The Runner Who Lifted His Cup in a Prison Camp

Eric Liddell won Olympic gold in Paris in 1924, a moment immortalized in Chariots of Fire. The world offered him fame, endorsement deals, a comfortable life in Scotland. Instead, Liddell returned to China as a missionary, teaching science and scripture to students in Tianjin.

When the Japanese army invaded, Liddell could have evacuated. He sent his wife and daughters to safety in Canada but stayed behind to serve the Chinese people he loved. In 1943, he was interned at the Weihsien concentration camp in Shandong Province.

Behind barbed wire, Liddell organized games for children, tutored teenagers, and shared his rations with the sick. Fellow prisoners recalled that he never complained. He carried a worn Bible and led evening worship services in the crowded dormitory block — lifting, as the psalmist says, the cup of salvation and calling on the name of the Lord in the presence of all the people around him.

On February 21, 1945, Eric Liddell died of a brain tumor in that camp. He was forty-three. His last words to a fellow internee were simply, "It's complete surrender."