The Cambridge Seven

How a move of God among Britain’s students answered the desperate prayer of a missionary on the other side of the world.

On 18 March 1885, seven young men arrived in Shanghai to serve as missionaries to China. This was remarkable in itself, when China had the reputation of a missionaries’ graveyard. But even more remarkable was the fact that all seven were highly educated young men associated with the prestigious Cambridge University. They all had prospects of great careers ahead of them in Britain but each one had turned his back on worldly ambition in order to give themselves to the cause of the gospel in a foreign land.

The story of how god used these dedicated young men – who came to be known as ‘The Cambridge Seven’ – begins in China with a medical missionary named Dr Harold Schofield. A brilliant young doctor, Schofield went to serve with the china inland Mission (established by James Hudson Taylor) in 1881. As he surveyed the province of Shansi in which he lived, with its nine million unsaved, heathen Chinese and only five or six missionaries, he got on his knees and prayed that God would raise up Bible teachers and shepherds, especially from the universities, and send them to china as missionaries.

Schofield never lived to see the answer to his prayer. Sadly, just two and a half years after entering China, he died of typhus, aged only 31. But although God buried his servant he remembered his prayers, the answer to which would provide not only workers for China but would also cause a spiritual awakening for the entire British nation.

In 1873, the American evangelist, Dwight L Moody, and his co-worker,Ira Sankey, began a three-year mission of the British isles. one of those attending the meetings was a 13-year-old boy called Stanley Smith, the son of a successful London surgeon. As Smith heard Moody the lord opened his heart and he accepted Christ.