4. Native Evangelist’s Work.
THE following account of the commencement and continuance of a very remarkable work of grace in a mountain village in the interior of China, illustrates beautifully the present power of the gospel among the heathen, and cannot fail to interest and encourage Christian workers everywhere; especially should it lead us to expect and look for great things to be done among the heathen in these last days.
We narrow our sympathies and cramp our faith very much if we confine our prayers to the mere handful of men and women who have gone forth into the great harvest fields of heathendom from our own European and American shores, and forget the tens of thousands of native Christians upon whom, humanly speaking, the evangelization of the great nations, still lost in the darkness of superstition and death, depends.
Ku-cheng Tsih is a small village of 300 families in the province of An-huai, 240 miles from Gan-king, and 60 miles west of Yang-chou Fu, in the province of Kiang-su, and about the same distance north or Nanking.
The work there commenced through the faithful testimony of a native of the village, named Chen Loh-tsuen. No missionary had ever been there, and upon Chen alone rests the honor of being the first man to preach the gospel to the people of that village and the district surrounding it for many, many miles. A few words respecting the conversion and early experiences of Chen will help the reader the better to understand and appreciate the subsequent labors of this devoted man and beloved brother.
More than twenty years ago, at the time of the Tai-ping rebellion, he was driven from his home, and compelled to serve in the rebel army. Whilst among the rebels he learned the name of Jesus, and, along with the whole army, used to bow down to the name of God the Father; for it will be remembered that the great leader of the Tai-ping rebellion (which Chinese Gordon assisted in suppressing) had obtained possession of a translation of the Old Testament, and imagining himself to be Joshua, and his army to be composed of the people of God, he went forward, conquering first the immediate neighborhood of his own village, and finally he almost overthrew the Tartar dynasty.
Chen learned from this cruel leader nothing of the spirit or the power of Christ, and was as ignorant of the gospel, probably, as any other idolater in the empire. In the north of the Kiang-suh province, after six years’ service in the rebel army, Chen, along with many others, was taken prisoner by the Imperial army. Most of these were put to death, but Chen was providentially saved, and henceforth became a royalist, and was stationed at a city on the old bed of the Yellow River, called Su-chou. It was here that, some years after, Chen heard of the presence of a foreign missionary in the city, and, desiring to learn something of the new religion which the missionary was said to be propagating, paid him a visit at the inn, and was kindly received. He had long since become dissatisfied with his present condition, and for some time had entertained serious thoughts of becoming a Buddhist priest, thinking that in such a capacity he might be able to acquire a sufficient stock of merit to gain admission into heaven when the time came for him to depart this life; he was therefore in a favorable state of mind to hear the good news of salvation in Christ: for who does not know that so long as the sinner is fairly satisfied with his own condition there is little probability of his coming to Christ for pardon?
Chen listened attentively to the words of the missionary, and left the inn with a copy of the New Testament and a hymn-book in the Chinese language. These he studied carefully, and soon became deeply interested in the teaching of the New Testament, so much so that he threw up his position in the army, and journeyed more than one hundred English miles south in search of a missionary or some native Christians who might help him to understand more clearly the doctrine of God’s word.
Chen found pardon and peace in Christ, and then he returned to his native village of Ku-cheng; but almost as a stranger. He had been absent twenty years, and all who had known him thought of him as having long since perished in the rebellion. All his near relatives had died, but there were some in the place who remembered him, and to them he appeared as one risen from the dead. They were, however, still more astonished at his strange behavior. He had no feat of the idols, neither would he worship them; he spoke against the ancient custom of worshipping ancestors; he strongly condemned lying and cheating; indeed he appeared to have imbibed some strange notions during his long absence.
Soon Chen’s faithful preaching and consistent life told effectually, and permanently, upon his neighbors, and one after another believed that what Chen taught was true; and they cast away their idols, and joined with him in worshipping the true God.
So the work commenced, and is now extending to other villages in the district.
Scores of men and women, and children, too, are repenting of their sins and receiving pardon and life in Christ through faith in Him. Among the first converts was one of the leading men in the village, named Hsiang. He was a doctor by profession, and kept a drug store. For thirty years this man had been an opium smoker, his wife also being addicted to the same habit. The poor fellow was a slave to the drug, and had often vainly sought to break away from it. He had tried both native and foreign medicines, but all alike left the old craving for the drug there still. Hsiang heard the preaching of Chen, and decided to become a Christian. One day when Chen went into his house to read the Scriptures with him he found his friend smoking his opium― “What!” said Chen, “Do you not know that you cannot be a Christian and smoke opium?”
“Is that so?” asked the convert; “does the Bible forbid it?”
He was told that, although not mentioned in the Scriptures, the passages condemning drunkenness of course condemned the far worse intoxication of opium. “What is to be done?” cried Hsiang. “Well, you had better gradually give it up; lessen the amount you smoke daily by a few grains until you can do without it altogether.” “Ah!” replied the opium smoker, “I have tried that plan, but in vain.”
Chen advised the gradual discontinuance of the use of the drug, lest his friend, by suddenly leaving it off, should die in the attempt―a not at all improbable issue.
Chen encouraged his friend by reminding him that at that time he had no Almighty Saviour to help him, but that Jesus was mighty to save from every form of sin. Upon this it appeared to Hsiang that it was sin, and, argued he, if it be sin to smoke three drachms of opium, it could be no less sin to smoke two drachms and nine-tenths. He dared not go on sinning for a long time while trying to give it up. “If it be sin it must be given up at once, and at any cost,” cried Hsiang.
They prayed about the matter, and Hsiang, on rising from his knees, with a strength given him from above, at once took his pen and paper and wrote the following: “In obedience to the will of God, I prohibit myself from this time forth from either smoking opium or entering an opium den, or in any wise having any connection with opium.” The paper was signed and dated, and pasted up in the most conspicuous place in his shop, so that all who came in might know his determination. It is needless to say that Hsiang, like many another man known personally to the writer, had grace given him to break off the habit. As his days so was his strength (Deut. 33:2525Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be. (Deuteronomy 33:25)), and he is now one of the most zealous workers in the district; his children are Christians, and probably a happier father could not be found in that part of China.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that a work of conversion to God from idolatry and sin could continue to prosper without persecution. But the Christians remained faithful to Christ; and we are happy to know that many of those who most reviled them for destroying their idols and worshipping a strange God are now Christians themselves. They could not but acknowledge that the remarkable conduct of the worshippers of the true God under persecution had convinced them more than anything else of the truth and the value of Christian profession.
The mother of one of the Christians was a most bitter persecutor. She was an old woman, seventy-eight years of age, and did all in her power to annoy the followers of the new religion. One of her sons, an opium smoker, joined with her in persecution, but sudden death silenced this wicked son, and the old woman herself was not far from death. Much prayer had been made that she might be saved. All had been done that could be done to win her for Christ, but hitherto she held to her idols and refused to lessen her hatred of the truths concerning the gospel. At last the old woman could hold her own no longer, and, calling for the Christians, she professed her desire that Christ should save her. Doubtless the consistent lives of the Christians around her, and their emphatic teaching about sin and salvation through the merits of another, had been gradually undermining her faith in the power of Buddha, or any of her other idols, to pardon her sins. During all those long years she had been fondly clinging to the hope that she would escape hell and go to heaven on the score of her own good works in having regularly worshipped her idols, and, on special occasions, chanted prayers and praises to them. She now requested to have the idols and paper gods pulled down from the walls of her cottage and destroyed, feeling that they were of no further use to her or to anyone else. This was quickly done, and her Christian neighbors gladly pointed her clearly to the one great sacrifice for sin. She soon confessed her faith in Christ, and there was great rejoicing.
In a few days the old lady sent again for her Christian son and his wife, and the others, and asked them to pray that she might be speedily taken home; she felt that her end was near, and she longed to be at rest. Prayer was made for her, and the friends dispersed, the daughter-in-law only remaining in the house. Presently, at a moment when her daughter had gone out, the old lady got off her bed, and, by partly resting herself on a chair, which she pushed before her, she feebly dragged herself outside the house, and prayed under the open heavens that God would call her home to heaven. She returned in the same way to the house, and laid herself upon the bed again; and when her daughter came in she found that her mother had passed away.
Every Christian followed the corpse to the grave rejoicing in the victory over Satan.
Here was a gracious end of seventy-eight years of heathen darkness and sin. A.G.P.