Eric Liddell

August 9, 2024

This excerpt is from Chapter Three in the book SEVEN MEN by Eric Metaxas.

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Eric Henry Liddell was born on January 16, 1902, in Tientsin, China, where his parents, James and Mary Liddell, were missionaries. The blond, blue-eyed boy was nearly two years younger than his brother, Robert, born in August 1900 in Shanghai. A sister, Janet (Jenny), joined the family in 1903.

The turn of the twentieth century was a decidedly dangerous time to be a missionary in China. The Boxer Rebellion (1898–1901) was a recent, vivid, and disturbing memory in which nationalist Chinese militants purposed to eliminate all foreign influence, in the process murdering thousands of Chinese Christians and hundreds of Westerners, including missionaries and their families. Warlords competed for power over villages and towns, and bandits kidnapped the well-to-do, holding them for ransom. But the Liddells knew God had called them to China; they would remain there despite the dangers and leave the consequences in the Lord’s hands.

Before Eric’s first birthday, his parents left Tientsin for Siaochang, where they lived in a newly built house within the compound of the London Missionary Society. There a Chinese nanny, or amah, looked after the three Liddell children. Eric was a sickly child, whose mother nursed him through many an illness, but when he was healthy, he and his siblings enjoyed life in the compound. The Liddells were very pious and serious about God, but they also knew how to have fun. At one point, they even allowed the children to adopt a family of goats.

When Eric was five, his parents took the family back to Croftamie, Scotland, on furlough. This was the children’s first sight of their family’s native land, whose green mountains and sparkling lochs were very different from their dry and dusty Chinese home. Eric and his brother, Robert, explored the village, picked blackberries, and enjoyed being spoiled by the many Liddell relatives who lived there.

At the end of the summer of 1907, just before he and his wife were planning to return to China, James Liddell enrolled his sons in the School for the Sons of Missionaries (later called Eltham College) just outside London. Missionary parents routinely left their children behind for seven years so that they could pursue their educations. The boys’ mother, Mary, intended to travel back to China with her husband and young daughter; but just before it was time to go, she changed her mind. She could not bear the thought of leaving her two young sons for so long, so she decided to stay in Great Britain for a year to make sure her boys would be happy at the school, and she moved with Jenny to a house near the campus.

During their years at Eltham, Robert and Eric studied mathematics, languages, science, English, Latin, the classics, geography, and the Scriptures. Outside the classroom, they played touch rugger and looked after a collection of pet birds and lizards. During debates with other boys, Eric was usually quiet, preferring to think about the answers he was hearing rather than entering into the discussions themselves.

In early 1913, the boys received a letter from their mother telling them of the arrival of a third brother—Ernest—in December 1912. When Mary Liddell’s ill health and need for surgery brought the Liddells back from China a year earlier than they had planned, Rob and Eric were overjoyed to see their family again.

As Europe was hurtling toward the First World War, both Robert and Eric—then fourteen and twelve, respectively—began excelling in school sports. They played cricket and rugby, and on a school sports day, in the under-thirteen age classification, Eric placed first in the high jump, long jump, and 100-yard dash.

Robert was outgoing and gregarious, joining the debate club and seeking leadership positions. By contrast, Eric grew into a shy, quiet teenager who loved mathematics and science—especially chemistry—and sports.

But his natural diffidence did not stop him from competing ferociously on the playing fields. He had been gifted with a staggering natural talent. In 1918, when he was sixteen, Eric competed in the school championships and took everyone’s breath away by placing first in three events: the long jump, the quarter-mile, and the 100-yard dash (tying the school record of 10.8 seconds). Eric also took second place in the hurdle race, the cross-country run, and the high jump. It was a phenomenal performance.

In his senior year, Eric was awarded the coveted Blackheath Cup (an honor given to the best all-around sportsman) and was named the captain of the school’s rugby team. Both awards showed that Eric was not just gifted athletically: the gentle young man was also very popular with his classmates.

After Eric’s graduation in 1920, he and Robert were again reunited with their mother, sister, and brother Ernest, who had returned to Scotland for another furlough. In February 1921, Eric entered the University of Edinburgh, where he studied physics and chemistry.

Amazingly, given his heavy academic schedule, taking part in his beloved sports did not even occur to Eric at this time. But within a few weeks, a fellow classmate wheedled him into participating in the University Athletic Sports Day in late May.

On the day of the competition, Eric’s time of 10.4 seconds in the 100-yard dash—which was not his best—won him the race. More important, it won him a place on the university’s track team, which would compete against other Scottish schools.

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If you’ve seen Chariots of Fire, you probably remember the controversy surrounding the decision by Cambridge runner Harold Abrahams to hire a professional trainer. But Eric Liddell had a personal trainer, too, albeit one who worked with him on a volunteer basis. This was to prevent any possibility of Liddell’s putting his amateur standing in jeopardy, thus running afoul of the Olympic rules. Under the canny tutelage of Tommy McKerchar, Eric won race after race, competing in the 100- and 220-yard events and quickly attracting the attention of the press, which predicted that a new Olympic contender might be at hand. The public took note of the unusually gracious behavior of the young Scot. Before each race, he always shook hands with his competitors and wished them the best, often lending them his trowel in order to dig their starting blocks, something all sprinters were required to do in those days.

The film accurately captures Eric Liddell’s peculiar running style: arms flailing like windmills and knees pumping high. As he approached the finish line, Eric would throw his head back and open his mouth wide. Odd and unorthodox as this style was, McKerchar apparently did not attempt to get Eric to run in a more conventional manner. It was almost as if in throwing his head back, Eric had to rely totally on God to direct him to the finish line, since he couldn’t see it himself.

In 1921 Eric joined brother Rob on Edinburgh’s rugby team, exhibiting the same ferocious desire to win that he displayed in his running. Two years in a row he was honored to be selected for the Scottish International Team. But in rugby the chances of injury were considerable, so after his second year of play, Eric gave it up and chose to focus on running. Word of his terrific speed eventually earned Liddell the nickname of “The Flying Scotsman,” after the well-known express train that connected Edinburgh to London, making the nearly four-hundred-mile journey in just over eight hours.

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In April 1923, Eric’s growing fame led to the first invitation to speak publicly about his faith. It came from the Glasgow Students’ Evangelistic Union, which was engaged, with little success, in an evangelistic rally in a hardscrabble coal-mining town outside Edinburgh. But what if Scotland’s fastest sprinter were among the speakers? Perhaps then the men would come and listen. So one of the group’s founders, divinity student David Patrick Thomson, agreed to ask Liddell. He traveled all the way to Edinburgh and knocked on the door of the house that Eric shared with his older brother. Eric himself answered, and Thomson put the question to him. Eric thought about it for a few moments and then agreed to do it.

But Eric hated public speaking, and no sooner had he given his assent than he began to regret it. The very next morning he received a letter from his sister, Jenny. At the end, she quoted Isaiah 41:10 (kjv):

“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

Eric felt that those words were God’s way of speaking directly to him. Some time later, he said that “those words helped me make my decision, and since then, I have endeavored to do the work of the Master.”

When Eric arrived at the meeting, he found some eighty coal miners waiting to hear him. Eric spoke quietly about his faith in Christ, “of what God meant to him,” and the strength he felt within himself from the sure knowledge of God’s love and support. Of how he never questioned anything that happened either to himself or to others. He didn’t need explanations from God. He simply believed in Him and accepted whatever came.

Decades later, Eric’s daughter Patricia noted, “He felt, ‘now who’s going to come and listen?’ But those times where he went speaking, huge crowds showed up.” Eric “brought in people who might not have been interested in religion as such, but more into sports: let’s see what this sports hero has to say.”

Few who heard him speak would have claimed that Eric was a great speaker. His natural shyness kept him from being passionate in his oratory, but somehow his sincerity and self-deprecating humor came through. They certainly did that day. Many of the miners who had come to hear him were deeply moved.

News spread rapidly that the Flying Scotsman had spoken publicly about his faith. Eric soon joined the evangelism group and began speaking with them in town after town, fitting in engagements during school holidays. It gave him great joy to know that God could use his athletic prowess in this way. Years before, Eric had committed himself to serving God in some way, but it seemed he had few talents other than an ability to run like the wind. His heart’s desire was to glorify God, and he didn’t think that being able to run fast—even as fast as he could run, which was very fast indeed—was of any eternal purpose. Why had God given him this world-class talent? What was the point? But now he began to see the point, and he was suddenly tremendously grateful for his rare gift.

As he later put it, “My whole life had been one of keeping out of public duties, but the leading of Christ seemed now to be in the opposite direction, and I shrank from going forward. At this time I finally decided to put it all on Christ—after all if He called me to do it, then He would have to supply the necessary power. In going forward the power was given me.”

At this time, Eric became very interested in what came to be known as the Oxford Group—men from Oxford University who urged Christians to surrender completely to God each day and live by the Four Absolutes: absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love. They also urged people to have a daily “quiet time,” in which they would read a portion of the Scriptures, pray, and listen quietly for God’s leading. Eric would do this for the rest of his life, even during the dark days when he lived in an internment camp in occupied China.

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If you’ve seen the movie, you will probably remember that one of the most unforgettable and dramatic scenes in Chariots of Fire involves a quarter-mile race in which Eric is accidentally knocked down by a competitor but against all human odds manages to win anyway. The remarkable event really did happen in July 1923 at Stoke-on-Trent at a so-called Triangular Contest track meet between Scotland, England, and Ireland. Literally right out of the blocks—near the very start of the race—Eric was badly knocked down, and in a quarter-mile race at such a high level of competition, fractions of a second determine the winner. Anyone knocked down is quite simply out of contention. But such accidents are unavoidable in the intense rough-and-tumble crowding of such races.

In this instance, however, despite the fact that he was twenty yards behind, Eric leaped back to the track and madly gave pursuit. That he was twenty yards behind made the attempt to rejoin the relatively short race seem utterly absurd. Nonetheless, Liddell ran at such an astonishing pace that the spectators were goggle-eyed and on their feet, rapt by the unfolding scene before them. Accelerating from far behind, Liddell managed to catch and pass one runner and then another until impossibly, he finally overtook the leader and won the race, at last collapsing onto the cinder track. It was an athletic performance for the ages, and no one who was there would ever forget it.

In 2012, New York Times writer David Brooks wrote a column claiming that the charitable aspect of the Christian faith was at odds with the killer instinct needed to win in athletic competition, so that serious faith was a hindrance to victory. But Eric Liddell is the classic example of someone whose faith was not only not at odds with the will to win, but also, indeed and on the contrary, was a tremendous boon to it. His competitive instinct, as evinced in this one race, was simply unparalleled. Because he desired to use his athletic gifts to glorify God and because he knew that his winning gave him an opportunity to speak about God to men who otherwise might not be at all interested in the subject, running and winning had an eternal purpose. Because he was not merely running for himself, Liddell was able to summon powers that sometimes seemed miraculous, even to avowed skeptics.

After that famous race, when some of the astonished onlookers asked him how he had managed to win, Liddell again seized the opportunity to publicly glorify God. He reportedly replied, “The first half I ran as fast as I could. The second half I ran faster with God’s help.”

Although the movie Chariots of Fire showed us this dramatic incident, it never told us what happened as a result: Eric had pushed himself so hard to win that he damaged muscle tissue and had severe headaches for days afterward. Those few seconds of superhuman exertion on the track took so much out of him that he didn’t even place at a 100-meter race two weeks later, and the 100 was his signature event, one in which he had recently set a record. Indeed, as it turned out, Eric Liddell had given so much in that single performance that he didn’t win another race again for the rest of that summer. The 1924 Paris Olympics were just one year away, but even though he did not win any races after that memorable day in Stoke-on-Trent, Liddell was still considered a probable Olympic contender.

To heighten the dramatic effect, Chariots of Fire suggests that Eric did not receive the news that the heats for the 100-meter race—his best event—would take place on a Sunday until he was boarding the ship that carried the British team to the Paris Games. But in reality, Eric learned about this in the fall of 1923. This was when, as a prospective Olympic contender, he received the schedule of events from the British Olympic Association.

Still, while deeply regretting that he would not be able to run, Eric did not hesitate making and abiding by his decision. As far as he was concerned, Sunday was the Lord’s Day—not a day for playing games—even the Olympic Games. Instead, it was a day for rest and worship. Eric took the Lord’s command seriously, that we are to observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Holy simply means “separated unto God.” As he saw it, running in the Olympics on that day was out of the question, and Eric could not compromise on what he believed God had commanded.

While the real Eric Liddell was not confronted by the Prince of Wales and the British Olympic Committee for his decision, as we see depicted in the movie, the scene nonetheless accurately represents the attitude of the British Olympic Committee toward Eric’s decision: they were flabbergasted and outraged. And they were not about to let the misguided fanaticism and arrogance of this overly religious young man ruin Scotland’s chances for national glory! They would use any means necessary to get this annoyingly headstrong man to run.

First, they tried to convince Liddell that there was no real problem with running on Sunday; after all, his heat wouldn’t take place until the afternoon, leaving him more than enough time to attend church services in the morning. Eric didn’t buy it. Nor did he buy the argument that he could worship God in the morning and run to God’s glory in the afternoon. When, in frustration, a committee member pointed out that the Continental Sabbath lasted only until noon, Eric testily responded, “Mine lasts all day.”

When the British Olympic Committee realized that Eric was an immovable object and would not budge, they tried another tack: they would try to budge the International Olympic Committee. They lodged an official appeal to have the heats for the 100-meter race moved to another day in order to accommodate any participants whose religious beliefs prevented them from taking part on the Sabbath. This was a terribly sporting effort on their part: the appeal was denied nonetheless.

The British Olympic Committee was hardly alone in being upset with Liddell’s decision not to run in his best event, the one in which he was likely to bring glory to Scotland. When news of his decision became public, many Scots—excited over the chance of Scotland winning its first-ever Olympic gold medal—were aghast at his decision. They felt he had betrayed them. To bow out of the 100 meter at this point was taking things too far. What was it but insanity? As for his chances in the 400 meter, Liddell was a world-class sprinter, not a world-class quarter-miler. It was all an awful mess, but everyone assumed the young man eventually would come to his senses.

But Eric had made up his mind. More important, he felt that he had God’s mind on the subject, and that was all that mattered. Eric would obey God, and God would sort out the details of who won what medal. Even if he faced a lifetime of calumny and ignominy for his decision, his desire was to glorify God and to obey God, and the results in these Olympics and in his future life were in God’s hands.

So in the end—with just six months to go before the Paris Games—Eric made his decision irrevocable and began training not for the 100-meter race but for the 400-meter event. The 400 is not merely longer than the 100; it is a middle-distance race and requires a completely different strategy. On June 20 of that year, Liddell took part in the Amateur Athletic Association Championships in London. This competition would determine whether he would be tapped for Britain’s Olympic Team. Many had their doubts, but the fleet-footed Scotsman nailed his place on the team by finishing second in the 220 and by winning the 440.

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On Saturday, July 5—roughly two weeks later—the grand opening ceremonies for the 1924 Olympics were held. Two thousand competitors from around the world entered Colombes Stadium in Paris. They watched and listened as the Olympic flag was raised, cannons roared, and thousands of pigeons were released. Eric Liddell was there, snappily dressed in a blue blazer, white flannel pants, and a straw boater, as was the rest of the British team.

The following day—Sunday, July 6—the heats for the 100-meter race were held. Who can imagine what went through Eric’s mind that day? But we know what he did. Eric first attended church and then joined his teammates and the Prince of Wales at a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier honoring those who had died in the First World War. Because feelings still ran high over the terrible costs of that war, Germany was not allowed to compete in the Games that year.

The final for the 100 meter was held the next day, Monday, July 7. Eric sat in the stadium watching while his teammate Harold Abrahams, far below on the track, waited tensely for the sound of the starting pistol. When the pistol fired, the runners burst forth, and 10.6 seconds later, Abrahams broke the tape, just ahead of the American, Jackson Scholz. Liddell joined enthusiastically in the roar of delight from British fans, celebrating Great Britain’s first-ever win in this event.

The heats for Liddell’s two events took place over the next four days. On Wednesday, July 9, Liddell, Abrahams, and four others, including Jackson Scholz, lined up for the final in the 200 meter. British onlookers were hoping for a win by Abrahams. But 21.6 seconds later, it was Scholz who crossed the finish line first, with his teammate Charley Paddock taking silver a tenth of a second later. Liddell, finishing a tenth of a second after Paddock, took home the bronze medal, Scotland’s first ever. But this achievement was mostly overlooked in the shock and disappointment over Abrahams’s placing not first in this race but dead last.

The 400-meter finals were held the very next day—Thursday, July 10. The overwhelming and sensible view that Eric would not win this event was powerfully confirmed when the American Horatio Fitch shattered the world record in the 400-meter semifinal heat early in the day, with a time of 47.8. Liddell, running in the second heat, managed to finish first, but his time was 48.2—two-fifths of a second behind Fitch’s.

And there was more bad news for Liddell. When the six finalists drew lanes for the 400-meter final that evening, Eric drew the outside lane, widely considered the worst possible position. This was because the runner in the outermost lane started the race far in front of his opponents, unable to see them and compare his progress to theirs. Given that this race was hardly his best event, given that Fitch had outperformed him earlier that day with a world record, and given that Liddell had already tired himself in two earlier races that day, Eric’s lane position seemed to put the final nail in the coffin on his chances of winning any kind of medal for Scotland.

But Eric was not one to fret. His perspective was quite different from the norm, and his ultimate goal was not to merely win his race or even to compete, but to glorify God. And what the other runners, the crowds, the coaches, and the fans listening to the Games on radios did not know was that Eric had that morning received a reminder of this: as he left his hotel that morning, a British masseur pressed a folded piece of paper into his hand. Liddell thanked the man for it and said he would read the message later.

In his dressing room at the stadium, Liddell unfolded the note and read the following: It says in the Old Book, “Him that honours me, I will honour.” Wishing you the best of success always.

The “Old Book” to which this referred was, of course, the Bible, and the quotation was from 1 Samuel 2:30. Receiving that note deeply touched Eric. As he said a few days later at a dinner in his honor, “It was perhaps the finest thing I experienced in Paris, a great surprise and a great pleasure to know there were others who shared my sentiments about the Lord’s day.”

Another man who played a role in encouraging Eric that day was fellow Scot Philip Christison, the leader of the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders. In the moments before Liddell’s race began, the regiment’s bagpipers played at least part of the rousing “Scotland the Brave.” It was a tune and an instrument that would stir the blood of any patriotic Scotsman.

As the runners took their places on the track for the race, Eric, in his typical gentlemanly way, shook the hands of his competitors and wished them well. Moments later, the starting pistol fired, and the men were off. In the stands was Harold Abrahams, who knew something about racing. Abrahams was immediately upset to see that Liddell, unable to see the other runners, had set a blistering pace, as though he were running the 100 meter and not the 400. While pacing was a nonissue in the 100 meter, it was a vital component to the 400 meter. Abrahams could see what Liddell could not, that he had begun too fast and would not be able to keep up the pace.

But Liddell kept it up longer than Abrahams expected. Halfway through the race, he was still ahead by three meters. Although it certainly wasn’t possible to continue at this blistering pace, somehow Eric continued.

Back in Edinburgh, seven hundred miles away, Eric’s roommate, George Graham-Cumming, listening to the event on a homemade radio, jumped up and shouted the announcer’s words as he heard them in his earphones: “They’ve cleared the last curve. Liddell is still leading! He’s increasing his lead! Increasing and increasing! Oh, what a race!”

Increasing? How could that be? But as the runners entered the last hundred meters of the race, that’s precisely what took place. And then in the final stretch, Eric went into his odd, familiar end-of-the-race running style, head thrown back, mouth open, arms pounding the air. Moments later, Eric crossed the finish line. He had won the race. Not only did he win, but he beat his nearest competitor by the unfathomable distance of five meters.

Harold Abrahams and anyone else who knew something about the 400 meter were quite agog at what they had witnessed. The stadium crowd exploded with joy, many of them madly waving Union Jacks. Eric Liddell had just won the gold medal for the UK and for Scotland. A few moments later, his time of 47.6 seconds was announced. It was a new world record. Again the crowd exploded.

Sixty years later, in 1984, the American runner Fitch recalled the event: “I had no idea he would win it. Our coach told me not to worry about Liddell because he was a sprinter and he’d pass out 50 yards from the finish.” And Fitch’s coach should have been correct. After all, that’s what logic dictated must happen. Instead, as Fitch recorded in his Olympic diary, “tho a sprinter by practice, [Liddell] ran the pick of the world’s quarter milers off their feet.”

Few people remember that the 100-meter race was not the only race from which Eric dropped out because it would have required his participation on a Sunday. He also gave up running in the 4 x 100- meter relay and the 4 x 400-meter relay races. When those events were being run on the following Sunday, July 13, Liddell was nowhere near the Olympic stadium. He was in the pulpit at the Scots Kirk in Paris, preaching to a large and admiring audience.

* *

Just two days after his return from Paris and the Olympics, the twenty-two-year-old Eric Liddell graduated with his class from the University of Edinburgh with a bachelor of science degree. But no one there that day was unaware of the national hero in their midst, and his classmates cheered loudly when Liddell stood to receive his degree. That wasn’t all. When that part of the graduation was over, a scrum of his classmates triumphantly and giddily carried Eric on their shoulders all the way to Saint Giles’s Cathedral, where the commemoration service was to take place.

Here in the coolness of the great cathedral Liddell once again exhibited his characteristic modesty, humility, and grace. Recalling his visit to the United States for a race the previous year, Liddell said, “Over the entrance to the University of Pennsylvania, there is written this, ‘In the dust of defeat as well as in the laurel of victory, there is glory to be found if one has done his best.’ There are many here who have done their best, but have not succeeded in gaining the laurel of victory. To these, there is as much honour due as to those who have received the laurel of victory.”

Following his stunning Olympic victory, Liddell stunned the world again when he announced his plans to stop running altogether. He would become a missionary to China, greatly disappointing all those who hoped to see more of his running. But Eric was excited about the great adventure of it all. He planned to teach science, mathematics, and sports at the Anglo-Chinese College in Tientsin, China. The missionary purpose of the college was to bring the gospel to the sons of wealthy families in the hope of influencing China’s future leaders.

In preparation, Eric enrolled in the Scottish Congregational College in Edinburgh for the coming year to study theology. During this year, Eric spent every spare moment accepting the deluge of invitations to speak about his faith during evangelistic campaigns across Scotland. He also taught Sunday school and often preached at his church, Morningside Congregational. As was ever the case and now much more so, Eric’s willingness to take part in local sporting competitions as part of evangelistic rallies helped bring out people who would likely never otherwise have attended.

It took the Olympic Games to teach Eric that God intended to use his phenomenal athletic ability to bring people to him. And it was Eric’s refusal to run on Sunday, sacrificing an almost certain gold medal, that taught the world there was no hypocrisy in this now world-famous Christian follower. Eric also revealed the value he placed on obedience to God: he ranked it above the greatest treasures the world could offer. His decision to forgo earthly glory brings to mind that scene from the Gospels when Jesus is tempted by Satan in the wilderness:

The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” (Matt. 4:8–10 niv)

So would Eric Liddell have won the 100-meter race if he had violated his conscience? Recalling the race decades later, Eric’s daughter, Patricia, put it this way: “The gold [for the 400 meter] was lovely, but not the most important thing. I truly believe that had he run on Sunday [and] sold out his principles, he would not have won. He would not have had the fire. He was running for God.”

Chariots of Fire makes this point as well, when a member of the Olympic Committee explains to another member:

“The ‘lad,’ as you call him, is a true man of principles and a true athlete. His speed is a mere extension of his life, its force. We sought to sever his running from himself.”

“For his country’s sake, yes.”

“No sake is worth that. Least of all a guilty national pride.”

* *

Anyone who watched Chariots of Fire may well believe that the most exciting and significant event of Liddell’s life was the moment he crossed the finish line in the Olympic 400 meter. One can hardly blame them; after all, that’s where the movie ends. We are told that Eric became a missionary to China and that when he died in 1945, all of Scotland mourned.

But the truth—if we can believe it—is that the second half of Eric’s life was even more dramatic than the first, although it’s not the sort of story one often sees dramatized in major motion pictures. During his years in Scotland, Eric had publicly told thousands of people of his love for God, but in China this love would blossom into service to everyone he encountered.

Eric arrived in China via the Trans-Siberian Railroad in 1925, one year after his Olympic triumph. His parents, his sister, Jenny, and his brother Ernest were all there waiting, delighted to have Eric back with them at last. But the political situation in China was again tense, with feelings running strong against foreigners. This was in part because of a recent deadly clash between colonial police and some demonstrating Chinese.

The Liddells lived in a large house within the compound of the London Missionary Society, in the British concession of Tientsin, and Eric began teaching at the Tientsin Anglo-Chinese College as he had planned. Thanks to his modesty, good humor, and genuine affection for his charges, he quickly became a popular member of the staff. In addition to teaching science classes, he conducted Bible studies, taught Sunday school, coached soccer, and helped with dramatic productions.

And of course he spent considerable time improving his Chinese. Eric also found time to socialize with other missionary families—and one family in particular: the MacKenzies. As it happened, Hugh and Agnes MacKenzie were the parents of a vivacious, red-headed fifteen-year-old daughter, Florence. Over the next few years, Eric, who was ten years Florence’s senior, often found excuses to be around her. He saw her during group activities among the missionary families, helped her study, and regularly popped in for tea at her parents’ house.

One evening in November 1929, when Florence had turned eighteen, Eric took her for a walk and proposed. Florence—who somehow had no idea Eric was serious about her—excitedly answered yes. Her father agreed to the marriage on the rather draconian condition that Florence first return to Canada and fulfill her goal of becoming a nurse, which meant a three-year separation for the young couple. It would be the first of many long separations throughout their years together.

In 1931, after he completed his initial four-year commitment to work in China, Eric traveled to Canada where he spent four weeks visiting Florence in Toronto. Afterward, he sailed across the Atlantic to Scotland, where he planned to spend his furlough studying at the Scottish Congregational College. By the time he had to return to the mission field, Eric hoped to become an ordained minister.

But while he was in Scotland, others had plans for him too. The London Missionary Society, which was seriously in debt due to the worldwide economic depression, hoped to exploit Eric’s tremendous popularity to bring in both money and recruits. Hundreds of churches and athletic groups were also eager to have him speak. The gracious Liddell—who had difficulty saying no—accepted so many speaking engagements during this time that he became exhausted.

Still, despite the endless calls on his time, Eric was ordained on June 22, 1932. After saying good-bye to his family, who were on furlough once more in Scotland, Eric boarded a ship to Canada for another visit with Florence. After a few joyful weeks together, Eric left his fiancée and returned to China, where he once more plunged into the work of the college and the church.

It would be two full years before Florence and her family came to China. They arrived on March 5, 1934, and three weeks later Eric and Florence were at last married. They set up housekeeping in Tientsin, and Florence assisted Eric in his work. She was especially gifted at entertaining students and the children of missionary families in their home, and many of these students made commitments to follow Christ.

Two years after they were married, Eric and Florence had their first child, Patricia Margaret. The next year another daughter, Heather Jean, was born.

By this time, storm clouds were beginning to gather as Japan engaged in acts of aggression against China. In preparation for a possible conflict, the government demanded that the older students at the college undergo military training. As a result, Eric and his colleagues were forced to accommodate changes in the routine of the college. In the summer of 1937, war came to the Chinese in the same way it would come to Americans a few years later: Japanese planes arrived without warning to bomb Tientsin, causing fires, death, and destruction.

Within three days the city had fallen to the Japanese. Chinese refugees, many of them wounded, flooded into the foreign concessions—which were lands in China governed by the British following the Opium Wars. This included Tientsin. Elsewhere in China, the Japanese army committed atrocities on the civilian population, most infamously in Nanking. Still, despite the chaos all around, the Tientsin school opened that September with 575 students.

In dealing with the problems created by the Japanese, Eric sometimes put his life in danger. Once, attempting to relieve a severe coal shortage, he contracted for sixty tons of hard anthracite, but planned to deliver it personally to Siaochang by barge. Two times on the journey armed thieves attacked and robbed him. He was also detained for a day and a half by the Japanese, and then forced by ragtag military groups to pay exorbitant “taxes.” With his money exhausted, he left the barge and journeyed back to Tientsin for a fresh supply of currency. After a mutiny by the crew and a half-day’s interrogation by members of the Communist army, he and the coal finally reached Siaochang.

On one memorable occasion, Eric took part in a baptism service as the sound of Japanese artillery shells pounded down and soldiers burst into the building, searching for bandits. On another occasion, Eric rescued a man who had been shot and another who had been nearly decapitated during an attempted execution by the Japanese. On at least one trip, he was himself shot at.

In August 1939, Eric and his wife and daughters were able to escape the difficulties of life in China by traveling to Toronto on furlough for a family visit. After that, they hoped to travel to Great Britain. But, Adolf Hitler altered their plans by invading Poland. Of course this led to war between Great Britain, France, and Germany, and everything changed. To cross the Atlantic, now with German U-boats prowling its waters, was not advisable. So Eric and Florence decided it would be best for Florence to remain in Canada with the girls, while Eric traveled alone to England and Scotland. But Florence and the children so missed him that in March 1940, they boarded a ship, safely crossed the Atlantic, and joined Eric in Scotland. The family spent five happy months there. For a time, despite the ravages of war, they could again enjoy family life.

But their return passage to Canada turned out to be even more dangerous than the previous trip to England. Their ship was part of a fifty-ship convoy, which was accompanied by cargo ships; warships of the Royal Navy provided an escort. Hitler’s U-boats found them nonetheless, and a German torpedo struck the ship carrying the Liddells. Happily, it was a dud, and the Liddells survived unharmed. Other ships in their convoy were less fortunate. Before the voyage was finished, the Germans had sunk five of them.

The Liddells visited Canada for a few weeks. Their desire to remain there in a safe place must have been extraordinary, but their desire to obey God’s call on their lives as missionaries was stronger still. Even with untold dangers and deprivations ahead, they made the return journey to China, but once there, they were unable to remain together. Florence and the children stayed in Tientsin, but Eric went on to Siaochang, a rural outpost where the London Missionary Society had sent him as a village pastor. Eric regretted that he would no longer be teaching. He was also sorry the dangerous conditions in Siaochang made it impossible to have his family with him.

The first thing Eric noticed when he arrived was how busy the Japanese had been. In a letter to Florence, he wrote: “The last few days we have watched rather depressed and dejected men going out on forced labour, to prepare a motor road to pass to the east of Siaochang.” He also wrote his wife, “When I am out it is giving, giving, all the time, and trying to get to know the people, and trying to leave them a message of encouragement and peace in a time when there is no external peace at all.”

One day, Liddell conducted a wedding ceremony in a village near Siaochang. During the reception, they could hear the sound of big guns firing.

As he bicycled through the region, Eric often encountered gruesome evidence that the Japanese had visited certain villages. The men had been killed, the women had been raped, homes had been set on fire, and many people were suffering from shock. In the midst of these horrors, Liddell continued to minister to whomever he could, and many came to faith in Christ.

Eric visited his family in Tientsin whenever possible, but as conditions worsened, the Liddells had a hard decision to make. Should Florence and the children stay with Eric in China? Or should they travel to Canada, where they would be safe?

After discussing the problem for months and praying about it, the Liddells decided that the two girls and Florence—now pregnant with their third child—should return to Canada to live with Florence’s family. Eric expected to join his family within a year or so. The Liddells traveled to Japan and boarded the Japanese ship on which Florence and the children would travel to Canada. Eric hugged his little girls and asked six-year-old Patricia to help her mother when the new baby came. After kissing his wife good-bye, Eric left the ship. Florence and the children went to the upper deck to search for Eric.

Turning to look back, Eric spotted his family and waved a final good-bye before watching the ship steam away. It would be the last time he saw his family.

Back in Tientsin, where he had been temporarily reassigned, Eric resumed his work. He moved into a flat with his friend A. P. Cullen, whose family had also left China. As the war progressed, garbage collection and other services were disrupted, including mail service. It was not until September that Eric received a cable with the welcome news that his beloved Florence had been safely delivered of their third daughter, Maureen.

After the Japanese forces’ craven and infamous attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Liddell’s life changed dramatically. At precisely the same time as they were bombing Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were busy in Tientsin, rounding up the foreign military forces responsible for guarding the British, French, and American concessions, installing machine gun emplacements, and making it abundantly clear that they were now in charge. They also sent all the college students home, searched the premises (confiscating a radio), and restricted the movement of all foreigners. They ordered all Americans to move to the British concession, terribly crowding the people who already lived there.

Worst of all for Eric Liddell, the missionaries were no longer allowed to do the work for which they had come to China in the first place. As one biographer notes, “they could no longer teach, preach, or practice medicine. . . . They had become missionaries without a mission.”

But Eric was not one to sit idle. He felt that God always had something profitable for him to do. So during these chaotic months he found the time to write a devotional guide that he titled Discipleship. Each month had a different theme, such as “The Nature of God,” “The Character of Jesus,” and “The Holy Spirit.” The book is still available today.

One cannot help imagining that his decision not to run on Sunday during the 1924 Olympic Games might have been in his mind as he penned the following words: “Have you learned to hear God’s voice saying, ‘This is the way, walk ye in it?’ Have you learned to obey? Do you realize the tremendous issues that may be at stake?”

These words reflected not just that one famous decision but the whole direction of his life. Surely the sacrifice of being alone in a war zone—on the other side of the world from loved ones—was a far greater sacrifice than foregoing the glory of an Olympic medal.

Elsewhere, Liddell wrote, “If I know something to be true, am I prepared to follow it even though it is contrary to what I want? Will I follow if it means being laughed at by friend or foe, or if it means personal financial loss or some kind of hardship?”

Eric did his best to help the adults, too, such as willingly rising early to do grocery shopping for them when he could.

In March 1943, the final blow was struck: all foreigners—who were now suddenly considered enemy nationals—were to be sent to an internment camp. After parading them through the streets for a mile as an attempt to humiliate them, the Japanese troops ordered the foreigners onto railway cars.

They were sent to Weihsien, an exhausting journey of some three hundred miles. The three hundred captives—among them missionaries, businessmen, tourists, jazz musicians, prostitutes, and opium addicts—finally arrived at their new home. It was a one-block compound built by Presbyterian missionaries. Its four hundred rooms, hospital, and large church had a few new additions: guard towers, searchlights, and machine guns. Japanese soldiers were now using some of the houses. The Japanese had stripped the buildings of water pipes and had stolen much hospital equipment. As a result of the newly non-existent plumbing, the latrines were unspeakably filthy cesspools.

Ironically, the compound was named “Courtyard of the Happy Way.” Nonetheless, the captives quickly set to work tidying up the buildings. In a humble and sacrificial display of true Christian love, Catholic priests and nuns, along with the Protestant missionaries, volunteered to clean out the revolting latrines for the others. The internees built furniture and cooked for each other. High-ranking business executives, accustomed to having everything done for them, learned how to pump water, stoke boiler fires, and peel vegetables.

The internees made time for amusements as well, with musical groups performing everything from sacred music for Easter Sunday, to classical pieces, to jazz. Teachers willingly taught academic courses to anyone who was interested, and when the captives were finished with their daily work, they played card games together.

When the winter of 1943 brought severe cold, the internees made fuel by mixing coal dust with mud in order to keep warm. One priest heroically smuggled food into the camp to complement the children’s skimpy diet.

Eric, known as “Uncle Eric” to the children of the camp, lived in tight quarters with his friends Edwin Davis and Joseph McChesney-Clark. As he always had, Eric threw himself heart and soul into his work and volunteer activities. He taught in the camp school; organized softball, basketball, cricket, and tennis games; and planned worship services. He organized square dances and played chess with the kids—anything to keep them out of trouble.

Eric took a special interest in the three hundred children who had been taken out of the China Inland Mission School and were now living in the camp without their parents; he thought of his own three girls, so fortunate to be in better circumstances.

Throughout these difficult years, Liddell maintained his belief that Sundays should be reserved for God. But when teenagers got into a fight during a hockey match, Eric—to the astonishment of those who knew of his famous stand at the 1924 Olympics—agreed to referee the game on the following Sabbath.

Joyce Stranks, who was a seventeen-year-old fellow internee, said that Eric “came to the feeling that a need existed, [and] it was the Christlike thing to do to let them play with the equipment and to be with them . . . because it was more Christlike to do it than to [follow] the letter of the law and let them run amok by themselves. And for me that was very interesting because it was the one thing, of course, everyone remembers about Eric [that he would not run on Sunday because the Sabbath was the Lord’s Day].”

No matter how busy he was, Eric never neglected his daily time with God. Each morning, Eric and his friend Joe Cotterill woke early and quietly pursued their devotions together by the light of a peanut-oil lamp before beginning a long day of work.

Eric sent monthly Red Cross “letters” to his family, but these messages were limited to an astonishingly terse twenty-five words, and it took many months for these letters to travel back and forth between China and Canada. A year after the internees had been herded into the Courtyard of the Happy Way, Eric wrote a twenty-three-word letter to Florence: “You seem very near today, it is the 10th anniversary of our wedding. Happy loving remembrances, we must celebrate it together next year.”

* *

The harsh year had worn down most of the internees, who grew weary of the endless standing in line for everything, from the morning roll call to latrine and shower visits. As the long months wore on, camp residents became less and less concerned about the good of the entire community. Instead, selfishness began to manifest itself.

Many began stealing food and other necessities. Although he deeply missed his family, Eric stayed cheerful for the sake of the others. In a Bible study class, he taught others to love their enemies—including the Japanese guards at their camp—and he exhorted his fellow Christians to pray for them, as the Bible instructed. This one lesson made such an extraordinary impact on Joe Cotterill that he promised God that if he survived the war, he would become a missionary to Japan.

Eric’s sincere Christian faith was everywhere on display. Stephen Metcalf, who was seventeen in 1944, remembered one remarkable incident. Metcalf’s shoes had completely worn out. One day Eric came to him with something wrapped up in cloth. “Steve,” he said, “I see that you have no shoes, and it’s winter. Perhaps you can use these.” Eric pushed the bundle into Steve’s hands. “They were his running shoes,” Metcalf says. We can only imagine that Eric had been saving the historic shoes as a memento of his past triumphs, but in the difficult conditions of the internment camp, their practical value to this young man far outweighed their sentimental value to Eric. Others have said that Eric spent much time making peace between various factions of the camp and tried to be a friend to everyone.

* *

In late 1944, as the internees were about to mark their second full year in the camp, Eric began to experience terrible headaches. Joe Cotterill saw other changes in his friend. He walked and talked more slowly, and his wonderful jokes became a thing of the past. Camp doctors treated him when Eric picked up a flu virus, but the headaches continued nonetheless. Those who knew him best thought he might be suffering from depression, and an old family friend, a Scottish nurse named Annie Buchan, made sure Eric was put back in the hospital where she could keep an eye on him.

Doctors, knowing how hard Eric worked, suggested that he had possibly suffered a nervous breakdown—a diagnosis that deeply disturbed Eric. “I ought to have been able to cast it all on the Lord, and not to have broken down under it,” he said bleakly.

On February 11, 1945, Liddell suffered a minor stroke. But just a few days later, he was up and walking around the camp hospital, telling friends he felt much better. The doctors now began to suspect that Eric was suffering from a brain tumor. But without an X-ray machine, they had no way of knowing for sure.

Joyce Stranks visited Eric during breaks from her work in the hospital kitchen, bringing him up to date on what was happening in the camp. On Sunday, February 18, the Salvation Army Band, which played hymns on the Sabbath just outside the hospital, received a special request from Liddell. He wanted them to play “Be Still, My Soul,” one of his favorite hymns.

Three days later, Eric typed a letter to his beloved Florence: “Was carrying too much responsibility. Slight nervous breakdown. Am much better after month’s rest in hospital. Doctor suggests changing my work. Giving up teaching and athletics and taking on physical work like baking. A good change. So glad to get your letter of July. . . . Special love to yourself and children.”

Joyce Stranks dropped in on Eric as he was finishing up the letter. Sitting beside his bed, she and Eric talked about the need to surrender one’s will to God in everything one did, “in our attitudes, not what we wanted to do and felt like doing, but what God wanted us to do,” Joyce recalled. “He started to say ‘surren—surren’—and then his head went back,” she said.

The frightened teenager ran to get the nurse, Annie Buchan, but little could be done. Eric had slipped into a coma, and he died that evening at 9:20. He was forty-three.

When news of his death traveled around the camp the next day, the internees were grief-stricken. “He was known, not because of his Olympic prowess,” Metcalf recalled, “but because he was Eric. . . . He was the kind of person who was a friend to everyone. And his funeral bore that out. The church wouldn’t hold all the people. . . . The whole camp was closed down. It was a very, very moving occasion.”

An autopsy revealed that Eric indeed had an inoperable brain tumor. When his death became known to the outside world, many memorial services were held to honor the man who would not run on Sunday—even at the cost of an Olympic gold medal for his country.

The news of his death came as a great shock to his wife and daughters in Canada, who thought Eric’s strength and vitality would carry him safely through the war.

Many years later, daughter Patricia talked about her thoughts on the day she learned of her father’s death, and of how she wondered why God had seen fit to separate Eric from his family during the last four years of his life. “I have met a lot of the children in the camp—the same age as we were,” she said, “and they were put in the camp without their parents. . . . We were safe, and these children did not have their parents, and most of them have done very well. And he made a great influence and steadiness of their lives there. So in that sense, God’s hand was there.”

Joyce Stranks, who was one of those children to whom Eric was so kind, said, “He made Christ’s life so relevant—and made it feel like we who followed Christ must do what He has asked us to do when we are in the situation we are in. You don’t get a dispensation because you’re in the camp.”

Eric’s friend A. P. Cullen, who had known Eric most of his life, summed up his friend’s life in a camp memorial service on March 3, 1945: “He was literally God-controlled, in his thoughts, judgements, actions, words to an extent I have never seen surpassed, and rarely seen equalled. Every morning he rose early to pray and read the Bible in silence: talking and listening to God, pondering the day ahead and often smiling as if at a private joke.”

* *

At Scotland’s Morningside Congregational Church, where Eric had taught, and at Dundas Street Congregational Church in Glasgow, thousands of mourners gathered to honor Eric’s life. The Glasgow Evening News summed up the feelings of the Scottish people regarding the man who had put God before a gold medal and then served so many others in China: Eric Liddell “did [Scotland] proud every hour of his life.”

In 1980, fifty-six years after Eric gave up his chance to win the 100-meter dash, another Scot, Allan Wells, won the 100-meter event at the Moscow Olympics. According to the BBC, “When asked by a journalist if he wanted to dedicate his win to Abrahams, who had died eighteen months previously, Wells replied in typically frank fashion: ‘No disrespect to anyone else, but I would prefer to dedicate this to Eric Liddell.’”

And sixty-three years after Eric’s death, just before the Beijing Olympic Games, the Chinese government revealed something that even Eric’s family didn’t know: Eric had been included in a prisoner exchange deal between Japan and Britain but had given up his place to a pregnant woman.

Why does the world still remember and love Eric Liddell today, when other athletes from his era have been long forgotten?

Lord Sands, an Edinburgh civil leader, put his finger on the answer during a dinner honoring Eric just after the 1924 Olympic Games. It was not because Eric was the fastest runner in the world that the guests were gathered there that evening, he said. Instead, “it is because this young man put his whole career as a runner in the balance, and deemed it as small dust, compared to remaining true to his principles.”

“There are greater issues in life than sport, and the greatest of these is loyalty to the great laws of the soul. Here is a young man who considered the commandment to rest and worship high above the fading laurel crown, and who conquered. It was St. Paul, the tent maker of Tarsus, who watched the Olympic Games many centuries ago and wrote, “They who run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize. So run that ye may obtain.”

God had a far greater plan for Eric Liddell’s life than a gold medal that would eventually be forgotten, along with the athlete who won it. And he has great plans for each of us. Those plans may include the need to give up something we value highly. But those who give up what we may most desire—if God has demanded it—the Lord will truly honor.

* *

This story and the stories of six other incredible men are included in SEVEN MEN by Eric Metaxas.