Men on a mission

Eric Liddell became an international star at the 1924 Paris Olympics. He famously won the 400m gold medal (and bronze in the 200m) after refusing to compete in his best event – the 100m – because he was a committed Christian and felt it would be wrong to run in the heats on a Sunday.

By the 1930s, however, Liddell had taken a step back from athletics to become a missionary in China. Like Dr Graham, he was an in-demand speaker who gave talks and sermons around the world.

Ordinarily, both Liddell and Dr Graham would have been far away at their mission stations in China and India – not in wintry Scotland! But in 1931, it just so happened that they were both on extended leave at the same time.

A special event

But athletics’ loss was Edinburgh’s gain: one of Liddell’s bookings was a speech to the Church of Scotland’s younger members on 8 November – an event that would be hosted by Dr Graham, who the Guild had sent to India three decades earlier as a missionary.“In the evening, a public meeting specially intended for young men and women will be held in the Assembly Hall, at which the Moderator, the Right Reverend Dr J A Graham, will preside,” the Scotsman reported, ahead of the event. “The presence of Dr Graham, at one time the secretary of the Guild, and its first missionary at Kalimpong, India, at the Conference meetings, will give an added interest.”