CHINA 
 
 FROM WITHIN 
 
 CHARLES ERNEST SCOTT 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 lailiam E. Colby 
 
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 dWxUL^ 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/chinafromwithiniOOscotrich 
 
China From Within 
 
Students* Lectures on Missions ** . ^, 
 Princeton Theological Seminary, igi4 -igjj 
 
 China From Within 
 
 Impressions and Experiences 
 
 By 
 
 CHARLES ERNEST SCOTT, M.A., D.D. 
 Missionary of the Presbyterian Church, Tsingtau, China 
 
 Introduction by 
 REV. J. ROSS STEVENSON, D.D., LL.D. 
 President of Princeton Theological Seminary 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 1917, h^ 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
 GIFT 
 
Bv3'//5 
 
 To My Honoured Teacher 
 
 Woodrow Wilson 
 
 President of the United States 
 
 whose prompt recognition of the Chinese Republic 
 and whose spirit of justice and fair play towards 
 the Chinese have won the respect and gratitude of 
 the people of that great land, causing them to look 
 upon the name *' American'* as syno7iymous with 
 **Fnendl' this book is by special permission respect- 
 fully dedicated. 
 
 M781754 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 OPPOSITE 
 PAGE 
 
 Rev. Ting Li Mei — Celebrated Chinese Evangelist 
 
 and Student Leader Title 
 
 One of the Elegant New Palatial Hotels in Peking 38 
 
 In the Yard of a Rich Gentryman at Kaomi City. . 100 
 
 Starting on a Journey in South China 134 
 
 A Scene at a Festival 164 
 
 Lions for Funeral Procession 200 
 
 Stilt Walkers at a Funeral Festivity 244 
 
 The Old Order Changeth, Giving Place to New. ' \. 316 
 
 << 
 
Introduction 
 
 THE student lectureship on missions at Princeton 
 Seminary was established in 1892 to provide an 
 annual course of lectures on some topic con- 
 nected with foreign missions of practical importance to 
 those looking forward to missionary work. Eev. James 
 S. Dennis, D. D., an honoured alumnus of the Seminary, 
 generously aided in securing the endowment for this 
 lectureship and gave the first course which was published 
 under the title, ** Foreign Missions After a Century. ^^ 
 He subsequently delivered a course which became the 
 basis of his monumental work *' Christian Missions and 
 Social Progress.'^ Dr. Dennis set a high standard for 
 this lectureship, which has been continued for twenty- 
 five years, and which has not only given instruction to a 
 large body of students, but has contributed to missionary 
 libraries books of the greatest value, embodying the ex- 
 periences and conclusions of eminent church leaders. In 
 selecting Dr. Charles E. Scott, of China, to serve as the 
 missionary lecturer for the year 1914-15, the Committee 
 was in line with the well-established precedents of ex- 
 cellence. Dr. Scott's services in China as a successful 
 evangelist, as a well-equipped teacher, administrator and 
 church builder ; his broad experience and thorough study 
 of present day conditions entitled him to speak with 
 authority on the subjects he selected. The course of 
 lectures as delivered attracted large audiences and was 
 followed with eager attention and evident profit. It was 
 clearly demonstrated that Dr. Scott had not onJy discovered 
 
 9 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 China's greatest needs and hopes, but had himself, as a 
 missionary, been applying the only remedy therefor — 
 the remedy which can heal, redeem and uplift and which 
 is found in the power of the Gospel. It is the experienced 
 evangelist who best knows any country ^* from within." 
 The present volume will serve as a useful handbook for 
 those who contemplate mission service in the Orient and 
 will be serviceable to all who are interested in the prob- 
 lems of world evangelization. Dr. Scott's book is replete 
 with valuable information, is charged with the spirit of 
 apostolic enthusiasm and carries with it the tonic of a 
 lofty and wide-reaching outlook. 
 
 J. Boss Stevenson, D. D. 
 Princeton, K J, 
 
Preface 
 
 WHILE on furlough in the United States I was 
 surprised to find that there are many even in 
 the Christian Church who deny the usefulness 
 of Missions in China, and therefore their right to be. 
 Iliis course of lectures is not intended to be an argument 
 for that right or usefulness. Bather it is an humble testi- 
 mony by a student on the field to the ability and achieve- 
 ments of the Chinese ; to the lostness of China out of 
 Christ ; and to our Lord's sufficiency even fpr China, the 
 vastest single prize on this planet for continued mastery 
 over which Satan contends. 
 
 Though venturing to make no claim to erudition in 
 things Chinese, and though hard-pressed with itinerating 
 engagements in the American churches, yet I was glad to 
 accede to the request of a committee of my revered pro- 
 fessors to give the Princeton Theological Seminary Mis- 
 sion Lectures for 1914-1915. 
 
 I am deeply conscious of the inadequacy of these lec- 
 tures. But my prayer is that they may increase interest 
 in the great *^ land of Sinim '* of which Isaiah prophesied 
 so gloriously — particularly among the future ministers of 
 the Gospel for whom they were originally prepared, but 
 also among the larger constituency that may chance to 
 read them. 
 
 My thanks are due to Professor Benjamin B. Warfield, 
 D. D., of Princeton Seminary, for his assistance in pre- 
 paring the manuscript for the press and for seeing it 
 through the press. 
 
 U 
 
12 PREFACE 
 
 I wish also to thank Professor John D. Davis, T>. D., 
 chairman of the committee on the lectureship, for en- 
 couraging me to undertake the task, and also President 
 J. Ross Stevenson, D. D., for kindly preparing an In- 
 troduction to this volume ; as well as several religious 
 and missionary journals and magazines, particularly 
 The Sunday School Times and The Missionary Beview of the 
 Worldj for courteously permitting me to use paragraphs 
 and short articles which have appeared in their pages 
 and are now incorporated in these lectures. 
 
 I regret that the publication of the lectures has been 
 somewhat delayed. One of the results is that certain 
 adjustments require to be made. These concern not only 
 allusions to contemporary events, which are no longer 
 exactly contemporary ; but also descriptions of conditions, 
 some of which, in these rapidly moving times, have been 
 modified. The distance between China and America has 
 made it impracticable for the author to make these adjust- 
 ments for his readers. He can only ask them benevo- 
 lently to bear in mind that they are sometimes reading 
 history when the forms of statement are thrown into the 
 present tense. If they will kindly remember that, the 
 lectures, I trust, will not have suffered from the passage 
 of time. All description of living things becomes history 
 as soon as it is made, in any event 
 
 0. E. S. 
 Tsinfftauj North China, 1917, 
 
Contents 
 
 I. 
 
 The Land and the People 
 
 17 
 
 II. 
 
 EaoialTeaits 
 
 . 57 
 
 III. 
 
 The Crises of China's Ancient Wallei 
 Cities 
 
 ) 
 
 91 
 
 IV. 
 
 Sowing the Good Seed . 
 
 131 
 
 V. 
 
 The Market and the Tent 
 
 161 
 
 YI. 
 
 The Call and Its Answer 
 
 193 
 
 VII. 
 
 Salt and Its Savour . . . . 
 
 231 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " It Shall Not Come Nigh Thee '' 
 
 265 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Promise in Its First-Fruits . 
 
 295 
 
 13 
 
I 
 
 The Land and the People 
 A Study of Some Historical Facts 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 " A ND He made of one every nation of men for to 
 /\ dwell on all the face of the earth, having deter- 
 
 JL JL mined their appointed seasons, and the bounds 
 of their habitation ; that they should seek God " (Acts 
 17 : 26, 27). With this summary of the divine philoso- 
 phy of history in mind, the story of China becomes one of 
 absorbing interest. If it be true of nations, to adopt Dr. 
 Weymouth's translation, that God has fixed ^'a time for 
 their rise and fall, and the limits of their settlements,'' 
 or, according to Dean Alford, that God has "prescribed 
 to each nation its space to dwell and its time of endur- 
 ance," the history of that nation which comprises nearly 
 one quarter of the human race, and whose "time of en- 
 durance" has exceeded that of any other Empire, and 
 which to-day is "rousing itself from the torpor of ages 
 and under the influence of new and powerful revolution- 
 ary forces," cannot but be of commanding interest and 
 importance. 
 
 " Even the discovery of the American continent and 
 its islands, and the organization of society and govern- 
 ment upon them, grand and important as these events 
 have been, were but conditional, preliminary, and an- 
 cillary to the more sublime result now in act of consum- 
 mation — the reunion of the two civilizations which, parting 
 on the plains of Asia four thousand years ago, and travel- 
 ling ever afterwards in opposite directions around the 
 world, now meet again on the coasts and islands of the 
 
 19 
 
 ^ 
 
20 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 Pacific Ocean. Certainly no mere human event of equal 
 dignity and importance has ever occurred upon the earth. " 
 This profound reflection was enunciated by Lincoln's 
 great secretary, William H. Seward. And the chief 
 factor on the western side of the Pacific in this fateful 
 reunion is China. 
 
 Mr. Seward's words embody the deliberate verdict of 
 a galaxy of men, clear-eyed and far-visioned — American 
 statesmen like Clay, Benton, Webster ; European pub- 
 licists like DeTocqueville and Viscount Bryce ; foreign 
 generals like Chinese Gordon, Lords Wolseley and 
 Roberts; Asiatic administrators like Kitchener, Sir 
 Robert Hart, Lord Curzon and Dr. Morrison ; veteran 
 missionaries like Martin, Mateer, and Hayes ; diplo- 
 mats like Count Cassini, J. W. Foster, Wells Williams, 
 and Anson Burlingame ; expert government advisers 
 like Adams of Michigan, and Schurmann of Cornell j 
 naval strategists like Mahan, Von Tirpitz, and Lord 
 Beresford. They believe that China is the coming land 
 of towering importance. This unanimity of conviction, 
 possessing all classes of investigators, is one of the sur- 
 prises that confronts the student of Far Eastern Politics. 
 In a world where, and at this particular time when, its 
 leaders are so wofuUy at odds as to policies ; when rulers 
 differ so hopelessly in their view-point as to the fate of 
 neighbour nations j this singular accord of opinion as to 
 the future greatness of China is truly remarkable. 
 
 Napoleon, who usually thought in world-terms, foresaw 
 this day, saying : *^ A lion is asleep. Do not wake him. 
 When China is aroused she will change the face of the 
 world. " The Kings and Kaisers and Czars, their courts 
 and cabinets and chancelleries, have long understood 
 this, and only too well. Accordingly they have con- 
 centrated upon China their most searching investigation, 
 careful balancing of high probabilities, and astutest 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 21 
 
 machinations. Some of the craftiest schemes of dynastic 
 glory and uiitioiial aggrandizement that ever came out of 
 Europe have been at the expense of China. Why! 
 Because they realize that, as Lord Beresford says: 
 ** Whoever shall find a way to dominate China, either 
 through commerce or conquest of arms, will be able to 
 master the world even more effectively than did Eome in 
 her day." 
 
 And while the reason for the present world-war is the 
 unwillingness of Christendom to accept the law of Christ 
 as the rule of life, another reason that forms one of the 
 main backgrounds for it is the English and German com- 
 petition that had become ever keener and more tense, for 
 trade and political influence in China, most potential of 
 markets and the exploiter's paradise. And after the 
 Entente and Central Powers have settled scores, many 
 believe that Eussia and Japan, even though now allies, 
 will continue the rivalry for this great prize, until one 
 beats down the other. 
 
 The powers all realize that China is to bulk increas- 
 ingly immensely in the world's affairs— and, from their 
 view-point, bulk menacingly. Having seized ten-twelfths 
 of Africa, and practically all the islands of the seas, and 
 having subjugated or vassalized Asia, vastest of con- 
 tinents (except Japan and China, out of the latter of 
 which huge slices have been gouged), they cannot view 
 with equanimity the Coming of the Yellow Man. It 
 does not harmonize with the selfish and sedulously culti- 
 vated and ostentatiously assumed sense of racial superi- 
 ority of the white man, which assumption will have to 
 be eradicated by his *^ eating much bitterness " (as the 
 Chinese would say) ; for that assumption is a gratuitous 
 and insulting reflection on the character, history, and 
 ability of the great races of the East. 
 
 And yet, despite all asseverations of white superiority, 
 
22 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 this huge, inchoate thing looming out of the East excites 
 apprehension. Men are in no wise certain that their 
 position is one of security, of primacy, in the face of the 
 Asiatic breaking the barriers of his age-long isolation. 
 Hence for decades their policy of feverish preparation ; 
 this carving of territory while they dare ; this binding by 
 European Liliputians of the Asiatic Gulliver before he 
 fully rouses. 
 
 And those familiar with the new spirit that now seethes 
 in the Orient can conceive of how Europe, when it has 
 decimated itself with this sanguinary war among its own 
 members, may be faced with a vaster, more deadly one, 
 arising from the East. There is wrath, intense and 
 brooding, at the outrages perpetrated by Europe upon it. 
 There is fierce resentment against the white man's arro- 
 gance, so brutally displayed. There is an exultant real- 
 ization that, given modern arms and training, it need 
 no longer cringe before the relentless Western powers. 
 It has beaten them ^^many times, scores of times," as 
 Professor A. B. Hart of Harvard reminds us. And the 
 whole East, as symbolized in China, has lifted up its 
 head in the presence of the new and terrible castigations, 
 that, within a decade, the Japanese have visited upon 
 the two foremost military powers of the world. 
 
 There are certain mountain -peak events that stand out 
 and up above the levels of history, even as the Himalayas 
 tower over the plains of Asia. Among them are the de- 
 parture of Israel from Egypt ; the culture of Greece 
 stamping itself upon the Mediterranean civilizations ; 
 and Eome's march, over her roads and with her law, to 
 the confines of Europe. A fourth is the emergence of 
 China from her seclusion. Day by day China bulks 
 larger on the horizon of the Church Universal and of all 
 Governments. And whether her shadow is to loom por- 
 tentous or auspicious for the nations is the anxious ques- 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 23 
 
 tion of leaders everywhere. It is a subject so iusisteut 
 aud paramount that it bids fair iu the future to outrank, 
 as an international political issue, the rivalry of Briton 
 and Teuton, of Eussia and Japan. 
 
 China is the burning question of current history — irre- 
 pressible, fascinating and mysterious. Like Banquo^s 
 ghost, it '* will not down.'' The impossibility of relegat- 
 ing it to second place is that it interpenetrates the great 
 questions of foreign policy that concern the leading na- 
 tions of the world. With the discernment of committal 
 to Truth, John Hay saw this, and, prophet-like, he 
 spoke. To that truly good and great friend of China, 
 that champion of international justice aud fair play, to 
 whom armed Europe listened, and whom Eoosevelt called 
 America's ablest Secretary of State, is accredited the 
 prescient pronouncement: ^'The storm centre of world 
 politics, despite all eddies, has swept steadily eastward 
 — past the Holy Eoman Empire, the Balkans and Con- 
 stantinople ; past the Persian Gulf and India ; onward to 
 China, where it will remain ; and whoever understands 
 China— socially, economically, politically, intellectually, 
 religiously — has a key to world history for the next five 
 centuries. ' ' And Professor Eeinsch, now American Minis- 
 ter to Peking and long student of the Far East, felt justi- 
 fied more than a decade ago in writing in his " Welt- 
 Politik '' (p. 89) : "A careful consideration of the powers 
 engaged in the Chinese struggle, their politics and tend- 
 encies, is of the greatest necessity, is of the most ab- 
 sorbing interest. As a result of the emergence of China 
 from her seclusion a drama is about to be enacted, the 
 like of which the world has never seen. It dwarfs even 
 the conquests of Alexander ; and, compared with this 
 titanic struggle, the exploits of Napoleon seem a passing 
 diversion — and all previous meetings between the Orient 
 and Occident are the merest frontier skirmishes." In 
 
24: CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 this opinion he is supported by the testimony of modern 
 experts, witnesses out of every nation — a notable com- 
 pany of diplomats, merchants, bankers, editors, teach- 
 ers, journalists, manufacturers, missionaries who have 
 long resided in China and long studied the Far East. 
 
 If monarchical Europe is interested in China, much 
 more should democratic America be, especially since the 
 establishing of the Eepublic. The new administration 
 at Washington voiced that interest almost as soon as it 
 assumed authority. President Wilson, in a State Docu- 
 ment given to the world March 22, 1913, said: ^'The 
 Government of the United States is not only willing but 
 earnestly desirous of aiding the great Chinese people in 
 every way that is consistent with their untrammelled de- 
 velopment and its own immemorial principles. The 
 awakening of the people of China to a consciousness of 
 their possibilities under free government is the most sig- 
 nificant if not the most momentous event of our genera- 
 tion." And that good interest has been incontrovertibly 
 voiced by the United States in its early recognition of 
 the Chinese Republic, and in its withdrawal from the 
 Sextuple Loan unfairly conceived and callously carried 
 out. Note the two reasons given by the head of the 
 American Nation for interest in China. 
 
 Firsty the Government of the strongest Republic in the 
 world recognizes qualities of worth in the Chinese which 
 make it desire to do everything suggested by good judg- 
 ment and brotherliness to help the youngest and largest 
 Republic in the world. 
 
 Secondy President Wilson is deeply impressed with the 
 fact of the Chinese coming into ** a consciousness of their 
 possibilities under free government." Like other dis- 
 cerning students of China, he intimates that the Chinese 
 have never been moribund. In fact they have always been 
 very much alive. And this movement of theirs is not a 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 25 
 
 risiDg from the dead, but rather ^^an awakening," an 
 awakening accompanied by a right-about-face and "a 
 transfer of attention'^ from the past, in custom and life, 
 to the present ; from the theoretical to the practical ; 
 from themselves to the world — a change in conception as 
 to what constitutes national greatness. 
 
 Many experts qualified to pass judgment are certain 
 that the ** Eudder of Asia " ultimately will not be Japan. 
 In confirmation of this belief, rooted among those who 
 know the Far East, stand certain basic considerations, 
 inherent in China and the Chinese — their history, their 
 land, and their race-traits. These are calculated to win 
 for the young Eepublic and its people the interest and 
 respect of every man alive to momentous affairs of world- 
 wide significance. 
 
 China is the oldest of existing States, the only one that 
 has witnessed the rise and eclipse of the ancient empires 
 of the Valleys of the Nile and Euphrates. *'She was a 
 great monarchy ages before the foundation of the Eternal 
 City, and she was the most powerful Organization in the 
 world (though the West knew it not) during the centuries 
 of Eome^s decay ; ^^ and she has witnessed the earliest 
 feeble beginnings of all existing Governments — and she 
 is still with us. '^ From the obscurity of China's Golden 
 Age, nearly 3000 B. c, when, her classics tell us, 'all 
 men were good and doors required no bars, ' we trace her 
 story through the stirring times when valour in war 
 pushed her conquests eastward to Japan and westward 
 subdued the warlike Ghorkas;'' on down to the very 
 days of the last great woman ruler who seated and un- 
 seated sovereigns at pleasure, and who finally placed a 
 baby emperor, the last, on the world's greatest throne. 
 It is indeed something to have seen Egypt emerge, 
 Babylon fall, Nineveh destroyed and Greece crumble. 
 And the world to-day is being forced to consider the 
 
26 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 significance of this unique, unbroken life from hoary 
 antiquity. Of ancient contemporaries all have long since 
 vanished into mournful oblivion, save only the Jews j 
 and they as a race have lost their language, their land 
 and national existence, while the Chinese still possess 
 theirs. 
 
 Not only is China's longevity unique ; but the quality 
 and nature of the culture of this long life is also unique 
 and interest-compelling. The high state of civilization 
 to which the Chinese had attained, its solidity and di- 
 versity, when the West was still weltering in savagery, 
 may well afford food for thought. When the early in- 
 habitants of Ireland, clad in coats of blue paint, were 
 eating raw fish, refined Chinese poets were composing 
 exquisite odes, still extant, on "The Brevity of Life.'' 
 When our Scotch ancestors dwelt in caves and gnawed 
 flesh off the bones of wild animals, China was filled with 
 a vast network of walled cities, administrative centres 
 of empire. These cities were ruled in accord with written 
 and codified laws, were seats of learning where youths 
 were prepared for public office through civil service ex- 
 aminations. When the early dwellers in England were 
 dragging captives of war into the dark recesses of their 
 oak groves, and, with fearful Druidic rites, were offering 
 them up to their bloodthirsty gods, Chinese emperors 
 were offering prayers of singular purity and majesty to 
 Shaug Ti, Lord of Heaven, the One True God. 
 
 When the Goths were sallying forth on fierce forays in 
 the gloom of primeval forests, and observing generally 
 the law of tooth and ravin, Chinese rulers were extend- 
 ing the study of the classics, encouraging agriculture and 
 fathering the people. And when our Norse ancestors 
 (who conceived of their Heaven, Yalhalla, as a huge 
 slaughter house) were with battle axes splitting open the 
 Leads of their enemies and drinking their blood hot from 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 27 
 
 their skulls — tearing each other like dragons of the prime 
 — then Chinese students, seated in great libraries, were 
 studying their own ancient history, Chinese literati were 
 writing essays flawless in form, Chinese philosophers 
 were moralizing on the Princely Manner of Man ; and an 
 army of Chinese scholars in quiet cloisters were, at the 
 command of a great emperor, making a cyclopedia of 
 human knowledge that filled hundreds of tomes. 
 
 Long before our Teutonic fathers, clad in skins of wild 
 beasts, and wielding stone axes and sliding on their 
 shields down the snow-clad slopes of the Italian Alps to 
 loot and plunder and ravish and decimate fair Italy, 
 ruthlessly destroying the choicest that she had gathered 
 of the ancient civilization of Greece and Eome — ages be- 
 fore that, princely Chinese merchants, dressed in flowing 
 robes of brocaded silk and satins of fine texture and delicate 
 shades, were sending their caravans across Asia westward 
 to trade with ancient Eome. And in their palaces were 
 costly cloisonne, with a bewildering variety of potteries 
 and porcelains ; also precious inlaid and lacquered furni- 
 ture and exquisitely delicate paintings ; and their gardens 
 were full of exotic plants, trees and shrubbery, with 
 many varieties of flowers. To acquire samples of this 
 ancient art, great collectors, like Morgan and Frick, and 
 Government Museums, are glad now to pay large sums. 
 
 When Moses led the Israelites through the Wilderness, 
 Chinese laws and literature and religious knowledge ex- 
 celled that of Egypt. A hundred years before the North 
 Wind rippled over the harp of David, Wung Wang, an 
 Emperor of China, composed classics which are com- 
 mitted to memory to this day by every advanced scholar 
 of the land. When Homer was composing and singing 
 the Iliad, China's blind minstrels were celebrating her 
 ancient heroes, whose tombs had already been with them 
 through thirteen centuries. Her literature was fully de- 
 
28 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 veloped before England was invaded by the Norman 
 conquerors. 
 
 Even in far-off West China a vast and elaborate civiliza- 
 tion had been developed. Though isolated for a thou- 
 sand years, with Thibet shutting it off on one side and 
 the Yangtse gorges disputing the way from the east, the 
 trade from Europe nevertheless once passed that way. 
 It was the "land of Sinim " known to the Eomans, the 
 China knit with the Koman West by the great land route 
 over the highlands of central Asia before ever a European 
 keel had plowed the Yellow Sea. 
 
 And what China^s great and ancient walled cities have 
 been and may become is hinted at in the following facts. 
 A seventeen-year-old boy from Venice, Marco Polo by 
 name, entered China in 1270 A. D., by way of Chengtu, 
 the capital of Szechuan. He called it " a rich and noble 
 city." It was two hundred miles from Thibet, as near to 
 the Bay of Bengal as to the China Sea, which is nearly 
 two thousand miles to the eastward. But he found paved 
 streets there, in a day when Paris was a swamp and Lon- 
 don a mud-hole. This far inland city of half a million, 
 nearly as remote from the Yellow Sea to the north as 
 St. Paul is from the Gulf of Mexico, and cut off moreover 
 by the terrible rapids and whirlpools in the gorges of the 
 Yangtse Eiver, has recently and with astonishing avidity 
 appropriated a vast deal of Western culture. Seven days 
 on a houseboat through the Yangtse gorges and fourteen 
 days in a sedan chair brings one over the century-old 
 stone-paved road from Wan Hsien into the beautifully 
 located and beautifully built Chengtu, exceptionally clean 
 and boasting a fine city-water system and electric lights j 
 streets well paved and adequately policed, full of impress- 
 ive Government buildings and modern schools. 
 
 To the world's progress the Chinese early contributed 
 their share, though they still have much more to give. 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 29 
 
 It is appalling to think what the world would be with- 
 out paper. The Chinese made it during the period of 
 the Minor Prophets. More appalling still is it to think 
 what the world would be witliout the printed page. The 
 Chinese invented the art of printing five hundred years 
 before Caxton was born (1421-1491). They were making 
 books in large numbers centuries before Dr. Faustus 
 (1485-1540) played with his wooden blocks; indeed be- 
 fore the English language was in existence. Admiral 
 Mahan used to say that oceans were the principal means 
 of uniting races and disseminating culture. In view of 
 that statement it is significant that the Chinese invented 
 the mariner^ s compass, necessary precursor of steam and 
 electricity ; and when the forebears of the British Ad- 
 miralty, in willow- woven canoes, were hugging the shore- 
 line of Albion, the Chinese, by the use of this instrument, 
 were, in big junks, putting straight out to the open sea. 
 Gunpowder, which has revolutionized all military and 
 naval science, was first compounded by the Chinese and 
 used before the coming of the Prince of Peace ; and they 
 invented firearms as early as the reign of England^s 
 First Edward (1239-1307) and were using them efifectively 
 long before the last great Mohammedan conqueror, in 
 1453, shot down the gates and walls of Byzantium. 
 
 They developed and raised to a high standard silk 
 and tea and cotton culture, vastly utilizing them. They 
 were pioneers in the manufacture of exquisite and dainty 
 art-works in porcelain and silk and brass, enamel and 
 glazed ware, which have made not only her own, but the 
 wares of Korea and Japan, who learned from her, famous 
 the world over. The Great Wall and the Grand Canal 
 are striking evidences of the engineering skill and prac- 
 tical enterprise of the ancient Chinese. The former was 
 built to keep out the Mongol and Tartar hordes of the 
 North ; the latter to bind the capital with the whole realm 
 
30 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 by a cheap and safe inland route along which the tribute 
 could be forwarded. The Wall ran along the crest of the 
 mountains for 1,728 miles. The Canal ran through the 
 Continent from Peking to Canton. More men laboured 
 at one time in the construction of these vast works than 
 can be mustered in each of many other nations. The 
 Great Wall, General Grant said, dwarfed any other build- 
 iug feat upon the planet. It contains enough material to 
 build a barrier six feet high and a yard wide around the 
 globe at the Equator. The Grand Canal is the first of its 
 kind in the magnitude and difficulties of the undertak- 
 ing. And the point of interest in each for the modern 
 world is that ever since their construction they have been 
 monumental suggestors to man both of defense and of in- 
 land water traffic. 
 
 **The principles of what is now being taught in the 
 West as scientific agriculture lie in the * Chow Cere- 
 monial^ (a book written 3,000 years ago), which dis- 
 cusses the methods of transforming soil, silk culture, 
 cotton selections, utilization of waste, etc.^' "Ages ago, 
 as to-day, the Chinese were the most skillful agricultur- 
 alists and irrigators and cooks. They dug salt wells 
 8,000 feet deep centuries before Solomon was born. / 
 They had civil service examinations for office ages before 
 Abraham received the blessing from Melchisedek." 
 
 They have many rivers in West China but few floods. 
 Twenty-one centuries ago a son of Szechuan built a mov- 
 able dam across the river Min, which absolutely controls 
 the flood waters and diverts them to irrigation. That 
 dam is one of the engineering wonders of the world. In 
 vast sections, as in Szechuan Province, not a drop of 
 water goes to waste. Every river which flows into the 
 Chengtu Plain from the snowy highlands of Thibet is 
 skillfully caught and harnessed to the work of irrigation. 
 These terraced puddy fields are hundreds of years old. 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 31 
 
 They never are allowed to fall into disrepair. The irri- 
 gation system of West China is an example of engineer- 
 ing skill comparable to the Dykes of Holland. The rich- 
 ness of the soil, the warmth of the climate, the abundance 
 of water and the indefatigable industry of the people, 
 combine to give West China several crops a year. 
 
 In this day and age of senseless extravagance in the 
 Western World, the lesson of frugality, which the Chinese 
 can teach, ought not to pass unnoticed. It is a real con- 
 tribution to modern civilization. Frugality is an age- 
 long Chinese virtue — nothing can go to waste. The 
 Chinese use four hundred and seventy-eight different 
 plants for food. They have to ; because in Szechuan, 
 with only the area of France, they have twice the popu- 
 lation. 
 
 One of the roots of this world-war is the privileged 
 military aristocracy of Europe. Had there not been this 
 well-organized and highly developed and all-powerful 
 militaristic caste on the Continent to-day, who can say 
 that this conflict, as gigantic as excuseless, would have 
 been ^ irrepressible^' ? In China Shih Huang Ti, a great 
 ruler who preceded the Hsia, Shang, Chow, Tsin, Han, 
 Tang, Sung, Yuan, Ming and Tsing Dynasties — one of 
 which alone had thirty-five sovereigns — this Emperor, 
 seeing the evil of such feudalism, parent of the system 
 existing in Europe to-day, abolished it. In Europe to^ 
 day there are classes of privilege into which a man can^ 
 not break. That condition has not obtained in China foi 
 centuries. According to her ancient system, the veriest 
 peasant boy was eligible, through dint of hard study, 
 and by passing the graded examinations, for the most 
 coveted viceroyship of the land. 
 
 It is interesting to see this fact set forth from the view^ 
 point of a talented Chinese leader. He says: '* Since 
 the fall of feudalism with the destruction of the Choa 
 
33 CHINA FKOM WxiHlN 
 
 Empire, the people of China have remained essentially a 
 free democracy — where all good and talented men are 
 equal in every respect. Every man, whatever his rank 
 in society or his wealth or his poverty, had always the 
 same opportunities and could, by his abilities, rise to the 
 highest rung of the social ladder. lifot only have there 
 been no caste distinctions, but also no class barriers. In 
 this respect, we Chinese have a social order, as regards 
 its humanity and democratic spirit, perhaps equal if not 
 superior to that of the most developed and free country 
 in the West. For these reasons, the officers under the 
 successive empires of the past had always been obliged 
 to govern through the local social headmen of the pro- 
 vincial communities, whose rights were further attended 
 to by special guilds and societies." 
 
 The whole weight of China's ancient system has been 
 against war. Its people are not only the most enduring, 
 but most peaceful of all ages. Though it has fought and 
 conquered many times, it has never looked upon itself as 
 a laud and a race of warriors. Whereas the scholar, as 
 the framer of the ideals of the nation, was put highest in 
 the social scale ; and the farmer, as the honourable pro- 
 ducer of the means of life, was put second ; the soldier- 
 class, alone in China of all nations, ancient or modern, 
 was put lowest — his trade being that of destruction. 
 Who can estimate the weight of China for world -peace, 
 when she shall speak with the might of hundreds of mil- 
 lions of enlightened citizens trained against the thought 
 of war as the conventional way of settling international 
 disputes ? Is it worth nothing to the world to-day — this 
 age-long custom of the Chinese with regard to differences 
 of opinion? Their method is to secure a middleman, 
 and talk it out, each side conceding something in order 
 to a settlement that obviates mutilation and destruction 
 of the temples of the Eternal Spirit. 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 33 
 
 Given Cliiua's institutions and traditions, with her con- 
 sequent attitude towards the repulsiveness of butchering 
 men as a method of determining opposing view-points, 
 it is not strange that the authorities of the Eepublic did 
 what may have seemed to the world at large an incon- 
 gruous thing. The Government of a heathen nation 
 issued a call for its officials to meet with Chinese Chris- 
 tians — for what ? To pray for * ^ Christian ^ ' Europe reek- 
 ing in its men-shambles ; to pray that its war, conceived 
 in iniquity, and the most gigantic of history, might 
 cease ; and that peace might once more prevail upon the 
 earth ! This episode deserves more than passing notice. 
 It is the second time that the officials of the Chinese Ee- 
 public have called upon the Christian churches in the 
 land for a season of special prayer. On April 27, 1913, 
 prayer was sought for China ; to-day it is for those suffer- 
 ing from the terrible war in Europe. By the advice or 
 invitation of President Yuan Shi Kai, Sunday, October 
 18, 1914, was set aside as such a day of prayer for 
 Europe, and representatives of the Eepublic were pres- 
 ent at many of the services in every section of the land. 
 In Amoy, for instance, there were present the Taotai 
 Wang Shou Chen ; the Su-beng Magistrate, Lai Ju Lin ; 
 also Hsin Kuei Fang, the second in command of the 
 Amoy Forts ; Wang Ch'en Chang, Chief of Police ; and 
 Chen Ugen Tao, Diplomatic Officer of Amoy. The 
 Taotai spoke in part as follows : 
 
 *' We meet here this afternoon to pray for peace, and 
 I am exceedingly glad to have a part in these exercises. 
 As I see it there is not a man that does not desire happi- 
 ness — not a man that does not desire to see peace reign- 
 ing everywhere throughout the world. This war, the 
 result of militarism, has torn the world to pieces. The 
 President of the United States tried his best to act as 
 peacemaker, but adverse forces were too strong. And 
 
34 CHINA FKOM WITHIN 
 
 now, man having reached the limit of his resources, we 
 come to pray /or help from Reaven. 
 
 ** The Book of Odes tells us that the great God rules 
 all under Heaven, and with splendid power influences 
 the nations of the world for peace. The Historical 
 Classic says : ' Heaven pities the people and most cer- 
 tainly hears their cry in time of need. ' Heaven does not 
 want strife, and will assuredly understand your pur- 
 pose. Washington was a man of prayer and in the time 
 of the Kevolution a portion of every day was spent in 
 prayer. Lincoln also, during the civil war in America, 
 spent much time in prayer, and at such a time as the 
 present we do well to remember his words and manner 
 of prayer. He did not pray especially for the success of 
 his own armies — not that his soldiers might prove vic- 
 torious, — but that war might cease and the world be at 
 peace. 
 
 ^'Eecently President Wilson called for a day of uni- 
 versal prayer in behalf of the struggle in Europe j we 
 are thus but following his example in meeting here this 
 afternoon to pray that war may cease and universal 
 peace be established throughout the entire world. And 
 so to-day unitedly and with one voice in unison with 
 this whole nation, we lift our hearts in prayer. God 
 is not afar off. He is at all times near — in reciprocal 
 relation — and so will hear and bestow peace in answer 
 to prayer — prayer of unbounded, unlimited power." 
 
 Much has been said about Confucianism being adopted 
 as the religion of the Eepublic; but such spectacles 
 seem far from proving it. However, it is to be remem- 
 bered that the leaders who speak thus are but as a drop 
 in the pond, compared with the vast masses who grovel 
 in superstition. 
 
 The citizens of democracies and republics are usually 
 against war per se. And men in monarchies who are 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 35 
 
 masters of themselves, not subject as henchmen to the 
 sudden caprice and irresponsible mandate of an over- 
 lord living by pillage and violence, have also been 
 against that method of settling disputes. Such men are 
 apt to possess their own hard-earned and carefully kept 
 property. And such small landholders are the vast 
 mass of Chinese folk. At first sight it is an astonishing 
 fact that, in the most ancient and despotic of empires, 
 the Chinese have long been a democratic people. The 
 world hardly realizes that theirs has been a nominal ab- 
 solutism, an autocracy not like the Russian or Prussian 
 but superimposed as an extraneous thing — superimposed 
 because the people have long determined how much they 
 would tolerate in rulers and what taxes they would pay 
 — which fact the officials have known only too well, care- 
 fully observing the limit. The Eei^ublican form of 
 government, i. e., rule by chosen representatives, ap- 
 peals instinctively to the Chinese. 
 
 How this can be so, contrary to the Western concep- 
 tion of the Celestial, is explained by a distinguished 
 Southern Chinaman, Lun Boon Kang, in his English lec- 
 ture, "The Spirit of Independence,^^ delivered in Jan- 
 uary, 1913. 
 
 "Despite appearances to the contrary, the Chinese 
 have for two thousand years maintained, under every 
 disadvantage and discouragement, a spirit of personal 
 and communal independence, which compares favour- 
 ably even with the so-called liberty in the freest states 
 of the West. What though a despot sat on the dragon 
 throne — theoretically with autocratic powers, neither Im- 
 perial nor provincial authorities could touch the rights 
 and privileges of the people in their towns, villages or 
 homes. 
 
 "Historically we may trace the formation of this na- 
 tional character to the warring times at the end of the 
 
86 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 great Chou Dynasty — which succumbed to the meteoric 
 genius of the T'sin Emperor. The period of the Han 
 restored the Confucian principles which T'sin Shih. 
 hwangti endeavoured to obliterate in Chinese writing by 
 the infamous burning of books. During the subsequent 
 rise and fall of the ruling power in successive periods, 
 the Confucian precepts concerning the rights of the 
 people have never been disputed — the Emperors of each 
 successive dynasty having undertaken to conform to an- 
 cient usages, and to be the protectors of the liberties of 
 the people. In fact, from the founder of the Han, down 
 to the last regent of the Ching, each Chinese ruler had 
 always admitted that he was only the servant of the 
 people — whose sufferings were due to his misgovern- 
 ment, and whose prosperity was his greatest joy. This 
 had ever been the theoretical profession, although in 
 actual practice both Emperors and their ofiicers often 
 acted regardless of their duties or their promises. The 
 people, however, submitted to an Imperial regime from 
 age to age, because their domestic and provisional rights 
 were never tampered with." 
 
 In further elucidation of this political phenomenon, he 
 adds: ^*So long as democracy was merely contented to 
 suffer the Imperial Government to remain as the cheapest 
 and easiest way of maintaining the national life, on con- 
 dition that the liberties of the people were not encroached 
 upon, the Ch'iug Government continued apparently to 
 exercise almost despotic powers. But foreign nations 
 soon learned that Peking could not influence provincial 
 centres, and that treaties made with the Central Govern- 
 ment remained ineffective until the people could be 
 coerced by force to observe them. But the preaching 
 of the principles of Republicanism gave the democracy 
 of China a definite policy, a common aim, and a satis- 
 factory means of solving the Manchu difficulty as well aa 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 37 
 
 maintainiug the integrity of the immense national terri- 
 tory. After fifteen years of indefatigable labours, Dr. Sun 
 Yat Sen succeeded in founding foci of republican thinkers 
 all over the world where Chinese had colonized, as well 
 as in every provincial city throughout the Oh'ing Empire. 
 He thus incurred the implacable hatred of the Manchus, 
 and it seems miraculous he ever lived to be the first 
 president of the first true republic of Asia, if we take 
 into consideration the enormous prize for his head offered 
 by the Manchu court, the number of assassins paid to 
 trace his footsteps, and the attempt to kidnap him even 
 in London. The fact that he could move safely in dense 
 centres of Chinese population during all this time, visit- 
 ing China herself surreptitiously in these years, is the 
 most solid proof of the democratic ideas of the people." 
 
 Thus a flood of light is thrown on the fact that when 
 our ancestors in the black forests of Germany as yet knew 
 nothing of the Witenagemote, that council of elders 
 elected by freemen (the boasted beginning of our town- 
 meetings and of Anglo-Saxon freedom) — ages ago, the 
 Chinese, inherent and instinctive democrats, were, as 
 unto this day, governing their villages by the system of 
 ruling elders chosen from responsible families. Indeed 
 Professor Giles, in his ^* Civilization of China, '^ affirms 
 that, ** China, aside from all considerations of the form 
 of its government, has for centuries been, and still in- 
 trinsically is, by virtue of the nature of its village 
 organization, the greatest rei)ublic the world has ever 
 seen." And Dr. A. H. Smith is not alone in believing 
 that in consonance with this system : " It is very possible 
 that China will become the greatest structure, politically 
 as well as socially, ever erected on the face of the earth. " 
 
 China lies in what Gladstone called ^Hhe zones of 
 power," in which the most masterful races have operated. 
 Extending from the eighteenth parallel of latitude north- 
 
38 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 ward to the fifty-fourth (as if from Guatemala to Labrador) 
 this country has every variety of climate from the semi- 
 arctic of the highlands to the semi-tropical heat of the 
 Malay Peninsula. Exclusive of Western Turkestan, 
 Anam, Cochin China, Formosa and Korea — all recently 
 filched away before China began to rouse to the animus 
 of foreigners— ^^ the term, taken in its widest sense," says 
 Professor Giles, ^ includes Mongolia, Manchuria, Eastern 
 Turkestan, Thibet and the Eighteen Provinces, the whole 
 equivalent to some five million square miles ; ^. e., con- 
 siderably more than twice the size of the United States, 
 forty-seven times that of Great Britain, forty times that 
 of Germany or France, one-tenth of the habitable globe, 
 one and one-half the size of Europe. The Eighteen 
 Provinces proper occupy not quite two-fifths of the 
 whole, covering 1,532,420 square miles, about as large 
 as that part of the United States lying east of the 
 Mississippi Eiver. Their chief landmarks are Peking, 
 the capital of the north ; Canton, the great commercial 
 centre In the south ; Shanghai on the east, and the 
 Thibetan frontier on the west. Of the Eighteen Prov- 
 inces proper only five are smaller than Ed gland and 
 Wales combined." The four additional outlying do- 
 minions, already ear-marked by England, Russia and 
 Japan, are, as hinted above, larger than all the provinces 
 combined. 
 
 When one reaches Shanghai from New York he is, in 
 regard to time, just half-way to what is understood to 
 be distinctly *^West China.'' Lay China over North 
 America, with Shanghai on New York and Canton on 
 Mobile, then, roughly speaking, Chengtu, the capital 
 of West China, would lie near Kansas City. Imagine 
 the entire population of the United States and Canada 
 crowded into Tennessee, Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, 
 Oklahoma, Nebraska and Iowa. That is West China, 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 39 
 
 an unknown land as yet, with a population of over one 
 hundred million. 
 
 As over against this plethora of human beings con- 
 gested in relatively small space, it is especially interesting 
 now, when in Europe *' manifest destiny " and ** necessity 
 for more territory " are deluging the world with blood — 
 to consider the extensive unexplored sections of China, 
 waiting for any possible overflow of population to de- 
 velop them. No need for the Chinese to seek an East 
 Africa or a Brazil, a Canada or an Australia. They are 
 at their door. There are vast regions in Eastern Mongolia 
 and a noble heritage in Manchuria which could easily 
 support one hundred million people instead of less than 
 twenty, as at present ; while exporting much grain, beans 
 and other food stuff as well. North of Harbin China 
 possesses about 300,000 square miles of territory of which 
 not one- tenth is under cultivation. East and northeast 
 of Harbin lies a magnificent tract of laud containing over 
 100,000 square miles of plains and hills, most of which 
 might be cultivated. 
 
 The Eighteen Provinces have some six hundred million 
 acres of splendid soil for agriculture. In this respect, as 
 in natural resources and opportunities, experts agree 
 that China is the only real rival of the United States in 
 all the world. 
 
 Mr. E. S. Little, one of the most able and authoritative 
 geographers of China, who has travelled for many years 
 in all parts of the land charting its elevations and noting 
 its agricultural and mining possibilities, returned Sep- 
 tember 23, 1913, from the Amur region, bringing a 
 specially prepared map with him. He says that the 
 revelation of the country and its possibilities came to 
 him "as a shock. '^ Here is one paragraph from his re- 
 port: 
 
 "The bulk of the Chinese have probably never heard 
 
40 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 of the province at all, and foreigners have had such a 
 hazy impression of it that they were discouraged from 
 any sort of investigation ; yet actually it is of absorbing 
 interest both politically and commercially. The river 
 Amur is navigable for more than two thousand miles 
 from the sea, and is fed by great numbers of smaller 
 navigable arteries, the total length of water being esti- 
 mated at 42,000 miles. 
 
 "The great plains are covered with a grass which could 
 support millions of cattle, and the land could produce 
 cereals in vast abundance. There are rich deposits of 
 all kinds of metals and minerals— as vast as yet virgin. 
 The forests are so extensive that one expert told me that 
 eight to ten million fine trees could be cut out every year 
 for hundreds of years without in any way destroying the 
 existence or the usefulness of the forests. The rivers 
 were so stocked that they promise rich harvests for any 
 one working them.^' 
 
 This is typical of many other sections practically un- 
 known to the outside world — new lands of China waiting 
 to be discovered and settled by its own people. And 
 this fact has i)ractical bearing on this world cataclysm. 
 Gladstone once propounded and proved a famous thesis : 
 " No nation can remain permanently great that does not 
 have an adequate physical basis of empire." For lack 
 of it, European nations plead the necessity of their vast 
 seizures all over the globe. For lack of it some of the 
 parties to this war justify their participation in it, as 
 well as their earlier engaging, each, in several other wars. 
 China already has the physical basis. 
 
 China's natural resources are staggering in their vast- 
 ness — practically untouched, unparallelled, incalculable. 
 Professor N. S. Shaler in a notable article in The Interna- 
 tional Quarterly on *'The Exhaustion of the World's 
 Supply of Iron and Copper,'' lays down the thesis that 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 41 
 
 these are " the mainstays of our existing civilization." 
 And of these two "iron is the prime metal of civiliza- 
 tion." He shows that in Europe the iron fields ^* are be- 
 ginning to be exhausted." Great Britain has practically 
 consumed its store, which a century ago seemed ample. 
 All American iron fields have been noted and marked 
 out; no new discoveries need be expected. In China, 
 however, coal and iron occur widely and together^ a most 
 valuable combination. Conditions of climate and labour 
 are also favourable. 
 
 *' China's combination of resources makes the struggle 
 of England and Germany, of Japan and Eussia, for as- 
 cendancy in China to take on world meaning ; for on that 
 control depends in large measure the economic mastery 
 of the Pacific, on whose rim dwell over one-half the 
 population of the globe. " 
 
 And what are these mineral resources? He says; 
 *^ The astonishing fact is that almost every province has 
 a rich and varied store of civilization's necessities — im- 
 mense deposits of coal, iron, limestone, copper, silver, 
 tin, lead, zinc, gold, gypsum, alum, marbles, precious 
 stones, platinum, nickel, natural gases, nitre, antimony, 
 slates, quicksilver, petroleum, manganese, mercury, 
 granites, salt.'' How abundant are these resources may 
 be surmised from the fact that 419,000 square miles are 
 already officially reckoned to be underlaid with coal. 
 Into these mineral sections the Chinese Government is 
 beginning to construct railroads, opening up "the largest 
 and finest coal and iron mines thus far known to man." 
 
 "Baron Eichofen, the German expert, after a laborious 
 investigation of many years, submitted to the German 
 Government a three- volume report of the coal and iron 
 resources of China, showing that they are the richest in 
 the world. He found coal in fifteen of the eighteen 
 provinces examined by him ; and reckoned that six hun- 
 
42 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 dred billion tons of it are anthracite. And in the prov- 
 ince of Shansi he reported enough coal to supply the hu- 
 man race at the present rate of consumption for several 
 thousand years. Beside huge beds of bituminous coal, 
 this province of 55,000 square miles is estimated to con- 
 tain no less than 14,000 square miles of anthracite aver- 
 aging twenty- one feet thick. Travellers in many places 
 can see that coal outcropping on the roadside j whole 
 villages are built directly upon it as a floor. Side by 
 side with these supplies of coal, Baron Richofen found 
 vast supplies of iron ore. The German Government was 
 so amazed by the Baron's report that an expert commis- 
 sion was sent to China in 1897 to reexamine his data, 
 and this commission fully verified Baron Richofen's esti- 
 mate'' (Bishop J. W. Bashford). Incidentally these 
 reports were factors in sending the Germans into 
 Shantung. 
 
 Geologists report that the principal seam in Shansi is 
 at a distance of one hundred and fifty to three hundred 
 feet above the flinty limestone, and varies in thickness 
 from twelve to thirty feet. The available anthracite in 
 Shansi is estimated at 630,000 millions of tons, of the 
 same quality as Pennsylvania anthracite ; while the bitu- 
 minous deposits of Shansi are still greater than its an- 
 thracite. The coal beds of Szechuan are also enormous, 
 and the railway line being built from Canton to Hankow 
 in the heart of China, some eight hundred and fifty miles, 
 passes some of the richest coal and iron fields in the 
 whole world. Yunnan, more than twice the size of Eng- 
 land and Wales, whose boundaries are coterminous with 
 the Burin an frontier for hundreds of miles, is one of the 
 richest of all China in coal, gold, copper, salt and 
 precious stones. 
 
 These provinces of Szechuan and Yunnan, together 
 with Kweichow, constitute what is technically called 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 43 
 
 "West China.'* Though hoary with age, they, by all 
 the iudications of their potentialities, belong to the fu- 
 ture. The people are there, the resources are there. 
 
 " West China " is recognized as the richest land in the 
 world. After having fed one hundred million people 
 merely by the intensive cultivation of truck-gardening 
 for centuries, her fields, which lie in the latitude of 
 Georgia and Florida, produce as prodigally as ever, two 
 and three crops a year. 
 
 As for mines, no one dare prophesy their value. The 
 mineral wealth of West China is practically untouched ; 
 but it is safe to say, on the authority of geological ex- 
 perts, that when the world's other stores of metal are 
 exhausted, West China will still have enough for all of us. 
 
 Also innumerable cascades flash down the ravines of 
 the extensive mountain chains, utilizable, as in the case 
 of Niagara harnessed, for the production of the electric 
 power that the industrial age demands. " Sooner or 
 later," says Lord Roualdshay, *' the much needed work- 
 ing plan will be found ; and, when this comes about, it is 
 difficult to see what is to prevent China from becoming 
 the greatest industrial country in the world. . . . And 
 when China shall have been changed from being merely 
 an agricultural nation, and have become also a manufac- 
 turing nation, through the well-nigh inexhaustible sup- 
 plies of coal and iron, twin pillars of modern industry, 
 who can measure her material power and greatness ? " 
 
 Such physical resources naturally suggest and make 
 inevitable wonderful commercial possibilities. Not only 
 is there vast potential welfare in sight, but already there 
 is great wealth in cash, circulating throughout China in 
 the business done to-day. The world is somewhat de- 
 ceived by appearances. Not seeing immense capital put 
 into public enterprises and government undertakings, it 
 imagines there is none available. 
 
U CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 Foreigners should remember that the great merchant 
 classes, only too painfully familiar with age-long fraudu- 
 lent schemes of the officials, are shy of advancing money 
 for large public works and undertakings. Bitter experi- 
 ence has taught them not to take kindly to smooth pro- 
 moters of plans, even for government undertakings. 
 
 The country is possessed of many holes in the ground 
 in which the fortunes of the gulled have been fruitlessly 
 sunk ; many highways, so-called only by the largest 
 stretch of the imagination, on which zealous officials for 
 ages have been collecting repair money which those high- 
 ways have never seen. The Chinese have been forced to 
 live in a realm of distrust and suspicion. But that does 
 not prove that there is not money in the land for legiti- 
 mate enterprise, legitimately carried on. 
 
 No student, informed on the subject, can doubt that 
 China has the brain and the brawn vastly to increase 
 her wealth. As yet, under the heathen conditions these 
 physical and mental assets cannot be adequately applied 
 to the development of the Creator's boundless gifts. As 
 yet the people have not learned to trust each other. Thus 
 as a race they do not take to large-scale commercial or 
 industrial organization. ^* Each for himself is safer," 
 they argue. Moreover, relatively little as yet goes into 
 the Central Government projects, because each province 
 is in itself a great government, needing much money both 
 to meet its Eevolutionary debts and to finance its re- 
 organization schemes. 
 
 China's outfit for commercial supremacy, through lav- 
 ish gifts of nature, is superb. The Yangtse River alone 
 has in its system over twelve thousand miles of navigable 
 waterways. They penetrate nearly one-half of China 
 proper. " No country can compare with her for natural 
 facilities of inland navigation." Being thus interlaced 
 with a network of canals and rivers, business and cheap 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 45 
 
 transport are greatly facilitated. And it is unique in 
 physical geography that Hankow, at the geographical 
 heart of China, to which continental trunk railroad lines 
 converge and to which more will converge, from all di- 
 rections, can accommodate ocean liners at her piers, six 
 hundred and eighty miles up the Yangtse from the sea. 
 
 Existing railroads are yielding thirty per cent, divi- 
 dends ; and communication, by rapidly extending tele- 
 graph, post-roads, railway, and newspaper, is opening up 
 the entire country. For example, authorities advertise 
 that Tsingtau, via Manchuria and Siberia, is only four- 
 teen days from London, Peking only twelve ; and great 
 trunk lines are in planning and being built from east to 
 west, and north to south, that will greatly cut into this 
 record. Japan's railway in Manchuria and Eussia's in 
 Siberia will be left relatively high and dry when the new 
 inter-continental traffic lines planned by the Chinese and 
 other Governments are put into operation — lines shooting 
 passengers across Asia into Southern and Central Europe 
 in a period of six to eight days. Already immense quan- 
 tities of pig iron are being shipped to America and sold 
 at non-competable prices; and the iron works at Han 
 Yang are exporting large consignments to Japan, Mexico 
 and South America. Even now, from far up the 
 Yangtse, Chinese pig iron is being sold on the Chicago 
 market for less than it can be laid down there from 
 Pittsburgh. And China is just beginning to accept 
 modern inventions and to introduce labour-saving ma- 
 chinery. 
 
 Professor Eeinsch thus voices the conviction of many 
 publicists that vast industrial and commercial expansion 
 is ahead : ** When we picture to ourselves the eighteen 
 provinces, many of which in their natural wealth sur- 
 pass, by far, countries like Germany and France, there is 
 little room for doubt that, when the industrial forces of 
 
46 CHINA FEOM WITHIN 
 
 this region have ouce been set in motion, China will in 
 truth become the ' Tsung Kwei ' (Middle Kingdom, or 
 Eealm of the Centre). The coal and mineral wealth of 
 China, taken in connection with the vast and highly- 
 trained, frugal and capable population, will, during the 
 coming century, make the huge Eepublic the industrial 
 centre of the world, and the Pacific the chief centre of 
 commerce. This is possible in the case of China, be- 
 cause, unlike Japan, she is most abundantly provided 
 with coal and iron in close proximity to each other, so 
 that the distance and cost of transportation of raw ma- 
 terial will be reduced to a minimum ; and factories can 
 be established in localities where fuel, material and labour 
 exist in the greatest abundance. " 
 
 Business uuder the Eepublic has been growing by 
 leaps and bounds. Despite the Eevolution, the Customs 
 Gazette shows that China^s custom receipts during the 
 Eevolution year, 1912, increased vastly over 1911. 
 
 Total Hal Kwan Taels for 1911, 7,402,667,422 
 " '' '' " '' 1912, 11,274,948,422 
 
 And, despite the Eebellion of 1913, there was a steady in- 
 crease in Custom Eevenues also during 1914, till the out- 
 break of this world -war. 
 
 And why should there not be? China has potenti- 
 alities to make trade — a hardy, thrifty, brainy folk ; 
 fertile soil, rich minerals, and navigable rivers. There 
 are estimated now to be 600,000,000 acres of arable land, 
 mostly in small plots, and so carefully cultivated by 
 their peasant owners, that the country is one panorama 
 of eye-gladdening fertility. China, because of her many 
 kinds of fruits, vegetables and cereals, bids fair, when 
 she begins to apply the latest scientific methods and 
 agricultural machinery, to become the orchard and 
 garden and granary of the world. With the iseacoast 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 47 
 
 on her front studded with harbours, and fed into by a 
 future network of raih'oads, highways, canals and rivers ; 
 and with labour cheaper than elsewhere ; why should not 
 China become the trade mistress of the world ? 
 
 Europe has marvelled why the United States allowed 
 the South American markets to pass, uncontended for, 
 into the hands of England, Germany and Japan. It is 
 much more marvellous why it did not strain every 
 nerve to capture the trade of its nearest neighbour to the 
 west. At last American chambers of commerce and 
 business men's associations are beginning to investigate ; 
 and American oil, tobacco, cigarettes, liquors and sew- 
 ing machines are especially being pushed into China. It 
 is for business men everywhere to realize — and the sooner 
 the better— that, as Dr. A. H. Smith says : ** The theatre 
 of commercial and political activity in this century has 
 already shifted to the Pacific Ocean. . . . With her 
 two thousand miles of coast line facing the Pacific ; with 
 a people equal to, if not superior to, the Anglo-Saxon in 
 industry, economy and perseverance ; with millions of 
 cheap labourers and almost unlimited raw material ; 
 with improved methods of agriculture and the introduc- 
 tion of modern machinery in mining and manufacturing ; 
 with the expansion of navigation and the extension of 
 railroads ; with the establishment of a stable monetary 
 system and commercial confidence ; with the peopling 
 and development of the vast hinterland of Manchuria, 
 Mongolia, Thibet and Turkestan, is it not reasonable to 
 suppose that, when the strongest race of the Orient is 
 thoroughly awakened, the mastery of the Pacific com- 
 mercially as well as politically will be in the hands of 
 the Chinese!" 
 
 "American trade with China, under reciprocal treaty 
 stipulations," says Dr. A. A. Fulton, "should reach five 
 hundred million gold dollars yearly. This is a mild put- 
 
48 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 tiDg of the case, when one remembers that an increased 
 average annual income of only five shillings ($1.25) 
 per head in China means a probable increased trade 
 to the world at large, in China or out of it, of about 
 £100,000,000." 
 
 Is it nothing, then, to the business men of the world 
 that China has started on a path of great industrial de- 
 velopment ? If, up to the present, China has been able 
 to sustain the vastest of all national populations largely 
 by farming and by such crude manufacturing as can be 
 carried on by hand — what of the future, when Chinese 
 commerce, manufacture and business are developed, and 
 have stretched out their tentacles to seize the trade of 
 the world ? 
 
 According to the recent Chinese Customs Census, the 
 Chinese number four hundred and forty million, one- 
 fourth the population of the globe, and three-fourths the 
 people of the Pacific basin. To Lord Balfour, preaching 
 imperialism, is attributed the political axiom: **For a 
 state to enjoy permanent political greatness, not only 
 must it have an adequate physical basis of empire, it 
 must also have a numerous and virile population. '' 
 . . . What this means can be realized as one re- 
 views the struggles of Athens, Sparta and Thebes for 
 the hegemony of the Grecian States ; of Florence, Venice 
 and Pisa, to dominate the kingdoms and City Eepublics 
 of Mediaeval Italy ; of Holland to maintain her fight 
 against Britain for sea supremacy . . . and all 
 finally losing, for lack of men. And within only the 
 last few months Montenegro, as intrepid as tiny, had the 
 will, single-handed, to throw down the gauntlet to the 
 great powers of Europe, when they in united puissance 
 blockaded her one lone harbour. And to-day the cry 
 of her gallant king, as of maev another ruler, ^: "Oh, 
 if I only had the men i '» 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 49 
 
 The Rev. W. M. Hayes, D. D., is one of China's ablest 
 sinelogues, educators and missionary statesmen. Dwell- 
 ing in the laud for thirty years, he concisely puts the 
 situation in these words : " Population is to a nation what 
 cells are to a battery — the electro- motive power depends 
 on it. And China has the cells." For example, Szech- 
 uan Province alone has nearly seventy million people ; 
 and Shantung about forty millions, with an average of 
 six hundred and eighty-three people to the square mile ; 
 in sections, 2,150 to the square mile. The Chinese are 
 numerous enough to equal the warring nations of Europe, 
 plus several neutrals. 
 
 Population of Warring Europe and that of interested 
 Neutrals^ compared with that of China, 
 
 England, 
 
 
 34,045,290 
 
 
 Scotland, 
 
 
 4,760,904 
 
 
 Ireland, 
 
 
 4,390,215 
 
 
 Wales, . 
 
 
 2,025,202 
 
 
 Canada, 
 
 
 7,900,000 
 
 
 Australia, 
 
 
 6,200,000 
 
 
 New Zealand, 
 
 
 1,039,417 
 
 
 Fiji Islands, . 
 
 
 130,981 
 
 
 British South Africa, 
 
 
 5,317,604 
 
 
 Egypt, . 
 
 
 9,821,100 
 
 
 Isle of Man and Channc 
 
 3lis. 
 
 148,915 
 
 75,779,628 
 
 France, . 
 
 35,631,509 
 
 
 Algeria, 
 
 
 5,600,000 
 
 
 Morocco, 
 
 
 5,000,000 
 
 
 Madagascar, . 
 
 
 2,505,000 
 
 
 French Congo, 
 
 
 8,000,000 
 
 46,736,509 
 
 Montenegro, . 
 
 • 
 
 230,000 
 
 
 
 
 230,000 
 
 Servia, . 
 
 • 
 
 2,911,701 
 
 
 
 
 2,911,701 
 
50 
 
 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 Portugal, 
 Port. Africa, 
 
 
 • • 
 
 • • 
 
 5,400,000 
 8,000,000 
 
 13,400,000 
 
 Eussian Poland, 
 
 • • 
 
 4,000,000 
 
 4,000,000 
 15,423,784 
 
 Belgium, 
 
 " Congo, 
 
 • • 
 
 • • 
 
 7,423,784 
 8,000,000 
 
 Germany, 
 
 ** East Africa, . 
 " West Africa, . 
 
 64,925,993 
 
 10,380,000 
 
 212,900 
 
 
 
 
 
 75,518,893 
 
 Austria, 
 
 • • 
 
 49,458,421 
 
 
 
 
 49,458,421 
 
 Turkey in Europe, 
 '^ '' Asia, . 
 
 1,891,000 
 17,683,000 
 
 
 
 
 19,574,000 
 7,230,418 
 
 Eoumania, 
 
 • • 
 
 7,230,418 
 
 Denmark, 
 
 Norway, 
 
 Sweden, 
 
 
 
 2,775,076 
 2,391,782 
 6,604,182 
 
 Holland, 
 
 
 
 6,114,302 
 
 
 Switzerland, 
 
 
 
 3,781,430 
 
 
 Spain, . 
 Italy, . 
 Greece, . 
 Persia, . 
 
 
 
 19,588,688 
 
 35,238,997 
 
 2,733,000 
 
 10,000,000 
 
 
 
 
 
 88,227,457 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 398,490,811 
 
 All these combined do not approximate China. 
 
 To count the Chinese, one a second for eight hours a 
 day, would require over thirty-eight years. If they held 
 hands (allowing a distance of four feet each) they would 
 stretch far beyond the moon (250,000 miles) ; again. 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 51 
 
 holding hands they would stretch more than twelve times 
 around the earth at the equator. 
 
 Such vast numbers the mind fails to grasp. However, 
 an illustration used by Professor Giles of Cambridge 
 University may serve to vivify the idea of China's multi- 
 tudes : "If the Chinese people were to file one by one 
 past a given point, the interesting procession would never 
 come to an end. Before the last man of those living had 
 gone by, another and a new generation would have grown 
 up to take its place, and so the procession would pass on 
 forever. " 
 
 The Cheng Tu Plain of Szechuan Province is the most 
 thickly populated spot in the world, with the exception 
 of the county of London. While the average population 
 a square mile for Iowa is thirty-nine, for the Eighteen 
 Provinces it is two hundred and eighty ; for the Cheng 
 Tu Plain it is seven hundred — all of them living off the 
 land. 
 
 And yet China is not over-populated. The total 
 average density of population to the square mile of 
 Japan (with a population of 67,143,798) is two hundred 
 and eighty-one; that of the United Kingdom (with a 
 population of 45,221,611) is three hundred and eighty- 
 one ; of Belgium (the densest population of Europe — with 
 7,432,784, before its decimation by Germany) six hun- 
 dred and fifty-four to the square mile ; while that of 
 China, including dependencies, is only ninety-seven. 
 
 The commercial attach^ at the United States Legation 
 at Peking, Mr. Julian Arnold, writes: " About ninety- 
 five per cent, of the population of China is confined to one- 
 third of the area of the country, with a density of 200 to 
 the square mile. Five per cent, of the population inhabits 
 sixty-five per cent, of the area, with a density of ten to 
 the square mile. Lack of transportation facilities and 
 inadequate means of protection account for the sparse- 
 
62 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 ness of settlement in the outlying dependencies. About 
 forty per cent, of China's population is in the provinces 
 south of the Yangtse River, with a density of 230 to the 
 square mile. This territory has twice the area of the 
 original thirteen states of the American Union and four 
 times the population. 
 
 *'In the outlying dependencies constituting sixty-five 
 per cent, of the total area of China, the density of popu- 
 lation is less than that of the Middle West of the United 
 States.' ' 
 
 This is not the occasion to enlarge in detail upon the 
 race traits of the Chinese ; but some of them deserve here 
 more than passing notice. 
 
 First, their homogeniety is a powerful factor in their 
 past and future greatness. Nowhere within the provinces 
 is there any such conjunction of mutually hostile states and 
 clashing racial animosities and bitter religious antipathies 
 as have made the rule of India a serious and uncertain 
 problem for England's solution. The developing pride 
 and joy of the Chinese, as sung everywhere by school 
 children of New China, is that they are four hundred and 
 forty million ^* Han Yin" (men of Han), and conscious 
 of their united destiny. For centuries land-locked and 
 sea-locked — frozen steppes on the north, highest of all 
 mountains to the west and southwest, and the widest of 
 oceans in front — they have in some ways been more 
 peculiarly ^^shut up" than the Jews in preparation for 
 their great mission. 
 
 Their language, a written one, peculiar among the 
 languages of the earth, but common to all Han Yin, to- 
 gether with customs and religions, uniform in the main, 
 plus their isolation for ages from surrounding nations, 
 have made them practically a unit. ^^A patriarchal 
 government, based intellectually upon a common litera- 
 ture that heretofore has been the stepping stone to official 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 53 
 
 employment, has welded them together as by bands of 
 irou J so that to-day they present a united front to the 
 West." 
 
 Another remarkable trait of the Chinese, matched only 
 in America, is their power of assimilation. Though now 
 homogeneous, they have long been in the melting pot, 
 and have come out of it in remarkable racial strength. 
 
 Can all this be for other than a mighty purpose of 
 God ? K'otable ancient states and peoples, such as those 
 of Egypt and Persia, have come into subjection to younger 
 races ; or, like the Picts, Celts and Angles, have lost their 
 pristine individuality ; or like the Slavs and Balkan 
 peoples, have been vastly changed by race mixture and 
 by the interplay of other civilizations upon them ; or like 
 the Hittites, Assyrians, and Aztecs, have been written 
 on the melancholy roll of history, dead. But China 
 stands China to-day. The ancient Eoman State moved 
 with the irresistible majesty of a glacier, crushing all be- 
 fore it. Chinese race-history reminds one of the tides. 
 The motion of a baby hand can deflect their waters— a 
 little and for a time. But they sweep on in resistless 
 mobility, swallowing all in their path. Eome, though 
 conferring the proud gift of citizenship upon many of its 
 conquered peoples, never could make a Parthian or a 
 Carthaginian a Eoman. Jews are fighting in all the 
 armies of Europe ; but they are neither Eussians nor 
 Austriaus nor Germans nor French nor Poles nor Eng- 
 lish. No other race ever made the Jew dwelling in its 
 midst an integral part of the stream of its national life. 
 Bat the Chinese have amalgamated that company of the 
 Dispersion who wandered into their midst and settled in 
 the region of Kai Feng Fu. 
 
 The Mohammedans are supposed to be the hardest re- 
 ligious nut in the world to crack. What nation, from 
 the days of the Byzantine Empire, has been able to curb 
 
64 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 their stubborn fanaticism ? Italy and France in North 
 Africa rule them and the Balkan States in Europe smash 
 them, but cannot mix with them in a peace that is born 
 of equality ; Austria can do little with her Mohammedan 
 subjects, but must cater to them on every hand — build 
 their mosques, organize them into special regiments, give 
 them distinctive dress and extra pay and peculiar food. 
 Russia, who like an anaconda has gormandized scores of 
 weaker peoples, is equally impotent to mould the Mo- 
 hammedans in its midst England the supreme colonizer 
 and past-master in the art of handling subject races — 
 what mass-movement of her Mohammedans has she ever 
 been able so to direct as to make these wild hordes take 
 on the characteristics of Euglish men ? But China has 
 absorbed her Mohammedans — millions of them — and they 
 have become Chinese. Usurpers and conquerors, like 
 Ghenghis Khan and his Mongols in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, and the Manchus in the seventeenth, have had to 
 conform to the customs, language, religions, laws, litera- 
 ture and government of the conquered — and thereby lose 
 their identity as the price of keeping place and power 
 even for a season. 
 
 As the Chinese proverb puts the situation : " China is 
 a sea that salts all waters that flow into it." Its history 
 shows that ''the conqueror has always suffered one of 
 two fates — he has been forced to retreat or he has been 
 quickly assimilated.^' 
 
 As their power of assimilation in part explains their 
 homogeniety, so their marvellous adaptability to all con- 
 ditions — of climate, of work, of environment — may in 
 part explain their powers of assimilation. 
 
 ''The Chinaman," as Bishop Fowler says, "crosses 
 all seas, burrows into all continents. He excels the 
 Saxon in ability to toil in all climates ; he matches the 
 Russian in enduring Arctic storms j he surpasses the 
 
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 55 
 
 Negro in labouriDg in the tropics. He is the one cosmo- 
 politan, at home everywhere, as if he owned the world. 
 Silent, gentle, submissive, industrious, economical, tem- 
 perate, all-enduring — he thrives everywhere. On moun- 
 tains, in the deserts, on the plains, on the islands. As 
 the serpent, with his one ability to crawl, competes in all 
 realms— without fins swims with the fish, without hands 
 climbs with the monkey, without feet runs with the 
 panther — so the Chinaman, with his supreme gift of 
 adaptability, competes successfully with the sailor on the 
 sea, with the frontiersman in the wilderness, with the 
 miner in the earth, with the exile in his wanderings. 
 He never asks for a fair chance, and never gets it. He 
 takes a chance beneath the notice of anybody else's con- 
 tempt, and succeeds. Once landed, he abides. The indi- 
 vidual changes, but the kind continues. A human 
 microbe, he multiplies. Many men, when they emigrate 
 to other lands, are * agin ' the governments of the land to 
 which they go. The Chinese, not being a politician, is 
 not. All governments that let him alone suit him. He 
 never breeds nor joins revolutions abroad. He is versa- 
 tile ; and all industries that have a possible margin at- 
 tract him. He never boycotts any occupation. All 
 occupations are good if they pay ; and all occupations 
 pay him. Not being ambitious, except for more cash, 
 all social orders that give return for service are equally 
 satisfactory to him. He, of all men, is pleasing to the 
 greatest variety of women. He marries through the 
 widest range of races. Like a mongoose he can run 
 through any passageway. Though fond of a palace, he 
 can live in a hut ; though fond of space, he can live in a 
 sewer -pipe; — and beat home anywhere. As gravity 
 draws all rivers along the lines of least resistance, so hia 
 instinct for gain, plus his discernment, draws him along 
 lines where there is the least waste of energy. Now that 
 
66 CHINA FEOM WITHIN 
 
 which, par excellence, makes a man a colonizer is 
 adaptability ; and the Chinese is the supreme colonizer. 
 He stands unrivalled in this. All countries are his — 
 from frozen Siberia to torrid India, Burmah and Africa, 
 even to its southernmost gold mines ; also all the Amer- 
 icas, from Alaska to the Horn, including the Caribbees, 
 Porto Eico, Cuba, Hawaii and Philippines. All islands 
 of the sea are his. He has the largest colonies, here and 
 there, on the earth, even larger than the British colony 
 at Buenos Ayres. In the Malay Straits, he far outnum- 
 bers all the Malays. In Siam he is three million strong, 
 nearly one-third the entire population of that kingdom. 
 But for the fact that he could not vote in America, and 
 that the politicians oppose him in the selfish interest of 
 many none the worthier (who are allowed to vote), he might 
 have been to-day ten million strong under our flag. It 
 took all the venom of local prejudice, all the chicanery 
 of labour leaders, all the congressional corruption that 
 violated our solemn treaty obligations, all the might of 
 the Federal Government, to check this silent, creeping, 
 unresisting, though ever on-pressing tide. " 
 
 The Chinese race is one to be reckoned with. Who- 
 ever belittles it does not understand the lessons of his- 
 tory ; he who condescends towards it is not wise. 
 
II 
 
 Racial Traits 
 A Study of Some Modern Achievements 
 
n 
 
 EACIAL TEAITS 
 
 WHILE Americans see three generations born, 
 many of the Chinese see four. The signifi- 
 cance of this can only be understood in the 
 light of the fact that medical missionary reports show 
 that from sixty to eighty per cent, of all babies born die 
 in infancy and childhood — heathen ignorance and super- 
 stition as immediately producing causes. Naturally those 
 who survive are the fittest. Those who in the United 
 States see the small, wiry, slight-built Chinese from the 
 south coast of China, do not know the Chinese. From 
 Central China northward they are a big-framed, power- 
 ful-statured race. Indeed the people of West China are 
 the giants of the Orient. Whoever has witnessed a re- 
 view of Yuan Shi Kai's foreign-trained troops, not to 
 speak of having lived among and studied the peasant 
 masses, has a new conception of the physical fitness of 
 the Chinese. And with every passing year the physical 
 conditions of this prolific race, under missionary and 
 educational development, are improving, so that a larger 
 percentage of its numbers can survive. 
 
 Professor Reinsch speaks as follows of this active, ener- 
 getic race: **For ages there has been with them a sur- 
 vival of the hardiest. Trained from youth to subsist on 
 meagre diet, to get along with little sleep, to work pa- 
 tiently from twelve to fourteen hours a day, these men 
 scoff at difficulties and exertions which would within a 
 year weary a European to death." Baron Von Eichofen 
 
 59 
 
60 CHINA FEOM WITHIN 
 
 has explored China more extensively than any one else, 
 and has studied it scientifically and economically. He 
 maintains that "in the struggle for existence the Chinese 
 have the advantage over inhabitants of the tropics and 
 over uncivilized races generally, of restless industry ; over 
 the people of Europe, the advantage of extreme thrift ; 
 and apparently over the other inhabitants on the earth, of 
 being suited to any other climate." This toughness of 
 physical fibre that manifests itself in the ability of a Chi- 
 naman to hang on and endure against hope suggests a 
 famous saying in the Far East: "A Chinese can live 
 longer on a cash piece (one-fiftieth of an American copper 
 cent) than any other human ; and when that is gone, he 
 can live off the hole." 
 
 This age, and the governments thereof, being built on 
 force, such a capacity for physical endurance cannot es- 
 cape scrutiny, in face of the inevitable weighing of the 
 fighting potentialities of every nation. Eumours from 
 Eussian sources credit the Chinese Government with a 
 plan to develop a standing army of fifty million soldiers. 
 If true, its significance is beyond words, and everybody 
 will want to know about the possible soldier-qualities of 
 the Chinese. 
 
 Putman Weale, in one of his volumes of epic scope on 
 the Far East, says : " Whilst the ordinary man all over 
 the world still pictures the Chinese soldier as the effete 
 and worthless coolie, the fact is becoming more and more 
 clear to European military agents in China that the 
 Chinaman is not only not effete and worthless, but that 
 he is being developed into the most formidable soldier on 
 the Continent of Asia. Contemptuous of death, physic- 
 ally far superior to the Japanese, wiih an immense pride 
 of race and a quickness and ingenuity which far eclipses 
 that of all other Eastern races, it requires but good lead- 
 ws and a careful selection from the great masses of men 
 
RACIAL TRAITS 61 
 
 available to evolve army corps which, conscious of their 
 strength, will defy the best troops of Europe."* As to 
 the bravery of the rank and file, men like General Gordon, 
 Lord Roberts and Lord Beresford, who know a real sol- 
 dier when they see him, unite in declaring, in the lan- 
 guage of Admiral Dewey, that, *^ properly armed, sus- 
 tained and led, the world affords no better material than 
 the Chinese soldier.'' 
 
 To students of China, few things are more impressive 
 than the recuperative powers of the nation. 
 
 Professor Legge, a conservative and authoritative 
 British scholar of things Chinese, says : *' Probably there 
 is no country in the world which has drunk so much 
 blood from its battles, sieges and massacres as China." 
 And Dr. Ernest Faber, the erudite German sinologue, 
 has written : ''Rebellions in China have occurred on a 
 large scale over fifty times in about two thousand years, 
 and local rebellions over some province are almost yearly 
 events— numberless. It is impossible to calculate how 
 many hundreds of millions of human lives have been 
 sacrificed during these rebellions.'' 
 
 Note that the Tai Ping rebellion was waged fourteen 
 years to establish ''The Great Peace Heaven Kingdom," 
 with the result that the Manchu usurpers were seated the 
 more firmly ; and perhaps a hundred million lives, as 
 suggested by Dr. A. H. Smith, were snuffed out in the 
 process. That is to say, between 1850-1864 more Chinese 
 perished, by forty millions, than the combined popula- 
 tion of the France and Germany of that time. 
 
 The catastrophes of nature have also been appalling 
 beyond belief. For many decades not a year has passed 
 during which one or more provinces have not been deci- 
 mated by drought or flood or famine or fever or pesti- 
 lence or plague or piracy or brigandage ; by local rebel- 
 * ** Reshaping the Far East." 
 
62 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 lions or by foreign wars, — never one of these disasters 
 alone — and all the time by opium. 
 
 At the point of the bayonet in two wars opium was 
 forced on the Chinese. To fend it off, they spent vast 
 sums, fighting a powerful Christian nation. Then they 
 paid vaster sums in indemnity as the price of their defeat. 
 Then they paid into the coffers of the Indian Government 
 the appallingly vast sum of eight hundred million pounds 
 ($5,400,000,000 gold) for the privilege of being ruined 
 physically, mentally, morally — and always under helpless 
 protest. Mr. Towyn Jones was speaking, May 7, 1913, 
 in the House of Commons against Britain longer forcing 
 opium upon China (which had then interdicted the 
 growth and sale of opium upon her soil). Seventy mil- 
 lion gold dollars^ worth of Indian opium was at that mo- 
 ment stored in Shanghai for forced Chinese consumption. 
 Mr. Smith said : ** Opium has destroyed a greater number 
 of Chinese people than war, famine and pestilence to- 
 gether. Can what we in Britain label ^ poison^ be in 
 China * food ' ? " There was no reply. How could there 
 be, in view of the fact that the British Parliament had 
 twice declared the traffic * ' morally indefensible ^ ' ; and 
 that when the Empress Dowager in 1906 began her cam- 
 paign to blot out the traffic, a register (ordered of all 
 consumers of the drug) showed forty per cent, of the 
 population to be opium users. 
 
 From the inception of modern relationships with the 
 West the Chinese Government has been unj ustly wrung 
 for every sort of concession — political, economic, terri- 
 torial. When stung to madness, the people have made 
 savage retorts. And for these they have been punished 
 mercilessly, brutally. 
 
 For example, the Boxer outbreak indemnity was an 
 extra tidbit of some 67,500,000 pounds (almost $337,- 
 000,000 gold). How just it was may be judged from 
 
RACIAL TRAITS 63 
 
 this fact: Russians share was 19,575,000 pounds, or 
 twenty-nine per cent, of the whole. This claim embraced 
 pay for 120,000 troops who were never concerned directly 
 or indirectly with the suppression of the outbreak ; but 
 who, while the other Powers and China were busy at the 
 siege of Peking, were busy in Manchuria, stealing that 
 vast domain by a process which Russia euphemistically 
 styled "painless identification." We are told that Rus- 
 sia had seventy-five soldiers in the siege of Peking and 
 seventy-five more marched to its relief. 
 
 Without referring to the drastic and amazing claims 
 put in by the Powers in connection with the hypothetical 
 losses that they affirmed their merchants might not have 
 sustained had there been no rebellion against the Repub- 
 lic, China's foreign debt, contracted by the effete Man- 
 chu dynasty and wasted largely in their imperial excesses^ 
 mounted up to more than $700,000,000 gold. No other 
 nation, either as a political entity or as a race, has ever 
 paid such appalling tolls of blood and treasure, all so 
 utterly without returns — and still survived its losses. 
 
 And yet the Chinese, though all their ancient con- 
 temporaries have passed into mournful oblivion, are to- 
 day more numerous, more energetic and more prosperous 
 than ever before in their history — the mystery of the na- 
 tions. The situation was succinctly put by Mr. T. T. 
 Meadows, a British Consul of " philosophic temper and 
 of large knowledge of China," who, more than fifty 
 years ago, published "The Chinese and their Rebellions,'^ 
 a book fruitful in suggestions as to the reason of their 
 endurance. Seated on the pyramid of Cheops, he cog- 
 itated over this matter in the lines of Lowell : 
 
 " There sits drear Egypt 'mid beleaguering sands 
 Half woman and half beast, 
 The burnt-out torch within her mouldering hands 
 Which once lit all the East." 
 
64 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 And then he wrote : ^^The Chinese have as much youth 
 and vitality in them as the youngest of the young na- 
 tions. " 
 
 As England has long felt concern over the trade-mark 
 *^Made in Germany," so Russia has long feared the ex- 
 traordinary business capacity of the Chinese, a capacity 
 that can endanger the commercial supremacy of Europe. 
 Any one who knows China knows that the Chinese are 
 formidable competitors. As keen buyers and sellers, 
 they are inherently careful students of market move- 
 ments, of questions of supply and demand, of present 
 and future market rates, and of how to take advantage 
 of the same. " Watch a Chinese business man as he 
 figures his accounts. Though his features are immobile, 
 you soon realize that his gray matter is not. While his 
 nimble fingers run up and down the balls of the abacus, 
 he is listening to those around him, often giving orders 
 to clerks or to carters and barrow-men and coolies in the 
 yard, and all the while without raising his head or ceas- 
 ing to calculate with his left hand and write with his 
 right. Brain, mouth, eyes, hands — all working at once ; 
 yet few mistakes. Such characteristics impress the on- 
 looker that here is a born trader. '' Indeed he must be, 
 to work the puzzle of Chinese moneys — *^ most confused 
 and intricate of all currencies." Yet he works it easily ; 
 and by manipulating the balls of his abacus he will 
 reckon sums faster than the average foreigner can by 
 means of the Arabic numerals. 
 
 A well-known New York banker, who for two years 
 travelled all over China, studying its economical possi- 
 bilities, says : ^* China not only has the greatest unde- 
 veloped resources known in the world, but she represents 
 the largest aggregation of able traders, merchants and 
 bankers. '' **The Chinaman is, par excellence, the busi- 
 ness man of the Orient. He owns and manages great 
 
RACIAL TRAITS 66 
 
 steamship lines, banks, factories, mines, plantations, 
 railroads, mercantile establishments, vast corporations, 
 not only in his land ; — not only in the English colony of 
 Hong Kong, in Japan, in the Straits Settlements, in India, 
 Burmah, and Siam ; but in Boston, New York, Phila- 
 delphia, Chicago and San Francisco." Little men may 
 laugh at him ; but none dare ignore him. While some 
 sneer, he becomes a master. The hostility to and envy 
 of the Chinaman is that born of jealousy. 'No wise man 
 despises a powerful rival. Heretofore we have looked 
 upon the Jew as the greatest trader in the world. In the 
 Far East they say : ** A Chinaman can skin a Jew out of 
 his eye-teeth.'^ And it is highly significant that, for 
 decades, wherever the Hebrew and the Celestial have 
 come into business competition, the latter, by his supe- 
 rior ability, has said to the former, as Savonarola to 
 Lorenzo : *^ You must go, but I shall remain ! " And 
 the Jew has gone ! 
 
 In a land where until recently calisthenics and ath- 
 letics have been below par ; and where the marks of a 
 scholar were a slow gait, stooped shoulders, a narrow 
 chest, long finger-nails and, possibly, a hectic cough ; our 
 Mission school boys, of the first generation out of hea- 
 thenism, have attended the first meeting of the Far East- 
 ern Olympic games at Manilla, and, competing against 
 white men and Orientals of various races, have won. In 
 the same way it has surprised Westerners to find boys 
 out of squalid mud villages, the first generation out of 
 heathenism, ranking with the best students in our uni- 
 versities and frequently capturing first places. Many a 
 Chinese student, both in Europe and America, has been 
 an honour man, despite the handicap of working in a 
 strange language. When ex-President Elliott of Harvard 
 was asked how the forty-seven Chinese students then in 
 the University compared with the American students, he 
 
66 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 answered : *'I should have to search amoug hundreds of 
 Americans to find their equals ! " Probably most edu- 
 cators in the Far East would agree with Dr. A. A. Fulton, 
 a missionary leader of thirty years' experience in China : 
 '^ I will match Chinese children with the children of any 
 other nation, both in their desire to learn and in their 
 ability to reach a high standard." 
 
 In diplomatic discussion involving delicate controver- 
 sies as well as in questions affecting international inter- 
 ests, the Chinese have proven themselves the equals of 
 some of the best minds of European nations. For dec- 
 ades, in their political intercourse with the West, their 
 only weapon was their finesse. What could better illus- 
 trate their diplomatic resourcefulness than the manner in 
 which they handled the international Quadruple and 
 Sextuple Loan Groups ? Without the adventitious aids 
 of international banking corporations and powerful 
 armies, they, by the might of their own acumen, fended 
 off the mercenary conditions of the forced loan from 
 March 14, 1912, to December 12, 1912, holding up to the 
 whole world the loan-shark trick therein, and causing 
 honest men everywhere to blush at the odious condi- 
 tions imposed, and finally bringing forces into play that 
 defeated the loan as thus organized. And this, despite 
 the fact that arrayed against them were the combined 
 brains of many financial experts of Europe and America, 
 backed by the reputation, wealth and power of six of the 
 most powerful Governments whose ^'honour" was at 
 stake to jam through the deal, and whose diplomatic 
 representative schemed day and night to force the Chinese 
 to swallow their Egyptianizing pill. 
 
 An American Y. M. C. A. Secretary to the Chinese, 
 born and brought up in China, says : " As to China's 
 scholars we are only beginning to realize that, with all 
 the faults of her educational system, it has produced a 
 
KACIAL TRAITS 67 
 
 race of thinkers, the brainiest race in Asia, who com- 
 bined the mental alertness of the Americans with the 
 solid endurance of the German student. China's weak- 
 ness in the past has not been due to a lack of intellectual 
 vigour. Her people have been thinkers, as evinced by 
 the practical good sense of scores of millions of peasants 
 who are able to produce larger crops per acre probably 
 than any people not trained in the most recently de- 
 veloped methods of scientific farming carried on with 
 large capital. Not slumber, not intellectual inability to 
 meet a situation, explains China's backwardness and 
 seemingly arrested development, but isolation plus the 
 pall of heathenism and a reactionary dynastic govern- 
 ment. It does not prove that the Chinese are inade- 
 quately equipped mentally because they have not always 
 thought in profitable directions. This is everywhere the 
 penalty upon men for not living according to the light 
 of revelation. But the Chinese are now beginning to 
 think profitably ; and no better evidence of their intel- 
 lectual power profitably applied need be adduced than 
 the marvellous rapidity with which they assimilate 
 Western ideas. Five years before 1900 the ignorance of 
 the ruling class was so crass, their pride so overweening 
 and their self-satisfied aloofness so dense, that scores of 
 millions not only did not know that Japan had beaten 
 China, but did not even know that China had been at 
 war. Five years after 1900 the ruling class had become 
 so permeated with Western thought as to render im- 
 probable the recurrence of such storms as the cataclysm 
 of 1900. Even Japan, with her almost magic power of 
 transformation, has not been so quick as China to bring 
 the rank and file of her educated leaders to appreciate 
 the fundamental factors of progress." 
 
 Such a people may be counted upon to have a passion 
 for learning. And to know how intense, one needs to 
 
68 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 dwell in the laud and note its many manifestations. Now 
 that many from the leading classes — officials, literati and 
 government students — believe that education, and in its 
 Western variety, is the key to power, they want it. And 
 the Christians, throughout the land, thinking of it as 
 inseparably associated with ^Hhe Jesus Eeligion," also 
 desire it, and to a point of sacrifice that the rich city 
 gentry cannot appreciate. In many a little mud village 
 of China many a peasant parent ekes out the meagre 
 winter supply of soupy vegetable food by mixing in 
 dried sweet-potato leaves — the same dried leaves that 
 each householder feeds his pigs — and many a meal is 
 omitted altogether — both by parents and by children, — 
 in order to avail themselves of Mission school privileges, 
 to pay the required tuition in a higher school, or theii 
 share of a Christian teacher's salary in a primary school 
 established by the Mission in their own village. 
 
 In a world where might makes right, where conquerors 
 and nations have long been obsessed with the efficacy of 
 war to accomplish selfishly ambitious projects, and where 
 the God of the heaviest battalions is zealously worshipped, 
 few facts could be more creditable than this to such a 
 virile and numerous race as the Chinese. It honours not 
 war but peace ; it glories not in the sword, but in the 
 printed page ; it magnifies not the conqueror, but the 
 sage and his best thoughts. To all young nations, who 
 would win a place in the sun by the methods of the mailed 
 fist, there is food for thought also in this : " That probably 
 the most distinguished characteristic of this ancient Em- 
 pire and people has been their pursuit of intellectual 
 development and education." For two thousand years 
 they have made scholastic attainments the first requisite 
 for admission to the public service ; and scholars, under 
 the patronage of the Government, have for centuries, in 
 every province and district of the Empire* been magnify- 
 
RACIAL TRAITS 69 
 
 ing the power of the pen, preaching the peaceableness of 
 learning and its pleasant fruitfulness. 
 
 How explain such an attitude towards books and 
 teachers ? It has been possible only because of the fine 
 mental equipment of this people. And so it is a hopeful 
 sign for China that her masses have long honoured edu- 
 cation and struggled to attain it ; that her leaders have 
 sacrificed much in order to inaugurate the modernizing 
 of that educational system ; and that one of its *' first 
 fruits " has been the grinding in pieces of a dynasty, selfish 
 and reactionary, that lay like an incubus upon the nation. 
 
 Other race traits both physical and mental could be 
 profitably dwelt upon in detail — their absence of nerves 
 and hardiness in lightly carrying toil, pain and hard- 
 ship that is beyond our conception ; their good-nature 
 and contentment, approachableness and peaceableness j 
 their frugality, industry and economy j their power of 
 swift combination for passive and active resistance ; re- 
 spect for intellectual and moral forces ; conservatism that 
 makes for reverence of accredited authority, and law 
 observance ; courtesy and friendliness and gratitude 
 towards those whom they have any reason to trust, 
 indomitable perseverance that hangs on despite the most 
 discouraging circumstances, and a wonderful reliability 
 in all matters which they recognize as involving an obli- 
 gation or contract. 
 
 A host of witnesses could be drawn upon to testify 
 to the all-round qualifications of the Chinese — given a 
 chance — to play well their part in the great days to 
 come. But four must suffice — a missionary statesman, 
 the British creator and administrator-general of the 
 Chinese customs, a famous war-correspondent resident 
 in the Far East, and an American ex-Secretary of State. 
 
 First, Dr. John R. Mott, than whom there are few 
 saner or more keen and well-equipped students of inter- 
 
'iO CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 national conditions, on the occasion of Princeton's fare- 
 well to its missionaries to China, October 4, 1906, said : 
 "In all my travels, embracing over thirty nations, I was 
 more impressed by China than any other. And it was 
 not the vast population, not the great antiquity of China, 
 not the difficulties and obstacles it presents, which im- 
 pressed me most, but the race itself, combining as it does 
 all the characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon race— industry, 
 frugality, patience, tenacity, conservatism and mental 
 vigour, apart from which qualities no nation has achieved 
 permanent greatness. " 
 
 Second, Sir Eobert Hart, despite experiences in the 
 siege of Peking enough to make a man pessimistic, said 
 in England just before his retirement : " I am a great be- 
 liever in China's future. It is a very big country and 
 has everything it needs in its own ring fence. The 
 Chinese are a most industrious, intelligent, law-abiding 
 and easily governed people, and individually they re- 
 spond with wonderful reciprocity to reasonableness. The 
 world can therefore form its opinion as to what more 
 than four hundred million people may do, once they are 
 organized after Western ideas." 
 
 Third, Frederick McCormick, many years in the Far 
 East as special writer and reporter, much travelled in 
 China and long student of things Chinese, thinks that 
 **the Chinese people — sober, brainy, industrious, imagi- 
 native — are capable of now adding the greatest contribu* 
 tions to civilization." 
 
 Fourth, listen to General J. W. Foster, authority on 
 American diplomacy in the Orient, friend of China, and 
 valued official Adviser to the Chinese Government : "It 
 is scarcely an exaggeration, in the presence of its history 
 and attainments, to assert that no nation or race of 
 ancient or modern times has stronger claims than the 
 Chinese to be called a great people." 
 
KACIAL TRAITS 7l 
 
 The foregoing facts and considerations lead us, with 
 Professor J. E. Williams of Nanking Union University, 
 to say : ** We may confidently expect that a people who 
 abolished feudalism two hundred years before the Chris- 
 tian era, who have never known caste, who are more free 
 from class distinctions than any country in Europe, who 
 are more democratic in common relations than Americans, 
 and among whom representative government in village 
 life has been indigenous for ages ; and who have shown 
 in their history as great genius for organization and 
 government as the Eomans, will be able to work out the 
 problems of a Republican Government. We may expect 
 that a people who could build the Great Wall (which 
 General Grant said represented more labour than all our 
 railroads and sky-scrapers) in a period of ten years, two 
 hundred years before Christ — will be able to open mines 
 and build railways. We may expect that a people 
 who were printing a thousand years before Gutenberg 
 (1400-1468), who were sailing by the mariner^ s compass 
 centuries before Columbus, who discovered gunpowder, 
 incubators and a hundred contrivances that were only 
 discovered within the century in the West, will be able 
 to apply modern science to their own immeasurable 
 mineral and agricultural resources. We may expect that 
 a people whose business honesty is notable among Chris- 
 tian merchants and whose genius for trade and finance 
 excels the Jews, will be able, when freed from the age- 
 long shackles of a corrupt piratical government, to 
 develop their own commerce and industries." And 
 when this race has been evangelized it may be counted 
 upon to present to the world the same type of religion, 
 marked by the same sturdiness and robustness, as has 
 characterized the followers of Calvin and Knox in the 
 British Isles, New England, Holland and the fastnesses 
 of the Waldensian Alps. 
 
72 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 Familiarity with the sheer native ability of the Chi- 
 nese, not only considering their traits massed in the race, 
 but as they appear in the persons of outstanding individ- 
 uals, causes one's respect for the Chinese to mount. 
 Take, for example, four men, two of whom are still with 
 us— Li Hung Chang, Chang Chi Tung, Yuan Shi Kai 
 and Swen Yat Sen. These men, for native forcefulness, 
 for intellectual power, for diplomatic success, for con- 
 structive ability, for administrative efficiency under well- 
 nigh superhuman difficulties, for influence over scores of 
 millions of their countrymen, might compare not unfa- 
 vourably with any four political leaders of any other na- 
 tion of this generation. 
 
 Concerning the first of these men, Li Hung Chang, 
 General Grant said that Viceroy Li impressed him as the 
 ablest personality he had ever met. Indeed, in a notable 
 review, ex-Secretary of State, J. W. Foster, authority on 
 diplomacy, has this estimate : ^'Li Hung Chang was not 
 only the greatest man the Chinese race has produced in 
 modern times, but, in a combination of qualities, the 
 most unique personality of the past century among all 
 the nations of the world. He was distinguished as a man 
 of letters ; as a soldier in important campaigns he ren- 
 dered valuable service to his country ; as a statesman for 
 thirty years he maintained a recognized preeminence 
 over his countrymen in the Oldest and most populous na- 
 tion of the earth ; and as a diplomat his achievements 
 entitle him to a front rank in the international relations 
 of all history. The last one hundred years have pro- 
 duced many men of scholarship, several great generals, 
 a number of statesmen of distinguished ability and suc- 
 cess, and a few diplomats of high rank ; but no one of 
 these can be singled out as having combined in his per- 
 son all these attainments in such an eminent degree as 
 Li Hung Chang." 
 
RACIAL TRAITS 73 
 
 Aud the followiDg concerning him among a galaxy of 
 international '^ great ones": '^The ceremony of the 
 coronation of the Czar of Russia brought together at the 
 ancient Muscovite capital such a representation of the 
 nations of the earth as was never before assembled in the 
 world. And it is safe to say that the most notable per- 
 sonage in that august assemblage was Li Hung Chang, 
 the representative of the 'Son of Heaven,' the Emperor 
 of China. In length of public service and of the myriads 
 of people in whose behalf it was rendered, in his intel- 
 lectual attainments, his unique characteristics, and in his 
 commanding personality, the Chinese representative was 
 the most conspicuous witness of the young Czar's coro- 
 nation.'' 
 
 And this as to his patriotism: *'At four different 
 times in his career he was stripped of his * yellow jacket ' 
 and all his honours, and disgraced in the eyes of his 
 countrymen by the irascible Empress Dowager, yet he 
 remained loyal to the throne, assured that she knew the 
 value of his services and would again bestow upon him 
 the honour and high duty. He records : ' Whenever 
 there is trouble, I am always the physician in attend- 
 ance, but instead of collecting a fee, I am usually subject 
 to a fine for my trouble and skill.' " 
 
 *^The last service he rendered his country was the 
 crowning act of his long career. After the Empress 
 Dowager and the court had fled from the capital, as the 
 allied armies occupied Peking and rescued the legations 
 and foreign refugees, the nations which had been so 
 grossly outraged instructed their diplomatic representa- 
 tives to seek the punishment of the guilty ofiScials and 
 exact full indemnity for the losses sustained. Notwith- 
 standing Li Hung Chang had been driven with angry 
 words from the presence of the Empress and banished to 
 a distant province at Canton, yet, from her hiding-place 
 
74 CHINA FKOM WITHIN 
 
 in the mountains, she summoned him to Peking to meet 
 the angry and determined diplomats, aud save the throne 
 from extinction and the Empire from dismemberment. 
 
 '^Although the disease which brought him to the grave 
 was rapidly undermining his strength, he made the long 
 journey to the capital. On his way, at Tientsin, he 
 makes this entry in his diary : ' I fear the task before 
 me is too great for my strength of body, though I would 
 do one thing more before I call the earthly battle over. 
 I would have the foreigners believe in us once more, and 
 not deprive us of our national life.' 
 
 *^ His labours were successful. Incidentally it is grati- 
 fying to Americans to know that in his diary he gives 
 our Government credit for aiding him to save his coun- 
 try from dismemberment and from conditions too burden- 
 some to endure. 
 
 *' Within a few weeks after he signed the protocol 
 which gave his country peace, he ended his earthly life 
 in the seventy-ninth year of his age. It was a fitting end 
 to a stormy career of the greatest of Oriental statesmen 
 and one of the most distinguished of the public men of 
 the world." 
 
 Viceroy Chang Chi Tung, before the Boxer War, wrote 
 " China's Only Hope," a book that was as much a clarion 
 call to China's millions as were the words of Peter the 
 Hermit to Mediaeval Europe ; a book that within a given 
 time had a larger sale than any other on record, — the 
 Bible alone excepted. During the year of its publication 
 several million copies got into the hands of the future 
 leaders of the land and it was read by and to millions 
 more. In that book, among various reforms advocated, 
 were two of immense significance to the world at large, 
 as well as to China — reforms now on the way to realiza- 
 tion. One was the sweeping away of the hoary system 
 of Chinese education in favour of the Western j the other 
 
RACIAL TRAITS Y5 
 
 was a prohibition of the production, sale and use of 
 opium within the Empire. To be sure, American Mis- 
 sionary Associations were behind both reforms. They 
 had undauntedly advocated them, and had steadily 
 pressed them, giving him vast support ; but the credit 
 for officially bringing these matters before the attention 
 of the Empress Dowager and the ruling classes, and with 
 all the force and 6clat that the ablest living viceroy pos- 
 sessed, and pushing them, belongs to this old man, who 
 had never travelled outside his country, who had no for- 
 eign education, who spoke no foreign language, and who 
 was, anomalous as it seems, irrevocably bound to the 
 past. 
 
 Think of what was involved in these two changes 
 alone. China's educational system, which for thousands 
 of years has been individualistic and exclusive, was in- 
 tended to hold the Ship of State to her ancient moorings. 
 
 The new educational aims and ideals planned in tho 
 Imperial edict of 1901 implied not only the cutting of 
 those moorings, but the transference to another kind of 
 ship. It was intended to prepare the Chinese for chang- 
 ing from an autocratic form of Government to a repre- 
 sentative, and, as speedily developed, even into a Repub- 
 lican form. 
 
 The educational task was staggering in its vastness. 
 It involved the establishment of a million public schools 
 for which sixty-five million children were waiting. 
 ** Probably not one in forty of the children of school age 
 are in school," certainly not among the vast mass of 
 peasant villages. In 1913 the Government maintaineC 
 about thirty-six thousand schools ; imagine county nor- 
 mals in which the magistrates were trying to meet this 
 crying need for teachers by turning out graduates hold- 
 ing certificates for a three months', six months', nine 
 months', and twelve months' course in "Western learn- 
 
76 CHINA FKOM WITHIN 
 
 ing'^ — teachers of English, for example, "proficient to 
 the letter G " ! The Mission schools have one hundred 
 thousand pupils ; but this edict revealed the need of, and 
 opened the opportunity to train, ten times that number 
 to become Government school teachers alone. 
 
 The Imperial University at Peking was given $1,425,000 
 for buildings and was assured of nearly $150,000 a year 
 for its annual budget. Shansi University as a Govern- 
 ment school was provided with property to the extent 
 of one-fourth of a million dollars. The Government 
 soon planned for four great University centres centrally 
 located in North, South, East and West China, together 
 with thoroughly developed college and technical schools 
 for each province. But time could not wait. In one 
 province the educational officials offered the entire charge 
 of the public school system in eight counties, revenues 
 and all, to one of the American Mission Boards. In an- 
 other place the missionaries were asked to take charge 
 of the schools of the entire Province. 
 
 And to get an adequate conception of what faced Chang 
 in the opium reform we must think of Eussia, Germany, 
 the United States, the British Isles, all of whose popula- 
 tions do not equal China's, but whose Governments 
 would make the most powerful combination in the world, 
 seriously, determinedly, using their united power to 
 stamp out the drink traffic and the white slave business 
 within their borders ; must think of their officers going 
 into every gin still and brewery and brothel that had not 
 actually closed up, and executing right there in their 
 own establishments, presidents and managers, foremen 
 and bosses, proprietors and Mesdames, procurers and 
 procuresses ; even as the stern old viceroy, when the 
 opium raisers refused to stop growing their crops, sent 
 his soldiers to the fields where the poppies flaunted their 
 gorgeous, seducing beauty, and made the red blood from 
 
RACIAL TRAITS W 
 
 the severed human necks miDgle in the furrows with 
 the scarlet of the trampled and plowed up flowers. 
 
 The anti-opium campaign inaugurated by the edict of 
 1906 was, as the Loudon Times remarks, *^ so formidable 
 that the strongest of Governments might flinch before 
 it/' Yet it has been steadily and determinedly main- 
 tained. *^ China has not," to quote a dispatch of Sir 
 John Jordon, British Minister to Peking, ^^ hesitated to 
 deal with a question that a European nation, with all the 
 modern machinery of government and the power of en- 
 forcing its decisions, would probably have been unwill- 
 ing to face.'' At a time when she was urgently in need 
 of money, she was willingly facing the loss of an enor- 
 mous annual opium revenue, ^' a far more serious ques- 
 tion,' ' adds the British Minister, *^ at the present state of 
 the Chinese national exchecquer than the similar prob- 
 lem with which the Indian Government will have to deal 
 in sacrificing the opium revenue." 
 
 Still another move, as necessary as far-sighted, also 
 fathered by Chang, and executed by him in conjunction 
 with other viceroys, was to refuse to obey the Empress 
 Dowager, in her command to slay all foreigners in the 
 provinces ruled by them ; not only so, but, through mani- 
 festoes issued to the world, to deny that China was at war 
 with the nations and to affirm that the slight unpleasant- 
 ness at Peking was ouly a local disturbance disapproved 
 of by the viceroys and governors (who were the real 
 rulers of China). Thus did he remove from the Powers 
 all ostensible excuse for the partition of China. 
 
 Surely such gigantic plans and the setting of the ma- 
 chinery for their accomplishment into operation required 
 vision and will and braius on the part of the old man. 
 
 Yuan Shi Kai, President of the Republic, like the 
 others came up from the ranks. For years, his finesse 
 thwarted the astutest machinations to wrench Korea from 
 
78 CHINA FEOM WITHIN 
 
 the suzerainty of China. As Governor of Shantung he 
 risked his life to save our missionaries ; and he saved 
 them. Seated in his yamen at Tsiuan Fu, where he 
 could be easily struck from Peking by '' The Venerable 
 Buddha " (as the Empress with a quaint conceit was ac- 
 customed to have herself euphemistically called), he yet 
 defied her secret telegram to kill. And, remember, her 
 power was absolute, her temper brooked no opposition ; 
 and in her resourcefulness and wealth and imperiousness 
 she was comparable only to Catherine of Eussia. He 
 inaugurated the first really great Provincial University, 
 under the scheme of Western education outlined with the 
 aid of missionaries by Chang Chi Tung, and put Eev. 
 W. M. Hayes, D. D., of the American Presbyterian Mis- 
 sion, in full charge with carte blanche to choose Christian 
 professors, trained by himself and other missionary edu- 
 cators, as faculty. 
 
 During the Chinese Eevolution of 1912 he played a role 
 unique in history. Bitterly hated by the reactionary 
 Court and by the Eadical Eepublicans, as being not ex- 
 treme enough for either, he was yet the only man who 
 could mediate between the two. Disgraced and dispos- 
 sessed of office by the Eegent, that same Eegent had to 
 implore him to return, had to give him absolute power, 
 in order that Yuan, a Chinese, might save him and his 
 incompetent House, Manchus, from destruction. Yuan's 
 life and that of his family were for months endangered 
 by assassins from both sides ; yet, step by step, he forced 
 this dynasty, entrenched in privileges and wealth, peace- 
 fully to withdraw from power. Where else in dynastic 
 history is the like recorded ? And then, step by step, 
 he forced an unwilling South — fifteen out of eighteen 
 provinces solidly against him — to accept him, a Northern 
 man, as the President of the united country. 
 
 Herbert E. House, inmate of his household, and tutor 
 
RACIAL TRAITS 79 
 
 to one of his sons, exi)resses an opinion of Yuan Shi Kai 
 in which probably, out of their experience and studies, 
 the majority of the older missionaries would join. ^^ He 
 has shown himself to be a man of the very highest order 
 of executive ability, a broad-minded, well-informed, con- 
 servative reformer, just and friendly in his attitude 
 towards foreigners, a sincere patriot, the integrity of 
 whose purpose is not doubted by those who best know 
 him. He is typical of the men now coming into power 
 who are to reorganize the Empire and develop the al- 
 most unlimited resources of the country." 
 
 On the question of his patriotism (much sneered at by 
 those who for sinister motives have for years systemat- 
 ically traduced him before the Chinese people) a little 
 side light is thrown by Mr. House who tells how one day 
 when certain Governments of Europe had consummated 
 a certain deal against the integrity of China, a deal that 
 in the long array of subterranean machinations against 
 the welfare of China would, for cynicism and iron-heart- 
 eduess, be difficult to surpass, Yuan Shi Kai came home 
 in great despondency. The son stated: ^^My father 
 nearly cried this morning ; for he says that * China is 
 finished.' " What it meant for the father to approach 
 crying can be best understood by those living among the 
 Chinese, who see such marvellous concealment of feeling 
 that they often smile and laugh when announcing the 
 worst personal misfortunes, the most poignant bereave- 
 ments and sorrows. Yet the day came when this man 
 held in his powerful hand the destinies of more millions 
 of human beings than any other national leader. 
 
 Swen Yat Sen may or may not have erred in judgment 
 when he allowed himself to become entangled in the re- 
 bellion against the Republic, and it looks as if he had not 
 lived up to the standard of an exalted national hero. But 
 that cannot eclipse the glory of his earlier achievement. 
 
80 CHINA FKOM WITHIN 
 
 Where else is it written that an unknown, penniless youth 
 set himself to pull down an irresponsible, tyrannical dy- 
 nasty, hated and feared of the people, but so entrenched 
 in privilege and power as to make popular headway 
 against it seem hopeless — and succeeded? Where else, 
 that on the ruins of that long- established throne he at- 
 tempted to set up a representative Government — and suc- 
 ceeded ? But for the accomplishment of this end he must 
 needs labour for many years alone and in the dark. 
 Hunted from city to city, and from continent to conti- 
 nent, by the sleuth-hounds of the Empress Dowager, men 
 high-salaried and unscrupulous, workiug for the imperial 
 price set on his head, he never quailed or faltered, but 
 agitated, made sentiment, filled men with his hope and 
 conviction. His multifarious experiences— trials and dis- 
 couragements, dangers and escapes — were stranger than 
 fiction ; yet, through it all, he kept his balance and cour- 
 age and will to achieve, perfecting an organization of 
 disaffection unequalled for its size, secrecy, completeness 
 and efficiency. It was nothing short of real genius, a 
 genius for leadership, insinuating, persuasive, fiery, dy- 
 namic — that, against heavy odds, enabled him to win the 
 unbounded allegiance of the student classes and confi- 
 dence of the merchant classes. 
 
 The loyal support given him by the latter class was 
 witnessed by the remarkable manner in which, for Chi- 
 nese, they poured out their gifts for his propaganda, 
 totalling immense sums contributed from the Chinese 
 dwelling both inside and outside the Empire. The same 
 support from the former class was witnessed by their 
 wholesale enlisting in his armies, and putting themselves 
 at his disposal to use as their gifts and training warranted 
 for civil duties. 
 
 On the part of men whom he approached there seemed 
 to be an abandon of committal to him and to his cause- 
 
RACIAL TRAITS 81 
 
 This enabled him fiually to become the First President of 
 its Provisional Republic. Then, though the idol of the 
 people, fifteen provinces solidly behind him and the hearts 
 of the leaders in his hand — he voluntarily surrendered 
 his phice to a rival, in order to cement the union of the 
 North and the South. How many national favourites 
 have in spirit or fact, during all the course of history, 
 measured up to this high ideal of self-effacement ? 
 
 Such traits, thus exemplified in the lives of its leaders, 
 and for ages characterizing the Chinese, have enabled 
 them, even during these brief, recent years, to accomplish 
 some things little short of marvellous, and justifying 
 sanguine hopes. Only a heroic spirit, dead in earnest, 
 could have wrestled for these reforms against such an- 
 tagonists as hoary custom, the inertia of heathenism, and 
 the suspicion and hostility of officials rich, powerful and 
 reactionary. The problems ahead are not hopeless of 
 solution in view of these earnests of victory. Some con- 
 crete achievements that may be put to the credit of the 
 new spirit animating the men of Old China are the fol- 
 lowing. 
 
 The imperial examination halls have been torn down 
 and for them and their system have been substituted in 
 all parts of the land technical and normal schools, col- 
 leges and universities after Western models, some with 
 English and American faculties. The general educa- 
 tional plan, drawn up, at the re(][uest of Government, by 
 three American missionaries, requires that every capital 
 city have at least one hundred primary schools, and all 
 prefectures and districts at least forty and every village 
 at least one. Every child seven years old shall be com- 
 pelled to attend school. Mission schools are crowded 
 with the sons of high officials, and on every hand have to 
 turn away more pupils than they receive. 
 
 Ten years ago, it could be said: '*In matters educa- 
 
82 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 tional in China, it is of special significance to note that 
 schemes of magnitude, which hold in them possibilities 
 such as the most sanguine never contemplated until 
 within the past decade, are now come to be regarded as 
 every-day events within the sphere of the commonplace. 
 Thus we find notice of a memorial to the throne from the 
 Board of Education, asking that $70,000 be devoted to 
 found in the capital a normal school for the training 
 of women teachers, the school to be maintained by an 
 annual grant from the Government of $40,000. The 
 feature of this memorial which makes it essentially of the 
 new time is the proposal to spend year by year so con- 
 siderable a sum in providing for female education. 
 
 " One recalls the significant statement of Yuan Shi Kai, 
 shortly before his retirement from ofBlce as Viceroy : * The 
 most important thing in China just now is that the women 
 of China be educated.' " 
 
 Many thousand students are studying or have studied 
 in foreign lands in order to give China the advantage of 
 the best that their civilizations afford. 
 
 Some six million Chinese, thanks largely to the Amer- 
 ican Mission schools, can speak English, and all students 
 are eager to use it as the key that, par excellence, un- 
 locks constitutional liberty and ordered progress. 
 
 A vast number of text-books, technical works, and 
 treatises have been translated from all languages into 
 Chinese. 
 
 The day of the modern news sheet in China has come. 
 A few years ago there were but two native newspapers 
 on Western lines in China ; now the land is flooded with 
 dailies, weeklies and monthlies, reaching many millions 
 of readers, and their contents are retold to many millions 
 more who cannot read. 
 
 The number of post-ofBices, and the mileage of tele- 
 phones and telegraphs, increase by leaps and bounds. 
 
RACIAL TRAITS 83 
 
 Railroad construction, which the Government a few 
 years ago so abhorred that it bought China's single road 
 and dumped it into the sea, is planned on a vast scale. 
 The Government has floated private loans to the extent 
 of five hundred million dollars for great trunk lines. An 
 American railroad expert says: ''During the next 
 twenty years more miles of railroad will be built in China 
 than in any other part of the world ; and while foreigners 
 may assist in furnishing the capital, the prime movers 
 will be the Chinese themselves, who will insist, as far as 
 they are able, upon obtaining substantial control." 
 
 A beginning has been made of the revision of the Chi- 
 nese system of jurisprudence, ''crude and almost bar- 
 baric," as J. W. Foster calls it, "despite the fact that it 
 has long been codified and compiled in forty tomes, each 
 volume being devoted to a specified branch of law.'* 
 This, carried out in good faith, will release China from 
 the humiliating exterritoriality regime. 
 
 A beginning has been made of city sanitation, in 
 the tearing down of hoary city walls and the remaking 
 of great areas inside them. Whoever has seen the mod- 
 ern sections of Canton, Shanghai, Wuchang, Peking, 
 Tientsin — their telephone systems and electric service and 
 asphalted streets — after having waded and floundered 
 during the rainy season through the narrow thorough- 
 fares of an ordinary city — unlighted, undrained, unpaved, 
 reeking with filth — will say this is marvellous in his eyes. 
 
 The Government's crusade against feet-binding, though 
 slow of progress, is bent upon freeing the feet of some 
 two hundred million women from pain and their minds 
 from the crampedness and littleness that accompanies 
 the bodily curse. 
 
 The Western Calendar has been adopted. 
 
 The New Testament, called the " Classic of the West,*' 
 has come into use in many Government schools, as a 
 
84 CHINA FKOM WITHIN 
 
 text-book of morals side by side with, the works of Con- 
 fucius, Mencius and Lao Tse. 
 
 The Government has made war against idolatry, in the 
 waging of which officials have invaded hundreds of 
 temples, and taken away and broken up the idols, many 
 of which have become mortar in Christian buildings. 
 
 Temples have been turned into Goveinment school- 
 houses, and their acres recovered to the state from rascal 
 priests, — ignorant, greasy, lecherous, tyrannizing — for 
 the support of its schools. 
 
 A successful revolution has been carried through in 
 the most ancient of empires, against a most powerful 
 dynasty, amid a most conservative people ; and that 
 with the minimum of bloodshed and the maximum of 
 protection to foreigners and their compounds scattered 
 all over the country. 
 
 The new Government has been es^tablished through the 
 unparallelled method of the ruling House, after tasting 
 the sweets of nearly three hundred years of power and 
 wealth, being forced to abdicate in peace and without a 
 counter royalist revolution. 
 
 A courageous attempt has been made to introduce fixed 
 salaries and the merit system of office-holding for lower 
 Government-officials, as a substitute for the age-long 
 regime of ^^ no salary and squeeze,^' 
 
 The Eepublic has been maintained for fifteen months 
 (February 1912-May 1913), ^4n comparative tran- 
 quillity " (as the London Times correctly says), in the 
 face of non- recognition by the Powers, although at the 
 price of costly special concessions (which China was un- 
 willing to give), in Thibet, Mongolia, Manchuria and 
 other parts of China (rich slices aggregating nearly three- 
 fifths of the whole). This maintenance has been done 
 without foreign money desperately needed ; loans that the 
 Powers were attempting to force upon the Eepublic under 
 
RACIAL TRAITS 85 
 
 conditions which the National Parliament rejected as 
 * incompatible with China's self-respect, because the 
 creditors assume the right to starve a nation or encompass 
 the destruction of its Government, when, but for their 
 outrageous pretentions, China, without difficulty and from 
 independent sources, would be able to satisfy all her 
 requirements. '* It has been done, despite the fact that 
 the Provinces had all instituted a multitude of local 
 reforms, calling for vastly increased outlays, as, for ex- 
 ample, adding on to their budgets regular salaries of all 
 officials and teachers, these enterprises— educational, 
 reformatory, administrative and commercial — requiring 
 such outlays on the part of the Provinces as to make im- 
 possible their forwarding revenues to the Central Govern- 
 ment which had been accustomed from time immemorial 
 to count on such revenues. 
 
 Internal order in the Republic has been firmly estab- 
 lished by successfully quashing a rebellion of formidable 
 proportions, engineered by popular and influential ultra- 
 republican leaders, and reported to be financed in part 
 by a foreign power — which rebellion had spread through- 
 out all the central and southern Provinces. 
 
 Religious liberty has been secured — one of the first 
 official acts of the Republic being its promulgation, as a 
 condition of the respect of other Governments and as 
 a corner stone of permanent national strength. Against 
 such a commitment the Monarchy had set its face like a 
 flint. 
 
 / The debts of the defunct Monarchy have been assumed, [ 
 its members being pensioned and their lives safeguarded! 
 — and this, despite the fact that the Manchus, by their 
 anti-foreign policies and extravagant folly, had left the 
 nation (as a leading vernacular paper said) ^*with no 
 funds, no resources, no system of efficient taxation, no 
 vi^bl^ revenues, no assets, no credit j and had saddled 
 
86 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 the nation with a ' regular debt,' so-called, for administra- 
 tion purposes of seven hundred million gold ; not to 
 speak of various additional debts, notably the * irregu« 
 lar ' Boxer indemnity, which, by the skillful manipula- 
 tion of compounding interest, and by extensions of times 
 of payments to 1937, raised the total Boxer indemnity to 
 be paid to somewhere between six and seven hundred 
 millions of gold dollars." *^ Christian^' States have re- 
 peatedly been known to repudiate not only their own 
 debts but those of their conquered enemies as well. Not 
 so this penniless heathen Eepublic. ' 
 
 Government edicts under the Eepublic have appeared 
 against gambling, and in some sections (as in Kwang 
 Tung Province) the vice has been abolished at least for a 
 season, as reported — though it is the darling sin of all 
 classes. Various schemes of regulation, license and taxa- 
 tion of the vice all having failed, the Kwang Tung 
 legislature enacted a prohibition law and the Governor 
 enforced it, at an initial loss in annual revenue of seven 
 million dollars. It is something to have gambling and 
 prostitution under the Republic recognized as crimes, 
 and not to have the Government dealing with them in 
 license as partner. 
 
 The actual and effective suppression of opium -growing 
 in every Province at a loss in revenue of one hundred and 
 fifty million taels a year — what a gigantic turn-over this 
 means, the stamping out of the opium habit which is the 
 crying social evil of the land, and which was forced upon 
 it at the cannon's mouth by a Christian nation. What it 
 means can be felt in part by a Westerner as he compares 
 the benefits that have come to the virile Russian villagers 
 and peasant folk from their Government's vodka prohibi- 
 tion. But, fine as that is, it involves only one hundred 
 and seventy million people ; and that in a land where 
 tlie Gove^'ument is so rich and powerful and actually 
 
KACIAL TRAITS 87 
 
 autocratic that it can easily work its imperial will — in 
 this instance, for good. 
 
 Protestant Christianity has been popularized through- 
 out many sections of Chiua because of the sincere and 
 courageous adoption of it by many real lovers of their 
 country — among them many prominent leaders of New 
 China— and that even before the Revolution, at a time 
 when it was banned by the Monarchy. 
 
 The official call of the Republic to the Native Church 
 (and implicitly to the whole Christian world) to pray for 
 it on Sunday, April 27, 1913, should be kept in mind. 
 If this be not a reform — in view of what the Central 
 Government of China has been — and a mighty stride for- 
 ward in real progress, then it is hard to define what con- 
 stitutes a step in progress. For this action was not an 
 " astute political move " on the part of the President and 
 his coadjutors, as misrepresented by cynical, carping 
 political critics abroad. The movement originated offi- 
 cially with Mr. Lu Cheng Hsiang, a staunch Christian, a 
 member of President Yuan's Cabinet, Minister of Foreign 
 Affairs, who in proposing to the Cabinet this day of 
 prayer said he did not wish great spectacular meetings, 
 but rather quiet gatherings of the Christians everywhere 
 in their regular places of worship on the Sabbath desig- 
 nated. 
 
 Consider the situation as stated in the words of Rev. 
 W. P. Merrill, D. D. : 
 
 **But now, for the first time, a nation not yet Chris- 
 tian has definitely asked the prayers of Christians ; 
 and the action has been taken so simply, with such 
 absolute directness, such utter lack of artifice, as to 
 disarm all suspicion of hidden motives, or adroit at- 
 tempts to influence the political action of the Christian 
 nations. 
 
 " I am fortunately able to give you the very wording 
 
88 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 of the message sent by tlie Chinese Government to all the 
 Provinces of the Republic, and to every Chinese city in 
 which there is a body of Christians : 
 
 *^ ^ Prayer is requested for the National Assembly now 
 In session; for the new Government j for the President 
 who is to be elected ; for the Constitution of the Republic ; 
 that the Government may be recognized by the Powers ; 
 that peace may reign within our country ; that strong 
 and virtuous men may be elected to office ; and that the 
 Government may be established upon a strong founda- 
 tion. Upon receipt of this telegram you are requested to 
 notify all churches in your Province that April 27th has 
 been set aside as a day of prayer for the nation. Let us 
 take part. ' 
 
 ^* Am I making too much of this matter when I say 
 that it means, in the life of the Church, what the visit of 
 the Greeks meant in the life of Jesus ? We recall the 
 long and weary years during which faithful men laboured 
 and apparently made not the slightest impression upon 
 the impassive and immobile civilization and people of 
 China. Morrison * against hope believed in hope ' keep- 
 ing up his faith only because he believed in the Living 
 God, with whom nothing is impossible. Down to some 
 fifteen years ago, China was considered the stronghold of 
 paganism. It is but a few years since the Boxer move- 
 ment threatened to drive the foreigners and their mis- 
 sions out of the Empire. And now Christians are in the 
 Cabinet, and in the recently elected National Assembly ; 
 the Provisional President is a man of pronounced Chris- 
 tian sympathies, who said last autumn, to a group of 
 Christians, ^ I am no Christian, but I admire the wonder- 
 ful teachings of Christianity, and am trying to live by 
 them,^ and who some years ago issued a ' Primer of 
 Christianity ' that the Chinese people might have a more 
 intelligent and sympathetic idea of the religion of Jesus. 
 
KACIAL TRAITS 89 
 
 And this Government now sends a request for prayer, not 
 to the priests and temples of its ancient faiths, but to 
 the Christians alone, as if recognizing in them the vital 
 power of the nation to-day." 
 
 The deep significance of that ^^call to prayer" inheres 
 in the fact that China's best and truest men — her real 
 leaders— realize that, as Professor T. M. Lindsay says, 
 ^^ History knows nothing of revivals of moral living apart 
 from some new religious impulse. The motive power 
 needed has always come through leaders who have had 
 communion with the Unseen." 
 
 So rapidly has the reform movement advanced in 
 China that men who had to flee the country ten years 
 ago as ultra- radicals are to-day, by the advanced reform- 
 ers, regarded as reactionaries. *^ China, " says J. E. Mott, 
 "has made greater progress in the last five years than 
 any other country in the world. She has made a more 
 radical adjustment to modern conditions than has any 
 other nation in the same period of time. For a nation to 
 pass within a few years from the days of the Crusaders 
 to the twentieth century is a feat of mental and socio- 
 logical gymnastics not devoid of danger. Such a leap is 
 to risk failure, and failure means nothing else than chaos.'' 
 Yet China under her leaders has made the leap. 
 
 As Bishop Maloney puts it : " The most capable and 
 populous non-Christian nation has really turned at last 
 into the steady channel of reform and progress." 
 
 Where in world history do we find more governmental 
 moral earnestness than that displayed by this youngest 
 and largest of Republics in her attempts to cast off the 
 whole brood of hell-born incubi that press her down ? 
 
 Indeed, as Dr. A. H. Smith says : "The political, in- 
 tellectual, sociological and moral renovation of China and 
 its millions is the mightiest task ever undertaken by any 
 people. And unless the history of the past is itself one 
 
90 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 great illusion, the entrance of China upon a new national 
 life is of deep and permanent significance, not to the 
 Far East alone, nor yet to Asia, but to the whole in- 
 habited world. '^ 
 
 Verily the vastest prize on this planet for continued 
 mastery over which Satan contends is China. And verily 
 the most stupendous single task that faces the Christian 
 Church till Christ shall come again is the bringing of 
 the knowledge of the True and Living God to China. 
 
Ill 
 
 The Crises of China's Ancient Walled Cities 
 A Study of the Turning of the Gentry from Idols 
 
in 
 
 THE CEISES OF CHINA'S ANCIENT 
 WALLED CITIES 
 
 EIGHTEEN NINETY-FIYE was a momentous year 
 not only for far eastern politics, but in world his- 
 tory. In that year Japan crushingly defeated 
 China, and made manifest that she had entered upon a 
 career that, ten years later, was to enable her to defeat 
 Eussia, at that time reputed to be the most powerful 
 militaristic nation in Christendom ; and that in another 
 ten years was to enable her not only to humiliate Ger- 
 many, supposedly resistless, but to drive her from China 
 and spoil her great schemes in the Far East. 
 
 It was a bitter pill for China to swallow, this sudden 
 emergence of pigmy Japan into power at China's ex- 
 pense — China, the ''Middle Kingdom"; China, the 
 teacher and elder brother and patron, not only of the 
 Nipponese but of many other races ; China, to whom kin- 
 dred peoples of the Orient had brought tribute from time 
 immemorial. Well might her leaders feel sore, not 
 merely over their defeat but over the fact that their 
 people, scores of millions of them, did not know it ; yea, 
 did not even know there had been a war. 
 
 When this war had revealed the weakness of China's 
 Government, and that it could with impunity be outraged 
 by powerful nations, the great states of Christendom began 
 a rapid encroachment on China. *' For political as well as 
 commercial reasons," says former Minister W. W. Eock- 
 hill, *Hhey sought to partition the Empire among them 
 by the creation of spheres of influence, the securing of 
 
 93 
 
94 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 strategical bases, the buildiDg and operating of lines of 
 railway, and the acquisition of vast and ill-defined con- 
 cessions over the whole face of the land.'' 
 
 On October 12, 1900, Li Hung Chang records: "I 
 have learned from a source that is beyond questioning 
 that the Powers have determined immediately after the 
 capture of the city to make a division of China between 
 them. Yet it seems that, like so many dogs over the car- 
 cass of a beast, they could not agree over their respective 
 shares. It was determined that the European nations 
 and Japan should act in concert, ignoring the United 
 States. This, however, was not found to be feasible, for 
 first England, and then Japan weakened. The trouble 
 is that Japan wanted that part of China as her sphere 
 of influence which Russia claimed as her own. Perhaps 
 amidst the quarrelling of the wolves the sheep will get 
 away.'' 
 
 However, it soon became painfully manifest that there 
 was little permanent comfort to be derived from the 
 quarrelling of the spoilers of the flock ; for the aggres- 
 sions of foreign governments continued so active and so 
 fierce that it finally seemed to Li Hung Chang "as if our 
 own gods and good genii had forsaken the religion of the 
 Middle Kingdom, and departed from their guardianship 
 of the Throne." 
 
 For the first time China's leaders began to realize some* 
 thing of the tremendous disadvantage that was theirs. 
 Self-satisfied, they had for centuries gloried in their self- 
 sufficiency ; had boasted of their splendid isolation, 
 hemmed in as they were by the barren steppes to the 
 north, the highest of mountains to the west and southwest, 
 and the vastest of oceans to the east. Now it came to 
 them with a rude shock that they had really been side- 
 tracked while Asia all about them, and especially Japan, 
 had been rushing forward upon the main track of the 
 
THE CRISES OF THE CITIES 95 
 
 world^s material progress. And it was a terrible awak- 
 eniug to see Japau, in her first modern trial of strength, 
 thus leap into power and prominence. 
 
 Manifestly China could no longer remain aloof from 
 the world's life, and maintain its own. To save itself 
 it must become a wrestler with and among the nations. 
 And yet, to whom to go ? and — what to seek ? Where 
 the sinews of strength ? China was like a Ship of State 
 that has slipped its moorings, and without pilot or chart 
 or port of destination, was adrift. 
 
 The immediate effect of the war with Japan was to stun 
 the Chinese statesmen. Then gradually the conviction 
 possessed them : little Japan, heretofore thought haughtily 
 of, even though in self-deception, as pupil and inferior 
 state ; also arrogantly conceived of as under the hegemony 
 of the great central power, even if not payer of tribute ; 
 had accomplished what it had only because of secrets 
 learned from the West. The Chinese would learn these 
 secrets too. Then began such a frenzy of the study of 
 Western languages and law and literature ; the trans- 
 lation of the best Western treatises and scientific text- 
 books ; such a delving for their technical knowledge in 
 jurisprudence, mining, railroading, electricity, com- 
 merce, economics, newspaper- making ; such plans for 
 army and navy expansion as in its sum -total this planet 
 possibly had never seen before. The result was the rang- 
 iug of the world by Chinese students and official deputa- 
 tions to find their best in all departments of human ac- 
 tivity as sources of power. 
 
 This was a bold step. Its primary importance lay in 
 the fact that it was a practical confession of the failure of 
 Chinese institutions. Before the war, the Chinese leaders 
 not only saw little necessity for reform administration, 
 but also had no conception of the weakness of their 
 country and its institutions without Christianity. Li 
 
96 CHINA FKOM WITHIN 
 
 Hung Chang voiced the conviction of literati and officials 
 when he wrote : *^ I have no need for Christ, if I will but 
 follow our own great sage and philosopher. I feel no 
 personal call for the Christian religion. If my lot were 
 cast in England, France or America, I should want to 
 call myself a Christian, for that is the religion of those 
 countries.' ' 
 
 But, despite all the cynicism and cruelty and callous- 
 ness of the West j despite its injustice and land-lust and 
 aggrandizement for national glory ; despite the assump- 
 tion of superiority and brutal attempts at enforcement of 
 the same ; despite its insatiable hunger for trade advan- 
 tages and colonies and coaling stations, there came to be 
 borne in upon the Chinese investigators that much of the 
 power and glory that these Western nations possessed and 
 which China did not possess — that which made them to 
 any degree admirable or to be copied — was somehow 
 wrapped up in what Li Hung Chang called ** the religion 
 of those countries. '^ Evidently their God was different 
 from China's, just as Israel's was from Babylon's ; and, 
 like the supposedly all-powerful ruler in the presence of 
 the fiery furnace, it behooved China to respect, even to 
 investigate, foreign deities. And, indeed. Western na- 
 tions asseverated that their God was at the bottom of 
 everything good in them. Yet it is always to be remem- 
 bered what prejudice against the Christian religion the 
 Chinese leaders had to overcome because of the too often 
 harsh and unjust and utterly un- Christian actions of 
 Western Governments professing it. 
 
 Their view-point can be imagined from this paragraph 
 out of Li Hung Chang's memorial to the Throne of July 
 23, 1900. 
 
 *' Since the middle of the reign of Tao-Kuang the 
 pressure of the barbarians on our borders has steadily 
 increased, and to-day we are brought to desperate straits 
 
THE CRISES OF THE CITIES 9\ 
 
 indeed. lu 1860 they invaded the capital and burned 
 the Summer Palace j His Majesty, Hsien-Feng, was forced 
 to flee, and thus came to his death. It is only natural 
 that His Majesty's posterity should long to avenge him 
 to the end of time, and that your subjects should con- 
 tinue to cherish undying hopes of revenge. But since 
 that time France has taken from us Annam, the whole 
 of that dependency being irretrievably lost ; Japan has 
 fought us and ousted us from Korea. Even worse disas- 
 ters and loss of territory were to follow ; Germany seized 
 Kiao-Chow ; Russia followed by annexing Port Arthur 
 and Ta Lien Wan ; England demanded Wei-hai-wei and 
 Kowloon, together with the extension of the Shanghai 
 Settlements, and the opening of new treaty ports inland ; 
 and France made further demands for Kuang-Chou-Wan. 
 How could we possibly maintain silence under such 
 grievous and repeated acts of aggression ? Craven would 
 be the man who would not seek to improve our defences, 
 and shameless would be he who did not long for the day 
 of reckoning.'* 
 
 Listen to one Viceroy : " Foreign Governments say 
 they * lease * our lands. Alas ! we know they are gone 
 forever ! ' ' 
 
 Listen to another : *^How splendid a thing it would be 
 if our ancient motto : * King sik tsze chil ' (' Reverence 
 the written word and keep it holy,') should be hung 
 conspicuously on the walls of the various Foreign Of- 
 fices ! " 
 
 See this picture, ironical side-light on *Hhe "Western 
 Religion " as Chinese officials know it. A Chinese 
 statesman of highest rank is surrounded by a group of 
 foreign diplomats. He asks them if they believe the 
 teachings of the Jesus Sage. They affirm that they do. 
 Then he opens a Bible and reads : ** Thou shalt not covet," 
 adding : " If you believe, why do you not practice? '- 
 
98 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 And finally listen to the despairing wail of the Empress 
 Dowager : "We shall have nothing left ! " 
 
 The inconsistencies of the Christian nations did not fail 
 to attract the attention of the Chinese. A great mandarin 
 notes how they fight among themselves and cherish most 
 bitter hatred against each other. He records: **The 
 French hate the Germans, and the Russians kill the 
 Jews, but they are all Christians when they come to 
 China." And he refers to the action of Great Britain 
 in forcing opium on the Chinese as "one of the worst im- 
 pediments to the progress of Christianity," with this 
 closing comment: "A great nation, a Christian nation 
 above all things, has given this awful blight to the 
 Middle Kingdom. What are our people to think?" 
 Naturally they thought just what Li Hung Chang thought 
 out loud : " It is offensive to our educated people to know 
 that these churchmen are sent from all parts of the world 
 to explain to us the nicest way to live and the happiest 
 way to die. '^ 
 
 Try to see the situation through the eyes of a heathen 
 Chinese official. He saw camped in his land "mission- 
 aries" — many of them supposed to be paid agents of for- 
 eign governments — from all the European States now 
 at war — missionaries, British, French, Russian, Italian, 
 Belgian, Portuguese, German, Austrian. Whenever he 
 thought of these men as a class — and he had to think of 
 them pretty often — the old facts drilled into him from his 
 youth rose like a wall to separate him from any sym- 
 pathy with these foreigners — the old facts that have for a 
 hundred years been such powerful factors in keepiog 
 China's leaders prejudiced against Christianity. Hear 
 him say : "These foreigners have, by iniquitous wars of 
 conquest, fastened themselves like leeches upon China. 
 At the mouths of foreign cannon, at the points of foreign 
 bayonetSj they have seized vast areas of Chinese territory. 
 
THE CRISES OF THE CITIES 99 
 
 These foreign men and foreign guns and * foreign dirt ' 
 (one of the Chiuese contemptuous names for opium) are 
 bad, bad for us ! Must not their religion be of the same 
 kind? What can be expected from *a foreign-devil 
 Jesus religion ' brought by tlie filchers of our territory, 
 and the miners of our bodies and morals? ^' And from 
 his view-point, according to his light, who shall say that 
 his conclusions are not sound, his logic irrefutable ? 
 
 Eeally can the Chinese leaders be blamed ? So much 
 evil against which they vainly protested had been forced 
 upon them by the nations whose names are associated 
 with Christ's — rum, opium, doctored cigarettes, mor- 
 phine, war, indemnities, land seizures, foreign domina- 
 tion — that they naturally were suspicious of all that came 
 from the West. Whenever they were given the oppor- 
 tunity to choose what they would receive, they were 
 chary of choosing even so good a thing as Western re- 
 ligion. They saw in practice what they had little means 
 of knowing was not Christianity ; and it was only odious. 
 
 So bitter was the rancour and hatred aroused in the 
 hearts of gentry, literati and officials against the Chris- 
 tian religion, because of its apparently indissoluble as- 
 sociation with the arrogant meddling of powerful and 
 covetous European Governments, that Li Hung Chang, 
 one of the most enlightened and open-minded of Chinese 
 statesmen could once say : '^ I hated the foreign religion 
 more violently than all other scourges in the world ; and 
 I prayed and hoped that not alone would the Taipings 
 be destroyed, but that earthquakes, eruptions of moun- 
 tains, and terrible fevers would make the Christian na- 
 tions without a man, a woman or a child." Later that 
 same great leader became convinced, as he says, that "the 
 Christian religion is not so much hated in itself, but that 
 the animosity throughout China against the ^ Foreign 
 Devils ^ is because they are * foreign,' And the foreigner 
 
100 CHINA FKOM WITHIN 
 
 is disliked, not because of his religion, not because he 
 may be the agent of Jesus Christ or a follower of that 
 great man, but as a possible enemy to the political and 
 industrial independence of the country.'' 
 
 Still later Viceroy Li Hung Chang says that slowly the 
 gentry began to make clean-cut distinctions between what 
 he terms '* Catholic priests as paid agents of European 
 Governments, catspaws for their policies of encroach- 
 ment, and the American Protestant missionaries. " The 
 situation began gradually to clear up in the minds of the 
 gentry. But even so, it is one of God's good miracles 
 that, having hated the foreigners with a perfect hatred, 
 and having shunned their religion as one would contact 
 with a leper, the gentry should now be turning from the 
 idols in which they had trusted, and opening their walled 
 cities to the Gospel. 
 
 And who are the gentry ? There are two preponder* 
 ating classes in China. The gentry are the people (ex- 
 clusive of the nobility) of good position and means, con- 
 stituting the merchant, literary and official classes — the 
 real rulers of China. As distinguished from the peas- 
 ants, living in innumerable mud villages, they are the 
 indwellers of the great walled cities, — the administrative 
 centres of empire — elegant (after Chinese standards), 
 learned in their learning and glorying in its degrees, 
 rich, powerful, self-sufftcient, reactionary. These aristo- 
 crats have constituted a powerful barrier to the progress 
 of the Gospel, spurning it — themselves another "great 
 wall of China," but vaster than the famed one and un- 
 speakably more impressive in the bulk of their pride, 
 exclusiveness, lofty pretensions, contempt, and hatred of 
 the foreign devils. 
 
 And the walled cities of China ! Who has language 
 adequate to suggest their meaning — their life for millen- 
 niums past and their potentialities for the future ! These 
 
THE CRISES OF THE CITIES 101 
 
 seats of Satan, hoary, some of them, before America was 
 discovered. 
 
 And what more fascinating than the walls that enclose 
 them — huge, gray, grim, their very mystery challenging 
 solution ! And many a city, sitting like a queen — in the 
 midst of a great plain, — is well calculated to pique the 
 curiosity because of those encompassing walls that hide 
 the life within. They intimate mysteries that the human 
 spirit would fain unravel. To the uninitiated they are 
 not only tantalizing, but altogether bafling. For cen- 
 turies these massive walls of China^s cities have in silence 
 looked down upon the multiplied sorrows of her children 
 — flood and famine, drought and plague, rebellion and 
 massacre, idolatry and witchcraft, ignorance and super- 
 stition, deceit and fear, squalor and vice — all grinding 
 the face of the poor in a woe that is beyond words. For 
 centuries the people, seeking soul-rest and finding none, 
 have surged through these frowning portals — their own 
 religions pitiless and impotent to answer them. 
 
 And to-day these people out of their helplessness in- 
 articulately cry : " To whom shall we go ? ^^ They are 
 perplexed, distressed ; the old spiritual foundations are 
 breaking up ; and they will turn in the direction that 
 offers them succour and soul- peace. Now, for the first 
 time, some seventeen hundred, we are told, of China's 
 great walled cities invite the Gospel, in the sense that 
 they are at least open to receive it. Only a few months 
 ago had the time arrived when Li Yuan Hung, Vice- 
 President of the Republic, entertaining the Mott party, 
 could urge them to persuade the Home Church to occupy 
 these cities, and to do it at once. 
 
 It is hard indeed to realize that these centres of exclu- 
 siveness, of reaction, of anti-foreignism — all seats of 
 power — are at last open ; and that their resident gentry 
 are turning towards the living God. Those portals that 
 
102 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 until recently were closed in sullen pride and haughty 
 resentment against ** Western Barbarian intrusion" are 
 now flung wide open to the missionary. It is scarcely 
 believable that high of&cials are everywhere sympathet- 
 ically examining Christianity. *' Eager for better gov- 
 ernment, a better education, a better economic system, 
 China's leaders are also turning from her ancient super- 
 stitions and seeking a new faith. Already there are men 
 among their most influential officials who say, *The 
 greatest religion in the world is that of Jesus Christ.' " 
 A prominent general says : *' We want to know what 
 Jesus wants. " The Vice-President Li Yuan Hung says : 
 '* Jesus is better than Confucius ; we welcome the Amer- 
 ican I*rotestant missionary to proclaim Him ! " 
 
 Perhaps some will say that such testimony from Chris- 
 tian or Christianity-favouring officials may be discounted 
 as being peculiar to the more enlightened and tolerant 
 centres. But here is a testimony, one out of many from 
 missionary lips, from far-off Chen Tu of West China, by 
 the late Eev. Samuel Pollard. He says : 
 
 "In the years gone by, the officials in the Province of 
 Yunnan, where I have spent a quarter of a century, were 
 either hostile or coldly indifferent to Protestant mission- 
 ary work. Now and again a minor official was a friend 
 of the Westerner, but we never dreamed in those days of 
 mandarins attending Christian services. Now, however, 
 the highest officials in the Province are frequently listen- 
 ing to Christian appeals and encouraging those under 
 them to follow out the high ideals. 
 
 *^ A short time ago a mission of ten days was held in a 
 large city in the northeast of Yunnan and the attend- 
 ances numbered thirteen thousand. The officials, pro- 
 fessors in Government schools, heads of police, and others, 
 nearly all accepted invitations to be present, and several 
 made speeches commending the work of the missionaries. 
 
THE CRISES OF THE CITIES 103 
 
 *^ In Yuunan Fn, the capital of the Province, and one of 
 the most beautifully situated cities of the whole of China, 
 for thirty years men and women missionaries have 
 plodded on with very little success. Now conversions 
 are frequent, services are crowded, workers are in good 
 heart and the name of Jesus is highly respected by many 
 who are outside of the churches. Years ago in that 
 beautiful city, I woke up one morn to find the legend 
 written across my front door * Jesus is a Devil, therefore 
 Foreign Devils worship Him.' How changed it all is. 
 Those were days of great up-hill work. A few of us held 
 a half-night of prayer and there came a promise to us 
 that we should see thousands of people converted. Be- 
 fore many years there may be a Christian Church in 
 Southwest China of half a million members. When years 
 ago we admitted two men into the Church in one day we 
 were greatly elated and rejoiced. One afternoon recently 
 in one village centre alone a hundred and three men and 
 boys and seventy-three women and girls were baptized. 
 
 **In Tali Fu, West Yunnan, where the Panthay rebels 
 had the seat of their government, about forty years ago, 
 missionaries laboured for thirty years, and did not see 
 thirty converts. Now the people come in crowds, and 
 on one occasion more people were baptized than in the 
 previous thirty years. God is giving the increase." 
 
 Several years ago, in company with my honoured 
 senior colleague, the Eev. W. M. Hayes, D. D., I visited 
 such a walled city, said to be ancient before the discovery 
 of America, one of the important county seats in our 
 station field. The natural importance of this place as an 
 administrative centre is enhanced by the fact that it is 
 located on the German railroad. The inveterate preju- 
 dice of its inhabitants against foreigners was quite beyond 
 belief. It was probably increased by the fact that the 
 Germans occupied their city until after the defeat of 
 
104 CHINA FEOM WITHIN 
 
 Eussia 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 the work, had tackled 
 them. Both had been frozen out. 
 
 The gentry there had seen the Bible translated into 
 Kwan Wha (the vernacular). As trash beneath their 
 notice, they had turned up their noses at it, though the lan- 
 guage of the translation was what they all spoke, and it 
 was excellently done. They despised it because, forsooth, 
 it was not put into Wen Li. The moment they saw the 
 New Testament 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 offering him the American 
 Eevision, instead of a Bible in the language of Beowulf. 
 Their pride of scholarship in the Chinese classics had 
 run well-nigh mad. 
 
 But several of our Christian gentry from the country 
 had established themselves in business in that city. They 
 are men of sturdy faith and prayer-power ; they preached 
 as they did business. And they expected to do some- 
 thing for God. As a result of their witness, 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 
 *Hhe 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 dissatisfaction with 
 the old order grew up in them. They cursed it — its 
 blindness, its turpitude, its hopelessness, its lifelessness. 
 
 Things developed rapidly. Even two years before the 
 establishing of the Eepublic, an influential family of 
 officials who had charge of a Government school for boys 
 
THE CRISES OF THE CITIES 105 
 
 hired, in open defiance of the Manchu Government's in- 
 structions, two of our Christians as teachers, who daily- 
 expounded the Scriptures in the school. From that 
 family one brother has become a zealous evangelist, and 
 out of that school of thirty boys have come many Chris- 
 tians and inquirers. 
 
 Another family of gentry of four brothers and a father, 
 all ofi&cials, have established a girls' school in their com- 
 pound, 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 jDroved eager 
 learners, and have received their ** Doctrine Teachers" 
 most cordially. 
 
 Imagine what it means that these people should pro- 
 pose 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 learn- 
 ing. 2. We would make the choice of books to be used 
 in the union school. 3. At least one- fourth of the course 
 would be devoted to the teaching of Christian subjects. 
 
 Repeatedly I have accepted the invitation of the 
 magistrate to speak before his official schools, especially 
 before the normal school, where hundreds of young men, 
 in courses of six months, nine months, one year, and two 
 years are hurriedly trying to fit themselves to meet the 
 needs of schools being opened by the Republic, — a rare 
 chance to preach Christ and distribute tracts and aid in 
 the moulders of Chinese thought. 
 
 Christians in that city have steadily multiplied from 
 the gentry ranks. I have taken pains that all be baptized 
 by the native pastor of a near-by country church. 
 
 There have been two especially interesting and helpful 
 human factors in this development. 
 
 The gentry have seen in their midst the superiority of 
 Christian schools and teachers. It has been as eye-open- 
 
106 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 iDg as humbling. They have been profoundly impressed 
 by the fact that our Christian system produces students 
 with usable knowledge at their command, better than 
 any of which they had conceived. Our teachers know 
 geography, mathematics, calisthenics, music, and many 
 other things involved in the idea of ''Si Wen" (West- 
 ern learning). It commands their respect that the dis- 
 trict magistrate sends his teachers to our Chinese teach- 
 ers 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. And what that 
 means can be understood only by the missionary long 
 resident in heathenism. 
 
 Then Christianity has brought to many of the gentry 
 of that city a new sense of the value of girls and the 
 dignity and worth of educated women. One of the lead- 
 ers there confided to me that the thing that has impressed 
 him more than all else with the desirability and satis- 
 fyingness of the Christian religion was an episode that 
 he witnessed as a guest in our home, — the baptism of our 
 youngest daughter. Such unexpected and humble means 
 can the Holy Spirit use to reach a man's heart and to 
 help open a city. The ceremony was performed by 
 Dr. Hayes in the presence of this heathen man and a few 
 missionary friends "refugeeing'' with us during troub- 
 lous 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 plan his work in another 
 city so as to be able to come and administer this sacra- 
 ment ; quite overwhelmed him with a changed conception 
 of life. The music, the presence of foreign ladies, cul- 
 tured, and honoured 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 some- 
 
THE CRISES'OF THE CITIES 107 
 
 thing for others has been manifested in his helping ns to 
 open a Christian Middle School for boys in rooms on hig 
 own compound, — Christian, I say, because two of our 
 ablest Christian teachers have been employed in his 
 school. The course conforms to our Mission school cur- 
 riculum ; compulsory morning and evening worship ob- 
 tains ; also Sabbath worship, the school marching fore- 
 noon and afternoon in a body to the chapel. And the 
 native pastor is now the welcome guest and presiding 
 good genius there over it all. And remember that the 
 pupils are mostly boys out of heathen families. Further 
 to prove his interest mine host has, at considerable ex- 
 pense, outfitted the school with furniture, maps, charts, 
 etc. J and he hopes to build and run on similar lines a 
 girls' school in another yard of his compound. 
 
 In addition to this, he has established a reading-room 
 in the city, modelled after the one in the Y. M. C. A. 
 connected with our Tsingtau Church, where the ^lite of 
 his clan and friends can come and leisurely soak in the 
 Christian literature secured through us. As a result of 
 his aroused interest and that of his friends, the East 
 Suburb Chapel cannot hold the Christians who now at- 
 tend the meetings. 
 
 Recently we called on the magistrate to invite his co- 
 operation in erecting a new church building. As things 
 are in China, he could, if he so desired, instantly nip the 
 project in the bud, especially as this is a Chinese church, 
 not a foreign mission affair. He, however, took great in- 
 terest in the matter, and promised a generous subscrip- 
 tion, and issued a proclamation asking the business 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 Dr. Hayes, the in- 
 fluence of whose able, scholarly, and consecrated witness 
 is with him still. 
 
108 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 After talking with him several times about establishing 
 an official school for the daughters of the gentry, he has 
 finally opened one. His wife and mother act as patron- 
 esses, and 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 magistrate, speaking for 
 several of the leading gentry, asked me to accompany 
 them to the First National Y. M. C. A. Convention, held 
 in Peking, December, 1912. It was a great venture for 
 them. 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 centres now for the 
 first time face to face with the truth of Christ — who can 
 calculate? 
 
 And this is the city that only a few months ago was 
 lorded over by a peasant-squeezing, queue- wearing Man- 
 chu official of the hopeless old regime. During the 
 revolution he was seizing even our Christian schoolboys 
 and shutting them up in a foul prison for the crime of 
 cutting their queues. When, after repeated and fruitless 
 attempts, I was at last able to get in to them, I found 
 them chained, hand and foot, in a sitting posture, in that 
 low, dirty den ; their families were distressed beyond 
 measure, some of their women folk nearly dying of anx- 
 iety and fear. In an age-long, sin-encrusted gentry- 
 centre, what hath God wrought ! 
 
 Personally I have had surprisingly pleasant and grati- 
 fying relations with these gentry, both in their homes, 
 and in their coming to visit me. As they have learned 
 *4he Doctrine," they have invariably helped with their 
 money and with the use of their compounds for schools 
 and places of meeting. Would it not seem strange in 
 
THE CRISES OF THE CITIES 109 
 
 America for old men, all their life long hostile to the 
 Gospel (through the prejudice of ignorance), men who 
 had scarcely ever been away from home (even though 
 they were men of learning in their own land), suddenly 
 resolving to take a long journey and dwell weeks at their 
 own expense, in a strange city, just to learn the ^* Jesus 
 Doctrine ^ ' and carry it back to their own people I Such 
 is now the situation in China. And in every section the 
 same wonderful workings of the Holy Spirit, as those 
 witnessed in the walled centres of my Province, can be 
 duplicated. 
 
 To-day missionaries all over China, through like ex- 
 periences, are profoundly impressed with the present op- 
 portunity to reach the upper class Chinese. Great cities 
 everywhere are eager to receive the Gospel, the gentry 
 and of&cials being ready to receive and listen — if the 
 Church will now preach to them. The following is a 
 typical appeal. The Bishop of Hankow recently re- 
 ceived a petition from over four hundred leading men, 
 in which they said : "If Christianity can do for China 
 what it has done for America, we are going to have it, 
 and on that ground we apply to you to send men up to 
 our district to preach the Christian religion. '^ 
 
 Think of the proclamations posted in 1900 by the For- 
 eign Ofi&ce of the Chinese Government : '* Now that all 
 foreign churches and chapels have been razed to the 
 ground, and that no place of refuge or concealment is 
 left for the foreigners, they must unavoidably fly in 
 every direction. Be it therefore known, . . . that 
 any person found guilty of harbouring foreigners will 
 incur the penalty of decapitation. For every male for- 
 eigner taken alive a reward of fifty taels will be given ; 
 for every female forty taels, and for every child thirty 
 taels.'' 
 
 And then picture the following scene of last year in that 
 
110 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 same conservative Peking. Special Gospel services were 
 held at the invitation of high officials for the presenta- 
 tion of Christ to the leaders of the city life. Even Presi- 
 dent Yuan Shi Kai received the workers, while the Vice- 
 President of the Eepublic, General Li, gave the evangelists 
 a special luncheon, after which they were asked to ad- 
 dress his family upon "Christianity as the hope of 
 China." The Government allowed the evangelistic 
 meetings to be held in a pavilion in the old Forbidden 
 City directly in front of the imperial palace, from which 
 in 1900 the Empress Dowager directed the murderous 
 Boxer attack against foreigners and Christians. It is 
 also next the altar where the Emperor used to worship 
 the spirits of the land. There audiences of three thou- 
 sand and even four thousand men gathered to hear the 
 Gospel. Meetings for schoolboys and business men, at 
 the latter of which the Board of Trade asked to have three 
 hundred reserved seats, brought the total attendance up to 
 14, 000. The importance of those Special Gospel Meetings 
 held in a theatre by missionaries for 2,500 literati and 
 business men, as well as for Cabinet members and leading 
 officials of Peking, can hardly be overestimated. 
 
 Of those who attended these meetings, upwards of 
 2,000 became inquirers. Among the latter were a former 
 governor, two generals, a private secretary to the Presi- 
 dent, the director of China^s national bank, prominent 
 officials and a young non-Christian philanthropist who 
 has recently given $12,000 to worthy objects. These 
 cases, like many others in all sections of the country that 
 could be cited, show that the attitude of the leading men 
 of China is one of welcome to the Gospel. 
 
 Think of the edict of the Empress Dowager in that 
 same fell year of 1900. ' ' I command that all foreigners 
 — men, women and children, old and young — be sum- 
 marily executed. Let not one escape, so that my Empire 
 
THE CRISES OF THE CITIES 111 
 
 may be purged of this noisome source of corruption, and 
 that peace may be restored to my loyal subjects.'' Aud 
 then think of the Government's request for all Christians 
 on April 27, 1913, to meet to pray for it, and its com- 
 mand to its officials to meet with them in that service. 
 
 What hunger for spiritual light and for the welfare of 
 the land is hinted at in the following, where a mixed 
 company of varying creeds met in the greatest business 
 city of North China to pray for the Republic. We are 
 told that at this mixed meeting of prayer for China, the 
 service began with a deafening noise from the Police 
 Band and was followed by an explanatory address by a 
 Methodist pastor. Members of the Women's Red Cross 
 Society sang ; speeches from a leading Buddhist and a 
 prominent Christian came next ; then an atheist proposed 
 that all should rise, thrice repeat the formula * ' God bless 
 our country and protect the people, " bow thrice and re- 
 sume their seats, — which was done with some hesitation. 
 Two representatives of the Viceroy, one a Moslem and 
 the other a Buddhist, spoke, as did one representing the 
 Red Cross. Then came the most interesting part of the 
 service, the reading aloud by all of a printed prayer 
 which they held in their hands. This had finally been 
 written by the only one on the committee who knew what 
 true prayer was, a Christian. Its four divisions of praise, 
 thanksgiving, confession and petition were reverently 
 read aloud by the vast audience under the guidance of 
 the chairman. After further singing and addresses by 
 a Moslem and Chang Po-Ling, the prayer-meeting ad- 
 journed. Parenthetically, let me say that this Chang 
 Po-Ling, head of the famous Government Middle School 
 at Tien Tsin, a school of first rank and reputation for 
 sous of gentry, is one of China's most able aud conspicuous 
 Christians ; is himself an aristocrat wonderfully converted 
 by the preaching of the Rev. Ting Li Mei, long of our 
 
112 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 station field. Mr. Chang is now in tlie prime of life and 
 one of the strong personalities for Christ in China — a big- 
 statured, vigorous man of winning personality, cultured 
 and refined ; a pleasing speaker in English as well as in 
 Chinese ; and in his person well illustrating the possi- 
 bilities of the Gospel among the gentry, when it is given 
 an opportunity to dominate their intellects, affections and 
 wills. 
 
 *'Was there ever a more pathetic prayer- meeting! 
 That crowd of men, women and children seeking to pray 
 for their country and not knowing how, and surrounded 
 by a vast city that cares for none of these things I " But 
 did it not suggest that many of the leaders have come to 
 feel, however vaguely or grotesquely expressed, that they 
 and their land need the help of a real God I They are 
 ripe for the truth. 
 
 That explains the response of the leaders of China to 
 the Government's call for the Christians to pray for it. 
 And few events since the day this earth began to witness 
 strange and meaningful sights have been more significant 
 than that Day of Prayer in China. And these instances 
 of the present willingness of the gentry (which might be 
 multiplied indefinitely) to hear spiritual things along with 
 the earlier cases of dramatic contrasts to them cited in 
 the preceding paragraphs, bring home in startling im- 
 pressiveness, with truth that may not be gainsaid, with 
 an insistence that rday not be put off, the necessity for 
 the Christian Church as a whole (if its Lord is not to be 
 crucified afresh), to change its attitude of callous indif- 
 ference and wake up to a vast and passing opportunity, 
 which, if met, is pregnant with blessed promise without 
 limit. 
 
 In view o#-such a crisis it is no wonder that our mis- 
 sionary statesmen, the secretaries of twenty-eight Foreign 
 Mission Boards, have issued ^^a message to all the 
 
THE CRISES OF THE CITIES 113 
 
 Churches of North America^' — which constitutes a 
 clarion call to all who love the Lord Jesus Christ with a 
 love incorruptible, to pray and sacrifice for China now, 
 and to thank God that He has called us into the King- 
 dom for such a time as this. The ^* Message'^ is worthy 
 a place alongside of documents of state, like the Magna 
 Charta, the Declaration of Independence, and Lincoln's 
 Emancipation Proclamation, — that have challenged the 
 race to move forward. And the interpretation thereof is 
 that, whatever leverage we intend to exert for good 
 upon China, we ought to bring to bear with power and 
 at once. To-day the nation's younger leaders are plas- 
 tic. Many fear that ten years hence may be too late. 
 One paragraph of that ^* Message" reads: **The whole 
 world is agreed in recognizing in the transformation of 
 China one of the greatest movements in human history. 
 Whether we consider the immensity of the population 
 affected, the character of the change taking place, the 
 magnitude of the interests involved, the comparative 
 peacefulness of the crisis, or the significance of the fact 
 that a great and ancient race is undergoing in the period 
 of a decade a radical, intellectual, and spiritual readjust- 
 ment, it is evident that it is given us to witness, and 
 have a part in, a vast movement whose consequences will 
 affect the whole world and be unending." 
 
 After one hundred years of spiritual skirmishing in 
 China the Christian Church has made but relatively little 
 progress. There are not a million communing Protestant 
 converts. And the progress that has been made is largely 
 among the peasants in the country districts. Less im- 
 pression has been made upon the cities, strongholds of 
 gentry dom. And now that the Church's opportunity 
 with the gentry has come, how is it prepared to enter in 
 and possess the land for Christ? Kot at all. 
 
 When we say that present methods are unequal to the 
 
114 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 crisis, no implication is intended that missionaries are 
 blameworthy or that their plans and the methods in use 
 are unworthy. A new situation has arisen that requires 
 a mighty advance, and a host of additional workers to 
 make it. And a new kind of a host. If the allies ever ex- 
 pect to beat Germany, burrowiug in in France and Flan- 
 ders and Italy and Poland and there adopting a waiting 
 policy, would not be the way to attain their ambition. 
 They must advance on to the soil of their enemies and there 
 victoriously clinch with them. And just as it required 
 the advent of Bliicher on the field of Waterloo, with the 
 tremendous thrnst of his additional army to make good 
 the heroic stand of Wellington, so it requires an addi- 
 tional force of Christian workers equipped and eager, 
 ready to take China's cities for Christ. 
 
 While poignantly recognizing the crisis, the Western 
 missionaries realize that it is impossible for them to 
 evangelize these cities. One of the axioms of the science 
 of Missions, born out of its history, is that foreigners can- 
 not evangelize another nation. Ultimately it must be 
 done by its own people. Of course, men can be baptized 
 wholesale — provided they can be gotten hold of — as they 
 were forced to be at the command of Constantine and of 
 Charlemagne ; but that is as futile as attempts to put life 
 into a tree from without. 
 
 Some reasons why this city work cannot be done by 
 foreigners are only too painfully evident to the mission- 
 aries themselves. They need a large increase of numbers 
 in order merely to overtake the work they have already 
 developed in their country fields, not to speak of their 
 entering new ones. 
 
 There are sections of China in which there is not one 
 ordained man missionary to five hundred thousand peo- 
 ple ; not one to seven hundred thousand j yes, not one to 
 a million j as over against, Chicago for example, with 
 
THE CRISES OF THE CITIES 115 
 
 twelve biiudred churches, and New York with eighteen 
 huudred, not to speak of a host of Christian workers to 
 cooperate with their pastors. 
 
 There is probably not a Mission station in China with 
 a quota of workers sufficiently adequate to administer 
 the work that has there developed. Most of them are 
 like my own station, where, for several years, with sta- 
 tion force depleted, I, a young man, inexperienced, had 
 to try, as best I could, to care for some half a hundred 
 village schools, for a girls' high school, a boys' high 
 school, and a women's Bible School ; to be pastor of 
 eight churches, and counsellor and co-worker in the af- 
 fairs of seven others ; to direct the campaign of thirty-six 
 evangelists and sixteen Bible women ; to look after and 
 keep supplied fifteen market -town chapels ; to buy land 
 and help build up a Station Compound where mission- 
 aries could live and work ; to make out statistical reports 
 of religious conditions both for the Chinese Presbytery 
 and the Home Church ; to act as treasurer, receiving, dis- 
 bursing and reporting moneys both to the treasurer for 
 China at Shanghai and to the treasurer of the Foreign 
 Board in New York. 
 
 The many thousands of dollars handled had to be 
 worked through in American gold and Mexican silver 
 and Chinese currency. 
 
 Imagine what just two of the above duties involved in 
 view of the fact that, previously to their suddenly com- 
 ing my way, I had never given a thought to house- 
 planning and building and that I was blissfully ignorant 
 of formal bookkeeping. Incidentally the missionary 
 often has to burn much midnight oil (as I did over that 
 day-book and ledger) on work for which he has no apti- 
 tude or special training. All that I did was very inade- 
 quately done. None could realize more poignantly than 
 I how absolutely essential it is that a missionary should 
 
116 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 be able to manufacture time, that he should have a hun- 
 dred hands like Briareus, and that he should be an all- 
 round expert. Sanctity with no flaw in it, unerring 
 judgment, skill of hand, and the constitution of an ox 
 ought to be the outstanding characteristics of each mis- 
 sionary, under circumstances of such dearth of workers 
 attempting to man the foreign field stations. 
 
 The recent foreign evangelistic attack upon the great 
 cities — and much of it through interpreters — has neces- 
 sarily been so sporadic and inadequate as to be almost 
 disheartening. At present it is quite unrelated — here a 
 little and there a little — and at irregular intervals, in- 
 capable of being pushed with the relatively few foreign 
 recruits at disposal. It is as if Haig should attempt to 
 take Berlin with a regiment. 
 
 Neither can the cities be captured by the ordinary na- 
 tive country evangelists now in Mission employ. These 
 men are faithful under conditions unusually hard and 
 forbidding. And whoever as a fellow-shepherd has fel- 
 lowshipped with them, tramping with them through dust 
 and rain and sleet and snow ; whoever has eaten and slept 
 and prayed and planned and preached with them ; and 
 been in perils with them of rivers and roads and robbers 
 — such an one must have love and praise for them. Use- 
 ful as they are, ministering to peasant Christians and 
 preaching in the markets and opening country chapels, 
 nevertheless they are not equipped for this vast enter- 
 prise. They have neither the education nor the training 
 nor the position to reach the city gentry. For them to 
 attempt it would be as futile as for the converts of Water 
 Street to man New York's up -town pulpits. 
 
 In the face of this exigency there remains, or rather 
 there has developed, the China Cities Evangelization 
 Project, an adequate plan to meet China^s classes in their 
 walled seats. And among all the Missions at work in 
 
THE CRISES OF THE CITIES 117 
 
 China, the honour of originating it and first putting it into 
 execution falls to the Presbyterian missionaries of Shan- 
 tung, ** The Sacred Province,'' the *' Heart of Confucian- 
 ism," pivotal in the Eepublic as Pennsylvania is the 
 ^' Keystone State" of the American Union. 
 
 Realizing the urgency of the situation, our Shantung 
 Mission in 1912 decided that it must plan to open within 
 ten years at least ten foreign-manned new stations. But 
 the rapid advance of events forced the Mission to realize 
 that time would not wait for foreign houses and hospitals 
 and schools to be erected, and for young missionaries to 
 learn the language and the people. It seemed imperative 
 that the Gospel get in on the ground inside of five years ; 
 or it was felt that the opportunity would have materially 
 changed for the worse ; and a present, determined oppo- 
 sition have hardened into the set. Powerful forces are 
 even now at work in the cities for the rejuvenation of 
 Confucianism. For instance, the first great annual, na- 
 tional Confucian congress was recently held at Ku Fu, 
 the native city of Confucius, whom millions upon mil- 
 lions, to all intents and purposes, worship as very God. 
 Confucian scholars, alert and foreign-university trained, 
 and backed by large money, and of great influence, went, 
 after the close of the sessions of their Congress to Peking, 
 to press the Constitution-makers of the nation, themselves 
 overwhelmingly Confucian, to incorporate Confucianism 
 into the national law as the state religion. This would 
 mean that every student in every Government school in 
 the land would have to worship Confucius ; this would 
 disenable every Christian, and would cut the tap-root of 
 religious liberty already promised and without which as 
 a corner-stone no real Republic can exist. This move- 
 ment emanates from the cities, remember. Reaction 
 against the radicals and against the progressivism with 
 which many of them have been linked — all this is rapidly 
 
118 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 taking shape in plans formed to run counter to *'the 
 foreign religion." 
 
 It is to be remembered that Shantung Province, with a 
 population exceeded only by Szechuan, has one hundred 
 and eight walled cities, with many additional market 
 towns, large and important, and multitudes of villages. 
 Of these one hundred and eight centres, some eighty-five 
 fall, by comity arrangements with other Missions, to the 
 American Presbyterian Mission to evangelize. And this 
 vast opportunity that the missionaries felt driven to face, 
 the Chinese leaders also, interestingly enough, began, on 
 their own account, to feel as their problem also to solve. 
 Coincideutally with the new step that the burdened mis- 
 sionaries in great and daring faith planned to take, the 
 Chinese inaugurated an ''Independent Church" move- 
 ment to do this very thing — to reach the Gospel- neglected 
 upper classes of China. So it was proposed that between 
 these high-grade native leaders and the Foreign Missions, 
 instead of isolation and reduplication of work — as is so 
 appallingly carried on in the home-land— there should be 
 full cooperation. Accordingly, therefore, arrangements 
 have been perfected between them and the American 
 Presbyterian Mission, which hopes to do its share of this 
 work China- wide ; and we are to begin by opening at 
 least fifteen cities in those sections of Shantung Province 
 for which the Presbyterian Church is responsible. 
 
 With regard to Chinese men available for this great 
 undertaking, we Presbyterians in Shantung are peculiarly 
 favourably situated and have a consequent weighty ac- 
 countability. Some fifty years ago, the Eev. Calvin W. 
 Mateer, D. D., revered and honoured as a premier sine- 
 logue and untiringly fruitful scholar, able translator, 
 versatile educator, and missionary statesman, gatliered 
 several beggar boys into a school, which, under his faith- 
 ful leadership, and under the succeeding presidencies of 
 
THE CRISES OF THE CITIES 119 
 
 Drs. W. M. Hayes aud P. D. Bergen and W. P. Chalfant, 
 has developed into the Christian University of Shantung 
 Province, a union institution embracing schools of Arts, 
 Medicine and Theology, supported by several leading 
 Protestant Missions in that section of China, including the 
 Mission of the Church of England. Missionary leaders 
 have repeatedly declared this union Mission University to 
 be one of the most potent single educational factors in 
 China towards making that land a new creation in Christ. 
 
 As a result, we have graduates of this university scat- 
 tered in various sections of China, real leaders in its re- 
 making, men in great demand and holding many positions 
 of influence and responsibility. Thus we have for this 
 evangelistic enterprise educated men of ability, experi- 
 ence, and consecration ; men who have suffered for the 
 Name and who have come to the Kingdom of God for 
 such a time as this. They are willing to leave positions 
 as heads of departments in the Government, and as pro- 
 fessors in schools of higher learning, etc. (with all the 
 prestige and honour that such positions in China can 
 carry) in order to take up this work, at greatly reduced 
 salaries. Accordingly, our Mission has promptly met 
 them half-way by requesting the Home Church to raise 
 twenty-five thousand dollars at once and one hundred 
 thousand dollars ultimately for the carrying out of this 
 corner of the project. So that the way for the most 
 strategic sort of giving imaginable is open to any in- 
 vestor who wishes large spiritual returns on his money. 
 
 The following ten points contain the gist of the argu- 
 ment, and much of the wording used by the Committee 
 (Rev. R. M. Mateer, D. D., Rev. W. M. Hayes, D. D., 
 Rev. W. P. Chalfant, D. D., Rev. J. P. Irwin and Rev. 
 C. E. Scott) entrusted with bringing the matter before 
 the Mission, the Foreign Board, and the Home Church. 
 
 At least five thousand dollars will be spent for the 
 
120 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 plant in each city, which sum is a mere bagatelle, com- 
 pared with that required for a missionary-manned sta- 
 tion. Subject to any local modification which may be 
 found necessary, each building will contain a large audi- 
 torium, a street chapel, a guest room for men, and one 
 for women, school and Bible class-rooms to be used both 
 day and evening ; and, with separate street-entrance ac- 
 commodations for a Y. M. O. A. 
 
 Engaged in this work will be an older, together with a 
 somewhat younger, college graduate, a Bible woman and 
 a gateman. In each chapel the salaries, together with 
 incidental expenses, will require five hundred dollars 
 annually. It is proposed to have an educated physician 
 travelling among each five of these cities, seeing patients 
 four days every month in each city ; also a general super- 
 intendent for the fifteen cities. The college is proposing 
 to make this its benevolent enterprise, securing gifts 
 from the alumni scattered all over China ; and the Chris- 
 tians of the county whose city is thus occupied will as- 
 sist ; also the gentry in the cities occupied have already 
 given substantial assistance, which it is expected that 
 they will increase until, at the end of three years, our 
 hope and expectation is that the support of the work will 
 be guaranteed from the field. 
 
 This whole project is entrusted to the oversight of a 
 Board of Directors, consisting of six men, three Chinese 
 selected by the Synod, and three missionaries selected by 
 the Mission. 
 
 Incidentally, this project is not a new, hair-brained 
 scheme, springing full -orbed out of the mind of some in- 
 experienced enthusiast at home, ignorant of conditions in 
 China ; but is a conviction slowly maturing in the minds 
 of some of the ablest of our missionaries — evolved on the 
 field by those who have lived there longest, whose judg- 
 ment is solid and respected. 
 
THE CRISES OF THE CITIES 121 
 
 The project commended itself at once to leaders of other 
 Missions in China (some of whom are planning soon to 
 put it into execution in their fields) as well as to the lead- 
 ei-s of the Home Church. 
 
 For the vast population of each county, the walled 
 county seat is becoming more and more the commanding 
 political, commercial, educational, and social centre. 
 Longer to neglect the opportunities here, with doors 
 marvellously opened — doors that God has opened and 
 that no man can shut — would be highly culpable. In 
 China, as elsewhere, the country streams into the city. 
 And much of its ablest and best life finds itself per- 
 manently located therein. If Paul, an inspired mission- 
 ary statesman, our human model as a master-builder of 
 the Church, set himself to establish churches in the lead- 
 ing cities, shall we continue to pass by such centres I 
 
 As in all times and countries, large church success 
 awaits a fully equipped leadership. Here, as in the 
 West, high-grade leaders are not satisfied with a pas- 
 torate among scattered country churches, but are at- 
 tracted to the cities, centres of power. With churches 
 developing among these thickly populated counties, the 
 man in the central city will, without the office, be a 
 veritable metropolitan of wide and commanding in- 
 fluence. We have some such men ready for this work, 
 and an inspiring program just as rapidly as we become 
 sponsor for a modest remuneration for these services. 
 
 Had the Home Church the missionaries ready to fill 
 these teeming cities, and had it the money to send them, 
 and were they actually set down within the walls of those 
 vast and numerous centres, the first step in their evan- 
 gelization would hardly have been taken. 
 
 Land for the compound must be purchased — often an 
 intricate and expensive transaction that often leads a 
 would-be purchaser through a maze covering years ; a 
 
122 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 veteran missionary must be detached from a station al- 
 ready overworked and undermanned to direct the young 
 and helpless company of new recruits ; building ma- 
 terial must be purchased and assembled, much of it often 
 from across oceans and out of other lands, the cost of 
 which, plus freight, is high ; workmen, ignorant of 
 architecture and unused to foreign ways must be con- 
 stantly supervised in building operations (often " a proc- 
 ess of anguish" to both sides mutually "knowing only 
 in part'^) ; young missionaries must grind at least three 
 years on the language, and often spend two years more 
 of watching and experimenting before beginning to be 
 of pronounced practical assistance in the burden-bear- 
 ing ; in any company it is very possible that some will 
 be misfits, physically, mentally, or spiritually, soon to 
 break down in health and die on the field or be fur- 
 loughed home at great expense. 
 
 An adequately manned station ought to consist of at 
 least two clerical men and wives, a principal of a boys' 
 high school and of a girls', a medical missionary, and 
 two single ladies for country classes ; and when homes 
 have been built for all these, together with two station 
 high schools and hospital and dispensary and Bible Study 
 buildings, and necessary servants' quarters, outbuildings 
 and compound walls, plus the price of the land, a sum 
 of money has been spent that ranges anywhere from 
 $40,000 to $100,000 or more for outfit, as against the 
 $5,000 Chinese-manned "Jesus Doctrine Preaching Hall '^ 
 planted in the midst of a great city ; and often the land 
 for a Mission Compound is purchasable only outside the 
 city walls, and apart from the people. 
 
 Moreover, it is always to be remembered that the only 
 rightful attitude for a missionary to take is that of John 
 the Baptist in the presence of his Lord — "He must in- 
 crease, but I must decrease." The missionary must con- 
 
THE CRISES OF THE CITIES 123 
 
 sistently recognize and plan for and look towards the 
 day when his work may be gradually turned over into 
 the hands of the convert, and he and his temporary oc- 
 cupation be eclipsed ; when he shall give way in favour 
 of those who preach, and possibly with greater power 
 and results, to their own nationals. 
 
 How fortunate that we have a plan that can use the 
 men trained on the field ; and that they can begin at once 
 what will be a permanent occupancy, and do it by the 
 use of an eminently workable method I 
 
 Grace and vision is everywhere required on the part 
 of missionaries in order increasingly to accord to the 
 Chinese leaders positions of evangelistic prominence 
 worthy of their gifts and training. Here is a fine oppor- 
 tunity for the missionaries to retain a directing influence, 
 without *' lording it " over the Chinese. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the native leaders in China have 
 developed so fast and progressed so far that any make- 
 shift, rather than giving them liberty of action and large 
 responsibility and full credit for all they do, will spell 
 disaster, as the history of the missionary enterprise 
 warns. 
 
 The need is to fellowship with the Chinese, not to com- 
 mand them ; else we drive them from us, and the Mis- 
 sions thereby are stranded high and dry, without soul- 
 material to work upon and with. And at the present 
 stage of development this is the most feasible plan that 
 will draw both missionaries and prominent converts to- 
 gether, and hold them united. 
 
 This plan is calculated to eliminate the idea that a 
 *' Foreigners' Church" is being planted throughout 
 China, which impression is a serious drawback, and has 
 long been. Moreover, the Chinese Church itself will never 
 be a large success until the members are filled with the 
 realization that this is an enterprise for which they are 
 
124 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 responsible. This is a fandamental truth ; and now is 
 the psychological time to make the responsibility over 
 to them. Whereas it sounds ridiculous to many Chinese 
 for a foreigner to asseverate that the " Jesus Doctrine'' 
 is not a " foreign " religion, it strikes home with power 
 for an educated Chinese of social position to proclaim it 
 as indigenous. 
 
 This method of work helps to make worth while in an 
 evangelistic way the large amount of effort and money 
 put into higher education in China. It furnishes open- 
 ings for able and consecrated graduates, because such feel 
 drawn towards the influential task of bearing witness for 
 Christ in city centres where the men who are shaping the 
 destinies of China go and come. 
 
 Such occupation will give needed prestige to the di- 
 rectly evangelistic work in the eyes of the influential 
 classes both in and out of the Church. The rapidly in- 
 creasing prominence given to our church education by so 
 many fine plants and such rapid expansion, with the 
 turning of almost all college graduates to the more profit- 
 able work of teaching, is calculated to misrepresent our 
 missionary object. It thus appears that, to say the least, 
 we need the prominence of this city evangelization enter- 
 prise for the balancing up of the several departments of 
 our common work. 
 
 Because Christianity is not an institution but the prin- 
 ciples of God applied and of life eternal inwrought, what 
 could more damage the cause of Christ in China than to 
 let the educational and cultural overtop the evangelistic 
 phase of Mission effort? This preaching movement by 
 educated Chinese is the only adequate movement in sight 
 calculated to be a sane corrective of higher educational 
 work into which such large sums of money are being 
 poured. 
 
 Preaching and teaching is to be supplemented by lee- 
 
THE CRISES OF THE CITIES 125 
 
 tures, scliools, women^s work, medical work, and Y. M. 
 C. A., and various kinds of Bible Classes, thus teaching 
 many different points of approach to mind and heart. 
 And, surrounded as each walled city is by multitudinous 
 villages in close proximity, it will be feasible — both ap- 
 preciated and profitable— to invite their inhabitants on 
 special days to special evangelistic services. 
 
 This evangelistic offer promises to arrest the attention 
 and save from spiritual bankruptcy 'the educated classes, 
 and stem the rising tide of an atheistic, materialistic 
 philosophy of life. This impending bankruptcy consti- 
 tutes the greatest menace to the future of China. With 
 the grip of the old religions gone, with atheism the popu- 
 lar form of educated thought, and agnostic literature 
 widely read, together with a more or less conscious de- 
 sire of the educated to find something to satisfy the crav- 
 ings of the soul, it is easy to see that a veritable crisis 
 has come in the religious history of China. Hence the 
 wisdom and urgency of the above program. 
 
 Dr. Hayes, in the following paragraph, emphasizes the 
 danger, and points out how, by this plan, it can be com- 
 batted. 
 
 ^* At present," he says, ^'the Chinese leaders are just 
 shaking off the shackles of the past and starting out on a 
 new career. Whether it shall be a career for advanced 
 Buddhism, for Neo-Confucianism, for Infidelity, or for 
 Christianity, is the question before us. In Japan the 
 significance of the opportunity afforded by the period of 
 transition, when men's minds are like molten metal, quick 
 to receive new impressions, was not grasped as it should 
 Lave been, and much of Japanese thought seems to have 
 crystallized into a state of disbelief in all religions. Con- 
 sequently the entire church membership, instead of reach- 
 ing into the hundreds of thousands as it might have done, 
 only numbers some eighty thousand. Let us not at this 
 
126 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 critical point repeat that error, which it may require ages 
 to overcome, but rise to the possibilities of the present 
 opportunity. Their faith in the old cults is dying out. 
 Temples are deserted, the doors closed and the idols left 
 to the moles and bats, or the images are destroyed and 
 the buildings converted into schools or public buildings. 
 This is what missionary effort, according to the Chinese 
 themselves, has already succeeded in accomplishing. 
 But it is easier to tear down than it is to build up and 
 we need a larger force to supplant the false with the true, 
 else we shall find the demon of superstition supplanted 
 by the much more intractable spirit of infidelity. Our 
 own Board, relying on the zeal of the Church, is planning 
 to do what it can to make this China of the future one of 
 the richest diadems on the Saviour's brow, which, re- 
 placing the crown of thorns, causes Him to see the travail 
 of His soul and be satisfied." 
 
 We have several strong Chinese leaders already at 
 work in Shantung cities, and with splendid results. 
 They are men who could command much larger salaries 
 in secular work, but who prefer this soul- winning work 
 in these centres, especially among the young men and 
 young women students. 
 
 Success in such a far-reaching, soul-saving venture is 
 not easy of computation. But aside from the plants al- 
 ready established and those planned for, the fact just re- 
 ferred to cannot be too strongly emphasized as an initial 
 success scored of first-class importance : that success in- 
 heres in the type of men who have become interested in 
 this project. They are the very best product of what the 
 missionary in China can turn out. And men of this type 
 of finest calibre have responded nobly to this call and 
 will as the Home Church gives them opportunity. It is 
 to be remembered that it is just this type of men that the 
 Government is everywhere searching for — able men with 
 
THE CRISES OF THE CITIES 127 
 
 Western educations whose training and Christian char- 
 acters have made them natural leaders. They are sought 
 for every sort of position of trust and influence ; for ex- 
 ample, as heads of departments in mining, engineering, 
 agriculture, railroading ; and as officials and teachers. 
 Relatively high salaries are offered them ranging from 
 $50 to $150 Mex. a month. 
 
 In addition, it must be borne in mind that the pull of 
 high salaries on them in a land of unbelievable poverty, 
 where millions are on the ragged edge of nothing, is tre- 
 mendously strong. 
 
 Thus far the men who have offered themselves as su- 
 perintendents for this work are already pastors or profess- 
 ors in our Christian university. Whatever of 6clat and 
 deference the position of officer would bring to a Prussian 
 in Prussia is suggestive relatively of the position that 
 teacher brings to a man in China. 
 
 Moreover, some of these men were already as teachers 
 receiving nearly twice the salary they will get in the 
 city chapels, which is $30 Mex. (not $15 gold) a month. 
 These candidates are mature men — zealous, able, bal- 
 anced and solid, — not mere youthful college enthusiasts. 
 Some in witnessing for the Name have already suffered 
 severe testing, even persecution. And those candidates 
 who are not already ministers of the Gospel have not 
 only consented to give up their professorships to take a 
 full theological course, but several of them are already 
 half-way through that course, in classes with some of 
 their former pupils. This in China denotes a degree of 
 earnestness and humility that speaks well for these fu- 
 ture leaders, no less than the consecration that causes 
 them to forego their accustomed income during these 
 years of preparation. 
 
 I will sketch just one key -leader, Lui Kwang Chao, as 
 a type of the men commissioned or in training to achieve 
 
128 CHINA FEOM WITHIN 
 
 the success expected. Like many of our leaders, lie was 
 a beggar boy, picked up by one of our missionaries. He 
 became head professor of mathematics in the University, 
 a maker of books of higher mathematics, and official 
 translator for Macmillans of books of higher mathematics 
 from English into Chinese. He speaks excellent English, 
 and is a teacher of teachers. For years the Chinese 
 Government has tempted him with one hundred and 
 fifty taels (a tael is about sixty -six cents) a month to act 
 as a school inspector for North China, and for years he 
 has continued to serve a Christian college for $50 Mex. a 
 month. 
 
 During the great revival services held in the college by 
 the Eev. Ting Li Mei, when scores of students decided to 
 give themselves to the ministry, Mr. Lui became con- 
 vinced that he could serve the Master more efficiently as 
 a preacher than as a teacher. Accordingly he left his 
 professor's chair to take the course for the ministry in 
 our Shantung Union Theological Seminary. As soon as 
 he had completed his course, he entered at once upon his 
 work in an ancient walled city. An Kiu, where a large 
 pawn-shop was fitted up for his use. Last year he there 
 organized a church composed of the gentry. Already 
 under his direction the place is a beehive, with a Normal 
 School for girls, a boys' Academy, a school for the wives 
 of important young gentry-men of the city, a Women's 
 Department in which an excellent Bible woman is at 
 work, a large Night School, a Y. M. C. A., a Primary 
 School for girls. These schools are self-supporting, as 
 this work is expected to be in the centres opened, and the 
 Bible is a required part of the daily curricula, and chapel 
 is held every morning and evening. 
 
 The latest word from the Eev. Mr. Lui regarding the 
 situation is as follows : 
 
 *^Now in An Kiu a boys' Christian Middle School, a 
 
THE CRISES OF THE CITIES 129 
 
 girls' Normal School, with seventy boys and thirty-five 
 girls respectively, as well as a Primary Girls' School with 
 twenty little girls, have already been started : also an 
 English class with about twenty young men and a Chinese 
 Literature class of nearly thirty boys and young men, 
 have begun each evening. 
 
 " About one-third of the girls in the Normal are from 
 non-Christian homes, but all are Christians now. They 
 have divided themselves into three classes to study the 
 Bible each evening, and two or three go to the women's 
 guest room to preach to outsiders each market-day and 
 Sunday. 
 
 "Over one-half the boys in the Middle School come 
 from non-Christian homes. In the beginning of the 
 spring term it was difficult to get them to attend prayers 
 each morning and evening. Many of them dislike the 
 hymns very much. But I pray for them, and the Holy 
 Spirit has done His great work. After about two months 
 they are greatly changed. Thirty -two of them were ex- 
 amined for church membership and now the whole school 
 has divided itself into six groups to study the Bible each 
 evening. Some promised to serve the sick and some to 
 help the young and some to teach newcomers. 
 
 *'Five or six boys go to the country to preach to the 
 people each Sunday. Our Lord's words are ever true : 
 * The harvest indeed is plenteous but the labourers are 
 few.''' 
 
 Even so. Nevertheless these sons and daughters of the 
 gentry constitute the most capable and encouraging class 
 of people who are available, in God's great opportunity, 
 to become His labourers in the soul-vineyard of China. 
 
 Mr. Lui has again definitely told the Government that 
 he cannot accept its flattering offers. "I am doing a 
 great work and cannot come down." A veteran mis- 
 sionary friend writes (November 20, 1914): "Last Sun- 
 
130 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 day the Eev. Mr. Lui gave a powerful appeal to the 
 students of the University for consecration to this great 
 work — I think the most powerful, influential talk ever 
 given here.''^ This is love and zeal trained and according 
 to knowledge. Will the Home Church let it go to waste 
 for lack of opportunity which it alone can supply ? 
 
 China, in view of her vast population and natural 
 resources and age-long influence on Asia, is the lock to 
 the Far East ; and the key to that lock is the cities. In 
 view of the above, is it not apparent that it would be 
 hard to find a Christian appeal combining so many at- 
 tractive and impelling considerations for the investment 
 of life and money as the China Cities Evangelization 
 Project ? Verily here is a *Uong reach for the Kingdom 
 of God ^M 
 
 Small wonder, then, that President Wilson, addressing 
 the Potomac Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church, 
 urged: "Convert China !'^ "Why,'^ said he, "this is 
 the most amazing and inspiring vision that can be offered 
 you, this vision of that great, sleeping nation suddenly 
 cried awake by the voice of Christ. Could there be any- 
 thing more tremendous than that? And could there be 
 any greater contribution to the future momentum of the 
 moral forces of the world than could be made by quick- 
 ening this force, which is being set afoot in China? 
 China is at present inchoate ; as a nation it is a congeries 
 of parts in each of which there is energy, but which are 
 unbound in any essential and active unit ; and just as soon 
 as its unity comes, its power will come in the worldj 
 Should we not see that the ^arts are fructified by the 
 teachings of Christ t " 
 
IV 
 
 Sowing the Good Seed 
 A Study of the Gospel Among Village Folk 
 
IV 
 
 SOWING THE GOOD SEED 
 
 SOWING the seed of the Word is in China a fasci- 
 nating work. No man is big enough to graduate 
 into anything more important. And as there are 
 many diversities of gifts but one Holy Spirit energizing 
 each worker in the exercise of his gift, so it may be said 
 that in this seed-sowing in China, while the ways of do- 
 ing it are many, the prime essential in the human sower 
 is that he have the pastor-heart. He who has this pity 
 for men in the toils of Satan and soiled beyond human 
 washing in the filth of sin can have fruitage of souls unto 
 eternal life, and, even though for a season in tears and 
 through soul- travail, shall come at last rejoicing, bearing 
 his sheaves before the throne — sheaves of souls redeemed. 
 
 In this discussion we shall confine ourselves to study- 
 ing the methods of seed sowing which a missionary 
 necessarily and obviously uses when functioning as 
 country pastor and itinerating evangelist. 
 
 By the very nature of the case, in order to attain his 
 object, the itinerant missionary must get the eyes and 
 ears of the people, of the ordinary country folk. He 
 must go to them in their multitudinous villages. They 
 will not come to him, for as yet he and what he stands 
 for are nothing to them. Therefore, the most natural 
 thing for an itinerating missionary to do, as he journeys 
 along the way, is to talk with individuals. Incidentally, 
 this systematic going from place to place, this preaching 
 the glad tidings from village to village, involves the tak- 
 
 133 
 
134 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 iDg with one of a complete itinerating outfit — everything 
 that a man will want to use on his long trip, from a nail 
 to cooking utensils and tracts and Scripture portions. 
 It involves the setting up camp, so to speak, anew every- 
 where he goes. To this end he must have a faithful, 
 strong man to push his barrow, and a boy euphemistic- 
 ally called * ' a cook. '^ He himself needs physical strength 
 and endurance for the rough, irregular life. He needs 
 the ability to extract all the humour possible out of the 
 kaleidoscopically changing daily situations that can be 
 fall enough of annoyances. He needs grace to be truly 
 interested in and to like people who aesthetically and 
 temperamentally and intellectually may not appeal to 
 him. 
 
 An important factor determinative of whether one shall 
 do evangelistic work along the road is how the mission- 
 ary travels. I have tried various means of locomotion 
 in our section — practically everything that goes on hoofs 
 or wheels — donkeys, mules, mule-litters, horses, barrow, 
 sedan-chair, bicycle, two- wheeled cart, and I once jour- 
 neyed on camel- back. The use of these practically cuts 
 the itinerator off from personal contact with folks along 
 the road. Because by walking one can utilize many a 
 golden opportunity en route to places of meeting, I have 
 practically settled down to that method. Moreover, 
 strange as it may seem to a Westerner, and slow as I was 
 to come to it, my experience is that the most time-saving 
 method for me is to walk. All other means of getting 
 over the ground in my section except this one have 
 marked disadvantages. The disadvantage of riding, if 
 the Chinese evangelists or elders walk while the mission- 
 ary rides, is that it is practically impossible to talk with 
 them on the journey — Chinese pride and sense of demo- 
 cratic equality not allowing them on foot to imply, ac- 
 cording to their standard, a suggestion of their inferiority 
 
SOWING THE GOOD SEED 135 
 
 to the mau mouuted, by carrying on a conversation with 
 him. If he forgets to alight from his animal when enter- 
 ing a village and asking directions he is apt to be pur- 
 posely misdirected. The Chinaman addressed will often 
 lie to him, saying under his breath, '* If he is too snobbish 
 to get down when he asks a favour let him go on the 
 wrong road." It can mean many a weary, extra mile, 
 and disarranged plans. 
 
 The advantage of walking in my field is not merely 
 that it saves the expensive luxury of renting a donkey 
 which when brought around at the hour of starting may 
 be skin and bones, have something akin to heart disease, 
 and die on one's hands ; not merely that it obviates the 
 embarrassment of your horse dumping you into a cold 
 and swollen stream ; not merely that you avoid a can- 
 tankerous mule clawing at you with his hoofs ; not merely 
 that you save strength that might have been expended in 
 luggiug a broken bike through miles of mud or pushing 
 it in the teeth of a chill head wind. These and many 
 more interesting experiences may occur. The main ad- 
 vantage of walking remains that it enables the pastor to 
 talk with his fellow- workers ; to teach the Scriptures 
 and discuss policies ; to plan about the places to which 
 they are going; to counsel together about the people 
 whom they have left and expect to meet ; and at any 
 time along the road to kneel together and seek Heavenly 
 guidance as to whatever demands attention. This talk- 
 ing and praying over the problems ahead and those left 
 behind gets one into close sympathy and fellowship with 
 the workers ; and on such trips, walking, eating, sleep- 
 ing, roughing it with them, the Chinese will gradually 
 open up worlds of Chinese life and thought to one whom 
 they trust — worlds of which the foreigner never dreamed. 
 
 The praying places along the road are numerous : on 
 the edge of a wheat-field, beside a booth in a vineyard, 
 
136 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 or the lodge in a melon patch ; or on a threshing-floor, or 
 beside the temple wall. The itinerator ought to be well 
 supplied with tracts, the judicious use of which facilitates 
 very much his work in speaking to individuals. Not to 
 distribute these and not to speak of Christ to the people 
 along the road— journeying to the market or on their way 
 to pay a visit or going to and from their fields or passing 
 along their village streets — would be negligent indeed, 
 and would involve loss of many precious opportunities. 
 The obvious reason for the foreigner in China is either to 
 push business or to propagate the Gospel. 
 
 The people who are to be told are myriad. In some 
 sections more than two thousand to the square mile. 
 Scarcely ever is one out of sight of human beings. Ee- 
 peatedly have I taken my handkerchief out of my pocket 
 with the thought of not putting it back until I could see 
 no human being in the landscape, but for hours at a time 
 there was never a moment when one or more were not in 
 sight. This is the land par excellence for the man who 
 wants to do ''individual work for individuals. '^ 
 
 The following situation will suggest how interesting, 
 not to say fruitful, are these opportunities. One day I 
 was travelling along the road. It was noon, the hardest 
 part of the day was ahead — seventy li to be made on 
 foot, a bridgeless river to cross and an important meeting 
 scheduled for the evening. There was no time to wait 
 for the innkeeper to fire up and get a hot meal. So for 
 dinner I bought of a peddler hawking them on the nasty 
 dust-blown street cold '' hwoa shao " (coarse-flour native 
 biscuits) and some peanuts. As I munched, the whole 
 village gradually gathered to watch the manipulation of 
 the foreigner's jaws, to comment on his buttons, to marvel 
 at his coloured glasses on top of another pair, and to dis- 
 cuss with animation the price of everything about him. 
 After meal-time on the road usually affords an excellent 
 
SOWING THE GOOD SEED 137 
 
 opportuDity for an informal preaching of the Gospel ; for 
 the curious will assemble to see the outlandish foreigner 
 outlandishly eat. 
 
 And as I travelled along — and this is one of the great 
 advantages of walking — there were occasions innumerable 
 to sow the seed. One sits down by the roadside to rest, 
 or on a threshing floor, or on the nether millstone of a 
 donkey-power flour mill, or on the steps in front of a 
 temple— and there are always auditors in abundance, 
 willing to receive the little tract explained and presented. 
 I had not progressed far after my meal when I espied a 
 patriarch coming down the road towards me. He carried 
 the conventional little basket and shovel on his shoulder, 
 and in the conventional manner was strolling out on the 
 highway to improve the shining minutes gathering 
 manure. In response to my salutation : *' What is your 
 honourable surname?" he replied: *^My base name is 
 Wan.'' "What is your worthy given name?" His 
 eyes bulged at such politeness to a peasant, and he an- 
 swered, "Ping An" (my given name is Peaceful). 
 "What is your venerable age?" I continued. At this 
 marked courtesy to a plain old farmer he stuttered with 
 delight, holding up his fingers in the expressive count- 
 ing fashion of old Chinese men. In impressive silence I 
 read "seventy-seven." Then, with the polite consid- 
 eration for the learner of their language that character- 
 izes the peoples of Europe and Asia, as it does not 
 Americans, the old man gravely bowed and said with 
 emphasis : "You speak Chinese as though you had your 
 cof&u bought and your grave-clothes prepared " — a high 
 compliment, indeed, and wholly undeserved. This was 
 his way of saying: "You speak just right, correctly, 
 like a native. Your language is as proper as is the 
 social condition of that parent whose dutiful children 
 have made all rightful preparations, ordained of custom, 
 
138 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 for liis fittiDg burial, so that he may daily look with 
 paternal pride upon his huge cof&n, also his last habili- 
 ments safely stored in his own chest, and awaiting his 
 dissolution !'' 
 
 Scrutinizing me with increasing interest, the old man 
 was finding his tongue and massing his words for a rak- 
 ing cannonade of inquiry, so to speak. He loosed upon 
 me a bombardment of long pent-up curiosity. And out of 
 all the fireworks of words I learned that he had never in 
 all his '*born days" seen a real foreign devil; that he 
 had always longed to gaze upon at least one such strange 
 creature before being gathered to the shades of his ances- 
 tors ; that he had often contemplated making the journey 
 to Tsingtau for this very special and highly desirable 
 purpose, despite the heavy expense and loss of time it 
 would entail. And now before his very eyes, near the 
 home of his fathers, on the very highroad indeed, he 
 had, in broad daylight, run right into one ! Surely he 
 was born under a lucky star, and his presiding genius 
 was good ! Now he could depart in peace ! 
 
 The old man bowed and bowed himself out of my 
 presence, and started off again on the treadmill round of 
 his existence. Then he turned and came back. Quite 
 unabashed now, he confidently placed his hand on my 
 arm. Out of his half-closed, unwashen eyes, running 
 with sores, he peered intently at me, scanning my face 
 through and through — every lineament — as if searching 
 my soul. Such a hungry look— and I have seen many in 
 China— I have rarely met. Divining his meaning, I laid 
 my hand on his shoulder and said, *'My venerable 
 brother, you have spoken of my Chinese as being like * a 
 coffin purchased and grave-clothes prepared.' But are 
 you ready to pass beyond ? " A long silence as we gazed 
 at each other. His bent, withered frame shook. He 
 pulled out an old dirty rag, such as hangs tied to the 
 
SOWING THE GOOD SEED 139 
 
 blouse of the countryinau, and whicli serves as towel, 
 handkerchief, and wash-cloth combined, and wiped away 
 his teai-s. At last he said : ^* I fear to die. I have no 
 hope, no hope ! " I told him of the Overcomer of death, 
 and the resurrection hope. And then after a prayer we 
 parted, probably never to meet again till at the great 
 assize. But for mouths that mournful speech and hope- 
 less manner, the more melancholy because indicative of 
 millions of others here, have haunted me. 
 
 The obligation to this sort of work is the more impera- 
 tive because of the present accessibility of the people. 
 The remarkable fact is that so many people when ap- 
 proached are willing to listen. Frequently they are sus- 
 picious of the foreigner and afraid of the tract which he 
 attempts to hand them. I have repeatedly had a man 
 refuse, saying ; **The tract that you have just given to 
 one of my neighbours is sufficient for the village.'^ But 
 usually they are willing to receive these expositions of 
 Scripture ; and they open the way usually to an explana- 
 tion of the Gospel and to the gathering of a small group 
 at least to listen to that exposition. Almost any person 
 with whom I have yet experimented seems willing to 
 halt in his tracks— the farmer in his field, the tradesman 
 in his store, the pilgrim on a journey, the peasant en 
 route to market, the lounger on the village street, — and 
 to listen courteously, often eagerly, to what we have to 
 say, politely bowing as we leave. Imagine thus invad- 
 ing a business man's time in America ! 
 
 Sitting down beside the road and talking with " these 
 least" about their souls brings a new and blessed realiza- 
 tion of the meaning of, ** There is joy in the presence of 
 the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." ** I 
 had always thought," said a worker who had come to 
 know Christ in power, ** that this meant that the angels 
 were glad. But now a new meaning flashed out from the 
 
140 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 verse. It is not speaking of the angels' joy. It is Christ's 
 joy, and all heaven knows about it. What a privilege 
 to bring such a joy to our Lord that the angels see it 
 lighting up His face ! And this joy comes, not when a 
 nation is converted, but when one sinner repents. How 
 infinitely is the fruit of our service multiplied when it 
 reaches to heaven ! " And there is no limit to the op- 
 portunity of sowing seed along the road unto such 
 fruitage. 
 
 In the list of outfit requirements for the ideal village 
 street preacher you must put down, inter alia, the follow- 
 ing : A constitution of iron, lungs of brass, the voice of 
 Stentor, the patience of Job, and the ability to hang on 
 amid conditions peculiarly distracting. For the preacher 
 has to get in his message edgewise, so to speak, and he 
 must have the ability to sing and speak and hold his own 
 against every conceivable variety of noise made by men 
 and women, barrows and babies, and boys and dogs and 
 donkeys and all else that goes to make up the strident 
 doings of the village street. 
 
 A regular method of procedure is to go into a new 
 *'raw heathen" section, accompanied by several evan- 
 gelists, or Christians who have volunteered time for a 
 period of days, or both j and, as systematically as pos- 
 sible, to preach through all that region. We usually 
 eat and sleep together, that is in the same room, rough- 
 ing it as best we may. Each morning, after a united 
 family worship, we set out two by two, in apostolic 
 fashion. The general direction in which each pair is to 
 work has usually been decided upon in conference the 
 previous evening by the band leader ; and it is the holy 
 ambition of each pair to reach as many of the multi- 
 tudinous villages as possible during the day, before it is 
 time to return to the central meeting place. After 
 supper all gather together for evening worship, to plan 
 
SOWING THE GOOD SEED 141 
 
 the campaign and to rehearse, like the Seventy of old, 
 what they have seen and heard and done — the manner 
 of their reception, hopeful and discouraging features of 
 it, persecution, if any, special cases on which they need 
 counsel and happenings of peculiar interest ; above all, 
 to 5£ay for 'God's blessing upon the witness made for 
 Him. Such a program means hard, wearing days; 
 scanty and often — usually — cold lunches upon the road 
 — a thing the Chinese detest ; and mental and physical 
 weariness at night. But this is just what our Blessed 
 Lord experienced on the way as He went from village to 
 village proclaiming the Kingdom of God. And when one 
 is tired for the Gospel's sake, it is a peculiar comfort to 
 realize that He is the Yoke-Fellow in all this: ^*LoI 
 am with you all the days.^' 
 
 By way of introduction to the local scene of operation 
 the reader may be told that there is usually in front of 
 each house- wall on the one thoroughfare wide enough to 
 be dignified by the name of ** the village street" a pile 
 of stuff that, by a large stretch of the poetic license, may 
 be called an earth-mound. It is the accumulation of the 
 yard and stable within, gathered for months, and plas- 
 tered over sometimes with mud, and left to the four winds 
 of heaven and to the olfactories of the passers-by '^to 
 work " until such time as the owner chooses to spread it 
 upon the soil of his garden or grain plot. Such a coign 
 of vantage, when hard and dry, is often chosen for a pul- 
 pit. And could an outsider know the crowd and see how 
 closely they sometimes press the speaker, often well-nigh 
 to smothering, they would realize the value of even this 
 makeshift speaker's platform. 
 
 Outside the village the two evangelists have halted for 
 earnest prayer before tackling their hard proposition. 
 They would hardly dare enter without that, and so, 
 strengthened by His might in the inner man, they ad- 
 
143 CHINA FEOM WITHIN 
 
 vance to the ordeal of the street. As they pass along in 
 front of the house yards, one after another the villagers 
 begin to flow towards them ; and by the time they have 
 mounted the rostrum and sung the first verse of a hymn 
 a strong tide of human beings has set in towards them. 
 
 If the cold north wind has had its innings and spring 
 has really begun there will be evidence by many infallible 
 proofs — the youngsters are running about naked, and 
 their elders are wearing less than the canons of the 
 politest Western society would deem superfluous. 
 
 Picture if you can such a gospel-hearing audience — 
 some standing, others squatting in their Chinese fashion 
 **at ease,'^ a position that makes your own limbs ache 
 even to look at them, or else sitting in the dust that is 
 blown in gusts up and down the dirty street— all, I say, 
 except that front-row, esoteric circle of more interested 
 adults and more curious youngsters. They have eaten 
 things of indescribable odoriferousuess, and in utter dis- 
 regard for the speaker's eyes, nose and throat, they, 
 standing in solid phalanx, as it were, ring him round. 
 Edging up ever closer, they remind me, not so much of 
 a glacier ever moving irresistibly onward as of a gang 
 of redskins closing in relentlessly upon a victim tied to a 
 post. 
 
 It is a curious spectacle as they come trooping towards 
 one : old men hobbling on their staves who seize the ear- 
 liest opportunity to rest their weary bones by sitting 
 down in the dust, face on knees, eyes closed, prepared to 
 listen — more probably to sleep ; children running hard 
 in expectation of unique excitement and fortified against 
 the exigencies of the hour by a bunch of leeks in one 
 hand and in the other a raw turnip or something else 
 equally germ-laden, and voraciously gnawed, peel and 
 all, their naked bellies protruding almost to bursting 
 with the nests of worms working within j strapping 
 
SOWING THE GOOD SEED 143 
 
 young bucks who stroll leisurely towards the scene of 
 action, the while taking huge bites of their dinner of hot, 
 boiled sweet potatoes, and who then squat down for a 
 comfortable smoke, as if the end and aim of existence 
 were attained by repeatedly filling their tiny pipe-bowls 
 out of their long tobacco pouches, and then interminably 
 striking their flints, passing lights, borrowing tobacco, 
 exchanging neighbourly whiffs and making a running 
 fire of comment on the foreign speaker's grotesque 
 clothes and generally queer appearance. 
 
 The women, timidly, but eaten up by curiosity, also 
 come ; some hurry, some straggle along — but always 
 painfully on their tiny feet ; often each one weighted 
 with, or absorbed in the care of, a babe or two ; to sit 
 cautiously on the filthy heaps at a slight distance or to 
 crouch at their bases — all except those whose age and 
 ugliness allow of greater freedom of action and nearer 
 access. To concentrate their thoughts on the preacher's 
 theme is no light task. Poor creatures ! vacant-headed, 
 shrill-voiced. It is hard to interest them in that for 
 which the preachers came. The monotony of their yard 
 existence, its unending drudgery, its sterility of spirit, 
 the callousness of the life that impinges upon them, the 
 helplessness, lack of sympathy, abuse and cruelty that 
 press them down — all these, and more ; the foul things 
 that only they know have done their bruising, soiling, 
 deadening work upon their bodies and spirits. 
 
 Yonder sits a young mother in the middle of the road, 
 glancing up occasionally, listening a little, but princi- 
 pally intent on rolling her naked darling in the filth of 
 the street about her, to the unalloyed, chuckling delight 
 of the youngster, while she beams upon him with mother- 
 joy. 
 
 Slinking behind the others is a pitiful looking creature, 
 her face more distorted than the others, with the hard 
 
144 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 lines of abuse and neglect and lovelessness branded on 
 her forehead ; between her eyes and covering the upper 
 part of her nose, an ugly bruise of greenish hue — the 
 marks of a love-tap imprinted recently by her husband, 
 we learned, who in a fit of anger had floored her. 
 
 In the nearer group is here and there an aged grand- 
 father who glances repeatedly with pride at the tender 
 grandson at his feet who is to continue his name and in- 
 sure the worship of his three spirits after his demise. 
 As caretaker, he occasionally reaches forth and, picking 
 up a stone or chunk of dirt in lieu of handkerchief, wipes 
 the nose of the young hopeful. Sauntering back and 
 forth among the crowd are proud young papas, hugging 
 boy youngsters in all states of dishabille, and, in lieu of 
 clothes, warming them against their own skins. The 
 youngsters are all spoiled and tyrants, knowing only too 
 well their power. They keep their dads on the move, 
 jolting and amusing them, any halt eliciting a howl. 
 There are also plenty of big burly loungers frightfully 
 pock-marked. They are illustrations of the law of the 
 survival of the fittest, a law that throughout all heathen- 
 dom works itself out with such harshness as dwellers in a 
 Christian land cannot understand. Only iron constitu- 
 tions could have resisted the attacks that had been made 
 upon these fellows. Wandering in and out among the 
 crowd were two youngsters, only half- recovered from their 
 dread disease, and such terrible looking objects that even 
 the Chinese, hardened to all kinds of sights of physical 
 distress and loathsomeness, and indifferent as they are to 
 contagion, draw back from them. 
 
 Once an old man, who had looked so attentively that I 
 thought he was really interested in the message, limped 
 up to our dirt-piled platform and asked : ** Do foreigners 
 never have smallpox ? '^ He had heard that all from the 
 West have smooth faces (i. e., unmarked by the pox). 
 
SOWING THE GOOD SEED 145 
 
 To his mind this was incredible, as the country folk be- 
 lieve that few or none can escape the smallpox, it being 
 heaven's decree that all get ** the flower " (as they mock- 
 humorously call it). Why should any one vainly seek 
 to avoid the inevitable decree of heaven ? 
 
 The apparently impossible feat of the human mind, of 
 giving attention to two things at once, seemed to be per- 
 formed repeatedly before our eyes, as those in the audi- 
 ence, with their eyes glued on the speaker, would vigor- 
 ously blow their noses, and then raising their bare feet — 
 perhaps mechanically as a pianist strikes a key-board — 
 use their heels for handkerchiefs, never moving the 
 head or even relaxing the gaze. It is not always easy 
 for a speaker to maintain his gravity, as a whole gamut 
 of vigorous, droll, and ever-changing and unexpected 
 action punctuates his points. 
 
 All the while the village curs are snapping and fight- 
 ing their way, often between the legs of the crowd, the 
 battle raging back and forth in a manner reminding one 
 of the zigzag eddying fortunes of a football match, as the 
 changing exigencies of attack and defense drive the 
 players hither and yon over the gridiron. Also heavily- 
 laden barrows with ungreased, screeching wheels add 
 their lively quota of confusion to the scene, as the sweat- 
 ing, naked-waisted pushers shout hoarsely for passage, 
 and at times run through the hastily scattered crowd 
 to keep pace with the affrighted animals pulling the 
 vehicles. 
 
 A placidly peaceful element in the picture is a group, 
 here and there, whose members are engaged in a ''head 
 hunt," while, above all the din, rises the immoderate 
 laughter of an idiot, running loose and bantered, even 
 harried to violence, by the village boys, his tones, as he 
 fights them off, strident, vacant, wild and creepy. Here 
 is near approach to beast nature, the spiritual in him 
 
146 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 starved and stunted, abused and outraged beyond reason- 
 able hope of recovery. In village heathenism who has 
 time or inclination or real interest or power to pity such I 
 
 The good- will of the crowd is shown in the fact that 
 here, as in many another place, members of it had brought 
 us stools to sit on, and hot water. Not to drink it was 
 impolite j to drink it involved mental uneasiness far out- 
 weighing the physical inconvenience of a dry, dust-laden 
 throat. The teacups — often the blacker with ancient 
 grime, apparently, in proportion as they are the politer 
 vehicle of hospitality — are ostentatiously wiped by the 
 impromptu host with an indescribable rag serving as 
 combined handkerchief, towel and cloth factotum, pulled 
 out of an equally indescribable girdle. The insides and 
 edges of that drinking vessel contained enough " culture^* 
 material to supply simultaneously almost all the bac» 
 teriological laboratories now in existence. It is one of 
 those many experiences into which the itinerator has to 
 plunge and trust to the good Lord for the consequences. 
 
 When ready to depart, to repeat the process of explain- 
 ing the *^ Jesus Doctrine " in as many other villages that 
 day as our strength and time would permit, we were 
 given hearty invitations to return. As we moved away 
 I took pains to speak to an old woman who had sat a 
 little distance off, looking intently at us most of the time, 
 not because she was taking in the teaching but because 
 she was feasting her eyes on a, to her, nine days' wonder 
 —the excitement of her life— herself filthy to a degree 
 and sitting in the dust of the street^ — and it was thick. 
 Her head was covered with it. Beside her was a young 
 girl, naked to the waist, and picking lice out of her thin, 
 spare gray locks. This was not peculiar nor exciting ; 
 one sees it everywhere along the roadside and village 
 streets. While preaching here, I suppose ten or twelve 
 couples had thus settled themselves down comfortably in 
 
SOWING THE GOOD SEED 147 
 
 the sunshine, to be within hearing of *^the doings," and 
 at the same time imiDrove the shining moments. 
 
 It is always the safe and polite thing in China to ask 
 people their ages, and especially so the older they grow. 
 Noting her white hair, I took occasion to felicitate her 
 on her age, expecting to follow it with a little homily on 
 the shortness of the earth-time yet remaining to her. She 
 sighed and answered in almost indentical words, spoken 
 under similar circumstances to an older missionary friend : 
 "Yes, honourable sire, I am getting old. Indeed, I am 
 aging too fast. My teeth are falling out so rapidly that 
 I can no longer bite lice ! " — referring to the common 
 aesthetic practice of biting in two captured lice. Often 
 they are snipped by the long thumb-nail ; but so annoy- 
 ing are these ubiquitous little pests that the finder who 
 does the snipping occasionally hands the owner an espe- 
 cially juicy one upon which to wreak special vengeance 
 — well deserved. If the Lord made the mosquitoes to 
 illustrate the malignity of the Devil, as Horace Bushnell 
 averred, is it irreverent to think that He might have 
 made the Chinese lice and fleas for the same purpose 1 
 
 There have been in the course of the ages many inter- 
 esting methods of reckoning cycles of time, from that of 
 the Greeks who measured their history by the names of 
 victors in the Olympic games, to the Chinese in Eastern 
 Asia, who measured by the name of the emperor of the 
 reigning dynasty. But probably this old woman's method 
 of computation, by the vigour and precision with which 
 one's teeth can slice lice, is unique in chronometry. 
 
 Let any cultured man or woman at home who believes 
 that ** heathenism is good enough for the heathen," and 
 who deprecates **the foolishness of the missionary in 
 stirring up the heathen to become dissatisfied with the 
 religion they possess,' ' *' with the religion that God gave 
 them," sit down and think through, if he or she dare, a 
 
148 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 few of the implications and corollaries of heathen life 
 from these incidents of every-day life. Would you like 
 to be left in their condition 1 
 
 This narrative may jar on the sesthetic sensibility of 
 some of the home folks j but it is just because men are so 
 degraded that they need Christ j just because they are 
 under the bondage of iniquity in body, mind and soul, so 
 lost with a lostness that manifests itself in every phase of 
 life — physical, mental and spiritual — that God in the 
 flesh came to succour them. It is precisely because the 
 heathen world is so repulsive, unlike the lovely and 
 adorable God, out of tune with the health and holiness 
 of the Infinitely Perfect One, that He sent His Best Gift, 
 the Good Paragon, a propitiatory offering of infinite, 
 inherent merit, to change all this. He has pitied to the 
 utmost, in infinite prodigality, providing the Son of His 
 dear Love. How much have you pitied in making 
 known the hope of glory through that Son ? 
 
 Such days of evangelistic activities vitalize one's con- 
 ception of Jesus' experience of having no time, no, not so 
 much as to eat. One's opportunity to preach here to 
 throngs of people, who require no drumming up or 
 special music or extra exhortation or advertisement, is 
 limited only by one's physical endurance. For the mere 
 effort of singing a hymn, standing in the narrow, filthy, 
 lane-like streets, one can often have many members of 
 the village for an audience. 
 
 Every class and condition of the village is represented. 
 There are small children, exceedingly dirty, often fright- 
 fully covered with syphilitic sores ; blear-eyed, shaky old 
 men ; lusty young bucks, heralding their grown-up-ness 
 by self-consciously sucking their big-mouthed pipes j and 
 ubiquitous boys, crawling around the feet of the speakers 
 and examining their clothes. There are also reserved 
 village scholars, contemptuous but curious, innocently 
 
SOWING THE GOOD SEED 149 
 
 pretending, to the amusement of the crowd, inability to 
 read the tracts handed to them. There are also proud 
 papas of baby boys, hugging their young hopefuls to their 
 bosoms— for in lieu of fires, the Chinese men open their 
 numerous layers of coats, and cause, for the time being, 
 their youngsters to hibernate, as it were, in the volumi- 
 nous folds, substituting skin heat for coal heat. This is 
 naturally a money-saving process — provided one has time 
 to carry a child all day long, week in and week out. 
 Lined up near by along the mud walls, and furtively bnt 
 vigorously exchanging stage-whispers and often audible 
 comments about the novel and interesting situation, are 
 ancient dames, hags before their day. A little farther off 
 groups of young wives are lounging. Occasionally there 
 is among them one "made up" for a visit back to her 
 own family in another village, her yellow face and neck 
 plastered a bright pink, as ghastly as one sees on the boule- 
 vards of Paris— only the pigment used by these women 
 poisons their systems. Maidens are peeking around 
 corners, their faces often drawn with physical pain, often 
 expressive of wretchedness and despair. The fear and 
 vacuity and sorrow of their pathetic lives — all is evidenced 
 before us. The appearance of these women reminds one 
 grotesquely of Civil War veterans stumping around on 
 their wooden legs ; for with their trousers tightly wound 
 around their ankles and lower limbs and these emaciated 
 members capping their tiny mutilated feet, the nether 
 parts of these unfortunates could well pass muster as 
 counterparts of the ''pins" which glorified the heroes 
 we used to run away from school to admire around their 
 camp-fires. 
 
 It is well-nigh impossible for home friends to conceive 
 of such an audience, but what impresses the itinerator 
 most about them, no less than about individuals met 
 along the road, is their accessibility to the Gospel now. 
 
150 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 The willingness of heathen to hear as one goes among 
 the villages is shown, for instance, thus : One summer 
 afternoon a Christian and I had battled our way through 
 a driving dust storm — a wind having suddenly blown up 
 fierce and hot — to a certain village. We were given 
 asylum in an inn. It mattered not that the air was 
 choking with dust — the people came and listened. All 
 the afternoon men crowded into that foul, ill-smelling, 
 darkened room to hear the Gospel. And towards sun- 
 down, when the wind abated, the entire village, as it 
 seemed, sat or stood around in the dust of the main street 
 to hear the Word. 
 
 On another summer day we reached a village at noon. 
 We were fagged — hungry and thirsty. The people readily 
 gave us food and drink, and then they settled down on the 
 threshing-floor, hemming us in, a solid circle of them — 
 patriarchs, ancient dames, the middle-aged, youths and 
 children — to listen to all we would tell them. We pro- 
 tested it was their eating time, but they made light of 
 that weighty consideration. One by one workmen came 
 in from the fields and joined them — and stayed till 
 we were ready to depart. Thrifty housewives hastily 
 brought unfinished quilts and other needlework from 
 their houses and settled down comfortably (?), ready to 
 listen. When we left the heat of the day had been 
 broken. It was their busy season, the period of three 
 meals a day ; many had not eaten their noon meal, or sat 
 crunching a cold snatch. Still they urged us to stay and 
 to expound more at length the Jesus Doctrine. 
 
 In a third village we were caught by the rain. At 
 first it sifted down, thin and misty, and the crowd stayed 
 by us in the street. When it finally set in hard, they 
 provided a large empty storeroom for us ; and, hastily 
 changing our base, we continued the preaching, a spirit 
 of marked interest prevailing. Each group of workers 
 
SOWING THE GOOD SEED 161 
 
 reported like experiences of eager listeners in all villages 
 visited. 
 
 In such blessed work the preacher cannot be other than 
 heartened and sustained, because he leans on the sure 
 promise of God : *^ My word shall not return unto me 
 void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it 
 shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it ' ' (Isaiah 
 55 : 11). 
 
 It has been estimated that *Mf one hundred and forty 
 millions of people live in the walled cities of China, three 
 hundred million must live in the myriads of villages that 
 everywhere stud the landscape and make the country 
 throb with life.'^ Very few of the vast peasant popula- 
 tion live in isolated houses ; they dare not ; they band 
 together for mutual protection. In Shantung Province, 
 on the great plain, in my station field, within a radius 
 of fifteen li (five miles), there have been counted from 
 ninety to one hundred and ten villages — within a radius 
 of three miles were counted sixty-four villages — with a 
 carefully estimated population of sixty thousand, two 
 hundred souls, or more than two thousand one hundred 
 and twenty-five to the square mile. This is four times 
 the average density of the population of Belgium, which 
 is the most thickly inhabited country of the European 
 continent — or was, before its decimation. Had Christ 
 been able to walk among the masses of this great people 
 when He was on earth. He surely would have had com- 
 passion on them, for they peculiarly are *^ as sheep with- 
 out a shepherd.'' 
 
 To appreciate something of what it means to do evan- 
 gelistic work in a peasant home it is necessary to look in 
 upon such a house and yard, typical of scores of millions. 
 This vast multitude of peasant folk live congested in low, 
 filthy, one-story houses ; mud -floored and poorly lighted 
 (and this light darkened by opaque paper stretched across 
 
152 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 the window frames), the mud walls black with soot and 
 full of cracks for the lodgment of vermin, the corn-stalk 
 ceiling heavy with cobwebs and with all that has paid 
 toll to them. 
 
 The ordinary peasant house consists of three small 
 rooms, joined end to end, all facing south, the entrance 
 being through the middle room which does duty for 
 kitchen, dining-room and reception hall. One of the 
 side rooms is the family bedroom, the other is the 
 granary, storeroom, attic, tool-room and catch-all. It 
 also does duty as a guest room : but I can testify that be- 
 tween the irrigating pump, the winnowing machine, 
 plow, drag, loom, lumber, coffins, baskets, and a few 
 other impedimenta apt to be there, the foreign guest 
 often has to exercise some ingenuity and exert some 
 strength cleaning house in order to find a place for his 
 folding cot. 
 
 In such a domicile may be found a family consisting of 
 three generations — parents, sons, daughters-in-law and a 
 swarm of youngsters — all in the closest proximity to a 
 dozen chickens, several pigs, dogs and plow animals. I 
 do not mean that all lie under the same roof, though fre- 
 quently I have seen the ox and the ass share the house 
 with the family. In any case it is a poor enough make- 
 shift for a *^ home." Apropos of this condition Western- 
 ers have often been told that the character that in the 
 Chinese written language means ^'home " is made by in- 
 dicating a pig under a roof. 
 
 Each little walled yard, facing the hut door, is, though 
 the "front yard," also the barn-yard. One window in 
 each of the end rooms looks out upon this yard. In 
 front of the small window on the left is the peiig (the 
 lean-to) open towards the yard, where the unmusical 
 donkey or patient ox, or both, stand under the same 
 roof and practically in the same stall. Under the same 
 
SOWING THE GOOD SEED 153 
 
 roof is often found the ponderous two-stoned family grist- 
 mill — turned by the women of the household (in case 
 there is no family donkey, or in case he is otherwise en- 
 gaged). In any case the women are usually assigned to 
 the delightfully aesthetic and highly stimulating mental 
 occupation of following the grinder, whether human or 
 beast, around and around the grinding stones, hour after 
 hour, week in and week out, to transform, as occasion re- 
 quires, the raw grain into a coarse flour, or the beans 
 into a curdish consistency that looks like thin Dutch 
 cheese. 
 
 Immediately under the small room at the right is the 
 pig-pen, fronted by a pit that may be eight feet square, 
 larger in an inn-yard. Into this is thrown all the offal 
 from the stable and the general filth of the yard. Con- 
 fusion worse confounded often reigns in that little clut- 
 tered area. By a steep stairway of brick or stone the 
 pigs clamber up and down into this pit of filth, at night 
 to grunt and squeal and fight under a cover that abuts 
 against the house. 
 
 Living thus, without opportunity for the ordinary 
 decencies and the necessary privacies, often without love 
 or with positive hate, and lacking all chivalry towards 
 the women, the ** weaker vessels,^' and without Christ as 
 honoured guest, it is easy to imagine what dullness, 
 dreariness and depression must characterize the pitifully 
 vacant home life of that vast people. The physical 
 squalor is matched by the mental crampedness and the 
 spiritual barrenness. The vacuity and starvedness of 
 such a life beggar description. Multitudes of villagers 
 who live only a few miles from a German railroad have 
 never seen one of the **fire carts.'' To them it is too 
 suggestive of the Old Dragon for willing proximity. 
 Multitudes who live near the coast of this long penin- 
 sular province have never seen the sea. A **boy" (a 
 
164 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 man twenty-five years old), who for a time made my food 
 when I was out in the country, had never looked upon 
 the " iron horse" until he once met me at a country rail- 
 way station. 
 
 The lighter side of all this may be seen in such episodes 
 as the following, told me by a missionary friend. ^' One 
 of the boys who had been graduated from his local village 
 school, and who had probably never been five miles away 
 from home, was tramping en route to our High School. 
 Suddenly, upon sight of one of the little arms of the sea, 
 he stopped in amazement saying : ^* Che moa si sui si 
 tsung na li lai ti ? " (So much water as all this — where 
 did it come from ?) 
 
 We were one day bound for the home of a heathen 
 mountaineer, far up the valley. The man and his wife 
 were aged and they with their four sons and daughters- 
 in-law and grandchildren all lived in an incredibly small 
 yard and hut. The only hold that we had upon the 
 family was that the youngest son now married and 
 labouring hard to eke out the scanty family sustenance, 
 had once attended one of our Mission schools. Through 
 the wedge of that village school we had entrance to that 
 home which otherwise would have been closed to us. 
 Moreover, we were going to sympathize and console with 
 the parents, whose daughter had recently committed sui- 
 cide in the home of her mother-in-law to spite the mem- 
 bers of her husband's family, thereby bringing great 
 trouble upon the family and village. 
 
 Arrived at the village of our quest we found the home 
 we sought on the bank of a small mountain stream. Our 
 approach was heralded by the fierce barking of dogs. 
 As we proceeded gingerly into the yard they showed their 
 teeth in a manner that meant business. Though it was 
 then past supper time, the father and sons were still 
 planting sweet potatoes out in their fields, if fields they 
 
SOWING THE GOOD SEED 155 
 
 conld be called. For these fields consist merely of small 
 patches of ground laboriously made on the mountainside, 
 each terraced with stone still more laboriously prepared. 
 Inside the yard was an open lean-to in which two donkeys 
 and an ox were feeding. The yard was so contracted that 
 there was only a small space between these animals and 
 the doorways of a small L-shaped hut. In that space sat 
 the daughters-in-law in the filth of the yard (the front 
 yard is always the barn-yard of a Chinese peasant estab- 
 lishment) each using a club, pounding sweet-potato 
 stems. So reduced were they for food before the spring 
 vegetables and summer wheat arrived, that they were 
 now eating this stuff boiled with sweet- potato leaves. 
 
 On seeing us the daughters-in-law ran into the house. 
 It was pitiful to think of the condition of mind that 
 should force them to flee and peek in a scared manner 
 around the corner of the door. There needs no other 
 suggestion as to the hygienic condition of these people 
 than to intimate that under the ^' ma peng " (the animal 
 stall, open to all the winds and dust that blew down the 
 gusty valley) was the family flour mill. And right there 
 among the animals these two great stones were operated 
 by the daughters-in-law, to produce the flour that they 
 had earlier been eating, made from grinding chips of raw 
 sweet potatoes, welcome food that had long since been 
 exhausted. 
 
 The old mother I had visited once before when the 
 youngest son as a schoolboy had very diffidently, hesitat- 
 ingly, and fearfully led me to the parental home. Often 
 these old peasant women, hags before their day, are 
 stupid, already blind or deaf or lame, one or all in com- 
 bination, and shut up within themselves, their life almost 
 a blank. Pictures always appeal to them, just as they 
 do to children. We had brought with us a large scroll 
 of Bible pictures and produced one, *' Joseph Forgiv- 
 
156 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 ing His Brethren." We put it up on the wall. Con- 
 fucianism is keen, in theory, on children honouring theii 
 parents— on their not only not forgetting them, but car- 
 ing for them in their age. Communicating with them in 
 such language and such illustration always appeals to 
 the Chinese heart. In this section of the world it is espe- 
 cially telling because so many sons have gone to Man- 
 churia in search of fortune. Some of them have never 
 come back, as was the case of a son in this family. There 
 is hoping against hope for years, to hear from them. 
 Some who have never returned have been ungrateful to 
 parents and let them shift from bad to worse in helpless 
 poverty. When the question is put to the Chinese parent, 
 as we put it that day to the old lady, ^* What would you 
 think if after nourishing your four sous, caring for them 
 in their helpless infancy, giving them food and clothes 
 and shelter — they were not thankful when they grew up ? 
 Even more, if they never spoke to youV The old 
 woman's eyes flashed anger as she replied, *' Very bad, 
 very bad ! ' ' " But, " we said, ' ' this is just what we have 
 done here in this home to the Heavenly Father. He has 
 given us, year in and year out, rain and sunshine without 
 which our sweet potatoes could not grow. He has given 
 us the trees on your mountainside for fuel, and grass for 
 the fodder of your animals, and yet all your life you have 
 gone to the temple and burned incense sticks and paper 
 money to gods that your carpenters and your smiths and 
 your plasterers have made, outraging the true God who 
 made these green fields and the sea over the mountain 
 wall from which you get your fish. Do you think God is 
 pleased ? He tells us that these gifts of His to us should 
 daily put into us the spirit of repentance. Can He do 
 less than punish if His children are willfully going wrong f 
 What would you do ? Would you also not in love punish 
 your children, to save them from worse misfortune"! 
 
SOWING THE GOOD SEED 157 
 
 Could you expect that your suicide daughter, whom you 
 never trained to honour the true God, could honour you ? 
 If parents do not rejoice in a child who forgets to honour 
 them, can the Heavenly Father?" 
 
 This old woman was keen ; her eyes snapped with 
 interest and she even was in a mood to argue, which is 
 quite unusual with the timid, not to say broken old women. 
 She said, *^But how can I know God? I cannot see 
 Him." Then she started to ruminate. ** Did these great 
 mountains make themselves, and who cleaved this val- 
 ley! " ^* If your son in Manchuria were still alive, how 
 would you know that he was alive?'' "Why," she 
 said, **he would send me a letter." *'Even so, God has 
 sent us a letter, even His book, which tells us all about 
 Him. In it He speaks directly to us." " But how can I 
 get in touch with Him?" " Well," was the rejoinder, 
 * ^ how do your children get in touch with you ? " " Why, 
 they talk to me." *^Even so we talk to the true God. 
 We thank Him and we tell Him of all our needs. This 
 talking to God — we call it prayer!" **But," she an- 
 swered, *^ I don't know how to pray. I don't know how 
 to worship God." 
 
 To a foreigner living among these people and hearing 
 such words out of the anguish of spiritual longing in 
 which they are sometimes spoken, they are as startling 
 as to hear what we can hear over and over in these glens : 
 **I have never yet heard of Jesus." To say that these 
 words are startling in the twentieth century, in view of 
 the command of Jesus and the opportunity that the 
 Church has had to obey His command, is putting it 
 mildly indeed. "But," she insisted, "you say we shall 
 rise again. How can I believe that? I never saw a 
 resurrection." "Well," we answered, "have you ever 
 thought what it means that many sweet potatoes will grow 
 from one slip? or that many grains of wheat grow on 
 
158 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 yonder stalk only because the grain that was planted dies 
 of itself!" "Except a kernel of wheat fall into the 
 ground and die it abideth alone. If it die, it bringeth 
 forth much fruit." Her next move was the most int-erest- 
 ing and startling of all : ^' But I have sinned, I have no 
 hope, I have seen the hell pictures in our temple." She 
 was referring to the plaster representations in the near-by 
 temple, which with much more can be seen in the Temple 
 of the Under World in each walled city, where demons 
 of the Buddhist faith, grafted upon the Chinese Spirit 
 Worship, are seen putting human beings through well- 
 nigh every sort of nameless horrible punishment for the 
 deeds done in the flesh. There is one thing about heathen 
 religions that makes them hateful and repulsive beyond 
 words. They not only drag down the heathen into 
 deeper sin, not only make them sin still more gravely 
 against the light they have, but leave them with abso- 
 lutely no hope. Being human, they can offer no sugges- 
 tion of salvation, no glimmer of light from above. Only 
 the religion of the Son of God coming down from Heaven, 
 and not Taoist or Confucian priests, has wisdom to pierce 
 the future. 
 
 These priests know no more than the common folk 
 instinctively know ; no more than the stupid old women 
 of China ; no more than that we have sinned and we 
 ought to suffer for our sin. Therefore the marvel of the 
 Holy Spirit working hope and faith in this old woman. 
 As she gazed at the picture of Joseph suffering for and 
 forgiving his brethren, the omnipotence of God made 
 plain to her that this strong, winsome, self-sacrificing son 
 of Jacob was a type of the Son of God. He set forth to 
 her the possibility of getting right with God. Earlier 
 she had said, ^'I am too old to believe *'— the remark of 
 many another aged Chinese, like an anguished wail from 
 the under world. But now, through many repetitions 
 
SOWING THE GOOD SEED 169 
 
 and in varied form, the truth was brought home to her 
 mind, dull to apprehend such grace because heretofore 
 believing it to be inconceivable, "Can there be hope for 
 me 1 " She caught at it like a drowning man at a straw. 
 Earlier she had said : *^ What use? When I die I shall 
 become a snake !^^ 
 
 By the light of the moon the men of the family, father 
 and sons, staggered into the courtyard j each man bowed 
 with his burden of grass or fire-wood cut off the moun- 
 tain, or the tools of labour. Though hungry and wearied 
 with the work of a long day, they squatted there in the 
 moonlight and listened. 
 
 One of the first fruits of that visit was that when we 
 left that night, as we were escorted out, the old woman, 
 now believing, murmured the equivalent of " Unworthy 
 but thankful I God pities me ! He cares for a worthless 
 old hulk like me. Oh, how I thank Him ! ' ^ In heart- 
 warming experiences like this the Gospel messenger gets 
 a new conception of the program of Christianity, of 
 Christ^ s adaptability to every human being on the 
 planet, of the cosmic reach of God^s purpose and plan 
 and passion, as indicated in the prophecy of Isaiah : **I 
 will give Thee to be a light to the Gentiles, that Thou 
 mayest be my salvation unto the ends of the earth. ^' 
 
 In view of such openings, numberless, no opportunity 
 to accept an invitation to a heathen home should ever be 
 rejected. It may under the blessing of God result in 
 precious fruitage. Many a heathen man and family are 
 looking for the true God. In our field I have in mind a 
 one-time heathen school-teacher whose soul had long been 
 prepared for the Gospel message, who, when it was pre- 
 sented to him in his home, speedily embraced it. He has 
 now for years been one of our best pastors, a man used 
 in a large way among three churches to which he minis- 
 ters. Through him hundreds of souls have been born 
 
160 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 into the kingdom. He confessed that as soon as he heard 
 of the Lord Jesus and what He could do, he was ready- 
 to accept Him. The personal worker among these masses 
 is continually reminded of the pledge of the Almighty : 
 *^ I am the Lord that confirmeth the word of His servant 
 and performeth the counsel of His messengers.'* 
 
V 
 
 The Market and the Tent 
 A Study in Itinerating Methods 
 
V 
 
 THE MAEKET AND THE TENT 
 
 WITH several centuries of history to its credit, 
 China naturally has acquired many deeply 
 rooted customs and institutions. Dynasties 
 have risen, their ripples have subsided, but the people 
 have moved on in vast unconcern — plowing, sowing and 
 reaping in stolid regardlessness of time and change. One 
 of the things that has become an integral part of their 
 life is the market, held every five days. For fear of rob- 
 bers and because of distrust of all things in general, the 
 peasants live in small villages — not apart, each man on 
 his own land as in America. Of necessity, these primi- 
 tive country folk must often come together in these 
 markets to buy what they cannot raise or make. A 
 great exchange takes place of eatables and other neces- 
 sary and useful things. These markets are called by the 
 numbers of the days of the month when they are held. 
 For example : the market of one town is 1-6 ; of another, 
 2-7 ; of another, 3-8 ; of still another, 5-10, etc. From 
 time immemorial these buying and selling bees have been 
 held in certain larger and more important villages, cen- 
 tral in their own district. Thus, for example, a market 
 is held at the town of Shikou (the village of the stone 
 ravine) 1-6, 11-16, 21-26 ; or at the village of Hung Lan 
 Pu (the village of the red and blue cloth) on 2-7, 22-27, 
 etc. ; or at the village of Chi Gi (seven chickens) on the 
 ** three " dates ; or at the village of the little hen on the 
 *^four" dates; or at the village of the "river of the 
 demon source" on the **five^^ dates, etc. Each has 
 
 163 
 
164 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 dates that do not interfere with the days of any contigu- 
 ous market. 
 
 At these markets everything conceivable that people 
 can use is sold; from the filthy cotton wadding of the 
 worn-out garments of the previous winter season to old 
 shoe soles in the last stage of disrepair ; from all sorts of 
 fish that smell to heaven to nameless things out of the 
 sea, to look at which makes one feel weak in the pit of 
 his stomach. Many varieties of vegetables and fruit are 
 sold, often cut into small pieces for the convenience of 
 the buyers and exposed to the dust and filth and flies of 
 the street. 
 
 Here, at this gathering-place of the community of that 
 district, the itinerating missionary, with a company of 
 volunteers — Christians, elders, deacons — or paid evangel- 
 ists, or all together, prepares to preach the Gospel. 
 Often the market is held outside the wall of the market 
 town in the bed of a dry moat or stream, as well as upon 
 the long, rambling, irregular main street. The practised 
 eye of the preachers picks out pulpits as serviceable as 
 unique from which to preach — often the steps of a 
 temple; often a theatre platform, which frequently is 
 opposite the main temple gate j often the earth mounds 
 scattered in the street. Sometimes, down among the 
 crowd, the preachers may, several times during the day, 
 work through the mass of people in the street, preaching, 
 distributing tracts, and disposing of Scripture portions 
 sold absurdly cheap — one copper cash a volume. 
 
 It is a unique and interesting scene that is spread out 
 before the preacher, standing a little above it— the 
 throngs of countrymen who surge up and down along the 
 streets in front of the men squatting with their wares. 
 All are endlessly seeking bargains. And ever above the 
 hum and the strident noise of the crowd of buyers and 
 sellers, the one word is constantly heard, — ^'cash, cash, 
 
C/3 
 
THE MARKET AND THE TENT 165 
 
 cash ! " One wonders if there could be any more ma- 
 terialistic race on the face of the earth. Out of such a 
 restless, pushing jam of people the preacher is to get an 
 audience — if he can. There is usually, however, no 
 trouble in getting some of the crowd to stop and listen. 
 Above the din and uproar, the Gospel messenger raises 
 his voice. Often they gaze intently and the foreigner 
 thinks that he has their attention centred on the truth he 
 is preachiug, only to find out later, through questions 
 asked and the conversation that takes place in front of 
 him, that the interest centred on a button or a shoe-lace 
 or his glasses or his watch or his all-round general 
 queerness. 
 
 There are happenings in a day comical enough. The 
 auditors discuss and argue among themselves why the 
 foreign devil's glasses are dark-coloured. Or what sin- 
 ister motive can he have in coming to our land, thereby 
 subjecting himself to inconveniences and hardship ? Is he 
 in our land in order to take it, or is he preparing to at- 
 tempt to enslave us ? And with the pride of provincial- 
 ism in their great and difficult language they exclaim : 
 ** He must be very venerable in age ! He must have re- 
 quired many years in which to have accomplished the 
 feat of talking our talk. We never could learn his 
 tongue ! '^ 
 
 The foreigner is generally able to attract a crowd, and 
 if their attention is lagging, or if they have moved on 
 during the expounding and haranguing of the Chinese 
 evangelists, they usually surge back again when the for- 
 eigner begins to speak. However, one evangelist, faith- 
 ful elder for many years, used a scheme when interest 
 was lagging which would startle and attract well-nigh 
 any market crowd. He was the proud possessor of a set 
 of teeth made by a foreign -trained Chinese dentist ; and 
 when he saw a sagging in interest, he was accustomed to 
 
166 CHINA FKOM WITHIN 
 
 call out to the people to watch him, as something won- 
 derful was about to happen. Then with a dramatic 
 movement of the hands, he would take out his false teeth 
 and wave them in the air, again shouting to everybody 
 to look. Sometimes the people on the instant would ex- 
 claim and draw away in astonishment and temporary 
 horror, immediately after, mob-like, to surge back around 
 him to see and hear such a wonder-worker. Aside from 
 any adventitious attraction to aid him, the Chinese 
 evangelist preaching in the market usually is, as a fellow 
 missionary says, a wonder, and can usually save the situ- 
 ation. He is a fluent talker, can speak apparently under 
 any circumstances, and is deterred or perturbed ap- 
 parently by no amount of shouting or noise. At times 
 his talk may seem rambling and wide of the mark, but 
 he surprises and delights with his apposite illustrations 
 and his realistic presentations of the Scripture stories 
 and truths, and usually scores a strong point. 
 
 The remarkable thing is that the Holy Spirit can use 
 witness borne of Christ under such adverse circumstances 
 of noise, confusion, distraction and selfish barter, causing 
 men to be smitten with the conviction of sin. Eepeat- 
 edly in this market preaching we have been interrupted 
 by men who have asked with troubled earnestness one of 
 the most terrible questions that any Christian can ever 
 have put to him : ** Honoured Shepherd, if all this hope 
 that you speak about in the Jesus Doctrine is true, why 
 did you not come a long while ago and tell us about it ? " 
 Many a Christian in the Home Church will have to face 
 that question in the judgment. 
 
 Men turn away apparently untouched. And yet one 
 of the best of men, for many years a preacher and an 
 elder, confesses that as a raw and callow youth, at the 
 market, looking around to see something new and strange, 
 he heard a foreign missionary preaching ; had gone away 
 
THE MARKET AND THE TENT 167 
 
 apparently unimpressed ; but twenty years later was 
 smitten with the conviction of sin and of righteousness 
 and of judgment to come by the words all these years 
 buried in his heart. Many other cases, the same in 
 principle, could be cited. We know that the Spirit of 
 God is not bound ; too many times, through the miracles 
 of market street-preaching, have we been forced to 
 realize the limitlessness of His power. In view of these 
 experiences it is ours in faith to cast the bread upon the 
 waters, knowing that ** after many days" it shall, as He 
 says, return increased. 
 
 How hearts are prepared for these messages no one but 
 God Himself can ever know. For example, a certain 
 man heard a missionary preaching in the market. Though 
 he himself did not at once repent, when he returned home 
 he told his wife about it, but vaguely, confusedly. How 
 precious the market message was to her weary soul and 
 what it ultimately accomplished in and through her may 
 be seen in the following narrative. From early woman- 
 hood she was keenly conscious of her sinfulness and that 
 she *' ought to do something to get right. '^ So, in ac- 
 cordance with the universal instinct planted in the hu- 
 man heart (but which displays itself, perhaps, more 
 dramatically in the gorgeous ritual of Asia — its idol wor- 
 ship and temple services — than in the West), she sought, 
 as zealously as vainly, to placate God, after whom she 
 blindly groped, whom she instinctively knew she had 
 outraged, and with whom she felt she ought to be at 
 peace. She knew no way to peace except through merit- 
 making. And to prove to deity the sincerity of her long- 
 ing, she determined to make unusual merit, as extraordi- 
 nary and unconventional as it was fetching. It could not 
 but make a **hit" with the priests; and perforce they 
 would help her to peace. Note how God^s providence 
 was over her to use her gifts and turn her life into His 
 
168 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 service. Mrs. Li is a natural leader. So, during unen^ 
 lightened years, she had gathered up from the villages 
 round about a band of sixty heathen women to go in a 
 body with her and lay before a temple altar their com- 
 mon gift — pooled, specially prepared, and of unusual 
 value. 
 
 To persuade that number of women to leave their 
 homes and go without their men-folk's escort is in rural 
 China an extraordinary feat. Many peasants during 
 their lifetime have not been even five miles away from 
 home ; many women have scarcely left their own mud- 
 walled yard, not to speak of their own village. Heathen- 
 ism's spirit of fear, distrust, suspicion and non-initiative 
 broods heavily over the people. If the husband whom 
 the women call the waitou (one who has communication 
 with the outer world) has not at all opened the eyes of 
 his understanding — being unable to read, and the victim 
 of all manner of debasing superstitions— what must such 
 an undertaking be for a peasant woman, the litou (one 
 who stays in the house), who knows little beyond the 
 door-step gossip, whose intellectual horizon is often 
 bounded by the village— the latest news about Mrs. Li's 
 baby dying of worms, and Mrs. Wan's abused daughter- 
 in-law jumping into the village well, and Mrs. Lin 
 poisoning her husband, and Mrs. Tang selling her little 
 girl to a brothel, and the like. 
 
 For a Chinese peasant woman to go sixty miles on foot 
 is almost like your crossing a continent. She leaves 
 home when married, and at increasingly rare intervals 
 revisits the parental abode, her crippled feet necessitating 
 her riding on an animal or barrow, and being escorted by 
 a man of her family. Now this sort of an expedition, led 
 by Mrs. Li the Zealous, was more analogous to Living- 
 stone's first penetration of the Dark Continent. How 
 sixty husbands would allow it is a mystery, explainable 
 
THE MARKET AND THE TENT 169 
 
 only ou the basis that the illogicalness of heathenism 
 makes possible all sorts of contradictory credulities and 
 foolish practices and hurtful customs side by side. But 
 so it was that time after time these women set out, upon 
 their tiny crippled feet, to walk the weary distance to 
 their sacred precinct, especially famed in that region. 
 Together they toiled to the summit of that holy hill ; to- 
 gether on their knees they entered the temple, each burn- 
 ing a stick of incense. Many times they prostrated 
 themselves on the cold, earthen floor in worship to the 
 hideous demon-idols. After they had knocked their 
 foreheads repeatedly in the dirt they crawled backward 
 on all fours out of the temple, keeping their eyes glued 
 upon the awful presences until their forms were lost 
 through the open portals. Such was their merit-making ! 
 Weakened from the fasting connected with the vow, foot- 
 sore from the long and arduous pilgrimage, they got what 
 solace they could out of their laboriously made merit. 
 
 Then, each season, succeeding their great adventure, 
 Mrs. Li and her companions dispersed to their homes — 
 their quest vain, their souls more weary than their bodies 
 — unsatisfied, thirsting after the living and to them un- 
 known and unknowable God. 
 
 A year came when it seemed to Mrs. Li as if she should 
 die if she could not find heart-peace. She early began 
 making preparations for the merit-making journey, the 
 best method of which she could conceive to placate deity, 
 totally ignorant as she was of the truth : ** Sacrifice and 
 oblation (as a substitute for holy obedience) Thou wouldst 
 not." As the time of the temple festival approached, she 
 was feverish in her desire to be off and lead her baud of 
 zealots. But on the day set for departure she was stricken 
 with fever, and passed the days of the pilgrimage in de- 
 lirious moaning. Often she muttered : " Oh, Spirit of 
 heaven and earth, light, light, light ! " 
 
170 CHINA FEOM WITHIN 
 
 She recovered, and when strong enough to bear the 
 news, was informed that her band of women and many 
 other worshippers crowded into the temple had all been 
 burned alive in the temple. Over the main double door 
 was a half second-story, stored with straw and corn-stalks, 
 used for winter fuel by the priests, lazy, ignorant and 
 vicious, who live in fatness off the offerings of a poverty- 
 stricken people. On such an important festival occasion 
 one of the priests, on account of the press, and to make 
 the service more impressive to an unsophisticated folk, 
 had stood up in that loft, and there, facing the idols, had 
 intoned the prayers, while another by his side beat 
 the drum. At each proper period, signified by the 
 pounding, the people prostrated themselves upon the 
 floor. By accident, probably, one of the priests knocked 
 off from the stand before him an incense stick (an Amer- 
 ican boy^s Fourth of July piece of punk). Suddenly it 
 must have ignited the combustibles all about him, and as 
 suddenly the flames leaped up, enveloped the two priests 
 and ate through the years- old and dry-as- tinder board 
 platform supporting them. The people below, stiff with 
 surprise and dumb in terror, watched the two wretches, 
 eaten of fire, tumble down at their feet before them. 
 Then a wild stampede for the door in front occurred. 
 Unfortunately, the very effort to rush out, as the people 
 pushed from behind, each thinking only of himself, only 
 pressed the doors, which opened into the temple, more 
 tightly shut And there the crazed company were, im- 
 prisoned in that sacred charnel-house ! 
 
 Those on the outsidC; attempting rescue, were unable 
 to make any headway against the jam from within. The 
 flames quickly spread to all the inflammable things in- 
 side the temple— rafters, cross-beams, door-lintels, furni- 
 ture and framework, from which hung gorgeous banners 
 and silk curtains screening the features of mud deities. 
 
THE MARKET AND THE TENT 171 
 
 And these, bedecked as they were with paint and gay 
 tinsel, were, no less than their victim-worshippers, licked 
 up by the fervent heat. The fumes issuing from the 
 doomed building suffocated even those tugging at the 
 doors from without. Terrible were the descriptions of 
 the diabolical din and frenzied cries within. Through 
 the smoke and amid the crackling of the flames onlookers 
 got a confused impression of a writhing mass of fierce and 
 maddened creatures trampling without pity and as ruth- 
 lessly trampled, scrambling frantically over one another, 
 fighting like demons for the door, their clothes all afire 
 — human brutes and human torches in one. 
 
 The heavy, tiled roof, wrenching and groaning and 
 gutted of its inner supports, fell in, and many little leer- 
 ing, protecting devil- images fastened on its top— all too 
 significant — keeled in after. A cloud of dust and ashes 
 arose. From within came the smothered cries and stifled 
 shrieks of roasted victims. Then a ghastly silence. 
 And the holocaust of sin, offered up to the Father of lies, 
 was complete. 
 
 In far-away China we have read of such disasters hap- 
 pening even in Christian America. If pandemonium 
 could grip a cultured audience in an American theatre, 
 imagine what a fire panic must mean when it seized upon 
 a company of illiterate, uncouth, untravelled heathen 
 peasants. 
 
 With the news of the death of her women friends, Mrs. 
 Li's hope in the power of her gods to help her failed 
 utterly. Horrified at the fate of those pilgrim com- 
 panions, she now determined with all the energy of her 
 being to find a real Saviour or die in the attempt. Again 
 she questioned her husband desperately about the foreign 
 God. "What did you say His name is?" "Yie Su 
 (Jesus) ! " he answered. And as the description became 
 more detailed and she slowly and laboriously patched to- 
 
172 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 gether the ideas, she finally exclaimed: *'Yie Su Kiu 
 Chu (Jesus Saviour) ! He is the one I am looking for ! 
 He satisfies me. He causes me to rest my heart ! " 
 . The outcome of her search was that she became one of 
 ?T our Bible women, travelling on foot and preaching tire- 
 ^ lessly to women through the villages of three churches. 
 '; y She was called "The Zealous^' — a little wrinkled old 
 ^^ woman, poor and without immediate family. But her 
 life-quest had succeeded. She had found the secret of 
 happiness. Her shining black eyes snap with the zest of 
 joyous living. The winsome smile that habitually is hers 
 attests it. Her zeal for the faith delivered to the saints 
 is phenomenal. Like Paul she can say : " This one thing 
 I do" — press forward towards the mark in His service. 
 She often says : '^If all my life long I have wasted my 
 energy in serving demons, why should I not now as zeal- 
 ously try to serve the true God ? If I led sixty women to 
 the temple of idols, why should I not spend myself trying 
 to lead as many to Christ, the Saviour?" Truly, as 
 Isaiah said, our God is a " wonder of a Saviour." " They 
 to whom no tidings came (directly) shall see, and they 
 who have not heard shall understand." 
 
 The simplicity of the faith of a Christian household 
 taking God at His Word is refreshing. With them it 
 seems natural to thank the Father for a visit of the 
 pastor, a prayer of gratitude being usually offered on his 
 safe arrival. It gives a minister strength for his mission 
 and message as all the folks of the home stand bared, 
 while the blessing of the Almighty is invoked on the 
 visit. Likewise on his departure there is always the 
 prayer together for God's guidance on the journey, that 
 he may go panoplied in the strength of the Almighty 
 God. And well he knows he needs it as he faces heathen- 
 dom — huge and crass and indifferent to him who in his 
 own weakness is as unable to make a dent in it as with 
 
THE MARKET AND THE TENT 173 
 
 his fist to batter down the vast sea-dykes of Holland. 
 And as he sees continual tokens of his people's confidence 
 in him and their looking to him as an example, well may 
 the missionary pastor, imitating the solicitude and ex- 
 ample of Paul, stir himself up to give ** no occasion of 
 stumbling in anything, that our ministration be not 
 balmed, but in everything commending ourselves as 
 ministers of God, in much steadfastness, in watchings, in 
 pureness, in knowledge, in longsuffering, in kindness, in 
 the Holy Spirit, in love unfeigned, in the word of truth, 
 in the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on 
 the right hand and on the left/* 
 
 One is always impressed with the politeness of the 
 peasant Christian hosts — politeness according to their 
 standards, of course. Few receptions could be kinder 
 or more enthusiastic. Afar off the visitor is frequently 
 espied and the men of the household hasten out to meet 
 him, it being the prerogative of their senior, as host, to 
 take the traveller's ^'Chien tatsi" (the Chinese equiva- 
 lent of valise, dress-suit case, band-box, lunch-box, trunk 
 and purse), which is carried on the shoulder and hangs 
 down in front and behind. A few minutes before the 
 Shepherd arrives, the word has been hurried on, and the 
 women of the family have indulged in a perfect hurricane 
 of house-cleaning — i. e., dust-raising. 
 
 Inside the gate they, flustered and warm, smiling, bow- 
 ing and apologetic, receive the guest, placing a stool for 
 him. The canons of etiquette require that it should be 
 farthest from the fresh air of the open door (it would be 
 a sign of *'no welcome" were he seated near it). Often 
 the room is so thick with stirred up dust as to suggest 
 the thought of its being cut with a meat- cleaver. 
 
 The ceremonial cup of tea is soon brought, just as in 
 Palestine the Syrian host to-day brings the basin for the 
 travel-stained feet of his guest. " Ha i tien sui '' (drink 
 
174 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 a little water) is urged. Unless it is certain that he is 
 equal to the emergency, the guest would better be po- 
 litely wary, for the invitation often means to perform 
 the feat of plucking several, usually six, slippery dropped 
 eggs — and with chop-sticks— from a bowl of hot water, 
 and landing them all safely where they were intended to 
 go. If they are not eaten the host may feel hurt, certainly 
 disappointed. If the guest bungles the job, the audience 
 doesn't think much of his dexterity in handling the 
 "Kwei tsi'* (nimble fellows, as the chop -sticks are 
 facetiously called). 
 
 There is no fathoming the troubles, the undoctored 
 sicknesses, the inarticulate woes of these humble folk. 
 Much that they suffer is born, either of the squalor of 
 their lives, the vice-grip of which is never relaxed, or of 
 the persecution, petty and serious, that meets them in 
 myriad forms because of their breach with the idolatrous 
 superstitions of their clan and neighbours. 
 
 I entered a room where an old woman lay. She was a 
 Christian, her folks were not. While they had not 
 literally turned her out, they made it manifest that they 
 had no room for her. In each of the end rooms of the 
 three-roomed house was a "kang" (brick bed). The 
 well members of the family slept on one, and the other, 
 on which the sick woman had been lying, they had com- 
 mandeered as a nursery for the sweet-potato plants. The 
 tender slips embedded in rich black soil filled the kang. 
 Its warmth, because of the flues underneath connecting 
 with the stove, forced their growth preparatory to plant- 
 ing in the fields a few weeks later. The little low dark 
 room was so cluttered that it was a squeeze between the 
 kang and the pile of boxes and stuff on the opposite side. 
 
 There she lay in that alleyway on the damp earthen 
 floor, bundled up in her quilts— filthy, ragged, odoriferous 
 — despised and rejected for Christ's sake. As I entered 
 
THE MARKET AND THE TENT 175 
 
 unobserved she was softly repeating to herself verses she 
 had been taught : ^* I love Him because He first loved 
 me.'' After I had prayed she said : ** Though my body 
 is racked, my heart is filled with peace! I know in 
 whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able 
 to keep that which I have committed unto Him against 
 that day.'' Her gratitude filled me with a realization of 
 the joy of being an uuder-shepherd of the Great Shepherd. 
 I felt that I received much more than I gave that day. 
 And as I left her I found myself, for very gratitude to 
 God, humming this hymn-prayer : 
 
 " Let me be tender when I touch 
 The meanest name to Jesus dear ; 
 Lest my rude hands inflict a wound 
 Where Jesus' mercy dropped a tear." 
 
 In another home which I visited, another Christian 
 woman lay stricken upon the kang, her whole limb 
 afflicted with a foul ulcer. The family were Christians 
 but utterly ignorant of what to do. Like all their neigh- 
 bours they were innocent of cleanliness and sanitation in 
 handling the sick, and utterly without facilities to care 
 for the case even had they understood it. Such knowl- 
 edge comes to a nation as a by-product of the broad, 
 humane enlightenment that results from honouring Christ. 
 At least the spirit of heathenism never produced it. 
 
 The weather was hot, the atmosphere of the room fetid 
 and rancid,— stifling to me. The woman was rotting to 
 death of gangrene, no help or hope. Heathenism had 
 provided no hospital for her. In order to catch any 
 breeze that might come her way she had thrust her 
 fingers through the paper that covered the lower rows 
 of the tiny wooden square openings in which the window- 
 frame was divided. It had not occurred to the family to 
 strip off the paper entirely ; or perhaps it had and they 
 had desisted for an obvious reason. The pig-pen was 
 
176 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 just outside, separated from the patient only by a mud 
 wall. Under the grilling of the sun the fumes rolled in. 
 The flies came through the punctured holes in the paper 
 panes, and in greedy swarms were tormenting and de- 
 vouring her. In weariness and pain she tossed on her 
 brick bed and rolled her head from side to side, seeking 
 a soft spot in her pillow, stuffed hard and full with barley. 
 And yet, in this hole of a wretched hovel, she knew 
 Christ. For months He had sustained her. Though she 
 could not express it thus, she was aware, just as well as 
 Samuel Rutherford, that ^^He delighteth to take up the 
 fallen bairns and to mend broken brows. Binding up of 
 wounds is His office.^' She had been taught the twenty- 
 third Psalm, and this she repeated joyfully with me, say- 
 ing, almost in the language of Paul, ** Though the out- 
 ward man perish, the inward man is renewed day by 
 day." And this despite revolting surroundings: the 
 bare grimy walls and the flies inside, and just outside the 
 hogs, grunting, squealing and fighting week after week, 
 day and night. This broken ignorant woman taught me 
 anew the meaning of Browning's words i 
 
 ** There is no good of life but love — but love I 
 What else looks good is some shade flung from love j 
 Love guilds it, gives it worth. 
 
 Be warned by me, never you cheat yourself one instant. 
 Love, give love, and leave the rest." 
 
 On another day I made a detour in my itinerary and 
 sought out a family, the only one in that village who were 
 Christians. For weeks during the daytime they had been 
 kept from the village well because of their confession of 
 the Lord, it being necessary for the father and son to go 
 in the dark to another village to draw water. The father 
 had become a Christian through hearing the Gospel 
 preached "in the market." He had sent his son and 
 daughter to a near-by village Mission school where thev 
 
THE MARKET AND THE TENT 177 
 
 had accepted Christ. For some months these three had 
 been iustructing the mother, who was eager to take the 
 step. Tliough they were desperately poor, the father 
 was now away on a volunteer preaching tour, selling 
 Scripture portions. 
 
 Before I began to talk to the mother I, for two reasons, 
 sat down in the tiny dishevelled yard. First, that the 
 heathen, suspicious and jamming into the yard, might 
 see and hear all that occurred (their heads protruded 
 everywhere above the wall) ; and, secondly, because I 
 could not stand it inside the nasty little hut (from it she 
 brought me food black with the flies settled on it). Two 
 little children that feared the strange man pulled and 
 tugged at the mother — one of them naked but for a shirt, 
 and dirty and covered from head to heel with undressed 
 sores, stung nearly to madness by the flies. As best she 
 could, the patient, worn, ignorant mother comforted her 
 infant. Slowly and plainly I unfolded to her the st^ry 
 of Jesus. Her hungry heart eagerly drank it in. I tried 
 to emphasize what her husband and older children had 
 not made clear. Fine-spirited she was, even in her 
 squalor. She passed creditably through the examina- 
 tion the elder and I put to her. She longed to partake 
 of the Communion. Her future opportunity was exceed- 
 ingly uncertain. She had not gone far from her yard for 
 years. And we decided to administer the Sacred Supper. 
 Nobody could picture the pathos of her starved life, the 
 type of ten millions of women like her. 
 
 Beside the door, laden with fragrance and beauty, stood 
 an exquisite rose-tree full of rich red flowers — aristocrat of 
 the aesthetic world and strange sentinel for such a place, 
 for immediately behind it was the pig-pen and just oppo- 
 site it, across the path, was the donkey stable. A board 
 over a stone feed-trough lying on the ground in the yard, 
 was our substitute for a table. I sat behind it on a low. 
 
178 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 rickety three-legged stool, the best the house afforded. 
 In front of me were the elder and the big boy and girl, 
 all seated on a borrowed bench. The patient, soft-eyed, 
 humble mother sat on the raised door-sill, holding the 
 diseased child, who slept with its mouth open, and the 
 sun shining right into its eyes. She was also comforting 
 the other little one, restless and fretting. The son had 
 borrowed a fresh **Hwoa Shoa" (a biscuit baked over 
 coals) and a cup of Chinese beer made from sweet pota- 
 toes. I placed my handkerchief over the elements. It 
 was a grotesque setting for such a service — the cramped 
 yard littered with its filth, and its mud wall lined with 
 staring, unsympathetic faces ; the excited chatter and 
 irreverent remarks of those who had crowded in through 
 the gate ; the hens digging and rolling in the dirt, seek- 
 ing refuge in their holes from lice, and then shaking 
 the dust in dry waves upon us ; the skinny cat crawl- 
 ing through the sill under the mother ; the yard cur 
 growling and showing teeth at the invaders around the 
 gate J the grunting pigs, and the perfect rose-tree — a 
 more perfect specimen than which it would be hard to 
 find outside the villa gardens of Florence or the lawns 
 of a French chateau. 
 
 The verse that comforted the mother more than any 
 other was Matthew 11 : 28, ^'Come unto me all ye that 
 labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 
 Take my yoke upon you and learn of me ; for I am meek 
 and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 
 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. '^ She 
 knew all about the yoke j not the yoke that we Western- 
 ers think of— the neck yoke of a pair of steers of equal 
 size. Multitudes of Chinese are too poor to own a don- 
 key, not to mention an ox, and when they are fortunate 
 enough to own both, they are often hitched tandem j but 
 whether they are hitched side by side or tandem, no neck 
 
THE MARKET AND THE TENT 179 
 
 yoke could be used. They are fastened together to the 
 plow or drag or cart by a marvellous ^* contrapshun^^ of 
 ropes. The yoke that she thought of, and possibly our 
 Lord too, is the omnipresent *' bien tan,'^ a strong flexible 
 pole carried on the shoulder, to which, in front and be- 
 hind, are fastened whatever is to be carried, from babies 
 to baskets of eggs. This is the yoke that halves the 
 weight of all burdens, making it light! "Yes!" con- 
 tentedly nodded the mother after the service — the yard 
 full, but she oblivious of the rabble. *■'■ Yes, Jesus halves 
 all burdens. He makes them light to be borne I ^' And a 
 mist of joy was in her eyes. She could not explain it 
 and didn^t have to. 
 
 I have many times celebrated the Lord's Supper in 
 such humble, unknown nooks of the Peasautdom of China, 
 and in these celebrations the Holy Spirit of God has drawn 
 very close to me and has helped me to forget the crudities, 
 the vulgarities, even the obscenities, of the setting, and 
 to see the Christ, King of Love, eternal Host, presiding 
 at His Banquet Board ; and to hear His blessed words : 
 " Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these who are 
 my brethren, ye have done it unto me.^' Part of His 
 blessed reward has been that, in circumstances of minis- 
 tration to His little ones. He has given me the spirit to 
 pray: 
 
 ** Lord crucified, 
 
 Give me a heart like Thine ; 
 
 Teach me to love 
 
 The dying souls of men. 
 
 O, keep my heart 
 
 In closest touch with Thee ! 
 
 And give me love, 
 
 Pure Calvary- love, 
 
 To bring the lost to Thee." 
 
 Oh, that reward, even here and now, is satisfying be- 
 yond words. 
 
180 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 Once again I entered a peasant hut. I had been called 
 in haste from another village. It was a winter day, 
 cloudy and cold. A strong head wind was on. After 
 buffeting it for a couple of hours, we reached our desti- 
 nation ; but long before we reached it the wind had found 
 our marrow. 
 
 The street, swept by gusts of dust, was deserted. Pass- 
 ing down it, the elder and I entered a hovel just beyond 
 the sheltering wall of the village— only two tiny rooms, 
 the inner quite dark to us, entering. The paper cover- 
 ing the wooden slats of the window frames had been 
 whipped into shreds by the wind. The windows had 
 been piled full with loose, sun-dried brick to help if pos- 
 sible keep out the cold. 
 
 Our eyes, soon accustomed to the gloom, made out that 
 the only furniture in the room was the kang (the brick 
 platform that serves as bed and is built into the wall). 
 It was not even covered by the customary straw mat. 
 Upon it had crawled an old man who lay huddled there 
 — a Christian dying. His only garments were a blue 
 cotton shirt and trousers, such as is universally worn by 
 the common people of the North during summer. The 
 ordinary peasant frequently has to pawn to heathen 
 usurers, at exorbitant rates, his hoe and mattock and 
 plow to buy padded garments for the winter 5 but he 
 usually manages to get them somehow. The clothes of 
 this poor man were not only thin but ragged. Through 
 the holes his skin showed *' goose pimply. ^^ Manifestly 
 he was not long for this life. The infirmities of age and 
 the steady, relentless abuse to which he had been sub- 
 jected, plus this exposure to cold and lack of nourish- 
 ment, had about done their work. 
 
 To make a long and pitiful story short, heathen-spirited 
 children of ruthless will and stubborn purpose had, quite 
 contrary to the tenets of Confucius as to filial conduct, 
 
THE MARKET AND THE TENT 181 
 
 turned liim out. They had reasoned : *^ If I cannot bend 
 this old man's purpose to be a Jesus-Doctrine man, I will 
 break him ! " And, under Chinese setting, they had 
 treated their father with the same base ingratitude that 
 Goneril and Eegan had treated Lear. He had been 
 forced out at night and in the winter storm, ill-clad and 
 without food — the climax of the " freezing out " process 
 that the family had for some time been perpetrating 
 upon him. The old man had through the night wan- 
 dered heli)lessly across the frozen fields and stumbled 
 into this place, outside the village, just as he was ex- 
 hausted. 
 
 That room was a bleak and dreary place — fireless, of 
 course, and lightless. The cold damp of the floor soon 
 numbed my feet. I touched the man gently on the 
 shoulder; he groaned and turned. "Brother, are you 
 suffering much?'' "Compared with Jesus' sufferings 
 for me, it is light !" He knew he was dying. I asked 
 what I had asked so many times of other men in China : 
 "Do you fear to die?" He replied at once : "No, I 
 am not afraid to die ! Jesus will sung (escort) me to the 
 Throne of the Father, where I will fall down and wor- 
 ship Him ! " 
 
 I asked what I could do for him. < ' Sing ! " " What ? ' ' 
 "Jesus loves me. This I know," the favourite hymn of 
 all our Chinese Christians, which old Christians, even if 
 they learn to sing nothing else, usually can sing. Cover- 
 ing him with my sheepskin-lined overcoat we began to 
 sing. To a finicky aesthetic taste ours was not a very 
 brilliant rendition — our voices were strident from throats 
 full of sand and dust, and every breath was marked by 
 trails of steam on the frosty air. When we finished the 
 last line, the old man was ready with another request ; 
 "Can I partake of the Holy Communion?" At first 
 blush it seemed incongruous— the time, the place, the 
 
182 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 circumstances — for the observance of the Holy Supper. 
 But we decided to do it, using my pocket set. 
 
 He partook ; and as he did so I read — again at his re- 
 quest — some " peace passages.'^ ** My peace I give unto 
 you " — I am sure he had it — the peace of an unshaken 
 trust in his risen Lord, the peace of a confidence in His 
 sustaining power which filled his soul with quietness 
 while the storm raged outside. And as he partook, God 
 solemnized the service with the flight of his spirit. The 
 numbed and worn-out body lay before us; he himself had 
 gone to glory. 
 
 In that instant we understood, as never before, the 
 glory of being God's ministers to His humble ones. The 
 meaning of Jehovah's commission *'to preach good tid- 
 ings unto the poor, to bind up the broken-hearted, to 
 proclaim liberty to the captives — to comfort all that 
 mourn, to give beauty for ashes and a garment of praise 
 for a spirit of heaviness." In the cold and darkness of 
 that room the miracle of the Holy Grail was reenacted. 
 And it was as if our cup was transformed into that holy 
 chalice of marvellous mystic beauty ; as if the dying out- 
 cast revealed to us the face of the glorified Christ. 
 
 Love worked mightily for us in the gloom of that win- 
 ter afternoon. It made Him real to us, as we two elders 
 took Him at His word, and did His service in His name 
 to that despised and helpless one. After that experience 
 we might doubt the sun in the sky, but we could not doubt 
 the reality of the love of God, made incarnate in Jesus 
 Christ, nor the eternal necessities which prompted it, nor 
 the blessed reward of thus ministering in the Holy Spirit. 
 
 " Lo, it is I, be not afraid. 
 In many climes without avail, 
 Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail : 
 Behold it here — this cup which thou 
 Didst fill at the streamlet for me just now." 
 
THE MARKET AND THE TENT 183 
 
 When we left that village something of the vast pity of 
 Christ for the poor, the weary, the helpless had, through 
 His grace, been strengthened in us. That day we appre- 
 ciated anew the blessed truth that service for His sake 
 to those who can return nothing is a key that unlocks 
 the riches of the Infinitely Wealthy Father, and also that 
 unlocks the vision of it and a glad walk with Him. 
 
 During the winter this province sees little snow, but 
 the cold winds, sweeping down from the vast Manchurian 
 plains and over the gulf of Pi Chi Li, sometimes pene- 
 trate almost to the marrow. The missionary who gets 
 caught on his itinerating trips in one of these biting dust 
 storms cannot forget the experience. The Christian at 
 home, worshipping in his overheated, aesthetically-satis- 
 fying church, might well shiver at the thought of going 
 to meeting under a tent during the winter weather on 
 the plain. Imagine it ! The dampish cold ground, cal- 
 culated to transform feet into icicles, one end of the tent 
 more or less open, the wind at times piercing through 
 layers of clothing and filling one^s eyes with sand and 
 grit. But this is what our Chinese do. One marvels at 
 their indifference to discomfort in general and to the cold 
 in particular. As far as toughness of physical fibre is 
 concerned. Napoleon should have had some of them for 
 his grand campaign in Eussia. They would do in dashes 
 for the Pole. 
 
 In these winter meetings held in tent or church or pri- 
 vate rooms, fireless and floorless, and through the broken 
 paper panes of whose windows a keen wind is often pene- 
 trating, while the foreigner is rummaging his brains to 
 devise means to get warm and keep so, the Chinese ap- 
 pear to think that there is nothing extraordinary in lis- 
 tening to the Gospel — nothing, except the Gospel itself. 
 
 In the homeland one recalls people feeling quite justi- 
 fied in leaving the church if the janitor on a crisp morn- 
 
184 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 iug has failed to get the furnace fire to the desired tem- 
 perature ; so to me, a youug missionary, it was an 
 inspiration and a revelation to see, during winter, tents 
 full of these men and women, the expression of tlieir 
 bronzed (not yellow) and furrowed faces revealing the 
 fact that they were, despite inclement weather, intently 
 listening to the *' Jesus teaching." 
 
 But why meetings held under such strange and ap- 
 parently abnormal conditions? To the worker in the 
 "West with his crowded daily program it seems unthink- 
 able that here in North China are literally tens of mil- 
 lions of i3eople who through the months of December, 
 January, February and March have practically nothing 
 to do. They are farmers. With the last crops har- 
 vested in November, the people face a hiatus of four 
 mortal months. Accustomed to long hours of laborious 
 daily toil, they welcome almost any relief from winter 
 ennui. Their i)rincipal occupation now seems to be to 
 attempt to keep warm by piling on the maximum layers 
 of wadded cotton garments and by burning the minimum 
 amount of leaves, grass and corn-stalk fuel, and their 
 principal recreation is to attend the village theatricals. 
 The long ambling streets of the villages are full of groups 
 of men and boys standing and squatting around practis- 
 ing the fine art of sunning themselves. Day after day 
 nothing to do except to gather and smoke and gossip and 
 gamble and quarrel. The devil is there and very busy 
 hatching trouble. A large percentage of the lawsuits 
 that wreck morally and financially so many Chinese 
 families originate in these idle days. Naturally they 
 welcome well-nigh any diversion. So that here in these 
 multitudinous villages, this *^ empty time," as the Chinese 
 call it, is the evangelist^s opportunity, despite the un- 
 comfortable weather conditions entailed for the foreign 
 itinerator. 
 
THE MARKET AND THE TENT 185 
 
 Therefore, for some years past, throughout our country 
 field a big teut in sections has been used for these evan- 
 gelistic services. Accommodating many more than any 
 Christian home could hold, and being something new 
 and strange, at least in being used for ^^ Jesus-Doctrine'^ 
 propagation, the tent is certain to insure ** a full house " 
 of heathen who will not enter a church building. Fre- 
 quently they have been ready to volunteer benches and 
 tables, to serve tea and hot water and cakes to the evan- 
 gelistic party, and to provide lanterns for the evening 
 sessions. 
 
 On such soul-soil much seed has been sown by our sta- 
 tion evangelists who have carefully mapped out the 
 region about their preaching centres, and then have 
 systematically gone through those villages. One thing 
 that has heartened them on to more strenuous endeavour 
 is their interest in and prayers for the Korean Christians 
 in their " million souls " campaign, the progress of which 
 was carefully reported to them. 
 
 No revival scene could be more unique or the sight 
 more strange than such a company — many of them con- 
 sumed with well-nigh uncontrollable curiosity to ^^look 
 see," the women particularly, if, in the company of Chris- 
 tians conducting the meetings, there chances to be a 
 Christian woman. Not only outside the tent is there per- 
 petual pushing, but inside as well. The speakers chew 
 grit ; their throats are raw with dust and the strain of 
 speaking to a crowd often innocent of order, many of 
 them chattering, gesticulating, or indulging in stage 
 whispers, and smoking. 
 
 Experience has proved there is but one way to fend off 
 an acme of confusion inside the tent, such as will prevent 
 the services, and that is to build a bulwark of benches 
 around the speakers' table, those benches to be occupied 
 by preachers and local Christians, who constitute a 
 
186 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 ** vacuum of attention " in the storm of enveloping hub- 
 bub. As one speaks the crowd is often jamming against 
 his chair and him from behind ; while frequently the for- 
 eigner, even while leading in prayer, is conscious of boys 
 crawling between his legs, examining his watch, feeling 
 his clothes and buttons, and handling his personal be- 
 longings. 
 
 At times the tent becomes so choking with dust, and 
 the crowd inside swells to such numbers and presses so 
 eagerly to see and hear (not necessarily the Gospel, but 
 the new and strange things told), that it becomes un- 
 manageable. The program has to be suddenly changed. 
 It becomes necessary to get into the open. The Chris- 
 tians betake themselves to numerous coigns of vantage 
 outside ; and there by twos, in apostolic fashion, they 
 become the preaching centres of large groups, each group 
 often limited in size only by the auditors' power to hear 
 the speaker. 
 
 It would seem impossible that in any such melee^ amid 
 so much raw confusion, any spiritual fruitage could come 
 out of such a ** jamboree" ; but many are the instances 
 citable to show how there, as in the market, many a man 
 has made the beginning of a Christian life. 
 
 Here is such an one. To look at him Brother Chang 
 would not be called a handsome man or an especially 
 promising catechumen. He is a peasant, minus his front 
 teeth, is stoop-shouldered, undersized, partly deaf and 
 halting in gait and speech. He is uneducated, and 
 poorer than many Americans can understand. But there 
 is now a smile on his face and a gleam in his eye that at 
 once arrests the beholder and makes him look twice. 
 
 This man learned the Gospel when Miss Yaughan came 
 to his village to hold a Kung Ki. She was accompanied 
 by several of the women from our "Women's Bible School, 
 under the management of some of the Chinese leaders of 
 
THE MARKET AND THE TENT 187 
 
 onr field, and largely supported by our Chinese Christians. 
 Chang hung on the edge of the crowd of curious women, 
 and learned some new things that he could not get away 
 from. And the more he pondered this ^ * Jesus Doctrine, ' ' 
 the more he believed it. His family and neighbours 
 ridiculed and abused him for his faith. But a great 
 peace had come to him j and ** the heavenly light '^ that 
 now filled his soul he wanted them to experience. For 
 this he began fervently to pray. 
 
 To his mind it was all-important to get the men of the 
 village in touch with the Christian leaders who could 
 more fully explain the teaching. He had no money, no 
 name, no influence — not even a cart or barrow on which 
 to bring foreign guests, even if they could spend the time 
 to come. So he prayed, in faith, steadily for a year. 
 
 He prayed that on a given date Miss Vaughan with a 
 band of Bible women might return ; also that the *^ for- 
 eign pastor " and several native evangelists might come 
 — and they all came. 
 
 He prayed for a crowd of heathen to leave their spring 
 plowing and dragging and sowing to come and listen — 
 and they came. 
 
 No house or yard in the big market town was big 
 enough to hold the crowd he wanted to see gathered ; so 
 he had prayed that a large *' revival tent" might come 
 — and it appeared at the proper time and was set up. 
 
 He could not furnish the tent with seats and convention 
 accessories ; so he prayed for them. And the people of 
 his and a neighbouring village brought all that were 
 needed and put them at his disposal, even foreign lamps 
 for the evening sessions. 
 
 At the meetings it was soon realized that the preachers, 
 because of the uncomfortable jam, would have to divide 
 forces. So Miss Vaughan took the tent, which, daily, 
 from early till late, was packed with women and babies. 
 
188 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 Some Bible women taught others who thronged the yard 
 of Chang's mother. We men talked to companies on the 
 streets and to the constantly shifting throngs who came 
 to the yards which were in friendliness loaned for our 
 various headquarters. 
 
 Some results: — There was a large company of women 
 inquirers — some thirty. More than three thousand men 
 heard the Gospel, the local people themselves providing 
 the money for the expense of the meetings. 
 
 After we left, Chang was smitten with the need of a 
 Christian school j he prayed for it and a teacher — and 
 got both. 
 
 Then his old mother, in answer to his prayer of faith, 
 accepted Christ. 
 
 A few months later his flaming zeal brought to his 
 village a second series of meetings, in which many of us 
 were greatly blessed. It was remarked by many as a 
 curious fact that just before and after these two series of 
 meetiugs the weather was unusually cold and windy and 
 dusty. But later they learned that it was Chang who 
 had especially prayed the Lord for the perfect weather 
 that obtained during the meetings. 
 
 I have since baptized a number of those for whom 
 Chang prayed. All his family are now Christians or 
 inquirers, and many outside are interested. Hopeful 
 days are ahead for that village and that region. And all 
 because one humble man has tried to live up to the light 
 he had, that first dawned on him in a Kung Ki. 
 
 The good that comes also to local Christians themselves 
 witnessing in connection with the Kung Ki for the 
 heathen is incalculable. In place after place the local 
 Christians have received a great blessing because they 
 dared to stand up in the tent before their heathen neigh- 
 bours and witness, and because they were willing to help 
 run in the crowds to the tent meetings ; also because they 
 
THE MARKET AND THE TENT 189 
 
 were williug to participate in the street campaign, and 
 to go out with us to preach in the surroundiDg regions. 
 
 Not only through the witness of these humble Chris- 
 tians, begun in the Kung Ki, have thousands of people 
 in little groups among the villages been reached with the 
 Gospel message, not only have the heads of influential 
 families been stirred up to become inquirers and catechu- 
 mens ; but repeatedly the Christians, bringers of these 
 blessings, have themselves been imbued with new life — 
 the eternal law of the Spirit was re-proved that *Hhe 
 more one gives out the more he gets. " 
 
 In one case the Christians came to appreciate so 
 thoroughly the value of testifying that they opened a 
 permanent chapel, attractive and roomy, on the main 
 street of a near-by market town, also a boys' school there, 
 as well as a boys' school and a girls' school in their own 
 village — all at their own expense. 
 
 Again the sons in two leading families were moved to 
 give themselves with their parents' blessing to prepara- 
 tion for the ministry, though for a time the vision of 
 well-paid Government positions had filled their minds 
 with thoughts of worldly advancement. 
 
 The transformations also that have come to mature 
 Christians through rich spiritual experiences in the Kung 
 Ki would fill a book. I have in mind an honoured elder 
 who before the new vision that he got at such a winter 
 revival had with his wife led an exemplary Christian 
 life. With the blessing that came to him in such a meet- 
 ing his whole life was changed. In answer to prayer of 
 faith a son was born to this godly couple, 'five daughters 
 having already been bom into that home.' By virtue of 
 his being a member of the church session, this Christian 
 had been a governing elder ; now as a keen and success- 
 ful business man he became a providing elder, rejoicing 
 to tithe generously. He helped to send worthy pupils to 
 
190 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 high school and college and theological seminary ; he 
 established several village schools and became a veritable 
 ** father of mercy " to the worthy poor of his region, until 
 he was assaulted in sleep by desperate men and murdered 
 for his money. 
 
 These Kung Ki, lasting from three to ten days each, 
 have also been held primarily for Christians and Christian 
 leaders. And each of these, as well as those held espe- 
 cially for the heathen, have been very fruitful of deepened 
 spirituality manifested in practical forward steps taken for 
 the welfare of the church. 
 
 To mention the results of only one such Kung Ki. There 
 were present pastors, evangelists, Bible women, school- 
 teachers, elders and deacons from the entire field. Sixty- 
 five leaders joined the tithers' club. Ninety formed a 
 prayer-circle to pray daily for three specific objects of 
 great importanccc The teachers of our village schools, 
 having caught the vision of service for Christ, definitely 
 pledged themselves, contrary to earlier plans, to remain 
 with the Mission, renouncing all thought of larger pay 
 from Government schools. Three promising young men 
 decided for the ministry. A number of non-Christians 
 were brought to Christ. Many Christians started a Bible 
 league, pledging themselves to carry a pocket edition and 
 read daily at least one chapter and to purchase other 
 copies to be given away. Nearly every one of the fifteen 
 churches of the field through their representatives ar- 
 ranged to subscribe one or more month's pay for the 
 salary of the evangelists labouring in their districts, one 
 church subscribing a year's salary, in addition to its 
 pastor's, for an evangelist and Bible woman. All groups 
 of Christians having village schools arranged to pay one- 
 third of the cost or more. Twelve places agreed to sup- 
 port entirely their own school ; one built a church. A 
 local Home Missionary Society was formed which forth- 
 
THE MARKET AND THE TENT 1^1 
 
 with began to support two schools and three evangelists. 
 An elder gave as a thank-offering to God some two hun- 
 dred tiao ($80) for the equipment of the station Girls' 
 High School located in his village, a school in which he 
 teaches free of charge, though the Government offers him 
 $100 a month to take charge of one of its schools. A 
 band of twenty picked men took a week of time to preach 
 systematically up and down the streets of Tsingtau, 
 among its forty-five thousand non- Christians. And the 
 local church subscribed $2,000 to increase its seating 
 capacity. 
 
VI 
 
 The Call and Its Answer 
 
 A Study of Need and Its Meeting 
 
YI 
 THE CALL AND ITS ANSWEE 
 
 COUNTBY folk of China are almost always in dis- 
 tress — of flood or famine or revolution or robbers 
 or intestine or foreign war. In some sections 
 the flood comes almost as certainly as the rolling months. 
 It is apt to come in late summer at the time of year when 
 some of the various crops are harvested. If it be severe, 
 in one fell day all that has been garnered will be swept 
 away, and relief must be given at once or starvation en- 
 sues. Then is the golden opportunity for the witness of 
 the missionary and the Christian. He who had stored 
 food to last for the next twelve months and suddenly finds 
 his mouth empty is inclined to listen at least respectfully 
 to a kindly word about the "Jesus Doctrine'^ from the 
 lips of the bringer of food. In one of our country fields, 
 several years ago, one of the worst floods of years oc- 
 curred, bringing in its train the removal of prejudice all 
 through that section against the Christian religion and 
 adding many to the Church, not because many wheat 
 biscuits came from Tsingtau, but because men were im- 
 pressed that here was a religion of genuine helpfulness 
 and comfort for broken people. 
 
 Then there is not only immediate distress resulting 
 from flood, but often the slow, creeping famine during 
 the succeeding months of effort to recover from the flood's 
 effect. Or the year has been bad as the result of drought, 
 or crops damaged or worthless from pests. There is no 
 powerful central government at hand, generously lending 
 
 195 
 
196 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 long-armed assistance, its trained and experienced agri- 
 cultural department wisely suggesting, disinterestedly- 
 helping, and scientifically forefending against crop-ene- 
 mies. The people must be tided over till the harvest next 
 year, or starve, many of them, from crop shortage. 
 
 Pitiful indeed is it to see them attempt to eke out a 
 living in the spring. As the hart panteth for water 
 brooks, so they long for the wheat harvest of June. The 
 sweet potatoes have long since disappeared, and they 
 have betaken themselves to a soupy food of which the 
 sweet- potato leaves form a large ingredient ; later to 
 pounding and eating sweet-potato stems, the common 
 fodder of their pigs. And then when the green things 
 begin to api>ear out of the ground, the eager search along 
 the roadside, practically grassless, for anything that can 
 be used as greens, these in extremis conditions continuing 
 till the peasant women are stripping the tender shoots 
 from off the budding trees, and gathering on the hill- 
 sides the prickly thistles. And when the wheat begins 
 to ear, long before it is ripe, the kernels are pulled off 
 and used. 
 
 Under such circumstances when the representative of 
 the Christian Church comes to the people — as he needs 
 to do — often year after year, with many gifts from Amer- 
 ica that will buy bread and prolong life, it becomes 
 easier to believe in 'Hhe foreign religion." No matter 
 if, as is sometimes the case, people are too starved to 
 eat, and the stench and flies have brought famine fever, 
 and men are beyond hope of physical recovery, yet the 
 impression of tremendous contrast is created in the minds 
 of all these people between their callous religions and the 
 spirit of Christianity — for heathenism does not, jper se, 
 pity the needy and them that have no Helper. 
 
 Imagine the sensation made in three country churches, 
 fall of starving Christians (who until one fell day had 
 
THE CALL AND ITS ANSWER 197 
 
 been relatively well-to-do peasants supporting their own 
 pastor), when, in the midst of such distress, it became 
 manifest that during the next year these churches could 
 not pay their pastor's tremendous salary of about seven 
 dollars gold a month ; when at the same time from South 
 China (where salaries of Christian workers are much 
 higher) there came an offer to this pastor, with the assur- 
 ance of a Foreign Mission treasurer's check to bind it, to 
 engage him at once at four times his salary — imagine 
 the impression made throughout that region, and uj)on 
 pinched- stomached heathen as well as Christians, by this 
 pastor-hearted man as he replied : "No, I choose to stay 
 and eat bitterness with my people ' M Is it remarkable 
 that he had revivals all over his field ? 
 
 In all sorts of political commotions, whether revolu- 
 tions from within or invasions from without, it is the 
 common people, the non-combatants, who suffer most. 
 The peasant population of China have been no exception 
 to this universal experience. It was they who suffered 
 during China's Eevolution of 1911-1912. 
 
 This altogether unique crisis in the annals of civil war 
 brought unusual opportunities of sowing the Word to 
 the itinerating missionary and country pastor. In Shan- 
 tung Province the situation was peculiar. It, like the 
 metropolitan province of Chili to the north of it, was 
 absolutely in the control of the Manchus. Their soldiers 
 held the cities, patrolled the railroads, and swarmed in 
 the country. South of Shantung the Eepublicans were 
 in strength and great clashes were taking place at Nan- 
 kiug and Hankow. But here, in the "keystone province 
 of China," all was one-sided. Especially were these un- 
 toward conditions true in East Shantung, for reasons 
 that it is not wise to mention, but which are perfectly 
 undei-stood by the initiated on the scene of action. 
 
 Early in the fall, soon after the outbreak at Wuchang, 
 
198 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 I began to get heartrending calls both from Christian 
 villagers and from those dwelling in several of the walled 
 cities of our station field. It was to be expected that 
 with the passing months the pressure upon them would 
 grow heavier, for the more the Manchus lost out in 
 South China, the fiercer and more vindictive would 
 become the conduct of the soldiers quartered among 
 the dumb and helpless villages of our section. It 
 was from the direction of our ports in the east of the 
 province that invading expeditions, with which local 
 patriots hoped and planned to cooperate, were to arrive. 
 Therefore the more necessity for overawing with show of 
 force the people in the east, farthest removed from the 
 provincial capital in the west end, held solidly in the 
 hands of the foreign-trained Northern troops. In a sec- 
 tion so overridden with Imperialists there was no more 
 opportunity for local Christians and patriots to put Re- 
 publican troops in the field than for the Kaiser to raise a 
 regiment of Parisians to fight under his eagle. 
 
 Sure enough, as the South gradually took on a more 
 united front — fifteen Provinces having swung into line 
 for the Republic — the Imperial princes strengthened 
 themselves in the determination to hold on to Ho Nan 
 (the Province of the Premier, Yuan Shi Kai), and Shan- 
 tung (the historic sacred Province of Confucius and of 
 incalculable strategic value to them), and Manchuria 
 (the ancient seat and dominion of the ruling dynasty). 
 And their men set themselves in our section not only to 
 keep securely what was already in their hands, but to 
 harass the Christians, whom they conceived, and rightly, 
 to be the root and trunk of permanent opposition to the 
 •old, rotten, reactionary Mauchu regime. These soldiers 
 were zealous of evil works ; but quite logically so : 
 ** Whose rice we eat, his will we do." 
 
 The tactics of these ''regulars'' naturally smote terror 
 
THE CALL AND ITS ANSWER 199 
 
 into the countryside. Whole clans in a ** visited ^^ dis- 
 trict would move out in a night. Villages became as the 
 grave. The mai-kets, held every five days from time im- 
 memorial, no longer witnessed the accustomed crowds. 
 People hung close to their homes and talked in whispers, 
 not knowing when a band of rough-riders, mounted on 
 tough, shaggy, nimble-footed Manchurian ponies, might 
 appear in their midst. Fear, like a huge and hideous 
 genie, brooded over the hearts of men, palsying them. 
 And as Christianity was, in the thoughts of heathen 
 neighbours no less than in the thoughts of the soldiery, 
 associated with the Revolution, it was not a propitious 
 time, from the view-point of the opportunist, for the 
 "rice Christian^' to confess Christ, much less to become 
 an active preacher of the faith. 
 
 It was a clear case of the Christians needing their pas- 
 tors. If ever the flock was to be shepherded it was now. 
 With the active cooperation of my wife — she taking on 
 many additional burdens — I arranged to remain as much 
 as possible in the country, visiting my parishes. And 
 from early September, before the Revolution formally 
 broke out, till after the wheat harvest in June of the next 
 year, I was almost continually among them. 
 
 The only class of people, as a class, and native to the 
 Province, who had dared cut their queues as the sign of 
 emancipation from the usurping Manchu misrule, was the 
 Christians ; and the soldiers were hot after them, hunting 
 them out and chasing them around in a fashion that en- 
 abled one vividly to conceive of how the Pharisaic Saul 
 and later the minions of the Roman emperors got after 
 the humble followers of our Lord in the Roman Empire. 
 Many a Christian school and churchyard became a 
 queue cutting recruiting office for the Republic, and 
 many a man who did not dare cut it by himself, when he 
 got into such a place and under the moral suasion of some 
 
200 CHINA FEOM WITHIN 
 
 of the brethren armed with shears, sat down on a stool to 
 cross his Kubicon and join his Boston Tea Party. 
 
 For their daring in this queue cutting, as a sign of 
 their conviction and committal to a righteous cause, the 
 Christians ate much bitterness. I visited the heathen 
 father of one of my Christian men who went blind with 
 rage because of his son's temerity ; and another died in a 
 frenzy of uncontrollable auger, for a like reason. In still 
 another place, I barely restrained a heathen mother from 
 committing suicide because of her son's disgracing the 
 family in this shameless manner. *' He sinned the sin of 
 *Bu shu kwei ku^ " (not observing custom) was the un- 
 answerable verdict of condemnation against him. Other 
 women could not be thus restrained from such a protest 
 of violence upon their own persons. 
 
 At a distance of half-way around the globe it may seem 
 amusing — this queue cutting in China. But at close 
 quarters and in the consequences involved it was serious 
 business, calling for a high order of moral courage. In- 
 cidentally, it led to many a pastoral visit and afforded 
 many an opportunity to show, in their own homes, to 
 unreasonable families persecuting their Christian mem- 
 bers, the reasonableness of Christianity. 
 
 But not only were the Christians subjected to har- 
 rying by their relatives. How hatefully the Manchu 
 troops harried those who did cut during Eevolution days 
 may be illustrated by the situation involved in a visit to 
 a certain " General." An officer, so-styled, had come to 
 one of the walled county seats of our field. With him 
 were some four hundred cavalrymen. As the gentry 
 had decamped in terror, they preempted all the most 
 available buildings in the city, like schools and temples 
 and large private establishments. They had knocked 
 out the sides and put in big glassed window frames on 
 the sunny exposures, and were prepared to settle down 
 

THE CALL AND ITS ANSWER 201 
 
 and eujoy themselves while in that section, incidentally 
 making it hot for anybody not in accord with their ideas. 
 The reason of their sojourn was soon revealed. One of 
 the first acts of " the General" was to issue a manifesto, 
 saying he was not after **good'^ people but only after 
 ** queueless tu fei ^' (robbers). Now, as everybody knew, 
 the tu fei belonged to the old order of things, and would 
 be the last class of people to cut their queues. That 
 manifesto was aimed at the Christians and bolder young 
 patriots, for only these two classes dared to cut their 
 queues. 
 
 And these troops, ofi&cial harriers of the best classes in 
 China, were scouring the country around to find victims. 
 They evidently wanted to be busy enough to justify their 
 presence. Squads of them were known to dash up to 
 small milway stations, and when the train pulled in, go 
 through and search the coaches, haul out any person 
 luckless enough to be queueless whom they deemed sus- 
 picious, and behead or shoot him right there on the 
 station platform, or in the yard of the railway, police 
 near by. 
 
 The senselessness of searching out queueless heads, 
 per se^ may be realized from the fact that the Prince 
 Regent had issued repeated manifestoes saying all classes 
 might cut their queues. He had cut his ; Yuan Shi Kai, 
 his Premier, had cut his ; and the members of the various 
 Boards in Peking likewise had dispensed with this use- 
 less appendage. Even this ^* General^' and his under 
 ofiBcers had cut theirs. 
 
 The Christians were, not without reason, alarmed. 
 Accordingly I went to see the " General " to try to per- 
 suade him to differentiate between innocent Christians 
 and guilty ** tu fei." After an exciting episode, in which 
 a dozen soldiers attempted to take by force my queueless 
 cook from me and haul him off to a fate suggested by a 
 
202 CHINA FEOM WITHIN 
 
 bodiless head haugiDg outside the city gate and others 
 nosed around in the moat by scurvy curs, we reached the 
 ** General," with whom we had a pleasant visit. I put 
 the case of the Christians as strongly as possible. He 
 promised to do everything reasonable. From the stand- 
 point of the Christians I think there were good results to 
 show for the trip j for thenceforth there were far fewer 
 seizures or even scares among the Christians in that 
 region ; while astonishment, to say the least, was the im- 
 pression made on the heathen. In many instances this 
 changed to good-will. 
 
 Again, in another walled city, we had a pastoral ex- 
 perience long-to-be-remembered. The magistrate of that 
 region was under the evil domination of influential 
 foreigners who acted as informers for the people higher 
 up. He was the means of several prominent Eepublicans 
 being ferreted out and delivered over to death for their 
 patriotic endeavours. Pitiful appeals for help and pro- 
 tection were daily reaching me from that city. They 
 were carried by special messengers who searched me out 
 in another section of our field. It seemed inhuman not 
 to hasten to what looked like a more urgent need. A 
 Christian loaned me a donkey and I started off. 
 
 We had not gone far when it began to snow ; the snow 
 turned to sleet ; the wind increased and drove bitiugly. 
 Much rain had fallen that autumn, and the road gradually 
 took on a condition that apparently accords with many 
 Chinese problems ; it became ** bottomless. " The country 
 was flat ; so it was all of a piece whether we went through 
 the fields or over the road — all was a sheet of ooze. I 
 arrived, wet, stiff and cold, but the Christians' welcome 
 made it all worth while. After a hot bowl of a mixture 
 floating in grease that shall be nameless, and which con- 
 tained meat of a suspicious flavour, I was ready. 
 
 Not much time was wasted in getting to the yamen 
 
THE CALL AND ITS ANSWER 203 
 
 yard, where, with reluctance, I was admitted to an un- 
 speakable prison. In a low, cramped room, a wretched 
 den, without air and almost without light, and daily 
 growing more filthy, were kennelled some forty prisoners 
 — old men, young men and schoolboys. They were 
 chained hand and foot in a sitting posture and unable 
 to rise. So far as they knew they were likely to rot on 
 that dirt floor that reeked indescribable filth. For days 
 they had been thus, half-starved as to food and air. Re- 
 peatedly they had been taken out and bambooed, as the 
 result of which they had, through their friends and 
 relatives, produced wheat and money for the yamen 
 henchmen. That is one way these rascal hangers-on 
 make their wageless living. 
 
 The crime of the victims was that they had cut their 
 queues. They were a woebegone lot. And from what 
 they knew of the cruel, vindictive nature of the magis- 
 trate, they felt that their days were to be few upon the 
 earth. Some of their women relatives were ill of worry 
 and fright. I was certain that these victims were inno- 
 cent of any crime. They were all plain country folk, 
 simple peasants, who attended to their own business. 
 How could they harm the Government, especially the 
 young schoolboys? So while a group of Christians 
 prayed, I went to see the magistrate. As we sipped our 
 tea, I, in a few words, without complaint or criticism, 
 and disclaiming all thought of interfering with the admin- 
 istration of his affairs, explained the pathetic condition 
 of the victims, and the terror of those dependent upon 
 them. I also asked whether, if no bona-fide testimony 
 convicting them of guilt could be brought against them, 
 he would not consider releasing them, provided I, who 
 knew them well, would go surety for their proper con- 
 duct. 
 
 Then I dropped the subject (which surprised him) and 
 
204 CHINA FKOM WITHIN 
 
 drifted into telliug him about a man named Saul, who 
 also was very zealous in the performance of what he con- 
 ceived to be his duty against some supposed evil-doers. 
 To my surprise he asked me to tell him more about that 
 man j so I read the account of the Damascus Eoad con- 
 version, of the mobbing and speech on the castle stairs, 
 and of the shipwreck. Several times he interjected ; 
 *'The man had courage, courage ! " Meantime, some of 
 his writers and close henchmen edged in and listened. 
 Both he and they forgot about renewing the tea, about 
 relightiug the official pipe. For a while we all forgot 
 time. Finally at the catalogue of Paul's hardships and 
 of his willing endurance of them all, the magistrate re- 
 marked : *^Paul must have had a great God to be willing 
 to sacrifice for Him ! " In that moment the magistrate 
 had entered a new world. Never Christian philosopher 
 spake more profoundly. As I was about to leave, I 
 asked him if I might pray for him. ''Yes, here and 
 now ! '^ came the astonishing answer. He put out the 
 servitors, but I knew they were peeking while I prayed. 
 
 Two days later a soldier sought me out at a village 
 some miles away, and handed me a telegram from the 
 magistrate. It read as follows c " Prisoners not guilty. 
 Eeleased and returned to homes !" The people of that 
 city and the surrounding villages cannot disassociate that 
 episode and others of like flavour that came within the 
 shepherding experience of the Chinese pastor of that 
 section and myself from the marked friendliness of spirit 
 towards the Gospel that later resulted, and the inquirers 
 and Christians who have since thereabout spruug up. 
 
 While en route to another of the walled cities of my 
 field, I met a messenger coming post-haste. He, an 
 elder, and one of the best of our field, was looking foi 
 me, and besought me at once to go to his native village. 
 Terrifying rumour had it that an order had gone fortlii 
 
THE CALL AND ITS ANSWER 205 
 
 from tlie near-by walled city for the Manchu troops 
 stationed there to raid that village and destroy the Chris- 
 tians. They were known to be Revolutionists, and could 
 expect no mercy. 
 
 When we arrived the heathen, in wild panic, had 
 already fled, leaving their homes free to thieves and 
 looters. But the Christians had remained. They awaited 
 our coming, and on our arrival the little flock, trembling, 
 came together. Such a time of stress is a good test of the 
 power of God's Word and of the comfort of the united 
 prayer of God's people. There is no need with Chinese 
 Christians of mincing the fact that "through tribulation 
 we must enter into the kingdom of God." 
 
 It would have been as foolish as untrue to have told 
 this flock not to fear because * ' there is no danger. " We 
 all knew that there was. The teaching for them was of 
 trust in God's faithfulness to keep His own. *'What 
 time I am afraid, I will trust in Jehovah, my Rock. " 
 
 Our theme together was ** Enduring hardship as good 
 soldiers of Jesus Christ." We comforted one another 
 much in the Holy Ghost. As they prayed, it became the 
 settled conviction of the church that as the attack, if 
 made, would be upon them as Christians, it was their 
 privilege to take the high ground of Daniel's three 
 friends in the presence of the golden image : " Our God 
 whom we serve is able to deliver us out of your hand, O 
 king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that 
 we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image 
 which thou hast set up." 
 
 It was fine. And never did the little elder reveal him- 
 self to better advantage. He expounded the situation 
 with courage, clearness, eloquence. Under his leader- 
 ship, in answer to their united prayer for guidance, it 
 became manifest that there was no advantage in fleeing 
 around through a country infested with marauding bands 
 
206 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 of troops, and thereby at least subjecting themselves to 
 beggary and to seizure as suspicious characters. So they 
 all decided to stick together and pray the thing through. 
 The '^unexplored remainder" of the elder's character 
 was a gratifying revelation. The day passed and days 
 succeeding, and the whirlwind of vengeful soldier fury 
 passed another way. But the test of their courage and 
 their faith in God was as complete as though they had 
 stood in the teeth of the storm. 
 
 In all parts of the field it was true that wild rumours 
 oppressed the people like an incubus. Cut off from au- 
 thoritative news, they were helpless to know the facts, 
 and so were the prey of vague terrors that paralyzed. 
 It can be imagined how they welcomed anybody who 
 came to lend a hand j how eagerly, even desperately, 
 they grasped at any word, any statement of the situation, 
 calculated to allay their fear. Such times of chaos are 
 always used by the lawless to prey upon their brothers. 
 The godless improve the opportunity to settle long- 
 standing scores. 
 
 As previously hinted, robbing, burning and killing 
 were freely indulged in. Stories were vouched for of 
 heathen eating the hearts of enemies. It is safe to say 
 that the Christians endured their full share of suffering. 
 They supported small bands of troops quartered upon 
 them, who worked their will ; they were imprisoned ; 
 some narrowly escaped execution ; some were shot by 
 soldiers, and some, in the general terror, lost their reason. 
 Some were marred by bomb explosions. It was a kalei- 
 doscopic experience of fear, panic, hardship and death — 
 bandits terrorizing the highway ; student patriots battling 
 futilely with regulars ; villages gutted and burned ; out- 
 rages and blood-madness everywhere ; the strong beating 
 down the weak ; the people in deep darkness, and no de- 
 liverer. Eepeatedly I visited a home where some variant 
 
THE CALL AND ITS ANSWER 207 
 
 of this had happened : while the men were away at mar- 
 ket, or even in their own near-by fields, roughs had 
 broken in, beaten and outraged the women folks, and de- 
 camped with the money, food, clothes, quilts, etc. 
 
 Imagine what it meant, in the midst of such distress, 
 trying to cover even a few of the points of a five county 
 field. And the villages so thick and the people so many ! 
 It wag as if the inhabitants of Chicago had a half-dozen 
 pastors, instead of a thousand. During those months 
 from October to June — months filled with civil strife, 
 anarchy, flood, famine, pestilence and road dangers — I 
 was travelling almost constantly among our Christians, 
 distressed by banditti and Manchu soldiers unreconciled 
 to the succeeding Republic, and hated by heathen neigh- 
 bours attributing the inevitable corollary woes of Revolu- 
 tionary conditions to the ^* Jesus followers.^' To comfort 
 and counsel these needy ones at such a time was a blessed 
 work, calculated to grip the energies of any pastor-hearted 
 man. 
 
 During those months I saw harrowing sights, learned 
 indescribable things, met tough characters aplenty on the 
 road. No one harmed me personally, though thieves 
 several times got into my room (after money intended for 
 evangelists and teachers) and we had some interestiug 
 scenes — but they never got the money. I made some two 
 hundred village visits, some only of a few hours, but all 
 appreciated. I acted as pastor of four churches, each 
 composed of village groups ; repeatedly visited our six- 
 teen market chapels, directed the work of some thirty 
 evangelists and several Bible women, had charge of and 
 inspected many village schools ; acted as evangelist at 
 large in three counties aggregating three million people j 
 out of one unorganized district organized a church of one 
 hundred and sixty members ; examined one hundred and 
 forty-five candidates for baptism ; received to the Lord's 
 
208 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 table fifty-eight adults ; baptized forty-four babies ; held 
 thirty-nine communions ; excommunicated thirteen sin- 
 ners. The balance of the time, when I was not in the 
 country, I was at a steady grind at Tsingtau. 
 
 But the outstanding impression now of it all is that, in 
 and through alarms and harassments, through stress and 
 trials of many sorts and on all sides, pastor and people 
 were drawn together as never before by the cords of sym- 
 pathy and love. Many heathen lost their insane prej- 
 udices against the Gospel. Many new and unexpected 
 opportunities presented themselves for preaching Christ. 
 And therefore more pioneer work was possible in casting 
 up a highway for our God. 
 
 It is naturally to be expected that the direct teaching 
 of the Bible in classes would be a vitally important phase 
 of sowing the good seed. Indeed so much is this true 
 that every Mission station considers a Bible Class build- 
 ing one of the indispensable adjuncts in the equipment 
 of the Station Compound. Here, at periods suiting the 
 various constituencies of the field, their times of leisure 
 from work, Bible classes may be held for different groups, 
 as, e. g., for evangelists or elders or Bible women or men 
 peasants or their women. 
 
 Our station happens, however, to have no such neces- 
 sary building, and therefore has been forced at a great 
 disadvantage to hold many of these classes in the country 
 villages. This has usually meant that a class must be 
 held in a small, dark room, often at great personal in- 
 convenience to the Christian family who offers the extra 
 room. No inn is available, particularly in a small vil- 
 lage J and if there is, such a place would be out of the ques- 
 tion for women. Such a room as has been previously 
 described must be cleared out temporarily for their use. 
 
 Eeference has already been made to the facility with 
 which boys and girls in the country schools learn long 
 
THE CALL AND ITS ANSWER 209 
 
 passages of Scripture. Interesting and surprising as this 
 is to foreigners from the West (where up-to-date psy- 
 chology forbids children memorizing anything they do 
 not fully understand, even the catechism) a still more 
 interesting phenomenon is the eagerness with which the 
 ordinary country folk attempt in these classes to get hold 
 of the Scriptures. 
 
 There are few sights in ^this world so pathetic as that 
 of matrons and old women (who never had a chance and 
 who never would have but for the Bible), seated on a car- 
 peting of corn-stalks placed upon the cold, damp earthen 
 floor, and, by the dim light that comes into this room, 
 toilsomely memorizing, as it is told to them, such a 
 passage as John 3 : 16 ; or still more toilsomely picking 
 out the hieroglyphic Chinese characters, the ability to 
 recognize and pronounce which, as the key to the pre- 
 cious meaning of the verse, they never before dared hope 
 to possess. As one watches them, he realizes something 
 of David's spirit: "Thy Word will I eat.'^ It is no 
 marvel that they display this eagerness to master the 
 " heavenly teaching " when one notes that the more they 
 get into it the more they realize instinctively that the 
 Word of God is for them, and for scores of millions of 
 their sex like them, the only road to recognition of their 
 womanhood, to respect for their wifehood, and to the 
 honouring of their motherhood. It only can restore to 
 them their rightful position in the present life or their 
 hope of a future without fear. Until the Word comes to 
 their homes they are looked upon often as no better than 
 the curs of their street. Multitudes of men do not deign 
 to speak to their wives in public, and the women dare 
 not presume to eat with the men, but munch off of the 
 cold leavings, and often go hungry. 
 
 While the militarism of Europe does not hesitate to 
 doom millions of men to KanonenfuUeVj the Chinese 
 
210 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 heathen systems do not hesitate to doom millions more 
 of these women to a living death, terrible beyond com- 
 pare. I refer to the selling of girl babies, which prevails 
 to an unbelievably colossal extent, the children being 
 sold because of chronic penury, or because of a season 
 of famine, or because of poverty incurred through 
 opium-smokiDg or lawsuit adventures in the courts. 
 How vast is this evil trade may be suggested from 
 the fact that ^Hhere are five thousand registered slave 
 girls in brothels of the foreign settlement (not to men- 
 tion the Chinese) of Shanghai alone. Tientsin has at 
 least half this number, and Peking a thousand, while the 
 smaller provincial capitals and commercial settlements 
 boast at least twenty thousand more." Only God Him- 
 self knows how many additional, even in these places, 
 are unregistered slaves, not to speak of the concubines 
 and other classes of ''singsong" girls. 
 
 Now women who in Bible classes learn Christ know 
 not only that it is He who tears off the mask of supersti- 
 tion from their minds and who opens their eyes to see 
 Him in His beauty, but that it is He alone who can 
 make their men-folks pity them, and, as ''weaker ves- 
 sels," helpless before heathen customs and male callous- 
 ness, treat them even decently. And while they cannot 
 say why or how this is so, they know it instinctively. 
 
 Chinese etiquette prescribes that a woman may not 
 wander abroad alone. She never leaves her village with- 
 out the escort of male relatives, and she leaves it at all 
 with increasing rareness through the years. The annual 
 visit back to the family in her own town gradually grows 
 more and more infrequent with the passage of time. To 
 leave home is for her a great experience. It is a sight to 
 see such women pouring in for a meeting. Some, almost 
 frozen or dust-smothered, arrive on donkey-back, across 
 treeless plains, or through stinging wind-storms, ove^. 
 
THE CALL AND ITS ANSWER 211 
 
 long stretches of sandy river bottom. Others, well-nigh 
 racked to pieces in mule litters, or trundled in on squeak- 
 ing wheelbarrows by men blackened with sweat and 
 grime. Over ruts big and little they come, past fenceless 
 farms and through roadless fields. Others come bounc- 
 ing along in two- wheeled Chinese carts— ponderous, 
 springless — built, it is averred, " to withstand the crash 
 of worlds. " To the questionable privilege of riding in 
 these many a passenger, after having his head knocked 
 for a little while over a rocky road, prefers the blisters of 
 walking. Other women still come seated astride a pair 
 of panniers — two wicker baskets hanging down, one each 
 side of the animaPs back, from the top of which may 
 often be seen protruding the head of a youngster — a 
 method of locomotion as picturesque as it is uncomfortable 
 and dangerous. Many a woman, who has been unable to 
 afibrd coming in any of these styles, has made the journey 
 on foot, carrying her baby on her back, and over one arm 
 a big basket containing sweet potatoes and black bread 
 and other delectables for physical nourishment during 
 the days of the class. In numerous instances in our 
 province the women have walked many li (one-third of 
 an English mile)— twenty, forty, sixty. Sometimes the 
 result has been such a tearing of their already tender, 
 maimed feet that for weeks return was impossible till 
 recovery in a measure of these tortured members had 
 taken place. Imagine even grandmothers hobbling in on 
 such tiny crippled feet ! 
 
 In some respects these conferences for women are the 
 most interesting of any sort, partly because of the un- 
 speakably important place that the motherhood of any 
 race plays in its degradation or exaltation, partly be- 
 cause of the depths to which these women have been sunk 
 by the heathen conditions around them which they have 
 been powerless to combat. In any such class there are apt 
 
213 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 to be some purely heathen womeu, brought by Christian 
 neighbours. But it is to be remembered— for it is of no 
 use to dodge the hateful truth — that the believing members 
 of the class have been themselves a part of that physically 
 alive but spiritually dead womanhood of China, whose 
 condition of wretchedness and woe surpasses description. 
 Moving in a monstrous shade-world of mental vacuity 
 and hopeless ignorance and superstition ; filled with daily 
 envyings and bitterness, strifes and jealousies, engendered 
 by commingled Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, 
 millions upon millions of such women have, during the 
 complacent centuries of neglect by their Western sisters, 
 been guilty of all the awful, unknown abominations of 
 heathenism, of which the apostle Paul dared hardly hint 
 in his character sketch of the Gentile world. These are 
 women who have shared the guilt if not the act of dis- 
 embowelling sons for obstreperousness ; women who have 
 helped to drown their daughters-in-law for rebelling 
 against unendurable hardships and maddening servitude ; 
 women who have consented to their frenzied husbands 
 striking their daughters dead for daring to long for a larger 
 and a better life ; women who have deliberately pounded 
 the feet and ankle bones of their daughters in order to 
 bind them tighter that brothel keepers might give a larger 
 price for them ; women who, in the presence of fellow- 
 villagers and local priests, have been forced to use a 
 heavy peasant's grub hoe to do unspeakable things to 
 girl babies and thereby avert the wrath of devils to 
 family and village cursed by an undue increment of femi- 
 nine humanity ; women who have cast out even male 
 infants to be eaten by the village curs under the delusion 
 that sick boys are demons in disguise plaguing the home 
 through added care, sorrow, disease and death ; women 
 who, in famine days, have not stopped short of selling 
 even their sons for fifty cents apiece. Yet out of such a 
 
THE CALL AND ITS ANSWER 213 
 
 pit Jesus had digged them— out of the homelessness and 
 the helplessness, out of the lovelessness and the hopeless- 
 ness and the lostness of their lives. 
 
 At a particular conference I have in mind the enter- 
 tainment of the delegates in the homes of the Christians 
 was out of the question ; there were too many. And 
 the heathen do not ordinarily open their doors to Chris- 
 tian guests for ''foreign rites." A dry brick platform 
 covered with a mat to us seems cheerless enough as a 
 bed. But in this instance the only alternative was the 
 temple, disgraced and discredited after the Boxer war, 
 when the German troops had pulled down the mud-bodied 
 gods and even thrown some of them into the village 
 pond : since which the local deities had been given the 
 cold shoulder, and the temple had stood vacant and un- 
 used. Incidentally, what a commentary on the old order 
 of things in ''changeless China '^ that heathen headmen 
 were willing to allow the use of the village temple for the 
 entertainment of Christian women while they studied the 
 Bible 1 To be sure, the entertainment was not quite up 
 to Western standards and ideas. The one big room was 
 black with the grime and filth of years. The floor was 
 of dirt. The windows were few and on one side sealed 
 up. The barn-like enclosure was unheated, and through 
 the big door the chill wind could drive freezingly. 
 Camping on the cold ground as best they could the dele- 
 gates slept ; and here seated cross-legged, or squatting in 
 the courtyard, they twice daily ate their table d^h6te of 
 boiled cabbage, millet soup and large leather- like pan- 
 cakes made of the coarse flour eaten by the poor. 
 
 In numerous instances the women were divided into 
 groups, sometimes only two or three persons studying 
 the same thing together, in an attempt the easier to get 
 the truth into their dulled brains. Large coloured wall 
 pictures, such as illustrate the Sunday-school lesson, 
 
214 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 have proved of considerable aid iu bringing the Scrip- 
 ture scenes and teachings vividly before them. 
 
 Always it has happened, as the women have together 
 studied the precious truths of the Bible, that the Holy 
 Spirit has brought the strong conviction that a knowledge 
 of the Holy Scriptures, illustrated in the life, is China's 
 one hope. Eepeatedly have they said : ^' We must have 
 women who know how to read the Bible, who have 
 learned its meaning, and can teach it to us." Chinese 
 women outside of marriage have practically no legitimate 
 way of satisfying their own hunger ; much less are they 
 apt to have any considerable incomes. Therefore the 
 horror in their minds of being divorced. In that pre- 
 dicament they belong neither to their own family (which 
 gave them up at their marriage) nor to the family of the 
 mother-in-law. What can Christian peasant women so 
 circumstanced do in the way of money raising ? Eepeat- 
 edly, however, without visible resources of income, in 
 the characteristic fashion of those inured to penury, they 
 have set about making something out of nothing. At 
 one conference a line was strung across the room. Each 
 woman had come arrayed in all the glory of all the gew- 
 gaws that she could muster — bracelets, bridal rings, ear 
 pendants, hairpins — pitiful things, cheap and ugly to the 
 last degree, but very dear to the feminine peasant heart. 
 Women have given these with the thought that some 
 missionary friends might give them to their lady friends 
 in America and they might receive therefor money to 
 enable them to have a Bible woman or to help in the 
 Woman's Bible School. The surrender of these things 
 by such spiritually ill-nurtured souls, in order that they 
 might dispense the Bread of Life — small loaves and fishes 
 indeed for their starving sisters— has meant more of sac- 
 rifice probably iu numerous instances than for an Amer- 
 ican woman to forego a long-planned trip to Europe, or 
 
THE GALL AND ITS ANSWER 215 
 
 to give up her pleasure yacht or motor-car. In many 
 instances they have tithed generously out of the odd cop- 
 pers they could scrape together. In some cases where 
 families were far enough along in the Christian life and 
 the position of the women assured enough in influence, 
 women delegates have vowed that when the crops of pea- 
 nuts or millet or wheat or sweet potatoes or broom corn 
 were spread on the threshiug floor, they would guarantee 
 that a tithe would be laid aside to help in the spread of 
 the Gospel. 
 
 Then, too, before these women topics have been dis- 
 cussed which for the first time gave them a vision of the 
 larger life — such topics as ; 1. "How Christian women 
 should adorn and dress themselves. "2. " Should women 
 bring their babies to church 1'^ 3. " Winning the chil- 
 dren to Chrisf 4. " How ought Christian women to 
 show their love for their country ? '^ 5. " How should 
 families be taught and nourished in the Doctrine!" 
 6. "The household's health safeguarded by the Chris- 
 tian mother.'^ 7. "Marriage engagements in heathen 
 families." 8. "The shame of foot-binding." 9. "Beau- 
 tiful characters of saintly women in Holy Wrif 
 10. "How ought Christian husband and wife to 
 treat each other f" 11. "How to treat the pastor." 
 12. "Every Christian woman a soul- winner." 13. "The 
 evils of anger," etc. Incidentally, I recall one of our 
 lady missionaries giving a health talk to the women of 
 such a conference. It was a difficult task to tell about 
 fundamental laws of decency and cleanliness when the 
 majority of her listeners had been accustomed to break 
 all the laws of which she was speaking as a matter of 
 course. However, she made an incisive speech that won 
 their hearts. It was packed full of sense spoken in sym- 
 pathy and love. She mildly suggested a few not unrea- 
 sonable ideas, such as refraining from face paint, which 
 
216 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 often poisons the whole system, occasionally taking a 
 bath, scrubbing the baby well once at least before he 
 reaches adolescence, using clean water to wash the dishes, 
 etc. To fortify the rationale of her startling innovations, 
 she delved a little into the mystery of microbes in daily 
 life, and showed scientifically some of the disadvantages 
 of ^' ma-ing,^' that is, of working oneself up to a pitch of 
 uncontrollable fury, rushing into the street, howling and 
 screaming with rage, reviling the person who has aroused 
 one's ire, cursing his ancestors and defaming his unborn 
 descendants, thereby always making entertainment for the 
 street generally, and sometimes invalidism for the central 
 figure personally. 
 
 When the missionary had finished her argument, a na- 
 tive doctor, a plain blunt man, got up. Without the 
 usual self-depreciatory introduction he jumped right into 
 his subject, to this effect: *^I am telling you what you 
 all know. This ' invisible bug ' business of which the 
 wise foreign lady doctor so learnedly speaks may all be 
 true ; they may all be there ; but they cannot be men- 
 tioned in the same breath with bugs that are harboured 
 which you ca7i see. ' ' Thus it went on, an unburdening and 
 an excoriation plainly spoken: "You know that when 
 an animal dies of disease you help to eat it, and when you 
 are told that, for eating rotten fruit and vegetables, stom- 
 ach troubles will come, you say : ' Did not these things 
 cost us money ? ' And when unbelieving fake medicine 
 men inoculate your babies against the plague, using cast- 
 off cans of spoiled condensed milk from the West, and 
 your babies die, then you have turned in and joined the 
 pack who curse the foreign devils. Sisters, these things 
 ought not so to be. We have got to clean up and use a 
 little sense.'' After this fashion he flayed them alive, 
 good-naturedly, but very forcibly. Then, amid a sea of 
 black heads nodding feminine assent to his cogent logic, 
 
THE CALL AND ITS ANSWER 217 
 
 the doughty doctor, praying the good Lord to ^*open 
 their faces," took his seat. 
 
 In such classes these country women have improved 
 their chance to learn Cliristian ideas of cleanliness, of 
 health, and of proper family relationships— that godliness 
 which is profitable for the life that now is, as well as for 
 the life to come. 
 
 These women return home, often to a welcome for their 
 message, in many instances to increased opposition. 
 Sometimes they are speedily rewarded with a favourable 
 hearing and reception of the truth. Sometimes those 
 about them in bitterness harden themselves to persecute 
 the witnesses. I am thinking now of a mountain woman 
 who years ago had part in such a class, and at that class 
 zealously learned Scripture passages. On her return to 
 the family of her heathen mother-in-law she was not only 
 beaten but was forbidden ever again to attend a Christian 
 meeting. Her husband's home is up a mountain valley 
 far away from her own Christian family. We received 
 word that she was dying, and with her brother went to 
 visit her. Her husband, a peasant boor, was so angry at 
 seeing us that, in a frenzy of uncontrollable rage, he leaped 
 into the air, coming down upon the path with a resound- 
 ing thwack on the soles of his heavy nailed shoes, at the 
 same time ejaculating the short, sharp syllable : ^^ Pei ! ^' 
 into which he concentrated all the venom of disgust, dis- 
 dain, pride of superiority, hatred and contempt combined, 
 that he could muster. He broke away up the path 
 towards his hut muttering in Berserker rage : **I'll beat 
 
 her to '^ Without knowing Saul, he showed SauPs 
 
 spirit, "breathing out threateniugs and slaughter." 
 
 With heavy hearts and praying for God to work with 
 power, we followed after. When we arrived a group of 
 children, clad mostly in the garb of nature and itching 
 with curiosity, surrounded us. Then several stalwart 
 
218 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 sons, slowly puffing their pipes, shuffled silently towards 
 us, sizing us up. Daughters-in-law, with babes in arms, 
 and in a dishabille such as only heathenism knows, shame- 
 facedly yet curiously stared out at us from the safe inside 
 corners of the yard door. Finally the old mother-in-law 
 came out, blood in her eye. She looked as if prepared to 
 give her sons and grandchildren and daughters-in-law a 
 demonstration of what a proper reviling is. Yet the Lord 
 helped us to get in ahead of her — nothing would have 
 stopped her after she had got started. She became inter- 
 ested in what we had to say, and before long had invited 
 us into the yard to say more about the ^' Good Sage, Yie 
 Su '^ (Jesus). She squatted on the ground before us, elbows 
 on knees, her wrinkled and wizened face held in her long 
 skinny fingers. She was a hungry soul, starved without 
 knowing it. Queer setting for a sermon, that little yard 
 — dogs, chickens, donkey, babies, children, litter, filth, 
 smells, and grown-ups distracted between curiosity and 
 prejudice. But the Spirit was working even there. As 
 suddenly as unexpectedly she invited us in to see the 
 woman on the kang — and a part of our prayer was an- 
 swered. 
 
 The husband had preceded us and in brute anger had 
 worked his cowardly will. In a little dingy room, full 
 of flies, a wan face peered out from under a malodorous 
 quilt. There were unmistakable welts on face and neck, 
 and new ones. She could only whisper, but was cheerful. 
 After greetings, and ignoring the fresh bruises, she said : 
 **Tell me about God, the Dyer of souls. '^ *'Do you 
 mean this ? " And I quoted : * * Come now and let us 
 reason together, saith the Lord : though your sins be as 
 scarlet, they shall be as snow ; though they be red like 
 crimson, they shall be like wool.^' Then she said : ''Tell 
 me what the Holy Book says about how good it is to 
 obtain Christ." And I read PauPs glorious words : ''But 
 
THE CALL AND ITS ANSWER 219 
 
 what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for 
 Christ. Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss 
 for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my 
 Lord : for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and 
 do count them but dross that I may win Christ, and be 
 found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which 
 is of the law, but that which is through the faith of 
 Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith : that 
 I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and 
 the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable 
 unto His death ; if by any means I might attain unto the 
 resurrection of the dead.'^ *^Ah, that is it,^^ she mur- 
 mured. *^And now tell me about the great God and 
 who shall see Him and how they speak in His palace. " 
 And I read: **And I saw, and behold a great multi- 
 tude . . . out of every nation . . . before the 
 Lamb . . . saying, ^ Blessing and glory and wisdom 
 and power to our God ' . . . and they shall hunger 
 no more . . . and God shall wipe away all tears 
 from their eyes.'' "Yes," she murmured again. "That 
 is it — tell them," nodding feebly towards her persecutors, 
 who had crowded in and who stood wondering and 
 hushed. Her witness, the verses she had memorized, 
 with all else that she had learned at the Bible class, has 
 not availed to date in that mother-in-law's family : but 
 the story of her steadfast integrity in the Gospel, endur- 
 ing as seeing Him who is invisible, has been a power in 
 sowing the good seed of the Word in many another life. 
 
 In another instance a mountain elder, who at such a 
 class got a vision of the Victorious Life in Christ, went 
 home to live a similar one in his own village — even 
 though faced by great obstacles ; and it was used to be- 
 come a strong factor in turning many members of his 
 clan, heretofore opposing the Gospel, to the confession 
 and service of the living God. 
 
CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 In a land of Christian civilization, where a large per- 
 centage of children have the privilege of attending public 
 school and gaining at least an elementary education, it is 
 hard to realize what a Mission school in a heathen land 
 means. To speak of it as a cheering light in darkness is 
 to put it mildly. Imagine our most thickly populated 
 states, like Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York, 
 with practically no Government schools except in county 
 seats and large market towns. And then imagine the 
 population multiplied many fold until, in some sections 
 of our field, the itinerator may count villages, thirty to 
 one hundred and ten of them, all about him, without 
 schools of any sort — Christian or secular. 
 
 The work of sapper and miner is essential in present 
 day fighting to assure victory against enemies ensconced 
 in trenches, and equally vital is the work of the Mission 
 school in the villages. The local Christians provide a 
 building in which the school is to be held, and for the 
 initial year in which the school is opened provide at least 
 one- third of the teacher's salary, being supposed to in- 
 crease their proportion each succeeding year. The room 
 furnished is usually small and dingy — dirt floored and 
 fireless, its rough mud walls not only without kalsomine 
 or paint, but black with smoke and grimed with filth ; 
 while from the corn-stalk ceilings often depend cobwebs, 
 heavy with dust-stalactites of filth. Should one apply a 
 lighted candle to the wall, he would be apt to find its 
 cracks alive ; these denizens of the cracks, though reg- 
 ular in attendance upon school, hungering for something 
 else than human knowledge. The windows on the street- 
 ward side of the room are apt to be high in the wall, being 
 thus made so that thieves may not climb in, and often 
 bricked up as an additional precaution. Facing the yard 
 may be two windows lower down and larger. The wooden 
 slats of these are pasted over with paper through which 
 
THE CALL AND ITS ANSWER 221 
 
 opaque light enters. The tables and backless stools are 
 of crude workmanship. There are usually no pictures 
 unless provided by the missionary, nothing sesthetically 
 attractive. The pupils begin early in the morning pre- 
 paring their lessons in a unison of din, each apparently 
 trying to outshout the other as he attempts to pack the 
 knowledge of the book by layers into his memory cham- 
 ber. Sitting during the winter day in such a cold damp 
 room is assuredly no picnic. Nor is it more delectable 
 during warm weather, when the air inside is heavy and 
 fetid. Practically ventilationless is that room ; small and 
 cheerless is the mud yard ; as yet with rare exceptions 
 the teacher of such a school is not apt to be very capable 
 in leading calisthenics — if at all, he usually does it at the 
 end of the afternoon. Studying from early in the morn- 
 ing till breakfast time, the boy's intermission is only suf- 
 ficient to go home and eat breakfast ; to return and study 
 till noon recess ; time taken out for dinner (plus nap, if 
 weather is warm); to return and study and recite till 
 supper-time ; and finally return and study till bedtime. 
 The fact that children survive this process is another of 
 the many instances of the tough physical fibre of this 
 race. 
 
 According to some modern educational theories as to 
 the omnipotence of environment these schools ought all to 
 have failed miserably. However, the Bible is in them 
 supremely honoured ; it is taught as part of the daily cur- 
 riculum ; chapel is held morning and evening, at which 
 time its chapters are read and expounded ; great chunks 
 of it are memorized through a series of years ; and the 
 pupils become men of God grounded in the Word. 
 
 One of the miracles in connection with the Bible is that 
 where it is reverently studied it creates an atmosphere of 
 sound learning and Christian character. This is quit^ 
 contrary to the spirit of Chinese heathenism which is 
 
222 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 bowed under a burden of unusable learning and which 
 gropes in the shadow of moral unreliability. 
 
 Thus names often given to these village schools, though 
 flowery, are an index of their real nature : ^ ' Ming Liang " 
 (bright light) and '^Dei Hsing" (character progress), as 
 over against the half-bakedness of many an official school. 
 Again, a Chinese proverb speaks of Chinese character, 
 the fruitage of Chinese heathen learning, as '^rotten wood," 
 adding significantly: '* Rotten wood cannot be carved. '' 
 How, in marked contrast to the fruitage of heathen vil- 
 lage schools, they infuse gospel grace and strength into 
 that character-building which is the only bulwark of a 
 people — for righteousness alone exalteth a nation — is seen 
 in many a little life story, in many an episode, in which 
 a Christian child figures prominently. Here is one. 
 
 Late in the afternoon I reached a village where I was 
 to conduct a communion service. When we entered the 
 church — the typical primitive ^'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 
 **kan 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 midst of 
 raw heathenism, he may be surprised to see how much of 
 a part adventitious aids have played in his conception of 
 what are necessary surroundings and conditions, in order 
 that he may decently and in order participate in the cele- 
 bration of the Holy Supper — soft cushions, a comfortable 
 
THE CALL AND ITS ANSWER 223 
 
 temperature, carpeted floors, a dignified commuDity out- 
 fit, noiselessly moving ministrants, exquisitely beautiful 
 music artistically rendered. In the catacombs outside of 
 Eome, where for very joy the early Christians partook of 
 the feast, the visitor to-day fails to find any suggestion of 
 fitting aesthetic accompaniments — paid choir, pipe organ, 
 orchestra, clustered Gothic columns, rose windows, pri- 
 vate pews. Conditions here would doubtless have shocked 
 the *^ proper " home communicant. In front of the pas- 
 tor stood a rickety old table grimed with filth. No spot- 
 less linen of sacred home memories covered it ; nothing 
 covered it. What preparations had been made had been 
 the work of the elders j for, while the pastor helps with 
 suggestions, the responsibility is theirs, and the only way 
 to learn perfection is through imperfect attempts. 
 
 On the table was a foreign beer bottle containing native 
 wine, coarse plates with whole Chinese biscuits upon 
 them, and several dirty, cracked bowls. Over them was 
 thrown a towel not exactly clean. The minister groaned 
 inside ; but it is ticklish business to wound the sensibili- 
 ties of ignorant, untrained leaders with whom one works, 
 and who are doing the best they know how. Here was 
 not the time nor place to remove the bottle or to rebuke 
 the elders. So with a prayer for grace the minister be- 
 gan 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 printed in 
 English and Chinese on a newspaper which hung across 
 the paper panes of the window sash: ^'Pabst Beer ia 
 Always Pure!" Extraordinary accompaniments 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 
 Eepublic and *' posted " many of the supposedly inacces- 
 sible nooks of the outlying sections. 
 
224 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 In the homeland I had never celebrated the Lord^s Sup- 
 per at eventide. But many a time here I have met with 
 God's people around His table by a flickering candle or a 
 dingy bean-oil wick. 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 betrayed, 
 as He celebrated that last Passover awefully changed into 
 the first Eucharist, possibly He also, by some faint light, 
 looked upon the shadowy faces of His friends, that hum- 
 ble group gathered around the table ; and, with no exter- 
 nal 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 half-storeroom^ or 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 per- 
 sons, to realize that, despite the sweat and dirt and the 
 smell, despite the simplicity of humble folk and the half 
 darkness of soul out of which they are struggling — despite 
 every hindrance and drawback — the Holy Spirit is there 
 in the midst, again and again, and in power to convict 
 and to energize, as on that first great 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 understand their privilege ; and because there 
 
THE CALL AND ITS ANSWER 225 
 
 were uo candidates, as expected, from the school group at 
 this place. 
 
 The little room iu which we were meeting, like many 
 a schoolhouse-church-aud-family-residence one in which 
 we frequently met, had a half partition across it in the 
 rear which made one end of the ^^kang" (brick platform 
 used as bed) ; and on this, farthest away from the min- 
 ister and where they naturally were least able to hear, 
 though needing the teaching most, sat the women and 
 girls. The service from their end had been much dis- 
 tracted by the crying and moving of children. Through 
 the dim light the air was murky with dust that rose from 
 the dried dirt of the floor and that sifted from the cob- 
 webs, heavy with the accumulation of years, depending 
 from the corn-stalk ceiling. 
 
 Just preceding the distribution of the elements I noticed 
 particularly among the group of schoolboys 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 Jesus, 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. He answered, **I love 
 Jesus and want to be baptized and join the church ! ^^ 
 
 Thinking this a mere childish whim, the elder ques- 
 tioned and prayed with him, and counselled him to keep 
 on learning the Doctrine so that he might enter the 
 church when older. Then the lad returned to his back- 
 less stool, to sit there listening not many more minutes 
 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 tell the session. 
 
226 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 "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 — 
 steadfast in his wish to confess Jesus before all. What 
 should be done? His conscience troubled him till he 
 had spoken out this matter. Could a 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. Now, in a husky voice, he said : " Let the session 
 here and now examine this little one." Then by way of 
 proof, he turned to passages in the New Testament, 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 examination, his big black 
 eyes lustrous with love to Jesus. His mother was a 
 school-teacher, young and pretty and neatly dressed, who 
 had been deserted 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. 
 
 This examination was a surprise. It revealed the fact 
 that the boy had long known how to pray ; that morning 
 and evening he prayed to God to help him 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 Lim from his birth 
 to the Lord, and like Hannah, had taught her boy to feel 
 
THE CALL AND ITS ANSWER 227 
 
 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 homeland, training and receiving children 
 into the church, but never had I seen anything so un- 
 studied and artless, and so profound in impression. 
 What joy the Lord must have felt at such simple, trans- 
 parently sincere testimony as was given that night ! 
 
 But it did not end there. Seven large schoolboys 
 arose and confessed Christ, and were examined j also the 
 wife of the boy's 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 that it 
 involved persecution. The Holy Spirit manifestly worked. 
 Then a man got up whom I had hoped would meet that 
 day with the session. He was illiterate but influential. 
 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. However, he clung tenaciously to the model prayer, 
 daily repeating it. *' And,'' he added with the ingenu- 
 ousness of a child, *'at its close I always *ka ton' 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 honoured 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 
 in Jesus to save and keep me ; I have been a coward ; I 
 now resolve to endure all evil consequences of taking 
 Him into my life ! '^ 
 
228 CHINA mOM WITHIN 
 
 Such a sight is strange and awe-compelling — to see the 
 scales lift from the eyes of a blinded soul, and see that 
 soul spring eagerly out of the heathen blackness in which 
 he groped into the splendour of the light that is in the 
 face of Jesus Christ, Lord of Glory. 
 
 All these were that night received by the session. 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 towards 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 re- 
 vival. Now they wanted both ; and this Spirit-refresh- 
 ing 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 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 a mother who had been trained in a 
 village school was behind it all. 
 
 Out of such places come men who are the makers of a 
 new China, the true and best makers of it ; for out of 
 Christian text-books on " Western learning " they learn 
 something of true patriotism and real progress, of free 
 government and ordered liberty. And they learn it from 
 Christian teachers who turn their backs upon all hope of 
 higher emolument in service of the Government, which bids 
 
THE CALL AND ITS ANSWER 229 
 
 strongly for tliein because utterly inadequate is its supply 
 for its thousands of proposed schools, short of teachers 
 for its scores of millions of potential pupils. And they 
 do this for the munijacent salary of $48 to $Q6 Mexican a 
 year (the equivalent of |20 to $30 gold) and board them- 
 selves. Indeed every strong leader of the Chinese Church, 
 whom I know personally, has begun his training in a 
 Christian Mission school, located in some such room as I 
 have described ; and he has developed into what he has 
 become out of this humble institution, hidden away in 
 some unknown village. Such a true pastor as Eev. 
 Wang Shu Chwen ; such a winsome soul- winner as Ting 
 Li Mei ; such a flaming evangelist to city gentry as Liu 
 Kwaug Chao ; such a gifted and trained elder as Ting 
 Li Sui ; successful and godly business man as Elder Liu 
 Shu San ; skilled and consecrated school leader as Prin- 
 cipal Wang Shu Ching — all known and honoured in this 
 great Province. Many others of like calibre could be 
 mentioned. 
 
 Such powerful factors have these schools already be- 
 come, through the men trained therein, in the life of 
 China j such manifestly important foundations for its 
 future greatness have they begun to lay ; that it is a 
 matter of general comment among discerning students. 
 Admiral Oscar Yon Truppel, the Governor for ten years 
 of the German Imperial Colony in China, once said to 
 me in a confidential talk at his mansion: **But you 
 Americans have the inside track of us in China." 
 "Why?" I asked. "Oh, because of your numerous 
 village schools. You are stamping your institutions and 
 political view-point upon its youth. But you Americans 
 are rich; your Government can afford to aid them." 
 "Ah, but,'' I replied, "these schools are not aided by 
 our Government, but are supported by the voluntary 
 gifts of American Christians, many of whom sacrificingly 
 
230 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 contribute to help support them in cooperation "with the 
 parents of the Chinese pupils. " Astonished, he replied : 
 ** At any rate the destiny of China, in so far as the 
 good influences are moulding it, is in the keeping of these 
 country church schools." And who can prove that he is 
 not right ? A million such schools, instead of the pitiful 
 hundreds, and China might in this generation be won for 
 Christ. 
 
VII 
 
 Salt and its Savour 
 A Study in Steadfast Witness- Bearing 
 
VII 
 
 SALT AND ITS SAYOUE 
 
 NO one who has taken the pains to investigate 
 the facts longer doubts that the Christians of 
 North China in 1900 were Petrine, founded on 
 the **Kock Christ Jesus. ^' Some 20,000 native Chris- 
 tians in North China, many of them in the first genera- 
 tion out of heathenism, deliberately chose to lay down 
 their lives rather than deny their Lord. And the denial 
 was made possible on such easy terms. All they had to 
 do was to burn incense sticks before the idols, or to sign 
 a paper that they had recanted the Foreign Devil Doc- 
 trine, or merely to draw a cross in the dirt and spit on it. 
 The testimony of missionaries on the ground and of 
 persecutors and neighbours and relatives, all goes to show 
 that during that fateful year almost every part of He- 
 brews 11 : 35-38 was again fulfilled. In addition to the 
 martyrs, many thousands more had their homes and 
 property destroyed, being destitute, afflicted, tormented. 
 In the case of city riots, both missionaries and converts 
 were stoned and hacked, if not sawn, asunder. 
 
 ** Children even confessed Him. The Boxers of Tung 
 Chow themselves related the story of how two little lads 
 of thirteen and fourteen years of age met their death. 
 They suspected the children of being Christian scholars, 
 so they asked, * Are you believers in the foreign faith ? ^ 
 *Yes,* replied the children quite boldly; * we are fol- 
 lowers of Jesus. ^ The persecutors brought out cords to 
 bind them, with a view to dragging them to the Boxer 
 altar. * There is no need to bind us,' said the boys; 
 
 233 
 
234 CHINA FEOM WITHIN 
 
 *we will not try to escape. Every step that we take 
 towards your altar is a step nearer to heaven.' In a 
 few moments their lives were sacrificed by the Boxer 
 swords. " ^ 
 
 Bonds and imprisonment were constantly resorted to in 
 cases where instant death was not resolved upon. Yet 
 they were faithful under torture. 
 
 ^' A Christian, called Yen, had his house and property 
 burned by the Boxers. Then he himself was caught and 
 killed. One of his sons was then caught ; and, because 
 he would not betray the hiding-place of his family, he 
 was tortured. His hands and feet were tied behind, and 
 the pole, by which he was suspended, passed between. 
 Still refusing to reveal it, burning incense was placed 
 upon his back and stone placed upon that V^^ 
 
 All were tempted in every way both to deny the Lord 
 Jesus or merely to renounce their religion " for a time'' ; 
 and in both cases were begged by friends ^^just to bow 
 before the idols whilst remaining faithful at heart." 
 But, in spite of every temptation, many were tortured, 
 not accepting deliverance. Others were jeered at in the 
 moment of their death by fire or sword yet steadfastly en- 
 dured the trial of cruel mockings and scourgings. I 
 knew of an old Christian who, given the option of recant- 
 ing or being immediately plunged into a caldron of boil- 
 ing water, chose the latter. 
 
 There were also cruel mockings. 
 
 **A Christian, named Ho, was examined in order to 
 find out the hidiug-place of the missionaries, but he re- 
 fused to tell. He was beaten, and the yamen underlings 
 ridiculed him, saying, * Doesn't it hurt ? You'll soon be 
 in heaven.' He was beaten with over a thousand strokes, 
 and then, when nearly insensible, thrown into prison, 
 
 * Brysou : " Cross, Crown." 
 
 ' Edwards : "Fire and Sword in Shansi," 
 
SALT AND ITS SAYOUR 235 
 
 and fettered hand and foot. Another Christian, also in 
 prison, attended to his few wants ; but he was only able 
 to take a little water, and the fourth day happily put an 
 end to his suffering ! " * 
 
 Not a few were men who had formerly lived bad lives 
 but were out of weakness made strong. 
 
 *^ Wang was well known in the city as having formerly 
 been a gambler, opium smoker, and, in fact, a regular 
 blackleg. The genuineness of his conversion was mani- 
 fested by a complete change of life. Early in July he 
 was set upon and seriously wounded. They then bound 
 him and held a mock trial. Many of the people said, 
 * We know you were formerly a bad character, but have 
 now reformed. Only leave the foreign sect, and you will 
 not be killed.^ He replied, 'I have already left the for- 
 eign sect (referring to Buddhism), and now follow the 
 Supreme Euler, believe in Jesus, and worship the true 
 God.' He was soon taken out of the city and barbarously 
 killed.^' * 
 
 And yet, though that crisis of 1900 brought forth its 
 solemn and irrefragable testimony, many people in the 
 homeland seem to believe that China's Christians are of 
 the " rice " brand, those who, sordid and low-motived, 
 are in the Church for what they can get out of it. This 
 devil's lie about the quality of Chinese Christians every- 
 where persists. The missionary on furlough is amazed 
 by weird conceptions current and the garbled stories be- 
 lieved concerning them. Unless one has itinerated over 
 the United States in the interests of missions ; heard even 
 the pillars of the churches (intelligent business men) ask 
 him in all seriousness if he really thinks the Chinese have 
 souls ; been ex cathedra informed that converts are bought 
 at two dollars a head, and positively assured that they 
 
 * Edwards; " Fire and Sword in Shansi." 
 
236 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 don't stick — unless one has had this experience, and has 
 realized that nine-tenths of the people do not believe that 
 missions are necessary or worth while— he could not 
 credit that sucli notions of straw are still in 1916 stuffed 
 and stood up, to be knocked down before an assenting 
 public. 
 
 From whom are constantly emanating these distortions 
 and slanders with regard to China's *'rice Christians"? 
 Especially do rich, worldly-minded globe-trotters claim 
 to know them — they who engage the most elegant state- 
 room suites on ocean palaces, and put up at the most 
 fashionable and luxurious hotels, and rarely inquire for a 
 Mission Station or a convert while their steamers are 
 coaling and provisioning in port. Equally do many ship 
 captains and of&cers claim to know them — they whose 
 lives are rebuked by all that the ''rice Christians " have 
 been taught. So also do the foreign inmates and keepers 
 and frequenters of the haunts of vice scattered all up and 
 down the China coast — these who hate the mission move- 
 ment that everywhere confronts them. So too do many 
 high society people of the Far East— these who take pride 
 in teaching Chinese merchants how to use Western wines 
 at foreign banquets, and how to bet in foreign fashion at 
 the spring and fall races, always held on the Sabbath. 
 And so also do many white merchants — these who, hav- 
 ing accumulated their piles, are almost ready to return to 
 their native lauds, but who, though living fifteen, twenty, 
 even thirty years in the land, can converse with Chinese 
 only through their English speaking head Compradores, 
 themselves knowing little of the real life and thought 
 about them. 
 
 The fact is, as witnessed by those who know conditions, 
 that the sufferings which came upon the Christians in 
 1900 were greater only in degree than those which to-day 
 are often visited upon Chinese who boldly come out to 
 
SALT AND ITS SAVOUR 237 
 
 confess Christ. Our station field stretches through five 
 counties, with a population estimated by the Government 
 at some five millions of people. It is my privilege to 
 itinerate up and down through these multitudinous mud 
 villages of the peasants. I understand some of the con- 
 ditions that obtain in some of those villages. I know 
 personally many of the Christians dwelling in them. I 
 believe that, when a man decides to-day, no less than in 
 Boxer days, to become a Christian he gets, humanly 
 speaking, the small end of the bargain. And I know 
 very few *'rice^' Christians j but many who have en- 
 dured hardship for the Lord Jesus Christ, as good 
 soldiers. 
 
 There are few things more pathetic, few things that tug 
 harder at the heart-strings of a pastor-spirited man, than 
 the spiritual isolation of a single Christian or a family in 
 a heathen village. Though in closest physical contact 
 with kindred and neighbours, the elect one is often shut 
 out from their sympathies and lives as completely as 
 Holland's sea-dykes separate ocean from land. The 
 multitudinous aids to righteousness afforded in our home- 
 land, the adventitious moral helps of church institutions, 
 the encouragement of noble Christian friends and of the 
 beloved home circles who pray for our growth in grace, 
 the very spirit of our public life and social intercourse, 
 which is charged with a thousand blessings brought by 
 Christ and which the people of a country where Christ is 
 known breathe in as unconsciously as they do thanklessly 
 — all these are, in the case of most Chinese Christians, 
 lacking. When the Chinese start sweet-potato slips for 
 planting, they coax them into vigorous growth by plant- 
 ing them on the kang, the brick platform used as family 
 bed and warmed by flues from beneath. The outward 
 stimulus to Christian living that the ordinary Christian 
 gets from the environment of his village life would be 
 
238 CHINA mOM WITHIN 
 
 comparable to " forcing " sweet-potato slips in an ice- 
 house. 
 
 Parts of my field, though a peasant population, have 
 over two thousand people to the square mile. And there 
 are hundreds of heathen villages, practically untouched 
 by the Gospel, that I have never yet been able to enter 
 even once. With a parish the size of mine the itinerant 
 missionary can hardly make frequent pastoral calls. But 
 when he does arrive, how unfeignedly glad they are to 
 see the "Shepherd," to welcome him with a prayer of 
 gratitude for safe arrival, to perform with alacrity the 
 simple offices of host ; and how loth to have him depart, 
 escorting him sometimes far out of the village upon his 
 way, and parting only after a prayer of benediction upon 
 him and his plans, which often includes petitions for 
 safety from perils of rivers and roads and robbers. And 
 then the converts have slowly retraced their steps village- 
 ward, often to face — a little hell. 
 
 The membership of some of the sixteen churches con- 
 stituting our station parish is scattered through scores of 
 villages. Few in the Home Church can realize what it 
 means to these humble, lonely Christians to have the mis- 
 sionary enter their cheerless mud huts and kneel on their 
 dirt floors in prayer with them, and expound the Scrip- 
 ture in their yards to them and their neighbours. How 
 hungry are they for spiritual sympathy and strength ! 
 And how much their pitifully narrowed lives need it ! 
 .And what these starved souls love most of all is the Holy 
 Communion. I have never elsewhere so entered into the 
 mysterious depths of God's love and into the sweet com- 
 fort and cheer of the religion of His dear Son, never else- 
 where so seen the naked power of the Holy Ghost, as in 
 that service amid conditions of squalor and grinding pov- 
 erty and the odiousness of heathenism with the lid off. 
 Then, communing with ignorant, isolated brethren, the 
 
SALT AND ITS SAVOUR 239 
 
 ugly millet bowl (often cracked) seemed transfigured into 
 a chalice, mystic, wonderful ; then, as we together ate the 
 coarse, unbolted bread, by faith there was brought to us 
 the thrilling ineffable realization that we, even we, were 
 part of His body, the holy catholic Church, and partici- 
 pants with Him in His glory. 
 
 Whenever a man, by his prayers and teaching and ex- 
 hortation, has won several members of his family — enough 
 of them to control the situation — he starts " the church in 
 the house." It becomes the seat of local worship, and, in 
 turn, opens the way for the planting of a Christian village 
 school, acorn for the potential oak, the future church. 
 But all this is usually accomplished only after hard labour 
 on stubborn ground. Frequently he gains nobody, and 
 stands alone for years, the single Christian in his village 
 and neighbourhood. 
 
 When a man becomes a real Christian, the break with 
 the hateful past has to be so complete that he inevitably 
 concentrates the venom of heathenism upon himself. Its 
 temptations, its hoary customs, its blasphemies, its inev- 
 itable sins — gambling and lawsuiting, cheating and re- 
 viling, concubinage and slavery, ancestor worship and 
 witchcraft, superstition and demon worship, adultery and 
 geomancy, and the vile power of priests— all rise up to 
 smite him — smite him not only from without but from 
 within ; for, as one trusty Chinese elder, who knew soul 
 travail as well as bodily torture, told me : "Please, in 
 my stead, salute your Christian friends in America and 
 convey to them this message : * You have been born in a 
 country where there are no idols ; you have not been de- 
 filed by them as we have been : their defilement has gone 
 into us nice dye into cloth.^ " The Christian and his house, 
 while they become a beacon of light for sin-tossed men, 
 become also, by the very fact of their conspicuousness, a 
 target for the diabolism of Satan and his minions. And 
 
240 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 in withstanding their onsets ^Hhese little ones " illustrate 
 what Li Hung Chang recorded in his diary as a curijous 
 fact for which he could not account : ^^This Christianity 
 makes poor and lowly people bold and unafraid." 
 
 What is the daring of the Christian's stand and what 
 its challenge to the powers of darkness can be realized 
 only by knowing concrete cases. Those that follow are 
 taken from notes in my missionary diaries, and throw 
 suggestive light on the varied experiences connected with 
 the pastoral duties of an evangelistic itinerator. The 
 plain narration of these incidents constitutes the argument 
 of this lecture, the proof of my theme. These are all 
 common, every-day sufferings, endured for the sake of 
 The Name. Not all h^ve happened to the same person or 
 in the same village ; but they are among the ordinary 
 methods that are employed to make a Christian, in the 
 expressive language of the Chinese, **eat bitterness." 
 And these multitudinous sorrows that are born out of the 
 myriads of villages will never get recorded in a book of 
 martyrs ; curious visitors can never see them, nor Board 
 secretaries know them. Each missionary-pastor has his 
 own set of cases ; and their inarticulate cry, while it as- 
 cends to God, is lost on the sea of the woes of heathenism. 
 
 First, there is the persecution that originates in the 
 family. And this perhaps is the bitterest of all. During 
 the Revolution that established the Republic, some men, 
 not Christians, in North China cut their queues — not 
 many. But it was noteworthy that even before the Revo- 
 lution many Christians cut theirs as a sign of being Chris- 
 tians. One day I emerged unexpectedly on the street of 
 a village, a village with one Christian, and saw ahead of 
 me that identical young man crying and limping. He 
 held his neck sidewise and stiffly ; his face, clawed fiercely 
 by finger nails, was dripping blood ; his eyes were black- 
 ened J his finger joints were swollen ; and he later showed 
 
SALT AND ITS SAVOUR 241 
 
 me great welts on his shin bones. He had returned home 
 from a queue cutting-bee with a queueless head, his badge 
 of disci pleship ; his mother and wife and sister, feeling 
 the family disgraced beyond measure, and the spirits of 
 their ancestors irretrievably outraged, had risen up in the 
 might of their wrath, and with sticks and clubs laid to 
 upon his body with such vigour that he required weeks 
 to recover. 
 
 Again I baptized the oldest of four sons ; the father had 
 protested to the son at the contemplated step. Soon after 
 the father "fen kia" (divided his inheritance). By the 
 custom of that district the oldest should receive much 
 more relatively than the others. In this case he received 
 nothing for himself and wife and children, though he had 
 done his share in earning the common family living. 
 
 In one village a mature son for confessing Christ was 
 disinherited, and, penniless, had to leave his ancestral 
 village. In another, a heathen son and wife drove off the 
 old father and mother, thinly clad — and out into the win- 
 ter storm, to die. The children had decided to bend the 
 wills of the parents to recant the Jesus Doctrine or to 
 break them. 
 
 In another village the only Christian was an elder. 
 For a long time I did not know he had a brother — an 
 older brother, a giant in stature — fierce, overbearing, 
 brutal, garrulous, impervious to reason. Years ago for 
 general wickedness and blasphemy he had been excom- 
 municated by a senior missionary. One day I arrived 
 unexpectedly in that village and found the church build- 
 ing (which stood on land given by the elder and family, 
 and which had been built largely through them) full of 
 straw and grain and wickers of peanuts and dried sweet- 
 potato vines, hog-feed, and otherwise desecrated. It had 
 .been put there by the older brother to chagrin the elder 
 and to dare me. Then it came out how this older brother 
 
242 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 — rough and insolent and sin-hardened — had been carry- 
 ing on for years a systematic harrying of his smaller and 
 younger brother, hounding that church elder nearly to 
 death. 
 
 Another Christian, a useful evangelist who went to 
 South Africa to preach to the coolies in the mines there, 
 was an influential man in his village, and secured the 
 consent of the village elders to turn out the idols from a 
 neglected temple and to use it for a Christian school. 
 His heathen parents, incensed at such sacrilege to the 
 gods, went to the county magistrate, and from him de- 
 manded an official destruction of their son. And he con- 
 sented ; for there is an old custom or law of the land by 
 which, in virtue of parents' power of life and death over 
 children, they can so demand and not be refused. How- 
 ever, before the magistrate could execute the decree, the 
 son had been warned and had fled for his life, leaving his 
 wife and children to great distress in the parental home. 
 
 At one of our market towns an inquirer was distracted 
 by the continual petty nagging of his wife and brother — 
 persecution that is comparable to the plague of flies, frogs, 
 lice and boils— until he decided to leave home and hire 
 out in a neighbouring county. After some weeks he re- 
 turned home to be told by the neighbours that horror of 
 his sacrilegious step in becoming " a second degree deviP' 
 (as converts are called — the missionary being the first) 
 had so preyed on the mind of his wife that she had died 
 of "worry and fright.'' 
 
 Imagine this scene, part of which I saw : a wife tug- 
 ging at the coat-tail of her husband and, the entire length 
 of the long ambling village street, reviling him before a 
 jeering crowd of heathen onlookers ; and for three mortal 
 miles (Chinese) she hung on, cursing, and attempting to 
 pull him (crazy as she believed) back from the hated 
 foreign worship, till he arrived at " a church in the house'* 
 
SALT AND ITS SAVOUR 243 
 
 of a iieighbouriug village where he was to meet with 
 fellow ChristiaDS. Then the wife turned and fled pre- 
 cipitately, lest some one bewitch her with one of the 
 *' Jesus pills " of cursed magic. 
 
 In another village a widow was persecuted long and 
 relentlessly because she would not renounce Christ. 
 When I came to know her, she was seventy-one years of 
 age, none to take her part, still tormented by the sons 
 and daughters-in-law of her own household because she 
 would not **shao tsi shao hsiang" (burn ghost money 
 and incense) with them to the shades of their ancestors. 
 
 On the 23d of October, 1913, while examining mature 
 candidates for baptism, their parents stalked in, and 
 threatened on their return home to commit suicide if the 
 candidates did not at once renounce their interest in a 
 foreign religion. Committing suicide is in China an 
 accredited kind of protest, as common as emphatic. 
 When committed on account of the Jesus religion, 
 it is **to spite ^' the renegade member of the family, 
 and to discourage others from becoming thus foolish 
 and impious, converts to strange doctrines. Common 
 methods of suicide by the women peasants in my part of 
 the world, in protest against the male members of their 
 families joining themselves to the Jesus Devil Sect, is to 
 jump into the village wells, drink sulphur soaked off the 
 heads of Japanese matches, and destroy themselves with 
 the cabbage knife. It is a consummate triumph on the 
 part of the suicide, because it achieves double-edged suc- 
 cess in two worlds at the same time. The immediate ad- 
 vantage to a suicide of this mode of procedure is expli- 
 cable in the light of the Chinese belief and proverb : ** He 
 who arrives first at the yamen [with his bribe understood] 
 wins the case." The spirit of the suicide hastens ahead 
 and prefers charges to a judge of the infernal regions 
 before the opponent can arrive. On the other hand, 
 
244 CHINA FEOM WITHIN 
 
 manifold and continuous embarrassments for the living 
 victim of the suicide are at once set in operation. He is 
 often looked upon as a murderer, and lives the loathed 
 object of contumely. Well do these Christians know, in 
 relation to their own family : " To you is granted not 
 only to believe in Christ, but also to suffer in His behalf " 
 (Phil. 1 : 29). 
 
 The tricks and devices of fellow-villagers to embarrass 
 and humiliate and torture a Christian neighbour are 
 numberless. A man is refused the use of the village 
 well ; and many a tragedy occurs at night when he 
 attempts to steal out and draw water from the old place 
 or fetch it from another. Sometimes he is not allowed to 
 grind at the mill shared by several families on the street. 
 It is crude but effective, two-stoned and propelled by 
 donkey or daughter-in-law ; and it is a serious business 
 to get bread without flour. 
 
 For unwillingness to conform to blasphemous heathen 
 customs, companies of villagers have made the body of 
 many a Christian neighbour smart, and have reduced 
 him to penury. He refuses to burn paper in worship to 
 his ancestors, and he is despised as unfilial, a moral 
 pariah. Likewise he refuses to burn spirit money to 
 supply ghosts of the departed with good food and warm 
 clothes for winter, and he is contemned as a niggard, a 
 miser, dishonouring them. And some morning he awakes 
 to find a hole dug through the mud wall of his yard, and 
 his donkey pulled through it. Search is useless. Doubt- 
 less it has been butchered and sold on the market. Or 
 he wakes up in the night to find his yard wall pulled 
 down (and no one can well get along without his wall) ; 
 or he finds his meagre stock of brushwood (so laboriously 
 cut and gathered and carried on his head down the moun- 
 tainside) stolen ; or his crops lugged off, or his ox driven 
 away, or his straw burned. 
 
m 
 
SALT AND ITS SAVOUR 246 
 
 He refuses to make a contribution to the expenses of 
 the debasing peripatetic theatre, intimately linked with 
 the temple and its abominations. Its local appearance 
 has been arranged through the priest, who gets a rake-off 
 for his pains. The use of his tools in preparation for the 
 spectacle is ostentatiously demanded by his heathen 
 neighbours. Such a test case having in one instance con- 
 vinced the villagers of the acquired perverseness of their 
 neighbour, they seized the man refusing them, an intimate 
 friend of mine, bound his hands and hung him by his 
 arms to beams on the theatre platform opposite the vil- 
 lage temple; and there they made him a gazing-stock 
 and, taunting, said : "You say your God is better than 
 our gods within ! Now ask Him to make you come 
 down ! " 
 
 On the consistent and repeated refusal of two brothers 
 in another section of my field to pay that theatre tax, 
 their fellow- villagers decided between themselves (and 
 carried out the decision) to seize and divide among 
 themselves fourteen out of sixteen shares of land on the 
 mountainside that belonged to the brothers. On their 
 appeal to the magistrate, the seizure was confirmed as 
 justified. 
 
 In cases where Christians have preached to fellow- vil- 
 lagers they have suffered many kinds of violence. One 
 of our best preachers was run upon by a gang of village 
 bullies, who mauled him and hauled him around by his 
 queue, and pulled out some of his hair. Not far from 
 that village two Christians were selling Gospels and tracts, 
 as the law allows, when the head village-elder not only 
 imperiously ordered them to leave but kicked part of 
 their supply into the dust of the street, had the boys 
 throw some into the village pond, and gave away the re- 
 mainder to the crowd to be used for shoe-soles. One day 
 I was scheduled to arrive at a certain village ; the heathen 
 
246 CHINA FEOM WITHIN 
 
 there knew it, and in order to humiliate the one resident 
 Christian man they stole his barrow with which he was 
 to forward my stock of Bible portions, food box and bed- 
 ding. This vehicle for a peasant of North China is a 
 piece of property of considerable value and quite indis- 
 pensable. It never was found. In another village, an- 
 other Christianas saddle-mule, when it became known 
 that the animal was rented for missionary itineration, 
 disappeared in like mysterious manner. 
 
 How often have I received from harassed Christians 
 letters of this tenor : ** When our village learned that we 
 had planned to open a Christian school here, they seized 
 five acres of our land and four of our ponds. " Or this : 
 *' Village roughs found out that my son was carrying 
 money for our school-teacher, and they attacked him on 
 the road, stole the money and his big fur coat and hat 
 and girdle, and beat him nearly dead.'^ Or this : ^' I re- 
 fused to profane the Sabbath with them ; and on my re- 
 turn from the field last night they had broken the doors 
 and windows of my house, burned my goods and outraged 
 my wife.^^ 
 
 In one village a company of men, wild with New Yearns 
 excesses, and drunk with home-brewed intoxicants, went 
 to the homes of the three Christians of the village — hum- 
 ble, inoffensive men — seized and bound them, and nearly 
 ran them through with knives in vain attempts to terrify 
 them out of their confession. 
 
 One of the most appalling things that the itinerating 
 missionary ever sees is the enactment of the *'ma kiei^' 
 (the reviling of the street). Usually it is done by a 
 woman who, habitually cowed and dishonoured, has en- 
 dured abuse till her outraged womanhood rebels and 
 breaks like a whelming flood against a dam. Wild and 
 frenzied, she rushes out into the street, there, in the 
 presence of the neighbours, fast gathering for the specta- 
 
SALT AND ITS SAVOUR 247 
 
 cle, to relieve her mind in one awful typhoon of vitupera- 
 tion ; and, because heathenism has no gods worth cursing 
 by, she likens the object of her wrath to all the lower 
 owlers of creation, big and little, quadrupeds and vermin. 
 With her locks dishevelled, and tearing her clothes, her 
 arms waving in frantic energy, and beating her breast, 
 she reviles all the ghosts of her outrager's ancestors and 
 all his posterity to the nth generation. She curses every 
 home on the street, up one side and down the other — 
 until she falls frothing, often a physical wreck for life, or 
 permanently blind as a result, or with a blood vessel 
 broken. In her blind fury she has buried the village 
 under a lava-stream of malediction mountains deep. 
 
 I arrived late one Saturday night to worship over Sab- 
 bath with the only real Christian of that village. He was 
 a fine old man and an elder, mellowed by sorrow and 
 trial. A cunning scheme was worked up by the village 
 to humiliate him in the presence of ^*the foreign Shep- 
 herd." Newly dug peanuts were sunning on the thresh- 
 ing-floor of a next-door neighbour. A man sauntered 
 up and began to accuse the elder's wife, a heathen woman, 
 of stealing several peanuts off the floor. As he taunted 
 and vociferated, accomplices joined him, the din of shout- 
 ing and recrimination increased in fury, until the young 
 bucks had the old woman wild in uncontrolled and un- 
 controllable rage, performing *'ma kiei'' (reviling the 
 street). Her raving was perfectly awful to see and hear. 
 Before the climax of the spectacle was reached the whole 
 village apparently had assembled ; the narrow street was 
 jammed with an excited crowd, gesticulating and noisily 
 commenting on the spectacle, common enough, but inter- 
 esting now because of the foreigner. And as she collapsed 
 from sheer exhaustion and a broken blood-vessel, the gang 
 of heartless mischief-makers, leering, moved nearer her 
 house and shouted to the gray-bearded elder : ^^ This is 
 
248 CHINA FKOM WITHIN 
 
 the self-control and love of the ' er-kwei-tsi gia^ ! '* (second 
 degree devil's family). " This is the power of the Jesus 
 Doctrine ! '^ But the power of it they never knew. They 
 thought he was a coward, afraid to come out and become 
 a part of the lava flow of inflamed vocal filth. But inside 
 he was on his knees, and pouring out his soul to God, 
 agouiziug for strength to love them and show them a good 
 example. 
 
 Many members of the Catholic Church in China are 
 village roughs and bullies who had grudges to pay ; also 
 lawsuit promoters, who seek power and prestige before 
 the magistrate in pressing cases that priests of the Eoiiian 
 hierarchy are willing to back with all the might and 
 energy that European Governments are accustomed to 
 display in China in the interests of their nationals. Many 
 of the members are unregenerates who, appearing for ex- 
 amination before Protestant missionaries, were recom- 
 mended to more study ; and, in pique and umbrage at 
 what they termed "loss of face," in not being received 
 at once into church membership, hastily offered them- 
 selves to the priests for baptism. I have examined a 
 number who did not know who Mary is, or even who is 
 Jesus. But such were speedily baptized by the priest 
 and entered at once upon interesting careers of zeal for 
 the Church ; only their zeal took the form of maliciously 
 harassing and tormenting Protestant Christians. 
 
 Eepeatedly with clubs they have broken up our relig- 
 ious services ; once with guns, one of which was acci- 
 dentally discharged by a rowdy into the arm of a pal, 
 thereby causing the gang to accuse of attempted murder 
 a mild and innocent worshipper in that service. Six 
 months he was confined in prison before the truth of his 
 innocence leaked out. He was pitched on because he 
 was, relatively speaking, well-to-do ; and the yamen 
 creatures would be sure of blackmail for their trouble. 
 
SALT AND ITS SAVOUR 249 
 
 Where these bogus converts have dared to do so the policy 
 lias been to terrorize humble, inoffensive folk. For ex- 
 ample, a poor woman whose husband had died, and who 
 was childless, was the only Protestant Christian in a vil- 
 lage of one of our churches, where twenty families had 
 suddenly become Catholics in order to push a lawsuit suc- 
 cessfully against a rival clan. They threw all her chick- 
 ens into her well, and committed a series of like outrages 
 — petty to us, but great to her. In answer to her request 
 to know wherein she had offended them they wrote : 
 ** Nothing, but we want you to know that we are * li hai ' 
 (fierce), and you had better clear out ! " She did, leaving 
 her small property to her spoilers. In another village 
 soon after visited by me, a gang of Catholics had sought 
 to drive out a single Protestant family there, burning 
 its harvested wheat and house, and lighting fires under 
 its plow-ox. 
 
 The magistrate in a county near Tsingtau was in bond- 
 age of fear to foreign priests there. He did whatever 
 they demanded. They entered upon a systematic plan, 
 not unknown to some Governments in these ** enlight- 
 ened ^ ' days, to use this ofi&cial and their own rowdies in 
 order to frighten our Christians into recanting and join- 
 ing their ranks, or else move out of certain desirable vil- 
 lages, in which our Christians had for some years been 
 settled and thriving as a Church, before the Catholics 
 appeared. Our services were repeatedly broken up, the 
 leaders carried off to the yamen where they were impris- 
 oned and bambooed and otherwise repeatedly tortured 
 by the yamen henchmen for blackmail. 
 
 Well do these Christians know that in relation to their 
 neighbours it is often only through tribulation they enter 
 into the Kingdom of God. They endure, and without 
 repining. Take the case of Han Wu, cited by a mis- 
 sionary friend. Waylaid outside the village by his 
 
250 CHINA FEOM WITHIN 
 
 heathen neighbours, he was beaten until insensible and 
 left there to die. Kind Christian friends, hearing of the 
 outrage, gathered him up, and as they were tenderly lay- 
 ing him down on his brick bed, one of them asked : 
 ^^ Are you suffering much. Brother Han ? '' Faintly came 
 the response : " Nothing like my Lord suffered for me.^^ 
 
 For many years the officials have been powerful and 
 fierce enemies of Christianity in China. To the national 
 antipathy towards a strange religion coming in to usurp 
 the place of the old has been added some things of which 
 they knew more fully than the people — foreign aggres- 
 sions, the forcing of leases and concessions by Govern- 
 ments, and the political indiscretions of the Eoman Cath- 
 olic priests. They have usually felt that, in the language 
 of one official, '* Christians are rough necks, who need 
 shaving with the heavy razor '^ (that is, the headsman's 
 sword). Even Li Hung Chang could once say : " I hated 
 the foreign religion more violently than all other scourges 
 in the world ; and I prayed and hoped that not alone 
 would the Taipings be destroyed, but that earthquakes, 
 eruptions of mountains, and terrible fevers would make 
 the Christian nations without a man, a woman, or a 
 child.'' A great Viceroy wrote : " Christians are rats of 
 disease caught from the leprous missionaries of Canton, 
 and they would run into all the holes of the centre and 
 north, and spread their vile malady. The lingering 
 death of one thousand slices should be applied to all 
 those who have countenanced this foreign doctrine. If 
 my own arms were not so lame during this season from 
 rheumatism and other ailments of the blood, nothing 
 could please me better than to take a place as executioner 
 of the vermin." 
 
 Apart from the fact that Christianity was for them a 
 trouble breeder, it has seemed utterly absurd to the Con- 
 fucian Literati and officials of China. *' Christ crucified, 
 
SALT AND ITS SAVOUR 251 
 
 to Jews, stumbling-block ; to Gentiles, foolishness." As 
 Li Hung Chang put it : ^^ It is a part of the Christians* 
 teaching that their Heaven Father let His Son come to 
 earth and die for wicked people. Such teaching ! If 
 they would say that He came and died for the good 
 people, it would sound sensible, even if the rest of their 
 doctrines are too absurd for a man with brains to give a 
 serious thought to. If the gods are good and want men 
 to be good, will they allow members of their families to 
 be killed like criminals for the sake of criminals ? It has 
 been long intimated that most of these foreign devils are 
 crazy, and I am beginning to believe it. But it is strange 
 that they should be able to draw any of our people away 
 from the old religion and old philosophy. I cannot 
 understand how it is, but I am sure this crazy fad will 
 die out.'* The ofificials have had numberless methods 
 and opportunities to try in the dark, and without fear 
 of exposure, to make it **die out." The authority of 
 each magistrate in his district is practically absolute; 
 and few Christians who might be brought before him 
 would think oi being so rash as to oppose his will. 
 
 Often the persecution by fellow- villagers is intimately 
 bound up with that by officials, because the latter can so 
 powerfully abet and crushingly complete (if they be so 
 minded) what neighbours have begun. For instance, in 
 the case of refusal on the part of one of our Christians 
 to pay a share or subscription towards a temple show — a 
 subscription exorbitant and arbitrarily assessed him, but 
 which he would have repudiated even had it been smaller 
 — the village elders sued him on the charge of impiety 
 and sacrilege before the magistrate, who made him pay 
 heavily, and had his feet bambooed for good measure. 
 
 These unfair discriminations extend from the most 
 trivial affairs to the most serious. The young son of one 
 of our Christians cut grass over the boundary line of his 
 
252 CHINA FEOM WITHIN 
 
 neighbour's patch — by accident, he claimed. The regu- 
 lar fine for such transgressing was five tiao, but the village 
 elders fined him ten. Immediately after two heathen 
 were caught in the same misdemeanour and they were not 
 fined at all. In one village, a heathen stole twenty-five 
 tiao from a Christian. The amount of money, the time 
 and the place and culprit were all known to the official ', 
 but because the robbed was a Christian, the magistrate 
 would do nothing for him. In another village we had two 
 families wretchedly poor, whose men needed all their 
 time to earn food. The roads were kept up well there, 
 because in German territory. The Chinese road-master 
 so allotted the work as to make the heads of these pov- 
 erty-stricken families work on the roads, each man more 
 than six months. By an equitable arrangement their 
 share of road-tax, worked out in time, would have been 
 a couple of weeks. They were made to do the portion of 
 several heathen families — who escaped with no service 
 and were not required to pay for substitutes. In a cer- 
 tain village some of our members started a Christian 
 school ; the magistrate himself would not start an official 
 school in that place, yet fined and punished them because 
 they started a better one than his would have been. 
 
 More serious cases are frequently told. Eoughs of a 
 certain village organized themselves into a '^Hei Yie 
 Hui'' (Black Night Society). Disfiguring and breaking 
 the smaller idols of the village temple, they strewed 
 them, armless and headless, around the temple yard; 
 also threw the larger ones on their noses in the dirt. 
 They then went to the county official and accused a 
 fellow-villager, a Christian, of being guilty of the sacri- 
 lege. Whereupon the Christian who — mark it — was well- 
 to-do, was ordered to pay all costs of the lawsuit, and a 
 fine of five hundred tiao (which went into the mandarin's 
 pocket). He was also ordered to repair the temple, and 
 
SALT AND ITS SAVOUR 253 
 
 bear tlie expenses of village theatricals (that is, of briug- 
 iug a troop of travelling players), thus adding insult to 
 injury. 
 
 This sort of procedure is called by the Christians 
 ^* coughing up the squeeze,'^ also ** rubbing in the salt,' ^ 
 the latter characterization in reference to an ancient 
 custom, still extant in the yamen, of not only bambooing 
 an innocent man till he pays blackmail, but in addition 
 rubbing salt into the raw and lacerated flesh. 
 
 Incidentally the officials understand perfectly their 
 legal right to deal with Chinese subjects as they please, 
 which right they usually exercise like despots, and from 
 their decision there is little hope of successful appeal. 
 Since the establishment of the Republic the Chinese are 
 instructed no longer to "ka tou '^ before a magistrate 
 (that is, knock the forehead three times on the ground to 
 him). But what frequently happens may be known from 
 the following. 
 
 On the 27th of October, 1913, one of our Christians was 
 hauled on a false charge before a county official, who 
 ordered him to *• ka tou." He refused. And as he stood 
 and bowed, he said: ^'I prostrate myself only to Jesus 
 Christ, my heavenly Master ! '' For his temerity he was 
 imprisoned and bambooed four hundred strokes till his 
 flesh was pulp. Also the magistrates can now with better 
 face than formerly resent interference from foreigners. 
 Such interference often results in more pressure brought 
 to bear upon the persecuted one and those close to him. 
 Realizing the unwisdom of meddling in yamen processes, 
 the policy long ago adopted by Protestant missionaries — 
 hard as it has sometimes seemed to the Christians — has 
 been that of concentrating their efforts on praying with 
 and for the unfortunates, and on instructing them in the 
 Scripture attitude, and in exhorting them to endure 
 hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. 
 
254: CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 Duriug the Revolution the situation in Shantung Prov- 
 ince was peculiar. Fourteen or fifteen of the Provinces 
 to the south were practically solid for the Eepublic. 
 Shantung Province and those to the northward were 
 filled with Yuan Shi Kai's German -trained Manchu Reg- 
 ulars and other troops loyal to him. Not only was there 
 little chance for the Republicans to gain much foothold 
 in Shantung, but the Manchu troops in small bands in- 
 fested the countrysides, dominating the villages and 
 market towns. The soldiers, in these small bands, re- 
 moved from the eyes of their superiors, raided and looted, 
 and burned, and raped, without let or hindrance. And 
 the Christians were often the especial objects of their 
 rapacious brutality. They suffered in silence, as there 
 was no way to make their voice heard even had the 
 authorities been williug to listen to such *^ trivial" mat- 
 ters. 
 
 A certain ^* general '^ with his troops was quartered in 
 one of the walled cities of our field. I visited him and 
 politely called his attention to the fact that even our 
 young schoolboys, assuredly innocent of crime, were, at 
 that moment, contrary to a proclamation guaranteeing 
 religious liberty, manacled in a low, filthy den inside the 
 yamen. He smiled incredulity. I knew they were there, 
 for I had earlier visited them in their prison. Some of 
 their mothers were nearly distracted with grief, sick from 
 fear for their boys. His reply was : *' We are after only 
 the Hu fei^ (robbers)!" And all outrages, purposely 
 and definitely committed against Christians, as Chris- 
 tians, were explained away on that ground. 
 
 One of our country leaders was known to have money. 
 He with his aged parents was taken before a military 
 official, and made to face this terrific ordeal: the par- 
 ents were threatened with death unless he recanted. 
 Chinese heathen opinion would expect him to renounce 
 
SALT AND ITS SAVOUR 255 
 
 any profession lie had ever made, as the condition of 
 shielding them, on pain of being looked upon as their 
 murderer. "What would you have done ? The man said 
 he remembered: **The servant is not greater than his 
 Lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also perse- 
 cute you." He prayed j and money — not recanting — 
 purchased relief. 
 
 It was a sight during those days in East Shantung to 
 see Christians brought into and through a town tied to 
 the tails of horses ; to see a band of troopers dash up to 
 a railway station, and on signal enter the train and haul 
 out a man and execute him on the spot ; to see headless 
 trunks hanging outside city gates, and the heads in the 
 moats nosed around by starving curs. The same kind of 
 men scourged our Lord and mocked Him on the Cross 
 and parted His vestments. 
 
 The killing of native Christians was much hushed up ; 
 but in December, 1913, several provincial Governments 
 proposed to make inquiries into cases where Christians 
 had been killed during the Revolution, ''with the in- 
 tention" — mark it — ''to compensate relatives of those 
 who were killed owing to their adoption of Christianity." 
 
 Those who read the vernacular papers in China, or are 
 in touch with the foreign journals, cannot fail to be im- 
 pressed with the condition of chronic anarchy and terror- 
 ism due to organized bands of bandits that obtains ex- 
 tensively in some section or another all the time in 
 China. The names of many of these societies and bands 
 are significant — names like "Black Tiger Society" or 
 "Strong Ox Society," suggesting their object as being to 
 oppose Western learning and new methods (which are 
 rendering the Classics, their use and teachings, obsolete) 
 and to oppose Christianity. To this end they make a 
 specialty of harrying and persecuting Christians. Many 
 a countryside has during the last year been terrorized by 
 
256 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 such proclamations as the following, posted June 24, 1913. 
 It sounds like a second cousin to the Ku-Klux Klan or 
 the Black Hand. 
 
 ^^ Black Tiger Faithful Righteousness Society y Proc- 
 lamation of Ng 
 
 " Because of the Government's persecution of the people 
 this society has twice during the last year fought agaiust 
 Sienyu and has won, but there is a class of people who 
 are destroying the idols and the ancestors and therefore 
 in constant opposition to our society. Our society has 
 now collected a large number of men and will first des- 
 troy this class of people and then will cross swords with 
 the Government. 
 
 **Be it known to all people in this region, that if I 
 make a night attack anywhere, and you separate your- 
 selves from this class of people, you will escape all in- 
 jury. Stand aside and watch. If you do not do this, it 
 will be difQcult to distinguish one from other, and all 
 will be destroyed. I therefore issue this proclamation 
 that all may know. 
 
 ** Proclamation issued this day of the 5th month of the 
 5th year of Hsuan Tung." 
 
 There is no doubt whom he has in mind when he 
 refers to "a class of people who are destroying the 
 idols," etc. This bandit leader does not mean that the 
 Christians are literally going about breaking up idols, 
 for they have not done that. He means that the doc- 
 trines preached by them are breaking down faith in the 
 idols and in ancestor worship. This proclamation is 
 illustrative of the present program of many rebel socie- 
 ties. 
 
 There seems everywhere to be understandings between 
 brigands and soldiers ; for repeatedly, when soldiers have 
 returned from harmlessly raiding these lawless bands, 
 the robbers have come out of their retreat and made a 
 specialty of attacking Christians. Many cases could be 
 
SALT AND ITS SAVOUR 257 
 
 cited from the recent depreciations of the bands of White 
 ^yolf, ranging through several Provinces. On this subject 
 there is an embarrassing riches of illustration. Take this : 
 " On one occasion the rebels, who were in hiding not far 
 away, seeing the soldiers leaving, came out and began to 
 attack the Christians. They seized two women and a 
 child. They also caught and severely beat a man. The 
 home of these four persons was robbed and the crops in 
 their fields and orchards were entirely destroyed. The 
 two women and the child succeeded in escaping from 
 their captors and reached safety. A few days later the 
 homes of seven men who are members of the church were 
 also raided and plundered of all that they possessed. 
 Their orchards, fields, and gardens were destroyed, they 
 themselves with their families barely escaping." In 
 other places, the robbers not only took all the supplies 
 of the Christians, live stock and grain, and not only 
 killed women and children, but took Christian men, and 
 put them in the front line of fights to draw the fire of 
 soldiers ; if these conscripted, unwilling fighters tried to 
 flee, they were shot by their captors. These men would 
 rather release Barabbas than a Christian. 
 
 It does not sound so terrible when these cases of perse- 
 cution in many villages are taken in the mass, as it does 
 to look at a particular concrete instance. Here is one in 
 these piping times of peace in China. One might sup- 
 pose it occurred during 1900. It sounds as if it came out 
 of the Neronian persecution. 
 
 One night a gang broke over the wall of this particular 
 Christian's yard, stormed the door of his hut, seized him 
 and his wife, tied hands and wrists, and, stringing them 
 on poles, carried them to the village temple, dropped 
 them on the floor and gave them permission ^to recant. 
 A cross was drawn in the dirt and they were ordered to 
 spit on it. Refusing, they were taken to the bank of the 
 
258 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 precipitous village poud and given one more chance to 
 recant. For answer they began to sing: **My Jesus, I 
 love Thee, I know Thou art mine ! " *'Pei ! " shouted 
 the leader. That word gathers into itself all that the 
 user can conceive of disdain, contempt, impatience, 
 anger and hate — hurling it as a bomb of malediction 
 against the person for whom it is designed. * * Push them 
 in ! " he shouted. With ankles bound and bleeding, they, 
 helpless, rolled down and in, under the water, — for the 
 sake of The Name. 
 
 But there is a persecution that in extent and sustained 
 intensity exceeds all the foregoing : It is the hidden 
 horror of heathenism. It is called by the Christians 
 ** Burying alive." It refers to the immurement of Chris- 
 tian daughters-in-law in the families of heathen mothers- 
 in-law. 
 
 A baby girl, while her parents were yet heathen, has 
 been betrothed into a heathen family. In the course of 
 time her parents become Christians ; she is given a school 
 education, and grows up, trained and winsome, with the 
 laudable ambition to make her own home a real Christian 
 home. But her parents dare not break the contract, and 
 she is tied for life to a peasant boor — uneducated, un- 
 sympathetic, coarse and brutal. He has never seen her, 
 possibly is considerably younger, perhaps at marriage is 
 still a boy. It is a living death — the steady, relentless 
 pressure, glacier-like, of nagging and contumely. The 
 young wife is supposed to have swallo\<^ed a "magic 
 Jesus-Doctrine pill," and the only way to get it out is 
 to pound it out. This the family set themselves, through 
 drudgery, abuse and violence, to do. Often all the mem- 
 bers have a hand in the process, even the younger female 
 relatives. 
 
 A woman, converted in one of the meetings I was con- 
 ducting, confessed there with agonized weeping that for 
 
SALT AND ITS SAVOUR 259 
 
 ten years slie had made life as nearly unendurable as 
 possible for her oldest sister-iu-law, who was one of our 
 best Bible women. A charming young woman in one of 
 our churches, — an unusually good teacher she was, — on 
 her marriage, was repeatedly threatened by her husband. 
 Daily brandishing a knife before her, he daily vowed that 
 he would cut out her heart if she did not recant. Finally, 
 because of her inflexible determination, he divorced her — 
 an unspeakably disgraceful and helpless condition for a 
 woman in China. Another girl in nobility of spirit 
 silently endured the curses and scorn of her adopted 
 family. She came at night, when her father-in-law 
 would not know it, to be strengthened by her lady mis- 
 sionary friend in her purpose to serve Christ. And at 
 the end of the fifth year she was still holding out against 
 the most violent opposition and persecution. When 
 asked the secret of her strength she quoted God's promise 
 to Joshua : ^^ I will be with thee ; I will not fail thee ! " 
 Humanly speaking, it would seem as if the lamp of faith 
 of these girls— unbefriended, abused, hated, — could only 
 feebly flicker, to be ultimately snuffed out. Few other 
 situations so remind one of a doomed man, caught in 
 quicksand and inexorably sucked down, slowly sinking 
 out of sight — and yet these rarely go under. 
 
 On one of my recent country trips I made a dtour to 
 go up a lonely mountain valley, in order to see a woman 
 who was baptized before I went to China. Never since 
 that baptismal Communion had she been allowed to meet 
 with Christians. Now she had somehow got through to 
 us a request to come. Her mother-in-law had with special 
 viciousness abused and tormented her. And just before 
 our arrival, in rage at her desire for a Christian service, 
 the husband had beaten her with particular severity. 
 She longed for the Communion, and on her kang partook 
 of it. Later she died. She had endured as seeing Him 
 
260 CHINA FKOM WITHIN 
 
 who is invisible. And as her soul took its flight, she 
 murmured the words long before taught her, and to her 
 unspeakably precious : ** To him that hath no might He 
 increaseth strength. '^ 
 
 These are some of the daily tragedies among unknown, 
 humble, Chinese folk in witnessing for Christ, whom 
 having not seen they love. 
 
 Many illustrations of the saving savour of the salt 
 could be givea from the lives of Chinese of world-wide 
 reputation, notable for unusual achievements as men and 
 as Christians. But I have chosen to speak of the common 
 folks, out of the mud villages — unknown to fame and with 
 no way to reach the public ear ; and for the reason of the 
 marked effect that their witness makes upon those around 
 them. Even the officials, though persecuting, are favour- 
 ably impressed. We know of schoolboys who, alone out 
 of many schools in their city, when parading and ordered 
 to enter the temple of Confucius and, alone with their 
 Government school-fellows, worship the image of the 
 Sage, refused to obey the magistrate's command. They 
 expected to be bambooed for their courage. Instead 
 they were presented by the magistrate whom they defied 
 with a silken banner in tribute to their courageous ad- 
 herence to convictions. 
 
 We have had Christians outraged, through the designs 
 of wicked men, and humiliated before their neighbours ; 
 yet through prayer receiving justice in a marvellous way 
 from the officials. Mordecai-like, power unexpectedly 
 has swung their way, and then they have pleaded for 
 mercy for rascal persecutors, — for the remission of their 
 fines, and the lightening of their punishment ; and their 
 attitude of Christian charity has opened up villages and 
 market towns to the Gospel. 
 
 To endure persecution for righteousness' sake and to 
 reward good for evil is, as a principle and as a phenome- 
 
SALT AND ITS SAVOUR 261 
 
 non, strange to heathenism. And while the heathen ut- 
 terly fail to understand the reason for this attitude, they 
 yet respect it. It was this attitude that, during Boxer 
 days, caused tormentors to cut out the hearts of martyrs 
 in order to look for the secret of martyr-courage. It is 
 that which to-day has caused officials to say to our Chris- 
 tians : ** We know no Gods who are worth suffering for ! " 
 "Ah,^* but our Christians have answered, "we know 
 One for whom we would gladly die ! " 
 
 Because of the gulf fixed between Christianity and 
 heathenism, and of the apparent impossibility of a man 
 escaping from the down-drag of his hateful surroundings, 
 it is wonderful to see a soul break through the environ- 
 ment that coffins it, and become a new creation in Christ. 
 But there is another miraculous work of the Holy Ghost in 
 a man equally wonderful to see ; and that is the making 
 of his soul to bourgeon out in richness of life in Christ, 
 and the taking on of-— rather, the growing into — the 
 graces of the Spirit, through trial and persecution. 
 
 One member of my parish, of unusually keen mind, 
 was, before conversion, a gambler and medicine fakir 
 — the latter just because he had what is called, in Chi- 
 nese as well as in English, " the gift of gab.'* He had a 
 marvellous faculty of persuading people to buy his wares, 
 and had talked down many a turbulent crowd at many a 
 heathen fair and festival. He was the youngest of three 
 brothers, and the whole of his clan and village were 
 against him. But his intensity of conviction, his strong 
 crying to God with tears, arrayed his family, one by one, 
 on the side of the Lord. I received them all into the 
 church except his second brother, a man of strong per- 
 sonality who used such physical violence on the family, 
 because of their forsaking the old ways, that all were in 
 terror of him. With them I worshipped repeatedly in a 
 donkey and ox stable. Blinded with rage against the 
 
262 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 Jesus Doctrine, this man had vowed that if they dared 
 meet for worship in the house he would kill them. At 
 last I baptized that ^4i hai '' (fierce) brother, subdued of 
 the Spirit. I also had the joy of seeing the day when the 
 villagers welcomed me gladly ; when they turned over 
 the village temple to us for a Christian school. But the 
 joy was to see the development of that young Cornelius. 
 He had learned a truth that had transformed a life : "If 
 ye ask anything according to His will. He heareth." 
 
 I have in mind a young mountain- village elder, timid, 
 unlearned in books, lacking initiative, and fearful of the 
 opinion of others. Incidentally, he was the only Chris- 
 tian of his clan j incidentally, his prayers prevailed over 
 their persecution, winning some forty of them to the 
 Gospel 5 incidentally, though desperately poor, as verita- 
 ble serfs of the priests whose pine branches on their 
 mountain property these peasants gathered for the merest 
 pittance, they built a church and had their own school. 
 But the point is his own wonderful development in Christ. 
 In the teeth of appalling opposition and discouragement, 
 this man made a series of decisions that for moral hero- 
 ism puts him in the company of God's choice spirits. 
 They culminated in his taking his life in his hand to 
 discipline members of his church who, under horrible 
 circumstances, had had a criminal part in the murder of 
 a fellow-member. And in four short years he has, by a 
 Joshua-like fidelity to God, become one of the pillars of 
 the Church throughout all our region. 
 
 One characteristic of the Chinese, that is to say, adapta- 
 bility, has been much lauded. But perhaps this is only 
 one phase of their supreme trait, the power to persist. 
 And when they function religiously, one is sure to see 
 this same trait crop out, despite the fact that in the 
 East, and particularly in China, the clan quite overshad- 
 ows the individual The real Chinese Christian hangs on 
 
SALT AKD ITS SAVOUR 263 
 
 amid the most discouragiug circumstauces — alone. He is 
 spiritual kiu of Noah, who built aud voyaged alone; 
 of Abraham, who wandered and worshipped alone ; of 
 Daniel, who dined and prayed alone; of Elijah, who 
 prophesied and wept alone ; of Jesus, who loved and 
 died alone. It is this power to endure — this steadfast- 
 ness in the Faith — that is so powerful a factor in winning 
 the converts in China. 
 
 How this works out is well illustrated in the case of 
 one of the Christian women of our country field. A 
 young Christian bride, she was immured in a heathen 
 family. Her husband soon informed her that he was 
 going to whip her once a week till she renounced ** for- 
 eign doctrines.'' Each week as he lashed her she wept 
 for pain, and prayed in an agony of spirit for him. At 
 the end of two years he approached her, to inflict the 
 weekly beating, and in a terrible voice announced : ^*Now 
 this time, if you don't recant, I'm going to kill you!" 
 With ferocity he rained the blows ; then suddenly — 
 threw down his whip, and laughed — a strange, hard 
 laugh, exclaiming: "It's no use; I've been trying all 
 these weeks to make you *seug ta ki' " (literally, " beget 
 a great anger"), "just as the other women, whom I 
 know, do. But I can't make you!" And, in that in- 
 stant, the Holy Spirit, honouring her faithful witness 
 and real prayer-life, convicted and converted him; and 
 he and his wife, helped by the Holy Spirit, began forth- 
 with the winning of their clan to Jesus Christ. The 
 source of her endurance, I later learned, was Psalm 
 50 : 15, repeated and prayed many times, claimiug the 
 faithfulness of God : "I will deliver thee ; and thou shalt 
 glorify me." 
 
 The Chinese village Christians know well that "through 
 peril, toil and pain we climb the steep ascent to Heaven." 
 And they also know, as did Raymond Lull, that "he who 
 
264: CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 loves not, lives not ; and he that lives by The Life can- 
 not die.'^ Therefore they do not hesitate to put the de- 
 sirableness of Christ literally before father or mother or 
 wife or children or houses or lands ; gladly deuyiug self, 
 and taking up the Cross daily, and following Him. 
 
 And they are no boasters. Well has Dr. W. M. Hayes 
 spoken the feeling and conviction of many a veteran mis- 
 sionary, when, out of long experience, he said of Chinese 
 Christians, such as these: *' Humble minded, I have 
 never yet heard one who endured these hardships boast 
 of his trials, but I have seen the tears quietly steal down 
 the faces of strong men when a tale of persecution has 
 been told on the floor of Presbytery, men realizing that 
 they themselves, their wives, or their children any time 
 might be called on to endure similar trials. When I 
 think of what numbers of them have endured and of the 
 Christian sanctity of some of our Chinese leaders, un- 
 worthy as I am, I can only pray that 
 
 " * Numbered with them may I be, 
 Here and in eternity.* " 
 
VIII 
 
 «It Shall Not Come Nigh Thee" 
 A Study of the Power of Prayer 
 
YIII 
 *' IT SHALL NOT COME NIGH THEE " 
 
 IN a glad aud busy year of furlough one thing dis- 
 tressed me — hearing ministers deny that God pow- 
 erfully intervenes in behalf of His people. This 
 lecture on the Prayer of Faith is a humble testimony 
 from our Station Parish to the fact that God can and 
 does hear and answer the prayers of those who are His 
 for deliverance in crises. 
 
 It is a moving spectacle, the spectacle of a Christ- 
 dominated village in the midst of a sea of heathenism. 
 Whoever has happened upon Petra, to the east of Pales- 
 tine, on the edge of the Arabian Desert, that city of 
 classic beauty, magnificent in its ruins, is filled with 
 wonder and amazement. The sandy wastes about it only 
 render it the more impressive. It is with some such sen- 
 sation that the thoughtful Christian worker from the 
 West, who knows something of the horrors and repul- 
 siveness of the heathenism of the East, views the heroic 
 witness of a few Christian families and the miraculous 
 experiences that happen to the village and vicinity domi- 
 nated by them, as the result of that witness. Such a 
 clan is the Ting Clan, and such a village is their village, 
 Da Hsiu Tan of our station. The heathen cannot account 
 for the happenings therein ; and to them that village is 
 known as " the village with a charmed life." The fol- 
 lowing narratives reveal the mercy of God for the sake 
 of the righteous few ; His hearing their prayer in crises 
 for the welfare of themselves and of the many unrepentant 
 wicked in their midst. 
 
 267 
 
268 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 And first, the story of a holocaust of Christiaus— al 
 most. And how the flames were quenched. 
 
 I had walked over to ** the village of the charmed life" 
 to see one of our Christiaus who was sick there — a young 
 graduate of our Union Medical School. In patriotic 
 energy he had nearly blown out his eyes experimenting 
 in the manufacture of bombs to use against the " Manchu 
 Tyrants.'^ While there I was the guest of his uncle, a 
 dear friend of mine, the leading man of the village^and 
 elder of the local church. Ting Li Sai, the head of the 
 ting Clan. Through his efforts and example many of 
 its members have come into the church. Few men do I 
 love or honour more. He is a fine type of the Chinese 
 gentry; elegant in dress, grave in bearing, but with a 
 keen sense of humour j his face and life gracious and 
 winsome. He has the urbanity of manner and gracious 
 politeness of the ideal Chinese gentleman, along with the 
 attainments of a scholar in Western learning. After 
 being long a college professor, he has repeatedly declined 
 flattering offers of Government positions of honour and 
 relatively high salary, in order to devote his time and 
 energy, without pay, to organizing and managing and 
 teaching in our Girls' High School located in his village. 
 
 He is the kind of man in whose presence beggars, be- 
 lieved to be demon -possessed, who rave in helplessness 
 before and threaten the heathen from whom they ask 
 bread, at once calm down, saying that the demons in 
 them have no power before him to render them violent 
 and tear them, because this is a ''friend of the Jesus 
 God," in whom His spirit is and before whom the devils 
 torturing them quail. 
 
 As we were at dinner Elder Ting remarked : ''These 
 revolutionary times are not as dangerous for us here as 
 were the Boxer days." And he added with a humorous 
 twinkle, "You see the German troops are known now. 
 
"IT SHALL NOT COME NIGH THEE" 269 
 
 lu those days they were not." This put him in remi- 
 nisceut mood, and over our bowls and chop-sticks and tea 
 in his private recei)tion room and study he told me a tale 
 that is worthy of a place in church history. 
 
 The human factors of that miracle- story were an old 
 flint-lock musket, a troop of German soldiers, Chinese 
 Christians doomed to a fiery furnace by infuriated Boxers 
 — and prayer. 
 
 Be it remembered that Elder Ting's village is heathen, 
 but his own clan there resident is Christian. Though its 
 members have the brains and education, the acres and the 
 money, the push and the grace, they are but a handful. 
 Perhaps because of this fact they, during the early days 
 of the Boxer movement, were marked by mean and en- 
 vious men for destruction. There was no other village 
 safer than their own to which they could flee, as every 
 Christian was well known, and all the countryside was 
 alive with Boxers. Everybody, apparently, had become 
 either a '^Big-Knife Society" brave on the war-path, or 
 an active, spying sympathizer. 
 
 Under such circumstances it seemed necessary to the 
 German Government, in the interest of law and order in 
 and near their ^^Gebiet," to send out a punitive expedi- 
 tion into the surrounding villages. On the approach of 
 the troops to this place, the Boxer warriors, rendered 
 fatuously reckless by their incantations and magic aprons 
 (which were supposed to render them bullet-proof), 
 mounted the dilapidated village mud wall to annihilate 
 the ^* Black-bearded Barbarians." Their weapons of of- 
 fense were bows and arrows, spears and clubs and swords, 
 and some primeval muskets. 
 
 When but a few rods from the wall the German captain, 
 who understood some Chinese, heard the command given 
 to fire. Instantly he ordered his men to lie flat on the 
 ground in position for sharpshooting. Just as they 
 
270 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 dropped, the venerable guns on the wall, accompanied by 
 the clatter of a choice miscellany of mediaeval weapons, 
 banged harmlessly at them. The Boxers, seeing the row 
 of soldiers prone and motionless, thought their foes killed 
 to a man. With the temerity of *' know nothing, fear 
 nothing," they forthwith sprang to their feet, capering 
 about in wild jubilation at the destruction of the ''for- 
 eign devils." 
 
 It was one of those errors of heathen superstition— ir- 
 remediable. Their bodies, silhouetted against the sky, 
 were perfect targets for a much- practiced soldiery. Every 
 form that appeared above the parapet fell dead or 
 wounded. Survivors and *'pals" — robbers and thieves 
 all — were captured and held for official public execution. 
 And the heathen were disgraced by seeing the idols in 
 which they and the Boxer defenders trusted hauled out of 
 the temple, buried in the temple yard/ and flung into the 
 village pond — " face" lost beyond recovery. 
 
 But that was the beginning of trouble for the Chris- 
 tians. Boxer avengers sprang up like armed men from 
 Jason's sowing. The secret edict went forth : "The sec- 
 ond degree devils " (the heathen designation for Chinese 
 Christians, the missionaries being "first degree") "must 
 all die, and their church and houses be burned and their 
 land divided up." So one black night, when all was pre- 
 pared, a band of men fit for black deeds crept forth to 
 wreak vengeance upon the little band of faithful and ap- 
 parently doomed followers of Him whom they traduced 
 in posters, representing a pig on a cross. 
 
 Suddenly out of the darkness the flames of the burning 
 house of God — the largest in our field and built by the 
 Christians themselves — began to creep and crackle and 
 curl themselves sliyward, as if flaunting defiance to the 
 God whom they ignorantly hated. The Christians hastily 
 left their houses and fled to the walled yard of their leader, 
 
"IT SHALL :N0T COME NIGH THEE" 271 
 
 iny host, Elder Ting. It was death for any Christian to 
 appear, and they knew it. So they all gathered together 
 inside the flimsy barred gate of wood — and prayed. Out- 
 side, in the lurid glare of the fire-crumbling church, fig- 
 ures more demoniac than human danced in a frenzy of 
 Satanic glee. Confident that the innocent victims upon 
 whom they expected soon to wreak their vengeance were 
 inescapably theirs, one gang of wretches lingered and 
 gloated over the charred ruins. Another, like a band of 
 Apaches surrounding an emigrant wagon, ringed in the 
 devoted company ; and, having howled and reviled them 
 to their heart's content, proceeded to business. 
 
 At a given signal kerosene, as by magic, was produced 
 from somewhere — there were not lacking fellow- villagers 
 zealous to abet the raiders from outside — and simul- 
 taneously it was applied before each Christian door. The 
 doors and the thatched hoods leading into each yard were 
 as dry as tinder. And what a pretty blaze the houses in- 
 side would make, covered as they were with sun- burned 
 straw. These deserters of the ancestral deities, these fol- 
 lowers of the hated foreigners, forsooth, would be roasted 
 in their homes like rats in a hole ! 
 
 The flames had begun to lick the door-lintels when 
 something happened. Indeed, something had already 
 happened. There was, as has been said, no sense in try- 
 ing to flee — the country was alive with Boxers on the 
 still -hunt for Christians, immediate producing cause of the 
 foreign invasion, as the Boxers maliciously asseverated j 
 neither was there hope in armed resistance. So the be- 
 lievers locked inside the elder's yard, like those in the 
 fiery furnace, prayed — prayed desperately. Some knew 
 the promise of God through Isaiah, and they pleaded it : 
 '* When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be 
 burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee ; for I 
 am the Lord thy God, the Holy One, thy Saviour ! " 
 
272 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 As they prayed, one of the clan felt irresistibly drawn 
 to take down and fire an old-fashioned weapon, such as 
 the better-to-do keep on hand for shooting into the air as 
 evening approaches, to warn thieves that a gun is inside. 
 What overt act could he commit to put them in more 
 fearful straits ? So he quickly poked the muzzle over the 
 wall. Outside, a jeering, taunting mob of enemies whose 
 faces were lit up by flames of their own kindling. He 
 pulled at a venture and fired into the darkness. 
 
 The student of campaigns of armies needs no corrobora- 
 tion from God's Word to understand what could happen. 
 In view of the facts of secular as well as sacred history, it 
 is not difficult to conceive how the Almighty can use a 
 very little thing to ** panic" a body of men — even such 
 harmless utensils as lamps and pitchers. The bullet that 
 was aimed at a venture by the hard-pressed Christian had 
 struck the invulnerable Boxer chief, even the one pano- 
 plied in an apron of magic characters. He reeled. Fol- 
 lowers leaped to him. But the man was dead — shot 
 through the heart. The braves were too scared to use 
 their weapons. Instantly through their minds there 
 flashed a thought that froze their blood : * ^ Horrors ! There 
 must be German soldiers inside. Who can forget them ? 
 Sharpshooters ! Who knows how many ? These devils 
 of the second rank have cunningly concealed them there ! 
 Treachery ! No villager could shoot like that ! We are 
 all dead men !'^ 
 
 But the thought that at first numbed their limbs now 
 unlimbered them. Not even waiting to rescue their 
 bleeding fellow, they went pell-mell down the narrow, 
 dirty streets, shadowy now with new terrors. Their gait 
 increased. They *'hit it up'' to a dead jump. Who 
 knew but that the entire German army was after them I 
 None stopped to investigate. 
 
 The flames were soon extinguished. The Boxers came 
 
"IT SHALL NOT COME NIGH THEE" 273 
 
 not again. And from that day no man dared touch 
 them. And thereafter, throughout the days of fierce 
 alarums and fiercer deeds, the Christiaus of the '' village 
 of the charmed life^' rested in a security and a peace that 
 was the marvel of all. 
 
 And read the story of the plague : how prayer defeated 
 the death-stalker. 
 
 Again, a few years later, it was winter, and there was 
 a cry going up all over North China : ** The Christian's 
 God protects from the plague ! " In the presence of the 
 appallingly long lines of corpses of non-Christians, that 
 cry was impressive. In some places the dead were un- 
 buried because the ground was too hard to dig ; in others, 
 because money could not hire people to approach the 
 contamination ; in others, because the coffin material had 
 long since been exhausted ; and otherwhere, because fuel 
 failed for these awful holocausts. 
 
 In the homeland one used to hear, without understand- 
 ing its meaning, the phrase: ^* Avoid it as you would 
 the plague ! " In China one understands. " The Black 
 Death" or "Pneumonic Plague'' attacks its victims 
 with something of the sudden ferocity of the man-eater. 
 It tears out his lungs. In two or three days the stricken 
 one, spitting blood, dies in awful agony. No known 
 remedy. Disease one hundred per cent, fatal. Can catch 
 anybody. Terror reigned among the heathen. 
 
 Its ravages were severest in Manchuria, where some of 
 the greatest pentecostal experiences of recent years have 
 blessed the Church. Alarmed by the progress of Chris- 
 tianity, officials and gentry and priests had there banded 
 themselves together in the aggressive '' Wu Shen Huei" 
 (No-God Society), to fight Christianity to the bitter end. 
 And the hand of the Almighty was heavy upon them. 
 Russia and Japan were threatening to step in and clean 
 up thiugs, their ostensible reason being rows of plague 
 
274 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 corpses a mile long — not rumour, but consular reports. 
 And the Christians were not among the dead ! Small 
 wonder the heathen in fear and amaze remarked : ^ ' Che 
 si ke da hsi ki di sir " (" This is a portent "). And they 
 began to question if the vast sums spent on their hideous 
 idols of mud and the temples housing them were worth 
 while. 
 
 In those days the Ninety-first Psalm was precious to 
 Christians : 
 
 ** Because thou hast made the Most High thy habitation, 
 There shall no evil befall thee, 
 Neither shall any plague come nigh thy tent. 
 For He shall give His angels charge over thee, 
 To keep thee in all thy ways." 
 
 Alas ! The heathen did not realize that many present, 
 concomitant blessings follow in the train of accepting 
 Christ— among them, that He brushes superstition out of 
 their hearts ; drives away the demon of distrust and 
 doubt of the good intentions of all foreigners ; and that 
 He creates a willingness to cooperate with intelligent and 
 skilled and sympathetic physicians. And the greater 
 pity was that as heathen they could not know these 
 things. 
 
 While the heathen were sowing the lie that the " foreign 
 devils ^ ' had poisoned the wells — therefore this slowly but 
 relentlessly creeping death — the Christians were studying 
 our plague posters, burning garbage, cleaning up yards 
 and rooms. While heathen roughs were industriously 
 striving to stir up riots (because of the inconvenience of 
 an effective quarantine), and expecting to snatch some 
 gain out of the general confusion caused thereby, the 
 Christians were spreading the reasonableness of the pre- 
 cautions suggested by their foreign friends. Often when 
 a doctor had quickly buried a plague corpse, the heathen 
 
"IT SHALL NOT COME NIGH THEE" 275 
 
 relatives, the clan C7i masse^ came and iu hot displeasure 
 unburied it, gave it a '' proper burial," saved the corpse's 
 ^'face" — aud all died themselves for their trouble. 
 While heathen officials let the victims fall over in the 
 streets and lie there, or fester in their houses — to save 
 their own "face and place" — the Christians warned the 
 brethren how to be careful. While heathen went out and 
 cut off the queues from the dead, to swell the false hair 
 industry of the United States, adding to their coffers and, 
 in the process, adding themselves to the dismal list of the 
 coffined, the Christians stayed away from the plague 
 districts, did not go to the big markets, did not attend 
 the heathen theatres arranged during that ** vacant" 
 winter season by priests and village elders. While the 
 heathen journeyed to visit relatives aud friends, the 
 Christians kept off the "big roads," much travelled, 
 where the plague stalked daily a man's journey farther, 
 sowing death. 
 
 The case of the Christians in " the village of the charmed 
 life" is in point. They bring to us a striking illustra- 
 tion that will suffice to indicate the courage, the good 
 sense, the freedom from superstition, the cheerful fore- 
 going of personal convenience for the general good, the 
 sense of responsibility for the public safety, the contempt 
 of danger, even risk of life, in order to save men, and the 
 prayer of faith that Christ brought in this crisis to some 
 of His Christian disciples. 
 
 Near this village is another, larger, more prominent, a 
 market town. The two are only eight li apart (not three 
 English miles) j but in spirit they are separated many 
 leagues. In the former, the home of the Ting Clan, 
 many have really accepted Christianity as the religion of 
 their households. In their midst stands to-day rebuilt 
 the largest and best constructed church building of our 
 entire station field. And they have their own native 
 
276 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 pastor. The other place, the market town, is located 
 conveniently for evil men on the boundary of three coun- 
 ties. In it many roughs reside ; to it many thieves re- 
 sort. There many robbers have their dens, so that 
 peasants of the surrounding district like to give it a wide 
 berth when the afternoon shadows begin to lengthen. We 
 and our evangelists have often preached there, and as 
 persistently have the people there hardened their hearts. 
 
 When the plague swept from Manchuria into Shantung 
 this place had soon lost eighty people. And in the vague 
 fear of who next would be taken, horror like the black- 
 ness of darkness brooded over them. Even the post-of&ce 
 had closed its doors, and when I went there to ask for 
 mail there came from within a gloomy voice, hoarse from 
 fright, ordering me off. The stupidity, along certain 
 lines, of unenlightened peasant heathenism is beyond 
 comprehension. At that time, in that place, a donkey 
 died of some disease. The neighbours thought, whether 
 correctly or not, that it died of the plague. The family 
 who owned the animal knew that it died of disease, but 
 nevertheless made a feast — and the feasters all died. 
 Then one of the village fathers slowly and solemnly ven- 
 tured the sage pronouncement: "I have for sometime 
 had my doubts about the wisdom of eating animals that 
 have died of disease j but now I am quite sure that it is 
 a trifle risky ! " 
 
 Contrast with all this and its hateful implications the 
 attitude of mind of the Christians in the "village of the 
 charmed life," they to whom, as in the case of many other 
 followers of the Lord of peace, had not been given the 
 spirit of fear but rather of a sound mind, and who were 
 to be marvellously delivered from the present pestilence, 
 as well as from the bondage of eternal death. 
 
 The entire Ting Clan was home for the all -important 
 New Yearns Festival. A heathen in their village, feeling 
 
"IT SHALL NOT COME NIGH THEE" 277 
 
 sick, went to the other village to get some seuseless con- 
 coction that a heathen medicine shop sold. While there 
 he contracted the plague. Two days later he was dead 
 in his house. Immediately on learning of the case, Elder 
 Tiug and two of his nephews, both physicians — all three 
 men educated by our missionaries — took charge of the 
 situation. As earlier hinted, Elder Ting had for many 
 yeara been a professor of mathematics and science in one 
 of our North China Mission colleges. His training had 
 not been favourable to superstitious fears. One reason 
 why for the last ten years he has not only been giving 
 his time and energy, but also considerable money, towards 
 supporting our Girls^ High School in his village, is his 
 desire that these girls may be enabled to found Christian 
 homes in our midst where the deadening heathen fear 
 shall be unknown. I rejoice to pay him this tribute : 
 that he is looked upon as one of the solidest elders of the 
 church in Shantung. Dignity, sound judgment, benevo- 
 lence, and a thought for the public good, are almost an 
 instinct with him. The last named quality was certainly 
 not learned from heathenism about him, but from Him 
 who came not to be ministered unto but to minister. 
 And so it was that while the Christians gave themselves 
 to prayer in this crisis, he, panoplied of the Spirit, gave 
 himself to the task of solving the problem in hand. 
 
 The narrow alley on which stands the house of the 
 plague- victim he at once closed, and set a guard of trusty 
 clansmen at each end. The two doctors, his nephews, 
 scientifically protected, entered the yard, soaked the 
 place and its inmates with disinfectants, and sent the 
 family away from the village. Then, at considerable 
 expense, they hired four beggars. Properly protected, 
 they entered the death room, and carrying a big cloth 
 soaked in disinfectants, they, with the doctors, wrapped 
 it round the victim, and, quickly carrying him outside 
 
278 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 the village, buried him in a place apart. That was the 
 only victim of the plague there, although Elder Ting 
 later wrote me : **The plague is west of the water and 
 east of the river" — his way of saying that it is in all the 
 villages round about. 
 
 Our Christians with grateful hearts and opened minds 
 went to the Bible as never before for added instruction 
 and comfort. They found new meaning implicit in 
 Moses^ law of cleanliness in the presence of prevalent 
 leprosy, smallpox and plague ; and to this day they are 
 thanking God for their new light on the truth that the 
 Scriptures are profitable for the life that now is, as well 
 as that which is to come. Theirs was a new inspiration 
 to trust God from their realization of the reality of the 
 promise of God to His people as voiced in the Psalms : 
 
 *' Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, 
 For the pestilence that walketh in darkness. 
 Nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. 
 A thousand shall fall at thy side, 
 But it shall not come nigh thee. . . . 
 There shall no evil befall thee 
 Neither shall any plague come nigh thy tent." 
 
 Once more, consider how God in answer to prayer held 
 back the waters from whelming the "village with the 
 charmed life.'^ 
 
 In the midst of flood conditions exceeding in duration 
 and violence anything for forty years, it had a deliver- 
 ance little short of miraculous, so the people affirmed. 
 To the Westerner, familiar with the relatively well- 
 wooded streams that run past farm groves and through 
 virgin forests, it is not easy to conceive the significance 
 of the prophet's question : " What wilt thou do in the 
 swelling of Jordan?" But to the dweller in those 
 sections of the Far East, where for centuries the hills 
 have been practically bare, skinned of large trees and 
 
"IT SHALL NOT COME NIGH THEE" 279 
 
 denuded of soil, and the river banks are a wide waste of 
 sand or alluvial overflow deposit, the fury of the river in 
 flood is appalling. The stream becomes a living creature, 
 raging in relentless fury, a monster unleashed, tearing and 
 rending, taking an appalling yearly tribute of human 
 life and treasure. 
 
 For four months it rained almost daily. At last the 
 rich, flat soil of a large part of our field became sheets of 
 mud. Every river of China, to the extent of its un- 
 regulated power — not merely the Yellow Eiver — is 
 "China's Sorrow." When the annual summer rains 
 begin, it spreads sandy desolation along its treeless 
 length. As the river waxes * ' li hai ' ' (fierce) in its swell- 
 ing, it overflows its banks, attacks the foundations of the 
 mud houses, sucks them into its ravening maw, leaving 
 whole villages broken and spent — toppled into ruins. 
 
 Siao Kou Hwoa, the river that flows past our village, 
 raved this particular year without let or hindrance — ex- 
 cept in one instance. It, as the Chinese say, ' ' opened 
 its mouth ^' (broke its banks) in eighteen places within 
 six miles of Da Hsin Tan ; but never harmed it. Villages 
 everywhere on both banks were whelmed. What this 
 means may be imagined from the fact that the villages in 
 this level region are peppered 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 peas- 
 ants' farming plots, and changed 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 the 
 "village with the charmed life." But that village was 
 spared. The more is the marvel because directly across 
 from Da Hsin Tan the river crept far out of its course to 
 
280 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 eat into a big village located on higher ground than Da 
 Hsin Tan, which, like the towns of North Holland, lies 
 snugly behind its dyke, a few yards from the water, and 
 lower than its surface. 
 
 Incidentally, here is a significant point. The heathen 
 elders of that village for some distance along the bank 
 of the river on which Da Hsin Tan is located had, in their 
 communal capacity, some years previously asked the 
 Christians to take charge of the embankment repair. 
 Why ? Because they had learned, in daily dealings with 
 them, that they were reliable ; that they could be trusted 
 with the honest administration of the funds of other 
 people ; and that they were sponsors for solid work 
 undertaken for the public. Consequently, in the day of 
 the swelling of Siao Kou Hwoa, honest sweat and toil, 
 directed by able and consecrated brains, had their innings. 
 
 But even more sear chingly— how can such a deliver- 
 ance be explained ? Are spiritual forces of no conse- 
 quence as assets in the day of physical testing? Is it 
 nothing that in the midst of heathenism this village had 
 four generations of Christians, and its own church build- 
 ing, pastor, evangelist and Bible woman 1 Also that our 
 Girls^ Middle and High Schools, the hope and prayer- 
 focus of many a Christian family throughout our field, is 
 there? This Ting Clan had repeatedly and signally 
 stood for the Lord in the face of opposition, loss and 
 persecution. They realized that all their hopes are 
 bound up in the true and living God, and they are com- 
 mitted to His service. They had experienced marked 
 deliverances before, which had bulwarked their faith, 
 and which were now to them earnests of God^s grace in 
 these troublous days of flood that faced them. 
 
 They took God at His word ; they conformed to the 
 conditions laid down in Psalm 32, and they found God 
 faithful to perform His promise of saving and keeping : 
 
"IT SHALL NOT COME NIGH THEE" 281 
 
 " I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, 
 And mine iniquity did I not hide ; 
 I said I will confess my transgressions unto Jehovah ; 
 And Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sins. 
 For this let every one that is godly pray unto Thee, 
 In a time when Thou mayest be found : 
 Surely when the great waters overflow 
 They shall not reach unto him." 
 
 And the flood stayed at their very doors. Once more 
 the prayer of the godly was heard. ^'Thou shalt call 
 unto me in the day of trouble j I will deliver thee and 
 thou shalt glorify me.'^ 
 
 What that deliverance meant we later realized more 
 vividly when, plunging around through the flooded lands 
 on horseback in relief work, we saw the other villages 
 thereabout in heaps of muddy ruins and deserted by their 
 strongest indwellers. All who could get away fled their 
 places as from the plague. Beggars, who were shortly 
 before self-sustaining farmers, had gone out of these vil- 
 lages in swarms. The smell was awful. Lazy flies lay 
 around everywhere by the thousands, feeding on the 
 filth. Flood-fever was raising its spectral form. The 
 water had drowned out the wheat, beans and gaoliang. 
 Peanuts and sweet potatoes, the standard crops and 
 winter food of our people, had all 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 had stood on their kangs (brick beds) and help- 
 lessly watched the flood creep in and spoil their food and 
 wash away their belongings, and often topple down their 
 houses, in whole or part, upon their heads. There were 
 instances where mothers had died upon their kangs, 
 holding children up in their arms. The corpses were 
 
282 CHINA FROM. WITHIN 
 
 found thus — ghastly, realistic pictures of flood-fury and 
 of mother-love that even heathenism cannot quench. 
 
 Let us observe a typical man of prayer behind it all, — 
 the Rev. Ting Li Mei, Evangelist of Students, and how 
 prayer was used to save him from being done to death. 
 
 But even more, forces were at work and things hap- 
 pened in connection with that village and the flood, which 
 have not yet been hinted at. I have said that the Chris- 
 tians prayed. Cf course they did. But there was one 
 whose home is among them who, like righteous Noah, 
 walks especially close to God, and who knows the power 
 of prayer. That man is the Eev. Ting Li Mei, nephew 
 of Elder Ting, whose house in the same street stands only 
 a few yards from that of his honoured uncle. 
 
 Something more at this point needs to be said of the 
 Eev. Mr. Ting, wonderfully used all over China among 
 students and gentry, officials and literati, no less than 
 among country Christians and church leaders. His call- 
 ing card reveals the nature of the man. It reads : ^* Lord 
 Jesus' Blessed Doctrine Disciple, Ting Li Mei." Of him 
 J. R. Mott says : "In recent years he has influenced the 
 largest number of students to devote their lives to the 
 Christian ministry ever secured by one man during the 
 history of the Church in Asia. Those who know him 
 best will tell you that the dynamic secret of his life is the 
 central place which he gives to intercession. The last 
 time I saw him he had recorded in a book the names of 
 many hundreds of individual Christians from all parts 
 of the world for whom he prayed day by day. In travel- 
 ling with him from Shanghai to Dairen on our way to 
 the conference in Mukden, I observed that he spent hours 
 alone, either walking the deck, or seated with book open in 
 his hand. Mr. Brock man says that the Student Volunteer 
 Movement of China is the result of this man's prayers." 
 
 It can now hardly be said of Pastor Ting that he is a 
 
«IT SHALL NOT COME NIGH THEE'' 283 
 
 '* prophet without honour in his own country." The 
 story of his life has been carried to foreign lands. In the 
 spring of 1907 he was made a delegate to the World's 
 Christian Students' Federation Conference at Tokyo. 
 Later in that year he was one of the secretaries for the 
 Pan- China Presbyterian Union which met at Shanghai, 
 and an honoured guest at the Centenary Conference. 
 During the fall the Federation of seven different missions 
 of Shantung, assembled at Tsinanfu, the capital, elected 
 him their president. In 1909 he was a delegate to the 
 National Christian Endeavour Convention at Nanking, 
 where he proved to be one of the two most largely used 
 speakers. In the midst of his early friends he was *'the 
 Apostle of Shantung," being made pastor-at-large for 
 that great Province by the Presbyterian Church there. 
 Yet his many friends and admirers felt that this parish 
 was not large enough for him, and insistently called him 
 to labour in regions beyond. At last he has become what 
 the West China Missionary News styles "the most widely 
 useful Christian of the Eepublic." He is the founder of 
 the Chinese Students' Volunteer Movement for the min- 
 istry, which was organized to include students in various 
 Provinces of China, and he is now the first travelling 
 secretary of this movement. In the year of 1910-1911, 
 preceding the Revolution, he was blessed in leading some 
 seven hundred students in Mission and Government gen- 
 eral schools and colleges to enroll in a Volunteer Band, 
 pledging themselves to give their lives to winning their 
 fellows to Christ. Ever since then this movement has 
 been gaining momentum, going forward unobtrusively 
 and with power. 
 
 However, the important thing is not the honours but 
 the man behind them, not the place of prominence but 
 the spirit in him that causes prominence to seek him. He 
 is a modest, quiet, humble, gentle man. His is a smile 
 
284 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 and a persuasive grace that insinuate themselves into 
 every one's heart. His demeanour and the atmosphere 
 that he creates is such as one might imagine to have 
 been characteristic of the Apostle John, or of Brown- 
 ing's resurrected Lazarus. 
 
 As Dr. Mott said; ''Famous as an evangelist, he is 
 even more so as a man whose attractive character and 
 conduct constitute a convincing evidence of the life of 
 Christ in man. '^ The immediate source of his strength 
 is his assimilation of Scripture and his talking to God. 
 Impressions of him from West China corroborate those 
 from East and North and South China. '' Pastor Ting's 
 own life is nurtured by the Word of God. Twice each 
 year he reads the Old Testament through very thought- 
 fully, the New Testament four times annually, and the 
 Psalms every twenty days. He is thus saturated with 
 Scripture and speaks with authority. His message to be- 
 lievers and non- Christians alike is the presence of sin, the 
 surpassing love of God, and His power to forgive, and, 
 through His Son, to save abundantly. Individual work 
 for others is winsomely set forth. In enlisting students 
 for Christian service, he does not make the task appear 
 an easy one ; instead he issues a challenge to faith through 
 an appeal to conscience. His illustration of life, as being 
 the warp of the Lord's weaving (which would be useless 
 without the woof of our prayers) suggests his personal 
 attitude; and his statement, 'I trust the Lord to save 
 me. He trusts me to save others ' is the basis of his in- 
 creasingly fruitful career. '^ Thus strength goes out from 
 him. Thus every place that Evangelist Ting Li Mei vis- 
 its feels the power of his personality and message ; many 
 young men turn to Christ, and large numbers enter the 
 ministry. 
 
 In his own Province he has been used of the Holy 
 Spirit in a remarkable manner. One spring he went to 
 
"IT SHALL NOT COME NIGH THEE" 285 
 
 Weibsieu, where is located the Arts College of the Shan- 
 tuDg Union Christian University. Eumour had it that 
 for several years no student had decided for the ministry. 
 Even more discouraging — that the influx of the sons of 
 rich heathen, seeking English for money-making pur- 
 poses, had quite wet-blanketed the religious life of the 
 institution. God so planned it that the foreign mission- 
 ary pastors were in the country. Pastor Ting went 
 quietly to work. Soon students were praying in little 
 groups all over the campus. One by one men, smitten of 
 the Holy Spirit, began to volunteer for the Christian 
 ministry. In a few days one hundred and six men, the 
 flower of the classes, including a gifted Chinese professor, 
 had renounced their earthly ambitions and decided for 
 the ministry. When asked as to his methods, Pastor 
 Ting simply replied : " I have no method but prayer.'' 
 
 From Weibsieu he went to Tsingcboufu, the seat of the 
 Theological Seminary of this same Union University. 
 Here, not only were the students stirred to extraordinary 
 preaching and heretofore undreamed-of witness-bearing ; 
 not only were the older believers, men and women, from 
 the city and surrounding country, roused to renew their 
 grip on the blessed God ; but a company of unbelievers — 
 some three hundred, even including officials of that proud, 
 old, exclusive city of the Ming dynasty — became inquir- 
 ers and new creatures in Christ. 
 
 In every place visited, whether the centres or small 
 villages, the Christians have been mightily moved to 
 newness of life during his progress through the Province. 
 ** Judgment must begin at the house of God.'' A quick- 
 ening among the chosen, he believes, is the prelude of 
 the heathen turning to the Lord on a vast scale, as in 
 Korea. When that day arrives, he says that China's 
 millions will experience the mightiest Sychar-upheaval 
 of the ages. 
 
286 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 In I Chou Fu, described by one of our missionaries 
 resident in that walled city as " the hardest and most un- 
 promising of our stations," under Ting's leadership in 
 special meetings there, one thousand, three hundred and 
 ninety-eight inquirers were enrolled, among them mem- 
 bers of a wealthy and haughty gentry. 
 
 Power not only accompanies him but follows in his 
 wake. Even now from far-off Szechuan Province come 
 reports of *^ evangelistic bands organized in the wake of 
 his triumphing progresses." These '' Scatter the Truth " 
 workers go out book-selling, preaching, and tract-dis- 
 tributing. In the towns flags and a notice stretched across 
 the street attract people to their meetings. Thousands of 
 Gospels are sold and more thousands hear the Gospel 
 orally proclaimed. Incense pots are being emptied and 
 idols consigned to the flames amid the sounds of prayer 
 and praise and the solemn reading of the Scriptures. 
 Prayer for those who have heard the Truth are answered 
 in most remarkable ways, reminding one of the sure word 
 of promise, ^* While they are yet speaking I will hear." 
 
 The permanent results of his work among students is 
 suggested by the following facts. As travelling secre- 
 tary for the recently established Student Volunteer Move- 
 ment among educated Chinese whose objective was the 
 devoting of life to Christian services, he has organized 
 over thirty bands of volunteers in an equal number of 
 institutions, beside starting numerous prayer-circles and 
 groups of girl-workers. He is particularly interested in 
 the latter, for the reason that he attributes to lady mis- 
 sionaries the most helpful influences exerted over him. 
 Therefore, he is affording his own daughters the best edu- 
 cational advantages in Germany and China, in the hope 
 that they will be to others what these two Christian 
 women were to him. 
 
 If signs mislead not, Ting is a Spirit-filled man j and, 
 
« IT SHALL NOT COME NIGH THEE '^ 287 
 
 like the apostles after the resurrection, he does not trust to 
 the infilling of yesterday to perform the tasks of to-day. 
 
 But how in the beginning did he get this spirit of em- 
 powering, this eagerness to pray and to trust? What cir- 
 cumstances moved him *' to let go and let God " ? Every 
 true child of God experiences spiritual crises, designed of 
 God to be testings of love and faith-beckouers, that lead 
 him out into the light of intimacy with Christ — if he will. 
 And this illustrious disciple had two veritable turning- 
 points in his career, which, in the goodness of the Father, 
 revealed to him the secret of power in God. As such 
 they bear directly on the theme of this lecture. In them 
 he learned to know God immediately, rather than medi- 
 ately through a missionary acting as a sort of a confessor- 
 priest ; to trust God directly, rather than the foreigner's 
 powerful Mission and what it can furnish of cash, plant 
 and equipment. And we are proud and glad that, as 
 Ting often affirms, the human agent most used of God in 
 one of these experiences to open the eyes of his soul to 
 see God, whom to see is to love supremely, was Miss 
 Yaughan of our station. 
 
 Now, because the weakness of God is stronger than 
 men, the Almighty is continually using a humble, un- 
 expected means or instrument to attain a great object. 
 **God chose the weak things of the world that He might 
 put to shame the things that are strong." In this partic- 
 ular case the " weak thing " that the Lord used to mark 
 a turning-point in Pastor Ting's career and thereby seal 
 him in a strong faith was a humble *' Women's Bible 
 School" established in one of the villages of our field, 
 begun on faith, without any money, by Miss Yaughan, 
 Pastor Ting and Elder Tsiao. Burdened with a realiza- 
 tion of the crass ignorance, the unspeakable wretchedness, 
 and the appalling lack of provision for giving the young 
 married women and particularly the cast-off wives and 
 
288 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 abused widows even a reading knowledge of the Bible, 
 this consecrated trio made a desperate throw of faith, and 
 opened, so far as I know, the only Bible School for 
 married Chinese women that was founded with the idea 
 of being financed and operated by the Chinese Christians. 
 At first unbelieving workers scoffed at the idea and tried 
 to laugh it down. But Pastor Ting and his prayer-sup- 
 porters persevered and the money came. The school has, 
 from its inception, prospered ; indeed, it has been a bless- 
 ing to many. It has now graduated six classes of young 
 wives and women, all of whom have creditably completed 
 the three years' course and become teachers or Bible 
 women or the makers of Christian homes— all without a 
 cent of expense to the Mission. 
 
 The other pivotal episode in the Eev. Mr. Ting's career 
 was staged, not in a mud village, but in two walled cities of 
 East Shantung. He who was a child of the covenant, a 
 Christian of the third generation out of heathenism, who 
 has loved Jesus from his youth and had early decided for 
 the ministry, had at twenty-eight years of age become a 
 pastor — the dreadful Boxer year, the storm not yet burst. 
 And one day he found himself in the yard of a magistrate's 
 yamen, at the mercy of the ^' Ya I," the officiaFs hench- 
 men, from long practice expert in murdering folks in 
 many ways. 
 
 When Ting was brought before the magistrate and 
 asked, "Are you a Christian?" he replied, "Yes." 
 Two hundred blows with a bamboo rod that hissed 
 through the air failed to weaken his faith. Again he 
 was asked the same question, again the same reply, and 
 two hundred more blows were inflicted on the weakened, 
 lacerated, pulpy body. Skillfully the Ya I dealt out their 
 doses of torture. They knew that after the victim had 
 passed the writhing and groaning stage he could stand 
 little more ; he was near death. Then the obstinate 
 
"IT SHALL NOT COME NIGH THEE" 289 
 
 follower of Jesus, "devil of the second degree '^— the 
 missiouaiy alone being of the ** first" — was remanded to 
 prison, a hole so foul and loathsome that Americans can 
 scarcely imagine such a place. With returning conscious- 
 ness he, like Paul in prison, preached the love of Christ 
 to fellow-sufferers. 
 
 With Ting was a promising young Christian physician, 
 also a graduate of Tengchow College, who likewise, 
 stripped of his garments and placed with his face upon 
 the ground and held down by four men while two others 
 beat him a hundred blows, refused to deny faith in Christ. 
 This torture by miserable opium-eating harpies alternated 
 with the torture by flies and vermin and filth in this squalid 
 dungeon during the dog days of an unusually hot summer. 
 
 While Christians, caught and hustled into yamens, were 
 usually in those days executed at once, it was reported 
 that in this instance the officials had determined to tor- 
 ture these two promising young men as long as possible 
 before doing them to death. These were to be played 
 with as mice by cats. A senior missionary reports that 
 Ting " was beaten, half-starved, burned, pinched, had 
 needles driven under his fiuger nails and was strung up 
 by the thumbs." And he had none to call upon and 
 trust but God only. 
 
 How long he could have stood being thus slowly worn 
 down no one knows j but something happened. God had 
 foreordained to save this young '* martyr" — in the 
 inner Greek sense of ** witness- bearer " — for a larger use- 
 fulness. Many Christians were praying for him, in par- 
 ticular the fellow-clansmen of his village ; and the Lord 
 had prepared for him a way of escape. 
 
 Not far from Tsingtau is another ancient city, to whose 
 magistrate, in those troublous days, a German officer 
 thought best to pay his respects. Ordered there with a 
 troop of cavalry, he was expected to get a needed under- 
 
290 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 standing with the magistrate. The episode that resulted 
 would be comical if it were not so pitiful as a revelation 
 of overweening rashness, of impotent arrogance, of self- 
 deception and servility of spirit, of lack of wholesome 
 self-respect and of the utter moral rottenness that char- 
 acterizes heathenism, untrained in Western knowledge 
 and Christian virtue. 
 
 The German captain halted his men outside the city 
 walls and attempted to send in messengers to the magis- 
 trate, asking him to come out and ** talk it over. ^^ It 
 was ** market-day ^' and the city was packed with Boxer 
 sympathizers, supposedly in dangerous mood. When he 
 essayed to pass through one of the massive portals, which 
 pierced the walls, teeming with hostile men, the great 
 spiked gates were shut and barred in his face, and the 
 ambassage was foolishly shut out. 
 
 The dander of the Deutschers was up. In sarcastic 
 play on the words of Savonarola to Lorenzo II Magnifico, 
 the captain with an oath muttered fiercely : *^ You shall 
 come, but I shall stay ! '' Then to his soldiers : ^^ Fetch 
 me that magistrate ! ' ' 
 
 First, however, they fetched dynamite and disgraced 
 the city beyond measure by blowing up the gate and con- 
 nected tower. Then, to show their contempt for Boxers 
 and Boxer-sympathizing cities — and in their daring lay 
 their safety— a handful of these doughty Deutschers chose 
 to enter the city, not through the big jagged hole they 
 had made, but by scaling that grim, sheer wall, though its 
 top was more than fifty feet above the moat. 
 
 It is an interesting sight, this modern exercise of soldiers 
 of foreign governments camped in China — climbing the 
 sheer walls of cities hoary before these foreigners had 
 powerful governments. In the face of the amazed on- 
 lookers, and using long poles and ropes borrowed from a 
 near-by dyer^s shop, and with wonderful agility and close 
 
"IT SHALL NOT COME NIGH THEE" 291 
 
 team-work, clingiDg to each other aud the cracks like 
 Bedouiu guides to the stones of the pyramids — they 
 mounted to the top. The magistrate — luckless fellow — 
 who au hour before had refused to come out and parley, 
 had excused his declination on the threefold ground that 
 it was market- day, that the city was full of strangers of 
 anti-foreign spirit, and that the presence of Germans in the 
 city would be dangerous to the Germans ! In the mean- 
 time he had fled in terror to the inner precincts of his 
 yamen, disguised himself as a beggar, and got his run- 
 ners to rig out a fake magistrate in his ofificial robes. 
 But the soldiers had brought along a shrewd Chinese 
 guide and interpreter who knew the real official. Through 
 that sullen, silent crowd they ploughed their way, and 
 into the yamen itself, where in an inner court they found 
 and seized the terror-stricken *' host." Cringing and pro- 
 testing, he was mercilessly pulled out ; and, like a whipped 
 cur, was hustled through his own city streets jammed 
 with country folks in for the market. The escort, with 
 rifles at ready, pushed swiftly right through the seething 
 mass of people, and went out of the ruined gate that they 
 had so promptly and contemptuously blown up in the 
 face of their enemies. 
 
 The climax of humiliation was yet to come. If there 
 is anything that the ordinary land-lubber of North China 
 hates it is water in quantity, and especially in the form 
 of a ducking. The troopers with gusto and in grim 
 horse-play dragged their victim through the stream an- 
 sweriiig to a watered moat that flowed outside the city 
 wall, and then flung him, crestfallen and ill-disguised, at 
 the feet of their leader, who received him on horseback 
 — another bitter humiliation. If there ever was a be- 
 draggled, dignityless magistrate, he, clothed in his hastily 
 borrowed, dripping rags, was that man. Supposing that 
 such boldness, implying corresponding power, could fore- 
 
292 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 token only beheading, lie fawned and whined, pleading 
 for mercy. As the wretched official knocked his head 
 on the ground the officer thundered: *^Next time a 
 gentleman wants to call on you don't forget to treat him 
 like a gentleman." 
 
 Then, when the magistrate had promised what was 
 wanted — which significantly was not to kill Christians, 
 Catholic or Protestant, on pain of puissant Germany^ s 
 hot and heavy wrath — he was allowed to slink away 
 towards the city— his city — his people filling the walls, 
 excellent bleachers, and anxiously watching the comedy, 
 his tragedy of pride and loss of face. Before them all he 
 capered back through the stream. Scarcely believing 
 that he would not be regrabbed and hauled back, he 
 never looked behind, but churned the waters. In the 
 meantime his runners had arrived on the city side of the 
 bank, and there deferentially awaited him with his official 
 sedan chair and umbrellas. Clad like a beggar — oh, 
 nameless humiliation ! — but riding in state, he disap- 
 peared from the sight of his derisive visitors — hailed by 
 his own with joy as a conqueror, returned from the jaws 
 of death ! 
 
 The point of this episode is that fear of the daring 
 Deutschers, fear of condign punishment at the hands of 
 their imperial Government which would stand no trifling 
 and brook no treachery within reach of its mailed fist, 
 spread fast and far. From that day forth no magistrate 
 within reach of German rifles, dynamite and machine 
 guns in East Shantung had much stomach for torturing 
 native Christian leaders. 
 
 The magistrate of Hwang Hsien — in whose yamen 
 prison Ting Li Mei was rotting— soon heard the startliDg 
 news of how resistless foreign troops made short shrift 
 with the dignity of Chinese officials ; and Ting Li Mei 
 was safe — freed. Some say that he owed his life to solic- 
 
"IT SHALL NOT COME NIGH THEE" 293 
 
 itous missionary friends pleading with the American 
 Consul who telegraphed to Yuan Shi Kai, who ordered 
 his release. But the Christians afQrm stoutly that God 
 ordered it, through their prayers. Cannot both be cor- 
 rect! Josei)h, in audience with his guilty brethren, 
 said: ** Ye sold me hither; for God did send me before 
 you to preserve life. " Individual experience and history 
 testify to the reality of the two mysteries inextricably 
 interwoven. 
 
 At any rate, Ting Li Mel came forth from his experi- 
 ence a new man, having learned to know God imme- 
 diately, and to trust Him directly, this realization being 
 even clarified and intensified by the other later episode, 
 to which reference has already been made. 
 
 Now we have a background to understand the delivery 
 from the flood. Ting Li Mei knew how to intercede; 
 and, when his village and clansmen were threatened, 
 there was a great intercessor on hand wrestling with God 
 — and prevailing. For Ting Li Mei was home on his 
 summer vacation for a needed rest. The need for that 
 rest may be better understood when I explain that on one 
 of these annual home-comings it had been necessary for 
 me to hide him away here in a German retreat where 
 neither Chinese nor foreign friends could learn his where- 
 abouts, and so could not get at him for interviews or 
 speaking engagements. So much is he in demand. Only 
 thus could he rest. 
 
 This friend was not only not too tired to pray ; but all 
 who knew realized that he was praying and mightily. 
 Eepeatedly during those black, stormy nights of flood the 
 angry waters, filling the river channel, rose level with 
 the bank ; repeatedly gusts of wind and spurts of rain 
 sent it hatefully crawling and wriggling, serpent-like, 
 over the edge towards the village nestled helpless below ; 
 repeatedly patrolling watchmen out of the darkness (their 
 
294 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 paper-covered lanterns useless for the rain and wind) 
 raised the appalling cry that the embankment had sprung 
 a leak. JS'evertheless the flood was stayed. 
 
 The might of his prayers was manifest not only in the 
 delivery of the village, but in Ting's attitude of pity and 
 courage towards those in need in the surrounding villages. 
 Imagine this picture : When the land became thus flooded, 
 he, rather than anybody else, volunteered to sally forth, 
 facing the rampant waters alone, in an attempt to reach 
 us and tell us of the relief work needed. What he ex- 
 perienced of horror crossing those miry, flooded fields to 
 reach the railway station none will ever know. Even 
 when he reached the unbroken section of the railroad 
 embankment, he had to grope his way along and hang on 
 to the steel rails as the waters surged fiercely around him 
 in the darkness. It was a magnificent effort and it suc- 
 ceeded in its purpose. 
 
 Needless to say that as he made that fearful journey he 
 prayed with intensity to the God he knows experiment- 
 ally. He reports that during those toilsome hours he 
 "held the Ninety- third Psalm in solution in his heart/' 
 claiming the victory of God's faithfulness : 
 
 " Because he hath set his love upon me, 
 Therefore will I deliver him. 
 I will set him on high ; 
 Because he hath known my name. 
 He shall call upon me and I will answer him ; 
 I will be with him in trouble ; 
 I will deliver him and honour him. 
 With long life will I satisfy him ; 
 And show him my salvation." 
 
 Again the prayer of the righteous had prevailed and 
 the clan of the village of the charmed life and its illus- 
 trious member once more had borne to them witness as 
 to the present-day truth of this precious Psalm. 
 
IX 
 
 The Promise in Its First-Fruits 
 A Study of a Typical Parish — Tsingtau 
 
IX 
 
 THE PROMISE IN ITS FIEST-FRUITS 
 
 YESTERDAY Tsiiigtau was uuknowu ; to-day it 
 is the cynosure of tlie nations. Its investment 
 by the Japanese made it leap overnight into a 
 world fame that its remarkable record of steady progress 
 was more slowly but surely bringing it. So far as I know 
 there is no parallel anywhere in Mission lauds to the 
 record that this section, Germany's Imperial Chinese 
 Colony, was making along two lines : in the combination 
 of business prosperity (immense traf&c with the vast 
 hinterland^ plus sea commerce with many trade centres 
 all over the globe) and the progress of self-governing, 
 self-supporting, self-propagating native churches. And 
 in a twinkling, on receipt of the ultimatum from Japan 
 to Germany, because of war between England, Japan's 
 ally, and Germany — both Christian nations in Europe — 
 this whole prosperous movement, commercial and re- 
 ligious, in Asia, has been thrown into inextricable con- 
 fusion, even ruin — at least for the present. 
 
 Shantung Province is the Pennsylvania of China. By 
 a unique and hoary history it binds the Provinces of the 
 North and South together — a veritable ^^ Keystone.'^ 
 This Province, of commanding importance because of its 
 religious and political preeminence, and with a third of 
 the population of the United States, reaches out into the 
 Yellow Sea eastward, as if to greet Korea, Japan, and 
 America. Under its shoulder lies a great bay on whose 
 inner (i e., its northern) side is situated an ancient 
 
 297 
 
298 CHINA FKOM WITHIN 
 
 walled city, Chinese administrative centre of all that 
 section, called Kiao Chou. On the coast near by (i e., 
 southward) is the still larger city of Tsiugtau also spelled 
 ^^ChiDg Tao" (Green Island), beautiful for situation 
 and laid out in unusual attractiveness. This strategic- 
 ally located metropolis and port of the Kaiser's one-time 
 Asiatic possession nestles on a well-favoured, seaward- 
 facing peninsula. From the open ocean one's steamer 
 passes into an outer bay, commanding an entrancing 
 view of the city set up on and in its hills ; and on 
 through a narrow entrance, something like that of the 
 Golden Gate, to emerge on the north, into the inner bay, 
 said to be one of the finest in the world, land-locked by 
 encircling hills. This bay, thirty miles across, is capable, 
 as the Germans affirmed, of holding the navies of the 
 world. 
 
 Here again German science and skill supplemented 
 the art and power of nature, and made advantage doubly 
 advantageous by converting into good land and by cov- 
 ering with great government brick and stone warehouses 
 and customs buildings, many acres that not long before 
 were swamps or salt water. 
 
 After fourteen years of labour and the expenditure of 
 many million marks, German brains, industry and per- 
 severance constructed out over the shore-line of this con- 
 verted land a *'Kleiue Hafen" and a '^Grosse Hafen'' 
 (little and great harbour). These two triumphs of 
 engineering skill with their walls of concrete and stone 
 and iron — the Kleine, for Chinese junks and other small 
 craft ; the Grosse, for the large ships of war and com- 
 merce — were perfect refuges from the fury of the storm 
 king. 
 
 Within the shelter of those walls a gigantic dry dock 
 was built, the only one in the leagues of Chinese coast 
 At the mechanical school, connected therewith, great 
 
THE PROxMISE IN ITS FIRST-FRUITS 299 
 
 war-sliips and mercliantineu could be expeditiously 
 cleaued aud thoroughly repaired. In the iuner harbour 
 were built great granite quays, such as up to that time 
 the Far East had not seen. Alongside these, through- 
 from-Europe steamers discharged their cargoes directly 
 into freight cars drawn up on double tracks. These 
 were one web of a well-paying railroad, which the Ger- 
 mans, with keen foresight, had built across the whole 
 length of this east-and-west-lyiug peninsular province, 
 with daily trains to and from the great provincial capital 
 of Tsi Nan Fu, three hundred miles in the interior — that 
 capital being the natural political, business, and edu- 
 cational centre of some forty-five million people. Not 
 only was this railway linked with the great trunk lines 
 running north and south, ultimately to reach from 
 Canton to Mukden, but the boast was that Tsiugtau was 
 only two weeks by rail from London. 
 
 One is surprised at the rapidity as well as the thorough- 
 ness with which the Germans effected their revolution- 
 izing changes. In November, 1897, their cruiser -squad- 
 ron sailed into the harbour aud took possession of the 
 unknown Chinese village. It soon became the cleanest, 
 healthiest, most attractive and most beautiful city of the 
 Far East — a veritable triumph of sanitation, skill, science, 
 industry, efficient management and military astuteness. 
 Money was not spared to develop it. In nothing is this 
 better illustrated than in the road-making which was car- 
 ried out with enthusiasm and with the imperiousness of 
 the Romans ; no difficulties or expense balked the exe- 
 cution of the plans — hills were cut and levelled, great 
 ravines were filled, mountains climbed and chasms 
 bridged. The result was well-nigh perfect roadways 
 such as the traveller sees in the Swiss Alps — and that 
 in a land that may be said to be devoid of roads, or 
 whose roads are bottomless. Each of the principal roads 
 
800 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 bad four divisions : a part for pedestrians, for wheel- 
 barrows, for carriages, and for horseback -riding. 
 
 In like manner, not the city alone, but its environs for 
 miles were beautified by a very able and ceaselessly 
 active forestry department, that planted millions of trees 
 on the hillsides; established numerous and extensive 
 model gardens ; orchards of luscious fruits ; groves of in- 
 digenous and foreign trees ; encouraging the Chinese to 
 buy slips sold at cheap rates. Nor only so, but the rail- 
 road territory was beautified at each station across the 
 whole length of the Province, and all its embankments 
 anchored with tree groves. The proverbially skinned 
 Chinese mountains were, throughout the German conces- 
 sion, in successful process of reforestation — an object les- 
 son of incalculable value for the governors and viceroys 
 of vast treeless, flood-cursed sections of China. 
 
 The only place in China — possibly in the Far East — 
 where the pneumonic plague was successfully combatted, 
 where not even one case crept in, was the German -leased 
 territory. In the face of the inability of the Japanese, 
 the Eussian, the International, and the British settlements, 
 and of the Chinese Government promptly to fight down 
 that dread disease of the Far East, the Germans warded 
 it off completely. To accomplish this the Government 
 used the full strength of its elaborate military system. 
 At the outset it spent an emergency appropriation of 
 over $100,000, and went on to practically a war basis in 
 fighting this foe. It was kept out from the land-ap- 
 proach by rows upon rows of barbed wire and cavalry 
 patrols, and quickly installed field-telephone stations, 
 triple lines of infantry sentries, a large and efiScient med- 
 ical staff conveniently located on the boundaries, as well 
 as by detention wards which were great government out- 
 post barracks — clean, heated, well-equipped and pro- 
 visioned, and converted for that use ; and it was kept out 
 
THE PROMISE IN ITS FIRST-FRUITS 301 
 
 from the sea-approacli by patrols of cruisers and torpedo- 
 destroyers aud searcli-liglits. 
 
 It was likewise a tribute to the advantage of such a gov- 
 ernment aud of such a system of modern civilization that 
 great numbers of Mauchu mandarius and Chinese ex-of- 
 ficials fled, at the outbreak of the Revolution, into Tsing- 
 tau. They brought with them their fortunes and fami- 
 lies. Their money was invested in land and in the erec- 
 tion of great brick and stone buildings, entirely new sec- 
 tions being added en masse to the city. It was natural 
 that, under such favouring conditions, Chinese business 
 men, who are proverbially keen for good openings, should 
 also swarm to the German territory from all parts of 
 China ; likewise Japanese, and merchants from India, had 
 come and were all doing a thriving business. And the 
 irony of fate is that until August, 1914, Tsiugtau was 
 generally looked upon as the safest place in the Far East, 
 both as to immunity from disease and flood and famine, 
 and as to freedom from the ravages of insurrection and 
 war, which latter two, with their consequent anarchy and 
 distress, had been distracting and terrorizing other parts 
 of China. 
 
 Heathen superstition is very expensive, both of time 
 and energy and of money squandered, as well as of 
 souls wrecked. Its outworkings always grind the face of 
 the people, making it financially difficult, and in many 
 sections impossible, for them to build railroads, aside from 
 the fact that the mutual suspicion and distrust engen- 
 dered by heathenism greatly hinders the undertaking of 
 large public works. With characteristic thoroughness 
 the Germans had built their finely ballasted railroad from 
 their seaport into the great hinterland. This opened up a 
 new world of prosperity for the Chinese all along the line, 
 and even to the remote corners of the Province. There 
 being now a market and means of transportation for 
 
802 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 produce, instead of the crops rotting on the ground where 
 raised, an era undreamed of had arisen in the Province. 
 The missionaries, it is true, had helped the Chinese in 
 Shantung to a knowledge of new and i^rotitable crops and 
 to markets for them j but these markets became available 
 largely through the German railroad. For example, the 
 missionaries introduced the Irish potato among the Chi- 
 nese Christians who formerly were in extreme poverty, 
 with no sale for what they did raise, meagre as that was. 
 Now on the railroad they were shipping potatoes and 
 walnuts and bean-oil and brooms and many other products 
 by the carload to Tsingtau. As one result of their first 
 shipment some Christians of a far western district -were 
 so grateful that they began to tithe ; and in addition, as 
 a thank-offering, they erected a church building. That 
 was the beginning of a tithing system to which many 
 American Christians are strangers. Even in the winter 
 of 1911-1912, in the worst days of the Ee volution, when 
 business all over the country was conceded to be dead, the 
 peasants of the Presbyterian Mission-field around Tsing- 
 tau shipped into that place for the world-market fifty 
 thousand tons of peanuts, the original planting of which 
 was one of the many interesting and valuable by-products 
 of a certain missionary's life. 
 
 Multitudes of people, both in Europe and America, 
 have for a series of years been wearing straw hats made 
 from braid woven by the peasants in the remote villages 
 of Shantung — another incident of this railroad. This 
 trade also was suggested to the Chinese by a missionary. 
 And over this road hundreds of thousands of tons of 
 this material have rolled in to Tsingtau for the world- 
 market. 
 
 The people of Shantung have been afraid to mine their 
 stores of coal and iron, because, forsooth, to dig in the 
 earth would have been to prick the Venerable Dragon, 
 
THE PllOMISE IN ITS FIllST-FRUITS 303 
 
 and rouse him to fury, causiug Liin to visit appalling 
 calamities upon them. So, for fuel they have burned 
 corn-stalks and raked the grass off grave mounds, and 
 picked up stray leaves, and dug bean roots — while the 
 riches of anthracite were beneath their feet. The Ger- 
 mans, at enormous initial expense, opened the mines ; 
 and, because of the railroad, coal speedily became usable 
 in multitudes of peasant villages and market towns and 
 cities that were fed from the railway stations. Inciden- 
 tally, at the outbreak of war, the mines were ruined, 
 flooded by water, and the costly machinery destroyed, lest 
 they should profit the Japanese— and an army of Chinese 
 miners are now jobless, hungry and desperate, ready to 
 swell the hordes of robbers, professionals because that 
 trade apparently is the way of least resistance to a living. 
 
 Not only has the development of all these industries and 
 businesses meant new and better and greatly diversified 
 employment for hundreds and thousands of Chinese, but 
 it has meant a steady increase in wages and in the scale 
 of living. Eight or ten years ago in this section men 
 were employed by Chinese, not by foreigners, as cheaply 
 as at one to two cents a day for unskilled labour. Tsing- 
 tau came to mean the employment of vast numbers, also 
 the development of skilled labour. German brains, capi- 
 tal and science had, in the way of material civilization, 
 performed prodigies for the Chinese, things which the 
 paralysis of heathenism made it impossible for them to 
 accomplish for themselves. 
 
 Yet in all their prosperity-giving to others, the Germans 
 had also come in for their full share. Situated midway 
 between Shanghai on the south and Tientsin on the north 
 (two great emporia of the Orient) — wich Korea and Japan 
 on the east, and the immense hinterland of China on the 
 west, the natural advantages of Tsingtau's location, from 
 the standpoint of large and increasing commercial pos- 
 
304 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 Bibilities, plus the plans of a far-seeiug, powerful Govern- 
 ment, had combined to make this place in seventeen years 
 grow from an unknown fisher hamlet to a city of 90,000 
 people, a remarkably prosperous port and sea outlet for 
 the interior. This was witnessed by the fact that in five 
 years it had risen from twenty-second place in the amount 
 of money that its customs receipts turned into the Chinese 
 Government (after having subtracted the twenty per 
 cent, retained by the German Government) to fifth place 
 —exceeded in its business, as indicated in this unique 
 record, only by Shanghai, Tientsin, Canton, and Fuchow. 
 
 It is not my purpose here to remark upon how Ger- 
 many came into possession of this strategic place. Nor 
 is the recital of the remarkable achievements of the 
 Germans in develojiiug so interesting and so successful a 
 centre in Asia to be misconstrued as taking sides in the 
 wo rid- war. **Just as a church historian might show 
 that the famous roadways of the Roman Empire in the 
 first century made it possible for Christian Missions of 
 that day to accomplish a work which, humanly speaking, 
 could not have been accomplished without those roads, 
 so the author is merely intending to show that the tem- 
 poral work of the Germans in China has afforded certain 
 opportunities which the Christian Church there has been 
 quick to take advantage of. It is remote from my 
 thoughts or purpose that the material civilization of the 
 Germans has anything to do with the merits of the pres- 
 ent war." 
 
 Suffice it here to say that, following the dramatic de- 
 velopments of the Chino-Japanese war that so startlingly 
 made history in the Far East, Tsiugtau, with a near-by 
 hinterland (styled by the Germans Kiautchou, the German 
 spelling of the ancient walled city on the inner side of 
 the great bay) fell to the German Government. That 
 Government began to create a capital city that is unique, 
 
THE PROMISE IN ITS FIRST-FRUITS 305 
 
 a revelation to a vast, ill-governed, unsanitary, non- 
 progressive section of what centralized authority, using 
 plenty of money, technical skill and expert knowledge, 
 unwarped by graft and blackmail and wabbling policy 
 or no policy — all applied to civic welfare — can accom- 
 plish. 
 
 Shantung Mission of the Presbyterian Church soon 
 came to feel that it would be strategic to have in this 
 city a centre of operations for this part of its field, 
 especially since the country work could be easily reached, 
 at least in part, from the stations along the contemplated 
 railway running to the interior from Tsingtau. Pre- 
 viously it had been feasible to shepherd the groups of 
 Christians of this region only from Chefoo on the northern 
 coast of the Province five days of hard riding away. 
 
 Accordingly in 1898 the Mission appointed Drs. Cor- 
 bett and Bergen a committee with power to act. And 
 the result of their investigation was the founding of Tsing- 
 tau Station, with Dr. and Mrs. Bergen as pioneer mem- 
 bers. The legend runs that they began their far-reaching 
 work here temporarily ** housed in a piano case.^' In 
 our field, the name of Dr. Bergen, since translated, no 
 less than that of Dr. Corbett, still with us, is one to con- 
 jure with. 
 
 It is an interesting fact in connection with this parish 
 that the person who revealed Tsingtau to the world 
 and who may in some real sense be called its founder 
 was never a member of this station — the Rev. F. H. 
 Chalfant, D. D., of Wei Hsien, one of the American 
 Presbyterian Missions located in the centre of Shantung, 
 an able, consecrated missionary, loved and honoured by 
 all who knew him. In his itinerating he came to know 
 of this wonderful harbour, and he sent sketches of it to 
 the Shanghai papers, urging that the place be developed. 
 During the Chiuo -Japanese war, 1894-1895, when the 
 
306 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 missionaries from the interior were forced to flee for their 
 lives because of the ignorant prejudices and groundless 
 hatred of the Chinese populace, it was difficult for the 
 missionaries' wives and children to make the dangerous 
 journey over the hilly country several days away to the 
 city of Chefoo on the north side of the Province. So 
 Dr. Chalfant sent a message to the American admiral, 
 asking him to come to the harbour of Tsingtau, then a 
 small fishing village, and there take off the women and 
 youngsters. The admiral replied that he knew of no 
 such harbour. Dr. Chalfant sent him maps of the local 
 littoral. The cruiser came and found it as the missionary 
 had said. Thus in its finding and founding the place is 
 missionary ground. 
 
 Given such a centre of such promise, of such natural 
 advantages for work and business, it was inevitable that 
 in the general influx of enterprising men the Christian 
 Chinese also in numbers would flock to it ; and in the 
 Province where the Presbyterian Church is especially 
 strong it was also inevitable that a local Presbyterian 
 church should be founded. Such a church was sure to 
 have educated men in it ; for wherever a city is prosper- 
 ing, men of good parts and high character will go to it. 
 Shortly after the battle of Gettysburg the late Dr. C. W. 
 Mateer began in Teugchow a boys' school, continued by 
 his younger colleague. Dr. W. H. Hayes, who with his 
 senior colleague is justly honoured. The school developed 
 into the most noted school of higher learning in that 
 section of China. Shantung Province is full of graduates 
 who passed under the spiritually fruitful moulding hands 
 of these missionary teachers. 
 
 The opportunities at Tsingtau were so exceptional, de- 
 manding well-trained men along all lines, and giving 
 them high wages for their work, that many able Chris- 
 tian men of the Province gravitated there as naturally as 
 
THE PROMISE IN ITS FIRST-FRUITS 307 
 
 the needle seeks the pole. The leaders of this church 
 were almost without exception graduates of our Tengchow 
 CJoUege. How much the founder of that school meant to 
 them was strikingly illustrated when Dr. Mateer died in 
 the Faber Kraukenhaus, the City Hospital of Tsingtau. 
 These men — pastors, elders, deacons and various members 
 — *'Dr. Mateer 's boys" — begged the hospital and Gov- 
 ernment authorities to allow them the unprecedented 
 favour of having his body in their midst for a farewell 
 service, at which they sang out of the hymn book he had 
 helped to prepare and read comfort from the New Testa- 
 ment he had helped to translate. Later they escorted in 
 a body all that was mortal of their beloved teacher to 
 the ship for the sea voyage. 
 
 Naturally these men and members of their families 
 back in the country, who also had tasted the advantages 
 of Christian education, would have their children edu- 
 cated ; and as our Mission in this section was unable to 
 give them anything higher than the village school pri- 
 mary work, they sent them by the hundreds to the Ger- 
 man Mission schools here. Many of these pupils were 
 taught by some of our strongest Christian men and women 
 in the employ of the Germans ; and thus an additional 
 link was forged binding this constituency to the local 
 church organization. 
 
 All these opportunities for advancement culminated in 
 the University, founded and run jointly by the Chinese 
 and German Governments. Although more expensive 
 in board and tuition than any Mission College, its equip- 
 ment, the thoroughness of its work, and its prestige were 
 such that there were in attendance at it some four hun- 
 dred students, a large majority being sons of officials and 
 rulers-to-be of China. A corps of able German special- 
 ists conducted the departments of jurisprudence, engineer- 
 ing (electrical, mining, and railroad), medicine, and agri- 
 
808 CHINA FEOM WITHIN 
 
 culture. Students matriculated from all the eighteen 
 provinces of China j among them were many young fel- 
 lows of promise who had been taught in our Shantung 
 Mission schools. These were out of our Christian families 
 and they too were linked up with this church — one of 
 them being the son of the famous student-evangelist, 
 Ting Li Mei. Thus the church had a constituency edu- 
 cated along various lines. Members of it became real- 
 estate dealers, storekeepers, and importers and exporters, 
 high school teachers, university professors, evangelists, 
 sub-chiefs and assistants in post, telegraph and telephone 
 offices, and in various other German Government depart- 
 ments. 
 
 Many Chinese of ordinary ability and attainments also 
 became connected with the church because of the better 
 employment obtainable, with steady increase of wages 
 and the higher scale of living open to them as well as to 
 the heathen who flocked to Tsingtau. Back in the in- 
 terior many of these men would have been employed by 
 their fellow peasants at thirty to sixty tiao and board a 
 year ($8.00 to $16.00 gold). These men could now, as 
 the veriest coolies, get at least twenty to thirty cents a 
 day for unskilled labour. 
 
 A considerable number of country Christians, as cooks, 
 table boys, messengers, clerks, and men of all work in 
 foreign homes and stores and offices, now found a living 
 wage. 
 
 Also many men became connected with the church 
 through one of the educational institutions established by 
 the German Government, a mechanical school of complete 
 and modern equipment, a great plant located in the 
 Grosse Hafen near the wharves. From seven hundred 
 to a thousand promising apprentices, many of them sons 
 of our Christian families in our country field, were in 
 this school. They were bright fellows, studying during 
 
THE PROMISE IN ITS FIRST-FRUITS 309 
 
 the daytime in the machine shops, taking a six years' 
 course as electricians, plumbers, moulders, mechanics, 
 workers in iron, steel, brass and wood. In the evening 
 they studied German, arithmetic and other studies useful 
 for their trade. During their apprenticeship they re- 
 ceived an increasing wage. They could do much of the 
 work on any steamer or war vessel that went into Tsing- 
 tau dry dock for repairs — ^^a nautical shave, '^ as it was 
 called. They could even make turbine engines and elec- 
 trical motors. After graduation they received, as master 
 workmen, high wages. 
 
 Thus it was a church whose constituency was also one 
 of every-day useful work ; of experience in practical 
 affairs. 
 
 One of the most crucial problems of the Christian 
 Church, set in the midst of Chinese heathenism, is the 
 illiteracy of multitudes of men Christians; another, 
 possibly even more serious, Is the denser ignorance and 
 vacuity of mind of the wives, due, in many cases, to the 
 quite unrelaxed clutch of superstition upon them. Many 
 churches in China may be said to be churches of men. 
 The greatest opposition and the bitterest persecution 
 often arise from the women- folks. In this parish the 
 case was not so. The leaders described are men who 
 would never be satisfied with heathen wives. In as far 
 as it was within their power they would see to it that 
 their wives and women-folks were educated. Indeed many 
 of them were graduates of one or another of our Mission 
 Girls' High Schools, a considerable number of them from 
 Wei Hsieu, which is supposed to be the best Girls' High 
 School in the Province. 
 
 It would have been a revelation to any foreigner to 
 step into one of the regular weekly prayer-meetings of the 
 women, or their monthly missionary meeting, or their 
 business meetings, and see the manner, according to 
 
310 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 parliamentary usage, in which their affairs were con- 
 ducted. The wife of one of the elders is the daughter of 
 one of our leading pastors, a graduate of one of our best 
 High Schools and also a physician, trained in Western 
 medical science by one of our lady missionaries. In ad- 
 dition she is principal of a large German Mission Girls* 
 High School. It would also have been an eye-opener to 
 any foreign ecclesiastical body composed of male mem- 
 bers, as it was to our Chinese Presbytery, to have this 
 little lady — beautiful of face, dainty and attractive in 
 dress, a skilled teacher, wise and winsome mother of 
 six children — stand before them and expound with 
 cogent and irrefutable logic, as one who understood her 
 subject, the need of certain reforms not only in Chinese 
 female education in general, but in the curricula and ad- 
 ministration of our own Christian Girls' High Schools. 
 Nothing could more convincingly demonstrate that the 
 women of China, given a chance, are to be the power in 
 the Church that consecrated, Spirit-filled womanhood 
 can be in any other land. 
 
 One of the lamentable things met with in heathenism 
 is the unreliability of men not trained in Christ. The 
 character moulded by heathenism is, as expressed by 
 Chinese sages, ^^ rotten wood.^^ Brilliance of mind or 
 executive ability or great learning — no attainment that 
 the world can give — seems able to cover up this vital 
 weakness. Even Li Hung Chang, great as he was 
 recognized to be along various lines, could not disprove 
 the charge that he was in the employ of the Eussian 
 Government in transactions that were damaging, even 
 traitorous, to the welfare of his country. 
 
 It is only in Christ that true integrity of character is re- 
 vealed ; and this has been manifested many times in 
 members of this Tsingtau church. One of its leaders 
 who, through sheer native ability and character moulded 
 
THE PROMISE IN ITS FIRST-FRUITS 311 
 
 of the Holy Spirit, has come to a position of affluence, 
 has loug been able to borrow large sums of money at 
 cheaper rates than any other real estate dealer of this 
 section. He is the kind of a man who, having been 
 helped through school by a missionary friend, came to 
 that friend in his day of need and insisted on paying back 
 all that his missionary friend had paid out for him, plus 
 ten per cent, interest. Another business man of the 
 church was so able and trustworthy that, out of many 
 men of this Province — bankers whose ancestors for gen- 
 erations had been bankers — he was chosen by the Govern- 
 ment to manage one of its provincial banks. And in the 
 Revolution crisis, when banks everywhere failed, this 
 branch did not. There are men in this church whose 
 word is as good as their bond, and the heathen know it — 
 an unanswerable testimony to the power of God in the 
 presence of well-nigh universal lying. 
 
 In the crash of banks during the Revolution some of 
 our Christians here were members of a local bank that 
 failed — through no fault of theirs, as far as we could 
 learn. At their own initiative they made it a point of 
 honour to recover every cent with interest of several 
 hundred dollars that one of their missionary friends had 
 placed with them. All that is only another way of say- 
 ing that honour and trustworthiness such as Christ alone 
 inculcates are among these Christians. 
 
 If one at this date dared to write some of the sub rosa 
 facts as to the part the Christians played in the Revolu- 
 tion, it would make an amazingly interesting narrative. 
 No class of people equalled the Christians in their opposi- 
 tion to the rotten, effete, hopeless Manchu dynasty. And 
 it would be hard to find a company of Christians more 
 alive with patriotism than the members of this particular 
 church. Drinking tea with several members, I asked 
 tiiem where they got this Bunker Hill idea of patriotism, 
 
312 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 with abhorrence of autocracy. I said : "You know there 
 are millions of people caring not a rap who is in the 
 political saddle.'^ "Ah, but,'' they said, "when we 
 were boys studying under Dr. Mateer, what he taught us 
 of the Scripture, and the way he taught it, put into us a 
 flavour of hatred of all this injustice, official graft, 
 dynastic prerogative, and irresponsible government ! " 
 Surely here was a Chinese variant of Lincoln in his young 
 boyhood, from what he had learned of the curse of slavery, 
 vowing: "If ever I get a chance, I will hit that thing 
 hard ! '' Long before the Manchu Government had been 
 defeated by the Republican forces, this company of Chris- 
 tians had, on the inside walls of their church building, 
 painted a frieze composed of many "flowery flags of the 
 Republic " — the red, yellow, blue, white, and black fac- 
 ing the worshipper on every side. 
 
 When it looked as if Russia was about to make an 
 open, shameless steal of Mongolia, the twelve-year-old 
 son of one of the elders, a manly Christian little fellow, 
 his face suffused with intelligence, suddenly disappeared. 
 He left a note which read : "Dear Father, please forgive 
 me for leaving home unceremoniously. I have gone to 
 Chefoo, where I hope to enlist to fight against Russia ! " 
 His action was not strange, in view of the spirit pervad- 
 ing his home. It was Concord and Lexington over again. 
 When, at the inauguration of the Revolutionary move- 
 ment, it looked dark for the Republic, and when it was 
 feared that foreign nations would interfere to carve up 
 the country, not only were frequent and special prayer- 
 meetings held for the welfare of the cause so near their 
 hearts, but repeatedly various men of the church, with 
 tears in their eyes, came to my study asking me to pray 
 with them for the progress and complete success of the 
 Republican movement. 
 
 In this local church Republican leaders from many 
 
THE PROMISE IN ITS FIRST-FRUITS 313 
 
 sections met to arrange for the printing and distributing 
 of literature, to lay plans for the capture of the important 
 cities in the Province, and in every way possible to ex- 
 pedite among the country people the propaganda for the 
 Republic. Indeed so zealous were its leaders that the 
 German Government, whose sympathies were all mon- 
 archical, felt called upon to attempt to break up their 
 propaganda, and came within an ace of expelling from its 
 colony several of our strongest Christian leaders for Rev- 
 olutionary activity, an activity which, however, is rec- 
 ognized the world over as legitimate in a neutral land. 
 
 This action of the German Government so aroused the 
 ire of the young men of the church that it fed into and 
 precipitated the following episode, typical of several such 
 efforts. One morning the ''^Deutsche Werft^'''' the me- 
 chanical school already referred to, awoke to find that it 
 was minus hundreds of apprentices. The young Chris- 
 tian men, training with their fellow -mechanics, had dur- 
 ing the night mysteriously disappeared. They joined 
 forces with other enthusiastic fellows and marched on 
 several important market towns and walled cities of the 
 Province. 
 
 Indeed the contagion of enlistment was strong among 
 the young men at the schools everywhere, not least among 
 the students of the Mission schools throughout the Prov- 
 ince. 
 
 It is apt to be a sure sign that a man believes in the 
 cause to which he subscribes, especially subscribes out of 
 poverty. The local church, through its emissaries in the 
 Province among many villages, collected considerable 
 sums of money from the villagers, not only Christian but 
 non- Christian. So fiery were their orators and so enthusi- 
 astically and earnestly did they present their cause that 
 repeatedly headmen of heathen villages sought me out, 
 saying : " Our village also wants to subscribe to this 
 
314 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 fund being raised by the Christians in Tsingtau ! ^' This 
 was an amazing statement, in view of the fact that usually 
 the difficulty in squeezing subscriptions out of heathen 
 country folk for the public welfare is like getting blood 
 out of a turnip. The total subscribed for the cause by 
 local business men interested in the church and by mem- 
 bers on salary was a very large sum. 
 
 How some of them actually suffered for the cause may 
 be hinted at in a story of the butchery of some of these 
 enthusiastic young volunteers in connection with their 
 taking a certain walled city. It was a magnificent piece 
 of nerve, pure bluff, without much order or leadership, a 
 burst of unrestrained patriotism, a kind of Chinese Boston 
 Tea Party, but with a disastrous ending. 
 
 In the night they stole into the city, captured the 
 yamen '* arsenal" and money chest, and shut up the 
 yamen runners. Then, with rifles levelled at the head 
 of the magistrate, they demanded that he declare on the 
 spot for the Eepublic or resign. He did both, and then 
 slipped away in the darkness. Once in possession of the 
 city — the inhabitants indifferent, not caring a flip who 
 was on top so long as their property was unmolested and 
 they not seized for money — the boys held a council of 
 war and deliberated what to do with the white elephant 
 on their hands. While they deliberated as to how to 
 hold and rule a city, the magistrate was guiding a special 
 train load of Manchu regulars to the scene. 
 
 While the city slept they stole quietly over the wall, 
 and by the light of a gray dawn the shooting and bayo- 
 netting of the boys began. The butchery was soon over ; 
 only a dozen captives were reserved as a warning to 
 would-be rebels, for public torture and beheading. The 
 yamen yard was crowded with spectators. Bound and 
 stripped to the waist, the boys were marched in before 
 the magistrate implacable in hate. Last in line was a 
 
THE PROMISE IN ITS FIRST-FRUITS 315 
 
 young fellow of special promise who was completing his 
 sixth year of apprenticeship. Then a strange thing hap- 
 pened. An old man, whom I later learned had recently 
 lost a sou, was filled with pity at the sight of the victims. 
 He stood at the outer entrance to the court and as the 
 last boy passed him, he, in the seething mass and unob- 
 served, cut the cords. The boy squeezed back, the crowd 
 closed in, while he sped down the street. Later a mounted 
 squad was put on his track. For days he escaped them 
 — the villagers hid him by day and helped him on towards 
 home by night. But at last the troopers, before whom 
 dangled the prize of a special reward and honours, rode 
 him down and shot him before the eyes of our Christians. 
 And none of the Chinese dared tell the father. They 
 feared it would kill him. 
 
 The son had been engaged to the daughter of one of our 
 Christians. After his murder the girl was soon married 
 to another man, and the father, believing his son yet 
 alive, and sore at the seeming affront and ** loss of face,'^ 
 came to me, complaining bitterly. It was the first time 
 I had seen him since the tragedy, and it was my sad 
 duty to tell him the facts. I did it as tenderly as pos- 
 sible ; but he sank to the ground, a crushed and broken 
 man. Dry-eyed and speechless he went home and from 
 that day spoke little to any one. On a later visit to him, 
 he kept muttering mournfully: **A dry stick, a dry 
 stick ! " Yes, his root of posterity was dead. In re- 
 peated instances, between the activity of the German 
 Government cooperating with the Mauchu Government, 
 it looked as if leading Christians of Revolutionary tend- 
 encies might be ground between the upper and the 
 nether millstones of monarchism. 
 
 Indeed so pronounced were the patriotic proclivities 
 of the local church, so well were they known for subscrip- 
 tions and for Revolutionary activities, that Sun Yat Sen 
 
316 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 felt it necessary to go out of his way to pay them a 
 special visit of honour, when he might have gone directly 
 from Peking to Nanking. In the days when he was the 
 national hero (after he had given up the provisional 
 presidency in order to unite the North and the South) ; 
 when he was invested by Yuan Shi Kai with extraordi- 
 nary powers ; when to him the great sealed gates of the 
 Forbidden City (through which none but emperors have 
 ever passed) were thrown open ; when his reception by 
 the leaders of the capital was enough to turn the head of 
 any man ; when he was charged with a weighty com- 
 mission to mature and execute plans for providing China 
 with a complete system of trunk railways and was on his 
 way South to work out that plan — at that period in his 
 career, rushed for time, he journeyed on a special train by 
 way of Tsingtau in order that he might visit these Chris- 
 tians. Incidentally, the German Government ignored 
 him, though the greatest crowd in the history of Tsiugtau 
 turned out to receive him. Incidentally, it forbade the 
 local church to complete its arrangements for him to 
 speak before its members and to entertain him at tea. 
 Incidentally, the leaders and elders of the church, in 
 conclave over the matter, decided pointblank to defy the 
 mandate of the German Government, dated on a Sunday 
 and signed by the Governor, Prinz Heinrich and the 
 Chief of Police, and held their patriotic meeting with 
 Sun Yat Sen as speaker and gave their tea. It was one 
 of the few bluffs of the German Government that in in- 
 ternational history to date has been called. Incidentally, 
 the distinguished visitor, against pressure, observed the 
 Sabbath. 
 
 The patriotism of women and girls in any land is usually 
 displayed indirectly, perhaps most conspicuously through 
 the spirit they put into their men ; least of all would a 
 showy, dramatic outburst be expected from Chinese girls. 
 
3 
 
 
 
 o I 
 
 2 I 
 O I 
 
THE PROMISE IN ITS FIRST-FRUITS 317 
 
 However, there was a high-grade "Deutsche Madchen- 
 Scbule" in Tsingtau attended by many of the daughters 
 of our Presbyterian elders and leaders. When this affront 
 to "the Washington of China'' occurred, even these 
 Chinese girls were not lacking in a method to indicate 
 their high displeasure. Soon after Sun Yat Sen had passed 
 on to Shanghai, Priuz Heiurich, escorted by an Imperial 
 German cruiser squadron, returned to Tsingtau from 
 Japan where, at the obsequies of the Japanese Mikado, 
 he had acted as German envoy extraordinary and per- 
 sonal plenipotentiary of the Kaiser. With the glamour 
 and 6clat that was his, performing such functions, and 
 accompanied by his own princely staff and by the Im- 
 perial Governor and his staff— all mounted on prancing 
 chargers, and arrayed in the glory of gold lace, gala 
 uniforms, plumed helmets and flashing sabres — well cal- 
 culated to overawe ordinary mortals, not to mention 
 bashful Oriental maidens, he one day graciously conde- 
 scended to visit this school, blessing benighted Chinese 
 girls with Deutsche Kultur^ in order to give them the 
 privilege of singing German songs in the German lan- 
 guage in his awesome presence. Alas ! with shocking 
 lack of reverence, they not only refused to sing these 
 songs before his Imperial Highness, but kept him and 
 his illustrious company waiting an unconscionable time, 
 finally to send in word to the impatient great ones that 
 they could not condescend to appear before the ignorers 
 of the noble Sun Yat Sen ! When before had the Kaiser 
 been defied by women ? 
 
 At its annual Mission Meeting in 1913 the Shantung 
 Mission plumed itself, and justly, on taking a long ad- 
 vance step in mission administration along the lines of 
 the much heralded "devolution plan of India." By this 
 plan it began to share the responsibility for the adminis- 
 tration of its native work with a committee of native 
 
318 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 church leaders. This meant not only the joint dis- 
 bursement of the funds, but also the joint choosiDg 
 and dismissal of all evangelists, Bible women aud 
 teachers. 
 
 However, as an interesting commentary on the influ- 
 ence of the local Tsingtau church, as a by-product, so to 
 speak, of its witness, another fact must be chronicled. 
 Cogitating much on the creditable way in which this 
 local church was administering its own affairs, — calling 
 a better class of workers and paying them higher salaries, 
 and consequently getting the work done by its Chinese 
 helpers better than the station was getting its work done by 
 its Chinese helpers, — we decided to lay before the leaders 
 of our station field these facts for their consideration, in 
 order to increase the efficiency of our field work. Accord- 
 ingly in the spring of 1909, four years before the Mission 
 took its action, the station, at the suggestion of its senior 
 member. Dr. Hayes, invited the Chinese pastors of our 
 station field to come together and confer upon this matter. 
 This meant nothing less than to plan for the ultimate au- 
 tonomy of the native church throughout our field. We 
 met for prayer in a little tea house of our garden, which 
 place may in the good providence of God come to mean 
 to our station what a certain hay-stack became to the 
 Home Church. 
 
 All present frankly discussed the idea — namely, a 
 much fuller and more complete cooperation of the native 
 leaders with the station — aud the plan was outlined for 
 jointly administeriug the work as already indicated. 
 We were filled with thankfulness over what was mani- 
 festly a wise and reasonable step of His ordaining for 
 advancing the Kingdom in our midst by placing the 
 responsibility for its progress and the honour of its 
 development much more largely in the hands of the 
 native church leaders. 
 
THE PROMISE IN ITS FIRST-FRUITS 319 
 
 We separated to pray and meditate more fully over the 
 plau, again to meet in November — when it was con- 
 summated. An immediate and gratifying result was 
 that, not only did this committee of native church lead- 
 ers, jointly with the station, begin to choose teachers and 
 evangelists of even a better grade, and to supervise their 
 work, but the Churches of the country field began forth- 
 with to take upon themselves an increased proportion of 
 the support of native work, paying, from this date, in all 
 cases, at least one-third of the cost of schools, and in a 
 number of cases one-half and three-quarters; in some 
 instances, putting their schools on a self-supporting 
 basis ; in others, increasing the support of their preach- 
 ers. This step gave the foreigners of the station an op- 
 portunity to prove indubitably their confidence in the 
 ability of the Chinese to increase their share in the 
 management of the native church, and revealed the 
 cordial relationships which we sustain with the leaders 
 of the country field. 
 
 The expressive Chinese phrase, "the burning heart," 
 has in our section come to take on the meaning of eager 
 devotion to Christ in soul-winning work. It may be 
 thus used by the Christian constituency all over China ; 
 but I came first to know its meaning in this local church 
 where its leaders were thoroughly imbued with that 
 spirit. I am thinking of one elder who made it his 
 business to found the Sunday-school ; and by the logic of 
 eminent fitness he was year after year elected its superin- 
 tendent — himself thoroughly committed to the Wana- 
 maker aphorism: **Win a man and get a unit ; win a 
 boy and get a multiplication table.'* Another elder, an 
 able and experienced principal, has confided to me that 
 the underlying thought in his mind, all his life long as a 
 teacher of boys, has been not only to make good students, 
 but to lead boys to a vital experience in Christ. 
 
320 CHINA FKOM WITHIN 
 
 In our Station Boys' High School, weekly ministered 
 to by the local church, so carefully has the spiritual life 
 of the boys been cultivated that hardly one has been able 
 to be in the school a year and not give his heart to God ; 
 and almost all of them have decided to be preachers or 
 teachers in our Christian schools. 
 
 An elder of this church is one of the most forceful 
 preachers in this Province. He it was who, with his 
 talented, well-trained wife, went into a certain walled 
 city (one of the hardest fields imaginable), where the 
 people would not receive them because they were the 
 followers of the foreign devils, where they could scarcely 
 buy food and water, where the people were determined 
 to force them out, where during a great fall of snow they 
 nearly perished from the reluctance of dealers to sell 
 them necessities; but finally by his wife's skill as a 
 physician, and by his zeal according to knowledge as an 
 evangelist — their united pluck and perseverance, faith 
 and love — they laid foundations for a church now con- 
 tinued in a remarkable evangelistic and educational work 
 in that city by another evangelist of unusual ability and 
 promise. 
 
 In this very church, in the atmosphere that from the 
 very first pervaded it, developed Ting Li Mei, its first 
 ordained pastor, now prince of Chinese evangelists. 
 Some of his finest experiences that opened his eyes to the 
 glory of the Lord, the beauty of holiness and the rewards 
 of faith, came to him here before he became too much in 
 demand to serve in a local parish. 
 
 Men who have with faithfulness and power preached 
 in the market, men who have ministered to college 
 students, men who have served as Young Men's Christian 
 Association secretaries and who have been real shepherds 
 of the people — and all at smaller salaries than they could 
 have received in government employ— confess that they 
 
THE PROMISE IN ITS FIRST-FRUITS 321 
 
 were touched and lifted np to sacrifice by the spirit that 
 they learned in and through this church. 
 
 The calibre of the men conducting this church has been 
 such that attention has been attracted to them and posi- 
 tions of influence in a wider Christian circle have been 
 tendered them ; also distinctions have been heaped upon 
 them by merchants, by officials, and by the Church at 
 large. One of the elders is often referred to as " Old Re- 
 liable," his word being so sure and his character so de- 
 pendable. Such a man could not escape outside respon- 
 sibility, and he has become one of the most respected and 
 trusted directors of the National Young Men's Christian 
 Association Board. 
 
 The session has become the clearing house for many 
 things of importance. I have earlier said that the Chi- 
 nese are instinctive democrats ; the Christians like a rep- 
 resentative governmental system, in religion as well as 
 in politics, such as Presbyterianism stands for. It is of 
 their nature to do things through an arbitrator, a middle- 
 man ; and thus it results that this session has managed 
 many affairs, both inside and outside of its own local 
 communion, which, though not strictly sessional business, 
 have yet been for the welfare of the Christians and for 
 the development of the church — a fine tribute to men's 
 trust both of their character and their judgment. 
 
 The session might well be a heartener to any pastor. 
 Finer elders than constitute the leadei-ship of this church 
 would be hard to find in a Mission land. One of the 
 elders, once a beggar boy, is now the owner of city 
 blocks. By his integrity and remarkable reliability he 
 has made a shining mark ; quiet and unassuming, he 
 possesses the respect and confidence of all who know 
 him ; and he is well known in North China. He has 
 adopted several children and educated others. His bene- 
 factions reach far and wide and are born out of a piety 
 
322 CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 as simple as evangelical. His faith reminds one of 
 Abraham, his judgment is sound, his devotion to Christ 
 a passion. In a recent real estate deal with a grandson 
 of Li Hung Chang, he made a large sum of money, and 
 instead of using this to build himself a house, he turned 
 it over e7i bloc into the Lord's work, continuing to live in 
 several rooms. He is not only a ruling, but also a pro- 
 viding elder. 
 
 Another elder is a professor of chemistry in a German 
 High School. He has done evangelistic work that is 
 now bringing forth soul-fruitage manifold among the 
 Chinese higher classes. 
 
 Still a third elder, also trained by able and honoured 
 missionaries, an exceptionally solid man, is principal of 
 a large German High School for Chinese boys. He and 
 his wife are two of the most devoted disciples of Christ 
 I have ever met. As a boy his heathen parents be- 
 trothed him to her, then a heathen girl. For years as 
 his wife she in her heathen prejudice was unwilling even 
 to look upon the face of a Christian woman. But his 
 prayers, teaching and example prevailed and now she 
 is one of the most zealous of soul-winners, powerful in 
 intercession, rejoicing to come often to our home for 
 special prayer with Mrs. Scott regarding the work. 
 
 The attitude of outsiders towards these men is reflected 
 in this fact : the Governor of this Province has made a 
 gift of land for an ** independent church " to be located 
 in the capital ; a gift of government land which could 
 not be bought, but which the Governor offered, some 
 twenty Chinese acres in a choice section of the city, be- 
 cause of his respect for and belief in two of the business 
 3nen connected with the church. 
 
 When I cast about for an explanation of the mission- 
 ary spirit of this church, I think I find its rationale in a 
 prayer- meeting started by an honoured senior colleague, 
 
THE PROMISE IN ITS FIRST-FRUITS 323 
 
 Rev. L. J. Davics. This prayer-meeting is held every 
 Wednesday forenoon ; it is for the church leaders — quite 
 another afifair from the church prayer- meeting of each 
 Wednesday evening. It has been my privilege when in 
 town to meet with the brethren in this service. The 
 idea has been for their spirits and faith to burgeon out 
 and take in thoughts of the Church universal ; to lift up 
 their eyes and look on the whole field which is the world. 
 They have refused to let their interests be coffined in their 
 local i^arish. Their purpose has been strengthened in 
 this service to pray for objects outside their own church 
 and its interests, to intercede for men and things of the 
 world-wide Kingdom. And for this attitude of mind 
 and heart it has received a priceless gift — the ability 
 to love people whom they have never seen, people of 
 other races ; and to be deeply concerned for the projects 
 of God not within the circle of their immediate organ- 
 ization. 
 
 To the disobeyers of the spirit of the Last Commis- 
 sion all this is but as idle talk ; they can neither under- 
 stand nor explain away this stubborn fact— only the 
 obedient understand and rejoice in it — that just in pro- 
 portion as a church becomes a fellow-sympathizer, 
 fellow- worker, and fellow -sufferer with the Lord Jesns 
 in His purpose and plan and passion to get Himself 
 made known to the humblest person on the farthest rim 
 of the planet, does that church get the capacity to take 
 care of itself and of its own needs increasingly well. 
 The uon-missionaryite is constantly engaged in the 
 business — short-sighted and laughable, were it not so 
 pathetic — of systematically and with all his strength cut- 
 ting off the power of his church to do even for itself in 
 its own parish. 
 
 There is a reason why the men of the church for some 
 time were heavily interested in supporting a home mis- 
 
324: CHINA FROM WITHIN 
 
 sionary in another Province. There is a reason why the 
 Chinese women organized their own missionary society 
 with fifty charter members, their numbers increasing 
 until before the siege they included practically all the 
 women of the church and even outsiders — a total of 
 some one hundred and thirty members. Many of these 
 tithed out of very scanty coppers ; one old half-palsied 
 woman slowly and toilsomely dragged herself on foot 
 from the East Suburb to the City Church in order to 
 save her **cash," that she might have spent for rikisha 
 fares, to put into the missionary box. There is a reason 
 why, with the first news of the floods that one year dis- 
 tressed our field, the members responded promptly and 
 generously, according to their strength, several members 
 each giving fifty dollars and one giving one hundred and 
 fifty dollars. It is because they have with Jesus lifted 
 up their eyes unto the whole field, which is the world. 
 The blessing of the entire circle is sure to be shared with 
 the segments of the same. 
 
 One of the business men, as a thank-offering to God for 
 saving him from himself, gave five hundred dollars to de- 
 fray all expenses of revival meetings held under the lead- 
 ership of Dr. H. A. Johnston. The church, through its 
 men members, who are leaders in a Home Missionary 
 Society, has been instrumental in raising and distribu- 
 ting hundreds of dollars for preaching the Gospel, both 
 by evangelists and Bible women, through help given in 
 establishing village schools and in providing rent for 
 chapels. The women, many of them out of poverty, 
 pledged themselves to give eighteen dollars Mexican a 
 month to support two Bible women and a school. They 
 built a chapel in the West Suburb and put a school into 
 it. They also established a village school in our church 
 building in the East Suburb, and also contributed to Mis- 
 sion work on the Thibetan frontier. 
 
THE PROMISE IN ITS FIRST-FRUITS 325 
 
 The simplicity and directness of the prayer life of some 
 of the members of this church would be an inspiration to 
 any Christian worker, and they have had some remarka- 
 ble answers to prayer. They have prayed for a great 
 variety of things — for the guidance of their members on 
 dangerous roads, for rain in time of drought, for the safety 
 of their family members in their villages on river banks 
 during floods. They have prayed for good crops, for the 
 protection of our country pastors and others, wonderfully 
 vouchsafed ; for wayward children, for the recovery of 
 dear ones from the bondage of opium, and from that of 
 gambling, for payment of debts without their suing the 
 debtors, for the warding off of plague from Tsingtau when 
 it was all about them, for the preserving of our station 
 buildings and of their church and Young Men's Christian 
 Association building, and of their homes and business 
 places during the siege— and all of these prayers have 
 been answered. Nobody could convince them that prayer 
 is not a reality. 
 
 In the days preceding the siege with its disasters they 
 had learned well the truth that the light that shines 
 farthest shines brightest at home. In its varied and mul- 
 tifarious local activities it has proved this conclusively. 
 It can claim a distinction unique among our stations of 
 Shantung ; so far as I have been able to ascertain, it is 
 the only prominent church of this section that has not re- 
 ceived financial aid from the Mission with which it is 
 connected; that from the date of its organization has 
 been self-supporting, self-governing, self-propagating. 
 
 In regard to its plant and outfit this church has done 
 excellently — buying its own land, erecting its own brick 
 and stone church building, paying high taxes and 
 making many improvements. Growth in membership 
 has twice necessitated enlarging the church building, and 
 once doubling its seating capacity. From the beginning 
 
326 CHINA FROM AYITHIN 
 
 the Christians have called their own pastor, and they 
 have erected a two-story manse for him. They have 
 built their own Young Men's Christian Association build- 
 ing and part of the time had their own secretary. In ad- 
 dition they have paid the salaries of a local evangelist and 
 two Bible women, and organized and supported their own 
 three schools with teachers, the one in the main church 
 building in the Chinese city having forty pupils and car- 
 rying boys through the Middle School that feeds into our 
 High School. 
 
 The tendency has been in our country churches to call 
 a theological graduate merely as a stated supply. The 
 Tsingtau church has set an example to the Presbytery by 
 installing its preacher as regular pastor, thus avoiding 
 the disadvantages of stated supply relationship. Other 
 conditions being equal, this relation of permanency be- 
 tween pastor and people should reciprocally be a source 
 of increasing strength. 
 
 In the case of all its workers — school-teachers, evangel- 
 ists, pastor, Bible women and Young Men's Christian As- 
 sociation secretary — the salaries have been higher than 
 those paid elsewhere in our section and the workers have 
 been better housed, re-proving the truth: "Make me a 
 little cake first and want shall not touch you through all 
 the famine. '' 
 
 These churches and their fellows have had a big ideal — 
 the ideal of a national, independent, self-supporting church 
 of Christ. They refuse to be kept divided. The genius 
 of the Chinese is for solidarity. 
 
 This church to-day may be called unique, but it reveals 
 what may ultimately be in many centres. It is an earnest 
 of the Chinese, Church-to-be, a foregleam of some achieve- 
 ments of the missionary enterprise in China. When, 
 through its city -evangelization project, the Gospel shall 
 have reached the leaders of the great cities, and when 
 
THE PROMISE IN ITS FIRST-FRUITS 327 
 
 their educated, spirit-filled preachers shall have secured 
 for Christ the minds and affections of their gentry, when 
 the consciences and wills of big-calibred Chinese men of 
 wealth and influence in these cities shall have been 
 gripped by the Spirit's power, then we shall see the be- 
 ginning of the end of the reign of Satan in this land, the 
 laud whose symbol was long, and only too fittingly, the 
 dragon. 
 

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