Encouragement from a Famous Scot - Midweek Message 5th May 2021

 

What is your greatest discovery?

Dear Friends,

Tomorrow, 6^th May, sees the 151st anniversary of the death of Sir James Young Simpson who died in 1870 at his home, 52 Queen Street Edinburgh at the age of 58. Simpson is best known for discovering and popularising the use of chloroform as an anaesthetic in surgery and childbirth. From a relatively impoverished upbringing in Bathgate, after gaining a place at Edinburgh University at the age of 14 he pursued a medical career in which he rose rapidly to become a lecturer in obstetrics at Edinburgh University, aged 27, and soon afterwards, Professor of Midwifery. It was in 1847 following some experiments with various chemical vapours around the dinner table, involving himself and some of his assistants, that he realised the anaesthetic properties of chloroform. Though there was some resistance from fellow doctors and also some Christians about the rightness of using anaesthetics, especially in relieving pain in childbirth, Simpson persisted and chloroform eventually came into regular use. (Queen Victoria’s use of chloroform during the birth of her eighth child, Leopold, silenced many doubters.) Much fame and many honours came his way after that, including a knighthood.

Yet in spite of the success of his medical career and such fame, there was still a lingering unease in Simpson’s spirit and a dissatisfaction with his life. The death of his daughter had first caused him to ponder the meaning of life, as had the subsequent death of a Christian medical colleague. Finally, one of his patients, also a Christian lady, had witnessed to him and encouraged him to turn towards God in repentance and place his faith in Jesus Christ as his Saviour.  In 1861 that is what he did.

Later a journalist would ask him, what was the greatest discovery he ever made. Expecting him to point to one of his medical accomplishments, the interviewer was surprised to hear Simpson respond, ‘That I have a Saviour!’

Simpson would testify on another occasion as to how having his eyes opened to who Jesus was and what he had done had changed everything for him.

‘I saw… myself a sinner standing on the brink of ruin, deserving nought but hell…. But again I looked and saw JESUS, my substitute, scourged in my stead and dying on the cross for me. I looked and cried and was forgiven. And it seems to be my duty to tell you of that Saviour, to see if you will not also look and live’.

In the final days of his life, he said to one of his family “I have not lived so near to Christ as I should have liked. I have led a busy and active life and have not had so much time to think about eternal things as I should have wished and should have sought. Yet I know it is not my merit that I ˙am to trust to for eternal life. Christ is all.”

Having made that greatest of all discoveries of recognising and receiving Jesus as Saviour, James Young Simpson was able to face death without fear.  Encouragement for all of us, then, from a famous Scot to seek and savour knowing Jesus Christ above all else,

Yours in Him,

David