#18 in a series on the life of William Borden, the millionaire missionary who died unexpectedly en route to China's Gansu Province (BordenofYale.com, January 1, 2024).
A telephone call came from the Hassoon family on Good Friday, the twenty-first of March. It was to say that their guest was far from well. Mrs. Zwemer went over at once to the house by the railroad station, and found that Borden had seen the doctor already, who had told him to stay in bed. He had a headache and some fever, but nothing serious apparently. He had been out a good deal in connection with his canvass of the city and with the zikrs that were going on, and might have contracted influenza, which was prevalent at the time.
Next morning the message was that he was better, so that it was a surprise to hear in the afternoon that he had been taken to the hospital. It was probably heatstroke, the doctors said, but no one was allowed to see the patient.
Easter Sunday came with all its gladness, but a shadow lay on the little missionary community, for Borden’s place was empty. The hospital was five miles away, but after the morning service one of his friends went out to obtain fuller information.
“He was told,” wrote Mrs. Zwemer, scarcely believing it possible, “that Mr. Borden had cerebral meningitis – which stunned us all. I chased the doctor from place to place, and saw him personally that evening, but he would not give me any hope, only that Mr. Borden was no worse, and that serum had been injected into the spinal cord.”
So the blow fell, and that bright, strong, young life was suddenly challenged by suffering, if not death itself.
Over the succeeding days a veil of mystery was hung – at least for those who were watching, near and far, with stricken hearts. As day by day the cables carried messages of alternate hope and fear around the world, life seemed to stand still for many, and a great volume of prayer went up to God without ceasing.
One tragic element in the situation was that the relatives in America were unable to communicate with Mrs. Borden. She had already left with her younger daughter to join William in the Lebanon Mountains for the summer, sailing for Alexandria direct. They were not due in Gibraltar till the first of April, and efforts to reach them by wireless proved unsuccessful.
But in Cairo, in the shaded room at the Anglo-American hospital, who shall say that there was question or mystery? Suffering there was, intense and prolonged, for Borden was fighting the bravest fight of all his life. But he was not alone. Had not his prayer from childhood been that the will of God should be done in his life? There was no shrinking now.
All those Easter days, as he lay there, he could not but think of the young doctor-missionary whose sudden call had come just in the same way. Only a few weeks previously he had stood by that freshly dug grave. What if, for himself too, the call had come?
No reserve, no retreat, no regrets had any place in Borden’s consecration to God.