Biography of the late John Coldstream, M.D., F.R.C.P.E. / by John Hutton Balfour ; with an introduction by the Rev. James Lewis.

  • Balfour, John Hutton, 1808-1884.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Biography of the late John Coldstream, M.D., F.R.C.P.E. / by John Hutton Balfour ; with an introduction by the Rev. James Lewis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ciipied with his favourite work, how much waste and weakness there is in the usual eruptive, spasmodic advocacy of those who, par excellence, are accounted energetic men, and whose energy so often gives greater prominence to itself than impulse to their work, Dr Coldstream's art, or rather we should say his natm-e, was to suffer his work to plead for itself whilst he himself shrunk behind it; or if he pleaded with it, it was through a professional life in daily beautiful harmony with his missionary enterprise,— a life in illustration and practical evidence of the power of the medical missionary. When compared in his work with almost all other philanthropic workers of his day, you felt the depth of the Spanish proverb—speech is silver, but silence is gold. And yet, as we have already said, there was no want in Dr Coldstream's character of a genial human heartiness. His sympathies were broad as his mind was catholic ; nor did he lack in a cordial apprecia- tion of those more muscular and demonstrative minds that make themselves heard hke the ringing of the hammer on the anvil, and who, whether they succeed in shaping more metal to their mould than gentler workers, fill the air with inconceivably louder sounds and with a more plentiful shower of sparks. If in natural temperament, intellectual capacity and tastes, he was eminently fitted for the work in which he was so honoured, it must not be forgotten that above all h