BY DERICK BINGHAM Not everybody likes "Dr. Victor". Indeed some would even go as far as to say that it is impossible to be neutral about the man. You either like him or you don't. I didn't. Too well I recall on occasions going down to Scrabo Hall, Newtownards, when about 17 years of age and being accosted by this man. 'We will have you back again if you preach the Gospel next time' he would say after the service was over. "Remember there is my side to every question, your side, and the right side", he might tell another. Like him?! I thought him to be the most heartless being I ever met!!! I mean take a friend of mine who was a patient of his. She had a very sore finger. Feeling half wrecked with pain she entered his surgery. 'When I bend my finger like that', she said, demonstrating, 'it really hurts'. "Well", said the all‐knowing medical man from behind his table and half‐rim glasses: "Don't do THAT then"! Yet there is more to a man than the surface. Soon I began to learn that beneath that cover of, what shall I call it, "Dr. Cameron bluntness" (with respect to A. J. Cronin) was, a heart that loved the Christ of Calvary as much as any I ever have been allowed to know. Behind it all was a life that had been around a few corners and had seen too much not to know hypocrisy when it appeared and to be prepared to boot it when it did. I soon found a man who was frightened of no man. Such are refreshing characters when, by and large, the church is overpopulated with spineless "yes‐men". It is not often in life that you grow, quickly, from disliking a man to not only liking him but to respect and admire the qualities God's grace has wrought in him. Such a life deserves a little looking into. Victor Glasgow was born on 30th July, 1915. There was a war on and maybe this affected him a little because he was a fighter from the start. He was not the model pupil at the Model School in Newtownards when he went there. He never liked it, and hated study with equal wrath and reckoned the sooner it was over the better. Yet flippant and all as he was through primary and secondary schooling, and rebelling as he did to the disciplines of study, he knew one or two important things. He knew from the faithful teaching of exceptionally godly parents that he was a sinner before God and had a personal need for Christ as Saviour. He also knew of the absolute dependability of Scripture and he will tell you yet, if you ask him, that he has never had during his entire life a single doubt about the utter dependability of God's word. It was at eight years and ten months that he set out one evening with the usual childish relish for what we are pleased to call in Ulster a "Sunday School Tea Meeting". This, for those who don't know, is the night of nights for children, for they receive their prizes for Sunday School attendance and have a tuck in of cream buns and pastry and generally they try to drink tea in between! At the old Gospel Hall on Scrabo Hill that night the lad was to have the experience of his life, though of a very different sort to that expected. A gentleman named Mr. Bob Storey was the special speaker and to put cit as truthfully as possible in the words of my subject: "That night Bob Storey broke my heart by his presentation of the death of Christ"'. Let me quickly add that as far as the sufferings of Christ are concerned they still break Dr. Victor Glasgow's heart. Note well, my reader, the Doctor was but a child, but the message he heard was that of a Saviour's undying love for him at Calvary, and that, when acted upon, was enough to save his precious soul. Overawed by the greatness of the substitutionary death of the Saviour for him and the greatness of the worth of that sacrifice, the Spirit of God led him to put his trust in the Saviour through the lovely story of Captain Couts. This illustration aptly applied by Mr. Storey told how a dying sea captain was shown how he could put his own name into the lovely words of Isaiah. 53.5. Victor slipped his in there. He tens me, that it takes a long time for things to dawn on him and he insists that I record that it was not until he got home to the kitchen that it dawned on him what had happened. Yet dawn on him it did. He had been saved! His Godly mother coveted him for God and because she herself had had a false profession for a time she kept probing her son as to the reality of his conversion. Two years perhaps passed in which Victor spent more of his time doubting his conversion rather than enjoying it! Yet the, undoubted reality of the work of grace which had been wrought in his heart could not be erased. God had actually translated him to the Kingdom of His dear Son. He recalls being convinced of the necessity to obey the Lord in baptism and was eventually received into the fellowship of the little assembly of Christians meeting on Scrabo Hill. It was a precious time for him that first day he took the emblems. He likes to point out that he had remembered the Lord many times before he took the emblems that morning and sadly admits that he has taken the emblems some times since and didn't remember the Lord. Soon the quiet secluded life in Newtownards was to change. Coming out of school his father who had founded a business in the town in the 1890's and which was now prospering decided to allow his son to serve his time to the drapery business. It usually takes three years but Victor lasted 10 days. He used to crack to his father that it was a "poor family which. couldn't afford one gentleman"! The best way to describe how Victor drifted into medicine is that he got there by a process of elimination. He went to College in Belfast intending to study Law but eventually started a medical course at Queen's though through no great exercise of soul. Though we don't always know it God works in spite of us. The doctor believes such a statement was particularly true in his case.
He certainly spread his wings at Queen's. His horizons widened but his spirituality did not. He attended a prayer meeting one night of the Bible Union (now the Christian Union) and heard many young men dedicate themselves to the Lord. He was urged to do it by the Sipir1t but drew back and was afraid. He was afraid to trust God completely with the whole of his life on the altar. His soul was saved but he now recalls with tears that much of his younger life was spent living for self. You see, this story is not a story of a life that was perfect. Too many biographies fall into that trap. The truth is, and the doctor makes me record it for young to learn, you can be a Christian and not live all out for Christ and that is a tragedy. He looks back with bitter regret to lost opportunities in student days. Make sure, younger reader, that you don't have to. The war broke out in Victor's third medical year. The whole of Europe was never to be the same again and millions of young men were to be wiped out into eternity. The shadow of war soon touched Victor's life and one year after qualifying as a doctor he was found as a medical officer with the R.A.F. attached to 77 Bomber Squadron in Yorkshire, England. The year 1943 had seen Dr. Victor's squadron move from Coastal Command to Bomber Command and when he arrived in York‐
shire it was fully operational. This period in Victor's life was one heavy responsibility for him. Most men who go through a war don't want to talk about the horrific experiences of it because of the, fact that most of them feel that better men than they never came out of it alive. Doctor Glasgow is among that category. There was, he quickly points out, nothing wonderful about it. Pilots and their crews went out in the dark, bombed in the dark, and came home in the dark. Many, without Christ, went out into the dark never to see light again. Victor can recall to this very day the faces of many of those young men under his medical care who never came back. He can tell of one chap standing with a mug of beer in his hand and a hooked tobacco pipe in the other telling him of how he knew he was going to come through the war. His knowledge was false for he never came back. Men who are going out to die pay great attention to little things. They can become very superstitious. They were very particular about their doctor and for a frightening reason. In the first six weeks of his posting not one single man was lost yet returning after ten day leave to get married he found one hundred men of his squadron missing. After that the doctor found members of bomber crews coming and asking him what nights he would be on duty. If he was not on duty they wouldn't go out. For a Christian doctor believing superstition to be nonsense it was nevertheless very unnerving to be surrounded with men who had you as the subject of their superstition. In that first year of married life Doctor Glasgow and his wife Hetty lived on a farm about 6 or 8 miles from York. His son Peter was born there. It certainly was a year in his life that was heavily shadowed by the sickening relentless suffering and death that war brings. The doctor never flew on a bombing operation though he tried a few times to get permission to do so. His Commanding Officer refused permission stating clearly that if Doctor Glasgow went missing he as Commanding Officer would lose his job. There always has to be a doctor on the ground when there is an aeroplane in the sky. In the words of his wartime Commanding Officer "The most precious animal in the R.A.F. is the doctor so you're not going out on an operation'''. Strangely enough it was not a bomb or the Germans that threatened his life during the war years. In the spring of 1944 he was posted to India. He was found one day of that spring sitting on the deck of a ship in the Mediterranean. As the blue sea surrounded him and the hot sun poured down he was discussing tropical diseases with a few R.A.F. Officers. He said then that he reckoned that the biggest problem he was likely to face was Amoebic Hepatitis. This disease is caused by a microscopic parasite and usually enters the body through food. It can do deadly damage and can eat a hole in a man's liver and cause it to blow UP like a balloon. That day the doctor said that he had no fear of dying in India ‐ God, he said, had given him a verse from the Psalm: "Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor the arrow that flieth by day, nor the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor the destruction that wasteth by noonday". Amoebic Hepatitis was the latter. When he arrived in Bombay he was offered a gun for his protection. He signed in red ink that he had refused it. To this day, even in the present Ulster situation, he firmly refuses to have or use a gun. The reason? He says his problem is that whenever he was younger he could shoot straight. As a Christian doctor he is committed to the work of saving life rather than taking it and is opposed to violence as a means to any end. The amazing thing was that his very occupation was a protection against all kinds of physical danger in India. One evening when working in the Simla Hills in N. India the station was raided by Daks, the professional thieves of India. These men oil their bodies so that nobody can hold on to them even if they are caught. They fleeced everybody else but they never touched a thing belonging to the young Irish doctor. This amazed him and he asked his Pathan bearer, who slept outside his door every night, how such a thing could happen. The Pathan laughed: "They not touch you. You doctor. 'Sahib". The point was even further driven home to him by his servant when he showed him, laughing all the time, a revolver secured to the calf of his leg and a Bowie (a curved bladed knife) lashed to his leg! The truth was that the young Irishman was by his profession a rare commodity in wartime India which knew little of modern medicine. A story will serve to illustrate this point. One day an Indian got one of his legs caught between two rail carriages. Doctor Glasgow was called in to give him some medical treatment. As it happened the doctor had to amputate his leg and before he did so he gave the man half a grain of morphia. The immediate result was that the Indian, under the influence of the morphia, started smiling as if he never felt better. A huge crowd of hundreds had gathered around and when they saw this poor chap with his leg just amputated grinning like a kitten they immediately thought Victor Glasgow, M.B. of Newtownards, Co. Down was a God and fell down on their faces around him. The doctor hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. Laugh, because of the absurdity of people bowing down to a mere mortal, or cry, because of the blindness and superstition of those hundreds around him who knew nothing of the love of the Christ who died for them and who said: "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh unto the Father but by me". When it hit him no morphia could take away the seriousness of what had happened. It was the "destruction that wasteth by noonday" that brought him to the gravest illness of his life. He contacted Amoebic Hepatitis. The parasite got to work fast and he shed weight like you would an overcoat on a warm summer’s day. Weak and ill and weighing eight stone he was ordered home. His Pathan bearer had by this time become so devoted to him that he got down on his knees on the railway station at their parting and pleaded with Victor to allow him to come home with him. It was hard leaving him there but as far as Victor was concerned he felt no pangs in leaving India. He has since had no desire to return and as the 23,000 tonner that brought him home pulled out of Bombay he was so ill he wondered if Ireland would have an appeal any more. He was not all that far from the gates of death and the experience has left its mark on him to this day. He testifies that to live underneath the shadow of death knocks materialistic thinking out of one’s head. The temptation is still there but he says that it really holds no fascination for him at all. On V.E. day, May 15th, 1945, the whole of Allied Europe was ablaze with the joy of victory over the Nazis. The menace of Hitler was over, the long nightmare had ended. That day found Victor slowly making his way through the Suez Canal on board ship. The ship actually went aground for a time but soon they were refloated and within a few weeks his feet were on British soil .once more and he entered hospital for treatment. He served one year in the R.A.F. after his sick leave and then did a refresher course in obstetrics. In 1947 he entered the house on Castle Street, Newtownards where he now lives and settled into work as a General Practitioner. In 1949 his daughter Angela was born. What about his life in Christ in all these years? He feels that he cannot say there was all that much in them for God. He believes firmly that being a member of an assembly in all those years was not only a privilege but a protection. He never reckoned himself ever to be a member of any other assembly, though he worshipped in many others, other than Scrabo. Even in the Simla Hills in India he was still. as far as he was concerned, a member of the Scrabo assembly on Scrabo Hill. He gets very sentimental about even the Hill itself to this day. No matter where he roams when he comes over a rise and sees Scrabo Tower he feels he's home. God does not always move quickly but he is always at work in the believer's life. One evening Victor came in from his practice and his wife asked him if he was going to Bangor that evening. "Bangor?", he said, "What would I go to Bangor for?" "To hear Paul Plubell and Gordon Reager", said his wife, "down at Central Hall". "No", said the tired doctor. Messrs. Plubell and Reager were from the US and were on an Irish preaching tour. Little did the doctor sitting by his fireside know that Paul PlubelJ was to be mightily used in the hand of God to stir him out of his half‐hearted Christian‐life. At 6‐45 p.m. the doctor suddenly stirred himself and getting up he said that he was going to Central Hall. His wife quietly told him that she knew he would go, she had been praying he would. The place was packed to capacity and being a little late the doctor was given a seat in the aisle. As Victor puts it: 'There was a man sent from God whose name was Paul Plubell'. His subject was the gifts to the Church‐Apostles, Evangelists, Teachers, Governments, Helps. He pointed out that there are many Evangelists, fewer teachers, and no apostles in the Church today. Yet every single member can be a help. The speaker, under the power and leadership of the Holy Spirit, used two illustrations to press home his point. He read from Acts 27 .17 where Paul was on the high seas and the ship in which he was voyaging was in grave peril of breaking up. The passage points out that "they used helps, undergirding the ship". These were the men who volunteered to dive under the ship with ropes and thereby held the fast breaking‐up ship in one piece. So, applied Mr. Plubell, we too can be helps in the church, helping to preserve the harmony of the local testimony and helping it in times of distress and trouble. The second illustration used was of a young couple who had just moved into the fellowship of the local assembly in the United States. The young man had been a war veteran with an injured spine, the young woman was a polio victim which had left her paralized. An elder out of the local assembly to which they had formerly belonged was talking one day to a member of their present fellowship and asked how the young couple were getting along. "Oh! Wonderful!" he said, "Since they have come to us they have been a real help". The elder couldn't understand what he meant. "Help!?" he said. "In their state how could they be a help?" The gentle reply was that they had been a help by their presence. If there was any activity in the Assembly they were there. The words came as from the Lord himself to Victor Glasgow and quietly in his heart he told the Lord that from that moment on he would at least try to be a help in his local church, by his presence or in any other way he could. Victor heard that message twenty years ago. Since then Paul Plubell has gone to be with Christ but his message lives on. In 1960 the Assembly at Scrabo Hill moved down to Mill Street in Newtownards and it certainly has seen expansion in the last 17 years. Doctor Glasgow has been very deeply involved in the life and leadership of the Assembly and has had many opportunities to put Paul Plubell's message from God into operation. Dozens of precious souls have found the Lord in recent years. The Youth work has been singularly blessed and Lord's Day evening sees one of the largest congregations in the land, gathered to hear the Gospel. This is the Lord's doing and the doctor is only too pleased to help where he can. His attitudes have, of course, changed in various directions. When he sees his native Ulster wrecked by terrorists it makes him angry. He is beginning to wonder if England is worth fighting for any more. He reckons England used to stand for something but now it stands for nothing. They have thrown over the laws of God. He reckons even the Roman Catholic of Ireland has more of the fear of God about them than decadent so called "Protestant'" England. The doctor would like to see Capital Punishment restored. As for 'Assembly Life' in Ireland the doctor sees it being chocked by first rate materialism. Christians are working so hard to make money during the week that when the Lord's Day comes around they are so tired they can't worship God. If this continues at its present rate God will do what he once said he would do to the Laodicean Church. He said he would spue them out of His mouth. Assemblies must retain their spirituality or else. It is the writer's opinion that the Lord has used Victor Glasgow as an outstanding help to countless people both as a doctor and as an elder in his local church. The lesson of his life is that it is much better to lay all on the altar in your youth, and give the years of youth and vigour to the Master. The doctor says he did not do this but such is the gracious Master that he serves that he restored him to Himself and used him all the same. Because of him many have been encouraged and instructed. Yet we had better close, in the words of our subject, who on looking over fifty years in Christ has only this to say: 'Anything that has been accomplished, if anything has been 'accomplished, has not been because of me but very definitely in spite of me. It is the Lord's doing.' Victor Glasgow, M.B., on your half a century in Christ we salute you