OXFORD AND SOUTH AFRICA

Some senior members of the university had already risen to Buchman's defence. Then, on 23 June, a letter appeared in The Times over eleven academic signatures including the heads of two colleges, referring to reports which had been circulating about Buchman's work and declaring, ' From what we have observed of the results of this work, it is our belief that this criticism has arisen from misunderstanding and unfounded rumour, and misrepresents the spirit of the work.' On the same day, the Manchester Guardian described Buchman's work as 'extraordinarily impressive' and predicted that it would have 'a big and growing influence'.

The Express had meanwhile printed a statement by Canon L. W. Grensted, Chaplain and Fellow of University College and a university lecturer in psychology: 'I have seen a good deal of the leaders of the group, and I should like to bear testimony not only to the general sanity with which they have organised their efforts, but also to its real effectiveness. Men whom I have known - and they are only a few out of many - have not only found a stronger faith and a new happiness, but have also made definite progress in the quality of their study, and in their athletics, too.'14

That same summer of 1928 six Oxford men went to South Africa in the long vacation. Five, like Brock, were South Africans, and the party also included Loudon Hamilton and Eric van Lennep, the young Dutchman. The first problem was to raise their fares. 'We began to pray for money,' Hamilton recalled. 'I remember starting an account at the Chartered Bank with nothing in it, but by a variety of mysterious means the money began to come. We wrote not a line, no letters at all, but soon we had enough for those who, like me, needed money for their fare.' Others, like van Lennep, could well afford to pay for themselves.

Buchman was told of this enterprise after it was planned and made no attempt to control or direct their activities in South Africa. The one precaution he did take was to tell each of the party separately to be the person in charge - a stratagem which came to light on board ship when one of them called a meeting in his own cabin, only to meet resistance from all the others, who had been similarly instructed. 'It dawned on us,' said Hamilton, 'that he wanted us all to be equally in charge - to be a responsible team.' The only message Buchman sent during the entire trip was a cable saying that he would come himself the next year.

Despite their inexperience this team of young men made a considerable impression wherever they went. James Lang, the headmaster of Grey College, Brock's old school in Port Elizabeth, found 'something Franciscan in the naturalness of approach and the simplicity of method'15, and the most popular Presbyterian minister in Pretoria, Ebenezer Macmillan, spoke publicly of the new experience he had found through them. 'One had only to hear them,' he told his congregation, 'to realise that they have got hold of something we have not got, or once had and lost. L. P. Jacks speaks of the lost radiance of the Christian religion - that is just what they have found.'16

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