Born in 1878, Mary was listed in the 1901 census as a servant for Reginald Slader, a religious organization secretary. His two daughters worked as a church organist and a secretary to a bookseller.
Described as a “dream of a cook,” she was working for an elderly woman in London when she first met Oswald Chambers during a League of Prayer lecture at Speke Hall.
“The grip that held me then made me want to hear more of the Lord Jesus as presented by him.”
Shortly thereafter, the BTC needed a cook, and Mary took the job.
Kathleen Chambers knew Mary Riley her whole life.
“Mary could cook like nobody’s business. She was a wonderful cook.
She was a lovely lady. I loved Mary very much.”
At the BTC
Anyone remotely linked to the BTC could attend classes. Mary climbed the stairs from the basement kitchen like everyone else.
She loved being at the BTC. Mary Riley wrote about the years in Oswald Chambers: His Life and Work.
They were very full days, up often before six o’clock Mr. Chambers would be in his study preparing for the day, and the whole atmosphere of the College was charged with the presence of God, as he continually prayed that it might be.”
According to Kathleen,
“Mary was very, very downright in her beliefs about God. And she would contradict anybody absolutely to the utmost of her ability. There was no two ways about it, everything was black and white.”
Riley family photo
She cooked at the BTC — often for an unknown number of guests — every day for four years.
The family trip to Askrigg in August 1915 following the closure of the BTC for the duration of the war, included Mary and several other BTC students, along with Oswald’s brother and sisters.
Oswald traveled to Egypt in October, leaving Biddy and Kathleen behind, with Mary, in the echoing #45 Clapham Common north.
“Mrs. Chambers and Kathleen and Miss Riley arrived, and things got better and better.
“They kept open house for us all. Whatever they had they shared, and with . . . Miss Riley’s cooking, we began to feel almost as if we were home again.”
Oswald’s lectures in Egypt
When she had time, Mary attended Oswald’s lectures in the big YMCA hut.
As she wrote:
Mary in front right (Wheaton College photo)
“The sermons at Zeitoun in those years of strain and stress were the very sacrament of preaching.
“No one could doubt it who heard with the keen hearing of the spiritual ear, the miracle of authentic stillness that falls upon an assembly of men in those rare moments when a man speaks to his hearers; spirit to spirit, and he and they alike know it.
“The moment passes, but the ‘inward and spiritual grace’ abides—a sacramental permanent possession.”
Mary traveled to the Suez Canal with the Chambers family. She would take Kathleen with her in the early mornings to haggle over food at the stalls.
She bore it all cheerfully and even managed to join the family on a camel ride to the pyramids!
After Oswald’s death
Mary Riley stayed behind to continue cooking while Biddy and Kathleen left for two weeks of mourning.
She supported her dear friend and the YMCA ministry, bowing to God’s unknowable will:
“When God called our shepherd and teacher into His presence, and we were left without nay explanation saving that “He doeth all things well.”
They were encouraged that so many soldiers returned to Zeitoun, even without Oswald there.
Biddy began a class that studied Oswald’s book Biblical Psychology.
Mary soon recognized,
“The students came to the realization that he was our teacher yet, and we continue still to see new meaning in all the words he left us.”
Steadfast to the end, she remained in Egypt with Biddy and Kathleen until the very end. They traveled back to England together in June 1919.
Post-Oswald life
Mary is behind Biddy, Egypt YMCA secretaries, 1915. (Cadbury Library photo)
As Biddy ran another class that read through Oswald’s teachings, Mary regularly attended.
She traveled with Biddy and Kathleen when they retrenched to Oxford, not leaving until that humble cottage was livable.
Over the years, Mary helped with Biddy’s “ministry of the books” by storing some volumes at her home.
Mary Riley never lost her appreciation for Oswald’s teachings, later writing:
“To all who knew Oswald Chambers, his life was the interpretation of his teaching.
“To those to whom it comes now in another form the meaning opens in the hidden individual ways of God.
“The writer believes that the Spirit of God is using this teaching in many lands to very many lives as a corrective to the wave of shallow thinking, and of shallower religious values that has swept across a section of the Christian communities everywhere.”
Of Mary Riley what can I say? To have been with her and known her during these months and past years has been to see a Christian woman indeed and a joyous mixture of Mary and Martha. God bless and be blest for Mary Riley.
A good friend to the end, Mary’s devotion at the BTC and in Egypt enabled Biddy to take the notes she later used to compile the books of Oswald Chambers’ words.
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