The Story of a Colporteur in China.
THE Chinaman’s mind is full of gods many and lords many; he has a kitchen god, a god of agriculture, a god of riches, a god of war, a goddess of mercy, and so on. His knowledge of geography is very much at fault, His notion is that China is in the center of the earth (hence the name in Chinese―“Chong-queh” central country), and that there are certain small countries round about, all of which are―or ought to be―tributary to China, and that China is the only “enlightened” country under heaven. Hence the undisguised contempt, or the condescending curiosity that the Scriptures receive at the hands of many. The more liberal Chinaman is willing to consider the Scriptures as “virtuous books,” but, of course, not nearly equal to the Chinese classics. It is little to be wondered at, then, that when the colporteur offers the literary man a gospel, he too frequently gets the reply, “We Chinese have Confucius’ books, we do not need your foreign books.” The intense prejudice to anything foreign is about the principal difficulty that the colporteur has to contend with.
However, the bulk of the colporteur’s dealings is not with the literati, but with the tradespeople and country folk. With these classes there is another formidable difficulty (and this also applies to the literati), ―the intense dullness of comprehension as regards thing spiritual. If you talk to the Chinaman about the one Supreme Being by Whom the universe was created, his mind reverts to some misty King Pan-ku, who is said to have chiseled the heavens and earth out of granite. If you speak to him of judgment to come, he thinks of King Nieu.lu of the (Buddhist) Eastern Hell, and various modes of torture, soup of forgetfulness, and final transmigration into pigs and dogs, connected therewith. If you speak to him of repentance from sin, he comes to the conclusion that you are trying to earn merit by going about and exhorting people to be “virtuous.” If you exhort him to worship the one true God he assents, and says that it is quite right to “worship heaven and earth,” and to render filial obedience to parents―particularly after their decease, If you tell him of one Jesus, Who went about doing good, and Who died to redeem sinful man, it dawns on him that you are trying to spread the teaching of some foreign sage, and he replies, “Your Jesus is similar to our Confucius; your foreigners have Jesus, we Chinese have Confucius.”
In a country like China, the colporteur’s experiences are varied, both as regards the mode of travel, and the treatment he gets at the hands of the people. The mode of travel depends much on the nature of the country. I have spent many months traveling on foot in the province of Cheh-kiang, much of which province is very hilly. There we would itinerate from village to village, walking sometimes twenty li. (one English mile is about three li.,) sometimes thirty li. and occasionally as much as ninety li in a day’s travel, the distance depending much on the places where lodgings could be obtained, also on the density of the population.
Being in European costume, and being a foreigner, my arrival at a village would be a signal for everyone to turn out and see “the foreigner,” and thus we would get a good opportunity of speaking to the people. The illustration on this page is from a photograph, and represents this phase of our colportage work; one bystander is looking at a book, while the colporteur is drawing the attention of another to a certain passage in the book he has in his hand with the object of exciting interest, so as to persuade him to purchase. In some districts that I have visited, many of the larger villages have regular market days, and we could so arrange our daily journeyings as to be at the various markets, and thus get at the country folk, many of whom we would not otherwise meet with. Occasionally, while on these country itineration’s, we would enter a hamlet, and would receive a most cordial invitation from a resident to enter his home and sit down, when tea, freshly made, and perhaps some other light refreshment would be served; thus we would have an excellent opportunity of declaring the gospel to an assembly of attentive listeners, for on such occasions all the neighbors would come in.
I ought to say a word about the native colporteurs. They have to stand much opposition, web filthy reviling, much slander, especially when working apart from the European colporteur. “Eating the foreigner’s rice” is the mildest sneer thrown at them. Yet they go ahead meekly and bravely, bearing all for the Master’s sake. He will reward their faithfulness.
What are the results of all this effort? Do the results warrant the expenditure of so much energy? How many conversions have resulted directly from the reading of the Scriptures? Such questions are not unfrequently asked, but are indeed hard to answer. To answer these questions fairly and fully is not within the power of finite man. The longer that I am at the work of colportage, the more am I convinced that without the power of the Holy Spirit, all man’s efforts to enlighten the spiritual darkness of China’s millions are utterly futile. So may I ask all true friends when before the Throne of Grace not to forget to pray that the power of the Holy Spirit may accompany the efforts of the Society’s colporteurs in China (and elsewhere). Pray also that we may have Divine guidance and sustaining grace in our work, for we need it.
From the Bible Society’s Reporter.