Biography
Rosalind Bell-Smith was born on November 7, 1864, in Montreal, Canada, the daughter of John Bell-Smith, an English painter who had come to the colony and who became a leading artist in the city. She grew up in a home full of paintings, books and company. Her father taught her to draw and paint, and she showed such talent that she was sent to study at the Ontario School of Art in Toronto. She was a lively and independent young woman, with a quick mind and a strong will. She had grown up in the church and had a real faith, but she was proud and ambitious, and she dreamed of a career as an artist.
In Toronto, she heard a young theological student at Knox College speak about missions. His name was Jonathan Goforth. He was a farm boy from Ontario, who had been moved by the life of Robert Murray M'Cheyne and who burned with a desire to take the gospel to China. She was drawn to his sincerity and his force. They became engaged. She struggled with the thought of giving up her art and of going to a land she did not know. She was afraid. She said later that she had no call to be a missionary and that she went because she loved her husband and because God would not let her rest. They were married in 1887, and the next year they sailed for China. She was twenty-three.
The Goforths were the first missionaries of the Presbyterian Church in Canada to China. They were sent to the province of Honan, in the heart of the country, where there was almost no Christian work and where the people were hostile to foreigners. They suffered abuse and stones. Their first houses were destroyed. They lived in crowded, dirty inns and in mud huts. She learned Chinese and began to work among the women. She visited the homes and taught them to read. She held classes for the village women. She was a good teacher, patient and clear.
Her personal sorrows were great. She bore eleven children, and five of them died. She buried babies in the Chinese soil. She wrote that the loss of each one was like a knife in her heart. She struggled with bitterness against God and with fear for the children who remained. She said that she was often in despair, and that she was held up only by the promises of Scripture. In 1900, the Boxer uprising swept across northern China, and the missionaries were hunted. The Goforths were warned and fled with their children. They traveled for about a month, over a thousand miles, by cart, by boat and on foot. They were attacked by mobs. Her husband was struck on the head with a sword and nearly killed. She carried a sick baby through the heat and the dust. They reached safety, but the child died soon after. It was the worst trial of her life.
She returned to China with her husband and went on with the work. In 1907, Jonathan visited Korea, where he saw the great revival, and in 1908, he preached in Manchuria in meetings in which people were moved to confess their sins. Rosalind was with him in much of this work. She saw the power of the Spirit break through to the Chinese and to the missionaries alike. She said that she learned in those years that the power of God does not depend on the strength of the worker. She learned to rest in the Lord's care.
She was a gifted writer, and she began to publish the story of her experiences. How I Know God Answers Prayer, which was published in 1921, told of the way that God had provided for her family, in small things and in great. It was widely read. She wrote Goforth of China, a biography of her husband, which was published in 1937, and Climbing: Memories of a Missionary's Wife, in 1940. Her writing was candid. She spoke of her own pride and of her fears, and she did not hide her struggles. She also spoke of the difficulties of her marriage, as her husband was a man of single purpose, who sometimes forgot the needs of his family.
After Jonathan's death in 1936, she lived in Toronto and continued to speak and to write. She died on October 3, 1942, at the age of seventy-seven. Her life shows the effect of a reluctant missionary whom God sustained through every sorrow. She did not seek a life of loss, and she bore it, and her witness has given comfort to many.