When the Leper Was Not Healed: John E. Davis’ Experience as a Missionary to India

One of the best parts of my position at McMaster Divinity College is my access to the Canadian Baptist Archives – one of the largest Baptist archives in the Baptist family of churches. That said, some of my findings are sobering. One such account is that of Rev. John E. Davis, Canadian Baptist missionary to the Telugus in India. John died of leprosy that he contracted in India.
 
Here is a brief summary of his life as described in his autobiography entitled The Life Story of a Leper (1917).

John was born in Wicklow, Ontario, 1858. Much to the joy of his praying mother, he was converted to the Christian faith in 1873 after a revival in his local church. He fell away for a while but was soon restored to Christian zeal. With that renewal he began to ponder what the future held. 
 
He moved to western Canada in 1880, where he farmed, preached on Sundays, and attended a school in Rapid City (his recollections of his student days at what would become Brandon College provides an interesting firsthand account of studies at a nascent Baptist attempt at education).
 
While in the West John had to deal with the death of his father, mother, and brother back in Ontario to typhoid (he found out my mail two weeks after they had died). His reflection on how to deal with such a blow is prescient for what would strike him in coming decades: “I had my Bible with me and was preparing my Sunday School lesson, when suddenly the wind blew over the leaves and my eyes rested on the forty-sixth Psalm, tenth verse: “Be Still and know that I am God.’ When I read these words I felt that God was rebuking me. I hid my face in my hands as I lay upon the ground and murmured no more. I understood then that friends and relatives must all stand aside when God’s call comes. Human love may sooth our dying bed, but it cannot keep us back from death” (26)
 
In 1886, he accepted a call to move back to Ontario to assist in pastoring Baptist churches, raise funds for missions, as well as attend McMaster in Toronto for further education. To make a long story short, by 1887 he was ordained in Bloor Street Church, Toronto, married to Laura Lockhart, and soon after both were shipped off to India. 
 
The book describes in helpful detail their ministry among the Baptists in eastern India – activities such as building relationships with other missionaries, engaging with Indians, planting churches, establishing and supporting educational structures, providing medical care, recruiting more missionaries, training local Indian leaders, dealing with theological issues, and, something that would change the course of John’s life, the building of a home for lepers.
 
John surmised that he caught leprosy while doing renovations at a home for lepers.
 
Chapter thirteen is entitled “Stricken Down with an Incurable Disease.” From that point on, the next seventy pages describe the inexorable advance of a horrible disease, the impact of his declining health on his family and missionary work, and his personal struggles dealing with illness and despair. John also described his struggle with suicide, what he called a “Great Temptation,” as well as his struggles with doubts, disappoints, and depression over the fact that God healed some but not him. He also recounted his loneliness and sense of being forsaken by God. It is moving reading. 
 
In one account of his struggles he recounted how when he was in a troubled state of mind he remembered what he saw was a rebuke from God in 1880 – and it soothed his soul: “While I was in this state of mind, murmuring and repining and beating my wings against the bars of the cage in which God had locked me up, the same rebuke that came to me in Manitoba, in 1880, when my father and mother and brother died of typhoid fever, came to me again in the hospital ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ Psa. 46:10. Again I was humbled before Him and hushed to silence….From that time on I became reconciled to my lot and I could say, with the Apostle, ‘All things work together for good to them that love God; to them that are called according to His purpose.’” (226) 
 
In 1905, John had to come back to Canada, for his health had precipitously declined to such a stage that missionary work in India was simply not possible. By that time, he had children, and he recounted the pressures on his family life, knowing that his life would be shortened, and he would not see his six children grow up – in fact, it had arrived at a point where he could not even touch them anymore for fear of transmitting the disease. 
 
To add even more tragedy to an already hard life, his wife died in 1910 after six months of painful infection (John called it neuritis).
 
In 1910, John was increasingly weak, losing weight (falling below 100 pounds), virtually blind, and in constant pain. The only option seemed to be to move John to a hospital in Tracadie, New Brunswick – 1,300 kilometers away from his children and family. 
 
The final chapter of the book covers the last years of his life where he was looked after by the nuns at the Lazaretto. The chapter is comprised mainly of printed letters between John and family and friends, as well some description of the advance of the horrible disease. He died 28 April 1916, and was buried in close to Wicklow, Ontario, that same year.
 
Baptists in India quickly passed a resolution honoring John and Laura: “We rejoice with our brother in his precious reunion with the sweet and devoted wife, who entered so heartily into all his labors, shared so much of suffering with him, and who preceded him to the glory land. We rejoice in our brother’s coronation, and that he wears for evermore the martyr’s crown of life. Farewell, beloved, till the day break and the shadows flee away.” (289) 
 
The Christian life is difficult for, while Jesus did heal some lepers, this book demonstrates that not every leper gets healed – even among faithful leaders serving in ministry. That said, this autobiography is a sober but inspiring book, definitely a work worth reading for historical research and/or devotional reading.
 
 

• To purchase a copy of his autobiography:

https://www.amazon.ca/Life-Story-Leper-Autobiography-Missionary/dp/0548719144

• Burial information on John:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/195921942/john-edwin-davis

• Burial information on Laura:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/197874721/laura_s_davis