THE LIFE STORY OF PASTOR WANG
IF Pastor Hsi may be spoken of as the Paul of the Shansi Church,
Barnabas finds his counterpart in Pastor Wang of Hwochow.
Though possessing none of the peculiar gifts which made Hsi a leader
amongst foreigners and Chinese, he has exercised a remarkable personal
influence upon hundreds of lives, winning by consistency and sincerity
those with whom he has come in contact. On our first arrival we found
him already in charge, conducting the Sunday services and generally
caring for the Church members.
His unfailing courtesy, consideration, and tact simplified many
difficult situations, and the exercise of his natural gift for gathering
people around him and drawing out the best in them soon resulted in a
rapidly growing work. He was almost immediately chosen as Deacon, and
before long the office of Elder was given to him. All turned to Mr. Wang
in difficulty, sought his advice in perplexity, and by the unanimous
desire of the Church he was in 1909 ordained Pastor at Hwochow.
He has developed his gifts in the school of adversity, for trouble
overtook him in his childhood when his father died only a few years
before the great famine which was to sweep over the province of Shansi.
Poor they always were, and his love for his mother was intensified as he
saw the self-sacrificing devotion with which she earned enough by her
spinning to enable him to continue his schooling. At the age of fifteen
he was married, and on the bride's arrival the falsity of the middleman
through whom the engagement had been long ago contracted was revealed,
for the bride was a helpless cripple and a serious burden on the already
overpressed household.
Food soon began to be scarce, for the rains failed and the prospect of
the wheat harvest was poor. They endured and hoped, being mercifully
saved from the knowledge that they must now enter upon a period when the
inhabitants of Shansi should touch the depths of human suffering and
call on death to end their woes. No pen can fully describe the horrors
of that time. When summer and autumn crops had failed the rains were
still withheld, and despair seized on all as they saw the impossibility
of sowing the wheat for next year's harvest.
The delicate bride, unable to withstand the privations of that time,
soon died, and Wang's sister was married, so that he and his mother
remained alone to care for each other. The poor young sister lived but a
very short while in her new home, and the circumstances of her death
were so tragic that Wang felt unable to forgive the man who had been her
husband. After many years, when circumstances brought this man to his
home, he realised that Christ's command to forgive those who have
offended against you required of him a complete change of feeling
towards this once hated brother-in-law, and he invited him to share his
food as a sign of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Every month the distress became more acute; weeds, leaves, bark of
trees, and even some softer kinds of wood were used as food, but numbers
were dying and of the one hundred and twenty families which inhabited
the village, at last thirty only remained. The dead outnumbered the
living, and compelled by hunger the latter were driven to sustain life
by feeding on the former.
Wang saw his mother's vain endeavour to supply some kind of food on
which they might subsist, and his heart was torn to see her deprive
herself even now that there might be more for him.
When the famine was at its worst, the most tragic blow fell. His mother
one day told him it was her wish that he should accompany several
neighbours to a near village where lived a relation. In those days none
dared to travel alone, lest in their weak, half-starved condition they
should fall a prey to man or beast. The pretext given was the
possibility of obtaining the loan of a little grain from the aunt who
lived there. Beggars were many and givers few, and he wondered at his
mother entertaining any hope of such good fortune.
He went, however, only to return a few hours later, empty-handed. As he
entered the courtyard, heart-sick with disappointment, he called for
his mother and received no answer. Doors and windows were locked on the
inside, and sick with apprehension he called the neighbours to his help.
On bursting open the door, they saw her body swinging from a beam in the
dim recesses of the cave. The errand had been an excuse to get him out
of the way, while she performed this act which was the last expression
of her love to him. She had chosen this solution of their impossible
position, hoping that, relieved of her presence, he might be able to
endure till coming harvest.
The body, wrapped in matting, was laid in an empty cave. There was no
money for a coffin, and many were waiting like hungry wolves to eat the
uncoffined dead; moreover, the boy and his uncle were too weak to drag
the body to the burying-ground.
The months passed, and still the arid, sun-baked earth refused to bear
any green thing, and the despairing people longed for rain which never
came. The second year of drought had come and gone, and there was now
nothing sown in the fields, but on the seventh day of the fourth moon of
the fourth year of the Emperor Kwang Hsue, the longed-for rain fell and
hope revived.
At this time also a stranger came to the village registering the names
of survivors, and announcing that foreigners had arrived and were
distributing grain that the fields might be sown for an autumn crop.
The worst of the famine was over, but the terrors of famine fever had
yet to be faced, and when the longed-for grain had ripened there were
in many houses none left to eat it, for whole families had been wiped
out.
Wang now naturally became an inmate of his uncle's home, and gradually
the conditions of greatest horror were relieved. As soon as strength had
sufficiently returned, they made coffins and prepared to bury their
dead, that the required rites should not be lacking which should bring
consolation to those who had entered the land of shades without the
necessary honours having been paid to their memory. Not only for the
coffins was money required, but also to pay the fees of the geomancers
who must decide the site of the graves and an auspicious day for the
funeral. In this one family, thirteen coffins were made and graves dug
in accordance with the following plan: The four quarterings of the
celestial sphere were borne in mind, respectively governed by the Azure
Dragon, Red Bird, White Tiger, and Black Tortoise, these being
identified with East, West, South, and North. The graves should face the
south, with White Tiger on the right and Azure Dragon on the left, as
these respectively control wind and water.
On the day of the funeral the son, dressed in coarse white cloth, with
unhemmed garments, white twists plaited with the hair of his queue which
he wore over his chest, and his head unshaven, walked as chief mourner,
the wailing relatives following the bier. In due course, paper money and
other articles were burned for the use of the deceased, and fire
crackers were exploded to ensure the soul and the mortal remains
against the attacks of demons. The next year in early spring on the day
known as _Pure Brightness_, in accordance with national custom, Wang,
dressed in white, again visited and repaired the grave. For three years
he wore signs of mourning in his dress, and abstained from all
festivities. Thus he strove to leave undone nothing which filial piety
could contrive, to make easier to his mother her sojourn in those
mysterious realms whither she had passed.
For the next few years he worked as a silversmith in his uncle's shop,
this latter being a generous, kindly man, on whom the responsibilities
of business life sat only too lightly, for an illness revealed the fact
that the profits were not sufficient to meet the interest due on the
rapidly accumulating debts.
Moreover, the sick man, with failing health, had gradually acquired the
use of the fatal drug known as "foreign smoke," which some years
previously had been first introduced from distant lands, and was gaining
ground every year as a profitable crop in the best soil. One ounce a day
had become the necessary allowance for the sick man, and to Hwochow the
nephew constantly went in order to buy the needful supply. He tells how
he walked between the poppy fields and heard the chant which always
accompanied the sowing of the plant:
"Of ten acres, fateful plant, thou claimest eight,
Thus only two are left for ripening grain;
From distant lands thou wert brought here,
And hast devoured the best of China's sons."
Of famine, of typhus, and of the raids of wild beasts, the inhabitants
of Shansi had tasted the full terrors, but now this more insidious foe
was working havoc in their midst. Amongst the villagers it already
counted its victims: one young man had recently died as a direct result
of its use, for after taking his accustomed dose he had so lain down
that a portion of his wadded clothes was touching the lighted stove.
Shortly after, his mother entered the cave to find this, her only son,
burned to death, the charred corpse being all that remained to tell the
tale. Another neighbour had gradually parted with all his possessions,
and when nothing else remained on which to raise money, he took his
young wife and sold her to an innkeeper in whose house she was not
mistress of her actions and had no choice but to obey her purchaser.
Nothing could save her, and the tragedy of that broken heart still
awaits His judgment Who judgeth righteously.
The duty of preparing the pipe for his uncle devolved on the young man,
and before long he himself was a victim of opium.
Meanwhile the uncle was weaker than formerly, and a neighbour strongly
recommended Wang to visit the China Inland Mission station at Hwochow to
ask for some medicine, and this was how he first heard the Gospel story.
He was cordially received by the evangelist, and given a dose to be
administered according to regulation, and told to pray earnestly for his
uncle; this he conscientiously did, kneeling in the courtyard, and
saying: "Heavenly Father, have mercy on my uncle." The next day, the
sick man was better, and continued so for many months.
Troubles soon thickened around Mr. Wang. When his uncle died he found
himself responsible for business and home, and overwhelmed by debts.
The great spiritual crisis of his life was at hand. He had from
childhood pursued, by what broken light he had, an ideal which was
intensely real to him. In the five relationships wherein his teachers
had instructed him as to conduct, he had endeavoured to be blameless: as
subject to ruler, son to father, younger brother to elder, husband to
wife, and friend to friend. He had worked beyond his strength to clear
himself of debt, and when his best endeavours proved futile he had sold
his goods and distributed their price amongst the creditors. Having
taken the vow of an ascetic, for years he was a vegetarian.
Nevertheless, all had failed, and he bitterly reproached himself with
having fallen into the sin of opium smoking.
Now it happened that a certain man, jealous of Pastor Hsi's success,
opened a rival opium refuge in which he treated patients according to
the Pastor's methods, but with medicine of his own making. The scheme
was a contentious one, and the man a cause of friction and difficulty to
the Christian community. It was to this Refuge that Mr. Wang, now thirty
years old, poor, sad, and dispirited, came as a patient. He found here a
man who, according to the established tradition of the opium refuge,
received even a degraded class of men into his house in order to care
for them, and performed many menial tasks in the discharge of his duty
towards them. Also the good news of the Evangel was proclaimed in the
house. If the preaching were not sincere but proclaimed a Christ of
contention, it behoves us to rejoice that even so Christ was preached,
for Mr. Wang heard something of the life of Jesus, His love, and His
humility, and thought that he saw the very spirit of the doctrine
exemplified in the man who ministered to these unfortunate patients. His
heart was overwhelmed by the love of God; and the beauty of Christ,
after which he for so many years had blindly felt, lest haply he might
find, was now revealed to him. On the ninth day, for lack of money, he
was obliged to cut his treatment short and return home; but henceforth
nothing could separate him from the love of God.
The rumour of his conversion soon spread, and many visited the workshop
where the silversmith sat at his daily occupation, questioning him,
hearing his story, and taking note of the great change in him. From the
first he exercised a great influence on men, and soon a few were joining
with him morning and evening for prayer and reading of the Bible.
The last month of the year--a period dreaded by the Chinaman whose
liabilities exceed his assets--found him in great straits. A fever had
laid him low, but as soon as strength returned sufficiently to sit up in
bed and work he was plying his trade once more, and it was thus his
creditors found him when they came to press their claims.
The Chinese universal system of debt does not allow for the exercise of
mercy, as each creditor is himself a debtor, and his object in securing
payments is to relieve the pressure brought to bear on himself by his
own creditors. Nevertheless, the sight of the sick man forcing himself
to work, and the reputation he had for integrity so affected them that
they left the house again, begging him to reserve his strength and free
his mind from immediate anxiety on their account. Health and strength
finally returned, and intercourse was established with the Hwochow
missionaries, which resulted in his baptism. By the year 1900 a group of
Christian men and women formed the nucleus of a church in the village.
Mr. Wang this year became a widower for the second time, the wife he had
taken some years previously dying in childbirth, leaving him the care of
two small children. The newborn babe it was impossible for him to rear,
and he gave it away to a friend whose wife had lost her own child and
now took this one to her breast.
As the dangers of that fateful year thickened and news came of
persecutions and massacres, the Church trembled and wondered how she
would endure. Finally it became known that Boxers were marching on the
village. Mr. Wang was recognised as leader of the local Christians, and
to him they would certainly come. He called his little boy and girl to
kneel with him in the cave, and committed the matter to God. At sunset,
a sound of rushing wind was heard and a violent thunderstorm burst on
the district. Hail, wind, and rain were followed by a terrific
cloud-burst which swept man and beast away in its irresistible violence.
The narrow mountain roads were completely carried away by the course
of the waters, and the Boxers never came.
[Illustration: PASTOR WANG.
_To face page 136._]
It was a great spiritual experience for Mr. Wang, to whom God spake not
in the thunder nor in the storm, but in a still small voice which
asserted His boundless claim on the life preserved from danger. From
that time he was conscious of a new strength and power, which resulted
in his shortly giving up his trade of metal-worker to take charge of the
Hwochow Men's Opium Refuge. That position he still holds, and thanks to
him the good name and repute of this institution is widespread. All his
noblest gifts find their full development in the work which makes hourly
claims on patience, forbearance, devotion, longsuffering, meekness, and
all those qualities which are bound up in the one characteristic of
love. From amongst the men in his charge a steady stream return home to
destroy idols and subsequently request baptism. When the question is
asked: "How came you to believe?" the answer will be: "I owe it to
Pastor Wang, who taught me about Christ and taught me to pray." His
methods are not those of the evangelist who gathers in the crowds, but
one by one he wins them to the Lord. In one particular only did I hear
him censured by a Christian, and that was on the occasion of his
ordination to the pastorate. A Church member protested that a stronger
man than Wang Bing-guin was needed for the work. "See my case," he said.
"When, as you know, I was recently the subject of persecution, I came to
Elder Wang for assistance. He listened to my story and urged me to pray
and have patience. This I did, but matters only got worse, and I
returned to insist on his taking action on my behalf. Would you believe
that he spoke of nothing more practical than prayer and patience again?
On the third occasion, when I had very nearly made up my mind to go
straight to the Mandarin, he only urged: 'I fear that prayer and
patience are your only lawful weapons, my brother.'"
The opinion of the heathen regarding Mr. Wang was forced upon my
attention in a rather startling way. We were preaching one day to a
group of village women, and as an old lady in the crowd heard us
explaining that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,"
she said: "Those words are untrue, for I knew a man who never spoke a
false word and never did an unkind deed." Interested, we asked who he
was, and she replied: "Oh, he afterwards followed your Church; his name
is Wang Bing-guin."
A VISIT TO THE BASE
"Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye are needing
all these things."
"I would be undone if I had not access to the
King's chamber of Presence to show Him all the
business."--RUTHERFORD.
"Dear children!
Let us not be loving in word nor yet with the tongue,
But in deed and truth."
The First Epistle of John.