New Forces in Old China The Chinese Christians

XXII



THE real effect of the operation of the missionary force is to be seen in the Chinese who have accepted Christianity. As the commercial force is causing an economic revolution and as the political force resulted in the Boxer uprising, so the missionary force is developing a great spiritual movement which is crystallizing into a Chinese Church. Much has been said about the character of the Chinese Christians and doubts have been cast on the genuineness of their faith. It is admitted that they sometimes try the patience of the missionary. But is the home pastor never distressed by the conduct of his members? I am inclined to believe that the Christians in China would compare favourably with the same number selected at random in America. A Chinese laundryman posted on his door this significant notice to his foreign customers:--``Please help us to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy by bringing your clothes to the laundry before ten o'clock on Saturdays,'' while in another place a Chinese servant left the morning after a card party at which much money had changed hands, stating to his mistress in explanation, ``Me Clistian; me no stay in heathen house!'' The Chinese Christian does not content himself with church attendance once a week when the weather is pleasant or an attractive theme is announced. He does not find himself in vigorous health for an evening entertainment, and with a bad headache on prayer-meeting night. There are of course exceptions, but as a rule, the Chinese Christians worship God with regularity in all kinds of weather. A missionary told me that the attendance at his mid-week meeting was as large as at his Sunday morning service, that every member of his church asked a blessing at the table, had family prayers and tried to bring his unconverted friends to Christ. If there is a pastor in America who can say that of his people, he has modestly refrained from making it public.

But such comparisons are, after all, unfair to the Chinese Christian for he should be compared, not with Europeans and Americans who have had far greater advantages, but with the people of his own country. ``At home, you have the ripe fruits of a Christianity which was planted more than a thousand years ago. The Word of God has been among you all these Christian centuries. You have in every part of the country a highly trained ministry, a gifted and devoted eldership, and a whole army of Christian workers of all ranks. You work in the atmosphere of a Christian society, and under a settled Christian government. You have an immense and varied Christian literature, and notwithstanding all defects and drawbacks, you have on your side a weight of Christian tradition and a wealth of Christian example. Under such circumstances and in such an atmosphere, what are we not entitled to expect of those who bear the Christian name? What justice is there, or what reasonableness, in demanding as a test of genuineness the same degree of attainment on the part of Christian people, many of them uneducated, who are only just emerging from the deadness and insensibility of heathenism?''

The real question is this:--Is the Christian Chinese a better man than the non-Christian Chinese--more moral, more truthful, more just, more reliable? The answer is so patent that no one who knows the facts can doubt it for a moment. The best men and women in China to-day are the Protestant Christians. This is not saying that all converts are good or that all non- Christian Chinese are bad. But it is saying that comparing the average Christian with the average heathen, the superiority of the former in those things which make character and conduct is immeasurable. ``The conscience of those who have been born into a new life is not suddenly transformed, yet the change does take place and upon a larger scale. When once it has been accomplished, a new force has been introduced into the Chinese Empire, a salt to preserve, a leaven to pervade, a seed to bring forth after its kind in perpetually augmenting abundance and fertility.''

The character of the Chinese Christian will appear in still more striking relief if we consider the circumstances in which he hears the gospel and the difficulties which he has to overcome. On this subject the following remarkable passage from Dr. Gibson is worth quoting entire:--

``Out there the great issue is tried with all external helps removed. The gospel goes to China with no subsidiary aids. It is spoken to the people by the stammering lips of aliens. Those who accept it do so with no prospect of temporal gain. They go counter to all their own preconceptions, and to all the prejudices of their people. Try as we may to become all things to all men, we can but little accommodate our teaching to their thought. . . . Often and often have I looked into the faces of a crowd of non-Christian Chinese and felt keenly how many barriers lay between their minds and mine. Reasoning that seems to me conclusive makes no appeal to them. Even the words we use to convey religious ideas do not bear to their minds one-hundredth part of the meaning we wish to put into them. I have often thought that if I were to expend all my energies to persuade one Chinaman to change the cut of his coat, or to try some new experiment in agriculture, I should certainly plead in vain. And yet I stand up to beg him to change the habits of a lifetime, to break away from the whole accumulated outcome of heredity, to make himself a target for the scorn of the world in which he lives, to break off from the consolidated social system which has shaped his being, and on the bare word of an unknown stranger to plunge into the hazardous experiment of a new and untried life, to be lived on a moral plane still almost inconceivable to him, whose sanctions and rewards are higher than his thoughts as heaven is higher than earth. While I despair of inducing him by my reasonings to make the smallest change in the least of his habits, I ask him, not with a light heart, but with a hopeful one, to submit his whole being to a change that is for him the making of his whole world anew. `Credo quia impossis- ble,' I believe it can be done because I know I cannot do it, and the smallest success is proof of the working of the divine power. The missionary must either confess himself helpless, or he must to the last fibre of his being believe in the Holy Ghost. I choose to believe, nay I am shut up to believe, by what my eyes have seen.

``I do not mean that one sees the results of preaching directly on the spot. In China at least one seldom does. But by the power of God the results come. We have seen unclean lives made pure, the broken-hearted made glad, the false and crooked made upright and true, the harsh and cruel made kindly and gentle. I have seen old women, seventy, eighty, eighty-five years of age, throwing away the superstitions of a lifetime, the accumulated merit of years of toilsome and expensive worship, and when almost on the brink of the grave, venturing all upon a new-preached faith and a new-found Saviour. We have seen the abandoned gambler become a faithful and zealous preacher of the gospel. We have seen the poor giving out of their poverty help to others, poorer still. We see many Chinese Christians who were once narrow and avaricious, giving out of their hard-earned month's wages, or more, yearly, to help the church's work. We see dull and uneducated people drinking in new ideas, mysteriously growing in their knowledge of Christian truth, and learning to shape their lives by its teachings. We have seen proud, passionate men, whose word was formerly law in their village, submit to injury, loss and insult, because of their Christian profession, until even their enemies were put to shame by their gentleness, and were made to be at peace with them. And the men and women and children who are passing through these experiences are gathering in others, and building up one by one a Christian community which is becoming a power on the side of all that is good in the non-Christian communities around them. . . . Everything is hostile to it. It is striking its roots in an uncongenial soil, and breathes a polluted air. It may justly claim for itself the beautiful emblem so happily seized, though so poorly justified, by Buddhism--the emblem of the lotus. It roots itself in rotten mud, thrusts up the spears of its leaves and blossoms through the foul and stagnant water, and lifts its spotless petals over all, holding them up pure, stainless and fragrant, in the face of a burning and pitiless sun. So it is with the Christian life in China Its existence there is a continuous miracle of life, of life more abundant.''

Is it said that these Asiatics have become Christians for gain? Then how shall we account for the fact that out of their deep poverty they gave for church work last year $2.50 per capita, which is more in proportion to ability than Christians at home gave? The impoverished Tu-kon farmers rented a piece of land and worked it in common for the support of the Lord's work; the Peking school-girls went without their breakfasts to save money for their church, and eight graduates of Shantung College refused high salaries as teachers, and accepted low salaries as pastors of self-supporting churches. ``Rice Christians?'' Doubtless in some instances, just as at home some people join American churches for business or social ends. But those Chinese Christians are receiving less and less from abroad and yet their number grows.

And it costs something to be a Christian in China. All hope of official preferment must be abandoned, for the duties of every magistrate include temple ceremonies that no Christian could conduct. For the average Christian, loss of business, social ostracism, bitter hatred, are the common price. Near Peking, a young man was thrice beaten and denied the use of the village well, mill and field insurance, because he became a Christian. A widow was dragged through the streets with a rope about her neck and beaten with iron rods which cut her body to the bone, while her fiendish persecutors yelled:-- ``You will follow the foreign devils, will you!'' And that Chinese saint replied that she was not following foreigners but Jesus Christ and that she would not deny Him!

And so on every hand there are evidences of fidelity in service, of tribulation joyfully borne, of systematic giving out of scanty resources. While sapient critics are telling us that the heathen cannot be converted, the heathen are not only being converted but are manifesting a consecration and self-denial which should shame many in Christian lands. At a Presbyterial meeting in north China, the native ministers held a two- hours' prayer-meeting before daylight. Such prayer-meetings are not common in America. Is it surprising that in that little North China Presbytery 292 baptisms were recorded that year?

Nor is this a solitary instance. Every Sunday the little congregations gather. Every day the native helpers tell the Bible-story to their listening countrymen.

The history of missions in China has shown that it requires more time to convert a Chinese to Christianity than some other heathen, but that he can be converted and that when he is converted, he holds to his new faith with a tenacity and fortitude which the most awful persecution seldom shakes. The behaviour of the Chinese Christians under the baptism of blood and fire to which they were subjected in the Boxer uprising eloquently testified to the genuineness of their faith. That some should have fallen away was to be expected. Not every Christian, even in the United States, can ``endure hardness.'' Let a hundred men anywhere be told that if they do not abandon their faith, their homes will be burned, their business ruined, their wives ravished, their children brained, and they themselves scourged and beheaded, and a proportion of them will flinch.

It was to be expected, too, that when, after the uprising, the Christians found their supporters triumphing over a prostrate foe, some of them should unduly exult and take advantage of the opportunity to punish their enemies or to collect money from them as the price of protection. The spirit of retaliation is strong in human nature in China as well as in America. When the armies of the Allies, led by educated and experienced officers, and controlled by diplomats from old-established Christian countries, gave way under the provocation of the time to unmeasured greed and vindictive cruelty, it is not surprising that some of the Chinese Christians, only just emerged from heathenism, should betray a revengeful spirit towards men who had destroyed their property, slaughtered their wives and children, and hunted the survivors with the ferocity of wild beasts. In some places, the missionaries had a hard task in restraining this spirit. It was inevitable, also, that in the confusion which followed the victory of the foreigners, some ``wolves'' should put on ``sheep's clothing,'' and, under the pretense of being Christians, extort money from the terror- stricken villagers, or try to deceive the foreigner with false claims for indemnity.

But as I visited the scenes of disaster, saw the frightful ruin, heard the stories of Christians and missionaries, faced the little companies of survivors and learned more of the awful ordeal through which they had passed, I marvelled, not that some yielded, but that so many stood steadfast. Edicts were issued commanding them to recant on pain of dire punishment, but promising protection to those who obeyed. The following proclamation posted on the wall of the yamen at Ching-chou-fu is a sample of hundreds:--

``The Taku forts have been retaken by the Chinese. Gen. Tung Fu Shiang has led the Boxers and the goddesses, and has destroyed twenty foreign men-of-war, killing 6,000 foreign soldiers. The seven devilish countries' consuls came to beg for peace. General Tung now has killed all the foreign soldiers. The secondary devils must die. General Tung has ordered the Boxers to go to the foreign countries and bring out their devil emperors from their holes. One foreigner must not be allowed to live. All who are not Chinese must be destroyed.''

It requires no large knowledge of Chinese character to calculate the effect of such official utterances on the minds of lawless men.

Word sped from a Chinese city that on a certain day all Christians who had not recanted could be pillaged. From every quarter, the lawless streamed in, eager for the shambles. Ruffians pointed out the women they intended to take. And there was no foreigner to protect, no regiment or battleship for the Chinese Christian.

Those poor people, hardly out of their spiritual infancy, stood in that awful emergency absolutely alone. Could an American congregation have endured such a strain without flinching? Let those who can safely worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences be thankful that the genuineness of their faith has never been subjected to that supreme test.

Those were grievous days for the Christians of China. Two graduates of Teng-chou College remained for weary weeks in a filthy dungeon when they might have purchased freedom at any moment by renouncing Christianity. Pastor Meng of Paoting-fu, a direct descendant of Mencius, was 120 miles from home when the outbreak occurred. He was safe where he was, but he hurried back to die with his flock. He was stabbed, his arm twisted out of joint and his back scorched with burning candles in the effort to make him recant. But he steadfastly refused to compromise either himself or his people and was finally beheaded.

The uneducated peasant was no whit behind his cultivated countrymen in devotion to duty. A poor cook was seized and beaten, his ears were cut off, his mouth and cheeks gashed with a sword and other unspeakable mutilations inflicted. Yet he stood as firmly as any martyr of the early Church.

One of the Chinese preachers, on refusing to apostatize, received a hundred blows upon his bare back, and then the bleeding sufferer was told to choose between obedience and another hundred blows. What would we have answered? Let us, who have never been called on to suffer for Him, be modest in saying what we would have done. But that mangled, half- dead Chinese gasped:--``I value Jesus Christ more than life, and I will never deny Him.'' Before all of the second hundred blows could be inflicted, unconsciousness came and he was left for dead. But a friend took him away by night, bathed his wounds and secretly nursed him to recovery. I saw him, when I was in China, and I looked reverently upon the back that was seamed and scarred with ``the marks of the Lord Jesus.'' Of the hundreds of Christians who were taken inside the legation grounds in Peking, not one proved false to their benefactors. ``In the midday heat, in the drenching night rains, under storms of shot and shell, they fought, filled sand-bags, built barricades, dug trenches, sang hymns and offered prayers to the God whom the foreigner had taught them to love.'' Even the children were faithful. During the scream of deadly bullets, and the roar of burning buildings, the voices of the Junior Christian Endeavour Society were heard singing:--

``There'll be no dark valley when Jesus comes.''

Such instances could be multiplied almost indefinitely from the experiences of Chinese Christians during the Boxer uprising. Indeed the fortitude of the persecuted Christians was so remarkable that in many cases the Boxers cut out the hearts of their victims to find the secret of such sublime faith, declaring: ``They have eaten the foreigner's medicine.'' In those humble Chinese the world has again seen a vital faith, again seen that the age of heroism has not passed, again seen that men and women are willing to die for Christ. Multitudes withstood a persecution as frightful as that of the early disciples in the gardens and arenas of Nero. If they were hypocrites why did they not recant? As Dr. Maltbie Babcock truly said:-- ``One-tenth of the hypocrisy with which they were charged would have saved them from martyrdom.'' But thousands of them died rather than abjure their faith, and thousands more ``had trial of mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment; they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated; wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth.''

Col. Charles Denby, late United States Minister to China, declared:--``Not two per cent. of the Chinese Christians proved recreant to their faith and many meet death as martyrs. Let us not call them `Rice Christians' any more. Their conduct at the British Legation and the Peitang is deserving of all praise.'' Beyond question, the Chinese Christians as a body stood the test of fire and blood quite as well as an equal number of American Christians would have stood it.

One of the most trying experiences of the missionaries has been the dealing with those who did recant. Some of the cases were pitiful. Poor, ignorant men, confessed their sin with streaming eyes, saying that they did not mean to deny their Lord, but that they could not see their wives outraged and their babies' heads crushed against stone walls. Others admitted that, though they stood firm while one hundred blows were rained upon their bare backs, yet after that they became confused and were only dimly conscious of what they said to escape further agony than flesh and blood could endure. Still others made a distinction, unfamiliar to us, but quite in harmony with Oriental hereditary notions, between the convictions of the heart and the profession of the lips, so that they externally and temporarily bowed their heads to the storm without feeling that they were thereby renouncing their faith. One of the best Chinese ministers in Shantung, after 200 lashes, which pounded his back into a pulp, feebly muttered an affirmative to the question: ``Will you leave the devils' church?'' But he explained afterwards that while he promised to leave ``the devils' church,'' he did not promise to leave Christ's Church. The deception was not as apparent to him as it is to us whose moral perceptions have been sharpened by centuries of Christian nurture which have been denied to the Chinese.

When the proclamation ordering the extermination of all foreigners and Christians was posted on the walls of Ching- chou-fu, a friendly official hinted that if the Chinese pastors would sign a document to the effect that they would ``no longer practice the foreign religion,'' he would accept it as sufficient on behalf of all their flocks, and not enforce the order. Warrants for the arrest of every Christian had already been written. Scoundrels were hurrying in from distant villages to join in the riot of plunder and lust. Two women had already been killed. What were the pastors to do? There was no missionary to guide them, for long before the consuls had ordered all foreigners out of the interior. The agonized pastors determined to sacrifice themselves for their innocent people, to go through the form of giving up the ``foreign'' religion. That word ``foreign'' must be emphasized to understand their temptation, for the Chinese Christians do not feel that Christianity is foreign, but that it is theirs as well as ours. Moreover, the pastors were made to understand that it was simply a legal fiction, not affecting the religion of their hearts, but only a temporary expedient that the friendly magistrate might have a pretext for giving his protection to the Christians. They were not asked to engage in any idolatrous rite or to make any public apostasy, but simply to sign a statement ``no longer to practice the foreign religion.'' ``So far from recanting,'' it was urged upon them, ``you are preventing recanting.''

Their decision may be best given in the words of Pastor Wu Chien Cheng: ``When I thought of these people,'' he said, his emotion being so great that the tears were running down his face, ``in most cases with children and aged parents dependent upon them, and thought of all that was involved for them if I refused to sign the paper--well, I couldn't help it. I decided to take on myself the shame and the sin.''

As the Rev. J. P. Bruce, of the English Baptist Mission, who told me of this incident, truly says: ``Who could listen to such a narrative--so sad and painful and yet not without much that was noble--without sympathy and tears?'' In this spirit of tenderness, so marked in the Lord's dealings with sinful Peter, the missionaries dealt with the recanting Christians. With the impostors, indeed, they had less mercy. The Rev. R. M. Mateer secured the arrest of two scapegraces who, under pretense of being Christians, had blackmailed innocent villagers. Very plainly, too, did the missionaries deal with Christians, who, like some people in the United States after a fire, placed an extravagant valuation upon what they had lost. But these were exceptional cases.

On the whole, Christians in Europe and America may well have stronger sympathy and respect for their fellow-Christians in China who have suffered so much for conscience' sake. Purified and chastened by the fearful holocaust through which they have passed, they are stronger spiritually than ever before. Like the apostles after Pentecost, they are giving ``with great power their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.'' ``The Chinese Church is not yet strong enough to stand entirely alone, but it is far stronger and more self-conscious of the eternal indwelling Spirit than ever before. It has learned the power of God to keep the soul in times of deadly peril, and to enable the weakest to give the strongest testimony. It has learned by humiliation and confession to put away its sins, and to gird itself for new conflicts and new victories.... Its ablest leaders are more trustworthy men than before their trials, and the body of believers has a unity and a cohesiveness which will certainly bear fruit in the not distant future.''