In one of my books on the lives of saints, which I usually read in conjunction with the daily office, Mary Slessor was commemorated.  She was a woman born into a working class Presbyterian family in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1848.  In 1875 she went as a teacher to a mission in Calabar, Nigeria, where she served until her death in 1915.  What struck me was a couple of  phrases from Richard Symonds’ “Above Rubies” (about her life):  “Partly as a result of her lack of formal education, particularly in Presbyterian theology, Mary Slessor took a broad-minded view of local a beliefs and customs when she arrived in Calabar, and as a result acquired an unusual understanding of them.”  “Mary Slessor’s religion is quite as interesting as the work which it inspired.  Although she recollected that as a girl ‘hell fire’ had driven her into the kingdom, she found it a kingdom of love and tenderness and mercy, and never sought to bring anyone into it by shock.  ‘Fear is not worship,’ she said, ‘nor does it honor God.'” (more…)