of my disease, they did so much for me, and were so kind to me, that I should have been willing to have been sick there all my life. Especially was the doctor’s mother kind to me.’ As he spoke he gradually approached me, and I noticed that he was scanning me closely; finally, he caught hold of my shoe, and pressing my foot, he said, ’ I swear, I half believe, that you are that doctor yourself! I swear you are that doctor! I adjure you, by the living God, tell me, are you not? ’ He was now clinging to me and wringing the skirts of my coat. When I had to admit that I was the man he described, he made me promise to wait until he could bring to me his son. Soon he returned, with his son on the back of another man, with his wife and his son’s wife, and several little children, and four or five neighbors. They came laden with clover for my horses, they brought bread and butter and milk and curds. Although I had eaten my lunch, they insisted that I eat their bread, so I partook of this gift, and then they took the remainder and made my men finish it, while the horses were made to eat their clover instead of that which we had already bought. I prescribed for their sick, and then mounted and rode off, with five or six of these men as my escort on foot. They wished to come with me all the way to the end of my stage, as they feared I might be robbed, it was getting so late, but I declined their offer and hurried on." His sister wrote of him:

" I remember a journey to Van, Turkey, in 1886, I think. Coming back, we took a cut right through the mountains among the wildest Kurds. Almost everywhere we were asked if we were the people of the ’ Hakim Sahib and great was their delight when they found that he himself was there. One night, after a very bad day of pouring rain, during which the packhorse with the bedding got carried down by a mountain torrent for some distance, soaking the bedding, we at last halted at a little village, way up among the clouds and snows, though it was summer. We were nearly frozen, for it was a great altitude, the horses were exhausted, and we ourselves dripping. Now, every one who has lived in Persia knows that if there is anything more objectionable to a fanatical Moslem than an ordinary Christian, it is a wet one, and these mountain villagers seemed the most fanatical of the fanatic, and not even a stable was open to us. From hovel to hovel we went, offering good pay, and at last it seemed as if we should have to put up our wet tent and sleep under it, while the poor horses were in the open. Just then a man came along, and peering into Joe’s face, gave a cry, and seized his coat, and began kissing it. It was the old story a hospital patient and we knew our troubles were over. The best he had, which was a large room inhabited by his whole family and the animals to boot, was at our disposal, and the shivering horses were led in, too. We found the corner, which was the living room, swept clean, and with some signs of comfort, and the beaming host explained to us that on his return he had tried to teach his wife to keep things clean as the ’ great lady ’ did the hospital. I remember with what trouble Joe persuaded them the next morning to accept at least enough to cover the actual food and fodder used by us they were evidently very, very poor, but they did not wish pay. That evening half the village came in, and many said, in a half-astonished way, if you had only told us at the beginning who you were, none would have refused you shelter, for many of our tribe have been in your hospital, and have told us of you and your mother, who is as a mother to all the sick!"

It is difficult to believe that any one could hate such an apostle of loving service, but even " Hakim Sahib " incurred the bitter enmity of certain Kurds by seeking to have them brought to justice for their deliberate murder of blameless Christian people. He soon knew that he was a marked man; that the Kurds would slay him at the first opportunity.

Such a strain was already telling on his health, when a tragic occurrence cast the mission and the entire Christian community into gloom. On March 4, 1904, several of the missionaries started for Russia. Dr. Cochran’s enemies understood that he would be one of the party, and they arranged with confederates to follow and, when outside of the Urumia district, to kill the physician. The Kurds had been misinformed, for Rev. B. W. Labaree, and not Dr. Cochran, was to accompany the party. Mistaking Mr. Labaree for Dr. Cochran, the Kurds cruelly murdered him in one of the mountain passes.

Mr. Labaree’s death caused Dr. Cochran profound grief. His hair whitened rapidly, as he dwelt on the thought of a person dying in his stead. However, he was never free from a sense of peril. He could sit in no room at night without drawing the shades. Think what this meant! The cruel Kurds might secrete themselves anywhere to murder the man who wished to bring them to justice for some of their foul deeds. The strain was too severe. At last, as he was visiting his patients, he fell ill with a fever that stole his senses. The illness of the good man plunged the populace into grief. Congregations on Sunday abandoned the usual form of service and gave themselves to supplication for his recovery. Moslem’s joined Christians in prayer. Some Mohammedans exclaimed, "Would that God would take us and spare him! ’ A little boy in the hospital said he would be happy if only he and his mother could die in place of " Hakim Sahib." But the end was at hand. On August 18, 1905, this loyal servant of God went to his eternal home.

Syrians wept, and many Moslem’s wore mourning for a Christian. Seldom have so many religions been represented at a single gathering, for at the funeral were Christians of the mission, Syrians, Russian ecclesiastics, Chaldean’s, Moslem’s, Kurds, mountaineers and Persian noblemen. A native preacher said in his address:

"The glory of Urumia has departed with the departure of Dr. Joseph P. Cochran. The splendor, the ornament of the country is gone, since the greatest, the saintliest man who ever lived in it has gone forever." A missionary associate, Rev. R. M. Labaree, who had left a pulpit in America to take up the work of his martyred brother, wrote of Dr. Cochran as follows:

’ For days the governor and the principal men of Urumia had been sending around men to inquire as to his condition; missionaries and every one connected with us were repeatedly stopped in the streets by total strangers to be asked in regard to him. The last night of his life all the people in the college yards assembled about the house, weeping, and several slipped up quietly to get one more glimpse of the face they loved so well as he lay on his bed, unconsciously breathing out his life. And when the end came, every one in Urumia felt that he had lost a personal friend people in every walk of life, from the governor, who burst into tears on hearing of the news, to the poorest beggar.... What sort of man was this who could so impress himself upon high and low, upon Nestorian of every form of faith, upon Persian, Armenian, Jew, and even Kurd, as his own personal friend! And I could not but think how cheap would have been the reputation and wealth that doctor could have easily attained in the homeland compared with the love and the trust and the almost worship that he has won here in Persia."

Concerning the value of his services in Persia, Dr. Cochran was rarely modest. Seldom could he be persuaded to speak of his own work. " In 1889," wrote one of his sisters, " when my brother visited my home in Sparta, N. Y., he yielded to my wishes, and spoke in our church one Sunday evening. It was always hard for him to talk about work in which he had taken a prominent part. I wanted him to tell about the circumstances leading to his receiving the decoration from the Shah, and to show the stars to the audience. But with his characteristic modesty he went to the service without them, and they were only shown when my husband in the pulpit, against my brother’s protest, fastened them upon his coat while he was speaking."

What was the secret of " Hakim Sahib’s ’ power? What was the secret by which he caused all men to look upon him as a brother and a friend? The answer is simple. In response to a disciple’s faith and self-surrender, the Christ was living again through the disciple before the people of Persia; and " The Life was the Light of Men."