The Work
The Disciplines of the Christian Life was prepared by Eric Liddell as a set of study notes for Bible classes he led in the Japanese-operated Weihsien Internment Camp (Wei County, China) from 1943 until his death in February 1945. The notes were published posthumously by the Religious Tract Society in Scotland in 1985, long after Liddell's story had become internationally known through the film Chariots of Fire (1981). The book is organized around a series of foundational Christian disciplines: concentration on God in prayer, surrender of the will, reading the Bible, Christian conduct in daily life, fellowship, and service.
The text is not a literary work in any conventional sense - it was written in the conditions of an internment camp, by a man who was also teaching chemistry and coaching athletics to the camp's young people, dying of an undiagnosed brain tumor. Its authority derives not from its literary quality but from the conditions of its composition and the integrity of its author. Liddell died on February 21, 1945, five months before the camp was liberated.
Biblical Engagement
Romans 12:1 - 'I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service' - is the foundational text of Liddell's teaching on the Christian life. The 'living sacrifice' is the key concept: not death but life offered completely to God, with the body and its activities - including athletic competition - consecrated to divine service. Liddell's famous statement in Chariots of Fire - 'I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure' - is the athletic expression of Romans 12:1: the body's gifts offered back to their giver.
Hebrews 12:1 - 'Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us' - is the athletic metaphor for the Christian life that was most directly applicable to Liddell's own experience as a world-class runner. The race, the weight, the cloud of witnesses - Hebrews' metaphor gave Liddell a theological framework for the discipline of athletics and connected it to the larger discipline of the spiritual life. He taught his young internees that the discipline required for physical excellence and the discipline required for spiritual growth were analogous, each demanding sustained effort in the power of God.
Philippians 4:13 - 'I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me' - is Paul's confidence of sufficiency in Christ that Liddell applied both to athletic training and to the conditions of internment. In a camp where food was scarce, conditions were harsh, and the duration of imprisonment unknown, Paul's claim of strength through Christ was not a comfortable sentiment but a tested conviction. Liddell's teaching on prayer and dependence on God was shaped by the conditions he and his students were enduring.
1 Corinthians 9:24 - 'Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain' - is Paul's application of athletic imagery to the spiritual life that gave Liddell his most characteristic metaphor. The runner who trained to win at the Olympics could speak with peculiar authority about the single-mindedness, discipline, and sacrifice that Paul describes. His students in the internment camp knew that the man teaching them about running the spiritual race with patience had run a physical race at the Olympic level.
Eric Liddell: Life and Context
Eric Henry Liddell (1902-1945) was born in Tientsin, China, to Scottish missionary parents, educated in Scotland, and achieved international celebrity by winning the 400 meters gold medal at the 1924 Paris Olympics - an achievement made more celebrated by his refusal to compete in his primary event (the 100 meters) because heats were held on a Sunday. He returned to China as a missionary in 1925, working under the London Missionary Society in Tientsin.
After Japan's invasion of China and the attack on Pearl Harbor, Liddell sent his pregnant wife and daughters to Canada for safety. He remained in China and was interned at Weihsien with other Allied civilians in March 1943. At Weihsien he became the center of camp life for the young people - teaching, coaching, organizing, adjudicating disputes, and leading Bible studies. Fellow internees unanimously described him as the most admired person in the camp.
He was offered early release through a prisoner exchange but declined in favor of a pregnant woman. He died of a brain tumor on February 21, 1945. The camp was liberated by American forces on August 17, 1945.
Chariots of Fire and Legacy
Hugh Hudson's film Chariots of Fire (1981), which won four Academy Awards including Best Picture, made Liddell's story internationally known and introduced the phrase 'I feel his pleasure' into the popular Christian vocabulary. The film's portrayal of Liddell was broadly accurate: a gifted athlete who was also a man of principled, joyful faith, for whom athletic excellence and Christian devotion were not in tension but expressions of the same integrated life.
The devotional notes he prepared for the Weihsien Bible studies acquired an authority beyond their literary quality because of this story: a man teaching the disciplines of surrender, perseverance, and faith while embodying them in the most demanding circumstances imaginable. The Disciplines of the Christian Life is a minor work by any literary standard but a major document of Christian witness.