THOMAS J. COMBER. 
156 
Splendid services, the confidence and respect of friends 
at home, and colleagues in the field, constituted him 
a leader, and imposed upon him the surely accom- 
panying load of care.” 
A few weeks after the delivery of this memorial 
sermon at Camden Road Chapel, his earlier friends 
at Denmark Place expressed their affectionate esteem 
by erecting a tablet, which was most appropriately 
unveiled by Mr. Edward Rawlings, he, having been 
superintendent of the Sunday school, when Tom 
Comber was a scholar. 
‘‘ Wherever your Comber went, there was life and 
activity. Again and again as I looked at him, he 
reminded me of the young man with the banner, on 
which was the word ‘Excelsior’;” so testified Mr. 
Stanley to Mr. Charters, a fellow-missionary. 
By his native name VlANGA-VlANGA, a sobriquet 
applied to a person who always hurries about — a 
ubiquitous person, he will long be remembered. 
In a recent letter from Mr. Slade, one of the Congo 
missionaries, the following testimony occurs: — “We 
at Wathen are only beginning to realise the great, 
almost irreparable loss we sustained by the death of 
Thomas Comber. His genial, hearty manner with 
the natives, always making himself at home with 
them in their houses, or by their camp-fires, gave him 
a hold upon them which it is not easy for every man 
to acquire. I frequently hear him spoken of with 
true affection, and it will be a long time before his 
memory dies in the hearts of those who loved him 
but little less than we ourselves. That God should 
call home such men as he, when the realisation of 
their long-cherished hopes and constant prayers were 
so near, is to me incomprehensible. It is for us, 
however, not to question His decrees, but to accept 
them in the spirit of true resignation, and to say, with 
a complete surrender of our own will, ‘ God knoweth 
best!’” 
But far surpassing in worth every other memorial is 
