ANOTHER PORTRAIT GALLERY
WHEREIN THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO SOME WHO HAVE FAILED
TO the student of human nature the fact that man so often fails to
respond to the highest ideals set before him comes with no shock. In the
early Church men who had run well were easily hindered, and in the
greatest series of biographies we possess, we see portrayed faithfully
the faults and failings of those who now form the great cloud of
witnesses, and are shown at the same time the possibilities of such
lives when brought into vital touch with the Divine.
The generous, impulsive David, the man God's own heart, was capable of a
tragic fall; Peter and John, privileged to personal intercourse with the
Lord, in the hour of crisis were amongst those who forsook Him and fled,
and Demas, "who loves this present world," is ever a disappointment to
Evangelist, who hoped that for him such dangers were over.
For the fact remains that the natural characteristics of the man are
strong forces, and that while Grace can, and does, make possible the
"new man in Christ Jesus," we remain each in our own order, and perhaps
no point is so vulnerable as that wherein has taken place greatest
change.
The emergence from heathendom is a difficult process, during which time
habits, vices, and superstitions cling to a man's soul with a tenacity
that would cause us to abandon all hope, were it not that monuments of
grace abound to prove that the power and dominion of sin has been
shattered.
Sometimes the enemy will entrap a young Christian when there is illness
in the home, and under pressure he will fly to magic incantations and
heathen practices, in order to get deliverance from the malignant spirit
which he still believes has power to torment him. Many a convert has
fallen on the occasion of a funeral. It takes more faith than a
Westerner can realise, to defy the legions of _gwei_ which at that time
threaten your home and its inhabitants with numberless ills; and
strength of mind is required to resist heathen relatives who accuse you
of slighting the deceased.
The test is a severe one and may well make a strong spirit quail,
especially when, as so often happens, several members of one family will
die in rapid succession, quite evidently to us by reason of the agency
of natural laws which govern physical life, but to the Chinaman, a clear
manifestation of the power enjoyed by demons whose pleasure it is to
torment men. Even the very dead may rise from the grave to confront you
with horrid vengeance, should the body not have been buried with full
rites as required for the laying of the spirit. Most subtly has the
enemy caused many a man's downfall when his unmarried daughter has died,
and he has found himself confronted with angry relatives and irate
villagers, when he proposed to bury the body with the deceased of his
own family. By the rule of ancient custom a spirit bridegroom should be
found for this girl, or, as an unattached spirit, she will inevitably
return to her neglectful relatives and trouble them in numberless ways
in order to bring her pitiful condition to their remembrance. In one
way, and one way only, can the ghost be pacified. A bridegroom of
suitable age, likewise deceased, must be found, and all marriage
ceremonies be conducted with due pomp, a memorial tablet being placed in
the scarlet chair in which the bride should have sat. Clothes,
furniture, and presents, all made of paper, go with the chair to the
home of the deceased bridegroom, and are there received by living bridal
attendants. A feast is spread, and all make merry until a few hours
later when mourning apparel is donned, and to the sound of wailing two
coffins are placed side by side in the family tomb. The paper clothes,
presents, and marriage-contract are burned, and thus ascend in smoke to
the spirit world. The bodies may have been kept for years before a
suitable match could be made, but from the day of the funereal nuptials
the two families regard themselves as, or even more, intimately related
than they would have been had an actual marriage taken place.[10]
It is easy to say that nothing so frankly heathen need ever raise a
question in the mind of a convert, but severe persecution and the
responsibility of every misfortune that may occur in his village will be
his, if he defy public opinion and introduce an orphan spirit to the
Valhalla where his ancestors, for countless generations, have never
failed to receive the rites of filial service.
The missionary knows the importance of keeping ideals high by precept
and practice, and that his best way to help the young believer is by
emphasising the big claim that Christ makes on a man. That claim once
apprehended will create in the man's heart an everlasting
dissatisfaction with anything lower.
Sad as is the case of a young believer falling into sin, how much more
tragic that of a man who abandons Christ after many years of service,
allowing sins, which he had overcome, once more to have dominion over
him. It is an awful reality of life that the point on which a man has
most conspicuously conquered is likely to be his weakest, for the enemy
plays a waiting game,
"And where we looked for palms to fall,
We find the tug's to come,--that's all."
* * * * *
Mr. Nieh came early under the influence of Pastor Hsi. He was a man of
conspicuous ability, business capacity, and influence. In early days he,
too, had smoked opium, but when he left that habit, he became a
Christian and an earnest student of the Word of God. Few could speak
with such power as he, and at any conference where he was present,
eager, interested crowds would gather to hear him. Many have been led to
Christ by his influence, and he seemed a man raised up of God to carry
on the work of the late Pastor Hsi. He administered the opium refuges
with great ability, and the work of the Church for many years prospered
in his hands. Every one turned to him for advice and help, and when the
Boxer troubles broke out, it was to Mr. Nieh that both Christians and
officials looked in their hour of need. "He was marvellously helped
until he was strong," and then, as to Uzziah of old, came the decline.
Power he loved, and in the position in which he found himself, holding
office in the Church, was able to exercise it in many directions.
Only God knows at which period the spiritual decay set in, which
silently, and at first quite invisibly, began a work which has ended in
the complete downfall of this man on whom the hopes of so many were set.
A desire to increase the prestige of his name, and love of popularity
led Mr. Nieh, as opportunity occurred, to lend his influence in
law-cases and village disputes on behalf of unworthy men, with the
motive of self-aggrandisement. Slowly but surely the material overcame
the spiritual in his life.
At this hour he is no longer even a member of the Christian community,
having publicly repudiated his former profession of faith. He even
smokes opium again, and finds his power and influence to be a thing
wholly of the past. Extraordinary trials have come to him in family and
personal life, but he remains hardened and untouched. The light has
gone from his face, for he has ceased to walk in the Light, but as we
look on his dissatisfied appearance, hope revives that he, having tasted
so deep of earthly bitterness, may yet be found amongst the suppliants
for mercy at the throne of God. May it be in the midst of life, and not
only in the hour of death that he will witness the great confession:
"Thou hast conquered, O Galilean."
* * * * *
There is a failure which is partial success, and under this, I think,
may be placed Yen Keh-dao, who, when once he was clear of opium himself,
bought up eagerly every opportunity that presented itself for
evangelistic work. He had fallen so often, and been obliged to return to
the Opium Refuge time after time, until new birth had made him a new
creature. Now at last he seemed firm where formerly he had been
powerless to resist temptation. When he at his own expense entered his
name for a two years' course of theological training, we all hoped that
a future of considerable usefulness lay before him, but before that
period was over, the craving was on him again and he had fallen into
open sin. Another effort, and he was free once more, and then again he
fell and soon was lying very ill with typhus fever. Christian men
visited him and prayed with him, and he, for so long as consciousness
lasted, prayed earnestly; then delirium, and in a few hours death
released his spirit from the body of its humiliation. According to man's
statistics, he is tabulated a failure--"one more devil's triumph and
sorrow for angels"--but there are many who loved him, and who look up
in expectation to see him "pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne."
* * * * *
"Puppy's mother" has lived at the door of our mission premises since
they were first opened. She, according to the custom of the country, is
only known as the mother of her child, so having elected to call her
daughter "Puppy," she must needs be "Puppy's mother" throughout the
town. She has known the three generations of missionaries who have lived
here, and has been dressmaker to them all. No one has been more
deliberate in her choice of heathendom over Christianity than she, and
no one has lent a more willing ear to the scandalous lies circulated
concerning the foreign women, even although she has seen enough of their
intimate life to know such stories to be fabrications.
She nourishes a secret regard for Mrs. Liang, in whom she recognises a
woman as intelligent as herself, and a match for her in every respect.
It was to Mrs. Liang she confided one day that there seemed little
inducement to repent and be saved, if going to heaven would entail
associating with foreigners for all eternity. Until two years ago she
was a healthy, sturdy woman, scarcely feeling the weight of her seventy
years. A slight dimness of eyesight caused her to raise her charges for
dressmaking on the plea, peculiar to Chinese logic, that old age made
her movements slower and more uncertain, and whereas three days were
once sufficient to make a garment, and make it well, now after six days'
work it was still far less well finished off than formerly. So we have
submitted to extra charges for inferior work, for old acquaintance'
sake.
Then a long and painful illness laid "Puppy's mother" low, and for
months we did not think that she could recover. Nevertheless, her
excellent constitution did finally assert itself, and now she is walking
about again, leaning on a stick and on the shoulder of a small
grandchild, one of Puppy's offspring. She is curiously softened, and
told us once that she had endeavoured to pray, but could not remember
the sentences we had taught her.
Time, age, and weakness work many transformations, and we feel as though
the veil of flesh were wearing thinner, and the spirit within feeling
its way out of gross darkness towards the light.
* * * * *
Mrs. Deh had fallen so low through opium, that it was to save her from
positive starvation that we admitted her to our household once more. She
had been one of the failures of our Women's Refuge, and had sunk deep
into the degradation which accompanies opium smoking in a woman's life,
pressed as she finds herself to raise the money necessary for the price
of her drug.
[Illustration: "PUPPY" AND HER MOTHER.
_To face page 218._]
For three years she kept herself respectable under our roof, living
amongst Christian women and joining in their prayers and hymn, night and
morning, but not a trace of the softened, repentant spirit could one
see, and finally a distinct retrograde movement accompanied with
physical disability forced us to send her home. I despair of Mrs. Deh
except when I look into the face of her daughter, the good, pure girl
whose life's prayer it is that her mother should be saved. She cannot
admit that this one thing she hopes for on earth should not be granted
to her. Her eyes are always full of tears when she speaks of her mother,
and when I see them I know they must, with strong entreaty, be pleading
the cause of the poor sinful woman before the Presence of the Divine
Majesty at whose right Hand stands the Friend of Sinners and the Man who
was "acquainted with grief."
* * * * *
"Flower of Love" became one of my pupils at the age of twelve, and
attended school for six years with unfailing regularity. Bright, happy,
and full of girlish enthusiasm she yielded her heart to Christ, and with
her girl companions rejoiced in her new-found joy. A horror of great
darkness fell upon her soul when the news was broken to her that her
parents had contracted for her a marriage with a heathen man, and
yielding to uncontrollable grief, she became seriously ill. Remembrance
of the promises of God, and the resilience of youth, caused her to
arouse herself; she returned to school, and begged that all would pray
that the impossible might happen, and this engagement be broken.
Prayer was answered, and to me was granted the joy of telling Flower of
Love the good news. "My life shall henceforth be wholly for God," was
her reply. Months passed, and when the Revolution of 1911 broke out, her
parents once more sought for her a heathen husband, a man whose wealth
was accumulated by wrong-doing, and before any step could be taken
Flower of Love was his bride. For months she struggled alone in the
city to which she had been taken, and then his orders were given that
intercourse with foreigners must cease. The fight was too hard, and
weary she yielded and allowed herself to drift with the tide. To-day, in
her husband's house, where men are too frequent visitors, she seeks to
get from the life she has to lead what pleasure she can. She is beyond
my reach, but her broken heart will yet, I believe, find a resting-place
upon her Saviour's breast.
FOOTNOTE:
[10] This remarkable custom is declared by Marco Polo to be peculiar to
North China.
PREACHING THE GOSPEL, HEALING THE SICK
"You make a very great mistake in thinking
Christianity is a religion. It is not a religion,
it is a person."--Words of a converted Mohammedan.
"Lord! how wouldest Thou deal with this sick man--in body, or spirit?"
S. VINCENT DE PAUL.
"A sick person does so enjoy hearing good news."
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.