The Call to China
Hobart, Tasmania, September 1890. A young university graduate, 20 years old, stood listening to the great interdenominational missionary pioneer, Hudson Taylor – founder of the China Inland Mission (later renamed OMF).
Hudson Taylor was visiting Australia for the first time, to recruit new workers for China.
Hudson Taylor had travelled from China with fellow missionary Montagu Beauchamp, one of the ‘Cambridge Seven’ – an inspiring group of British university students who had left to serve in China with the CIM. Taylor was frank in announcing his recruitment strategy: his earnest prayer was that Australia might supply 100 workers for China.
“Taylor was frank in announcing his recruitment strategy: his earnest prayer was that Australia might supply 100 workers for China.”
The eager listener in the audience was Charles Benson Barnett, or ‘Ben’ to his friends. Barnett was tall, athletic and academically gifted: in his final year of school he had been head boy, won the 100, 220 and 440 yard sprints, captained the cricket and Australian football teams, and was dux of the school. After school he completed an Associate of Arts degree. His three passions were sport, his studies and missionary work.
Meeting with Hudson Taylor in person after one of his Hobart meetings, Barnett was immediately confirmed in his thinking that God was directing him to China. Soon after, Taylor returned to China with twelve new Australian recruits: four young men and eight women. Barnett was not with them: he needed further training before leaving for the field.
Formation and Friendship
In 1893 Barnett studied at Hope Lodge (later Angas College) in Belair, Adelaide. In his time there he and fellow student Arthur Nicholls formed a lifelong friendship. They were to work together in the China Inland Mission – Nicholls for fifty years!
Barnett and the principal, Morton, had developed a great mutual respect. Later, as a principal himself, Barnett adopted many of Morton’s principles for his college: interdenominational training, pre-eminence given to the Bible, rigorous cross-cultural preparation, serious commitment to prayer, wide-ranging practical ministry components, and faith in God’s financial provision.
Mission in China and the Shadow of War
Arriving in China, Barnett studied at Anking on the Yangtze River before his posting to Taiho in 1896-97. His initial CIM training period was rigorous: learning Mandarin, cultural orientation, and even studying some key philosophical and religious texts and tracts in Mandarin. From there he went to the Yingchowfu mission station in Anhui Province, where he spent the remainder of his Chinese years.
“His initial CIM training period was rigorous: learning Mandarin, cultural orientation, and even studying some key philosophical and religious texts and tracts in Mandarin.”
His first five years in China were a difficult and turbulent period, in the midst of the First Sino-Japanese War – a year-long tussle, which ended in 1895 with the humiliating loss of Korea as a Chinese vassal state. The new missionaries saw Chinese troops armed only with spears, heading into battle against the Japanese, equipped with modern rifles and cannon. China’s defeat by Japan involved loss of territory and payment of reparations money.
This caused dangerous political upheavals within China, occasioning suffering and tragedy for many Chinese Christians, missionaries and other foreigners. In 1895, three Australian missionary women were massacred along with several others. In 1898 Barnett’s friend from his Adelaide training, William Fleming, was murdered with swords.
A Marriage Forged Amid Danger
Amid these perilous circumstances, Barnett met and married a newly arrived Victorian CIM missionary, Elizabeth Ferguson. Their first in-person meeting and talk took place when he arrived on horseback one day at Elizabeth’s mission station. Clearly, Barnett was a man with a plan. After some hours of speed dating he presented her with a ring, and they became engaged that same day!
However, the Barnetts’ wedding was postponed for a year. They married in Yokohama, Japan in 1900, both wearing traditional Chinese fashion and footwear, with Benson sporting a Chinese queue – a long braid of his hair hanging down behind.
The Boxer Rebellion and Rescue Work
By 1900, the bloody Boxer Rebellion in China had reached a fever pitch of animosity against expatriates and especially missionaries. Elizabeth had been evacuated to the safer Shanghai area. Barnett was ordained under Congregational orders in Shanghai, then returned to inland regions to assist missionaries and Chinese Christians attempting to flee to the coast.
He and other young men of the CIM helped rescue many imperilled people by passing them from one mission station to the next, travelling under cover of darkness with the help of local Chinese Christians and sympathisers.
“Barnett’s linguistic aptitude and his rapid language progress over the last six years had made him an accomplished Mandarin speaker. He was able to use this to great effect when entering hostile areas, planning rescue routes…”
Barnett’s linguistic aptitude and his rapid language progress over the last six years had made him an accomplished Mandarin speaker. He was able to use this to great effect when entering hostile areas, planning rescue routes, interceding with officials and negotiating with belligerent local nationalists.
Illness, Loss and Ministry
After their 1903 home assignment, Benson and Elizabeth returned to China for their second tour. Although the Rebellion was over, danger and hardship continued. Benson, often visiting further afield, was sometimes subject to opposition from local people who labelled him the ‘Foreign Devil’.
A leg wound from a savage dog and a bite from a scorpion dropping from the ceiling both caused protracted suffering and saw him feverish and close to death on several occasions.
The arrival of their first child, Harold, had brought delight and comfort to the couple. Then in the burning heat of his first summer, little Hal became sick, and before the nearest doctor could reach Yingchowfu, Hal died. Two more children were born: Rita and Allan. Rita grew up to marry an SMBC student, who 43 years later became the third principal of SMBC.
Medicine and Evangelism
The Barnetts integrated their evangelistic work with much-needed amateur medical and dental assistance. Opium addiction was a tremendous bane in the province, and helping addicts to dry out became a part of the family’s ministry.
Barnett also administered basic medical help to those suffering from malaria and other febrile diseases and carried his bag of homeopathic remedies along with the good news of Jesus Christ as he moved about the region.
“Barnett also administered basic medical help… and carried his bag of homeopathic remedies along with the good news of Jesus Christ as he moved about the region.”
Indeed, his self-taught dentist’s no-anaesthetic tooth extraction technique was so much in demand from locals with abscessed teeth that he was often preferred to the American dentist working in the area! Evangelism was always an inseparable part of these therapeutic encounters.
Return to Australia
Elizabeth fell ill and her health began to gradually deteriorate. Her energy dwindled, she found isolation and loneliness increasingly difficult, and the CIM sadly decided their return to Australia in 1907 was wise, describing Barnett as:
“…a missionary of more than ordinary devotion and energy. He laboured in a new and difficult field in Central China, and God was pleased to grant blessing to his efforts, both in the gathering of converts and the widespread preaching of the gospel.”
Pastoral Ministry and a New Calling
Upon their return, the Barnetts pastored several Congregational churches: Launceston and Latrobe/Forth in Tasmania, then Brunswick in Melbourne. Barnett joined the councils of the CIM and London Missionary Society, and was active in the temperance, prohibition and anti-gambling movements.
It was during these busy multiple ministries that he was called unexpectedly back to his old missionary training college in Adelaide, as assistant and then acting principal. There he served during 1915, until the college campus (now called Angas College) was requisitioned as an infectious diseases hospital and the student body shrank, as many students enlisted for war service.
The Move to Sydney
What was next for this indefatigable activist, missionary and evangelist? His cross-cultural missionary zeal was frustrated as he observed the lack of adequate training in Australia. Apart from a few small, private ‘missionary training homes’, there was a lack of faithful missionary colleges in the eastern states.
He sought God in earnest prayer to discover if there might be an answer to this need.
