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S3 9 1923 Scott, Charles Ernest, 1876 Answered prayer in China Answered Prayer in China v ANSWERED PRAYER IN CHINA Some Prayer-Experiences of Present-Day Chinese Christians By CHARLES ERNEST SCOTT PHILADELPHIA THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TIMES COMPANY Copyright, 1923, by The Sunday School Times Company PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA TO MY FRIEND CHARLES GALLAUDET TRUMBULL FOR WHOSE TEACHING ON THE VICTORIOUS LIFE AND THE LIFE OF PRAYER I AM PROFOUNDLY GRATEFUL, I AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATE THIS BOOK. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/answeredprayerinOOscot FOREWORD One evening a gronp of neighbors had gathered in our home to meet a missionary on furlough from China. We had been listening to him for an hour or so — no one kept track of the time — as he stood in a corner of the library and took us to China, took us itinerating among the villages, and into walled cities, and into the homes and churches and personal lives of Chinese Christians. The journey, described by word-pictures alone, was so new to us, so thrilling in its highway and by-way experiences, and so revealing in its dis¬ closure of the needs of the people and of the vic¬ tories of the Cross among them, that we were far more intensely under the spell of the missionary’s narrative than any of us could fully realize. For when he had finished, no one moved, or said a word. We did not readily return to our America after that enthralling tour in the land of Sinim through the welter of heathenism and the vast areas of life as yet unreached by the Good Tid¬ ings. Then, very quietly, we turned to one another, and shared our impressions of what we had heard. And one woman in the group, whose eyes were • • Vll viii Answered Prayer in China evidently seeing China, said with all earnestness, “I think that is the most wonderful evening I have ever spent in my life ! ’ ’ Perhaps it was Charles Ernest Scott’s vivid word-picturing of life in China as he had seen it with quick, appraising, discerning eyes; perhaps it was the range and suggestiveness of his inci¬ dents, the sympathetic revealing of the Chinese heart, and the setting forth of great issues in per¬ fectly understandable ways that gripped us so. In any event, I am sure that all of us were glad that one who so evidently rejoiced in the call, the se¬ vere toil, and the testings of a missionary’s life could so memorably and movingly tell the story. In conversation with Mr. Scott one day, he de¬ plored the fact (as lie thought) that his residence in China since 1906 had caused him to ‘ 4 lose his English.” 4 ‘ Well,” exclaimed one of the group, “if that is so, I should like to read some of the things you wrote before you lost your English!” No, his schooling at Alma College, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Munich, and Prince¬ ton Seminary has not been obliterated by his years in China, but apparently only intensified. Hence his writings for The Sunday School Times, his books, and his lectures at Princeton Seminary and elsewhere. In the Shantung Mission of the Northern Presbyterian Church he has been un¬ wearying in itinerating, in evangelistic work, in Foreword ix famine relief. Indeed, in the varied and taxing wrork of the man in the field he is counted among the most aggressive of the missionaries of the Cross in all of China. But his is not merely the aggressiveness and courage of a vigorous mind and an athletic, foot¬ ball-trained body. Nothing so fitful and feeble as that can meet the strain over there — or elsewhere. It is Charles Scott’s prayer-life, his reliance upon God’s prayer-promises, his full confidence in God’s infallible Word, his exultant joy in seeing God work out the problem on any and every oc¬ casion, that explains his abounding hopefulness and energy, and pioneer expectancy. So it is that this book of his seems to me to be straight from the heart, as he bears testimony to the power of prayer out of a rich, and reassuring experience. The same vividness is here that was in his word-picture that evening in the home. But I think even more than this, in the light of ripening experiences, these narratives carry the prayer- message with a humbling and penetrating chal¬ lenge to all who may have the privilege of read¬ ing these testimonies to the lovingkindness of our prayer-answering Heavenly Father. That is why The Sunday School Times Company is glad to have a publisher’s part in the extension of Mr. Scott’s writing-ministry through this book. Philip E. Howard, President . PREFACE Some years ago Chang Chih Tung, in deeds and fame second only to the great viceroy, Li Hnng Chang, wrote a book, 6 6 China’s Only Hope. ’ ’ It had a' sale not common in the West — several million copies. It was bought eagerly by students, literati, merchants and officials. And it was read to tens of millions of illiterates. (Incidentally, it is an interesting sight of a winter night to see thirty to fifty villagers crowded into a room and a literate reading to them.) The gist of Viceroy Chang’s argument was that the salvation of China hangs on its return to pure Confucianism, plus general education of the masses. Our experience in China leads us sorrowfully to believe that Chang’s* premises (and, of neces¬ sity, his conclusions) were wrong. China has had plenty of time to try out the panacea of Confu¬ cianism and education per se; they have landed China in the lowest depths. China possesses everything that Gladstone said was necessary for “conquering empire” — conti¬ nental domain in the temperate zone; enormous population that is brainy, fecund, virile, homo- XI xii Answered Prayer in China geneous, industrious and persevering; immense and varied untapped natural resources; and a vast shore-line of fine harbors stretching through many degrees of latitude — everything except the sine qua non, Christian character. As. Confucius said’ of his fellow-countrymen, “You cannot carve rotten wood!” Now a people are largely the product of their religion; and China’s religious life has not com¬ forted or ennobled her, or rendered her strong. Though one of the most extended of states, she is one of the most impotent politically. Few have been* so bulldozed or imposed upon by others. Governments and races which were not when China was in the splendor of her ancient glory and power, as being truly “The Middle Kingdom” of Asia, have mercilessly trampled upon her and she has been powerless to resent. Though the biggest of nations, a tiny neighbor has humiliated her times without number and done with her almost as she would. And though China has, from the hoary past, had education ; though she has long revelled in the printed page and been possessed’ of vast libraries, her scholars compiling extensive dictionaries and encyclopedias, writing odes and sonnets, stories and plays of artistic finish and literary merit, yet culture has not saved her educated officials from the depths of corruption. Squeeze and Preface xm blackmail are fine arts here. Almost every official has bis price. Truly there is no salvation in the remedies proposed by Viceroy Chang. Happily, however, we have found in China as elsewhere that prayer (which is the heart of true religion) is a virile dynamic to make life beautiful and worth while. If prayer could change the physical battle-front in the World War; if, as General Pershing wrote from France: “The invisible, unconquerable force let loose by the prayers ... of the Christian world, is in¬ calculable, ’ 9 then it is indeed worth while for every Chinese to learn to pray to the True and Living God ; worth while for his soul to commune in spirit and in truth with Him who is pure spirit. And no higher task for the welfare of the indi¬ vidual and the nation awaits the missionary than that heart-to-heart contact of the reverent, evan¬ gelistic Bible teacher, in which he can teach the Chinese how to pray. To set forth the fact that some of the Chinese have learned and are using this open secret which maketh all things new is the purpose of these little life-stories. They have occurred among humble folk, in villages unknown to the great world. They are “source documents,” of intense interest to one foreign missionary, because they have happened in his field, under his shepherding, as he has travailed among his people, attempting xiv Answered Prayer in China faithfully to present the glorious Gospel of God, uneviscerated, even in its naked power. Out of these blessed experiences he wonders more than ever why Jehovah, as in the days of Isaiah, has to be casting his eyes up and down all over the planet looking for those who realize the wisdom and joy and strength of prayer. “And he looked for an intercessor, and there was none.” This little book is sent forth with the hope that men will realize as never before how, as King Arthur said : More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. If these stories teach anything, they teach that: “Deeper than the need for men; aye, deep down at the bottom of our spiritless life, is the need for the forgotten secret of prevailing world¬ wide prayer. ’ ? Charles Ernest Scott. Tsinanfu, Shantung, China. CONTENTS PAGE I. Mrs. Hwoa's Conversion and Trans¬ formed Life . 1 II. The Little Lad and the Lord's Supper. 9 III. 1 ‘Praying Through" a Wayward Son.. 21 IV. A Soul's Tragedy and Triumph . 26 V. A Great Walled City Taken by Surprise 40 VI. When a Dead Church Listened to a Bible Story . 52 VII. The Mountain Church and Its Murder Case . 66 VIII. The Missionary Lady Who Did Not Die. . 99 IX. A Chinese Girl's Vow . 114 X. A Blessed Surprise For an Aged Blind Man . 124 XI. Casting Out a Herd of Swine Demons . . 129 XII. A Little Child Shall Lead Them . 139 XIII. Praying Back Stolen Church Money. . . 147 XIV. Rescue From Robber Violence . 154 XV. A Nefarious Plot Foiled . 161 XVI. Enmeshed in a Heathen Lawsuit . 182 XVII. A Persecution Case With a Happy End- , ing . 192 XVIII. The Village With the Charmed Life. . . 203 XIX. In Besieged Tsingtao . 209 XV f. Answered Prayer in China CHAPTER I MRS. HWOA’S CONVERSION AND TRANSFORMED LIFE Mrs. Hwoa, like multitudes of Chinese heathen girls, was in infancy betrothed by her heathen parents to a baby boy in another heathen family ; and, when still in her teens, was wedded to this husband whom she had never seen. Throughout her region the heathen marriage ceremony con¬ sists of the bride and groom drinking together a cup of wine. Anyone, relative or friend, can hand them the cup. In this particular instance a Chris¬ tian relative, an elder of our church, insisted on handing the cup of wine to the couple, though his ministration did not change the character of the rite as a heathen ceremony. This young woman, like myriads of her kind, was unschooled and inexperienced ; and, in her heathen ignorance, was senselessly prejudiced against the Christian re¬ ligion, of which she at that time knew nothing. 2 Answered Prayer in China So, to avoid contamination from the “cursed for¬ eign Jesns Doctrine man/’ she bolted from the room before drinking of the cnp. It made a ter¬ rible scene, shocking to the Chinese sense of pro¬ priety, which sets forth the proper behavior of women, who are so in subjection that they have nothing to say regarding the choice of husband, much less regarding the date and arrangements as to the wedding. When it is remembered that a bride wears a heavy veil of richly embroidered red cloth (which covers her head and shoulders), and that her wedding gown is so heavy that she has to be supported by a woman on each side as she walks to the ceremony, even a foreigner can realize something of the sensation that the poor girl created. Her action, “ outside the pale of custom, ” is more interesting in view of what she was later to become. Of course, they forced her back to go through the ceremony in proper fashion. She had been married but a short time when her husband died, leaving her in the condition, in China, horrible beyond words; for the maid or the childless widow ordinarily has no one on whom she can depend. The former is a nuisance, very badly treated (if tolerated at all, in her own home, and finally to be buried with contumely) and practically unable to get justice or fair deal¬ ing from any one. Understanding only too well Mrs. Hwoa’s Conversion 3 the unhappy fate that apparently was ahead of her, the grief of this young woman was incon¬ solable. The elder who attempted to officiate at the wedding and who was also present at the funeral realized as she wept day after day that, unless her mind could come out of its shell and her thoughts be turned away from her grief, she would die from starvation and thirst. So, as she sat in her woe, he with other male relatives im¬ proved the opportunity to try to console her and to exhort her to turn to the Christian religion for abiding comfort. She was young, good look¬ ing, and, though uneducated, was bright. If she could be interested in Christianity there were pos¬ sibilities of great usefulness ahead of her. Ac¬ cordingly, the elder, after much prayer, decided on a bold step. It was nothing less than to pro¬ pose that the pretty young widow go with an older woman relative, both escorted by him, to a Christian women’s Bible Conference, a few tens of li away. The women were astonished out of measure at his bold, and to them unthinkable, proposition, and flatly refused. But he argued and coaxed and exhorted and encouraged, putting forth benefits in every conceivable form that would appeal to them, until finally he secured a conditioned consent. After having got the secret assent of the women and their men folks (“ three can keep a secret — if 4 Answered Prayer in China two are dead/’ according to Poor Richard), the thing leaked out to the heathen villagers. They forthwith raised a pretty fnss abont the matter and prepared to resist by force the departure of the women from their village upon such an ex¬ pedition, although they were adequately escorted by their own men folks. It was indeed a critical situation when the little company — several men to each donkey, upon each of which sat a woman — approached the village gate. A threatening crowd faced them outside; there was much vociferous talk by which the heathen neighbors relieved their minds in the vigorous language of revilement, all but laying violent hands upon the little cavalcade ; yet they were finally allowed to pass unharmed upon their journey. And the young woman who was the center of it all? It was indeed a great adventure for her, such as a journey across the sea to another land would be to us. When she arrived at the place of conference, where hundreds of Christian women had assembled in the largest church of all our field, she was amazed beyond measure to see those other women, happy, confident, and actually standing up without fear like men, and earnestly, joyously, expounding a new and strange teaching. Pay by day, as she listened, a secret hope began to dawn in her mind ; also a realization took hold of her that she could have a present, as well as a Mrs. Hwoa’s Conversion 5 future, of joy and usefulness. Even though a woman, yes, a widow, as she put it, God had a place for her! And when the conference was ended she had made up her mind that if God would open the way for her she would attend our Women’s Bible School, a modest little institution run by the Chinese of our field, already having much good to its credit in the changed and useful lives which it had moulded. However, there was a great difficulty in the way. She had no money. Her nearest men folk were heathen, quite callous to her physical needs, much more to her spiritual welfare, and the school was many miles from the home of her heathen mother-in-law, who rather violently discouraged her entertaining this wild idea. It was to her entire family as a madcap venture. There was nothing for her to do but to pray: “Lord, if it is Thy will, open the way for me to attend this school.” This she prayed steadily for six months, when one day the good Christian woman in whose yard the school is held and who acts as mother to all these friendless women who attend learned of her decision and her heart went out to her to help her. On a visit to a friend at Tsingtau she men¬ tioned the case to this woman as one for whom earnestly to pray. Now “it happened” that, at that very time, the earnest Christian wife of a 6 Answered Prayer in China well-to-do Christian merchant had some tithe money that she wished to invest to the best ad¬ vantage. She and her money were at once put in touch with this woman, and Mrs. Hwoa began her longed-for schooling at the Women’s Bible School. The difficulties of escort and the physical, financial and moral difficulties as well, to and from the school, at the beginning and close of each term, were very great. Her immediate family, as hinted before, hindered the whole idea to the extent of their ability. Imagine by contrast, in the home land, an entire clan of people withhold¬ ing all sympathy and moral support from one of their own young women who had the laudable ambition to go to school and be somebody, par¬ ticularly when it cost them no financial sacrifice to encourage her. Yet prayer broke down their obstinate, senseless opposition. It would not do, according to Chinese etiquette, for any ordinary carter or barrowman to escort Mrs. Hwoa. The only solution of the problem was for the elder, who lived a good many miles away from her home, to arrange his time so that he could trudge to her village, furnish an animal for her and lead her on that animal, at a walk, to and from the school many miles away. This process went on four times a year for three years, until she graduated. Never once did her mother-in-law or the male relatives of the Mrs. Hwoa’s Conversion 7 family into which she had married relent in their hostility, openly expressed. At last came her graduation, the longed-for occasion from which she conld look forward to entering upon her career as a Bible-woman. To be snre, she was to be employed only six months of the year and at a salary of five dollars (Mexican) a month; but she eagerly jumped at this chance as a way of self- support and self-respect, also as the means by which she might witness for her Lord, who for her had made all things new. Though young and inexperienced, she was as¬ signed to a difficult place far away from her home, to work among mountain peasant women, shut in from all the world. These women to whom she went had never seen a woman teacher, much less had dreamed that they might have one to open up to them a religion as full of joy and com¬ fort as it was new and strange. There, practically unaided by any other woman, and feeling keenly the need of the sympathy of her Christian sisters who, in the Woman’s Bible School, had been to her, as she confessed, a real spiritual luxury, she labored the first year after graduation in zeal and faith and love. The result was that she was rewarded by seeing more than a score of women moved out into that light of Cod which maketh all things new. Not only so, her prayers have been rewarded so that her mother-in-law and her 8 Answered Prayer in China entire family have now changed their attitnde toward her and the Christian religion, marveling openly, as they say, that the Gospel of Christ conld make her so independent and attractive and nsefnl. Her heart of love has opened the way for a young married sister, also widowed, to pnt her girls through our high school, and a son is studying in our middle school. Thus is illustrated concretely in her case what we continually see : that the Gospel is always and everywhere the power of God unto salvation, working mightily through one individual really committed to Christ. It spreads among those to whom it is presented, and particularly through the whole family of the one who does the faithful witnessing. Evidently God so intends it. “Thou shalt he saved, and thy house. ” CHAPTER II THE LITTLE LAD AND THE LORD’S SUPPER I was on the road and it was past noon. The pleasantest part of the day’s work was yet before me. Abont dark I reached the village where I was to conduct a communion service, and after an unsatisfying Session meeting with the two elders and several candidates, all was ready to begin. When we entered the church — the typical, primi¬ tive ‘ 4 church in the house ’ ’ — it was packed. The audience had been waiting patiently more than an hour for our arrival, spending the time in singing and exhorting one another. After the service many of them would have to walk several miles in the dark. More persons would have been present" had it not been for the fact that one or more from every household has to stay at home when the others' leave, and act as han men ti (gate-keepers), guarding the family yard and property against thieves. All arose and bowed and indulged themselves in hearty greeting, and then the service began. Until one faces such a service, set down in the 9 10 Answered Prayer in China midst of raw heathenism, he may he surprised to see how much of a part adventitious aids have played in his conception of what are necessary conditions and surroundings in order that he may decently and in order participate in a celebration of the Holy Supper — soft cushions, a comfortable temperature, carpeted floors, noiselessly moving ministrants, a holy hush, exquisitely beautiful music artistically rendered. In the catacombs outside of Rome, where for very joy the early Christians daily partook of the Feast, the visitor to-day fails to find any suggestion of fitting esthetic accompaniments — paid choir, pipe organ, orchestra, clustered Gothic columns, rose win¬ dows, private pews. Conditions here would doubtless have shocked the “proper” home communicant. In front of the pastor stood a rickety old table grimed with filth. No spotless linen of sacred home memories covered it — nothing covered it. What prepara¬ tion had been made had been the work of the elders; for, while the pastor helps with sugges¬ tions, the responsibility is theirs, and the only way to learn perfection is through imperfect attempts to* gain facility and a sense of fitness. On the table, covered* by a dirty towel, was a foreign beer bottle containing native wine, plates with whole Chinese biscuits upon them, and sev¬ eral dirty and cracked bowls. The minister The Lad and the Lord’s Supper 11 groaned inside, but it is ticklish business- to wound the sensibilities of ignorant, untrained leaders with whom one works, and who are doing the best they know how. Here was not the time or place to remove the bottle or to rebuke the elders. So with a prayer for grace the minister began his sermon. In the midst of it some naked boys, standing just in front of the communion table, called the preacher’s attention to a big-lettered poster in English and Chinese which hung across the paper panes of the window sash — “Pabst Beer Is Always Pure!” Extraordinary accom¬ paniments of a communion service ! Incidentally, I might add that the enterprising American cigarette and beer firms have by their advance* agents penetrated to the far confines of the republic and “ posted” many of the sup¬ posedly inaccessible nooks of the outlying sec¬ tions. But our American Protestant Church, that spends over three millions a month with Tiffany alone merely for imported diamonds, is too poor to take outposts of China for Christ. Another episode broke in upon the sermon when a patriarch in years and in the faith, who had come a long way and walked laboriously, but who wanted to be there to meet the Lord, tottered in. All — boys and girls, men and women — arose to receive him, and the preacher stopped preach¬ ing till he had seated the old man directly in front 12 Answered Prayer in China of him. He was an interesting study — bronzed, wrinkled and bent, bis face placid and benignant. Very proud be was of the scraggly sprouts of white whiskers on bis chin. These be stroked affectionately while be listened with half-shut eyes, and leaned heavily on his staff. Had Tissot been there, this figure might have served him for a study of worn-out Jacob when he passed through those long lines of gigantic, grotesque, carven, ram-headed figures at Thebes (modern Ivarnak), on his way, in the' prestige of Joseph’s name, to a gorgeous court to meet the most mag¬ nificent of ancient monarchs. The old man might have sat for another representation of the dying Israel gazing upon his stalwart sons and their progeny when about to utter the prophecies of their tribal destinies. In the home land I had never celebrated the Lord’s Supper at eventide; but many a time here, by a flickering candle or a dingy bean-oil wick, have I met with God’s people around His table. And it has helped me to a sense of nearness to the Lord and to a reality of experience with Him to recall that on that night wherein He was be¬ trayed, as He celebrated that last Passover, awe- fully changed into the first Eucharist, possibly He also, by some such faint light, looked upon the shadowy faces of His friends, that humble group gathered around the table; and, with no external The Lad and the Lord’s Supper 13 aids to worship or to bolster up the solemnity of the occasion, He also with them drew near to the throne of the ever-living, ever-adorable God, pure Spirit, to find strength in time of need, and to pledge anew deathless fealty to Him with whom we have to do. Under these crude surroundings here — often in a half donkey stable, a storeroom of what looks like a junk shop — one gets down to reality. And I am always amazed, much though we teach that God is no respecter of persons, to realize that, despite the sweat and the dirt and the smell, despite the simplicity of humble folk and the half¬ darkness of soul out of which they are struggling — despite every drawback and hindrance — the Holy Spirit is there in the midst, again and again, and in power to convict and to energize, as on that night. I have always felt a profound sympathy with Martin Luther, who trembled, sometimes well-nigh fainted, as he led in the celebration of the Eucharist. The responsibility is as fearful as blessed. That night I felt it more than usual. Hard hearts were there, baptized, but unprepared for blessing. I could feel it as I preached. Those who had presented themselves for examination were ignorant of the step they professed to take. And I was heavy of heart, not only at inability to receive them, but at their utter failure to sense 14 Answered Prayer in China their privilege; and because there were no other candidates, as expected, from this group. The little room in which we were meeting, like many a schoolhouse-church-and-family residence, one in which we frequently meet, had a half parti¬ tion across it in the rear which made the end of the hang; and on this, farthest away from the minister, and where they naturally were least able to hear, though needing the teaching more, sat the women and girls. The service from their end had been much distracted by the crying and moving of children. Through the dim light the air was murky with dust that arose from the dirt floor and sifted from the cobwebs, heavy with the ac¬ cumulations of years, that depended from the cornstalk ceiling. Just preceding the distribution of the elements I noticed particularly among the group of school¬ boys seated in front a little fellow with a face like a cherub. It should have commanded my attention earlier, as it was both unusually clean and attractive. Though only six years old, he listened intently, occasionally looking wistfully at the elements on the table. As I dwelt upon the love and pity of Christ, the boy’s face filled with distress, and soon he left the room in tears. One elder followed him outside to learn what was the trouble. Tie answered: “I love Jesus and want to be baptized and join the church!” The Lad ahd the Lord’s Supper 15 Thinking this a mere childish whim, the elder questioned and prayed with him, and counseled him to keep on learning the Doctrine so that he might enter the church when older. Then the lad returned to his backless stool, to sit there not many more minutes listening before he began to weep, this time more intensely. The elder took him outside, talked and prayed with him a second time, and comforted his heart by promising that he would at once tell the Session. When I had finished speaking the elder arose, and with trembling lips told the audience how smitten he had felt that no adult was willing to confess Christ, and none even of the schoolboys ; and that this lad, a Chinese Samuel, had arisen — a rebuke to himself and to them all — steadfast in his conviction to confess Jesus before all. What should be done? His conscience troubled him till he had spoken out this matter. Could the lad so young be received into the church at once? Was there reason for it? Certainly this was not according to custom ! After a solemn silence the other elder, a big, dignified man, a mission school teacher of many years’ experience, arose. He was one of the few Christian leaders who, on a black day, denied his Lord and recanted under Boxer torture. Now, in a husky voice, he said: “Let the Session here and now examine this little one ! ’ ’ Then, by way 16 Answered Prayer in China of proof, ho turned to passages in the New Testa¬ ment, and read them slowly and distinctly, that all might hear and understand. As the lad was put on a stool in front of all the people, a hush fell upon the room — and remained. Fearlessly he stood there, eager for the examina¬ tion, his big black eyes lustrous with love to Jesus. His mother was a school teacher, young and pretty and neatly dressed, who had been de¬ serted by her bright and educated husband for becoming a Christian. It seemed natural for the mother, quietly and unbidden, to come from the rear and stand with her arm about him, a mist of joy in her eyes. Then his older sister, a baptized communicant, also came and stood on his other side. Looking at the child, my thoughts instantly and spontaneously flashed to a friend in Christ, Hor¬ ace Tracy Pitkin, of Yale, who died a martyr in the flames that such a little one as this might be in the Father’s bosom; and to his baby son, Horace, Jr., a child of the covenant, inheriting much, though few things more precious than the legacy of dedication so to spend his life that such as this little one might have life abundantly. The father’s earthly life had gone out at Paotingfu, through the fierce hate of the Boxers, for the Name — a hate as cruel as ignorant ; but before he ascended to glory he had penned these words that The Lad and the Lord’s Supper 17 thrilled the Christian world: “Tell little Horace that when he is twenty-five years old I expect him to come to take his father’s place.” And not many months before we had received a letter from the widowed mother saying that little Horace had partaken of his first communion, that when he came before the Session wise and cautious men had hesitated to receive him to the table; but so clearly and satisfactorily had he answered all questions that there remained no doubt in the mind of any as to his preparedness. Likewise this examination was a surprise. It revealed the fact that the boy had long known how to pray ; that morning and evening he prayed God to help him to become a minister; that his mother had taught him to sing many hymns and memorize many Bible verses, and that he did both well. Like Hannah, she had given him from his birth to the Lord, and like Hannah had taught her boy to feel in his young soul, “Here am I.” With keen zest he gave his childish witness, clear and unaffected, excellent and reasonable. I have had some joyous experiences as a pastor in the home land, training and receiving children into the church, but never had I seen anything so un¬ studied and artless, and so profound in impres¬ sion. What joy the Lord must have felt at such simple transparently sincere testimony as was given that night ! 18 Answered Prayer in China But it did not end there. Under his example seven large schoolboys arose and confessed Christ and were examined; also the wife of the boys’ teacher; also four big girls in the girls’ school. They were out of heathen homes, but made a good witness, and knew what they were doing and what it involved of persecution. The Holy Spirit manifestly worked. Then a man got up whom I had hoped would meet with the Session earlier in the evening. He was illiterate but in¬ fluential. More than a year before I had taught him the Lord’s Prayer. He was repentant and desirous to learn, but in his ignorance had lacked courage. He feared his family. Having money, they could make it especially hard for him. How¬ ever, he clung tenaciously to the Model Prayer, daily repeating it. “And,” he added with the ingenuousness of a child, “at its close 1 always ‘ha tou’ to Jesus!” And, so saying, he then and there repeated the prayer — reverently and with deep emotion — and then got down on the dirt floor and knocked his head three times in the dust to God. I helped him up, gently protesting, but he quickly replied: “I have always honored the idols thus. Should I do less for the true God?” He laid what he knew of life’s glory in the dust for Christ’s sake. With tears streaming down his face he pledged himself before the audience: “I confess my sins. I trust Jesus to save me and The Lad and the Lord’s Supper 19 keep me. I have been a coward. I now resolve to endnre all evil consequences of taking Him into my life!” Such a sight is strange and awe-compelling — to see the scales lift from the sight of a blinded soul, and see that soul spring eagerly out of the heathen blackness in which he groped into the splendor of light that is in the face of Jesus Christ, Lord of glory. All these were that night received by the Ses¬ sion. It was a blessed communion. So grateful to God were some of the women for what they experienced that night that, after the celebration of the Supper, they did what we had long been powerless to persuade them, unwilling, to do. They had no money, so they brought their most prized earthly possessions: earrings, bracelets, rings — big, cheap, and for the most part crude and ugly gewgaws, of little intrinsic value, but the best they had — and laid them on the altar toward the salary of a Bible woman, fearfully needed in their midst. This so stirred the men that they subscribed the balance needed. The people had not wanted special services nor a revival. Now they wanted both; and this Spirit-refreshing opened the way for a series of tent meetings, resulting in a blessing to church and heathen. And the end is not yet. Again has God vindicated himself, in ways beyond our 20 Answered Prayer in China fathoming. Truly our God worketh wonders, using the small things of the world, the despised, even a young Chinese boy, to break hardened heathen hearts and to kindle with holy enthusiasm the hearts of Christians grown cold, and the wand of power is prayer, the believing prayer of His faithful ones. CHAPTER III “PRAYING THROUGH” A WAYWARD SON Some time before the fell year of 1900, the Boxer year, a Chinese heathen woman, Mrs. Wang, heard one of onr Bible women explaining the* “Jesus Doctrine,” studied it, and later was baptized. She made such progress that she be¬ came a Bible-woman herself. When the mission¬ aries had to flee from Wei Hsien Station, in Shantung Province, she remained behind to wait for Miss Hawes, her special friend, and another missionary, who were out in the villages on an evangelistic itinerating trip, and who did not know that their fellow-missionaries had in the mean¬ time been forced to flee. The late P. H. Chalfant, D. D., had* remained behind on the compound to help these ladies and escort them away in safety. This was the natural thing for this brave, re¬ sourceful, gallant Christian man to do. Had she so chosen, Mrs. Wang could have left the compound earlier, when the other mission¬ aries abandoned it, but she preferred to stay be¬ hind' and help her foreign lady friend, if possible; and, if not, to share her fate. 21 22 Answered Prayer in China Later, after the return of the two ladies, when the Boxers burst into the compound and fired it, and were looting the houses while the flames were licking them up, these devoted people retired to an upper room to pray together in the face of death — apparently imminent, certain and hor¬ rible. By a marvelous providence they found a ladder and were able to climb over the compound wall in the very face of the Boxers, who were shortly before howling for their blood, and who had been “stood off” only by Dr. Chalf ant’s heroic efforts, but who now allowed them to pass unchallenged out of the burning house, across the compound and over the wall as they looted, fever¬ ishly, before the flames destroyed the booty. After a most thrilling experience of night flight through patches of corn and kao liang, constantly in peril of their lives, even from the troops, Boxer sympathizers, who finally escorted them, they safely reached Tsingtau. Mrs. Wang’s intelligent face and her quickness with the needle attracted the attention of the wife of Oscar von Truppel, the German Admiral, and acting governor of the Kaiser’s prize' “Kolonie.” So Mrs. Wang, child of poverty and squalor, by a strange turn of for¬ tune, became sewing woman at twenty dollars a month, a fabulous sum for her, in the big, com¬ fortable mansion which is a real palace, finer than that owned by many a prince in Europe. “Praying Through’ ’ a Wayward Son 23 While there, in the employ of the gracious Gov¬ ernor ’s wife (who, by the way, is of Philadelphia origin), Mrs. Wang, in attending our local church services, became acquainted with one of the lady missionaries — Miss Vaughan, a member of our station — whose self-sacrificing life, zeal for Christ and eagerness for souls so influenced her that, when the Boxer madness quieted down so that preachers could again go to the country, Mrs. Wang decided to leave her high- salaried and luxuriously boused position and become Miss Vaughan’s companion in hardship, resuming her work as a Bible woman at the munificent salary of five dollars (Mex) a month. Mrs. Wang had, in early childhood, been mar¬ ried to a heathen husband who was a “tartar.” He had run the whole gamut of badness, inci¬ dentally having nearly harried the life, as he had the wages, out of his wife. When he learned of her decision he roundly cursed and beat his wife for her idiocy in substituting a salary of five dol¬ lars for twenty dollars a month. And his deleteri¬ ous example was followed by a grown-up son. Such experiences as have been Mrs. Wang’s must either develop a person into saintliness or drive one to despair. A veritable Chinese Monica, she had spent her heart to an incredible degree on this wayward son, every lapse and outrage upon her calling forth new depths of faith and love. 24 Answered Prayer in China And each disappointment had seemed bnt to strengthen her to follow her son in prayer from place to place in his sin-wanderings, even as the mother heart of Monica followed her long way¬ ward Augustine. Her faith to intercede for her son gave her power to intercede effectively for other people and objects of the Kingdom outside her own life and circle. Our station sent her to a heathen village to work, and in a short time she had a goodly company of enquirers gathered together. Under her teaching there, nearly thirty became Christians, and built their own church, even the heathen being moved by her prayers to help. By prayer, and in the name of Christ, she cast out unclean spirits’ from demon-possessed persons. The weak and literally demon-harried enquirers, in their distress, came to her; and as often as they came’ she prayed them to relief and peace. Her soul travail for her son had com¬ pensations; she increasingly received sympathy and love and tact to help others in spiritual dis¬ tress. When one of our elders had a relatively large sum of church money stolen out of his yard, he walked many li to pray with her for its return, instead of going to the county magistrate to get his yamen runners to try to hunt it up, and mys¬ teriously obtained the money back again. She became no inconsiderable factor in build¬ ing up the church in one center of our country “ Praying Through’ ’ a Wayward Son 25 field. And, in reward, our Lord finally seemed to say of her, as He did long ago of another: “Oh, woman, great is thy faith! Be it unto thee as thou wilt ! ’ ’ Always merciful and gracious to His faithful ones, God took a strange way to answer this mother’s prayer, even as He did to grant Monica’s petition. And this is the way it happened. Early one year this son, penniless after a debauch, went to a German coal mine along the German railroad in Shantung, to get employment. While working underground a terrible explosion and cave-in oc¬ curred, and he, with more than a hundred other miners, was imprisoned, to face a slow and hor¬ rible death. In this situation he had time to think of his sins. The folly of his» course became mani¬ fest to him, and he vowed that, if God would save him, he would accept Christ and begin to comfort and honor his mother. The Lord heard him from the depths of the pit and delivered him ; he sought out his mother, confessed his sins to her and to God, asked and received forgiveness, and began a diligent study of the Word. Later he was bap¬ tized and acted as if he had the viewpoint of Browning’s resurrected Lazarus. It would be difficult to find a mother more overjoyed in the happy issue of her prayers than Mrs. Wang. She knows now what the words of Jesus mean, “Go in peace ; thy faith hath saved thee. ’ ’ CHAPTER IV A SOUL’S TRAGEDY AND TRIUMPH In a building near our little church in Tai Tung Chen, Leng Shu Ivien recently departed this life. Much of good and evil was packed into his career. On his trail the furies camped hot. The Chinese said of him: “ Often snared in the devil’s net”; and truly it was through peril, toil and pain that he climbed the steep ascent to heaven. But we rest assured that God, who mercifully forgives a real repentant, gave him abundant entrance into heaven. I went to see him before he died, and the fol¬ lowing tale he told, the story of his own soul’s tragedy and triumph. In the terrible year of the Boxer uprising, when terror stalked openly among the millions of Shan¬ tung Province (where the Boxer cataclysm origi¬ nated), and when the members of “The Big Knife Society” and “The Order of Patriotic Fists” were making it their devilish business* to ferret out and torture every confessor of Jesus who could be seized, many Christians of our field fled into Tsingtao. 26 A Soul’s Tragedy and Triumph 27 One was a man in his prime, Leng Shu Kien, reported to be one of the three brightest and ablest graduates of Tung Chow College. During those dread summer days of 1900, Leng acted as one of the evangelists in our station; he was zealous and busy, but as yet had not entered the furnace of God’s testing, which every man some day must do to prove himself, of what stuff he is made, and how leal he is to the King of kings. The great bay and roadstead of Tsingtao were full of German cruisers and transports. The place was a beehive in preparation for the punitive advance on Tientsin and Peking. For all this the American missionary had no time or strength. There was another swarm that engaged him — the refugee Christians who had fled in from the country. Terror-stricken, some hud¬ dled like a flock of sheep in this strange, new- grown foreign city; others, without intermission, besought the foreign shepherd to help them save their families. Between efforts to assist these helpless ones who leaned so heavily upon him, and to devise means to protect the country Chris¬ tians out in the villages, the missionary was taxed beyond his strength. In the midst of such distractions and anxieties the German general, Waldersee, afterward to be chosen commander-in-chief of the eight allied armies, sent to the American missionary to learn 28 Answered Prayer in China if he knew Of an alert, able, foreign-speaking Chinese who could accompany him as translator to the seat of disturbance. Leng Shu Kien, in his pride and strength, offered himself and was the man chosen. What honor to be sought of for¬ eigners of valor and might! What prestige for an unknown Chinese youth to become the boon companion and confidant of renowned ones ! Finally the great day came ; all was- ready for the campaign of punishment. Animals, muni¬ tions, provisions and soldiers were safely aboard. Amid a festive scene, long to be remembered, the mighty ships in gala attire moved slowly away from the great granite docks* and railway piers that have not their like in the Far East. As the fleet streamed down the bay, band answered band with stirring strains. But these vessels that could make such a noise of destruction were, as they receded from the land, silent, and that silence was impressive with terrible significance. It was as if they were husbanding all their latent power for the errand of vengeance upon which they were bent. And Leng Shu Kien was on the flagship ! Yes, even in the commander’s entourage. It would have been fine had he stayed and helped the dis¬ tressed flock, but he chose to go with the expedi¬ tion and to enjoy its eclat, what he knew not would be its pleasures of sin, for a season! A Soul’s Tragedy and Triumph 29 The storming of Taku and the fighting at Tientsin, the work of death in it all — the tnmnlt, the car¬ nage, the fierce lnsts unleashed — terrified him be¬ yond measure. Removed from the uplift of Chris¬ tian school and his missionary friends, Leng for the first time discovered his weakness. All the restraints of his life were suddenly brushed aside during those mad martial days. He speedily found himself under the pressure of the world, the flesh, and the devil, to be the victim of tobacco, liquor, and the gaming table. He was flattered with the attention that, for their own ends, the officers deigned to show him. And, consorting with ungodly ones, though in high places, it seemed necessary to him to conform to their un¬ godly standards. “Not fitting to offend them” is perhaps not altogether a Chinese character¬ istic. Be that as it may, he saw that the Valley of Decision lay immediately before him and he shrank from walking in it. He went to the great man and pleaded to be released, without pay, from his contract. His family needed him. His grand¬ mother was ill! Letters were calling him home. He was curtly told that if he attempted to leave his assignment he would be shot. Sick at heart at his own weakness and full of dread for the future, he was forced to go on with the troops to Peking. There all the powers of hell were loosed. The siege ended ; the sack, mem- 30 Answered Prayer in China orable in history, began. None conld stay it. The frenzy to loot also took possession of him; to loot before it was too late; to loot while fortunes in silver ingots conld, by the initiated, be had by the mere carrying of them away; to loot while jewel boxes of the most exquisite French design could be had (by the circle in which he moved) for the mere snatching of them from the tables of princely harems; to loot while furs of fabulous value, packed away in the chambers of decamped nobles, could be had for the selecting; to loot while sacred imperial garments themselves could be possessed for the choosing; to loot while the art treasures of palaces were still open to him. As the young preacher affirmed, “I sold myself body and soul to the devil, and sated myself in an orgy of sights and sounds and deeds wicked beyond description. ” Leng Shu Kien knew of many Chinese women jumping into wells and tak¬ ing poison to avoid a worse fate at the hands of representatives of Christian nations. He had in¬ side knowledge, in part experimental, as to what troops (the Japs) were considered “ smoothest” in getting booty, and what (the Russians) the clumsiest. He watched international police squads take out their victims and saw them pose before the camera just as they were about to behead the doomed wretches. He witnessed foreign troops hunt innocent villagers, shooting the men like rab- A Soui/s Tragedy and Triumph 31 bits and outraging the women. As Leng put it, “ I crawled on all fours in the slimy depths of devilish sights and indulgence s.” At last there was no more use for him, and rous¬ ing himself from his ghastly revel, he bade adieu to his adventitious glory — its tinseled pomp and circumstance — and started overland for his mud cottage in his mud village in Shantung Province. Several carts were loaded with his loot, a haul precious beyond the dream of avarice of any high¬ way robbers who might be met on the way. Scattering away from Peking were thousands of defeated Boxer braves. They were not only disappointed ; they were enraged. They had been made the puppets, the empty-handed dupes, of the wily empress (whom her officials, to her face, in ironic euphemism, called 6 6 The Placid Buddha,” but to her back “The Old She-Devil”) ; these bandits and soldiers lined the roads and were desperate. They were mad for plunder and revenge. No man could run this gauntlet and escape with his life, not to mention treasure, un¬ less he bluffed himself through as a Boxer. Poor Leng related that many times he lied and denied his Lord on that fateful march in order to keep his skin and plunder. To salve his conscience and show appreciation of kindness extended, he sent to a missionary friend one of his “souvenirs,” as he called it. It 32 Answered Prayer in China was no less than the very case which had con¬ tained the magnificent Bible presented by the Christian women of China to the Empress Dow¬ ager! — a gift and occasion marking an epoch in the history of the Church universal. It was a piece of loot out of the sanctum sanctorum of the imperial private apartments of “the Buddha’ ’ herself. The costly Bible therein encased had gone to a foreigner, “one higher up”; but this case was “good picking” for a young Chinese. The box was done in imperial yellow (forbidden to non-imperial yellow mortals), more dangerous for him to handle than TNT. Settled in his native village, the devil speedily drove him from one excess to another, until he was quite crazy in his colossal egotism, lordly pride, contemptuous disdain, and pseudo-military imperiousness, tyrannizing over his humble neighbors. To drown memory, he drank hard and lived fast, until delirium tremens had him in the toils. He ran through the streets naked, or brandishing knives, and attempting to kill anyone who got in his way. In a frenzy of brute rage he murderously dashed his little child off the hang (Chinese brick bed), which outrage later resulted in a mortal disease. He beat his wife repeatedly almost to death. Terror reigned all about him. Meantime he strutted about in robes the beauty and costliness of which amazed and struck awe A Soul’s Tragedy and Triumph 33 into the simple villagers. Gradually their first fear of him changed into hate and disgust. Green- eyed envy began to whisper, and finally it leaked out to the county magistrate that imperial gar¬ ments were in his possession. This meant death ; and, as Leng was reported to have loot, wealth untold, a unique opportunity was offered for “squeeze.” What official in his senses could let such a chance pass by unimproved? Moreover, it was all so easy. In doing Leng to death for “squeeze” the magistrate could pose before his superiors, and with good face, as a just judge and a patriotic doer of duty. So one fell day the yamen henchman suddenly pounced upon Leng, wallowing so deeply in the mire of sin, and trying thereby so desperately to drown conscience and forget the innocent days when he was poor and useful and happy! And he found himself landed in a Chinese prison ! And in warm weather ! The condition beggars descrip¬ tion. The prison had no beds, dirt floors, no sani¬ tation — prisoners just sat around on the ground amid filth and vermin and stench, to rot. A Chinese prisoner, if he has means, usually fur¬ nishes his own food, or starves. He usually fur¬ nishes some for the henchman, too. Indeed, he hands out blackmail to various grades of the prison underlings for every bit of nourishment and for every drop of water that is doled out to 34 Answered Prayer in China him. As long as a prisoner gnilty of serious offense has money, he is preserved after a fashion till the last possible cash is wrung from him or from his family. Then he may die as soon as he pleases. When Leng balked at too big a gouge the screws were put on. The Ya I (henchmen) are ac¬ quainted with every choice mode of torture and know how to apply it to the point of exquisite nicety. If the prisoner is recalcitrant it is easy to bring him to terms ; just put the cangue around his neck, so his hands cannot reach his face, and let him sit bareheaded in the boiling sun, unable to scratch off a swarm of stinging flies that settle on his bleeding, ulcerated neck. Or lock his feet and hands in the stocks and let him rest in that position all night while the vermin nibble at him. Or press hot chains into his naked flesh ; or pinch and crack his joints; or bamboo him till the skin jumps in chunks from his body and the raw flesh lies on his bones in waves of welts. For centuries the yamen henchmen have been pastmasters in these and all such tricks. For indubitable proof let one study the temple representations of the tortures of the damned, as portrayed under the direction of the priests, who hold the people in a bondage of fear. They get these realistic concep¬ tions from what they know is happening in the yamen yards and prison pens. A Soul’s Tragedy and Triumph 35 With all such resources at his command the magistrate piously cracked this whip over the head of the guilty, body-wrecked, terror-stricken Leng: “You know you ought to be shaved with the big razor [i. e., have your head cut off], and unless you give up your last cash, I’ll do you to death, and under the law!” Thus months passed, with no surcease of tor¬ ture, no hope of release. The only thing to look forward to when the gradually drying-up stream of blackmail should have been dribbled out to its last drop was decapitation. If horrors could be multiplied, Leng was occasionally threatened, when less money was forthcoming than some fam¬ ily member was expected to bring, with Ling Chi (the death of a thousand cuts), skillful slicing of the flesh in many pieces before the vital organs succumbed to such treatment. Leng was now learning, experimentally, the meaning of James’ objurgation : ‘ ‘ Come now, ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are rusted; and their rust shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as fire,” and “the way of the transgressor is hard.” Then one day Miss Vaughan, of Tsingtau Sta¬ tion, visited a village near Leng’s to hold a Woman’s Bible Class. The elder of the local 36 Answered Prayer in China church came and besought her to give him her calling card to give to the persecuting magistrate and plead for mercy for Leng. Armed with this bit of magic paper, the symbol of the now vindi¬ cated and resistless foreigner, the elder could with face beg the judge to relent. Thus the offi¬ cial might have mercy on him and pardon him. But Miss Vaughan was obdurate, and the elder, though a good man and a friend of hers, retired chagrined and angry at her hardness of heart. Soon the news spread that “Han Ku Niang” (Miss Vaughan), mighty in prayer, as they called her, was at Tai Tai Twang; and Leng’s mother and wife, faithful, anguished creatures, came with all speed to see her. They likewise pleaded, pleaded desperately, pleaded almost all night for the card-presenting. But in vain. At last they did only what a Chinese does in the direst straits, and what, when it is performed to them, few Chinese dare resist. They prostrated themselves before her and made the koa ton — they knocked their heads on the ground before her. Under these terrible conditions, in such dire straits, the Chinese say that they interpret the Iwa ton to mean, ‘ ‘ Grant my petition or slay me. ’ 7 In the course of their visit, Miss Vaughan re¬ peatedly suggested that they pray with her for the miserable Leng, but the poor creatures, weak in faith and almost distracted, had ignored this. A Soul’s Tragedy and Triumph 37 Now, with their last hope in the arm of flesh broken, they were ready to try her way. So Miss Vanghan instructed them how they might pray prevailingly with her. First, they were sincerely to repent and confess their own sins. Second, they were to dedicate themselves wholly to the Lord. Third, they were to pray God to give Leng a heart of repentance and pray that, if he would honor God , he might be released. Then for a year Miss Vaughan gave herself, with a few sympathetic spirits, to pray for Leng. A year after, to a day, Miss Vaughan was hold¬ ing a meeting in that same village; while they were praying for the miserable Leng, a messenger entered and said to Miss Vaughan, 4 ‘Leng Shu Kien is out of prison ! Leng Shu Kien is in this village. Leng Shu Kien is reviling you for pray¬ ing for him. He says that never, during all his life, has he heard of such goings on. Of prayer meetings carried on like yours, so not according to custom. 9 9 The little company began to pray the more earnestly, that today he might repent and confess his sins. That afternoon, irresistibly drawn of the Holy Spirit, he came to the meeting, and made a clean breast of his sins, asking God and his family and neighbors to forgive him, be¬ ginning a new life of service. 38 Answered Prayer in China It was the toilsome climb of the released jail¬ bird. Not only Christians, but missionaries, fonnd it hard to believe he was converted, or conld be. Bnt Miss Vaughan and her little band prayed on. And Leng, despite abundant sneers, kept his feet; he became a leader and a personal worker among the yonng men of onr Tsingtan church. And the sincerity of his confession none could doubt. His earnings he put into real estate in business sections in Tsingtau, and the earnings from that he set aside for the use of the church organization to which the Christians of his village belonged. This annuity, provided for in his will, helped his country church to call its own pastor and to do considerable home mission work. Besides, his ex¬ ample was stimulating to many Christians and heathen who had earlier known him. But his suffering had produced lung trouble and, spitting blood, he came to the East Suburb Hospital to die. Accompanied by an elder, his true friend and yoke-fellow in the Lord, a mem¬ ber of the little band who had prayed him out of the depths of hell, I visited him shortly before his death and held a little service. He witnessed a good witness to the saving power of Jesus Christ, his Lord, and wrote a letter to his old college mates and friends, now leaders of the church throughout this province. In it he said, A Soul’s Tragedy and Triumph 39 “Beware of covetousness, which is idolatry and a root of many kinds of evil. They that are minded to be rich fall into many kinds of tempta¬ tions and are snared of many foolish and hurtful lusts, such as drown men in destruction and per¬ dition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil: which some reaching after have been led astray from the faith ; and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows. Also especially beware of the love of fine clothes, our weakness, which brought about my downfall. I commend you all to the service and salvation of Jesus! Amen!” We believe that in glory he looks upon the face of the Lord of glory, being numbered among the saints who came up out of the love of the world and its great tribulation into the eternal felicity of His saints. CHAPTER V A GREAT WALLED CITY TAKEN BY SURPRISE The walled cities are the seats of the Chinese gentry — rich, powerful, elegant (after Chinese standards), educated in the ancient learning, glorying in its degrees. These aristocrats have, under Satan, constituted a powerful barrier to the progress of the Gospel in the Land of Sinim — another “ great wall of China,” but vaster than the famed one, and unspeakably more impressive in the bulk of its pride, exclusiveness, lofty pre¬ tensions, contempt and hate of the foreign devils. Several years ago, in company with my hon¬ ored senior colleague, the Rev. W. M. Hayes, D. D., I visited such a walled city, ancient before the discovery of America, one of five big ones in our station field. The natural importance of this place as an administrative center is enhanced by the fact that it is located on the German railroad. The inveterate prejudice of its inhabitants against foreigners is quite beyond belief. It was prob¬ ably increased by the fact that the Germans oc¬ cupied their city until after the defeat of Russia 40 A Walled City Taken by Surprise 41 by Japan. These city folks were supposed to be impervious. A German Protestant Mission and the Catholic Mission, neither lacking in learning, experience, or ability, or in funds to push their work, had tackled them. Both had been frozen out. The gentry there had seen the Bible translated into Kuan Hwa (the vernacular) ; but they turned up their nose at it, as trash beneath their notice, though the language of the translation was what they all spoke, and was excellently done. They despised it because, forsooth, it was not put into Wen Li. The moment they saw the New Testa¬ ment printed in the ordinary “talk language,” they cast it aside. Wen Li is “high” stilted Chinese, abbreviated and intensely idiomatic. It was as if you would insult an American by offer¬ ing him the American Revision, instead of a Bible in the language of Beowulf. Their pride of scholarship in the Chinese Classics had run well- nigh mad. Our only human hold on the city was this: Several Christians of one of our nearby country churches, supporting its own pastor, had formed a company and gone into the East Suburb — they could not get into the city itself — and had begun selling bean cakes. Please note that this humble business was one that would bring these Chris¬ tians into relationship with peasants, not with 42 Answered Prayer in China gentry. But our men were sturdy of faith and had prayer power, and they expected to do some¬ thing for God. Speedily their store became a rendezvous for many of their fellow farmer Chris¬ tians who had to market at this large center. And they began to pray together for this hoary, wicked city, that God would, in their midst, open a way — they knew not how — for “the Doctrine.” Then Dr. Hayes and I received an invitation to go and meet with* them — which we accepted. That night after store closing, our little company earnestly besought God to touch the hearts of Kao Mi’s heathen, aristocratic leaders. The next morning we had to leave. But that evening some¬ thing wonderful happened. Some of the gentry, Nicodemus like, “happened in.” To be sure, they were young men — older ones would not deign to come — and these came from curiosity. But that night these elegant young bloods, clad in rich, fur-lined brocaded silks, got their eyes opened a little. They found out that we were not ogres, would not even bite ; in fact, that we were not so bad as pictured. The ice was broken. They would associate with us. And the Holy Spirit answered our prayers as to things difficult of accomplishment, and step by step gave us solid standing ground in their midst. He moved upon the Christian business men to give a piece of ground for a chapel build- A Walled City Taken by Surprise 43 ing and part of the funds therefor. In large faith they deeded it to the nearby country church or¬ ganization “ until such time as a church can be organized in the city, when the property shall re¬ vert to that city church.’ ’ If an outsider only knew the difficulties that faced them when these four Christian men made that fine proviso, he would feel almost like classing their decision along with that of many a hero of Hebrews Eleven, who, when all seeming was against him, obeyed the command and went forward. The chapel next door to “our store” at once gave us a religious center of good repute, espe¬ cially as the magistrate there gave it his formal, written sanction, putting up a yamen proclama¬ tion to that effect. It rapidly became popular. The character of our business men and the evangelist recommended the place. The younger gentry, realizing that these men had something that they did not possess, were willing to fraternize with them, coming often to visit and more and more to learn ‘ ‘ the Doctrine. ’ ’ As their eyes gradually opened to the light that streams from Christ, and as they began to understand some of the multitudinous corollary blessings that flow from the Cross, a profound dissatisfac¬ tion with the old order grew in them. They cursed it — its blindness, its turpitude, its hope¬ lessness, its lifelessness. 44 Answered Prayer in China Moreover, they liked the place because it was a Chinese institution. Though often visiting the chapel and furnishing an evangelist for it, I placed it under the pastoral care of the nearest Chinese minister, and from the start the Chris¬ tian Chinese took great interest in it, and felt keenly their responsibility for it. At last there came a day when my food box and bedding failed to arrive; and to my surprise the leader of the gentry invited me to stay at his house. And there I saw eye-opening things — fine old Chinese furniture, rare and costly vases, beautiful plants; also American clocks, clothes, and photographs* galore. And I slept, on a for¬ eign bed! Like Cornelius, my host (I call the gentry leader that, because now he always insists that I be his guest) assembled his household to hear the Gospel. And from that time every visit was the occasion of his inviting some of his friends to meet me and hear the Gospel. At first they, like Nicodemus, came in the night; but as we became better acquainted, openly, and at all times of the day. Things have developed rapidly. Even two years before the establishing of the republic (which guaranteed religious liberty), an influ¬ ential family of officials who had charge of a gov¬ ernment school for boys, hired, in open defiance of the Manchu government instructions, two of A Walled City Taken by Surprise 45 our Christians as teachers, who daily expounded the Scripture in the school. From that family one brother has become a zealous evangelist, and out of that school of thirty boys have come many Christians and inquirers. Another gentry family of four brothers and a father, all officials, have established a girls * school in their compound, with one of our best women Christians as teacher. We have sent Bible women, at the request of such families, to instruct their women, who have proved eager learners, and have received their “ doctrine teachers” most cordially. Imagine what it means that these people should propose that we unite with them in establishing a boys’ school, in which: 1. They would furnish the teacher of the Chinese classics and we the teacher of Western learning. 2. We make the choice of the books to be used in the Union School, and morning and evening chapel compulsory. 3. At least one-fourth of the course is to be devoted to the teaching of Christian subjects. Kepeatedly I have accepted the invitation of the magistrate to speak before his official schools, especially before the- normal school, where hun¬ dreds of young men, in six months ’, nine months one-year and two-year courses, are hurriedly try- 46 Answered Prayer in China ing to fit themselves to meet the needs of schools being opened by the republic. Christians in Kao Mi have steadily multiplied from the gentry ranks, all baptized by the native pastor. There have been two especially interest¬ ing and helpful human factors in this consumma¬ tion. The gentry have seen in their midst the superi¬ ority of Christian schools and teachers. It has been as eye-opening as humbling. They have been profoundly impressed by the fact that our Chris¬ tian system produces students with usable knowl¬ edge at their command, better than anything of which they had conceived. Our teachers of English can do something more than “ teach English to the letter Gr. ’ ’ They know geography, mathematics, calisthenics, music, and many other things involved in the idea of si wen (Western learning). It commands their respect that the district magistrate sends his teachers to cur men to learn singing, setting-up drill, arithmetic, and to get a little peep into world doings. Above all, these men have character and are to be trusted. Then Christianity has brought to many of the Kao Mi gentry a new sense of the value of girls and the dignity and worth of educated women. Mine host has confided to me that the thing that impressed him more than all else with the de¬ sirableness and satisfyingness of the Christian A Walled City Taken by Surprise 47 religion was what he witnessed as a guest in onr home, even the baptism of onr yonngest daughter — such humble means can the Holy Spirit use to reach a man’s heart. The ceremony was- per¬ formed by Dr. Hayes in the presence of this heathen man and a few missionary friends “refugeeing” with us during troublous revolution days. To think that he and others should* be invited from a distance for the sake of a girl baby; that' Dr. Hayes should leave his work in another city to administer this sacrament, quite overwhelmed him with a changed conception of life. The music, the presence of foreign ladies, cultured, and' hon¬ ored of men, the brooding peace, the simplicity, dignity, and solemn beauty of the service, touched the inner chords of his- nature. His new grip on life that has stirred him to do something for others- has been manifested in his opening a Christian middle school for boys- in a fine series of rooms on his* own compound — Chris¬ tian > I say, because two* of our ablest Christian teachers have been employed in his school; the course conforms to our mission school curriculum, compulsory morning and evening worship ob¬ tains ; also Sabbath worship, marching in a body to the chapel forenoon and afternoon; and the native pastor is the welcome guest and presiding good genius there over it all — and remember that 48 Answered Prayer in China these are heathen boys out of heathen families. To farther prove his interest mine- host has* at considerable expense outfitted the school with furniture, maps, charts, etc., and he plans’ this year to build and run on similar lines a girls’ school in another yard of his compound. In addition to this, he has established a Y. M. C. A. in the city. After seeing ours in* our Tsingtau church, he wanted one just like it in his city, and proceeded to organize one (minus the active membership) from* among his friends, with the accessory of a reading room where the elite of his clan could come and leisurely soak in the Christian literature which we have provided. As a result of his interest aroused and that of his friends, the East Suburb Chapel cannot hold the Christians who now attend the meetings. Another reason for the happy development is the attitude of the Christian business men toward the Sabbath. On Sundays from their store front always hangs this sign: “This is the Sabbath; no business today.” While the daily market of that busy street surges in a roar all around them, they stand like Daniel and his friends — worshiping God on his holy day in his holy sanctuary. Also the members of this firm preach to their cus¬ tomers, and during dull hours go out into the sur¬ rounding villages and herald Christ. The Lord is faithful and has prospered his righteous ser- A Walled City Taken by Surprise 49 vants. And they have purchased a two-story tang pu (pawnshop), the upper story of which is to be fitted np for an additional school, and the first story for a chnrch. This is only a temporary arrangement. Recently we called on the magistrate to invite his co-operation in erecting a new church build¬ ing. As things are in China, he could, if he so desired, instantly nip the project in the bud, espe¬ cially as this is a Chinese church, not a foreign mission affair. He, however, took great interest in the matter, and promised a generous subscrip¬ tion, and issued a proclamation asking the busi¬ ness men to contribute. His wife and mother are Christians. His good-will is partly due to their interest and partly to the fact that years ago he was a pupil of Hr. Hayes in the provincial uni¬ versity, and the flavor of Hr. Hayes ’ able, schol¬ arly and consecrated witness is with him still. After talking with him several times about establishing an official school for the daughters of gentry, he has finally opened one. His wife and mother act as patronesses. He has called a fine Christian woman of our choice as the lady teacher of that school. Unbound feet are a sine qua non of entrance, and the school is full to its capacity. Though used to surprises in this city, one of the biggest came when mine host and the magis- 50 Answered Prayer in China trate, speaking for several of the leading gentry, asked me to accompany them to the first National Y. M. C. A. Convention, held in Peking, Decem¬ ber, 1912. It was a great venture for them. Of course, I jumped at the chance. And the rich fruitage of that convention, not only in the hearts of the gentry of this city, but of many rich and influential heathen in other centers now for the first time face to face with the truth in Christ — who can calculate? And this is the city that only a few months ago was lorded over by a queue-wearing Manchu offi¬ cial of the hopeless old regime. During the revo¬ lution he was seizing even our schoolboys and shutting them up in a foul prison for the crime of cutting their queues. When, after repeated fruitless attempts, I was at last able to get in to them, some forty were chained, hand and foot in a sitting posture in that low, dirty den, their families distressed beyond measure, some of their women folk dying from anxiety and fear. Since the foregoing was written, the Christians of this city have grown greatly in numbers. They have organized their own church, invited their own pastor, and they are in possession of an ex¬ tensive compound, on which are located their own church building, schools for boys and girls, read¬ ing and classrooms for the general public, and a pastor’s manse. The plant is located on the “big A Walled City Taken by Surprise 51 road” past which each day a stream of people pour into and out of the county seat. Classes, extending from ten days to two weeks for Bible study and for communion preparation, are fre¬ quently held. Recently the Session met for a solid week examining over 200 candidates for membership, some fifty of whom were finally received. In an age-long, sin-encrusted gentry center, what hath God wrought, and all through earnest prayer and through the manner of life wrought out of that prayer. CHAPTER VI WHEN A HEAD CHURCH LISTENED TO A BIBLE STORY A lowering winter day found ns at the village where the oldest of all the eighteen chnrches of onr station field is located. Though it was or¬ ganized many years ago, it had the reputation among the other churches of the field of being “Pang huai la,” helped financially by the for¬ eigners to the point of spoiling. Many called it the fifty-year-old baby. It was New Year’s day, and the great heathen festival of the Chinese calendar was in full swing. For that event even many of the beggars manage somehow to get a little money to buy better food than usual; and eat, drink, and be merry, forgetting their woes for a time. It is pre-eminently a time of happiness — noisy, carousing, gambling, gluttonous happiness — all the happiness that heathenism can muster. But there was little happiness among the Chris¬ tians of that village on the day of our arrival. In fact, they were badly discouraged. During the previous year they had given an unusually unsatisfactory account of their stewardship and 52 When a Dead Church Listened 53 had been rebuked by the finance committee, com¬ posed of an equal number of missionaries and Chinese leaders. The rebuke had taken the sharp turn of cutting down the appropriation of the Mission Board to their schools; indeed, in one case the committee had decided to give nothing to assist a certain school within their bounds for the coming year, because that school had paid in only five dollars of its pledged share of twenty- five dollars toward the salary of the teacher. And, as an additional punishment, the committee had refused to open a school in that village for the coming year. The church organization drew membership from twenty neighboring villages, and even in the principal village which I was visiting, and where the church building was located, the out¬ look was not the brightest for opening their school following the New Year. Many of the Christians were fairly well-to-do — according to the stand¬ ards of Chinese peasant villages. Some of them were teachers and evangelists, drawing relatively good salaries from the Mission. They had re¬ paired their own houses, but the house of the Lord in their midst they had allowed to fall into great disrepair, and the maledictions pronounced by Haggai the prophet upon the children of Israel for a like grave offense hung over them. They knew that such a state of affairs was disgraceful ; 54 Answered Prayer in China they were in part ashamed of dishonoring God; but there were jealousies and heartburnings be¬ tween families on the same streets, with resulting spiritual impotence. Doubt and suspicion, envy and strife, always and everywhere usher in such a condition. During the first meeting of the revival services held, while the preacher was referring to the need of repairing the house of the Lord before some greater disaster overtook them, a chunk of the wall under a beam supporting one section of the roof fell down on the audience. It was a most pointed intimation of the need of the Christians getting together and adopting some effective plans ere the whole side of the building should cave in upon them. The elders and deacons were later assembled and a list of all the members pre¬ pared. On this list was written the amount of money each family had the previous year sub¬ scribed to the church work; also the amount of land in the possession of each family; also, in addition to the amount actually subscribed, what the amount would have been if the family had tithed! The contrast was appalling. In many instances, where the amount should have been anywhere from five to twenty tiao, only a few hundred cash had been subscribed; and in many cases the subscription had not been paid. (A cash is a small round copper piece with a square When a Bead Church Listened 55 hole in the middle, worth about l-5840th of an American dollar.) In extenuation of this con¬ temptible cheating of God, a pitiful plea of pov¬ erty had been offered ; but, poor as they were ac¬ cording to our standard of poverty, the plea had little ring of sincerity in it, and with bad face they paraded this mockery of an excuse. At this revival conference the Christians began attending a forenoon and an afternoon preaching service. Later the Holy Spirit made them will¬ ing, in addition, to gather for two prayer meet¬ ings each day, one in the early morning and one in the evening, at which time the concrete needs of the congregation were presented before the Throne of Grace. When they prayed the people followed the custom of standing. All prayed aloud together, but each prayed his own prayer. To the uninitiated it might seem like a babel of confusion, but it fits in with the Chinese frame of mind, with their clannish interest and with the habit formed in village schools where all study aloud; and, when one gets accustomed to it, it seems like a unison of petitions offered before the Great Father. In this prayer meeting it was an interesting sign to see the elders, hitherto somewhat complacent over themselves as being better educated than their fellows and with par¬ donable pride in themselves as skilled preachers, praying a new kind of prayer. One began well 56 Answered Prayer in China enough, but broke down. Weeping aloud, he likened his church to Jerusalem with its broken- down walls when Nehemiah led the people back from the Jewish captivity to look upon the ruins and desolation of their beloved Zion. The next day the Holy Spirit led the missionary to preach on the text, Malachi 3:7-12, which is one of the most powerful challenges to the people of God in the entire Bible — its range of pointed thought, marvelously adapted to such a situation — its statement of the hard-heartedness of back¬ sliders and of the heinousness of their sin, their arrogant and impudent questioning of God as to what they had done wrong. God’s plain state¬ ment that they are thieves robbing him of the tithe which is his due, their debt; robbing him also of gifts which are by him expected in addi¬ tion after the debt is paid, gifts that are legiti¬ mate thank offerings; also the tender pleading of God for his people to return, imploring them to do what they ought, and promising them bless¬ ing to their soil and their crops and their vine¬ yards, even halting the locusts in their destroying march ; causing their country to be one of happi¬ ness and honored of the nations, and with the supreme blessing that in the last great assize they shall stand before God as jewels, precious in his sight. And as it is a mighty challenge, so few texts could be a more persuasive and winsome When a Dead Church Listened 57 plea for turning to God. Moreover, to make it stronger, if possible, the Almighty calls upon them to stretch their faith as an athlete does his muscles, and, putting forth a holy boldness, to cast themselves upon his omnipotence and upon the illimitable riches of his grace; and see — if they have the nobility to love and the courage to prove him — and see if he will not open the windows of heaven and pour them out such a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it. As this text was unfolded to the people, their minds under the Spirit’s guidance began to grasp the heinousness of their sinfulness in God’s sight — the sins of lukewarmness, of indifference to Christ, and to the propagating of his Gospel ; and that sinfulness became very real to them in its actual hatefulness. Men present who were evangelists to other sections of the field confessed with tears that they were indifferent to the preaching of the Gospel at home. As one put it, 4 4 The seller of salt has no salt for his own vil¬ lage,” a Chinese equivalent of our well-known proverb about the shoemaker’s barefooted chil¬ dren. Others, confessing, said that they had re¬ peatedly thought of going to friends and neigh¬ bors in nearby villages, two, three, five and six li away, but ultimately had not gone because they were “too cold in the Doctrine.” It became plain 58 Answered Prayer in China to them as the meetings progressed that the source of all their troubles was in the little word disobey , and the explanation of that word was the lack of love. “If ye love me, ye will do what¬ soever I command you.” The early morning prayer meeting, under the conditions of heathen discomfort and cold, was the most difficult to attend. Nevertheless, they turned out well and it was the most helpful of all the services. Even the women, who especially hate the dark, and who need to use an uncon¬ scionably long time to prepare the morning meal, were there in goodly numbers. And perhaps the extra effort put into it for the Lord’s sake was the reason for the extra blessing that came out of it for them. At any rate, on the last morning the Holy Spirit was present in special power. At that session as our prayer directing passage we were considering the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. Many of the Chinese talk easily and are natural story tellers. Maybe this gift has been unusually developed among Orientals because of the cen¬ turies of practice necessitated out of the limita¬ tions of their history — lack of libraries and news¬ papers accessible to or usable by the masses. Certain it is that hordes of blind men, wandering from place to place, make their living off the people because they are not only fortune tellers, When a Dead Church Listened 59 but also good story tellers. And part of the craze of the villagers for that powerful instrument of Satan, the peripatetic theater (that pitches its rostrum periodically in their midst) is due to the fact that the actors are consummate raconteurs and all the world likes a racy narrative well told. The instinct of Europe during the middle ages for its troubadours and ballad singers has its counterpart today in China. Everywhere a good story teller is welcomed. Whether crowding about him on the village street, or listening to him in an inn, or seated around him on the home hang at a friendly meal, he is sure of an audience. Everything that concerns an Asiatic, of in¬ tellectual or spiritual interest, has had to be thus orally handed down. Strange indeed if skill in description had not been thus developed. No more interesting specimen of a Chinese talker have I ever heard than an old man who arose toward the close of the last morning prayer meeting. He is one of the earliest converts in the fifty years of Gospel propagation through this section — himself for years an evangelist, preach¬ ing in many sections of Shantung Province, hav¬ ing endured hardship and persecution for the Name, an elder and the father of an elder, and one of the charter members of this church in his home village. All his mannerisms pique interest to the last degree. His comical grimaces and 60 Answered Prayer in China grotesque touches to situations described by him have repeatedly given us a hearty laugh. With rare skill he told us the story of that heathen woman and the prophet. To begin with, he had a fine background of understanding for his tale and an atmosphere of sympathy that we have not. His auditors all knew city walls and gates as we never can. In their mind’s eye they could picture perfectly that woman on the verge of starvation going out through one of those mas¬ sive portals that pierce the great gray wall, to hunt for the materials of a fire. On the day he was speaking all knew that multitudes in China were doing that very thing. To the doors of their houses and heralded by yapping, snarling dogs, there had come during the last few days people in the final stages of weakness to whom the parings of a turnip or sweet potato leaves were a godsend. All about that region they could see not only the professional beggar, but the people overwhelmed by the disastrous conse¬ quences of floods, unfortunates fleeing from the famine, whose belongings were on their backs or upon a barrow, lugubrious trampers of the road, than whom few more doleful are anywhere to be seen. They could also see people who belonged to their own village, raking up every spear of grass along the pathway and on the grave mound, shaking trees for a left-over dried-up leaf, When a Dead Church Listened 61 digging the frozen soil of the fields for a stray bean root — to make a little cake and die! As one who knew his business, his speaker’s imagination trained by experience, and one who had held heathen crowds breathless, he built up the narrative, elaborating details as he needed to vivify it all. His description was a consummate piece of art. Finally he flung out the question sudden and sharp. ‘ ‘ And what do you think would have hap¬ pened when Elijah said: ‘Make me a little cake first / if that heathen woman had refused the com¬ mand of God and had spurned the voice of his messenger?” There was a deep silence as he dramatically waited for them silently to answer his query. Then slowly and with emphasis : ‘ ‘ The prophet would have said: ‘Eat your little cake — and die ! ’ And that is just what God is* about to say to us!” He sat down. The effect was elec¬ trical. The people left the building saying: “We have come to the parting of the ways — God has not given us the gift of his Son merely to mock us with the appearance of comfort, just as he did not give the obedient widow a son merely to take the breath out of his body and work her sorrow. If we want his blessing here and now, we must decide today to trust his power, just as that widow did.” At the forenoon session every member was face 62 Answered Prayer in China to face with the proposition, will yon tithe for God or will you continue to rob him of that which is his own, causing his hand to continue to rest heavy upon you? Then something happened as a surprise, which is always the case where God’s Spirit is working, in answer to the prayer of his believing ones. Several years earlier I had spoken on the subject of tithing at our Girls’ High School ; and, in not overmuch faith, had supposed that probably little fruitage had come therefrom. But in this meeting several of the daughters of the Christians of this' village, school teachers, graduates of that high school, were home for a vacation, and one after another, each arose and pledged one-tenth of her salary to the Lord’s work. And this decision of blessing became conta¬ gious. Elders, deacons, leaders, even old, unedu¬ cated women, all had a part in the blessed frui¬ tion. At once the people began to be care-light¬ ened and resolute in faith to face with confidence the problems of the church. All wanted to forget the little subscriptions they had been accustomed to make, as they were amazed to see what they could do, and the sum kept rolling up from the fifty tiao of the previous year to five times that much. It must be remembered that the Chinese acre in this section is about one-sixth of an American When a Dead Church Listened 63 acre, and that it takes two acres to feed one mouth for a year. Many a family of five to twelve members did not have ten Chinese acres, which means a chronic condition of ‘ ‘ difficulty in getting over the days.”* Yet all now felt, as they said, that “nine-tenths with the Holy Spirits blessing and guidance is more than ten-tenths with the curse of God!” Even so, it was no slight thing for many of the families who possessed only ten acres to go on to this basis. At the same time, following out this law, it was a surprising test to compare what they could do with what they had done. How many congregations in America would be willing to submit to the test of that forenoon, to see their names written out and posted on the church walls, with the amount of their income for all to inspect; and also the amount they are actually giving to the Lord’s work, with the amount they ought to give on the tithing basis in contrast with it; also the names of those who gave nothing? It would make a sensation in some centers ! When the subscribing was completed some one proposed that the congregation rise and sing ‘ 6 Praise God from whom all blessings flow. ’ 9 Now they looked at the church building, fallen into decay, with new eyes. All could see the light through the roof in several places. They could see that the crossbeams supporting it sagged 64 Answered Prayer in China where chunks of sunburned mud without mortar had fallen away. They could see the walls bulg¬ ing and wobbling in dangerous fashion. They knew that there must be repairs before the sum¬ mer rains or there would be no building later in which to worship. But no longer did they look on these things in shame and confusion of face; for, though their money was not nearly enough to put the church building in shape, yet they now had the spirit to attack the problem. They opened two new schools in nearby villages. The church tithe made this possible, though in one village there were only two Christians and in another but one. Their share of a school inspec¬ tor and evangelist ’s salary, which they had earlier felt it impossible to provide, was now easily ar¬ ranged, and in addition they took on their own Bible-woman. At the close of the meeting the Christians looked at each other in amazement. Families that had not spoken were inviting each other to the season’s feasts. Many had volunteered to go out into the surrounding villages and preach. The spirit of hopefulness and the gentle warmth of mutual love was diffused; everybody’s face was beaming. They remarked: “How foolish to have kept ourselves from this blessing until now!” When we left they in joy escorted us out of the village, and after a final prayer upon the road When a Dead Church Listened 65 out in the fields, plus many a low bow and God¬ speed, we parted, all feeling: ‘ 4 Surely it is good to have been here, good to have gone to Him in sincerity, good to have asked Him in love for strength and in faith for courage to begin to obey his holy will!” CHAPTER Vn THE MOUNTAIN CHURCH AND ITS MURDER CASE Is the Holy Spirit dead? Yes! So thought many members of “the Mountain Church” of one of the northern provinces of China. They as¬ sumed that He was not to be reckoned with, and so proceeded in a deliberate conspiracy to cover up the murder of one of their members. And they kept the ghastly affair “under the lid” for twelve months. This church, so snared of the devil, scarcely realized that they were in his net — they had been “landed” so gradually. But it was painfully manifest' to others, heathen as well as Christian, that, though possessing the form and motions of a church, they were without its power and Paraclete. I had spent the fall and early winter going among all the churches of our field in five counties, telling of the inspiring things I had seen among the churches in Korea, where the Holy Spirit is teaching an amazed world what soul strength he can put into the weak and despised of this world, 66 The Mountain Church Mukder Case 67 if they seek God with the whole heart. As a re¬ sult, every church and section had promised to send its leaders to a Christmas week conference that we had arranged to ‘ ‘ think on these things. ’ ’ And now they had all ‘ 6 made good” — an unprece¬ dented experience for us. They were all present, even from the farthest corner of the field — pas¬ tors, elders, deacons, evangelists, Bible women, school teachers — all leaders, eager for and ex¬ pectant of a blessing, though ignorant of what it was to cost us. Among the company were the pastor and elders of the “Mountain Church,” genial and smiling, but not overmuch happy inside. Conscious as they were of their guilt, they were to learn the impossibility of dodging the terrible responsi¬ bility that was theirs. Outsiders who knew the. church were sure it was fast festering to dissolu¬ tion. Even heathen whom the missionary met on the road would make an occasion to volunteer the information: “That church has a rotten smell!” The deepest pathos of this situation was that this church, isolated and alone, had, like a certain first century one, been measuring itself by itself. Thereby it had lost soul perspective, and with it spiritual life. Our leader, humanly speaking, was the Bev. Jonathan Goforth, one of God’s noblemen, who had received a great blessing studying the church 68 Answered Prayer in China in Korea, and who had as one of the results car¬ ried that blessing to the church in Manchuria. By the grace of God on the first day of our con¬ ference, under the awful, relentless searching of the Spirit, directing Brother Goforth’s words, these “Mountain Church” men got a peep at themselves. And they shuddered and drew back in horror from the sight. They surprised every¬ body by breaking down, for they had come steeled against such a thing. Despite their' pride, they wept loud and long ; but they did not confess their sin. So their hearts were not comforted. Indeed, they were most miserably unhappy. That night, after the evening session, they asked me to meet with them. And we prayed together till late into the night. As one result, an awful burden was laid on their consciences. Still, though they had come to the point where they wanted the “blood spot” out, they were not ready to “out with everything” that was dyeing it red. At that stage they had not the spiritual strength. Each day of our sessions their lips opened but to weep, though opportunities for praise and intercession were ample, as we held four sessions daily, during which witness could be made. Their position, under the prickings of the Spirit, was fast becoming intolerable. For a year rumor had brought me garbled and lying reports of the case; but to get anything The Mountain Church Murder Case 69 straight out of them was like beating the air. Now, I was determined, in humility and rever¬ ence, to put the Holy Spirit to the test — Him who was promised by onr Christ to make plain to us the will of our Christ. Painfully conscious of our prayer inefficiency, we began each evening, after our regular meeting, to call into our prayer circle Miss Vaughan and a godly elder of great faith. And at each of these sessions the con¬ sciences of the mountain elders blistered hotter, and probed their sore deeper, until one night the whole ghastly affair came out. A man belonging to the church had gone to Manchuria to work. In his absence his heathen wife, abetted by her heathen son, had proved faithless. On his return he had prayed and exhorted them to repent. Wholly committed to the devil and smarting in¬ wardly under the man’s rebuke and exhortation, they had, in simulated repentance and smiling hate, poisoned his food. And one night the son, with the aid of a man of evil life, his mother’s paramour, dragged out the corpse and hid it, naked, like a dead dog, in a hole in the ground. For three awful months they faced out a sleek story. But gradually horror possessed them. They later described their condition as that of a man shoved slowly from behind by an irresist¬ ible hand toward a precipice. And one dark night, when their thoughts became unbearable, the 70 Answered Prayer in China wretched son and his fellow criminal, the para¬ mour, stole up the steep and lonely valley to the Christian village that sits like an eagle’s eyrie. In the blackness, their hearts still blacker, they roused a church member, Christian in name, close kin of the son’s accomplice, and begged him to save them. In agony they knocked their heads on the ground to him. When a Chinaman at mid¬ night, in the January snow, climbs a mountain to ha tou to you, you must do something — kill yourself or him, or help. The kinsman decided to help. By ‘ 4 save” the two wretched men meant “help us to cover up the crime.” And it was then and there planned out with devilish cunning how the entire church, which is largely of one clan, was to be enmeshed in this net — “used” to cover up the murder, to “save the face” of the man- slayers. The first step in the snaring of the church was for the “Christian” relative to give a big wine feast, with money furnished by the man-slayers, to the entire church. It was carefully arranged that the pastor and elders should be there, and even the small children of the Christians, so that, by one stroke, not only were all involved, but all became real partakers of the murder guilt, and all were sworn to a conspiracy of active silence. In merriment somewhat forced, they sat down and The Mountain Church Murder Case 71 i ate the ghastly blood feast. And the experiment was so unexpectedly successful that, to clinch it, the murderers shortly after invited the church of the mountain village down to their yard in a nearby village for another feast. Even the old women hobbled on their tiny, broken feet down the steep and stony trail to attend. And once more the little children, even girls, of the clan were present. Nobody succeeds like the devil. He was toastmaster, and guided the revelry. But doubts as to the righteousness of it all, not to speak of hard sense and worldly wisdom, began to haunt some of the better ones. And fear crept upon them, to numb the pleasurable recollection of two blood feasts. What if they could not keep this wild beast of a secret chained? Some dreamed that a slimy dragon, leagues, leagues long, relentlessly, in spite of all rocks hurled down upon him, drew his prodigious bulk up the narrow valley and deliberately gorged them all in his poisoned jowl. So a committee was sent to the murderers to disclaim for the church all responsibility — if the murder should leak out! The go-betweens chosen were, significantly, the relative to whom the son and his accomplice had appealed, and two of his brothers, with a deacon, whose brother is a minister occupying a prominent place in our mis¬ sion. The clan-face of the three brothers was 72 Answered Prayer in China involved in saving the face of their relative. The deacon on the committee would uphold the dig¬ nity of the church and give weight and prestige to any decision arrived at by the go-betweens. To the fears and the weakening of the church, the murderers, through the committee, returned a laconic reply, but a significant one — a present of two hundred tiao, cash in hand. Money talks ! In this case it talked with terrible effect. At once began the snarling and wrangling as to how this unexpected wealth was to be spent. The bribe was to be speedily used of the devil to rend the church in twain; to fill its members with mutual distrust, hate, envy, jealousy, covetousness; to take away all peace and power to witness ; to land the village in an actual made-to-order hell, all their own; to make the church a stench in the nostrils of the heathen, and a heaviness and a re¬ proach to many of our Christians in other vil¬ lages. The guilt-covering church was tasting the reality of Isaiah’s pronouncement: “The wicked are like the troubled sea; for it cannot rest; and its waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace to the wicked, saith my God.” Meanwhile the committee through whom the bribe had been received hung on to it like grim death, determined to use it as they would. And possession is nine points of the law. Now of this committee the three brothers were The Mountain Church Murder Case 73 strong-willed, energetic men, the most forceful characters in the chnrch, the sort chosen by Satan, and the deacon was a pliable man, consumed by avarice. The pastor was a young theological graduate in his first charge. Of his- two elders, one was old, illiterate and weak, and the other ignorant, young and inexperienced. So that the session, though well-intentioned, was no match for the four. Nevertheless the session, increas¬ ingly preyed upon by growing fears of the evil of it all, finally pressed the four to return the hush money, but in vain. A hint that the matter would be reported to presbytery sent the deacon, as the representative of the four, on a nineteen- day journey, to lobby before, during, and after the meetings; perhaps, more correctly, “to give himself to watchful waiting”; doing this so effectively that the matter never came up. His minister brother was there in attendance. The deacon returned, well fed and triumphant, with forty-seven tiao gouged out of the two hun¬ dred. The man to whom the son and paramour on that fateful winter night appealed also sub¬ tracted forty tiao, as his share for having nego¬ tiated the two hundred into the coffers of the church ! The balance the four used in an abandon of gambling, drinking and high living. The church was powerless to take action against them, and for a reason that to American Christians 74 Answered Prayer in China might seem little less than absurd. But to a Chinese church of weak spiritual life and con¬ stantly breathing the miasma of an age-long, Christless environment, it was a very real and terrible one. The three brothers are butchers, a fearsome business in China, partly due to the vagaries grafted by Buddhism upon the hodge-podge of Chinese superstition. Concerning these men, sev¬ eral old women have at sundry times confi¬ dentially addressed me. Each, first cautiously turning to make sure that no eavesdropper was near, and then removing a skinny hand from her toothless jaw, propounded this incomplete syllogism: “ These men slay cows. Can not he who sheds cow’s blood easily shed a man’s!” Not another word! But searchingly peering through her half-shut eyes, the ancient dame, with a sol¬ emn wink, would hobble off. From their view¬ point the evidence was conclusive. And indeed this logic was not entirely unjustified by facts, for I was to learn that the brothers carried long sharp knives, and suggested that if anybody ob¬ jected to the disposition they saw fit to make of the hush money they would use these knives upon them. Thus it stood that, despite all the efforts of the session, the blood-red spot, the “damned” spot, of the church’s complicity in guilt would not out. The Mountain Church Murder Case 75 So it sent another committee to “fixup” the busi¬ ness properly. So intent upon saving its face was this Chinese church! The second committee selected by the church to disclaim responsibility for the murder found it easy to bring pressure to bear upon the mur¬ dered man’s family. No country rejoices in parent-killers and husband- slayers, least of all China, whose Confucianism teaches, though with¬ out enabling power, children to venerate parents and worship ancestors, and wives to be in com¬ plete subjection to their husbands, whose power over their women is that of life and death. The neighbors would be anxious for a satisfactory settlement that might be made not only without resort to the yamen, but even without the cog¬ nizance of the magistrate ; for they knew the com¬ mon punishment of such a crime is the beheading of many members of the family, the confiscation of considerable property, and a merciless squeez¬ ing of the community. On the other hand, magis¬ trates often fight shy of an official knowledge of such horrid deeds, feigning ignorance or hushing them up, because to have serious crime and dis¬ order within the district for whose order and peace they are responsible often means removal from office, permanent degradation and severe punishment. In the face of an inexorable decision for a 76 Answered Prayer in China “ quiet’ * restitution-making, the murderess was helpless to resist the demands made upon her. She was forced to sell at a sacrifice her husband’s house and lot, and with the proceeds buy and erect a fine monument. By one stroke she was reduced to a penniless, roofless beggar. Then, with grim callousness, all assembled to witness the gruesome sight of the murderess experiencing the kind of exquisite torture that only the Chinese, after thousands of years of practice in the art, could conjure up. At the command of the session, representing the church, the wretched wife ex¬ humed the naked corpse, three months hidden in the ground, and with her own hands put it in a decent grave, previously prepared. Then the mother and son were marched through the village streets, up and down, to the bedlam accompani¬ ment of the clashing of cymbals, the beating of drums, the boom of cannon crackers, the shrill of fifes, the blare of trumpets, the kick and bang of the three-barreled Chinese burial musket, the shrieks of children and the execrations of grown¬ ups. Sewn on their breasts and backs, like a Chinese “ Scarlet Letter” episode, mother and son wore huge cloth characters, which read, re¬ spectively: “Why did you murder your hus¬ band?” “Why did you murder your father?” This procession wound up at the grave of their victim, where a “proper” Christian burial was The Mountain Church Murder Case 77 observed. Thus at least the “ honor’ * of the church was satisfied, though a fundamental law of God and of the nations was still broken. And the mountain village once more settled down to its self-made hell. The poetically euphuistic name of that village is significantly “The peace (or rest haven) of the Tung family !” This was the status twelve months after the murder, when the session of the mountain church, that cold, windy, Christmas midnight, found them¬ selves in the conference church building on their knees, convicted of sin by the Spirit they had despised, and weeping out their hearts in an agony of fear. At last they said to me: “Shep¬ herd Scott, will you go back with us and help us straighten out the affair?” “Yes, if you will do the manifest will of the Holy Spirit at any cost.” Solemnly, between sobs, they promised. Miss Vaughan and two true and tried elders, mature men of experience and spiritual power from neighboring churches, who had been pray¬ ing with us over the affair, also consented to go with us, as witnesses and helpers, and prayer auxiliaries. It was a hard walk. The night of the first day upon the road we were a pretty tired lot — one man with a frozen foot, but we dared not turn in without another conference and prayer* meeting. 78 Answered Prayer in China The next morning we were up before the sun. And all that day we tramped toward the Moun¬ tain Church, a sober company given much to silent prayer and heart-searching. The nearer we ap¬ proached what would be the crisis of their lives, the more the courage of the pastor and elders oozed away. And as we rested before the last steep climb, their courage failed them utterly. So we all sank down on the rocks to pray as we had rarely prayed. The session fully believed that the three brothers would kill them, if they did their duty ; and they had vowed to God to do their duty. Imagine the realm of terror in which the weak but well-intentioned brethren of that church had for months been dwelling as they daily faced and cowered before those three strong-willed men, hardened in sin, resolute to continue in evil, who had sold themselves to the devil. When we arrived at the village schoolhouse and church no Christian met us, very different from the hearty greeting on the occasion of previous visits. The mountains towered in calm and quiet¬ ness as of yore. But whereas in former times they had so refreshed our spirits, speaking of nearness to heaven and its peace, they now spoke to us in vain. A sickening atmosphere of dread hung over the place. We were filled with the in¬ definable sense of a mighty antagonist, present The Mountain Church Murder Case 79 though invisible, and instinctively we braced our¬ selves in prayer for the coming wrestling with him. Even the school children, who usually came out upon the way to greet us, or at least lined up near the schoolhouse door in a double row, through which we passed as they smiled and bowed their good will, were absent, the school was broken up, the patrons spiritless to pay the teacher’s salary, long pledged and overdue. Everything dead! This is indeed a choice spot in God’s out-of-doors, where He intended one’s spirit to be exalted; but it depressed us mightily this sombre afternoon. Without delay I sent the pastor and elders to request the presence of the four. They returned shortly from their homes; the members of the households, under instruction, reported that they all “had gone upon a journey,” not expecting us! We knew this was a lying subterfuge, because the day before delegates from a nearby Christian group in attendance upon the revival meetings had, at our request, passed through the place and spent the night there, so as to report the services and inform them of our coming. We could not drag them by violence to us; and if they would not come to us, then all this fag for naught, and worse, for my wife was at home alone, passing through the most serious crisis of motherhood, in possible peril of her life, and so many varied 80 Answered Prayer in China and imperative duties were calling me ! It is only in a situation like this, in the midst of a heathen¬ ism, huge, crass, blatant, that one can begin to sense the words of Paul, “Besides those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.’ ’ I thought of Wellington on the plateau, anxiously scanning the horizon and muttering over his watch: “Oh, for Blucher, or night!” In this intense spiritual conflict, as real as any battle earthly armies ever waged, we had no reserves of our own to call up, and no friendly human re¬ inforcements to call upon. We must summon our¬ selves anew to an extra, desperate effort, and pray those men, who had bound themselves never to meet us, into our presence. Wearily amid the fast-lengthening shadows, and with a depressed, half-sense of defeat dogging us, cold and hungry, we began to unpack our things and get ready to camp down for the night. We were interrupted by the unexpected arrival of a deputy from the household of the leader of the four, bringing steamed biscuits, sweet pota¬ toes, eggs and meat that these butchers had killed with their own hands ! How appetizing the food looked and smelled! But, “Beware of Greeks bringing gifts.” If we touched the presents we were undone, and had lost our cause before the trial was begun. It was the smoothest of tricks. The Mountain Church Murder Case 81 Long before the days of Abraham the Oriental probably understood the import of such pro¬ cedure; today they all know it and use it, from the Arab in his tent to the Chinese mandarin in his yamen. We had not come to become their companions in guilt. So I ordered the good things all taken back, with word that we could accept no gifts till justice had first been done and righteous¬ ness first established. I had to leave the next morning. The affair must somehow that night get into the way of a settlement. Taking only a bite of food, our party gave ourselves once more to prayer. At 8.30 p. m. the leader of the four, suddenly and unannounced, arrived. Brazen, sneering, and without greeting, he came in and seated himself before us. Wast¬ ing no time in ceremony and chiding, I merely said: “Tell your story in the presence of these witnesses.” He began in a loud, high-keyed tone of voice, evidently not sure of his ground, but with a bullying swagger, and abusive from the outset. He nervously “pulled” his pipe for in¬ spiration, and vigorously waved it around in big circles to emphasize the points he scored. Steadily I watched him. His eyes shifted rest¬ lessly from one face to another — eyes nearly folded in by wrinkles of sin, eyes that disliked daylight, small, beady, glittering, wicked in un¬ repentance. Only twice before did I remember to 82 Answered Prayer in China have looked at close range straight into the eyes of such an evil countenance. Once, the sardonic face of a saloonkeeper in the lumber woods of Northern Michigan, leering back at my rebuke, while around him on the floor were human wrecks of his devilish work, all bleeding copiously from the broken whiskey bottles upon which they had fallen toward the end of their drunken orgy. And again, one dark night on South Street Bridge, in Philadelphia, when the electric light lit up the desperate, angry faces of young city toughs, carrying railroad coupling pins, and pledged to kill some of us who had that evening forcibly put them out of the University Settlement House for terrorizing the youngsters. This fellow was a prince of bullies and acted his part with magnificent nerve. Before he had finished, a second member of the four, arriving quite as unexpectedly, came in, and began his testimony. His speech was one of innuendoes, belittling the pastor and railing at the Christians, who had no “nerve,” who had “caved in” and given the affair away, and so on. Frequently, with a contemptuous flourish of his pipe, and looking fiercely at the pastor, he referred to him as “that man,” in the manner of its delivery an affront of which it is difficult to conceive a Chinese church member being guilty. As he finished, a third member of the four The Mountain Church Murder Case 83 literally slunk in. He was the weak-willed brother who had been inveigled into the affair, a deacon and brother of a minister. He doubled himself up on his knees, like a closed jack-knife, stared steadily at the ground, and in a low, spiritless voice told his tale. At its close I merely asked him if he had experienced joy in this sort of wit¬ ness for our Lord. Weeping bitterly, he burst out with: “I have never had a moment of peace since I got into this business twelve months ago !” But sorrow for sin he did not express, merely fear of punishment that might overtake him. He was not repentant, only scared. His rugged old grandfather and entire clan had many years be¬ fore, when Hr. Corbett first climbed through the mountains to them, received the Gospel with joy. It filled a great need of their hungry mountain hearts. They, like the humble folk of other parts of China, had a society “to feel after God,” if haply they might find him; the father had for years been a zealous elder. The deacon son had in twelve months wandered far. In the meantime the fourth member of the four had entered. He, with the other two, his brothers, looked daggers at their confrere, who had prac¬ tically backed down. He had voluntarily given their case away, and badly, by stating what was earlier recorded, namely, that when the session had threatened to divulge this affair to the pres- 84 Answered Prayer in China bytery, the four bad sent bim on a nineteen-day junket to presbytery to steer the affair out of the range of publicity, and bad spent forty-seven tiao in the process. The balance they had squandered in high dining, wining and gambling. The third brother, realizing only too well that the situation was desperate for their case, began a cunning argument to discredit the pastor and lay all the blame on him. He reached his climax in the amazing charge : ‘ ‘ The pastor himself gave me sixty tiao as a gift if I would get the two hun¬ dred tiao hush money from the murderers. He said this balance was to be used for church ex¬ penses, largely for salary. The committee has merely delayed to hand it over ! ’ * In the meantime the church had gradually filled with a crowd of breathless hearers. The Chris¬ tians had not dared put in an appearance before the strong, evil men arrived, because thereby they would seem to disapprove of their conduct and to sympathize with the session. For the same reason they had not dared to receive us, vaguely fearing what would be visited upon them when we left. I now called upon the young pastor to answer for the session. He trembled as he rose. How we prayed for him in this test! Quietly, courteously, he began his testimony. He told how and when and where he and his fellow elders had repeatedly exhorted these men, with weeping, to The Mountain Church Murder Case 85 repent of their evil conduct and save the church, and of how they had only resisted the pleas and beaten the younger elder. It was simple and straight, carrying the conviction that inheres in truth. I then asked the two visiting elders to exhort the guilty men, which they tactfully and impres¬ sively did, not by haranguing the men to acknowl¬ edge specific points of guilt, but by tenderly pointing them to the example of Christ, and to his compassion and power available for us all when in the toils of Satan. To this the three re¬ sponded by strutting up and down the middle of the room vociferating fiercely: “No, we are not sorry! We are glad of what we have done. We have no regrets! Never happier in our life than tonight ! * * I then spoke the final word: “It is fortunate for the truth that so many persons are here to listen to the testimony given. It is also fortunate that you four men each came in at different times, so as not to hear the testimony of each other. You have contradicted the testimony of one another. It is worthless; none of it hangs together. Before tomorrow noon you four men must bring two hundred tiao here, to be handed back at once by the session to the murderers, or you will force yourselves to eat unexpected bit¬ terness !” 86 Answered Prayer in China It was lightning out of a clear sky. Muttering their anger and vows of vengeance, they departed into the darkness. And the audience of villagers gradually stole out, not to the slumber of their homes, however, but around the corner to man all the long, narrow windows of the little room. We could hear them outside, crowding and push¬ ing for peep holes, and in the stillness of the night we heard perfectly the cracking of the paper as they cautiously punched their fingers through the paper panes to make those peep holes. And by the brilliant glare of a big Montgomery Ward & Co. “ store lamp,” the pride of the village, we saw eyes, black and gleaming, staring at us. It was creepy. The session feared a raid. Again we prayed for courage and guidance. Finally, wdiispering together, the Chinese brethren even writing out their thoughts so that the eavesdroppers should get no inkling of what we were doing, the session, there, in the early morning hours, voted to excommunicate the four, the step they had for twelve months discussed and feared to take. But we agreed not to divulge this fact till the four had surrendered the two hun¬ dred tiao, lest they should later have occasion to rail and say that out of spite, because the session could not force them to surrender the money, they had taken this drastic measure. It required faith to believe that, for the glory of God and the good The Mountain Church Murder Case 87 of that church, the money would be surrendered the next day. After another season of prayer we settled down to a cold and sleepless night. It was the third of January; we were high up in the air ; and the winter wind found us out through the big cracks in the loose-fitting Chinese doors and through the broken paper window panes. Early the next morning, despite pleas to the contrary, I began grimly to pack up, preparatory to leaving; partly because it was necessary in order to accomplish the trip of the day, and partly because that was one way to help force matters to an issue. Even at that hour the yard was full of curious visitors, who would keep the four informed. But, before I had finished dress¬ ing, the session in great anxiety visited me and implored me not to leave. Weeping, they said: “We are children; we can not manage the affair to the end ! ’ ’ Again our little band gave itself to prayer. Such a realizing sense of our weakness and of the Holy Spirit’s sufficiency as was then and there born out of our distress is a blessing not often experienced and not soon forgotten. So far as we knew ourselves, no praying of our lives equaled in intensity our prayers of that morning. We felt as never before the actual presence of the devil. We felt that we were really battling with the powers of darkness. We felt the literal pres¬ ence of spiritual wicked ones in high places, 88 Answered Prayer in China powers of the air in infernal strength and malignity. The more we prayed that morning the more the Holy Spirit revealed to the session their guilt for having led the church so deep into sin through fear of men ; revealed their responsi¬ bility to clear themselves at once. Their grief was awful to see. In spite of ourselves we all found ourselves weeping in sorrow for them, and felt as if we would gladly make any sacrifice if thereby we could bring peace to them and the power of God back to that church. Because of all its implications the spiritual vic¬ tory was for the session, not me, to summon their people. Among other things that act would mean that they were the spiritual shepherds of the church; that they no longer feared the rowdy four; that they were now humble enough to con¬ fess egregious sin to their people, and bold enough to make the opportunity for the church members to do the same. One could not but love that young pastor- brother as he bravely faced Satan, and pity him as Satan repeatedly beat him back that morning. Again and again he and the elders essayed to go out and invite the Christians, and to confess their own guilt as under shepherds of the Great Shep¬ herd, and as often they came back, too weak to meet the ordeal, and to be again fortified in prayer. They realized that every moment they The Mountain Church Murder Case 89 delayed shortened the time before I must leave; and yet they could not face their people. For every foot of literal ground we covered that fore¬ noon we could almost feel the devil pressing us inch by inch. Finally, out of our agony of prayer, a great peace and courage was born. The quivering lips grew firm, the weeping eyes dried, the drawn faces became rested and restful to see, and the trio said quietly: “Now we will go, even though they kill us.” And they went forth for the last time, and victorious. Never can I forget the joy¬ ous confidence depicted on their countenances. As soon as they uttered that sentence of trust (for which the Lord had been graciously waiting), the deviFs spell was broken, his reign of terror ended. And at that very moment the leader of the four entered and cried abruptly: “Ten days! Give us ten days to find the money!” How did he divine our unuttered thoughts? “No, not a day!” I replied. He then opened his long skirt, gathered up into a scoop and hanging heavy with copper cash , and said: “Here is my share, forty tiao; I wash my hands of the bloody business!” “No you don’t! I receive nothing less than two hundred tiao , and from you four together!” He departed in a rage with his money. 90 Answered Prayer in China And now the Christians began streaming in, qnickly tilling the benches. A wondrous change had been worked in them. Deep expectation and responsiveness sat on their faces, an air quite different from last night. Without prayer or any preliminaries, I said: “Time is short and precious. You know your village is so located in this mountain pass, on the boundary, that both German and Chinese law can reach you. For this crime both could squeeze the life out of you. What magistrate of any nation, much less of heaven, could you convince that you were not par¬ ties to this murder, when for a whole year you concealed it and received hush money therefor? Your only salvation is, first, to return the blood money spent by one of your fellow villagers to feast you into the secret. Second, to return the blood money spent by the murderers to feast you into silence. Third, to return the blackmail by which the murderers sought to seal you forever into complicity with them.” Just then two more members of the four, who were shifting uneasily on the edge of the crowd, cried out, “We return eighty tiao!” “No, we won’t take eighty tiao !” I answered. And the four, cursing, retired in confusion to counsel anew together. Scarcely noticing the in¬ terruption, the Christians (whose eyes only now, for the first time, were opened to realize the ex- The Mountain Church Murder Case 91 tent of the enormity to which, they had been par¬ ties) cried ont: “We repent! repent! When can we subscriber’ “Now, only be sure to subscribe more than each plate cost, so as to wash your hands clean of blood.” I think that at that moment many re¬ pented with a great and bitter repentance. Then and there they realized that truth is more to be desired and more powerful than lies, that evil, immediately before their eyes, had signally un¬ dermined itself, that sin is a disgrace to any people, but righteousness exalteth a church. The Christians arose in rapid succession, feeble old men and women, heads of families and their wives, girls and boys, and eagerly, and with tears, pledged their money. Most pathetic of all was when the aged elder, with voice choking, said: “I was not present at the feasts, but had it not been for serious sickness at my home I would have been. I am as guilty as the rest.” And then he subscribed, like the pastor and his fellow elder, five times his share. When the tally showed that enough money had been subscribed, I said: “Now all scatter to your homes and bring your pledge back at once.” I must confess that my confident suggestion as to their ready money, “on tap” (in view of their previously pleaded poverty), rather staggered my own faith; but, in an incredibly short time, all returned with their pledges 92 Answered Prayer in China cashed. To save their faces the four had tried to subscribe; but we politely though firmly re¬ fused their offering, this being one made by church members only, and they, though they knew it not, were excommunicated. Nonplussed they certainly were to have their church refuse money, and their money, though “tainted” to a degree they did not yet realize. In the presence of all the pledges were counted. Meanwhile we had prepared two receipts, with blank spaces for the sums, also for names of re¬ cipients. One wad of the dirty money, the two hundred tiao of the four, was, together with one unsigned receipt, to be put into the pastor’s Chien ta tze before the eyes of everybody. This essen¬ tial article of a Chinese countryman is a humble cloth-bag substitute for our pocket purse and suit¬ case combined, and carried over the shoulder. The money in it was to be taken that day by the session over the mountain, and handed by them, for the church, to the murderers. The other wad, just subscribed by the church, I handed to the pastor, and said: “In the presence of all, offer this to . (the leader of the four who gave the first feast). If he refuses to accept it, we’ll pitch it outside the church yard.” As a matter of fact, the leader at first refused the money, and, of course, refused to sign the receipt. Laying it on a Bible, I walked up in front of him The Mountain Church Murder Case 93 and said sternly: “Sign it!” He did, growling the while like a bear. He was that fourth mem¬ ber who had obstinately refused to bring back his share of the two hundred tiao, which share he now reasseverated the pastor had given him as fee for the blood gift he had been instrumental in bringing to the church. The other three were now meekly squatting in front of the pulpit and holding their share of the two hundred tiao in their hands. This seemed too much for his re¬ sistance. Reluctantly, like a man parting with his own life, he slowly pulled his share out of his ma hwoa tze (a coarse short blue cloth jacket), balanced it on his palm in the sight of all, and finally dramatically dropped it on the floor — the last stage of resistance. I struggled to look indifferent and to keep my¬ self from shouting hallelujah! as the chief butcher and the two visiting elders, in presence of the assembled people, began to count out the accursed two hundred tiao. At an ordinary debt-raising we would have sung the doxology; but the time was too pressing, the business too stern. There was nothing for which to praise ourselves. We were rendering barest justice. As soon as this money was in the pastor’s CJiien ta tze , I an¬ nounced to the amazed company that the once all- powerful four had last night been excommuni¬ cated. 94 Answered Prayer in China All realized that at last the big four had ‘ 4 gone bust/’ and that the church had now made what reparation it could. Not an eye was dry. Ten¬ derly I exhorted the four. Fear, loathing, and hate which had filled the hearts of many for them was now changed to sorrow for them. If ever the spirit of Christ brooded over a company it was in that place, and at that moment. Amid much joy, mingled with heavy sorrow, the bene¬ diction was pronounced. In the yard I had a word with each of the four. A friendly hand on their shoulders in turn and looking straight into their eyes, I told them as a brother that what had been done was done for their good, and that I expected daily to pray for them; that as true servants of the Lord they would again seek in repentance to be numbered in church fellowship with His own. The hard lines of their faces softened and their lips quivered as silently they pressed my hand. These three brothers had years before risked their lives to save our beloved Hr. Hunter Cor¬ bett from death at the hands of an infuriated mob. The entire village watched the session, bearing the money in their shoulder pocketbooks, slowly climb away from them into the mist toward the village of the murderers. I stayed only long enough to see that no unexpected hitch delayed them. They disappeared over the crest of the divide and then I was oft, several hours late, to The Mountain Church Murder Case 95 be sure, but no matter. I felt that the Lord would help me to catch that night train. With gratitude to God for this issue to the affair, and with thanks to Him for health and strength, and with an ex¬ uberant sense that I was “going to make it any¬ how,’ ’ I tightened my belt in lieu of food, strapped my deerskin hunting coat on my shoulders, and lit out down the trail. Others with my luggage would come later. Every minute counted. For several hours I swung along at a hard pace till blisters developed. A swift prayer for help was answered by an elder (who was sup¬ posed on that day to be hundreds of li away, but who had unexpectedly returned). He speedily provided me with a donkey, fresh and fast. Mounting, I ambled on at a stiff clip and made the train that night by the closest margin. A few days later came a joint note from the session which included the following : First: Murdered man’s family received money from our hands and gave receipt, which find en¬ closed. Second : Church has made up the deficit in sal¬ aries of pastor and of teachers in the boys’ and girls’ schools. Third : Church has arranged for continuing its schools next year. Fourth: New hope. Praise the Lord! As a footnote to the foregoing, it ought to be 96 Answered Prayer in China added that this is the only village in which I have worked (with the exception of one other) where its entire population turned to Christ, destroying its idols and temples, so that there was no vestige of heathen worship left in their midst. Many years before this episode, Hunter Cor¬ bett, D. D., my senior evangelistic colleague here, had worked his way up into these mountains and had found this village. Its headmen, with their families, had, on Dr. Corbett’s presentation of the Gospel, eagerly and wholeheartedly accepted it, just as Cornelius and his own had done. No wonder the devil labored hard and inces¬ santly to make this entire village church fall often and deep into temptation. No wonder it was not easy for the session to rule spiritually its own clan family. No wonder it was difficult to punish its own members, especially the big four, strong¬ est of its village group. But the Spirit apparently took a hand in breaking their hard and willful hearts. Sin at the first may have its pleasures ; but, at the last, like wine, it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder. The four, impenitent after their excommunica¬ tion, soon ate unexpected bitterness. The wife and daughter-in-law of one, in shame at the dis¬ grace that had come upon the head of their fam¬ ily, committed suicide, leaving him and his only The Mountain Church Murder Case 97 son helpless with two little children on their hands. The third son, nineteen years old, of another, bright and promising, suddenly devel¬ oped quick consumption and died. The older of his two remaining sons became foolish, so stupid that he could not attend market and do bargain¬ ing, and when a Chinese cannot bargain, he is far gone. Also his mule died, a grave loss to any mountaineer. The son of the third immediately after the excommunication married into a heathen family and his marriage speedily developed into a little hell, the daughter-in-law setting both families by the ears. This son, the pride of the father’s heart, going away to school got into a gambling scrape, became unfaithful in his studies, became an associate of opium users, and was arrested and imprisoned for smuggling the drug, getting freed months later only by the payment of a handsome “fine.” The fourth member of the quartette repented at once. He had had no part in the division of the spoils (the blood money) ; he only ate and drank with the others at the blood feast. And he was sick and tired of the sin mess. His escape from the woes of the other three was a sharp, dramatic warning to the entire church that “the way of the trangressor is hard.” Later, through the soul travail that they ex- 98 Answered Prayer in China perienced, the three repented — God’s chastise¬ ment of them as sons was efficacious, and the big four were finally reinstated into church fellow¬ ship, sadder but wiser men, humble and self-dis¬ trustful. They described their pride and self- sufficiency as “high stilts which the devil had knocked from under us.” CHAPTER VIII THE MISSIONARY LADY WHO DID NOT DIE It was a perfect autumn day, one for which Shantung Province is famed, floods of sunshine, the air clear and crisp. We were celebrating the Lord’s Supper, and under very interesting cir¬ cumstances. A young man, educated in the Chinese classics, had heard us preach in the mar¬ ket, and the Holy Spirit had honored the message. He had been convicted of sin, converted and smit¬ ten with the passion to witness for Christ. Rela¬ tively well-to-do, he, at his own expense, had opened in one of the rooms of the family yard a small school for boys, he himself being their teacher. Besides his proficiency in the Chinese classics, he was also familiar enough with West¬ ern methods of education to be able to make his school, in the few grades that he taught, conform to the curriculum of our village mission schools, and had applied to have his school, as a self-sup¬ porting one, taken under our jurisdiction, which had been done. During the forenoon of this memorable day his 99 100 Answered Prayer in China pupils, ten in number, had been examined and re¬ ceived into the church, and all through his efforts. Now, on this glorious afternoon, we were in the midst of the Holy Communion, celebrated for reasons best known to the initiated, in the open yard, high-walled to keep out interlopers, loose animals, beggars and thieves. Suddenly, in the midst of the service, I felt that something was seriously wrong at home and that I was needed there at once. Many times I had been away on these country trips for weeks at a stretch, always knowing (and heartened by the fact) that I was faithfully being borne up before the throne, and I felt that all was well. But now, for the first and only time in my life, this premonition of danger, indeed, of harm already wrought, to my loved ones, struck me with an unexpectedness that was uncanny, and with a dagger sharpness. There was still another week of this itinerary as planned to be completed, preaching in the villages round about, but now the thought of continuing it became torture. By three o’clock I was so burdened that I had de¬ cided to do what I had never done before, cut all engagements ahead and hasten back home. To conserve strength for a forced march later, and to facilitate speed, I hired a big strong mule and started. But I soon learned, to my sorrow, that the beast was strongly possessed of mulish- The Missionary Who Did Not Die 101 ness, with the result that he did not take kindly to strangers; indeed, that he had no intention of being lorded over by a foreign devil. He had a way of remonstrating at the load on his back that was as interesting as it was literally striking. Every few paces he would stop and give a vicious lunge at me with one of his hind legs. The mani¬ fest purpose was by means of these sharp hoof jabs to dig the flesh off my calves. The ride speedily developed into a game of hide and seek, rather of kicks and dodges. As he increased the vigor of his attacks I retired my nether parts to the region of his back. The situation required “ watchful waiting,” and that I “sit high and tight,” and I tried to; that is, as high and tight as unstable equilibrium permitted. At last the game became too interesting for me, the barrage fire too intense. I was getting more than my money’s worth. Watching for an opening between attacks, I leaped over his ears, thankful to be on terra firma, glad to exchange that “ornery crit¬ ter” for shanks horses, and feeling privileged to relieve the mule and his owner from any further obligation to me. By five fifteen in the afternoon the November sun was gone, and I was swinging along over a steadily darkening way. Before I reached one of our chapels I had made sixty li (twenty miles). There I ate and slept a bit, and then started off 102 Answered Prayer in China to push on through the moonless night. It was a lonely and lonesome tramp, especially as the road was new to me, and leading over a rough, hilly region. The path, narrow and faint, could, ac¬ cording to our notions, hardly be called a ta tao (big road), as it meandered, here and there, wind¬ ing to places of least resistance among low levels and over crests. Yet it had, according to Chinese standards, the infallible marks of a “big road”; for it was traceable, from point to point, by white slabs of stone, three to five feet high, looming like ghostly guides, along through the blackness. These slabs were the famous lou pei, monu¬ ments planted always beside what purports to be an important highway in order to be seen of men, monuments that the family of a daughter- in-law have erected to immortalize her conjugal fidelity, in that, after the death of her husband, she never married again. Such monuments usually have four Chinese characters graven large on the roadward front, and, though I have written down and compared dozens of them, one idea seems to run through them all, as voiced in this stereotyped eulogy: “Her heart was pure as gold, firm as granite” (in her determination not to remarry). The next morning, somewhat the worse for wear, foot-blistered and empty-stomached, I pulled into a wayside railroad station whose The Missionary Who Did Not Die 103 Chinese master earned my gratitude. He brought water for washing, poured hot tea and shared his breakfast with me, and then gave me the use of his bed of cornstalks, waking me up in time to catch the train for Tsingtau. On arrival, I found sufficient reason for my premonition. No child ran to greet me; my wife was not about the house. Vague terror was in my bones. A little later I was told, with a painful impres¬ siveness that made my heart thump as if to break its walls, that Mrs. Scott had been hastily re¬ moved to the Municipal Hospital, and that the doctors gave her disease the ominous name of “ fleck typhus” (spotted typhus). Also, to my consternation, I learned that one daughter was in the hospital with dysentery, another was re¬ covering from it, but so weak, emaciated, and gen¬ erally changed that I hardly recognized the chubby, robust girl I had left; a third, the baby boy, was also sick, but convalescing from that same hateful disease. The servants informed me that Mrs. Scott had one forenoon gone to bed, remarking that she did not feel well, an act and remark alike strange for her. They did not then tell me that a high fever had developed, rapidly merging into delirium, that they had not known what to do, and that they had informed no foreigner of her condition. All that I was to learn later. So there she had lain, 104 Answered Prayer in China helpless and untended, within a few blocks of a fine hospital, sick well-nigh nnto death, but un¬ discovered. To make the irony complete, for¬ eigners had called several times but had blandly been told: “Mrs. Scott cannot see you now!” a common after-tiffin phrase, innocuous in itself. And so, by an apparently cruel conjunction of circumstances, no human friend who could have helped knew about her condition and that of the children, also sick and neglected in other rooms, till her dread disease had almost reached its climax. Later the servants told me that while still at the house in the delirium of fever, Mrs. Scott was figuring station accounts, in Chinese, even then faithfully trying to help with the book¬ keeping in order to give me more time for country evangelistic itinerating, work that she was not free to do, but in which her heart was centered. It afterward developed that, during my ab¬ sence, she had quite exhausted herself with the day and night care of two children seriously ill, that a careless servant had drawn bad water and failed to boil it properly, and that she herself was in the clutch of her fever before she could tell the servants where, and in what part of the field, I might be found. The conspiracy of events was pathetic, even tragic, to a degree. All the painful details in due time I learned, and as they gradually piled upon me, it was with The Missionaky Who Did Not Die 105 crushing weight. I mused bitterly, “Why must she, of all women, always busy for the Master, sutler thus ? ’ ’ The climax came when, on seeking out the German physician in charge of the hos¬ pital, he announced: “There is no hope!” The pompous, tactless way he pronounced it, as if he were gloating over me, made me tight hard not to hate him. Through my mind his explanations passed as in a dream: “The disease is of a very malignant type, and is not acting according to rule ! I have been holding daily consultation with some of the specialists of the big military hos¬ pital! The fever has passed beyond the power of technical knowledge and human wisdom to con¬ trol ! All skill is unavailing, because the case was caught too late!” I cared nothing for his ex¬ planations. I wanted life , her life . On that black day there arrived at our home, unsummoned by me, an older missionary friend from the far western part of the province. It meant much that that man, as busy as I knew he was, should leave his classes in our theological seminary to come to my aid. Sympathetically, like a wise and kind-hearted father, he helped. Yet it was dreadfully significant to me and added to the poignancy of my pain that he had come to assist in what were supposed to be the last sad rites. In bitterness of soul I assuredly was at that 106 Answered Prayer in China time not prepared to give her up. I had no doubt as to her immediate and full felicity (should God see fit to remove her from our midst ), but the thought of my little children left motherless (and she such a sunny, efficient mother), I was unwill¬ ing to face. Unable to see her, of course, I had nevertheless been hanging about the hospital like an uneasy ghost. When at last the doctor made his cruel, official pronunciamento, I staggered away from his presence into the hospital garden and there had it out with God. Now a garden full of trees is a good place to settle things with God. The most important mat¬ ter ever settled on this planet was once in such a place settled for time and eternity, and settled right. There, after a final, helpless wrestle, Jacob-like, I became willing to “let go and let God, ’ ’ whatever the consequences to me and mine. Then, and not till then, did I begin to realize something of the tender love and compassion of our God, “A bruised reed will he not break, and smoking flax will he not quench.’ ’ I now knew it for a fact. Not only did affairs at once, in my own mind, take a turn for the better, but, in the midst of my distress, more help from without was at hand, and it was to be increasingly so from that time on. As a merciful providence would have it, the Chinese leaders of our country field, on hearing The Missionary Who Did Not Die 107 of the desperate situation, had hurried in to Tsingtau to comfort and console me. Indeed, at that very hour of garden decision, some were awaiting me at my house. Words cannot tell how glad I was to see them. Among them was Pastor Li, whose parents, during his boyhood, had ex¬ perienced the greatest hardships, but who had early dedicated himself to the Lord, and the Lord in a marvelous way had led him on, out of penury, into prosperity and usefulness, giving him chil¬ dren to revere and honor him and giving him the ‘ 4 burning heart for Jesus, and eloquence to preach Christ, so that he is one of the most earnest and powerful of our evangelistic speakers. With him was Elder Ting Li Sui, elegant country gentleman, for many years professor of mathe¬ matics in a mission college, till the Boxer cata¬ clysm broke it up, the embodiment of dignity and politeness, head of the now famous clan of which the student evangelist, the Rev. Ting Li Mei, is an illustrious member. After 1900, Elder Ting had sacrificingly helped to establish in his village our Girls * High School, managing it, and, as a skilled pedagogue, teaching without salary in it. And there was Pastor Chae with his elders, he whose face is the embodiment of kindliness and good will, whose benignant spirit radiates sun¬ shine ; a man not great as a preacher, but a faith¬ ful and sympathetic pastor, a true shepherd, 108 Answered Prayer in China traveling continuously among his flock, three churches that stretch through many villages in three different counties, himself a fine Chinese scholar, and unusually skillful in writing the in¬ tricate and mysterious-looking Chinese ideo¬ graphs. He, as a Confucian schoolmaster, on hearing the Jesus Doctrine, embraced it gladly and at once , and ever since has spoken the name of Christ with love and reverence and power. When, during the flood time, I went to help his people and saw that the “swelling of Jordan’ ’ had taken away the possibility of his poor country Christians paying his paltry monthly stipend of twenty dollars (Mex), he told me that he had just received an offer from a foreign mission society to take the pastorate of one of its com¬ pounds at twice that salary, yet, without hesita¬ tion, and as a matter of course, he refused, say¬ ing: “I choose to remain and eat bitterness with my people!” And there was Elder Tu, slight of figure and excellent business man for the Lord who, per¬ haps more than any other human, has been influ¬ ential in leading us into a wonderful opening, in one of the walled cities of our field, enabling us to begin to reach its gentry. Of great faith, he has prayed through, to a successful issue, for the glory of God, many a knotty problem; also of great courage, he has, single handed and without The Missionary Who Did Not Die 109 weapons, stood before drunken mobs of heathen, in the riotousness and idolatrous zeal of the New Year festival season, as they threatened the lives of innocent and inoffensive Christians, and cowed them. And there was Elder Wan, a tall, big-statured man, straight as an Indian, of tine presence and handsome face, few men with eyes more kindly, or more bright and piercing. He also, like most of the others, had roughed it with me, tramping many li with me to preach on the market and through the villages. Yes, and other men, faith¬ ful and honored, came singly or in groups. And, in every case, just the right ones, in His goodness, were sent to reassure me. Without exception they spoke in these words or to this effect: 4 ‘ Friend, do not fear, only believe. Although the wise foreign doctors have spoken their sorrow¬ making words, you need not worry. Rest your heart in Him . We shall' pray her through!” With the restfulness of that assurance made by trusted ones, we now, as not in those earlier days of wild, agonized petitioning before the throne, laid hold of the promises. The strength of a new faith and of added courage was ours, waiting confidently upon Him. With new insight we appreciated “the comfort of the Scriptures.” Truly they are given “for discipline which is in righteousness, that the man of God may be* com- 110 Answered Prayer in China plete, furnished completely unto every good work,” including the sustaining in sorrow. Now, as we gathered around the table, as we knelt be¬ fore the family altar, and in private devotions, and many a time throughout the day, we found our lips reverently repeating, even as our hearts were fully claiming, the promise of the Psalmist’s words : “God is our strength, a very present help in time of trouble ! ” A marvelous verse ! Messengers had been dispatched by the Chinese leaders into all parts of the country field among the churches of our constituency, and the* Chris¬ tians in every section gave themselves to prayer, many with fasting. Needless to say, in our home there was a ceaseless outgo of prayer like the flow of a river. In it all the household joined, from the grown-ups to the Chinese servants, and the smallest daughter, not quite three' years of age, and convalescing. Never, on any other occasion, in speaking with anybody, had she mixed her English and German and Chinese, which lan¬ guages the children then spoke fluently, having learned the second from a German governess and the third from the servants. Now daily this little miss, who worshiped that sick mother and, to my distress, had been most insistent to be with her, seemed to feel, out of the depths of the agony of her childish heart, that she must intensify her prayer* by speaking to God in three languages at The Missionary Who Did Not Die 111 once . So, again and again we heard her petition¬ ing thns: “Wea ti tien fu, ah! Ke lien wea pa! Bring meine. Matter back safe zn meinem Hans !” (Heavenly Father, have mercy upon me! Bring my mother back safe to my house!) and her old¬ est sister I had repeatedly caught praying: “O Lord, spare her, if it is Thy will. It will be better for her in heaven, I know, but it* will be hard’ on us who are left ! ’ ’ Now, however, the desperation was gone; in’ its place was resignation, willingness to be led, even through tears. And so it was that, despite the authoritative pronouncement of the wise and learned doctors, despite all the fever charts that were traced and displayed, proving recovery im¬ possible, the sick one began to mend. In fact, she made an abnormally rapid recovery from the danger point, and a steady convalescence with no setbacks, despite untoward conditions in the* hos¬ pital, including the pounding of carpenters who were set to repairing the stairs outside her door, also the ravings of a man with delirium tremens in the next room. We saw the queen of our home restored to us, as one snatched from the jaws of death. Do you wonder that we love them, these true and tried Chinese leaders? During these troublous days it never occurred to us that our skins were of a different color or our eyes of a 112 Answered Prayer in China different slant; we were all just friends in Him. “He made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth”; and in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile; bond nor free; white nor yellow . Another question: Do you wonder that we be¬ lieve God can and does interpose in behalf of his* trusting children? In retrospect, as we re¬ joice over this, one of many prayer miracles he has graciously wrought for us, we are reminded that he is' plenteous in mercy ; and that, while it is not God’s intention to cure everybody of every complaint by prayer, yet it is in his loving prov¬ ince to do so, much more often than many Chris¬ tians, sinning the sin* of unbelief, may think. 4 4 Is any among you suffering? Let him pray. Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him . . . in the name of the Lord ; and the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sin, it shall be forgiven him . . . the supplication of a righteous man availeth much in its working” (James 5:13-15a.). So our message to the friends and comrades in the goodly company of the Victorious Life Brotherhood is the triumphant paean of David (Psalms 30 and 31) : The Missionaby Who Did Not Die 113 ‘ ‘ 0 Lord, my God, I cried unto thee, And thou hast healed me. 0 Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave : Thou hast kept me alive, That I should not go down to the pit. ‘ Sing unto the Lord, 0 ye saints of his, And give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness. For his anger endureth but for a moment; in his favor is life; Weeping may endure for a night, But joy cometh in the morning. ‘Lord, by thy favor thou hast made My mountain to stand strong. 0, how great is thy goodness, Which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; Which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men.” CHAPTER IX A CHINESE GIRL’S VOW Miss Tsiao is the daughter of two Chinese leaders in our field. Her father is an elder and an evangelist; her mother, a deaconess to Bible women. The kind of environment that only Christian parents and mission schools could give in the midst of heathenism have been hers for many years. From childhood she has displayed unusual intellectual and spiritual power — a girl of marked beauty, whose modesty of demeanor and humility of spirit, whose gentleness and win¬ someness have favorably impressed many kinds of people. Her maturity of thought and deep religious life have long marked her as sealed of the Spirit for an uncommon usefulness. She attended the best girls’ high school of our mission in this great province (Shantung), ranked with girls considerably older than herself, and was within a half year of graduation when she was sent home by the missionary physician in charge to die of consumption. She had been greatly impressed by the soul¬ winning zeal of one of our station members, and 114 A Chinese Girl’s Vow 115 now, in the presence of her ruined prospects, and facing a blackness of disappointment possible only to an unmarried girl in a heathen land, she vowed a vow to God, the Christian courage of which can only be realized by those who have lived years among the Chinese, speaking their lan¬ guage, in sympathetic friendship and devoted service. She vowed that, if God would let her' live, she would never marry, and would give all her time and strength, without fixed remunera¬ tion, to the saving and training of Chinese women for Christ’s service. In the current magazines one reads of many kinds of careers now open to unmarried American women. Chinese heathenism provides no such opportunities. After seeing how a certain mis¬ sion school in Syria was blessing the girls who were allowed to attend it, I once asked, through our dragoman, a petty Arab sheik, why he did not educate his daughter. He pointed scornfully to an animal near by and said: “As well spend time and money trying to educate that cow!” That remark is heathenism with the veneer off. In America if a woman remains unmarried, she is respected and honored, especially if she be edu¬ cated. In heathenism that does not follow. The unmarried state in China, even with education, savors of moral and social pariahood. In order to sense “the flavor” (as the Chinese 116 Answered Prayer in China say) of what Miss Tsiao determined to do, note several illustrations, both of Christian and heathen families, which reveal the Chinese mind on the subject, not only of mature maidenhood, but even of wifehood without sons. I have re¬ cently been in the home of one of our elders, the father of five children, all girls. Though quite model Christians and real leaders in our native church, the hearts of Elder and Mrs. Chou were blistered because they had no son. It was hard for them to be reconciled to the providence of God. But one Sabbath they heard a sermon about the mercy of God to Zacharias and Elisabeth. And daily for three years they prayed steadfastly and believingly for a son. At the end of that period they were rewarded. This case well illustrates the longings of the hearts of even the Christian women of China. Recently I was entertained in the home of a rich member of the gentry who was not a Chris¬ tian. The man and his wife were gracious hosts, kind and thoughtful to a degree, though in a very different way from those in Christ. But both are dissatisfied, full of heartburnings ; he, much away from home, looking for a likely concubine, and with his wife’s consent, for they have only girls. To me she wailed out the bitterness of her lot. And though the woman is eager to hear and learn of all things foreign, and their house is cluttered A Chinese Girl's Vow 117 with foreign clocks and fancy dishes and lamps and expensive furniture, yet what interested her more than all these things and many other things of the West, of which she asked, were three little inexpensive pictures that I presented to her, the birth of John the Baptist, the Christchild in the manger, and the boy Samuel presented to Eli. And, learning their meaning, she vowed forthwith to begin to pray regularly to a God who could work such marvels. In our own home is a servant, one of the most sincere and consistent Christians I have known. She is concubine No. 4 of a venerable-looking heathen who in sheer despair added her to his women because the others had not borne sons to him. And then, when she on three separate occa¬ sions presented him with a girl baby, he, in mingled chagrin and anger, named the third un¬ wanted unfortunate 6 ‘Enough,” and turned the mother and babe loose to shift for themselves. But even this was more gracious than the cus¬ tom of many disgusted fathers, who tell their womenfolks to give the girl babies merely num¬ bers, not *names, or throw them out, food for starving curs and carrion birds. This treatment is often accompanied with revolting and barba¬ rous “frills" because of the cruel belief current and propagated by the priests, that girl babies are demons sent in disguise to harass and im- 118 Answered Prayer in China poverish a family, and so long as they are em¬ bodied in that tender frame these evil spirits may be destroyed or at least mocked with impunity. Hence the indescribable atrocities that occur in many a field outside a village in the presence of a priest and kin and neighbors, the horrid deed being even performed by the mother ’s hand, such an act being proof positive that she repents of having brought disaster upon the family. The use of a grub hoe as an instrument of execution is supposed to clear away all doubt as to the sin¬ cerity of the mother’s protestations of regret. But, thank God! even these foul deeds cannot utterly break the spirit of Chinese women nor rob them wholly of their part in God’s precious legacy to women of the mother-heart. But enough to indicate that, outside of wifehood and hoped- for motherhood of boys, most Chinese women have a pretty slim chance of happiness. Now, of course, Miss Tsiao was cognizant of the conditions involved in her decision, as indi¬ cated by the cases cited. She realized that, from the viewpoint of the Chinese heathen world, her1 only title to respectability would be through wife¬ hood. From this she might rise in the scale to the dignity of motherhood of sons. This state (still viewing the matter from the standpoint of the masses about her) could make her life not only tolerable, but desirable. A Chinese Girl’s Vow 119 In the face of such a situation, the magnificent determination of this yonng woman, her intellect, keener than most others of her sex, her mind bet¬ ter trained, and her outlook broader to compre¬ hend what mnst therefore be before her, this de¬ termination and its fruitage, for sheer courage and self-abnegation, will, in its spirit, rank with some of the deeds of high honor for the glory of God. This young woman had given herself wholly to God for his glory. She knew she had the right to pray with something of the same freedom and abandon with which Jesus prayed. She prayed for her life. She was the bride of Christ. She claimed her body in strength for her Lord’s sake. And, to the amazement of everybody, including her devoted parents, sorrowing for her as for one doomed, this young woman began to get better. She became so strong in a few months that she was engaged by a sister mission to be head teacher in a girls’ high school. In this school she was a marked personality, a wonder even to the missionaries in her physical endurance, her mental grasp, her ability to teach, and in the pervasiveness of her spirituality. Her influence on the girls under her was remarkable, both as example and incentive. While serving her Master here, putting moral fiber into the girls, the opening for which she had been praying 120 Answered Prayer in China came. Her parents, as a thank offering for her recovery, started on their own compound a women’s Bible school, the first and only one of its kind of which I have been able to learn in China, opened it in faith, without any assured income. They were assisted in the inauguration of the plan by one of our station members and by the Chinese evangelist, then one of our pas¬ tors, the Kev. Ting Li Mei. Since its founding the school has been run and largely supported by the Chinese. The school was for widows before whom life yawns a blank. True, the Chinese erect all over the fields and by the waysides monuments in praise of such women who never remarry. But these are thin comfort for the lot of the widow in China. This school opened the way for such women to be grounded in the Scripture, and to go out two by two to expound it to their darkened sisters. And the graduates of this school have begun to do that very thing, on the salary of two dollars a month. But who was there to teach such a school? Teachers in plenty could be found for our regular village schools, high school graduates of excellent training and piety. None of these, however, would do. It required one of uncommon grace and love and patience to deal with these unfor¬ tunate ones. They were in all stages of dullness A Chinese Girl’s Vow 121 and stupidity. One of the entering students had been nearly pounded to death by a brutal hus¬ band. One we bought who was about to be sold to a brothel procurer. One had been deserted and was starving on the street. One was so im- bruted by grinding at the mill and like heavy labor that she seemed past the possibility of much light percolating down into her thickened mind. One had been rescued from the village well, in whose unclean waters she had sought peace. Another had been resuscitated from a poison po¬ tion made by soaking match heads, her panacea for the tyranny of a cruel mother-in-law. Practically each woman was a class by herself, requiring so much wise and loving individual at¬ tention that only one from whose life irradiated the meekness and gentleness of Christ could hope to deal with them all. Such a one was found in Miss Tsiao, who eagerly entered upon the service without fixed salary, gladly trusting her Heavenly Father to supply all her needs. The school has now been running some years, the Chinese Christians are taking a deeper in¬ terest in it each year, and the number of pupils steadily increases. Each year more Christians are becoming responsible for the board of the pupils (which is $7.50 a* year, and practically the only expense). Several classes, each of from three to six members, have graduated from the 122 Answered Prayer in China school and are already at work planting light centers. Two other teachers have now been in¬ stalled. The increase of attendance is hampered by lack of adequate sleeping places. If rooms conld be provided for this purpose, Elder Tsiao would give all land needed to erect them. For this Miss Tsiao and friends earnestly pray. Truly, if there ever was a blessed work helping to remold for God the women who have such op¬ portunity to remold the most virile of races, this work is blessed. Truly, if any woman consumed with a passion to help the helpless, and grateful to God for a wondrous healing, may ever hope to look upon the face of Him whom having not seen she loves, this woman may. It is hers to hear the : “ Come, ye blessed of my Father. Enter into the joy prepared for you. I was despised in my daughters and ye honored me in serving them. My name was forgotten, unknown, and ye caused it to be held in precious remembrance. Ye sought the weak and made them to become strong in Me.” This holy maid has learned the secret of ap¬ proach to God: “Ye shall . . . find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart ! ’ ’ For such he hath wonderful reward even now. To her he hath said: “Before they call I will answer.”’ She knows, out of what was on her part a joy¬ ous laying of self on the altar, that it is good to A Chinese Girl’s Vow 123 belong to that company numbering Zacharias and Elisabeth, Simeon and Anna, Joseph of Arimathea, and all those saints and martyrs who here and now are looking for the coming of the kingdom of God, CHAPTER X A BLESSED SURPRISE FOR AN AGED BLIND MAN III another connection I have told the strange and terrible story of the murder of my friend, Elder Yuan Feng Kang ; he, who, in one profitable business, had dedicated all his profits to the Lord. He had another business, and in this second busi¬ ness he had a “silent partner,’ ’ P’eng Ch’ang Ch’wen, also a fine Christian man who gave a tenth of his profits in this business to the Lord. This partner was a preacher for another mission, and was actively engaged in evangelistic work. His zeal for the Lord, I doubt not, had much to do with the blessing that was to come to his father. His father, at the time of this episode, was seventy years old, and blind; blind, as he explained, from the general infirmities of advanc¬ ing age. This father, too, was zealous in the “Jesus Doctrine.” As the Chinese put it, “He was possessed of a burning heart for Christ.” And how the old man became cured recently of his blindness through prayer, it is the object of this narrative to relate. 124 A Blessed Surprise 125 Let me state again what I am sure is an im¬ portant factor in the work of grace that followed. Even before his cure this father was what the Chinese call “ten parts zealous for God” (a phrase indicating absolute devotion to His cause). The father was noted .in his region for preaching the Gospel on every possible occasion. Not as a paid evangelist did he do .it, but out of his irre¬ pressible love and gratitude to his Saviour. Whenever the preacher son would return to see him the old man would urge him to stay at home the very minimum of time in order that he might hurry away once more to preach the Gospel to those who were perishing. The father had earlier had a vision, of his being called to account with God before he had done any faithful, efficient service, and it had made a profound impression upon him. In consequence he was eager to im¬ prove, with soul-winning, the time of his few re¬ maining and fast-fading years. In connection with his vision the old man, for the first time in his life, had heard Daniel 12:3, “They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firma¬ ment; and they that turn many to righteousness as' the stars for ever and ever.” That grand passage settled his conviction as- to what subject was worthy to possess a man’s thoughts, to dominate his life. In the spring of 1915, after our visit together 126 Answered Prayer in China upon the widow of the murdered elder, Pastor Chao told this “silent partner” the story of old Lin, a well-known Christian, also reputed for his zeal in the faith, now eighty years of age, who was of Chao Ke Chuang in Kao Mi County, the county where Pastor Chao has one of his churches. Pastor Chao went on to tell how, when old Liu was seventy years of age, his only child, a son, together with his wife, suddenly and un¬ accountably died, both at the same time. As old Liu mourned he burst the blood vessels of his eyes, and thus his grief caused him to become blind. This going blind, either through a fit of anger or inconsolable sorrow, is a common phenomenon in China. But in spite' of his dis¬ tress the old man did not give up his faith, going regularly to church, though now greatly handi¬ capped, to get as' much comfort as he could from the Christian religion in his lonely and declining years. One Sabbath day, bound for church, Liu, all alone, was feeling his way along in a' pitiful manner, very haltingly, not as an expert blind man, blind from his youth, who picks his way quite readily along a road well known to him. At last he found himself off his path, stumbling among the grave mounds of a- private graveyard. Just then a heathen neighbor, passing, called out in derision (this is the spirit of callousness char¬ acterizing heathenism, and one cannot help but A Blessed Surprise 127 link it with the spirit of those who wagged their heads at One upon the cross), “Why can not your God make a. blind man to see? Can He not see you ? Is He not strong? Why do you not be¬ seech your foreign Jesus Holy-man? Why does he not help you? Why do you come here to this place of the dead for comfort? Do you not know, ‘Ssu> UaOj ssu liao, La* tao pa!’” (Die! Die! And that’s the end of you — like a dog.) These are among the most terrible words of Chinese heathenism. Only one familiar with the hopeless soul conditions out of which they grow can un¬ derstand something of the bitterness, the hard¬ ness of heart, in this sarcasm of mock comfort that the annihilation of the grave offers (though, at the same time, this popular belief is illogically contradicted by the universal worship of the liv¬ ing spirits of dead ancestors). By these cruel words the old man was stirred to a new realization of things, to spiritual per¬ spective. Moved by the Holy Spirit, he, in daring faith, replied to his taunter : ‘ ‘ The true and living God can help me, and from now on I shall trust Him, and in faith believing, I am going to pray to Him to heal my eyes!” So he began that day to pray earnestly, casting himself utterly upon the grace and the power of God, saying over and over to himself: “The Lord has promised, ac¬ cording to thy faith be it unto thee.” He medi- 128 Answered Prayer in China tated on that promise, soaked himself in it, and actually claimed it’. In a few’ days he saw. His eyes were better than* ever before. He did not use glasses. The heathen taunt was rebuked. As soon as the evangelist partner of Elder Yuan heard this* account, he hastened to his aged father and repeated it to him; and the old man was smitten with conviction that he no longer needed to be blind merely because he was getting old. So he and a company of friends, including us two pastors' and several elders, met statedly out in the country, praying in faith together for his restoration to sight. A year passed and at the end of that year his sight, like the other old man’s, was quite restored. He also does not use glasses. His favorite verse is: “He shineth in darkness to them that seek Him, to them that seek Him with the whole heart.” Again was the promise verified : ‘ ‘ Them that honor Me I will honor. ’ ’ CHAPTER XI CASTING OUT A HERD OF SWINE DEMONS In this story are shown the deviPs uncanny deeds of darkness in the villages where he is un¬ hindered by those with faith in God. It illus¬ trates to us anew the wisdom of personal work and the power of intercession. The Gospel came to this village through old Li, the radiant. He was the means of converting a young relative, a member of an influential clan, who, soon after his conversion, became a pupil of our Boys’ High School at Tsingtau. The young fellow’s character, like his face, was lovable, winsome and open. He began doing personal work at once, intently, earnestly, among his fam¬ ily — brothers, sisters and parents ; the last a diffi¬ cult thing even in a Christian land. What this means in China is only understandable by those who realize the Confucian ideals in which this boy was bred. A son to instruct his father! When, by all Confucian teaching, the son is hardly supposed to remain in the room with his father, and, if he remains, to do so standing! Never to eat with him on any ceremonial occasion, not to 129 A 130 Answered Prayer in China dream of assuming to possess, much less to parade, even the seeming of superior knowledge ! This innovation of daring impiety, unfiliality, im¬ ported out of “the irreverent West,” would make Confucius turn over in his grave ! The son, as one who had come to know Christ, did excellently in school. He was conscientious to give diligence to present himself “approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, holding a straight course in the word of truth.” Moreover, being a fellow of fine parts, he was a natural leader in the school Y. M. C. A., also a zealous member of its preaching band. Twelve of his relatives, immediate members of his family, in the course of a few months were brought by him into the church, and into a saving knowledge of Christ, as we have reason to believe. His daily conduct was an impressive illustration of the wisdom of “individual work for individ¬ uals,” and of how God empowers a sincere, alert, obedient servant. During his senior year young Wan’s witness before his school fellows was manifestly led by the Spirit. One day during the summer vacation, soon after his arrival home, when he was leading family worship, his heathen grandmother was suddenly taken violently ill. She trembled, she clutched the air, she struck at unseen beings, she gnashed her teeth. With difficulty they put her Casting Out Demons 131 on the hang, the brick platform that serves as bed; but they could not make her lie down. She rocked and bowed in paroxysms that were more than of mere physical pain, making terrible grimaces. Her fingers were so firmly clinched together that one of her grandsons, a stalwart peasant of unusual strength, who was called in to force her hands apart, was unable to do so. Her face, in its distortion, was awful. All the time she muttered and mumbled wild things to herself. The picture her family drew of the spectacle of the old woman on the hang was terrifying in the extreme. They all instinctively felt that the ta Lao Yin Kia, “the Great, Venerable Family Head” (euphemistic name for the devil), had come and possessed her. In the course of these doings, so degrading and dreadful, the old lady incoherently demanded food; and when it was brought, she handled her bowl and chop sticks in a most extraordinary fashion, while her strange manner of eating, not only coarse and voracious, but bestial, together with her noises connected therewith, frightened those watching her. It was, much as they hesi¬ tated to say it, like that of a hog! And she a grandmother! For some time she talked, though not under standingly, breaking out at the close in this clear sentence: “Woa shih chu huin hwei tsi!” (“I am a herd of swine devils.”) 132 Answered Prayer in China As stated above, a number of the family were now believers, some had already been baptized, but the most mature in Christian experience was our schoolboy friend Wan. He called upon those present to unite with him in reading aloud a Gos¬ pel account of Jesus casting out a demon and in audibly petitioning for the exorcism of these imps. Together they knelt in front of the frenzied woman and together gave themselves for half an hour to prayer, desperately earnest and believing. Then, in the name of Christ, accord¬ ing to Scripture example (Acts 16:18) they called upon the unclean spirits to leave her. The old lady fell back upon her hang, though very much weakened, hardly able to lift her hand, yet her body and mind were no longer tortured, quiet in Him, Enabler and Comforter. The believing members of her family were weak, too, dripping with perspiration from their agony of intercession. And when I next saw the young man he told me that, after that experience, he understood a little of what Paul meant when he told the Ephesian Christians : ‘ ‘ Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places’ ’ (Eph. 6:12). What had happened was to be expected ; for the Casting Out Demons 133 experience was in harmony with Bible narratives, which state that all unbelievers are open to pos¬ session by demons (Eph. 2:2) which are spirits (Matt. 12:43, 45) and Satan’s emissaries (Matt. 2:26, 27) and so numerous as to make his power practically ubiquitous (Mark 5:9). They are capable of entering and controlling both men and beasts (Mark 5:8, 11-13) and earnestly seek em¬ bodiment without which, apparently, they are powerless for evil (Matt. 12:43, 44; Mark 5:10- 12). They manifest three stages of virulence, they influence men, they inflict physical maladies, and they entirely possess their victims (Matt. 4:24; 8:16, 28) as they did this woman. They know Jesus Christ as Most High God, recognizing His supreme authority (Matt. 8:31, 32; Mark 1:24; Acts 19:15), and they know their eternal fate to be one of torment (Matt. 8 :29 ; Luke 8 :31). Meanwhile, in all their acts, they reveal their true nature, unclean, sullen, violent, malicious (Matt. 9 :33 ; 10 :12 ; 12 :43 ; Mark 5 :3-5 ; Luke 6 :18 ; 9 :39) , as in this instance. They maintain especially a conflict with be¬ lievers who would be spiritual (Eph. 6:12; 1 Tim. 4:1-3), and the believer ’s resources, again as in this case, are prayer and bodily control (Matt. 17 :21), the whole armor of God (Eph. 6:13-18). At last the grandmother said in an audible tone, “Oh, I am so relieved! The dirty herd has left 134 Answered Prayer in China me. I besought the true God. He heard. He pitied. He drove out the demons. My heart now has peace !” And without effort she opened her hands, so long locked in a frenzy of animal-like fury. In his fruitless efforts to unclasp that vise- grip, with the thought that possibly he might thereby relieve her in those paroxysms of dis¬ tress, the strong grandson had rubbed skin off her lingers. Imagine now the amazement of the fam¬ ily to see her, without effort, open them, and, above all, to see her smiling, satisfied, at rest. To this was added glad amaze when she said: “Oh, I have seen Him.” “Who?” they queried. “Jesus the Saviour!” she answered. “He came to me when they were tearing me. He gave me release!” Incidentally, I may add, by way of commentary on this episode, that I have in my note-taking on interesting, spiritual experiences among the people numerous instances in which the Chris¬ tians affirm that during their supreme soul-crises they have in vision seen the resurrected Jesus, of greater than human size, clad in white, of in¬ effably benignant mien, gracious beyond compare, altogether glorious. Why not ? The Scripture is full of theophanies, count them once and see how many, manifested in the midst of heathenism, dur¬ ing the crises of God’s people, as Paul in Corinth, Casting Out Demons 135 when they need the realization of divine power and love undergirding them. Moreover, the Christians affirm that these appearances of the risen Lord are uniformly connected with his sud¬ den releasing of them from demon possession, or miraculously healing them in desperate sickness, or sustaining and comforting them in dreadful trials. In view of much Scripture proof along this line, I again ask ‘ 6 Why not ? ’ ’ Previous to this gracious turning point in her life the grandmother had violently opposed the “ Jesus Doctrine/ ’ doing so with all the vehemence of her woman’s nature. For women in China, as elsewhere, take keenly, in a personal way, matters that touch their family life and in¬ volve possible disgrace to its members. Be it understood that many a time have ignorant, timid, abused and apparently broken-spirited women dared to rise up and beat their men folk because they had turned Christians, this wild and des¬ perate action being in the defense of their homes (as they understood defense) against the sup¬ posed blasphemy, unfiliality, and insidiously un¬ dermining power of the “foreign devil” religion. Now, at once and with all her heart, the old lady believed, and what under the circumstances is Scripturally natural, she urged the other mem¬ bers of the family to believe. Was it not Paul who said: “I believe; therefore I speak!” And 136 Answered Prayer in China it is to bo remembered that, in the Confucian sys¬ tem, a woman who has sons and grandsons, with danghter-in-laws at her beck and call, is of no mean influence in the clan. And so another miracle grew out of the demon exorcism. Some weeks later I was examining for church admission three generations of that clan, the demon-cured among them. Relative to such a woman, grandmother of male children, and the risks involved in rousing the ire of one of her solid status, the Chinese have this prudent proverb: “She has wide-spreading branches, let us get under her shadow ! Who shall oppose her, for is not she the venerable mother-in-law F’ Previous to this particular potentate’s change of heart, members of her family who believed the Jesus Doctrine had done so under serious handi¬ cap. Now, inquirers in this same family, men, women and children, had a heavy weight of feminine displeasure, hitherto unescapable, lifted. This made a strong impression for Christianity in the village, and, incidentally, one result of the impression will be the establishment of a Chris¬ tian school there next year, which, in the teeth of the unreasoning prejudice of heathen villagers, is usually a process covering years, and often full of most unexpected vicissitudes. From the Chinese viewpoint, one of the most striking results of this prayer miracle is that, in- Casting Out Demons 137 eluded among these inquirers, is the heathen granddaughter-in-law, the young, inexperienced wife of our high school senior, to whom, as a baby, he was betrothed, by his then heathen parents. One familiar with Chinese social life could hardly imagine the daughter-in-law taking such a stand without having, as in the case of this girl, the active support of the women of two older genera¬ tions. Even so, the marvel of this girl’s courage in coming to Christ is the talk of the village. They whisper, “What will her father’s family say?” And wiseacres ex cathedra dolefully pronounce, “There will be a law suit over this disgrace.” For much of the thought and action of the heathen is based on fear and timidity, so that they follow a will-o’-the-wisp that is cowardly caution. To one living in the midst of this heathenism there is much food for thought in Paul’s discerning re¬ mark: “For God has not given us (Christians) the spirit of fear , but of power and of love and of a sound mind ! ’ ’ Incentive and freedom, initia¬ tive and accomplishment, are often throttled by the almost insane casting about with regard to the avoidance of offense to others, rather than the saying and doing of what is right at personal risk. And, incidentally, that paralyzing spirit that keeps back Wan’s village from accepting Christ explains in part China’s present political impo¬ tence. 138 Answered Prayer in China Only two other glad results of the old lady’s miraculous healing may be here chronicled. Young Wan has been so strengthened in faith as to go to a very hard village to teach in one of our schools where all the boys (and their constitu¬ ency) are heathen, and he is doing admirably. His father has cast to the wind his former fear of persecution, substituting Christ’s omnipotence for his own impotence, and has joyfully assumed the responsibilities of the deaconate for his part of the held. And the work of grace has just begun ! I have seen few instances in China that more clearly illustrate the wisdom of personal work and the power of intercession. CHAPTER XII A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM We were tramping over a mountain trail to a church dedication. My companions were two highly esteemed Chinese friends, a pastor and an elder, constituting with me the committee to organize a church. As was our custom, we discoursed, as we walked, of church problems and policies and of Bible themes, finally slipping into a subject vibrant with present-day interest in China, demon possession. Xot only had each of us authenti¬ cated instances of possession to narrate (in proof that miracles of healing connected therewith may still be wrought), but each of us had participated in at least one case of what seemed very like Bib¬ lical cases of demoniacal exorcism, a situation that may well make one’s flesh creep as he faces it, if he is not prepared, for, in this business we wrestle, not against flesh and blood, but against powers who are yet closer than breathing, un¬ canny in malignant supernaturalness from be¬ neath, against principalities the more subtle and strong as they are unencumbered by our earth 139 140 Answered Prayer in China bodies, against the world rnlers of darkness who now have their innings, and against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places. These will not lightly let go their stranglehold upon this planet, their prey. Does this seem un¬ likely or impossible in the case of such a land as China, whose people constitute one-fourth of all possible human victims? Rather is it altogether reasonable that so vast a prize to be lost out of the devilish grasp will be desperately fought for, particularly as it is still so completely in the clutches of the evil one. Truly, if the true God is to get into the hearts of the people of this land, we know that many more demons must be cast out. Be it noted that in the case of demon possession in China there seems to be this common feature, as in Bible times, the demons speak through the possessed ones, making them say and do, either consciously or unconsciously, what is odious to others as well as repugnant and humiliating and devitalizing to themselves. Also there is fear on the part of the demon or demons at the name of Jesus, as well as powerlessness on the part of the demons in the presence of a person dominated by the Holy Spirit. As this story seemed more strange than some others in its setting, more unexpected in its prin¬ ciples, the pastor who gave it to us went rather A Little Child Shall Lead Them 141 fully into this case of his boy friend being used to cast a demon out of a girl. Many years ago, when this pastor was a school¬ boy, he had as schoolmate the son of a Presby¬ terian minister, a man noted for his godliness, pastor in one part of my present field. His son, Tsung Wei I, early in childhood, under unusually favorable parental training, developed sturdy Christian characteristics and zeal for propagating the “ Jesus Religion.” Later he became an able teacher in one of our Christian colleges, and still later, a Y. M. C. A. secretary in a great city. He became a marked man as a soul winner, his spirit¬ uality being intensified by harrowing experiences through which he passed in the martyrdom of members of his family for the faith during the Boxer uprising. While yet a youngster, his strong bent for preaching the Gospel was a noteworthy phe¬ nomenon. Groups of people whom he met on the village street, in going to and from school, or on his way to market, he would, with an Elijah or a Savonarola fervency, exhort to abandon their idols made of mud, and’ worship the true and liv¬ ing God. Sometimes he would take the stones (which were revered as gods) out of the small wayside shrines and cast them into the gutter. Nor was he, with his family, ever punished for this, as others have often been by the heathen. 142 Answered Prayer in China When he first went to Chefoo to study there in the boys’ school of our mission, he was given his Christian name, Ma Na Si, which is the Chinese transliteration for the Hebrew tribe, Manasseh, and the point of this story revolves around this name, for, when Dr. Corbett gave him this name, his own relatives in his far distant home did not know he had it, much less the heathen neighbors, still less heathen strangers in another village than his own. One vacation, when Ma Na Si, then twelve years of age, had returned to his own home, a rider in great haste and perturbation arrived at his father’s gate. He carried a message from another town some miles distant, and had been sent by a heathen family because their young daughter-in- law, a heathen, had become so violent in the throes of demon possession that they, after trying for months to help her, had given up all hopes of cure at their command, and had finally decided to ask the Christian minister to come and see if he could do anything. Considering the loss of face for the heathen doctors who had so igno- miniously failed in the case, and considering the ignorant prejudice and unreasoning hate that often is felt for those Chinese who abandon the worship of their ancestors and thereby change many venerable customs, this was a tribute of no mean order, and an urgent plea for help. A Little Child Shall Lead Them; 143 The boy’s father had been sent for as a 4 ‘ Holy Man” of the 4 ‘Foreign Devil” Jesns religion, their last resort. Would he go? The fellow at the gate- on his knees pleaded so earnestly and impetuously that it was some minutes before they could make him realize that the minister was away from home upon a pastoral visit. The mes¬ senger in his distress insisted on describing to the family the symptoms of the victim. Quite in common they were with other cases often met, varying only in the circumstances peculiar to each home, and suggesting those of the New Testa¬ ment, raving and reviling at times, pulling her hair, clawing her face, tearing her clothing, destroying articles of furniture, dashing away the food brought to her and breaking the dishes, and what was most terrifying to the family, revealing a spirit of sacrilege, of outrageous impiety, of brazen blasphemy, mingled with impish malignity toward things sacred, and what was of the most serious consequence to herself, each exhibition was followed by great exhaustion, physical and mental. The unfortunate victim was very like that son who awaited Jesus at the foot of the Mount of Transfiguration, ‘ ‘ And behold a spirit taketh him, and he suddenly crieth out, and it teareth him that he foameth, and it hardly departeth from him, bruising him sorely” (Luke 9:39), “And 144 Answered Prayer in China wheresoever it taketh him, it dasheth him down, and he foameth and grindeth his teeth and pineth away (Mark 9:18), “And he sutfereth grievonsly; for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water ” (Matt. 17:15). And now an unexpected request, yet not altogether strange in view of the Oriental clan system and of authority and spokesmanship early inhering in the only or eldest son. What could have possessed the messenger, rather, what moved him, but the Spirit of God that he, a stranger, should turn to the lad, and, in his desperation, ask him to go in the place of his father ! He, too, was a Jesus man, to be sure, earnest and zealous, but he was immature in years and experience. However, God chose the weak things of the world that he might put to shame the things that are strong. He teaches not to despise the potentialities of even five loaves and two small fishes. A little child shall lead them. Youth, truly committed to Christ, is not fearful to offer in simplicity to him all that it possesses. So the boy accepted the entreaty as God-sent; and as he rode along toward the distant village he made what seems to be reasonable prepara¬ tion on the part of any Christian for casting out a demon ; he carefully searched his own heart for sin to be acknowledged and repented of ; he A Little Child Shall Lead Them 145 humbly confessed that sin; he prayerfully re¬ viewed some of the New Testament cases of demoniacal possession and the methods of pro¬ cedure there narrated, and then he cast himself upon the God of power and mercy to help him for the glory of Jesus Christ. When he arrived at the gate of the heathen family’s yard, and, remember, he had never seen its members and they knew nothing about him or his Christian name, he found that they were all assembled and, like Cornelius and his family of old, awaiting his coming in hope of relief and comfort. And, just as in the Bible instances, there must always be some one who will cry, ‘ 4 Lord, if thou canst heal,” with the implication of faith that he can and is willing, so this family afterward testified that they were thus moved to feel and call out. It was the case over again, in Chinese setting, of that Canaanitish heathen woman out of the borders of Tyre and Sidon, who “came . . . and cried, saying, Have mercy on me, 0 Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a demon . • . Lord, help us!” Some of the members of the family, by main strength, were holding down the tortured young woman upon her hang . Though she had not been told what the others were doing, yet as soon as she heard footsteps in the court outside the room 146 Answered Prayer in China where they were assembled she said with an im¬ perious wave of her hand: “All of you get out of my way quick, so that I can leave. I must fly! A Jesus man is coming . I cannot endure him. His name is Ma Na Si!” It was all the family could do to hold her by their united force. Ma Na Si immediately entered the room, and after the ceremonial bow, kneeled down and be¬ gan to pray, after which he sang a Christian hymn in praise of Jesus; and then, in the name of the risen Lord, glorified and omnipotent, he commanded the demon to come out of the woman. At once she was calm, though prostrate in weak¬ ness, and from that moment was no longer troubled. Later, after being fully recovered to strength and normal condition, she, like those mentioned in Bible narratives, was quite uncon¬ scious of what she had said or done on that mem¬ orable day, and she was particularly amazed to hear that she had uttered the name of some one whom she had never seen nor even heard of, and whose name was a Bible name of which she was necessarily ignorant. This episode, as is one of God’s purposes in the working of his miracles, was used not only to strengthen the faith of those already his fol¬ lowers, but was also the means of opening the way in that village and county for the progress of the Gospel among the heathen. CHAPTER XIII PRAYING BACK STOLEN CHURCH MONEY We had just been holding a series of evange¬ listic meetings with a little group of Christians in a heathen village, and, after three days together, the participants were escorting me on the way, to continue my itinerary. We had left the village a little distance and had prayed together and were saying our final fare¬ wells. Our fellowship had been blessed. We felt as if we had been upon the mountain top of privi¬ lege and could not but think that such strength¬ ening presaged some severe trial. Hid not the demon-possessed await those who descended from the transfiguration? Are retreats of prayer and prayer privileges just for the fun of it ? Lifting our eyes to the horizon we descried a man running toward us. As he approached he gesticulated wildly. When near enough to make out who he was, we exclaimed: “Deacon Liu! What can be the matter ? ’ ’ As he approached us he staggered. When he got to us he nearly dropped and could hardly speak from exhaustion. He was bathed in per- 147 148 Answered Prayer in China spiration. We saw it was not all due to physical weariness. His beaded face showed anxiety, even terror. He gasped ont, “Oh, I have lost it! I have lost it ! ’ ’ and sank on the ground. Then he moaned, “Stolen! Stolen!” We conld hardly wait for him to get breath to give us his story. Briefly it was this. Deacon Liu had been col¬ lecting an instalment of the Chinese pastor ’s sal¬ ary, then due, also partial payments on the wages of several school teachers and evangelists and Bible women, no small task, because this pastor presided over three churches, each in a different county, and extending through many villages. He had stopped in his own home overnight, expecting the next day to hunt out the parties concerned and pay them what was due, in all some two hun¬ dred dollars (Mex) (less than a hundred dollars American gold), a small fortune in his local rural life. This will be the easier understood when it is added that the pastor then was receiving the munificent sum of fifteen dollars (Mex) a month as a salary, the school teachers forty-eight dollars a year , the evangelists eight dollars a month, and the Bible women five dollars. To lose this money would be a calamity. On such salaries there was no margin to waste, yet that very night a thief had literally ‘ ‘ dug through the wall” (as Jesus’ illustration realistically puts it) and stolen the money, a roll of German bills Pkaying Back Stolen Money 149 (for Germany was then the master of “Kiautschou Kolonie,” of which Tsing Tan, Tsingtao, was the capital and seaport), and no money was then so desired as the German. The auditors needed no further explanation. They understood such a situation only too well. Probably most of the families represented had suffered from the thief digging through the mud wall. They knew just how the thief was accus¬ tomed to go at it. A ladder, by the connivance of the village watchman, put up against the out¬ side of the high wall that surrounds every yard, the light hand ladder then pulled up and let down on the inside of the wall, a cautious unlocking of the wooden bolt of the yard gate and leaving it opened, ready for a quick and barefooted rush through it, the tossing, if necessary, of a chunk of poisoned meat to the yard dog, and then the swift and comparatively noiseless hole opening into the house wall. To the uninitiated it is amaz¬ ing how small a hole will suffice through which to pull even a donkey and still make a safe get¬ away. I was staying one night next door to a house so entered, and the good man of the house, hearing and understanding the dull sound of working through his wall, got up, grabbed his heavy iron grub hoe, and, as the head of the in¬ truder was cautiously stuck through the hole, he brained it. 150 Answered Prayer in China The deacon ’s first impulse had been to rnsh off to the county seat, the nearby walled city, where was the yamen of the magistrate, “father and mother of the people, ” how ironical is that euphemism only long residence among the people can suggest. There he might hope for a chance to present his case without paying out too much “entrance money,” yet his experience told him that it was improbable that the thief would be nabbed (for he was “in snooks” with the sup¬ posed agents of justice), and, even if he were ever hauled into the yamen , the over-officials and the underlings and the hangers-on, the henchmen (often hundreds in number) would “squeeze” a large proportion of the original sum before the unlikely event of returning a part to the owner. The Christians of Deacon Liu’s household, how¬ ever, distractedly urged the yamen course, on the faint hope of “half a loaf better than none.” But, instead, the deacon had hurried to us, a group of praying men and women, for comfort and aid. None could doubt him. He was a tried col¬ lector and a carrier of church moneys of many years’ standing, faithful as the daylight. Never¬ theless, consternation reigned on the faces of all, all except Elder Tu. Now, Elder Tu, though so different from Paul, in education, race, natural ability and accomplishments, often reminded me Praying Back Stolen Money 151 of that great saint. Elder Tu was short of stature and slight of frame, his features thin but suffused with kindliness. He was a prosperous business man who honored the Lord and the Lord honored him. In his long brocaded silk gown, his feet dainty and well shod, his fingers slender and deli¬ cate, he hardly looked the man of iron will. But he was. Smiling and winsome, yielding in non- essentials, but not opening his business doors on Sunday, filled with zeal for Christ, and always bearing the care of the churches daily with him, he was a leader to tie to, a man of God, an inter¬ cessor of power, in faith as simple as a child. He was hardheaded, and, experienced of life, stood on his own legs, had Scripture principles of con¬ duct, and trusted the Lord directly, not through the medium of a foreign missionary. I could see that, while he was concerned and looked grave and sympathetic, he was not scared. Some of our group at that time reminded me of a hen flopping with her head off, but not he. Elder Tu illustrated in his life and conduct, almost as well as any individual I know, that state which Paul describes in Philippians 4:5, in which he exhorts his Christian friends to let their moderation be known unto all men. If that “moderation” means all the riches suggested in the Greek of balminess, of the yieldingness of selflessness in non-essentials, of sweet reason- 152 Answered Prayer in China ableness, of mellowness of character, of spiritual poise and self-possession, then Elder Tu dis¬ played ‘ ‘moderation’ ’ in this crisis. That very morning we had studied together Isaiah 26:3. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee'.” This idea had sunk into him; rather, he had anew responded to it, as he had many times before in circumstances’ of perplexity and danger. Heathenism is an awful hell of worry and cussedness all the time anyway, and it is always troubling everybody upon whom it infringes. Elder Tu did not hope to escape out of it, but he* knew he’ had a* refuge in the midst of it. At this juncture he spoke. “Shepherd Scott has to go on to his appointments. He cannot linger with us. He has his Holy Communion dates all set for his itinerary, and these are the most sacred of all engagements. The candidates will be at each place at the time appointed, to be examined, and the Christians will be there to par¬ take with him of the Lord’s Supper. He cannot turn aside to manage this affair. But he can pray as he journeys, and we will give ourselves to prayer here. This kind cometh not out but by prayer and fasting.” So we parted. Elder Tu went back to the vil¬ lage where he was a guest, betook himself to his Praying Back Stolen Money 153 Bible, to meditation and prayer, to praise and to intercession. Thus he prayed for three days. Early the morning of the third day, as he was praying, just as the dawn was stealing over the earth, he heard a shout outside the yard wall and a slight rattle, as if a light package had dropped in the yard. Going to the door, he saw a paper roll before him at his feet. Picking it up, he noticed writing tied to it. It read as follows : 4 ‘ I could not keep it.” Inside was the roll of German bills, intact . CHAPTER XIV RESCUE FROM ROBBER VIOLENCE It happened on the 20th of February, 1917. We were holding special revival services and the men who had been rescued from imminent death, from excruciating torture, were present with us along with those through whose intercession the rescue took place. All bore witness to the grace of God in answer to believing prayer. The country throughout my field had for months been terrorized with various kinds of roughs perpetrating unimaginable outrages upon the country folk who dwell in the villages. There had been the regulation robbers who swoop down from the hills and mountains upon the people; there had been disbanded soldiers, hungry and desperate, who have raided the villages, and there had been others brought inland from without, cynically organized by 6 ‘ certain foreigners ’ ’ from sinister motives and for far-reaching political purposes. These, often led by men of another nationality, had kidnapped the people and para¬ lyzed the local governments so that there might be reasons apparent to the world why interfer- 154 Kescue from Kobber Violence 155 ence by outsiders is necessary. The last-named class are called the “Pang Piao Ti” (i. e., those who seize and bind and carry off for ransom in paper bills). They wanted paper money, prefer¬ ably of the Japanese government, the use of which money had been forced along the Japanese-man¬ aged German railway running the length of Shan¬ tung Province. It was light to carry, so large sums could easily be made away with. More, they wanted it quick, “A Whirlwind Campaign, ” the equivalent, so to speak, as it were, of the speedy method of money raising for which America is famed. A company of these men dressed in particularly neat soldiers’ uniforms with bayoneted rifles and belted revolvers appeared at sunset one winter day on the street of the village of Da Shi Kiao. They asked for the headman of the village. They demanded him at once as hostage, also that rooms immediately be placed at their disposal for the night. They asserted that they had public busi¬ ness of importance to perform, and that it con¬ cerned everybody in the village. It certainly did ! Fortunately for him the headman of the village was not at home. In lieu of him they asked for and seized a silversmith, Mr. Li, nabbed him just outside the door of his own yard as he came forth to see what the noise without upon the street be¬ tokened. A silversmith in a Chinese village is as 156 Answered Prayer in China apt to have ready money, or that which can he converted into it, as anyone else, so, as the most likely victim to produce immediate returns, and in order to terrorize all the others, his arms were pinioned, his feet tightly fastened, and he was taken into his own yard and stripped to the waist. They were preparing to hold his naked stomach over the fire they had kindled. Such energetic money requests are apt to be heeded and the man begged, 1 ‘ Oh, I will give you anything I have, but I swear I have no gold, only silver and copper coin in my chest, also my clothing! Take it all, if you will spare me ! ’ * They had unbound him, expecting that he would find a goodly sum of money for them, but in iron-hearted stolidness they refused his plea for release. “We want bills; we demand big paper money. You must produce it!” The sun had now set. Against the black of the sky the fire which they had kindled, by a vigorous use of kerosene from a newly purchased Standard Oil tin, flared up so as to be discernible in the nearby villages. It must be remembered that in the thickly populated sections of our field villages are often only a few rods apart. The victim was promptly rebound. This time, he asserts, his tormentors used cord, larger than that with which he was at first bound, and hung him over a bar between two posts to which his Rescue erom Robber Violence 157 work animal was usually tied. Then oil was brought and dashed upon his clothes so that, soaked in them, he should burn alive, a human torch analagous to the kind that used to amuse Nero. Suddenly there was a noise outside the gate, a great pounding and a discharge of guns. As the robbers* prepared their defense they were, for a moment, diverted from their victim. In the mid¬ dle of this din the rope binding Mr. Li broke, to his great amazement. Stiff as he was, and cold and soaked in the oil, he fled to another part of the yard and jumped into a deep hole in the ground, which hole shall be nameless. The robbers by this time were so engaged with the visitors from outside that they dared not pay any attention to him. These visitors were neigh¬ bors and relatives from a very nearby village, Tung Liu Kou Tze, to whom, on the appearing of the robbers at sunset, messengers had run. As the newcomers began to fire off their guns, the robbers shot two of the rescuers, who were heathen. (Significantly, no Christians were harmed in the melee.) With the amazing daring which can characterize men who are comrades in a dangerous plight, and who are trained the greater the danger the closer to hang together, they each seized a villager by his girdle and swung him- around between him and the crowd 158 Answered Prayer in China of outraged assailants. Thus, going rapidly back¬ ward, each soldier held his revolver at fire, and, using friends and neighbors of the attackers as living shields, disappeared in the darkness and made their escape. Now the prayer power of this story is made manifest in the following. The as yet not bap¬ tized believer, Mr. Kwoa Kin Sheng, was a rela¬ tive of the silversmith and was intending the very day of this terrible experience to visit the silver¬ smith and abide with him several days. He was also carrying a considerable sum of money. He expected to talk with his heathen relative about the Christ whom he himself had so recently ac¬ cepted, and in thankfulness for learning of Christ he had already given a thank offering of fifteen dollars to God. With joy he anticipated telling the silversmith the glad news. Elder Tu and Deacon Liu also had planned that very day to meet Kwoa Kin Sheng at the home of the silversmith and there receive from Mr. Kwoa his regular subscription in addition to the thank offering for the native pastor’s salary. But late in the afternoon, when these two office¬ bearers had arrived at a nearby station, they un¬ expectedly felt constrained not to go on. They decided to remain in that village, have worship with the Christians there, and together to join in prayer for these two men, Kwoa Kin Sheng Rescue from Robber Violence 159 and his heathen silversmith relative. Particularly were they led to pray earnestly for Kwoa’s rela¬ tive, that no harm would come to him. They in¬ tended on the following day to resume their jour¬ ney, and at the home of the silversmith to meet and encourage both men in the Jesus Doctrine. Arrived the next morning at the silversmith’s village, they were filled with amazement at the manner* in which their prayer had been answered. Mr. Kwoa* had not arrived at all as he planned and so had escaped outrage, robbery and violence. The silversmith had been rescued from a horrible fate, and they themselves, still carrying the money subscribed by the Christians for their pastor, had also been saved the probability of robbery and the possibility of such a death as was narrated to them. Needless to say, the silversmith and Mr. Kwoa were filled with thankfulness beyond words and Mr. Li began then and there to study the doc¬ trine in earnest, and Mr. Kwoa did what is so common in heathen lands, namely, added another thank offering, in this case double the previous one, to the God of grace who had saved him. The heathen religion and temple systems are such that this method of expressing thanks for recoveries from illness or danger, or experience of unusual good fortune, is the ordinary method in which to manifest gratitude to the deities concerned. That very day the yard of Li, the silversmith, 160 Answered Prayer in China was packed with his relatives and friends to hear Elder Tu preach on the ineffable goodness of “The Living and the True God.” He took as his text the thrilling words of Isaiah 43:2: “When thou walkest through the fire thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. 9 9 And that very day we have reason to believe that several men, whom with their families I later baptized, were “born from above.” CHAPTER XV A NEFARIOUS PLOT FOILED In a village nearest to this hill of ill fame, on the top of which had been set the Temple of the Serpent Demon, resides one Christian family, the father of whom, along with Li the radiant, was made an elder in the newly organized church, and, since his elevation to that office, his tribulations have been numerous and varied. It was as if Satan were pursuing the policy of frightfulness, attempting to break the spirit of his enemies by outrage piled upon outrage. The climax came in the following manner : This elder has a younger brother with whom he many years* ago divided the paternal inheritance, so that each had his own land and house and yard. After that act they no longer counted as one family, and therefore each family was, according to Chinese law, not responsible for the acts of the other. This fall, when the newly elected elder returned from presbytery to his village, he was greeted with the astounding news that a decision had gone forth that his brother was to be banished for life to Mongolia (a form of punishment which for 161 162 Answered Prayer in China hundreds of years in China has been inflicted only for manslaughter), and he was to produce within a few days a sum of money which would necessi¬ tate selling his house and land, thus reducing him to beggary. How did it come about? The calf of a rich heathen, rich according to Chinese village standards, had wandered into the yard of the elder ’s brother and had begun to eat his cabbages. The brother noticed the intruder and, angered, threw a rock, hitting and killing the animal. He should have called in the village headmen and let them see what had happened, apologized for his burst of temper, and pledged to pay the price of the calf he had killed. Instead he made haste to haul it into his house, slaughtered it, hid it, and began to eat its flesh. The rich man at once set about ferreting out the loss of his property, but, in characteristic heathen fashion, did not announce that his calf had disappeared, rather that a girl slave had been stolen, and, this being a loss of sufficient conse¬ quence, he could, by Chinese custom, institute a careful search in each home of the village for his human property. The slave girl was really locked up in “ Dives’ ” house while the fake search for her was being made. Going carefully through the house of the elder’s brother, the calf meat was found hidden away in a stone crock under ma¬ terials piled upon it. Thereupon the rich man A Xefaeiotts Plot Foiled 163 accused the foolish man of having stolen also the mother of this calf! Xow, during the spring of this year, the mother of this calf really had disappeared, bnt in con¬ nection with another episode. 4 4 Dives ” has a very bad wife who, as well as himself, is an opinm smoker. The husband, refusing her the money desired for indulgence in an opium debauch, she had arranged for 4 4 certain lewd fellows of the baser sort to steal the cow and sell it to butchers, who. in China, are as a class usually catalogued not far below manslaughterers. TTith the profits of that sale these men and the wife, while her lord was away, had gone on a big spree. All this was perfectly known not only to the rich man and his family, but to the village public generally, in¬ cluding the accused. The only explanation of such a situation is that this is heathenism, heathenism being a state in which God *s laws of justice and righteous dealing, if known, are willfully ignored, and as a result of that willful ignoring men are palsied to do righteousness. This is the normal course of heathen life, and is therefore what makes it so odious in God’s sight. It is this attitude of heathenism, its remorseless grinding of the poor and weak, that throws meaningful light flashes upon many a prophetic invective of the Old Testa¬ ment. Heathenism is little concerned with jus- 164 Answered Prayer in China tice, therefore it easily trumps up “ reasons” for its doings, however unreasonable. These give it “face,” “something to talk to,” and that is sufficient. No wonder Lot was “vexed with the filthy conversation (manner of life) of the wicked,” and “his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds.” Heathenism is full of these “natural animals without reason” (2 Peter 2 :12) who are busy in ungodliness enact¬ ing ungodly deeds and making “hard speeches” against the Lord (Jude 15). That is the only explanation, its irrationality, the reason why “Dives” could with good face, in view of the facts, charge the disappearance of his cow and slave to the calf-killer. In order to clothe his cruel charges with the cloak of legality, “Dives” invited the village headmen, eight of them, to a wine feast at which there was the added luxury of opium. “Whose rice we eat, his friends we are.” Thereby the headmen were obligated to “Dives”; indeed, were bound to further his wishes. No words were necessary ; money talks ! Just previous to the feast, not earlier, “Dives” had had his slave girl removed to another village. Toward the close of the feast he opened up the subject of the condemnation of the calf-killer. Stirred to unwonted eloquence by a full measure of wine, he expatiated on how his victim had slain A Nefarious Plot Foiled 165 and eaten his calf, stolen and sold its mother, and now carried off his slave girl for ransom! They knew this was a lie. But the loosened tongue ran on glibly! 4 ‘What will you do with evidence of heinousness piled mountain high!” The upshot was that, like Herod, wine-befuddled and moral coward before Herodia0/ daughter, they too ren¬ dered a decision both foolish and cruel, banish¬ ment for the calf-killer ; for his brother, the Chris¬ tian elder, restitution money for calf, cow and slave to an amount that would require the sale of all he possessed. If the elder would not comply with these conditions without the case being en¬ tered in the yamen, then “Dives” would, a week after his ultimatum was pronounced, take the case to the magistrate. In the opinion of all concerned it would go utterly against the Christian elder, for the people expect a case to be won in a Chinese yamen only as a man has more money than his opponent. A common proverb among the Chinese is: “He who has reason without money ( i . e bribe money) should stay away from the yamen. He who has money without reason may expect¬ antly approach its south portals.” Assuredly the elder had no money to invest in such an enter¬ prise, and his enemies knew it. They chuckled, “What a stinging rebuke to the interloping for¬ eign religion was in sight! And what a fine re¬ venge on its renegade adherent!” (It will de- 166 Answered Prayer in China velop later how the headmen repictured the whole scene for us.) It was while I was out in the country, teaching with a beloved fellow pastor, the Rev. Chao, in a mid-winter Bible class of some sixty men, dele¬ gates from eighteen churches, that an evangelist arrived suddenly on the scene, related this nefari¬ ous plot, and urged me to proceed at once to the scene of action. The week within which the judg¬ ment was to fall had already elapsed. Therefore the reason for the evangelist’s hasty trip. How could I leave those picked men there for study? But on consultation all felt that I ought to go, and one of our ablest leaders volunteered to teach for me during my absence. I wTas the more en¬ couraged to go because the entire company pledged themselves to begin to pray at once and to pray continuously on the case. We were all especially anxious to see the elder vindicated, be¬ cause of the sore trials through which we knew he had passed in witnessing for Christ, and be¬ cause this flaunting injustice and overbearing con¬ temptuousness expressed toward him by the sup¬ posedly all-powerful heathen mogul of the village was too outrageous ! Moreover, I was interested to see this case peaceably settled outside the yamen (as other cases in my pastoral experience had been gratify- ingly settled), because of the habit of weak Chris- A Nefarious Plot Foiled 167 tians trusting in the foreign shepherd, and be¬ cause of their tendency, in persecution, to run to him with the thought that he, being a foreigner, has both the power and the will to help them when sued through the yamen, just as the German and Austrian Catholic priests do. Particularly is this impression abroad with regard to the Americans in China, due possibly to the many generous proofs of friendship that Americans have displayed in times of flood, famine and pestilence, and also to those manifested by the American government in its remarkable record of refusal to join in schemes of aggrandizement at China’s expense, as well as its enlistment of the great powers in constructive plans to preserve China’s integrity. And this enviable reputation of Americans is everywhere in China among the officials no less than among the flocks of the missionary pastors. On the very day of the arrival of this mes¬ senger we in the class were studying the sixth chapter of First Corinthians, where Paul expounds the Christian theory of law-suiting, a chapter and a principle that I have never heard mentioned in the home land, but vital here, throbbing with in¬ terest. Point was given to the passage involved by the fact that one of our Chinese pastors with¬ out judgment and in foolhardiness had just for¬ warded to a magistrate a demand that he release the heathen son of a Christian whom his hench- 168 Answered Prayer in China men had recently seized at his command for some irregularity. Messenger after messenger had been dispatched to me with the urgent request to put my card into the letter which the Chinese pastor was forwarding to the county official, this to give the pastor “face,” and on my refusal the final letter-bearer (who was the son of the seized man) hung around with his sympathizers for three days, pleading, weeping and working upon the feelings of the class. The principle of leaning directly upon Ood in time of trial and not upon the foreign shepherd was in great need of vindi¬ cation then and there, not only to strengthen the faith of the hard-pushed elder, but to set an ex¬ ample to all these church representatives gath¬ ered there in Bible study, as to how they ought to look at such matters. It was another one of those great opportunities of grace that God con¬ tinually gives one out here. The Lord, by his Spirit, gave me a keen zest to go, in order to put him once more to the test in this particular case, and in order to vindicate himself in the principle of prayer before the eyes of these, his people. Particularly was I encour¬ aged to this viewpoint because several times dur¬ ing this year I have had the joy of getting the parties at variance in a village together and have had them talk over in a friendly manner, while prayer pressure from behind the scenes was A Nefarious Plot Foiled 169 brought to bear to mold their conflicting views into a harmony of reasonable settlement with mutual concession and forgiveness. And in each case this plan of praying it through had succeeded to the glory of God. I knew it would now, if given a fair chance. So, by the messenger evangelist I sent a friendly letter to the headmen, mentioning the date when I would arrive at their honorable vil¬ lage. I made no accusations, but said that the affair in question was important, that I trusted they were zealous to quench lawlessness in their midst, and assured them that I would be glad to know them and to be their friend. Later I learned that on receipt of this letter they were full of doubt and fear, their guilty souls troubling them because of the unfairness with which they had acted. The spiritual tone of the class during the next two days before I left was considerably deepened by the episode that had occurred and the crisis that was ahead. The members realized that it would be an honor to our God to keep the case out of the yamen and manage the affair accord¬ ing to the teaching of Christ. The zeal of one man, a village headman, a member of the class and a new convert to the faith, was so great that the afternoon before I was to start he went to his nearby town and arranged for one of his donkeys 170 Answered Prayer in China (which I was to ride) to arrive during the night; and that animal, with his brother as driver, slowly stumbled in through the dark, over the stony road, a distance of twenty-five li, in time for our early start about 3 o’clock the next morning. Our prayers for good weather were answered with the gift of a perfect day — cold, clean, wind¬ less. Between crying babies, braying donkeys, men often stirring to feed the animals, we did not have much sleep that night, and a family party of heathen passing our door in the “wee sma’ hours,” wailing over one of the three spirits of a deceased member, which spirit they escorted to a little temple outside the village functioning to receive such a spirit, thus reduced still more the possibility of repose. When we started off it was too dark and cold to ride an animal. As the day broke I mounted the loaned beast, only to ride him a little way, when he “broke down.” It almost always seems to be my fate, in attempts to ride these animals, to have them, as on this day, give out at a critical point, so that the harder and longer the journey, the more there usually is of it to be walked. Crossing a small stream, which was frozen over, the animal did his best to “get through” the ice, and attained his object. I landed finally in safety on the far side, but we had considerable difficulty in pulling out the exhausted creature. From that A Nefarious Plot Foiled 171 point on he lay down repeatedly, and at length refused to budge, and I faced a tramp of one hun¬ dred and ten li that prudence dictated should be finished before dark of that short winter day, and the best edge of it had already been wasted with¬ out getting very far. The animal with his driver turned back, and our little party, tightening our belts, gritted our teeth and settled down to a day of weary road¬ plugging. My “boy” froze his foot. There was no suitable inn along the way in which to warm up. At noon, in the presence of an unmanageably curious crowd that jammed into the inner yard of a wretched little hut, I gnawed my cold lunch, part of it frozen like lumps of ice. I tried not to notice the boors who, with gusto and loquacious¬ ness, watched intently my disposition of my food. For some of us, this experience, when we are tired, is perhaps the most trying of all the things that the country itinerator faces. It is not the mere being stared at while one eats that is so apt to get on people’s nerves, but all the coarse ac¬ companiments of it. The “becoming a spectacle for Christ’s sake,” as Paul calls it, takes on flavor in a heathen land. It was dark long before we reached our destina¬ tion and that section of the road, a road according to Chinese standards only, was one continual mass of rocks over which my barrowman and donkey 172 Answered Prayer in China strained and stumbled with difficulty, while the barrow squeaked and grated and bumped slowly and toilsomely on. However, the elder and the evangelist came out some distance from the vil¬ lage with lanterns to escort us in. That evening was devoted to prayer for a right outcome to the business we had come to transact. The next day was the Sabbath and the Christians of all that region gathered from the other villages for wor¬ ship at the elder ’s, ‘ ‘ the church in the house. 9 9 The twelfth chapter of Acts was expounded at the morning service, the account of how Peter was in prison and his fellow Christians sought mightily in prayer his release. Many heathen, itching with curiosity to know what the tall for¬ eigner would say and do, were present. The Christians, though many of them lived as far as twenty li away, stayed for the afternoon service, when our minds dwelt on the wonderful promise of Philippians 4 :4-7, the uselessness of worry and the wisdom of rejoicingly telling God our needs and trusting him for the outcome. After that service I escorted Elder Li the radiant and other out-village Christians some distance on their way home, all the time our thoughts and prayers be¬ ing on the important meeting of the next day. I myself was particularly heartened for that con¬ test with the devil by this Li, victor in Christ, who was as full of comforting Scripture on the subject A Nefarious Plot Foiled 173 as a Shantung walnut is full of meat. To my de¬ light and surprise he quoted the entire chapter that I had read in the afternoon service, and, with shining eyes and in his own unique and forceful way, expounded the verses, very much to the point. That was one of the most profitable walks I ever took — certainly arranged of the Lord. On my return to the village the place seemed agog with excitement. Little groups of men were gathered everywhere. They were on the tiptoe of expectation as to the morrow. As I passed group after group on the main street, in the alleys, at corners, I heard such snatches as these, “They say he is American, but only Russians wear such big coats and have such black whiskers ! Why, he talks our talk, just like us ! And he un¬ derstands all we say! How did he learn it? We could never say his talk. No magistrate would speak to us, but he does. What is the foreign devil going to do? Will he report us to the offi¬ cials? They will believe him. If he lies about us we will be in a bad fix. He may draw maps of our land. He may find out how many sons we have. Is he going to spy on us? Ho you think he intends to threaten us or harm us?” It was a good deal more than amusing, revealing as it did their curiosity mingled with doubts, suspicion and fear. An extra twist was now given to the excitement because of what happened in the home 174 Answered Prayer in China of an inquirer who had loaned us a room for our newly established mission primary school, and who had been persecuted for his pains. That evening his grandmother suddenly died and the heathen on the street said, “This assuredly is a proof of the curse upon this foreign doctrine and a portent of more ill to come upon us as a result of the coming of the ‘ foreign deviP!” And that evening a little group of us was stirred to more earnest prayer as we realized the tight ahead of us. We claimed the promises of Psalm 62:5-12, 1 Corinthians 10 :13 and Romans 8 :28 : “My soul, wait thou only upon God, for my ex¬ pectation is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation; he is my defense; I shall not be moved. In God is my salvation and my glory: the rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God. Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us. Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity. Trust not in oppression, and become not vain in robbery: if riches increase, set not your heart upon them. God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God. Also unto thee, 0 Lord, belongeth mercy: for thou render- est to every man according to his work.” “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” A Nefarious Plot Foiled 175 “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose/’ / Early Monday morning we met for another season of united prayer. Luke 6:20-28 was con¬ sidered, with special emphasis upon verse 22: “Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake.” This was precisely the condition in which the elder found himself. Though an unobtrusive man and of few words he was led to give testimony in the language of Colossians 3:17, “And what¬ soever ye do in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him,” at the same time he exhorted us as well as himself to pray for polite¬ ness and kept tempers under possibly great prov¬ ocation in the meeting with the headmen. The Chinese are fond of ceremony and espe¬ cially of “managing public affairs” in a formal way. The evangelist had worked out an elaborate program for our conference with the eight village dignitaries, including our going out to meet them, receiving them, ushering them into my sleeping room, which room, by the way, was just an ordi- 176 Answered Prayer in China nary mud- walled, dirt-floored, catch-all of a place cluttered with boards and farm implements and a miscellany of junk. By putting together two square tables we made a council board of state and by placing benches around them we trans¬ formed my quarters into a reception salon fully equipped for business with the awaited ambassa¬ dors. They had agreed to arrive at eight a. m. Later than that hour messengers began to drop in with the assuring announcement that they probably would not come. We sent back others in return, urging them to stick to their promise and praying earnestly all the time. Following several exchanges of diplomatic notes they finally arrived at 11 a. m. They drew up in the little yard and after bow¬ ing formally were escorted into the guest room, where they were introduced to us by our local school teacher. I was pleased that even in deal¬ ing with these heathen moguls our Christians were not abashed and planned as a matter of course to honor their Lord. The Scripture was read, a number of passages selected from First Corinthians, beginning with “Be ye all of one mind,” and prayer was offered. The result was that from the beginning they seemed to be put at ease and free. A constant flow of tea and the eating of a generous supply of peanuts also con¬ tributed something. A Nefarious Plot Foiled 177 The ice broken, their tongues were loosed to speak their mind on the subject of our confer¬ ence, after which the elder stated his case. In opening the discussion they brazenly rehearsed the whole case as they had decided it. Then, as if guided by some unseen hand, one of the head¬ men abruptly asked if we knew Dr. Bergen. (Dr. Bergen was the American missionary who opened this station soon after a German cruiser squad¬ ron, under Prinz Heinrich, hungry for new crumbs of colonies, steamed into Tsingtao, and seized this end of Shantung Province, and his name is held in veneration among many Chinese in this section). I told him how, while home on fur¬ lough in 1914, I had visited Dr. Bergen in a hos¬ pital in New York, where he was dying from a disease which was the result of his having insuffi¬ cient blood, and how his own son had voluntarily given of his own blood to be put into the veins of his father in an effort to prolong the father ’s life. This excited the keenest interest of these Con- fucianists. Their lore abounds with stories of filial acts of children toward their parents (many of them grotesque and ridiculous, such as a son, during mosquito season, laying himself sacri- ficially on the hang and letting the mosquitoes gorge on his blood so that the father, unmolested, might compose himself for a peaceful night’s sleep upon the same hang). But they had never 178 Answered Prayer in China heard of a bona fide case in which one man showed such love for another as that of the missionary’s son who had given his blood for his father. Now they were all admiration, commendation, and on the qni vive. This opened the way to preach to them with impressiveness about the Son of God giving not only a little of his blood, but all of it, for the life of us men here in China, and all of it available for any who wished to be healed of his soul-sickness. Then was asked again that ques¬ tion that has been put to me several times when engaged in preaching on the street and “at the market,” an unconventional, almost uncanny query: “How long has Christ’s blood been flow¬ ing? How much blood has he? Is it enough to fill and cleanse our veins?” I think it was no captious questioning, though from one angle it was bizarre and grotesque and irreverent, crassly realistic; yet from another, considering the real purport of his life and the fact of the cross, it was very much to the point. I was startled. Eagerly and reverently, and with a prayer for' help, I told them of an ancient Book and of its prophecy about one, Immanuel-to-come, from whose wounds on the cross healing blood had flowed; was, as it were, still flowing. Never did the words of Zechariah seem more apropos to quote, “There shall be a fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness . . . And he shall speak A Nefarious Plot Foiled 179 peace to the heathen.’ ’ And never did it seem more fitting to sing a hymn, which we did, the Chinese Christians joining in, “ There is a foun¬ tain filled with blood.” Their silence and serious attention was the more impressive in view of the fact that but recently, when holding services in one of the churches, a “holy man” (one trying to make merit by the conventional “good works” prescribed in Chinese Buddhism and Taoism), after listening a while to what I was expounding in Hebrews of Christ as High Priest and Sacrifice, grew uneasy, then impatient and finally ostentatiously stalked out. I learned afterward that he was disgusted with the “vulgar teaching about a man shedding his blood to save others.” It was wonderful how these men, hard-faced and double-dealing, were touched by the story of Christ as it came in this guise, and wonderful how the Holy Spirit had in store for us a rewardful surprise, for it was manifest, as our conversation progressed, that the headmen were moved through this simple narrative, seasoned as it was with all the prayer that had preceded, voluntarily to con¬ fess the unreasonableness of their attitude and the injustice of their decision regarding the elder and his brother. Imagine our amazement to hear them volunteer the solution which from the first would seem to have been a more natural and rea- 180 Answered Prayer in China sonable one, namely, that the brother shonld give “ Dives” a fair price, determined by them, for the calf slain, that he shonld also pay “as the price of playing the fool” a tine, “to warn him and others against such conduct in the future,” as they naively put it, and that the elder should be free of all responsibility in the case, whether financial or moral. We could scarcely believe our senses, so quickly had the case tumbled out of its intricacies into reasonable form. This de¬ nouement was the more interesting because the day preceding, “Dives,” though remaining in the village, had ostentatiously given out that he was going to the county seat to push the case at once before the magistrate. We knew that this move was a bluff, partly to cause us to fear and partly to give him added “face,” that strange thing of strange ways, for he would argue that he had been forced in order to coerce more money, for the defeated has to pay all costs, and he would argue that, in the successful prosecution of his case, he had been forced to add on to his expenses by “road money” involved in an additional trip, plus feasts and wine money in the city, and more “gifts” to the yamen henchmen. An element of his venom was to make the elder smart to the limit and by swelling expenses he could accom¬ plish that end. Powerful and angry as was “Dives,” yet his A Nefakious Plot Foiled 181 sinister threats and the thought of future vin¬ dictive action, usually a fear-breeder among the heathen and a determiner of timid, cowardly ac¬ tion, seemed to have no power now over the head¬ men. We felt it was of the Spirit. They were relieved and happy, satisfied and self-respecting, in a decent decision. Then and there the terms of this just settlement of the case were written out in duplicate and signed by the principals present. We sang a hymn of thanksgiving and after a closing prayer gave to each headman Gospel tracts and picture cards of Christ’s miracles. It was a miracle that they now received them. A day earlier these men would no more have touched them than a poisonous snake. When they came they wore a wary, suspicious smile. Now, as we escorted them to the outer yard gate, they were pleased and friendly. Realizing that we desired only fair dealing and their individual and com¬ munity welfare, they had voluntarily committed themselves to send us pupils for our village school. The ice of suspicion was melted. After they had gone, how gratefully we thanked God for a good day’s work, for the beginning of hope¬ ful things there unto his praise. CHAPTER XVI ENMESHED IN A HEATHEN LAWSUIT The “motif” of this episode lies in the fact that the Chinese New Year was coming on. At that time, particularly, the Chinese even commit suicide over their financial troubles. Needless to say, many schemes are conjured up, out of their desperation for ready money, whereby they may “do” someone else. One witnesses every sort of “emergency expedient,” from stupid thievery to unthinkably sharp tricks. One winter day as I was leaving an out-station after administering the Lord’s Supper, the elders and Christians of the church told me a woeful tale. A heathen was arranging to “sue” one of their number, a meek and quiet man. When one realizes something of what a lawsuit in China means, he can understand the tragedy that this little band of Christians was facing. For one of the most fearful instrumentalities, except the opium pipe, used of Satan for perpetuating his usurped lordship over China is the lawsuit. The principal factors in the Chinese yamen, or law court, are the magistrate, the writers, and the “ ya i” (runners, henchmen). Under the old legal system all officials were 182 In a Heathen Lawsuit 183 supposed to obtain office by merit, through 4 ‘ civil service” examinations in the Chinese classics. As a matter of fact, multitudes of offices were and still are bought outright, or “ farmed out” to the highest bidder ; that is, turned over to the tender mercies of him who promised the “one higher up” the fattest return for a certain posi¬ tion during a series of years, or even of months. All this system was facilitated by the rule that no magistrate serve in his own district or prov¬ ince. As an outsider he would have more “face” to pursue his policy of squeeze than if he were grinding the face of his neighbors, so to speak. Also the magistrate was supposed to serve from love of his fellowmen and devotion to his country’s welfare, “pure patriotism,” and there¬ fore to receive no salary from the throne. The inevitable result of having to eat, coupled with the omnipresent fact of an unregenerate heart, can easily explain how magistrates, in lieu of salary, entered upon careers of systematic “squeeze.” A Chinese magistrate is himself the judge and jury and often counsellor both for the defense and the prosecution. In fact, in a case at law in his yamen, he is “the whole thing.” With such power in his hands, but without Christian back¬ ground or tradition or training or profession, an official can rarely resist the back-stairs methods 184 Answered Prayer in China of adding to his pile. The accuser in a county yamen lawsuit offers, by a circuitous route, one hundred dollars for a favorable decision, and the accused, by a method equally circuitous, is in¬ formed of what the accuser has done and offers one hundred and fifty dollars — and wins. Money talks. All this is perfectly understood by everybody, is taken for granted as a fact, and so acted upon by those who press processes in the yamen. An atheist was once interrupted in his lectures by a canny old Quaker who said: 4 ‘Friend, the Good Book says that the fool hath said in his heart there is no God; but thee dost blab it right out!” Now, in Christian lands, “malicious and malevolent innuendoes do ripple along just under the surface,” as Boosevelt said of besmirching rumors that, without foundation, befoul the repu¬ tation of public servants, while in heathen lands the people just “blab it right out,” but with this difference: that the people’s indictment of their rulers is usually true. And, forsooth, how else than by muddied methods is an impecunious, well- nigh salaryless official, who has paid $10,000 for a short-term appointment, to keep himself from starving, much less feather his nest? A man who knows just said to me of a provincial treasurer: “If Mr. Wang is left unmolested for six months in his office he will clear $400,000!” In a Heathen Lawsuit 185 Walking along a road with common country folks, I have many a time heard them, out of bit¬ ter and first-hand experience, speak their convic¬ tion. They have a proverb on the subject that runs like this: “Ya men k’ou hsiang nan h’ai; Yu li, wu ch’ien, liou tsin lai .” That is to say, “The yamen gate faces, or opens toward, the south; whoever has reason on his side, without bribe money , just let him step in last.” His case is hopeless. And, although the people euphemistically call a magistrate “the father and mother of the people,” yet, for characterlessness, with conse¬ quent lack of public spirit and disregard of the general weal, they distrust them, saying: “All officials ought to be slain. But what’s the use? If we dispose of the rulers we have, just as bad will come to take their places!” Whoever lives among the people knows that these conditions obtain, now under the republic, no less than under the empire. Another name for the government has not changed the unre¬ generate nature of the men misadministering it. Next in importance to the magistrate stand the yamen writers. They are swift to plan evil that the ya i are swift to execute. They have enough learning and are practiced enough in the tricks to know how to “manage the business” from the inside. Often, though a magistrate might be 186 Answered Prayer in China feebly well-intentioned, these men can thwart him. Unlike the magistrate, they are not outsiders, they understand the local situation, are usually fixtures in the yamen (for somebody has to be there who 4 ‘knows the ropes, ” and with whom the magistrate can officially advise). Last, and least, but as necessary to the system as a mule to a Chinese cart, stand the ya i ( yamen runners). To say that they are tough customers, a hard gang, is to express it mildly. They have long ago learned the art of “living off the hole,” as few of them get even the semblance of wages. Usually two hundred to three hundred hang around an ordinary Hsien (county) yamen, some¬ times hundreds more. These creatures range through the villages and seek out those who have property, and who therefore may be squeezed with profit. As a hound scents blood, they scent money. They accuse men of crime on the strength of innuendoes hinted by their enemies, these enemies often paying the ya i to prefer the charges. Grudges are made the most of. It is often dangerous to be well off, as many a farmer learns to his sorrow, dangerous even to be sus¬ pected of “getting over the days comfortably.” Innocence of crime is no panoply or protection. There is no bottom to the iniquities perpetrated. Disasters topple as suddenly and unexpectedly upon men’s heads as they did upon Job’s, for In a Heathen Lawsuit 187 these sharpers are abroad in the land thinking np every scheme to turn a dishonest penny. And often, even when the innocent victim is landed in the yamen, and after the magistrate has meted ont his punishment, the end is not yet, for the ya i have many methods, not of moral suasion, to extract money, and many a farmer is left not only sore from beating and other forms of tor¬ ture, but with his pocket needlessly lightened of many a dollar that the ya i wanted for food and drink. Some men are like roaring lions in their open and defiant violence ; these are wolves steadily gnawing the bowels of sleepers. In view of the conditions that obtain, it is un¬ derstandable that the pressure brought to bear* by the native brethren upon a missionary pastor to intervene wdien one of his Christians is sud¬ denly hauled off to the yamen and unjustly en¬ dures trial, danger and even torture, is sometimes terrific. As the heathen who was planning this suit against the unoffending Christian was a bully and had a “pull” with the ya i, he was pretty certain to win. The occasion of the suit was a piece of land that the Christian had some years before bought of the heathen. The land had been at the time of the purchase fully paid for, and the deed which they showed me was properly witnessed to. But, 188 Answered Prayer in China as stated above, the days were approaching the Chinese New Year, and the bnlly, like most other Chinese, needed “plenty money” at that festive season of eating, drinking, gambling, “fire-crack- ering,” and general extravagance and riot. Moreover, the land in question during eight years had increased in value from a few dollars to five hundred dollars an acre, due to its prox¬ imity to the German-built, prosperity-bringing railroad that runs through our Tsingtao field. And the covetous heart of the heathen could not resist his temptation. From his brazen viewpoint it was “risk little, gain much.” “Though the Christian owns the land he will at least pay me a large squeeze if I agree to withdraw the suit!” So he challenged the Christian’s right to his own property ! I called in the signers of the deed, heathen neighbors (who had witnessed the completion of the sale), and they acknowledged their signatures and promised to swear that this was the original deed, that it was properly made out, and that these were their names, written by themselves. If they stood by their guns the heathen suer had no case. So I left the village with a peaceful mind about the matter. After I had gone some miles on my journey I descried two men coming toward me from be¬ hind, running across the snow-clad plain. Ar- In a Heathen Lawsuit 189 rived, they proved to be the sued Christian and his brother. They stated that, after I left, the heathen witnesses had conferred together and agreed that the heathen suer was the more power¬ ful. He was violent and cunning. He would use bribery, and succeed. Therefore, they decided that it would be poor policy to witness, in the interests of the meek “ Jesus man/’ that they had written their names as signed to the deed. It was a clear and desperate case of “pray the thing through or fail.” There was no other way. And, standing there in the open, whitened fields, the wind whistling about us, I prayed again with the distressed brothers, and, leaving them once more, went on to my appointments. A few days later I returned to find a pretty mess. Not only had the covetous heathen, by methods of which he and the ya i and the yamen writers alone were cognizant, got his case “prop¬ erly” before the magistrate, but he had secured the moral (?) support of the headman of the vil¬ lage. That night I called him into my room and pleaded with him. But all in vain. He sat sullen and unresponsive. “The thing was done.” When I left he strengthened himself and his backers in their wicked determination by giving a two-day wine feast and orgy. From that time on we gave ourselves over to prayer about the matter. In a few days I received 190 Answered Prayer in China many letters from tlie Christian and his friends pleading with me to exert my influence at the yamen. “Not to manage the affair like a Catholic priest, of course, but only to speak a word of ex¬ planation, at least to present your card,” and so save him from reduction to beggary ! He and his friends came in person to plead with me. It was excruciating, their distress, also their trust in the arm of flesh was pathetic. When the sued man came the last time he was armed with a letter, carefully prepared by the Christians, which he requested me to send to Hr. Corbett, invoking his aid as efficacious with the American consul to put pressure on the magis¬ trate. As we sipped tea together we probed him to see if this calamity was not in any sense in the nature of deserved punishment for sins, rather than the testing of faith. Gradually he confessed voluntarily to sins of non-observance of the Sab¬ bath, of breaking down the family altar, of un¬ willingness to subscribe to the Lord’s work, although God had prospered him. So we all knelt together and asked God to give him a truly penitent heart so that God might forgive and save him. He promised future obedience. “Now would you be willing to hand me this letter and trust God direct for deliverance?” I asked. In a Heathen Lawsuit 191 He was not ready. We all knelt down again and pleaded that his faith and love might mount to this point. When we arose he handed me the letter, saying, “Destroy it.” “Would you now be willing to pray God to help yon forgive your enemy and bless him, even though he takes all your land and your home?” This was cutting him to the quick. But we all knelt and prayed once more. When we arose he was radiant. His burden was rolled off upon the Great Burden Bearer. He at once exclaimed, “Now I’ll go home, and as soon as I get there I’ll begin to preach the Doctrine to my family and neighbors, and to my enemy , too.” So he went in great peace. Two weeks later I met him on his own village street. Corroding care had left his face. His first word, as he seized my hand, was, “My enemy has of his own accord withdrawn the suit ! And he is now my friend! I am preaching the Gospel to him and to his family, and they listen gladly. ’ ’ CHAPTER XVII A PERSECUTION CASE WITH A HAPPY ENDING There are five brothers, relatively well-to-do, with their wives and children living in the same yard with the aged parents. Some months ago the third brother became a believer in the Chris¬ tian doctrine, through his first knowledge of the Gospel, which he had heard us preach in the big market town to which he had gone from his vil¬ lage, which nestled at the foot of a hill. The result of his earnest belief in the Jesus doctrine was, of course, his exhorting and pray¬ ing for his own family to accept Christ as Saviour. The other brothers had begun, in their slow, cautious way, to think over the matter of this new doctrine and to become considerably inter¬ ested, when suddenly an untoward accident hap¬ pened. Their neighbors in this small village, be¬ coming alarmed about so many of their fellow villagers being bewitched by the strange and ominous foreign religion, strange because new to them, and ominous because inimical to the wor¬ ship of their ancestors, hatched up a scheme 192 A Persecution Case 193 whereby this family of inquirers might be made to eat bitterness. It has now begun to percolate down among the masses in my section of China that it is not altogether safe to persecute apostates from the ancestral religion, for it is somewhat understood that the government has made treaties with for¬ eign countries whereby not only their nationals shall be allowed to hold in peace — i. e., unmolested — new and strange beliefs, but Chinese as well turning to the foreign religion. So, in order to give face (that very real but important as in¬ tangible asset in China) to the persecutors, the head hired man of the most well-to-do villager was put up to take the lead. One day early in September a young son of one of these brothers, “Lao San” (Venerable Third Brother), set down a basket he was carrying, whereupon this man took the opportunity to pull up some sweet potato vines and put them in the youth’s basket. Then, with great boldness born of good form, he, with another confederate as witness, hurried to his master and triumphantly announced that a child of the Christians was stealing his potatoes. This was sufficient “casus belli,” though all concerned knew that the accuser had put no potatoes in the basket, only vines, and even had potatoes been put in they were as yet too little and unripe to be of any value. So, “clothed in justification 194 Answered Prayer in China complete, ’ ’ the grandson of this well-to-do village leader, together with several other roughs, includ¬ ing the overseer preferring the charge, worked themselves into a pitch of fury, and seeking an opportunity, found two of these foreign-devil doc¬ trine-learning brethren upon the street and set upon them, all unsuspecting. The attackers used fists and stones and clubs, and, getting more ex¬ cited as they proceeded with pseudo punishment, they even pulled off their heavy hob-nailed peasant shoes and applied them with force to the faces of the unoffending sufferers. A crowd of heathen, sympathizers all with this punitive force, also joined them, and by the time they were through with “ Venerable Brothers Three and Five,” their faces were reduced to something like pulp. From the point of view of the assaulted, still dominated as they were by their heathen code, the only thing to do, in defense of their honor, was, under the circumstances, to steer straight for the yamen and prefer charges against their out- ragers. Of course, it would be expensive. They understood that perfectly. But no matter now, even if it took their last cent, yea, the roof from over their heads and the ground from under their feet. Their “ dander” was up. “Face” was at stake, and ‘ ‘ face, ’ ’ in this concrete instance, meant revenge, satisfying the pride of unregenerate A Persecution Case 195 hearts, not so different from “face,” in that sense, in all lands. Accordingly, with their faces in a gory condi¬ tion, which they felt was the best kind of an argu¬ ment to advance their cause before the magis¬ trate, they started off for a nearby yamen, breath¬ ing, if not slaughter, then at least threatenings and revenge. It was good fortune for them and for the cause of Christ (though the brothers knew it not) that shortly after they had started upon the road an elder, a trusted friend of mine, ar¬ rived at the village and learned of the exciting episode. With good sense and Christian prin¬ ciple, and believing thoroughly in First Corin¬ thians 6 (which is a very vital and fitting appeal to Christians not to go in controversy before heathen magistrates, the whole force of which Scripture only those living in heathendom can understand), the elder started at once on a donkey, whose pace could actually exceed the ordinary gait of a walk¬ ing man, in “hot pursuit” of the brethren swear¬ ing vengeance. He overtook them and was able, contrary to the ordinary result under such cir¬ cumstances, not through his gift of speech, but through earnest preliminary prayer along the road, to persuade the brethren to return and at least postpone their preference of charges. Now, if any doctrine of the Scriptures is a hard doctrine to the Chinese heathen mind, next to the 196 Answered Prayer in China humbling of pride that there is in the cross (as expounded in Phil. 2:1-7), and next to the humbling of human wisdom (as expounded in 1 Cor. 1), it is the doctrine of First Corinthians 6. Indeed, it is a tough doctrine for a mature Chris¬ tian to face, “Why not rather take wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? ” After a man has done everything within the church to get an ugly affair satisfactorily settled, why should he be asked to do more? After he has suffered personal wrong in silence for the sake of the cause, why should he not go to heathen judges? But no! there stands the question (which is a command) so ob¬ durate, so headstrong, so apparently unreason¬ able, “Why not rather tahe ivrong? Why not rather he defrauded?” It requires considerable grace for the inquirer out of heathendom to throw down the gauntlet to prevalent custom, to refuse to be of the class of the “brother going to law against brother, and that before unbelievers.” The seriousness of this case can only be judged by one who understands the Chinese viewpoint as to assault and battery. When men and boys in the West get angry they frequently settle it with their fists, words fast and furious, then the dare, then the fight. Not so in China. The dis¬ pute ordinarily ends, at least ostensibly, in tongue-lashing. Unless it is the most aggravated kind of a case no one thinks of using personal A Peksecution Case 197 violence upon an opponent; the Chinese method is -to revile. And this method, while from the Western viewpoint is comical, from the Chinese viewpoint is terrible indeed. The Westerners, when they cnrse, take the name of deity in vain. That, even in its blasphemy, is a direct testimony to the supremacy of the living God, using the name of him than whom there is none higher to curse into perdition an enemy. But the Chinese, though surrounded by many gods, of varying powers and functions, yet instinctively realize that they have no gods worth cursing by, so that in reviling a man, in order to demean and humili¬ ate him, they call him by the name of some lower animal, such as a donkey, or worse still, a rabbit, or unthinkably worse, a turtle, all of which is amusing to the uninitiated. Incidentally, therefore, there could hardly be a break so bad in preaching in the West as for a missionary to the Chinese to exhort persistence in the faith by using the famous illustration in the fable of the tortoise and the hare. The Chinese are natural actors, with a tremendous sense of the importance of seeming, all of which is a phase of their much-discussed “face.” Re¬ peatedly I have seen a “word fight.” As many of the villagers as can hear the loud talking in high, strident notes, or hoarse and guttural with passion, gather to hear the fun. One wonders if 198 Answered Prayer in China they really enjoy it, so distressing, so humiliat¬ ing. The men prance up to each other just as actors do in the open country theaters. One would think, from their fierce mien and clenched fists, that they would tear each other to pieces. Often partisans take hold of each man, allowing him to tug fiercely as if to get away from them and apparently claw his enemy into tatters, but everybody knows that he would not get away if he could, it is just to seem to get away. Ordi¬ narily a man rushes up to his opponent, who scowls at him, and then, passing by, he strikes a stage attitude. Folding his arms grandly across his heart, and having his back to his opponent, he flays him alive with this animal talk, using all his skill of tongue-lashing in comparing both his an¬ cestors and his descendants to these various in¬ ferior orders of creation. This skill he was taught in babyhood even as he sat on the brick bed, and has augmented it by practice ever since. So it was rather a serious business when these roughs pummeled the faces of “Venerable Brothers Three and Five” into jelly. The Chinese heathen doctrine of Li (reason) in such cases is that men strike animals, not men. Riksha coolies have made many an angered foreigner smart for hitting one of their guild. In this case men having been struck they must do something desperate and extraordinary to avenge the insult. A Persecution Case 199 However, wholly by prayer, our fellow elder was able to cause the offended and offenders to agree that they would delay the matter until a certain date when I was to arrive, and then in the presence of all concerned we would talk it over. In their hearts none wanted the occasion which all feared ; that is, the appearing before the magistrate with the high probability that the magistrate with his ya i (henchmen) would, through blackmail and other fraudulent methods, “eat them all up.” On the day of my arrival I was met far out from the village by the brothers and escorted to their yard, which, during this ideal month of Oc¬ tober, was at its very best. On the trees still hung juicy pears, in the corner of the yard was a vine tempting with grapes, and on the yard walls bloomed beautiful flowering beans. A table and stools and benches had been brought out, and in this pleasant little spot, with the sea nearby and the hills about, and fleecy clouds floating through the blue sky, the love feast was held. So im¬ portant was the case that not only did the village headmen appear, but several from nearby villages as well, also the headman over ten villages. The Chinese can easily understand, from their demo¬ cratic village government, what the Scripture suggests of a faithful steward being made ruler over ten cities. With them came the assaulters, 200 Answered Prayer in China all wearing the masked smile which the Chinese, as past masters in the art of simulation, seem able to put on at will to conceal the spirit of sus¬ picion, fear, hate, envy, jealousy and revenge which so often and so powerfully dominates them. Having no acquaintance with foreigners and their ways, and knowing only and that vaguely that they had power and were to be dreaded, the vil¬ lage leaders were at first very noncommittal and evasive. In the initial stage of our investigation they professed blissful ignorance that any assault had taken place. None of them could, of course, understand the golden rule; they all realized the Chinese heathen argument as to the seriousness of striking a man; none expected any man thus outraged to forgive the insult; yet gradually it did take hold of them that we were not there to use force or to punish, but only to persuade, and that those whom the foreigner was shepherding were asked to do what from their viewpoint was even more than he would expect from the heathen, namely, that the Christians should be willing to forgive the wrongdoers, while the culprits were merely asked to confess that they had done this wrong, that they had done it without proper grounds, and that they would guarantee in the future not to commit the like offense or one of its spirit. Finally they got this conception, and, as I have A Peksecution Case 201 said, all feeling as they did the horror of getting into the yamen, and realizing the reasonableness of onr arguments as to the folly of going before the magistrate, they offered to give a “punish¬ ment feast”; that is, to get up a big eat with the place of honor given, to the outraged ones and together to partake of the best that the village could produce, winding up with wine. But not even this was demanded or even wanted. Great was the surprise and admiration as to the Christian doctrine, this “foreign im¬ piety.” It did not take long to gain the consent of the heathen to the writing of a contract to which all the headmen and the missionary and the elder and both the parties affixed their names, promising that hereafter there would be harmony of action among the Christians and those who outraged them. Not only so, but the village head¬ man then and there willingly agreed to furnish pupils for a mission school, which we had been hoping to start under the auspices of the brothers, but which had been blocked by the heathen. Good feeling and satisfaction reigned, and the parting was impressive. All the headmen, with the outragers, as well as the Christian and the inquiring brethren, escorted us far beyond the limits of the village. Our conversation revealed the fact that the smiles, as we parted, were now sincere ; that there was real pleasure at our visit ; 202 Answered Prayer in China that a new light had broken into the village and that the men in the midst had come to recognize by this incident that there was something more important than “face.” In conference over the matter with the elder as we parted, he who had had much experience of village life and its quarrels could explain this instance only on one ground, that the Lord had been merciful and gracious. And step by step since this situation has developed into a happy consummation, through the prayers of those who sincerely desire to honor Christ in the midst of these humble brethren, “ beginners in the Jesus doctrine.” CHAPTER XVIII THE VILLAGE WITH THE CHARMED LIFE The community in question is made up of the Christians of Ta Hsin Tan, the home village, near Tsingtao, of the Rev. Ding Lee May (Ting Li Mei), the celebrated evangelist and personal worker. He is one of the most able and consecrated native preachers in the land, and used more largely in leading Chinese students to' de¬ cide for the ministry than any other person. And in the midst of flood conditions exceeding in dura¬ tion and virulence anything for fifty years, his village had a deliverance little short of miracu¬ lous. At the time I knew his clan and local con¬ ditions intimately. For four months it rained almost daily. At last the rich, flat soil of a large part of our Tsingtao country field became sheets of mud. Every river of North China, to the extent of its unregulated power — not merely the Yellow River — is “ China’s sorrow. ” When the annual sum¬ mer rains begin each river spreads sandy deso¬ lation along its treeless length. As the river waxes li hai (fierce) in its swelling, it overflows 203 204 Answered Prayer in China its banks, attacks tbe foundations of the mnd houses, sucks them into its ravening maw, leav¬ ing whole villages broken and spent — toppled into ruins. Siao Kou He, the river that flows by Pastor Ting’s village, raved this particular year without let or hindrance — except in one instance. It “ opened its mouth,” as the Chinese say (that is, broke its banks), in eighteen places within six miles of Ta Hsin Tan, but never harmed it. Vil¬ lages everywhere on both banks were whelmed. .What this means may be imagined from the fact that the villages in this level region are so thick that by merely turning one’s head from right to left one can count from thirty to sixty of them. The river hurled itself with great fury against seventy li of railroad embankment, strewing it all over the peasants’ farming plots, and changing its course — a trick of Chinese rivers. In the process it broke the German bridges, culverts and river masonry, wrecking the best work that the foreign engineers had done — all near Ta Hsin Tan, but that village was spared. The more is the marvel because directly across from Ta Hsin Tan the river crept far out of its course to eat into a big village located on ground higher than Ta Hsin Tan, which, like some towns of Holland, lies snugly behind its dyke, a few yards from the water, and lower than its surface . Village With Charmed Life 205 How can such, a deliverance be explained? Is it nothing that, in the midst of heathenism, this village has fonr generations of Christians, and its own gronp of church buildings, plus primary schools for boys and for girls; also supports its own pastor, evangelist and Bible woman? There also is located our girls’ middle school, the hope and prayer-focus of many a Christian family. This Ting clan has conspicuously and signally stood for the Lord in the face of great opposi¬ tion, even loss and persecution. They realize that all their hopes are bound up in the one true and living God and they are committed to his service. They had had marked deliverances before, which had bulwarked their faith, and which were now to them earnests of God’s grace in these later troublous days of flood, famine, pestilence and civil war. The heathen aver that this village of Ta Hsin Tan bears a charmed life. In the Boxer days they were miraculously saved from massacre by the sudden and unexpected arrival of German troops. Again, later, when a Boxer gang had burned the church and was about to roast alive the Christians gathered for prayer in one com¬ pound, a stray bullet was wonderfully used to stampede the ruffians who were seized with the “panicky” thought that German sharpshooters were hidden all about them. During February, 206 Answered Prayer in China I 1911, when plague entered their village it did not come nigh the dwelling of a Christian. And now the flood was stayed at their very door. How was it done! We believe it was accom¬ plished through the prevailing prayer of the righteous and that only, even as in the case of him who prayed for the city of the plain. Mr. Ting was home on his summer vacation for a needed rest. The need for that rest may be better understood when I explain that several times at these annual homecomings it has been necessary for us to hide him away here in a German retreat where neither Chinese nor foreigner could learn his whereabouts, and so could not get at him for interviews or speaking engagements. Only thus could he rest. But our minister friend was not too tired for prayer. And he and those of the same mind with him prayed for deliverance in this terrible flood crisis, even as they had prayed in other crises. What this deliverance meant we later realized more vividly when, plunging around through the flooded land on horseback or in flat-bottomed boats in relief work, we saw the villages in heaps of muddy ruins and deserted by the strongest. All who could get away fled their places as from the plague. Those who shortly before had been self- sustaining farmers went out of these villages in swarms as beggars. The smell was awful. Lazy Village With Charmed Life 207 flies lay around everywhere by the thousands, feeding on the filth. Flood fever was raising its spectral form. The water had drowned ont the wheat, beans, and gao Hang crops. Peanuts and sweet potatoes, the standard winter food of our people, had rotted in the ground. In many villages where the houses were on higher ground and better built, one saw the “ water mark” eight feet or more upon the walls, still foul and oozy with damp. Such a height of water meant that the people — those who could not get away — had stood on their brick beds and helplessly watched the flood creep in and spoil their food and wash away their belongings and often topple down their houses, whole or in part, upon their heads. In many instances the people died there, holding children in their arms. We found some corpses of mothers and babes thus cruelly done to death. From such devastation and catastrophe there was no possibility of human rescue. Again and again the waters outside of and above the Ta Hsin Tan dyke slopped over the very top. Yet it was from such an impending fate that Pastor Ting’s village was saved by an honest embank¬ ment honestly built and honestly kept in repair by “the Jesus men” of his village, plus the prayers of “the Jesus people” who really trusted the true and living God to deliver. 208 Answered Prayer in China * And imagine the courage of this Chinese evangelist! Not content with the salvation of his own village, when the land became thus flooded, he sallied forth, facing the rampant waters alone, in an attempt to reach ns and tell ns of the relief work needed. Even when he reached the un¬ broken section of the railroad embankment he had to grope his way along in the night, hanging on to the steel rails as the waters snrged fiercely aronnd him. The clan prayed as he made the essay. The prayer of the righteons prevailed, and this village through that attempt again be¬ came not only a mighty witness to the present- day trnth of the Ninety-first Psalm, bnt a bringer of life to the sufferers of other villages round about. CHAPTER XIX IN BESIEGED TSINGTAO When the World War burst, upon abstracted planet soon to be blood' red the imperial’ Japanese government revealed’ its determination to snatch some considerable booty out of the general dis¬ tress. With Germany decidedly engaged in other parts' of the world, indeed too hard pressed to offer effective' defense of her China Kolonie, a unique opportunity presented itself to Japan once more to get something for nothing — as she had gotten vast domain from China* in her ag¬ gression upon that power in 1894-1895; as, ten years later, 1904-1905, she had wrested from Russia; and, as now, after another decade, in 1914, at the beginning of a new andr supposedly ‘ ‘lucky conquering cycle,” she*felt that “imperial destiny urged’ ’ her once more to do. It was indeed a unique opportunity to seize and dominate Shantung Province, strategic' gate¬ way into China, through which the Germans had laid their railway in order to get at the vast coal mines of Shansi and to build a six-day-to-Europe iron road that should render the Manchurian- Siberian Railway all but obsolete. 209 210 Answered Prayer in China Japan had long itched for the “ Sacred Prov¬ ince’ ’ (Shantung), lying just opposite her Korea — just as it now itches for Fukien Province op¬ posite her Formosa — both these taken from China by the law of the jungle, which now rules the world, between governments, and will con¬ tinue so to do (despite the “practically idealistic” plans and pledges of cabinets and politicians) until the rightful Lord of the world comes back in glory to rule the nations in a righteousness and an equity that are real. Such a chance, therefore, as now presented itself to Japan from the standpoint of selfish op¬ portunism, was not to be passed by. Accord¬ ingly, early in August, 1914, Japan issued her famous ultimatum to Germany, demanding the surrender of Germany’s one imperial colony on the soil of Asia. With delicate irony all her own Japan' couched that demand’ in practically the same language that Germany, jointly with France and Russia, had addressed to Japan twenty years before, when Germany with Russia and France united to rob Japan* of the unholy spoils of her victory over unprepared China. Attacked as an unarmed man by a burglar in the night, China had yielded to the demands of Japan. Then that trio- of militarists had divided the booty denied by them to Japan, the* Shantung share of which fell to Germany. Now, had Ger- In Besieged Tsingtao 211 many known how to. be unselfish (which always means to be heavenly wise) she had a simple and strategic way to thwart the island empire’s ambi¬ tion — hand her stolen colony back to China. This wonld have chagrined and humiliated Japan, putting Japan in a bad light before the world; would have saved needlessly vast expense and waste of life; would have made sympathy for Germany among the nations at the very outset of the World War; would have created for Germany a vast enthusiasm among the Chinese, so that, when the trade war which would follow the war of arms was resumed, Germany would have had the inside track in the’ tradesman’s paradise, the land of limitless resources and economic possi¬ bilities — China. But Germany was* a stranger to the grace of considerateness — and the siege of Tsingtao was inevitable. If Japan had tried for Tsingtao in a legitimate manner, prescribed by the canons of international law, she would have attacked by the sea, posting her navy, armed with high-powered guns outdistancing those of the Germans off the port, and thus she would have pounded it until it surrendered — a job relatively easy to do. How¬ ever, Japan was after bigger game — control of the province — not merely of the small German concession (extending inland only twenty kilo¬ meters) and whose capital city, attacked from the 212 Answered Prayer in China sea, was the only front available without violating a neutral China; just as, had Germany tried for Paris in a legitimate manner, through France, it would have been not by way of neutral Belgium, but it would have been by way of the strongholds of Toul and Verdun. In both cases the attack meant great slaughter of men to be mown down by fortress guns. As Germany attacked by way of the contiguous- territory of an innocent neigh¬ bor, Belgium, so also Japan now did by way of a peaceable, neutral China. Marching over hundreds of li of the territory of Shantung Province, her troops living off the people, Japan, one rainy fall day of 1914, settled down to the siege of Tsingtao from its back door; that is to say, she posted hundreds of guns of heavy caliber, heavier than the Germans ’, and out¬ numbering them many to one, behind the protect¬ ing foothills of the Lao Mountains (Lao Shan), several miles to the east of the German colonial capital. For Japan it was but a first-class fall field maneuver, only more expensive and much more exciting; also destined to be bloody and “full of glory.’ ’ From behind those foothills the Japanese infantrymen, who had made themselves famous in the Busso- Japanese War, ten years earlier, by their spade work, crept forth each night to dig and worm themselves, by means of zigzag In Besieged Tsingtao 213 trenches, across the intervening plain, a little nearer to their prey. The Germans were outnumbered, so they said, fifteen to one (60,000 against 4,000) ; according to the Japanese not four to one (13,500 against 4,000). At any rate, it was only a question of time when the trapped victims had to succumb from exhaustion, shortage of water or food or ammunition or guns or men — some or all. With the same delicate irony as that displayed in their declaration of war, the Japs decided to take Tsingtao on the seventh of November, the anni¬ versary of the day the German cruiser squadron, under Prince Henry, brother of the Kaiser, had sailed into the bay during 1897 and taken it from the Chinese. Each side settled down grimly, but the advan¬ tage was all with the Japanese — as has been said, many more guns and bigger, many more men, an adequate commissariat, undisturbed communica¬ tions with the home base, a constant stream of reinforcements supplied by an unhampered navy. The Japanese had perfect maps, a multitude of them, with every sort of detail worked out upon them. Had not their engineering and artillery officers and draftsmen, disguised as Chinese coolies, helped to build the German forts? Had not their spies — an army of them — from the days of Germany’s occupation, swarmed Germany’s 214 Answered Prayer in China ‘ 4 ninety-nine-year leased territory/ ’ photograph¬ ing and drawing everything, np and down, every¬ where, from every angle? Had not other spies, many, dwelt in the city and environs, familiariz¬ ing themselves and their government with every business firm and house and public institution and private building and plot of ground? So that when those long rows of big modern guns were planted behind those foothills, the gun¬ ners not only knew where were their objectives, but knew the fraction of a meter to each object; they knew the exact angle and elevation necessary to smash these objects. And as afterward one saw the results of many of those shots, on the outer works, and the hill forts and buildings in the city, one felt that only by a special providence of God could anything have been saved from destruction. For instance, I saw shell holes where great shells had been dropped neatly and exactly on the top of under¬ ground casements of forts, the roofs of which were composed of six feet of solid cement strengthened with thickly woven heavy steel wire, plus four to five feet of gravel covering, and all that topped with a three-foot layer of dirt and heavy turf. And the monster shell had torn through it all as paper, wrecking thick concrete- walled hospitals, electric power rooms and kitchens and messrooms. In Besieged Tsingtao 215 If anything was to prevail against the barrage of snch monsters of frightfnlness when that bar¬ rage opened it wonld have to be supernatural. At last all was ready. The zigzag trenches, in spite of all the outnumbered and harassed de¬ fenders could do, had crept relentlessly forward, inch by inch, until they were right up under the chins of the five great AussenwerJce , that were linked together, and that in their united puissance stretched several miles, from Kiaochou Bay, the inner bay, on the north, to the open sea on the south, for thus, in linked defense, they cut off the peninsular land that constitutes Tsingtao from the hostile mainland to the east. The Germans all knew that when the expected barrage was fin¬ ished out of the earth would issue those swarms of human locusts that would eat up everything before them. For the barrage would have left little resistance. Suddenly one night the barrage began. Who can describe it? That infernal din! Soulless monsters of destruction hurtling through the troubled air; a systematic sprinkling of the city with iron projected at high speed; the sprinkling shortly increased to a rain of steel; that rain whipped up into a hurricane of bursting shells. They crumpled houses, disfigured public works, they fired private warehouses, they ruined in one second years of work; they ate up fortunes in a 216 Answered Prayer in China minute ; they made humans suddenly and literally disappear off the face of the earth; they sunk merchantmen that crouched vainly for protection in the inner harbor ; they spared not battleships, whose big guns on their decks, when hit, made them but go under the quicker; they crumpled and twisted the costly mortars of the German forts and threw them as light things violently out of their pits. Thus did terrible implements of destruction, costing immense sums of money, in¬ stantly become mere scrap iron. Great go-downs, stored with kerosene and other valuable merchan¬ dise, were set on fire, their black smoke clouds filling the sky for days; soldiers in their subter¬ ranean fortress caverns of concrete were done to death; the inhabitants of the city were searched out in their lowest cellars ; no pity was shown for the wounded lying in their improvised lazarettes. This was hell broke loose! And it lasted nearly a week ! No wonder that the Chinese servants, who had been unable to get away, opened the manholes of the sewage system and in terror crawled into the big piping of the streets for safety ! All in vain ! What folly the whole business ! And what bitter¬ ness of heart it aroused ! That whirlwind of iron ! Who could stay it, or avoid it, or direct it into harmlessness? Only One,. and that One God! And how? Through the In Besieged Tsingtao 217 medium of prayer, the prayer of his believing ones. Those believing ones were not lacking and their prayers were offered in sincerity and in truth. And remarkable was the result! When we realized that the Japanese could strike where and when and what they wanted to, we were surprised the more at our immunity. The three missions of the colony, the Berlin, the Weimar and the American Presbyterian, were all located on a beautiful high hill so sightly in its light-colored buildings and coat of dark ever¬ greens (planted by the Forestry Department), that we marveled how all objects thereon were not pulverized. This impression was heightened when we sensed the hurricane of shells that passed over the WTeimar end of our Missions- hug el; when we had to acknowledge the marvel of a shell actually passing into one of the resi¬ dences of the Berlin Mission, ricochetting all around the living room, standing itself demurely upon the reading table and injuring nothing; when we saw the unbelievable, of a big shell ex¬ ploding in our own back yard, and, though tear¬ ing up a capacious hole just outside our kitchen door and shattering window panes, yet harming no person. Still more remarkable was our immunity, in view of the fact that the Germans mounted on our hill batteries of long-range guns from the 218 Answered Prayer in China Kaiserin Elisabeth, of the Austrian imperial navy, changing them to various positions along the crest, inviting retaliatory fire, and still we were unhurt. In the East and West Suburbs our chapel com¬ pounds were used for cavalry stables, but no gun¬ fire damage was done. In the city itself, our church property, which consisted of a large church building, parsonage, schoolrooms and a Y. M. C. A. plant, had a few scratches on their streetward surface, but no real damage done, while many all about them, buildings of the heathen, toppled into ruins. One of our Christians, Elder Lin, was a wealthy real estate owner and house renter. He is a man of exemplary life, mighty in prayer, and generous with his money in the Lord’s work. No damage whatever was done to his property, scattered all over the city, while many stores and residences of the heathen went down like a deck of cards. Most remarkable of all, more so than the preservation of mission property and that of the Chinese Christians, was the fact that not one of our Christians lost his life or was even wounded. 4 ‘Our God is a protecting wall, a fortress in a hostile land.” Again we realized the truth of the latter part of the Shepherd Psalm, in which, still continuing the shepherd figure, David draws the picture of the sheep safe, though in the pres- In Besieged Tsingtao 219 ence of the foe, because of the presence of the shepherd : ‘ ‘ Thou preparest a [banquet] table [as it were] before me, in the presence of mine enemies.’ ’ With the Shepherd , the place of dan¬ ger is the place of safety . * I * BW8220 .S425 Answered prayer in China; Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 1012 00018 8104