p. 14 | Coals of Fire

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 21, 1912

Coals of Fire

MANY years ago two British officers, Captain Conolly and Colonel Stoddart, were thrown into prison by the Afghans in Bokhara, and after lying six months in a miserable dungeon, they were beheaded.

For a long time their fate was unknown in England, until a missionary undertook a dangerous journey to Bokhara, and ascertained that they had been murdered two years before. Five years later, a Russian officer, passing through the bazaar in the city, picked up a little well-worn English prayer-book which Captain Conolly had used in prison, and in which he had written an account of his sufferings. The Russian officer bought the book, and carried it home to St. Petersburg.

The little prayer-book that lay for seven years on the shelves of a Bokhara bazaar, next spent fourteen years in St. Petersburg, where an English visitor, who chanced to see it, begged permission to take it to Captain Conolly's relatives in England. Thus, twenty-one years after her brother's death, Miss Conolly received the book that told of his sufferings. About that time a mission hospital was opened at Bannu, near Bokhara, and Miss Conolly undertook the support of a bed in memory of her brother. Over it hangs a tablet which reads: “Conolly Bed. In memory of Captain Conolly, beheaded at Bokhara.”

No wonder that when the doctor in charge tells the sick Afghans of the way the Christian lady took her revenge, they are impressed that here is something very new and strange—an object-lesson of the love of Christ.—Selected.