IT was Christmas Day, a year later, when the first Christian festival drew together village leaders from all over Fraser’s wide field. Bachelor hospitality was taxed to the utmost when they came trooping in to the mission house at Tengyueh, from Tantsah on the north to the Burma border on the west and south.
Much of the year had been spent in itineration, for to direct evangelism was now added the pastoral care of more than two hundred families. These were scattered in remote hamlets hidden among the mountains, or nearer Chinese market towns, less difficult to reach. Riding on horseback where he could, Fraser still had plenty of ‘roughing it’ and weary climbing. But nothing daunted him.
I have been out just over a fortnight [he wrote on one of these journeys] and am in Water Bowl Village, where I have fifteen Christian families... I expect to be about two months yet on this itineration before returning.... When once in Lisu country, one seldom needs to travel more than fifteen miles a day, as the villages are within a few miles of each other. The hills are big: a day’s journey will sometimes consist of a descent of three thousand feet to a plain, and then a similar ascent up the other side. But the cross-country roads are like ladders sometimes, and you have to ford streams, or jump precariously from rock to rock, and venture over crazy bridges. Sometimes you cannot even see the road before you, but just take it on faith. I have no use for a horse in this kind of country. The hills are such that ‘no one with any moral sense would ride up, and no one with any common sense would ride down’.
Yet he could add, ‘I enjoy few things more than tramping round these hills... and always like travelling days better than stopover ones.’ Some of the stopovers were full of interest, however, as a February letter to his mother tells in unusual detail. It was a wedding that detained him, nothing less than the first Christian wedding in his southern district. After accompanying the wailing bride with her relatives to the bridegroom’s house, Fraser, was pressed to act as master of ceremonies. This brought up the question of whisky drinking, the main difference between a heathen and a Christian marriage being that drunkenness was not a feature of the latter. Fraser had to be very insistent on this point, for the Chinese saying, was all too true, ‘for a Lisu to see whisky is like a leech scenting blood’.
As a matter of fact [he wrote regretfully] most of these new converts waver on the whisky question when it comes to weddings and funerals. In this case they had brewed one big jar of whisky―ten times that amount would have been needed had they done it ‘properly’ ―and had hidden it away in someone else’s garden.... I got wind of it through one of the young men who searched the village for any of the abominable stuff still remaining in their houses.... The younger people of both sexes will as a rule heartily support me in my temperance crusade. They are the Radicals; the old people the Conservatives! In this case I got them to mix a lot of pig’s food with the contents of the jar, to make it undrinkable.
At another village they told me of a big jar of whisky in a family which was just preparing for a betrothal feast. They badly wanted me to stay for the occasion, but I threatened to go away at once unless they consented to destroy the stuff. Finally the owner agreed and gave me the pig’s food to mix with it. Their ‘whisky’ is not liquid, you know; it is just a mass of fermenting rice―the liquid is drawn off through a tube. I do not now destroy it all, as it is a pity to waste what is really a good fattening food for pigs, and I do not tip it out on the ground either, as pigs are worse drunkards even than the Lisu, and will drink themselves to death if you let them. One mixes bran, etc., with it―then they can feed it to the pigs at leisure, but would not touch it themselves. A novel form of temperance crusade, is it not!
But to return to the wedding. The only ceremony Fraser went in for was public prayer when the bride arrived, before she entered her new home. There was too much noise and excitement for anything more, save the indispensable handshaking. Still standing outside the house, all the company shook hands first with the bridegroom, then with the bride half hidden from view.
The bridegroom came along and offered a big hand with a big smile on his big good-natured face [Fraser continued]. In European weddings, the bride always looks ‘charming’, doesn’t she? At least, so the papers say! No doubt the bride looked charming on this occasion too. But Lists custom permits her and two bridesmaids to satisfy their bashful instincts by covering their heads and the upper part of their persons with a felt rug. She was told, however, to give me her hand. So a ‘charming’ feminine hand appeared from under the rug, and I shook it heartily. Then a way was cleared through the crowd, and the big felt rug moved slowly into the house, with the three girls under it. Once inside, they made their way to the inner room and disappeared from the public gaze, not that there had been much to gaze at before―she was so, so, so bashful, you know!
At that stage in the proceedings, before the bride could reach the house, a strange excitement broke out. Everybody started pelting everybody else with carrots, potatoes and other root vegetables―a kind of snowball fight, with vegetables instead of snow! Fraser was taken by surprise and did not know what to make of it.
They told me all about it afterwards [he commented] and I had to veto it for a Christian wedding.
‘These roots are hard and might hurt,’ I protested.
‘Oh yes, they do hurt, if they hit you,’ was the reply.
‘And you seem to throw hard!’
‘Yes, just as hard as we can!’
Of course, the older people do not do much at it―it is chiefly the young bucks of the crowd. ‘It is fine fun,’ they tell you, ‘and we don’t keep on long.’
‘But, surely, you do not pelt the bride?’
‘Oh yes,’ they laughed, ‘it only makes her run into the house all the quicker!’
Reluctant though he was to interfere with established customs, Fraser realized that this one must be abandoned when he discovered that it had its origin in demon worship.
The idea was, originally, to drive away the evil spirits, and to make the union propitious―though they do not seem to think so much of that, now, as of the sport of the thing. When I told them (perhaps unwisely) of our custom of throwing rice or confetti after the bridal pair, they at once jumped to the conclusion that it must have been, originally, for the same purpose!
Of one thing Fraser was increasingly conscious on these itinerations, and that was the need for a deeper work of grace among the Christians themselves. They were easily upset by rumors, because they had so little hold on spiritual truth. Yet, what was to be done? With over two hundred families to care for in widely scattered hamlets, his own visits were necessarily few and far between. If only they could be taught to read and pro. vided with suitable literature, a new understanding might be awakened which would lead to better things. So far, they were quite indifferent to anything beyond the first elements of Christian truth. If believing in the Lord Jesus meant protection from evil spirits and deliverance from the punishment of sin in the afterlife, what need of anything more? It was hard to get them to observe Sunday or to see the need of regular meetings at all. Of these conditions, Fraser kept his Prayer Circle fully informed, making no attempt to disguise the facts, or the concern they caused him.
I am not painting a dark picture [he wrote early in the new year]; I only wish to tell you the real position of things as candidly as possible. In some ways they (the Lisu converts) are ahead of ordinary churchgoers at home. They are always hospitable. They are genuinely pleased to see me when I go to their villages. They are sincere, as far as they go; we see very little among them of the ulterior motives commonly credited to ‘rice Christians’. They will carry my loads for me from village to village without pay ... and give me hospitality. But with the exception of a few, very few, bright, earnest young people, there are not many who wish to make any progress or are really alive spiritually. Most of them cannot be tempted away from warm fires in the evenings (these villages in the mountains are very cold in winter) to come together and learn little more, even though I am in a nearby house which also has a fire!
I have often in time past given way to depression, which cays means spiritual paralysis, and even on this last trip have been much downcast, I admit, over the state of the people. When at a village near Mottled Hill, a month or lore ago, I was much troubled over all this, but was brought hack to peace of heart by remembering that, though the work is bound to be slow, it may be none the less sure for all that. My mistake has too often been that of too much haste. But it is not the people’s way to hurry, nor is it God’s way either. Hurry means worry, and worry effectually drives the peace of God from the heart.
Rome was not built in a day, nor will the work of building up a strong, well-instructed body of Lisu Christians, in the Tengyueh district, be the work of a day either. Schools will have to be started when the time is ripe. There will be need of much visitation, much exhortation, much prayer. I will not be done all at once. The remembrance of this has cast me back upon God again. I have set my heart upon a work of grace among the Tengyueh Lisu, but God has brought me to the point of being willing for it to be in His time as well as in His way. I am even willing (if it should be His will) not to see the fullness of blessing in my lifetime.
It was one of the older workers in the Mission, and one of the most helpful, who said to newcomers, speaking of 2 Thess. 3:5,5And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ. (2 Thessalonians 3:5) R.V.: ‘The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ.’ ― ‘Now that will do for China! If you have the love of God and the patience of Jesus Christ, that will do for China.’ But the letter we are quoting was written by a young man, strong and eager, learning lessons in the school of hardship and loneliness. A thinker, a student of the ways of God with man, he was arrested by the patience as well as the power of infinite Wisdom and Love. ‘The God of all patience’ was making Himself known to this ardent soul as One who ‘worketh for him that waiteth for Him’.
Preparation, delay and growth [he went on] are characteristics of God’s working both in history and in nature Scripture and the facts of nature meet, when James, exhorting us to patience, says: ‘The husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it.’ The same principle applies to our own spiritual lives, and to our labor in the Lord. A mature Christian is not the product of a day or a month or a year either. ‘It takes time’ said the late Dr. Andrew Murray ‘to grow into Christ.’ We must strike our roots down deep in the soil of the Word and be strengthened by long, long experience. It is a slow process, and it is right that it should be so: God does not want us to be spiritual mushrooms. It is true that in the Lord’s work there is a place for haste―the King’s business requires it (there is a right and a wrong haste), and there is assuredly a place for diligence, for earnestness. James Gilmour said he ‘did not think we could be too earnest in a matter for which Christ was so much in earnest that He laid down His life.’ You know it was said of Alleine that he was ‘insatiably greedy for souls’. While it is day we cannot but be up and doing to the limit of the strength which God supplies. But the element of corroding care will enter into Christian work if we let it, and it will not help, but hinder. We cannot fret souls into the Kingdom of Heaven; neither, when they are once converted, can we worry them into maturity; we cannot by taking thought, add a cubit to our own spiritual stature or to anyone else’s either. The plants of our Heavenly Father’s planting will grow better under His open sky than under the hothouses of our feverish effort: it is for us to water, and to water diligently, but we cannot give the increase however we try. An abnormally rapid growth is often unnatural and unhealthy: the quick growth spoken of in Matt. 13:55Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: (Matthew 13:5) is actually said to be a sign of its being ephemeral.
In the biography of our Lord nothing is more noticeable than the quiet, even poise of His life. Never ‘flustered’ whatever happened, never taken off His guard, however assailed by men or demons: in the midst of fickle people, hostile rulers, faithless disciples―always calm, always collected. Christ the hard Worker indeed―but doing no more, and no less, than God had appointed Him; and with no restlessness, no hurry, no worry. Was ever such a peaceful life lived―under conditions so perturbing?
But we also, as He, are working for eternity and in eternity (eternity has already commenced for us): we can afford then to work in the atmosphere of eternity. The rush and bustle of carnal activity breathes a spirit of restlessness: the Holy Spirit breathes a deep calm. This is the atmosphere in which we may expect a lasting work of God to grow. Let us take care first of all that it is a work of God―begun and continued in God―and then let us cast our anxieties, our fears, and our impatience to the winds. Let us shake off ‘dull sloth’ on the one hand and feverishness on the other. A gourd may spring up in a night, but not an oak. The current may be flowing deep and strong in spite of ripples and countercurrents on the surface. And even when it receives a temporary setback from the incoming tide of evil, we may yet learn to say―as Jeremiah once said under the most distressing circumstances― ‘It is good that a man should hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.’
The immediate task before Fraser that summer was the completion of his translation of one of the Gospels, that the Lisu converts might have in their own language some portion of the Word of God. He had already made a beginning, and now as the busy farming season almost pit a stop to teaching in the villages, he went down to Myitkyina to avail himself of Ba Thaw’s efficient collaboration. This brought him in for a happy occasion; for Ba, Thaw was about to be married, as Fraser found, to ‘a sweet little Karen Christian girl’. Received with hospitality by the American missionaries (and later by the Ba Thaws in their own home) Fraser worked on month after month, through the great heat, to finish not only Si, Mark’s Gospel, but a simple dictionary and primer, and an enlarged Catechism with a number of new hymns. Fir was eager that the Lisu Church should be a reading church―lovers of the Book, founded upon its teachings and able to impart them to others. With the co-operation of the American missionaries―who were working among Lisu on the Burma side of the border―he also perfected his script for the language, reducing it to the simplest form of writing, so that his manuscripts were ready for printing when he returned to Yunnan.
Rich with the spoils of summer, and refreshed by contact with fellow workers, Fraser set out for the highlands of Yunnan. Once before he had climbed that mountainous borderland to meet bitter disappointment awaiting him at Tantsah, and even now he could not but be concerned as to the state of things he should find among his large and scattered flock. Coming first to his western district, it was at Pangpieh (Turtle Village) that Fraser found himself for the weekend, and the welcome with which he was received soon set his heart at rest.
When I left Turtle Village last [he wrote to his Prayer Circle] there were fourteen families of Christians, now there are twenty-one. When I left Water Bowl there were twelve families... now there are nineteen. When I left Redwood Spur there were nine―now there are twenty.... And this in spite of the fact that they have practically had no help of any kind for months. I hear that Melting Pot and Cypress Hill are the same as when I left them. They tell me that in the former village they have built a chapel (I have not seen it) where they hold regular Sunday services.
In Turtle Village one of the elders of the place, a good old man, was seriously ill for many weeks. But he and all of them held on in faith and prayer, and he pulled through. These people are great believers in faith-healing, and such an experience strengthens their faith considerably. Altogether I think they have increased in strength as well as in numbers since I was last here.
Their faith in this connection was unexpectedly tested during Fraser’s visit, but perhaps it was a needed lesson that prayer is not always answered just as we would have it. Fraser was glad that the loss was his, not theirs.
The Sunday I was at Turtle Village [he continued in the above letter] my horse fell and it died the next morning. As soon as it was seen to be ill, the people came and asked me to come out and pray—for that is the first thing they think of in such cases. (Did I tell you of a group of dear little Christian Lisu girls I saw standing in front of their pigsty at Cup Village, last March, with hands over their eyes, praying for the newborn litter of pigs?) I confess I heisted at first, not being used to just that way of doing things. But the people seemed surprised.
‘Aren’t you going to pray for your horse?’ they questioned.
So I went with them. We stood around the animal as I placed it in God’s hands for life or death. Next morning I was glad I had done so while it was still living.
Before leaving Turtle Village, Fraser had the joy of baptizing twenty-five, mostly young people, of whose faith in Christ there could be no question. To him as well as to the Christians it was a day of great rejoicing. Here is the picture:
Each one promised solemnly, not only to trust in the Lord Jesus for his whole lifetime, but to abstain from any connection with heathen worship, from whisky drinking, immorality, opium smoking or cultivation, and to observe the Lord’s Day. I enjoyed the occasion immensely (I always enjoy a baptismal service) as we went down to their village stream that summer morning, separated the men to one side and the women to the other, on the river bank, and commended them all to God in prayer, under His open sky. I then immersed them, one by one, in the swiftly running water, just below a thick plank bridge. Will you pray that they may be kept true to their promises?
That first Christmas festival, when it came, was an advance upon all previous experiences. Often had Fraser been the guest of Lisu hosts; but now, fifty or more were to receive his hospitality at one and the same time! In lives that had so little contact with the world beyond their scattered hamlets, it was a great occasion. To them Tengyueh, with its city wall and gates, was a metropolis indeed, and the simple mission house a place of marvels. The men were put up on the premises, the women at Mrs. Li’s nearby; ‘and didn’t they enjoy it!’ Christmas Day was the climax, with the united service in the morning (Chinese as well as Lisu), ‘sports’ in the afternoon, when Flagg and Fraser appeared in a new light, and then the crowning feast with more than eighty guests! But ever, day was one long enjoyment.
You would have been interested to see them when they first arrived [Fraser wrote to his Circle]. Very few had even been in the city before. When they came to our house (we let them roam all over it) the girls, going round in a bunch from room to room, kept up a continual, involuntary murmur of admiration and delight. It was like heaven to them! The men took things more calmly. Men with their big swords, gay satchels, chimney-like stockings and bare feet; girls with colored turbans, tassels, beads, necklaces, rings, bangles and other ornaments―I wish you could have seen them!...
Every day, after Morning Prayers, I had them all in our chapel, teaching them to read the Script ... In the evenings I took them in singing. Besides ‘Jesus loves me’ and I’ve wandered far from God which they knew already, I taught them, ‘God be with you till we meet again’ and one or two other hymns. They sang so well that Chinese from the street would come in and sit and listen.
One day our new Consul came round to call on us with the retiring Consul, Mr. Eastes. The Lisu all came crowding round them in the sitting room and outside, making all sorts of remarks and even feeling their clothing! We explained to the Consuls that they must not mind, as our guests had little idea of the proprieties.
‘I should say not,’ replied Eastes, taking it all in good part, ‘there is a fellow behind me stroking my back right now!’