April 27

Eric Liddell, the winner of the 400-metre race at the 1924 Paris Olympics, was a consecrated Christian. The film *Chariots of Fire* accurately
recounts his refusal to run his best event, the 100-metre race, because it was on the Lord’s Day, and that someone slipped a paper to him as he stood at the starting blocks. It read, “Them that honour Me I will honour” (1 Sam 2:30). Having been born in China to missionary parents, he left Scotland in 1925 and returned to China to serve the Lord. A huge crowd gathered at Waverly Station to bid him farewell. He addressed them, saying, “Let our motto be ‘Christ for the World, for the World Needs Christ’.” He then led them in singing Isaac Watts’ hymn, “Jesus Shall Reign”. “Blessings abound where’er He reigns; the prisoner leaps to loose his chains; the weary find eternal rest, and all the sons of want are blest.” Eric died in a Japanese prison camp in 1943. These were his last words: “It’s complete surrender.”