Biography
Peter Cameron Scott was born on March 7, 1867, in Glasgow, Scotland. His family moved to the United States when he was a boy, and they settled in Philadelphia. He grew up in the American city, in a family of Scottish Presbyterians. He was a young man who learned the trade of a gas fitter. He was converted in his youth and was active in the church. He was a man of energy and determination. He was drawn to the idea of missions, as a result of reading the stories of David Livingstone and others. He felt a call to Africa.
In 1890, at the age of twenty-three, he sailed to the Congo with his brother, John, as a missionary of the International Missionary Alliance, a group founded by A. B. Simpson. They went to the lower Congo. The trip was a disaster. His brother died of fever within a few months. He was struck down by illness himself and had to return to the United States. It was a bitter blow. He lay near death for some time. When he recovered, he said that he had a sense that God had called him to go back to Africa and to open a way to the interior.
He studied for a time at the Philadelphia School of the Bible and met a number of supporters. He had a plan to establish a chain of mission stations across Africa, from the east coast to the interior. The idea was to enter at Mombasa, in Kenya, and to move inland along the railway to Lake Victoria. In 1895, he founded the Africa Inland Mission, in Philadelphia, with a council of supporters. It was a faith mission, which did not ask for money but trusted in prayer. The aim was to take the gospel to the unreached tribes of East and Central Africa.
In August 1895, he sailed for Kenya with a party of ten missionaries, including a number of his relatives. They reached Mombasa in October. At that time, Kenya was under British rule, and the railway was being built. They traveled inland by foot and began to establish mission stations. The first, at a place called Nzawi, in Ukambani, was founded in 1895. It was a hard beginning. The missionaries were in a country that was new to them, and the climate was bad. Many fell ill. Peter was the strongest and led the group.
In the next year, he suffered a series of setbacks. In 1896, a number of the missionaries died or went home. Peter was ill with blackwater fever, a dangerous form of malaria. He kept working through the illness. He was a man of strong will, who pushed himself too hard. On December 4, 1896, he died at the mission station at Kangundo, in Kenya, at the age of twenty-nine. He had been in Kenya for just over a year. He was buried at a place near the station, in a grave that was marked with a simple cross.
He did not live to see the fruit of his work. Yet the mission which he had founded survived. It was taken over by Charles Hurlburt, who led it for many years. It grew rapidly in the next decades and spread to Uganda, Tanganyika and Congo and other lands. It became one of the largest mission agencies in Africa, now known as AIM International. The church that grew from its work, the Africa Inland Church, is one of the largest in Kenya. It has millions of members.
His life shows the power of a short and costly beginning. A young man who failed on his first journey, and who died a year after his second, started a work that has lasted over a century. His grave is a reminder that the seed that falls into the ground may bear much fruit.