1900 - Sydney Ennals

August 9, 1900

Xinzhou, Shanxi

Sydney Ennals.

Sydney W. Ennals was a native of Lewisham in England, where he was born in 1872. His father was a deacon in the local Baptist Church, and Sydney’s childhood was marked with great happiness. By the time he entered manhood, Sydney was described as “one of the best beloved of men. He was of an exceptionally winsome disposition, and his earnestness and strength of character made him a great spiritual power amongst those associated with him.”[1]

After graduating, Ennals moved to Cambridge where he spent five years in the business world. His spare time was occupied with volunteer Christian work, sharing the gospel with the unsaved and helping the poor and downtrodden of society. In 1892 he entered Regent’s Park College to prepare for missionary work. At the college he gained notoriety for his sporting ability and was voted the best public speaker in his class.

Ennals applied to the Baptist Missionary Society for appointment to China. They immediately accepted him, but asked him to wait until a vacancy occurred. In the meantime, he took a position pasturing a church at Queenstown in South Africa. When he resigned after 18 months to pursue his missionary calling the church mourned. Sydney Ennals sailed for China in September 1899, finally arriving at Xinzhou in Shanxi Province.

The young missionary was soon caught up in the cauldron of Boxer violence, enduring terrible hardship as he and the other missionaries hid from their pursuers. On July 4, 1900, Sydney wrote to his family:

“One feels quite unable to say much in a letter under these sad circumstances; we one and all, however, have been wonderfully calm, trusting in God. I do not regret coming to China, and although my life will have been short, it will in some way have fulfilled the Master’s will. May the Lord’s will be done! I pray earnestly for His deliverance, and feel we shall have it, but after all we may glorify Him better by passing through a deep persecution…. Good-bye, dearest ones; may the Lord take all the future in His hands, and grant us all to meet in Jesus’ presence.”[2]

On August 9, 1900, the carts Ennals and the other missionaries were travelling in were “stopped, the occupants were dragged out, stripped naked, their heads cut off, and their bodies taken to the banks of a small river nearby, and thrown down, to be abused in the most shameful way.”[3] Sydney Ennals was 27-years-old.