M»S^— ^-^ 4{ti:-jIk-^3;f«B34*,=t4is:' ■iv't.f- '"'f J* ' ci^ i.-iui'^fi ii' '-ntu* Mi*. . it.Jti.»b-^ *r-rfv ,-^i^;^>;iiti*.^b^1'■;!*;;!!iU«l:h^H|tKl*riitI'lrlifr((1h^''f:;;:l'HH^^^ (Qacnell Hmnecsity Slibtarg jittjara. £??» Ijatk CHARLES WILLIAM WASON COLLECTION CHINA AND THE CHINESE THE GIFT OF CHARLES WILLIAM WASON CLASS OF 1876 1918 Cornell University Library BV 3427.H64B23 David Hill, missionary and saint. 3 1924 023 085 768 Waodburyprint Wateflow (B Sons Limited. ArL.^^-cJf<^!^ DAVID H ILL MISSIONARY AND SAINT Rev. W. T. A. BARBER, B.D. HEADMASTER OF THE LEYS SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE THIRD EDITION CHARLES H. KELLY 2, CASTLE ST., CITY RD. ; AND 26, PATERNOSTER ROW, E C. 1899 Gt BV3^2.7 ^e,r 28, 1869. You can't tell how it awakens one's sympathies to look at the faces of old friends, real friends, loved friends. As I sit here all alone with these hundreds of thousands of Chinamen all around, who every time we go out call us the worst names they can, whose very dogs (of which nearly every house has one) bark with such incessant roar as we walk some of the streets, and then realise that you can number on your fingers all of them whose feeling towards you reaches anything near to lom, — as these thoughts come over one, and they do sometimes, it does one good to recall old faces, and especially such faces. He entered with great joy as the friend of the bride- groom into the wedding ceremonies which linked Napier to his bride, and then returned alone to Wuchang to prepare a house suitable for their residence. His charitable instincts found full play in the miserable condition of 150,000 refugees, who, now that the floods with their possibilities of fishing had passed away, could find no means of support in their ruined fields, and therefore crowded to the central cities. Alas ! this is no unusual sight in the winter. To the credit of the practical Chinese mind be it said that at such times the mandarin recognises a meaning in his popular title " the father-mother magistrate," WUCHANG 105 and that bare life is kept in the bodies of such refugees during their winter; 120,000 were regularly fed by public doles of rice porridge at a cost of 700 taels (£230) per day. Practical difficulties continued to present themselves at each stage of the work. To HIS Father. December 1, 1869. The future of the work here is shadowing itself forth, persecution of the native Christians is being attempted. You are aware that the guilds are, in commercial life, great and powerful institutions in China; but it is difficult to realise at home the tyranny and , power they wield. The nearest comparison that I can think of in England is the trades unions, but in China not only are the working-men banded together, but the small shop- keepers and little tradesmen of all kinds have their guilds, and it is like swimming against a strong tide, or sailing against a strong wind, for a man to try to get on without being a member of his trade guild — if indeed he could at all. But such membership requires of course a subscribing to the statutes of the company, and as man is a worshipping animal, so not only do the members of the Merchants' Company have their annual sermon in Fossgate, York, but the various guilds in China also at their annual festivals imite with pious earnestness in the worship of their idol god. As each class of traders has its own deity, who presides over the affairs of the trade generally, so it is most naturally expected that not only will the annual subscription for the dinner be forth- coming, but the guinea or the two guineas for the Eev. the Buddhist priest, and the same amoimt perhaps for crackers, incense, cash paper, candles, etc., to be offered in worship on the great day of the feast. io6 DA VID HILL Now it is not difficult to see that with such regula- tions, handed down for many generations past, and tenaciously held not only by a prejudiced and bigoted people generally, but also by the more interested class of Demetrius and Co., a true Christian clashes point- blank, and in so doing he has to stand single-handed against the whole guild. Moreover, as these guilds are the principal sources whence the corrupt officialdom of China receives its plentiful inflow, we may lay it down as an axiom that, in case a matter of this sort should be brought before the magistrate of the place, and he should see that it is one Christian versus a whole guild, he would not be long in making up his mind as to the rights of the case. Both the barbers' guild and the blacksmiths' are combining to force their few Christian members to idolatrous worship, and one or two have been thrashed by the leaders of the orthodox party. It was one of the periodic times of unrest in China, and a violent riot in Nganking destroyed the houses of Eoman Catholic and Protestant missionaries. This led to a visit from H.B.M's., Ambassador to the Yangtsze, which gave him but scant satisfaction. But among the matters brought to a successful conclusion was the question of the Wuchang land, the deeds of which were duly sealed. Hill had to take upon himself all the burden of designing and erecting a house suitable for the home of Mr. and Mrs. Napier. The contractor who was employed had had little or no experience of foreign buildings, and the ingenuity and patience of the amateur architect were severely tried. No one knows until he has made the attempt how apt measurements of rooms are to come out wrong, how prone one is to leave out a staircase, how wonderfully beams prove WUCHANG 107 over stout or over slender. When added to the woes of an architect come the sorrows of a clerk of the works who has vaguest notions as to the right con- sistency of mortar and the needed thickness of cement, whose workmen never work any harder than they are obliged, and lay a line crooked unless something occurs to prevent them — then patience has every chance of experiment on character. When, as in this case, the contractor proves entirely unfit for his work, is con- stantly coming for money before he has bought materials, delays for months, is finally bankrupt and is cast into prison, when the creditors desire to secure themselves by pressure on the foreign employer — we need not wonder that Hill often sighed heavily over being thus obliged to serve tables. Meanwhile the shadow of impending change fell on the little mission circle, for Dr. Porter Smith was pre- paring to return to England, and Dr. E. P. Hardey arrived in the early summer for a few months' apprenticeship to the difficulties of Chinese hospital work before taking his place. In July came the horrors of the famous Tientsin massacre, which roused the intensest feeling throughout the foreign communities of China. To J. E. Hill. The papers will doubtless give full accounts of this sad affair, so that it is hardly necessary for me to write much. It occurred on 21st June, about two o'clock. The French Consul was cut to pieces by the mob just in the precincts of the yamen of the first mandarin of the place, who did not move a peg to save him. His io8 DA VID HILL secretary, too, suffered the same fate. They had gone to the mandarin to urge his interference in the riot already excited, and attacking both the French Consulate and Eoman Catholic Cathedral and hospital — and in the very act of seeking the aid of the native authorities they were slain by an excited mob. Another French gentleman, who was only a visitor in Tientsin and on his way to Peking with his bride — a young and beautiful lady — suffered the same fate in the French Consulate. A French merchant, who, on hearing of the attack, ran to the protection of the Sisters of Mercy in the French hospital was shockingly mutilated. His wife, hearing of the riot, fled to a native Christian, but forgetting to change her shoes in the hurry was recognised by the Chinese and though in Chinese dress was cut to pieces so that it was hardly possible to recognise her afterwards. Abb^ Chevrier and another Eoman Catholic priest suffered the same fate ; but the worst remains to be told, for nine ladies of the Catholic Mission were dragged out by the brutal mob, stripped naked in the open streets, and one by one dragged away from the rest, and in their presence butchered in the most barbar- ous manner it is almost possible to conceive — their eyes dug out, breasts cut off, then speared up before the rest as a sample of what each one would have to submit to. But it is sickening to write about, and yet the tale of horror is not ended, for a Eussian lady and gentleman who were mistaken for French were also killed in the same way. Such is the story of one of the most terrible massacres of foreigners China has ever seen. It is called, indeed, in a minor degree the Chinese Cawnpore ; and you may be sure has excited a storm of feeling throughout the foreign communities in China. What, you wiU probably ask, can have been the WUCHANG 109 cause? The only assignable one is the rumours of kidnapping children, which are always spread abroad about the Foundling Hospitals of the Koman Catholic Mission, and have culminated at last in this terrible massacre. France applied great pressure to secure due reparation from China, but the sudden uprising of the Franco - German War prevented the punishment which alone could ensure that there should be no repetition. A few poor wretches were arrested and decapitated to satisfy the idea "a life for a life," but the actually guilty instigators remained unpunished. As the summer went on, it was evident that the high floods of the previous year were to be repeated ; the whole country was one vast lake, and as the waters retreated the noxious slime left behind encouraged all manner of disease. The month of August brought a stunning blow in the sudden death of Mrs. Napier. A few hours of rapid illness changed all the brightness of' the young home into utter darkness. The water lay deep over the church graveyard, and the sorrowing missionaries had to carry the cof&n to the Hanyang hill, and there to bury their dead in a little graveyard bought for the emergency. The few gravestones of that far away time still keep watch over the city below. But the sorrows of the year were not yet over Mr. Napier fell seriously ill of dysentery, and notwith - standing courageous battling with the disease it became increasingly evident that he would have to return to England. It was a sorely testing time to faith. no DAVID HILL We see the workings of Hill's miad in the following extracts : — To HIS Fathee. May 13, 1870. The boldness of faith is not a very common thing here. The boldness and valour of nature Englishmen as a rule possess, but few seem to have the valour of faith as we find it in the eleventh of Hebrews. Unbelief weakens, intimidates; faith emboldens and encourages; but one wants not only faith in prayer but faith in action. This latter I much need. To HIS Father. December 13, 1870. You refer to the massacre in the north, and advise a return to England ; but I have been led to look at the spread of Christianity lately in a somewhat different light. The agencies which are to help forward its progress are, I think, not only the preaching of the gospel, but after that has been done it has often come to pass that days of suffering have followed, and that the Lord has employed these as seals to the former, and then that after that the result of former work has become apparent. Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit. T should not wonder if the onward march of Christianity would be more favoured by sufferings than by the exercise of the strong arm of authority in its favour. After escorting his sick friend as far as Kiukiang upon his journey to England, HUl returned lonely to Wuchang. Dr. Smith had also left, and in Mr. Cox's absence there were only two missionaries to meet in the Annual Synod. Early in the year a long journey WUCHANG III with Mr. Bryson took him to the towns and cities which he was afterwards to know so well, Wusueh, Kwangchi, Hwang Sz Kang, Kotien, etc. At Kotien the unruly mob so assailed Hill that he had to appeal to the magistrate for protection, but his letters home made light of it. A later visit the same year, though he little knew it, was to lead up to many an oppor- tunity in the years to come. The American Methodists from Kiukiang had started a little work at Wusueh, and some little interest in Christianity was aroused in the neighbourhood. When a colporteur whom he had employed was set upon and robbed, while all his books were destroyed. Hill felt it necessary to appeal to the district magistrate at Kwangchi. The latter refused to interfere, and when confronted with the treaty-right that Christians should not be molested, he angrily declared that he knew nothing about treaties. On his return to Hankow, Hill happened to call upon the consul, and to mention this rudeness of the mandarin. The consul was that day writing to H.B.M.'s minister in Peking, and mentioned this as an instance of the dealings of country officials. The minister happened to need an argument just then, and used this. The Tsung Li Yamen found it inconvenient that the foreigners should have such a stone for their sling, and orders were promptly sent down to dismiss the Kwangchi magistrate. We can picture the effect upon the minds of the people, and the impression given of the power of the passing stranger who could thus humble the greatest man in the county. The results were very mixed, and by no means wholly desirable. But one outcome was, that during the many ensuing years of residence of missionaries in that region they 112 DAVID HILL were always treated with a civility and respect quite unknown in other parts of the district. Meanwhile Mr. Cox, who had married during his furlough, returned to China with his bride, and took up his abode in the new house in Wuchang, thus setting Hill free for new developments. Inquirers began to respond to the evangelistic efforts put forth in the Kwangchi district ; these became more and more numerous, until, when the American Methodists pro- posed the taking over of their Wusueh preaching-place, that they might be free to branch out in other directions, it seemed wise to detail someone to foster the growing work. Experience had taught the missionaries to be extremely cautious in anything that looked like a mass movement, but at anyrate an opportunity should not be lost. Thus it came about that immediately after the summer of 1872 we find Hill, fully conscious of the loneliness which he felt to be the great trial of missionary life, yet eager to win a fresh region for the Saviour's kingdom, appointed to the new Kwangchi and Wusueh circuit. CHAPTER VI COUNTRY LIFE CHINA, throughout its south and central regions, is a land of streams and rivers; roads are mere tracks, and the main lines of commerce necessarily follow the waterways. The vast Yangtsze, flowing from west to east for two thousand miles within the Chinese border, gives access to its inland provinces, and along it alone is the treaty right conceded that steamers should travel. The regular stopping - places of these steamers are at the treaty ports ; but beside these great cities there are a number of larger or smaller trading centres, where passengers may embark or disembark by means of a ferry-boat rowed out into the centre of the stream to meet the vessel. Such a stopping station is Wusueh, situated thirty miles above Kiukiang and one hundred and twenty below Hankow. The one link with the great outer world is the passage of the daily steamer and its momentary pause. The uncertainties of cargo and current in the lower reaches often necessitate a wretched twelve or more hours in the miserable waiting-room on the river- bank, during which it is unsafe to sleep or leave for fear of the sudden appearance of the long expected funnel- smoke. Before Hill's appointment to this station a 8 114 DAVID HILL single European had lived his lonely life there, as overseer of the customs ; there could be no doubt of the genuineness of such a spot as a purely mission centre, undistracted by too near a glimpse of the great world. The Great Eiver at this point is less than a mile wide. On its opposite bank rise beautiful green hills, whose slopes are clad with whispering pines, and whose sides are furrowed by glades all tremulous with delicate maiden- hair. But Wusueh itself lies exceedingly low, and is only kept from inundation by an embankment several miles long. The inhabitants of such low-lying damp places seem specially liable to sins of the flesh, and amongst its thirty or forty thousand inhabitants opium smoking and its kindred vices do great damage. Wusueh, though containing the largest population in the county, and commanding, by its position on the river, the converging lines of its commerce, is in Chinese estimation leas in importance than the walled cities inland. Kwangchi, the county town, is twenty miles to the north, situated on the first slope of hUls three thousand feet high, and, though somewhat decayed, always possessing importance through the residence and public of&ces of the highest mandarin in the county, and the examination hall where the tests for the first degree are regularly held. The area of mission work, large enough surely for the labours of a single man, was extended over an equilateral triangle, with base along the river from Lung P'ing, ten miles below Wusueh, to Chitsow, twenty miles above it, and having as its apex inland Kwangchi. Over this region, with occasional excursions to other cities across the river, HUl constantly tramped, preaching, visiting, bookselling, mostly all by himself. COUNTRY LIFE 115 The work commenced by the American missionaries in Wusueh, where they had placed a catechist and had won a few inquirers, naturally led to his settling first in that town. He occupied a couple of rooms in the very poor house already rented, which lay near a large pond. He was thus fairly immersed in the purely native life, and for weeks together would have no single sound of English speech or glimpse of English face. This was ideal, and he set himself diligently to the task of building up a Christian Church. He meditated deeply on the Acts of the Apostles, and sought to follow out Pauline methods, with the hope of the results that had followed in the days of the early apostles. A fair degree of success began early to crown his efforts. He quotes with solemn joy from one of his father's letters, " we have had a good prayer-meeting, look out for answers," and presently records six baptisms in Wusueh. But more and more did he act on the conviction that at that stage of the work it was not so much settled residence that was needed as itineration. He went forth everywhere, and expected everywhere to see God at work in the world. Eough usage and hardship he always made light of, for the spiritual was the real for him. His friend Bryson soon came down for a visit, and the two of them took an extended journey on the south side of the river. He thus describes their reception : — To Mes. Hill. WusuBH, DecemUr 7, 1872. We reached Shin Kwoh Tsow on Tuesday morning, preached, and sold Testaments and tracts. The people ii6 DAVID HILL were a little inclined for a row, but it came to nothing serious. Bean curd doesn't hurt, though it sticks to one's hat and may provoke a laugh. They knocked Mr. Bryson's hat off, and I was pushed over through being caught in some bamboos, which were lying on the ground ; but the Lord helped us to quiet, and we had large congre- gations, and when I tell you that on that afternoon and morning about seven hundred tracts and Testaments were sold, you will readily suppose that the trade was brisk. Seven hundred Christian books scattered through a town in this way — ^if quickened by the living Spirit, what may they not do ? What a fine field for the prayer and faith of our friends at home. And, further, when I add that it was this place which on a former trip we did not visit, partly from want of time and partly because we met a man at this very town of Wusueh who bought four thousand cash worth of books, which would represent an equal number to those we sold, it is clear that fourteen hundred Christian books must be in circulation in that place and the neighbourhood. I am reminded of a prayer Mr. Spurgeon offered when he preached in the concert- room. Just before he proceeded to apply the text he had been preaching from, he said very earnestly, " Quicken- ing Spirit, apply Thy word." Amen, so let it be in Shin Kwoh Tsow. Two points emerge distinctly in the debates as to method which perpetually filled his mind. The first was how soonest to develop self-reliance in the native workers. To HIS Father. December 27, 1872. One thought which has been much on my mind of late is, that in the working of this circuit it might be an advantage to spend one, two, or three months in a place at a time rather than visit round so frequently. COUNTRY LIFE 117 This seems to come nearer to the mode adopted by St. Paul in his missionary labours, and commends itself to a missionary on many grounds. For instance, it evidences and evokes faith in the presence of the Blessed Spirit, everywhere present to keep those souls brought into the Church, and to raise up and qualify men for the work of missionary pastors ; again, it enables a man to keep up continued effort on one point rather than to diffuse his power over several. Then it might, by the blessing of God, tend to make the native churches less dependent on man. These are some of the advantages of that course. Certainly there are things to be said on the other side of the question, but as it is impressed on me at present the balance is in favour of the former plan. May the Lord give wisdom and grace to direct us aright, and may He raise up native agents in goodly numbers by this plan, and to carry it on. The second was the great puzzle which comes before every missionary, — how a Western accustomed to the decencies of Western civilisation can manage to live amidst a poorer race without conveying the impression of great wealth, and thus giving false ideas as to his own self-denying aim, and raising in onlookers mercenary hopes of gain as attaching to the Christian profession. Eemembering that the average Chinese family-man of a social class corresponding to that of the missionary in his own land would be comfortable on from £20 to £30 a year, and that the great majority of the poor Christians of the first generation would esteem an income of £8 a year as Heaven-sent plenty, it is obvious that when an Englishman denudes himself of every ordinary comfort, and lives cxn the barest necessaries of life, he must still appear wealthy by comparison. Generally the missionary, recognising the hopelessness ii8 DAVID HILL of actually coming down to the physical level of those around him, gives up the attempt, and does very much as does his brother in England who missions among the poor. He lives plainly but sufficiently, caring for food, raiment, and the little amenities of an English home, just as an English missioner eats meat every day, has pictures on his walls and carpets on his floors, although he is preaching to those who have hard work to keep body and soul together. There can be no doubt that for ordinary effective service in treacherous climates, and especially for family life, this is a right course ; but every missionary, even while his common sense leads him to this life, recognises that, if it were physically possible, distraction of aim and mis- understanding might be avoided if he could to the Chinese become as a Chinese. This mental-moral warfare dis- tresses the worker until he fights his way through and sees where his duty lies. Those are but few and far between, starlike souls in lonely skies, who, in order to solve this position, will deliberately remain un- married, and, being unmarried, will respond to the passionate love for souls which will go to any length of self-deprivation in order to be like unto their brethren. To those who knew David Hill, and his long attempt to the Chinese to become as a Chinese, that by all means he might win some, it is impossible to avoid the thought of the great apostle, and even reverently to take this human sacrifice to the foot of the cross of Him who emptied Himself that we might be full. During his earliest years in China he drew the usual salary of an unmarried missionary, but ere long accepted an allowance from his father instead, repaying to the Society what he had received from COUNTRY LIFE 1 19 it. When he went to Wusueh he found himself for the first time absolutely free to carry out his own ideas of the guise in which Christianity should be represented to the people. No married man was living there, none of the machinery and plant of a large or old-established Mission was as yet necessary. We have seen how he was willing to build a foreign house in Wuchang for the dwelling of his friend Napier and his wife, but in Wusueh it was his eager desire not to build, and he himself continuously dwelt in small Chinese houses — generally rented. It is a practical dif&culty that the houses of the Yangtsze valley are one-storeyed, and that for most Europeans to sleep on the ground-floor induces malaria, but this risk he willingly took, and apparently with little damage. His attitude towards all these questions is shown in the following extracts : — To HIS Father. Decemier 27, 1872. In matters of personal requirement the Methodist law is to supply a man with what is " needful." This term being of various interpretation the matter is really left to the self-sacrifice of the man himself, and what one sees to be needful another would not. But self-sacrifice has its root in love, and love is necessarily spontaneous or it is not love. Consequently the forcing down another man's throat stricter rules of self-denial and self-sacrifice than he feels incumbent on him is bad policy — a questionable course. In such matters it seems to me that till the tone of Christian service is higher, stricter regulations will be kicked against, and, it may be, some good service lost ; to raise the tone of the Christian life and sacrifice one needs more to see 120 DA VID HILL before us living examples than to have imposed upon us rigid regulations. To HIS Father. Li Mung Chiao, Jammry 10, 1873. As to the money part of the question, experience in this district seems to teach us that we must put that in a very subordinate place as compared with prayer and faith. The Society has not stinted us in this matter, but money does not bring us power as do prayer and faith, and there is danger in having too much money. Where that is the case the native assistants as well as foreign missionaries receive too much, self-denial languishes. The majority of the church members are in more straitened circumstances than those they are asked to support ; the anomaly strikes them, and they- no doubt can hardly stretch out and up their faith to believe that to give for the support of a man living in much greater comfort than they themselves, is giving to Christ, con- sequently they give but little, and where such is the case faith and prayer are cramped and feeble, and devotion to Christ grows cold. To HIS Father. One of my best friends here sees in the state of the work in China a call to our young men to devote themselves to a celibate life for the sake of Jesus Christ, and for the spread of His kingdom. There is doubtless a great deal to be said for it ; but yet my view is that entire devotion to the Lord Jesus will give a man — each one for himself — an inward inspiration by which he will recognise what is the will of God without making any preconceived plan. But I do believe that with men of this stamp, enthusiastic in their love to Christ, there would be a large proportion of single men, and I should COUNTRY LIFE 121 like to see this sign of the presence of God both here and at home. To HIS Fathbe. A'pnl 14, 1874. To have too much is equally, perhaps more, injurious than having too little, and I am fearing lest the heavy sum you have placed to my credit should lead to foolish or hurtful expenditure on my part. The question has suggested itself whether the influence which it will give you for our Lord and Master when given through me will equal that influence which a common relation vdth others to the Church of God in point of giving would afford. But before touching on these points, a word more about the abundance with which it surrounds me ; it has another aspect, and that one of inspiring and quickening tendency, for it should lead to higher, bolder faith in our aggressive action on the kingdom of Satan. It has lately appeared to me that perhaps it is a higher faith which lays hold of God in spite of the hindrances, undoubted hindrances, which money often puts in the way of the propagation of the simple gospel, hindrances which only those dwelling amongst a people like the Chinese who are so much — you have no idea how much — poorer than we, can have any conception of. But my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus, and that not only need of funds, but of wisdom how to employ them, which just now is my specific need. It is the province of faith to seek through Jesus Christ, that as abundance of supply is afforded in regard to pecuniary need, so may we have a like abundance in the matter of wisdom for its use and opening for future employment of it. To HIS Father. Jm-e 22, 1874. On Friday last I came to Kwangchi ; against my usual practice I took a chair, a mode of travelling I much dis- 122 DA VI D HILL like, but one which I thought would most shield me from the sun, the heat being now intense. On the way it rained heavily, and I could not help thinking as I looked at those who were bearing me of the contrasts between wealth and poverty which our Lord so pointedly shows in the narrative of the rich man and Lazarus. That narrative strangely excludes the moral element when speaking of those two men, and if considered apart from the other Scriptures most strongly favours a state of poverty and even suffering in this world. Poverty presents greater attractions to me as I go on in Hfe, and look round on the world and on the New Testament records of the teachings of our Lord. The last extract reveals the extreme to which his earnestness and love for souls were pushing him ; there were times in which money almost seemed to him a hindrance; in later years, when he had inherited a considerable capital, he seriously pondered the advice of a good missionary friend to follow literally the command of our Lord given to the rich young ruler, " Sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor.'' So strangely is the human soul balanced that it seems that one element of the process of thought which decided him to retain the money for a lifelong stewardship was the idea that such constant possession of means would be a whole- some discipline for himself. Eventually the inevitable expansion of his district led to a considerable expendi- ture on his part on buildings of all sorts ; but his ideal was always one of the utmost simplicity, and the necessary crystallisation of a large society was a burden and a weariness to him. With this as the subjective spiritual and mental background, we can picture him upon his country rounds fostering the little churches in Wusueh, Kwang- CO UNTR Y LIFE 123 chi and Li Mung Chiao. The story of any individual missionary's life must be monotonous, and it is undesir- able to go through the routine of detail. A little chapel was opened in Kwangchi in March 1873, and a larger house was found necessary in Wusueh, where the front hall was enlarged into a chapel. He writes home cheerily, telling of his plan of avoiding household service by sending out for his meals to a restaurant, and chuckles over his fourpenny dinners. It takes time for the Western digestion to adapt itself to Chiaese cookery, and Hill found it necessary to give up this mode of life ; " it was an extreme " he confesses, " and therefore failed, as extremes always will and ought to fail." In after years he lived for months together on a couple of pence a day in order that his humble friends might be perfectly at home with him. His intense longings for the spiritual growth of the Church was subjected to many disappointments. Eeference has already been made to the unconscious fame he had attained owing to the removal of the mandarin at Kwangchi. This fame was no doubt encouraged and increased by the fact that he had engaged as his cook a man who had formerly been a general in the Taiping rebel army, with 20,000 men under his control. This man had saved his life by timely submission, and was now poor; but the old large ideas clave to him, and it is whispered that he sometimes charged two hundred cash (8d.) for admission to an interview with the foreigner ! The result was that a number of spurious inquirers entered their names, in hopes of assistance in their lawsuits. The long and careful, though sympathetic, trial to which all candidates were subjected weeded out most of these, but some who actually entered the 124 DA VID HILL Church gave him great disappointment by their baek- slidings. It is a remarkable thing that the very best, most faithful and devoted Christian of the whole countryside, a farmer named Liu Tsow Yuin, came originally from unworthy motives. Soon after the commencement of HUl's residence, some eighty men from the Tai Tung Shiang region came, under this man's leadership, to Kwangchi, professing to desire the gospel, and offering to build a chapel and support a teacher if only they might have the foreigner's card. This request is to the EngUsh reader mysterious until he understands that the visiting card is used in China as a sort of note of introduction, and, even more than that, as implying the moral support of the owner of the card. The men hoped to use this card in a law- suit, and of course failed ia their request. Liu Tsow Yuin returned, marvelling much that the foreigner should come so far to form a society and yet should decline when the opportunity of enlisting large numbers came. The result was much inquiry and investigation, which led finally to the opening of his spiritual eye- sight and his true conversion. He who came with the idea of earthly profit was won by the teaching of the gospel illustrated by the teacher's Ufe, and deliberately gave up his business that he might devote himself to the church. His small means were sufficient to enable him to act as unpaid preacher and chapel-keeper. For years he swept and scrubbed as well as preached, and finally built in his native village a chapel and " prophet's chamber," which he bequeathed, when he went to God, for the perpetual use of the missionary Society. This case is worth noting as illustrating the oppor- COUNTRY LIFE 125 tunity given to the gospel when men come within its power even from motives of interest. The perplexities caused by the disappointments and backslidiags were very real. Never was man more stern with himself, never missionary more prone to see in his own shortcomings the explanation of the native Christians' failures. The following glimpses of the missionary's hfe will reveal the elementary work which has to be done long after the door of the Church has been entered. To J. E. Hill, Ap-il 7, 1873. The native brethren need much watchful care; they are very young in the Christian life. Shall I give you an example ? Last Saturday evening two or three came begging me to interfere in a family dispute and save the life of a man who they said was in danger of losing it through the maltreatment of some members of his family. He had expressed a desire to become a Christian, and had entered his name as a candidate for church membership. They thought the case one of pressing importance. You would say, of course, that I ought to save his life. Probably, but wait a moment. First, is he really in such danger? Here is a doubt. On inquiry the evidence is hardly satisfactory. Second, if he be, am I justified in taking up the cudgels in a Chinese yamen for a man of whom I know so little ? Our Minister, Mr. Wade, would most probably reply "No," and so would Her Majesty's representatives throughout the empire. Thinking over and praying over the case I came to the conclusion that I must not give them much hope of assistance from me. The result was that several of the members absented themselves from the morning service. Thus you see 126 DAVID HILL something of the difficulties of our position as well as of the infantile state of the Christian character of these brethren. I spoke strongly to one or two about it. They much need the prayers of the English brethren, for in many respects they seem sincerely and ardently desirous of serving Christ and bringing others to Him. May the Lord build them up day by day. To J. K. Hill. November 27, 1873. The last few weeks have been very fully occupied with a general visitation of the persons who have entered their names as candidates for Christian instruction. They are scattered far and wide; it is almost as though you had one minister in York and he had to visit Malton, Pickering, Thirsk, etc., and villages intervening too numerous to name. How one man is to keep ahead of such a work is a problem for the General Secretaries of the Wesleyan Missionary Society to work out at their leisure. It is more, it is a question which ought to drive me, and all who love the Lord Jesus, to more earnest prayer for the raising up of native agents. For this I have lately been more stirred up, but do not yet give the time and earnest effort to it that I ought under the circumstances. Looking over the two hundred names entered in the books here, I note here one and there another against whose name the word dead is written. Dead without my knowing them ; dead without having received the Christian instruction they sought, perhaps followed to the grave by Taoist incantations. It leads me to pray, "Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, God," for had I been more up to the work, more active, vigorous, self-denying, I might have visited these men earlier, and not have to leave them dead without any, the slightest, assurance of their eternal salvation. COUNTRY LIFE 127 To HIS Father. Mwrdh 14, 1874. You will be very sorry to hear that we have had the painful duty to perform of expelling some of the Kwangchi and Li Mung Chiao members. Gambling, opium smoking and lying are the chief charges. It is a very sad business, and yet necessary for the purity of the Church, for with such things going on within its pale how can the Lord revive His work ? but would to God that these who have wandered away may be brought back to Him. On Sunday last two were baptized in Kwangchi, over whom we rejoice with trembling; but God is able to make them to stand even in this Sodom. These native Christians need much all the help and prayer our friends at home can give. While Hill was thus pursuing his solitary course, and slowly building up a living Church, the missionary circle in the central cities was increasiag. During the year 1872 were added two new-comers who were specially linked with him to the end of his Kfe. The Eev. J. W. Brewer joined Mr. Cox in Wuchang, and the Eev. Arnold Foster came out to Hankow in the London Missionary Society. There are many references in the letters of the period to eager and earnest conver- sations with the latter, especially on the modes of mission work. But visits such as allowed of interchange of opinion were few and far between. Once a year at least, generally twice a year, the necessary District Meetings obliged him to visit his brethren at Hankow, and undoubtedly such enforced renewals of intercourse with his own countrymen were necessary to bodily and mental health. It is significant of the great risks of complete solitude that the Roman Catholics wlio have 128 DAVID HILL a number of priests on solitary stations have been forced by experience of many a mental breakdown to make it a rule that all such shall come to Wuchang for at least a month's residence in the year. HDl betrays his loneliness sometimes : — To HIS Father. Jmrnary 30, 1874. I do myself the pleasure of wishing you many happy returns. You will be now sixty-five years of age, and for your continued health and vigour your three sons most heartily bless God. The death of Mrs. Hill must have made a great change in your life, but I trust that spiritual communion, fellowship with the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost in increased measure, is filling up the lack which the loss of one so dear to you must have created. Leaving the friends in Hankow and Wuchang gives me in a slight degree to have something of the same sort of feeling of loss for a moment or two, but getting back again to Wusueh, and once again in the Kwangchi harness, the loss is more than made up by the presence and help of the Lord. "Son, thou art ever vnthMe" indicates the real fountain-spring of satisfaction. Trench says that many misread this verse, placing the emphasis on ever whereas it should be on the vnth Me. Thou art ever with Me, and what more canst thou desire ? Can fatted calves or finger-rings compare with thy being with Me ? And again : — Being so much away from other foreigners here in Wusueh, I got into the way, when walking out, of look- ing wistfully up and down the river to see whether there be a steamer in sight or not. It is not often that I do see one, but when I do it gladdens and refreshes me in a CO UNTR Y LIFE 1 29 Way ; it is a kind of old Western-world excitement which is good for the animal spirits. When we remember that our Lord sent out His disciples two and two, and that the Apostle Paul seems nearly always to have had a companion, it seems doubtful whether such solitude is the right course. Hill himself writes that he doubts whether it is right to send a young man very early away from Hankow into the country, but he never appears to include himself in any such ease of rigour. Undoubtedly the strenuousness of life told upon him at this period in occasional depression and in sore self-accusation. It was at such times of solitude that the old difficulty of knowing the will of God became almost overpowering, the longing for certainty tended to develop an indecision which was unhealthy. He had naturally weighed the question of going home to his rapidly aging father, but saw clearly that the claim of his work was imperative in postponing that pleasure. Thus the great duty stood out plain and distinct, but small duties were not so clear. When his friend Bryson was returning to England on furlough, he missed seeing him on the steamer as it passed Wusueh through a conflict as to the special work to which God's wUl called him that particular morning. He followed him with a letter in which he says : — To THE Eev. T. Bryson. Wusueh, April 22, 1874. It would have been very pleasant if we could have gone together, but God's will is best. And the knowing that and doing it is our highest happiness wherever we are. 130 DA VID HILL Eeading over the Epistles of St. Paul with the Chinese during the last few months I have been restirred by the thought that the outpouring of the Spirit, the baptism of the Holy Ghost, implies a great effusion of spiritual light — light as to the will of God in ordinary matters among other things. Here with me there is often a doubt. At such times there lacks the joy of the Lord which is a man's strength ; but it is through such conflicts of a humble soul that one who does His will knows of the doctrine whether it be of God. At the end of 1873 a young English local preacher named Mitchil, joined the Mission as a volunteer worker. Possessed of a small competency, he felt himself called of God to leave his Leicestershire home and to come to China to do what he could to spread the gospel there. He was cordially welcomed, and was soon ensconced in the little rooms at Hanyang once occupied by Mr. Cox, where for years he rendered faithful and successful service in preaching, itiuerating, and bookselling. This welcome incident took place just when the China Inland Mission, under Mr. Hudson Taylor, was beginning to come prominently forward in bringing to the great waste - places of the empire numerous missionaries in addition to the more carefully and elaborately trained ordained men. The mind of David Hill, already brooding over the immense need and the small supply of missionaries, began to follow out the possibility of a large extension of the number of workers by a less expensive agency. Traces of this idea are constantly to be found in his conversation and letters, till eventually, twelve years later, it crystallised into the formation of the Central China Wesleyan Lay CO UNTR V LIFE 1 3 1 Mission, whose history will in due course be recorded. A letter to his uncle shows which way his thoughts were going: — To Eet. Dk. Lyth. November 11, 1874. Years modify much one's views of missioQ work ; we seem to come out all crude and imitative, and to need practical experience, with its many failures, errors, and weaknesses, to teach us what and how to do. Great societies with complicated machinery are very good so far as they go, but the danger is, while working according to orthodox regulations, that we forget the lifeful irregu- larities of the Acts of the Apostles. There is ample scope in this country for earnest Christian men who have no need to travel vid Eichmond — men who can get their own living in the sight of the Chinese and yet live a thoroughly pure and Christian life. Such men would he invaluable. Of course there's the language to learn too, but that would soon be picked up if living right amongst the people. Now surely Methodism has scores of young men whose hearts long to see the world brought back to God, and who could here find ample scope for zeal and effort, — men who do not enter the regular ranks of the ministry, and do not look for support from a missionary society, — men who have two hands ready and willing to work, and a whole heart ready and willing to be offered up. To support themselves they must make a sum of say — Board £20 Wages, one servant . . 10 Eent 10 Clothes, books, etc. . . . 20 £60 What a blessed sign it would be to see men breaking 132 DA VI D HILL through the bonds of routine and coming out in this way ; and what a still more blessed thing to see men continuing it year by year, for it is one thing to do a noble deed once, and quite another to keep doing it when the rush of excitement is over. Undoubtedly it would have been a joy to Mr. Hill if he could have carried out for himself the life here sketched out. He refers with envy to the life of one of his friends who supported himself by teaching while working among the Chinese as an honorary missionary, and described it as being nearer the model of the apostolic tentmaker Paul. Biit he always recognised that his own possession of means removed him from the special exercise of faith for which lack of money gives opportunity. He recognised too that the life of a layman such as he thus sketched out, unsupported by any reserve, unsustained by any Society, risked dis- continuity, and even disaster, in case of breakdown of health. That, he claimed, was just the place where faith would have its best play, and it became more and more his principle to follow out what seemed the immediate duty, leaving results to shape themselves. The history of such experiments tells that to the few to whom it is given to feel the special call there is also given the power to climb the rocky pathway of faith ; but that a man must count the cost carefully ere he venture therein. Of course, marriage is impossible, and it is necessary to say that, outside the treaty ports no English working-man could live, for no Chinese would employ him. His minimum wage would be far above the sixpence a day of the skilled Chinese artisan. The same difficulty would, to a certain extent, apply in a treaty port where labour for foreigners could be COUNTRY LIFE 133 obtained ; the competition of native labour would still be keen, and the cost of life higher. But the ideal of the Christian self-supporting merchant or trades- man, who will in time of leisure be a missionary, remains as much to be desired as ever; and the unmarried young lay - missionary, assured by home friends of the bare necessaries of life during a period of years, has repeatedly done excellent service in China. It is generally in the permanence of such an arrange- ment that the breakdown comes. In the beginning of 1874 the Eev. Joseph Eace was sent from England to the district, and joined Mr. HUl in the wide country circuit. He soon took up his residence in Kwangchi, thus to a certain extent dividing the field. The contrast between the measure meted by Hill to himself and others is well shown in the following letter : — To HIS Father. KwANQOHl, April 2, 1875. I never walked so much in my life as I do now. I might almost say I never use a chair except when visiting an official, in which case it is done as a matter of polite- ness. Wheelbarrows, too, I have almost discarded, and the old pony has been sold for nearly two years. . . . The advantages of walking are manifold ; it tends, in the first place, towards removing that very prevalent, and indeed correct, impression of the enormous wealth of the Society with which we are connected, an impression which is in great danger of inspiring wrong motives in the minds of outsiders towards becoming Christians. Another advantage of walking is that it gives us a good opportunity of conversing with, and getting near to, fellow-travellers, and walkers are in a vast majority in 134 DA VID HILL China. Then, again, I think, if anything, I can read more walking that I used to do when I rode along. Of course, in a chair you can read best of all, but the disadvantages of chair travelling outweigh with me this one point. Mr. Eace, on the other hand, thinks of buying a pony, and I would not dissuade him from it, for he feels living alone at Kwangchi a great deal, needs something to enliven him, cannot much enjoy walking, and hence is not infrequently a Uttle out of sorts when left alone. If under such circumstances a pony would help to preserve his health, the money would, I think, be well spent. A year later the Eev. A. W. Nightingale was added to the staff, but the Mission suffered a heavy loss in the utter breakdown of its founder and general super- intendent, the Kev. Josiah Cox. A heavy chill, caught after the exertion of preaching, worked upon a frame feeling the effect of more than twenty years of residence in China, and abscess of the liver developed itself. Very few indeed recover from this disease, but Mr. Cox's life was mercifully spared. It was, however clearly impossible for him to remain in Wuchang, and to the sorrow of all his colleagues he and his wife were obliged permanently to retire from the Mission. The addition of the Eevs. W. S. Tomlinson and T. Bramfitt increased the number, but it takes long to replace the experience of twenty years. The year 1875 was marked by one of those cold- blooded murders which have from time to time disgraced the name of Chinese officialdom. Mr. A. E. Margary of H.B.M's. Consular Service was directed to make a journey by way of the Yangtsze up to Hankow, and thence through the provinces of Hunan, Kweichow, and Yunnan, to Bhamo, that there he might COUNTRY LIFE 135 meet a party under Colonel Horace Browne, and, returning as their interpreter and guide, open up a trade route between Burma and Western China. Mr. Margary was furnished with all necessary credentials from the British Legation, and with passports from the Throne, and he successfully accomplished his long journey. On the return journey Margary, who had gone a day or two's journey in advance, was murdered, Browne's party was attacked, and the expedi- tion was abandoned. The Chiaese of&cials almost certainly connived at this treacherous act, and by it they secured the continued isolation of their western proviaces and the exclusion of foreign trade. Great pressure was brought to bear upon China, and the British Secretary of Legation was sent with a high mandarin to in- vestigate the case and secure the punishment of the murderers. Needless to say the crime was never brought home to anyone, and those who were probably guilty continued in high office. But an indemnity was paid, an Imperial proclamation was issued and posted up throughout the empire, asserting the right of safe conduct for all foreigners travelling with passports, and finally several new ports were thrown open to the commerce of the world. One of these was Ichang on the Yangtsze, four hundred miles above Hankow, at the foot of the mighty gorges through which the Great Kiver rushes with terrific speed in its time of flood. It is only iach by inch, and very unwillingly, that China has been forced into contact with the outer world. She has never grudged a few thousand pounds and a head or two as the price of a murder which secured the closing of a trade route, but the result has always been the opening of other ports 136 DA VID HILL to all the world, for the English policy is steadily to claim no exclusive advantages. A good deal of excite- ment was caused throughout the Yangtsze valley by the reports of the vengeance to be taken, but this gradually died away for want of material to feed upon. CHAPTER VII SOME DISSOLVING VIEWS OF CHINESE LIFE AMONG the materials at our disposal for this period is a book in which Hill recorded incidents illustrative of the life around him. These records and extracts from his letters home give us hasty and uncoordinated glimpses which yet may blend into a general picture of the people -among whom he worked. He was profoundly convinced of the work of the Holy Spirit among all men, and eager to do full justice to all the good he found in those he met, but the awful sinfulness of a land with- out Christ pressed heavily upon him. He describes the utter immorality all around him, the wholesale family impurity, the brothels, the two hundred opium dens of Wusueh. With every desire to give non-Christian systems their due, the experiences of all missionaries are alike ; when Paul wrote the first chapter of the Epistle to the Eomans he described the social life of heathenism all through the history of the world. It is obvious that minute details must not be allowed to sully these pages. To J. E. Hill. September 27, 1873. It is surprising how cheaply they value human life in China ; the last case I have met with is that of a man 137 138 DA VID HILL who committed suicide by opium because he had lost a pawn-ticket for 5s. Whilst I was writing the last line a poor woman living opposite has been calling aloud for the soul of her child to return home again. The child has, I suppose, been sick. The other day I saw a little boy go to a baby tower not far away from my house, and throw a basket and bundle into it through an aperture in the wall. I asked him what it was ; he said, " It is my sister; she was born this morning and died this morning and I was sent to dispose of her." When the tower is nearly filled up to the window, the contents, whether little babies, dead dogs or decaying cats, are removed and buried all together on a neighbouring hillside. To HIS Father. Boat, near Kiukiano. AprU 25, 1875. The greatest curse of this boat papulation is opium. To see how it is ruining the country is a most sad and sickening sight. If the Christian people of England did but know it, could but see what we see, they would to a man lift up their voice against it. Young men of between twenty and thirty completely enslaved by it, their will powerless to break it off, the conscience of its wrong settling them in dead despair. Last evening we anchored at a town called Lung Tang, where some 1500 cash worth of books were disposed of. It consists of one street of thatched houses, and almost every third house is an opium den; in many of these prostitutes are kept too. I don't remember ever to have felt so sad walking through a town as I did yesterday afternoon in that place. God only knows the evil this cursed traffic is working in this poor country. SOME DISSOLVING VIEWS OF CHINESE LIFE 139 To HIS Father. LwNG P'iNG, Odoher 8, 1875. Thieving in China is a curious business. Two men or more are expected to have charge of all thieves in connection with any yamen, and are held responsible for all thefts, etc. They consequently have considerable acquaintance with the thieves of the place, who must keep on good terms with them. The first thing a professional thief does on arriving at any new place is to call on and offer a present to these representatives of Chinese justice, who in their turn counsel them as to the course they are to pursue, what houses are thievable and what are not. Then in the case of a robbery these two are called, the matter is put into their hands, they go to the houses of the thieves and come to an under- standing with them whether they can put off the suing party by shuffling and evasive answers or not. If they can, then both divide the spoils ; if not, and the two men are bambooed by the mandarins heavily enough, they split and. deliver up thief, goods, and all. In case a thief wishes to spite a yamen man, he commits a heavy robbery and gets clean away, whereupon the yamen man is seized and bambooed black and blue. Curious people, these Chinese, aren't they? To HIS Father. Jwne 16, 1898. I was dining at an inn in Lung P'ing a few months ago when a basin of beef was brought in. I asked the waiter, "Is this slaughtered or dead beef?" He smiled at my innocence, and said, " Wherever do you find slaughtered cattle in this neighbourhood ? " My staple now is rice, bean curd, vegetables, eggs, and now and then pork. With this diet and the blessing of the Lord I am, I had almost said, fat and flourishing. I40 DA VID HILL Though not that exactly, yet in such good health that my one hundred and forty miles' walk a week ago was accomplished with comparative ease in five days, and this leads me to think that after a certain period of acclimatisation the best plan is, as far as possible, to adopt native diet and live as nearly as possible as the natives do. As to self-denial, a point you allude to in your letter, I have long felt that this, like every other grace of the Christian character, must grow, that what is self-denial to me to-day may not be so to-morrow. Self-denial in dieting on Chinese fare is a very little matter ; to deny oneself in spirit and temper is much more, and in matters requiring aggressive and initiative faith still more. To Edward Hill. July 7, 1877. The people have been praying for rain. From neigh- bouring temples they form processions carrying a great unsightly idol in their midst, with one or two men carrying burning incense and a priest screaming forth some incantation. Those forming the procession are farmers chiefly; each carries a long bamboo branch in his hand, to which is attached a triangular sheet of paper with their prayer written on it. This consists in almost every case of four characters: "Save the lives of the people. Quickly let rain descend." These men have even gone to the yamen and there loudly demanded that the district magistrate come out and worship the idol they have brought. In one case they struck their hands on his table and charged him with not caring for the people when he refused to come out. In fact, he seems to be at the mercy of the populace ; and now every day he is going from temple to temple asking these wretched idols to rain refreshing showers. SOME DISSOLVING VIEWS OF CHINESE LIFE 141 And all this farce of worship a man must do who does not believe one bit in it, if he hold office in China under the present dynasty. A little boy came into the Kwangchi chapel the other day with a roll of paper in his hand. "What have you got there ? " I asked. " Paper to erm y. unfolding the roll, which contained one large sheet of green paper for which he had given twelve cash (about a halfpenny), and a smaller piece of gilt paper. "What is it for?" I asked. "It is to make a paper pipe for my aunt who is dying in our house." " But what does she want with a paper pipe now she's dying?" "Well, she's been very fond of smoking," he said, " and we are preparing this for he«r that as soon as she dies we may burn it for her use in the next world." "And do you think it will please her?" "Yes, it's a great satisfaction, for then she'll have her pipe there as well as she has had it here." One or two who were sitting by said, further, that wealthy families prepare house and furniture and all ordinary utensils, all of paper, which they burn after the death of their friends, along with large quantities of cash paper for their use in the unseen world. " How much cash paper have you prepared ? " I asked the boy. " Between two and three thousand cash worth " (eight or ten shillings worth), he said. An amount which we should reckon a very fair subscription to the Mission from a native Christian in China. What a strange thing it would be if a law were en- acted in any English village that not one of the young ladies there, rich or poor, should be allowed *T" Gw/a""'^ to marry a resident in that viUage ! How strange to find that not a single one of all the married ladies there had been born and brought up in the village, but that every one of them had come from 142 DA VID HILL some other town. Yet strange as it may seem, it is really the case in hundreds and thousands of Chinese villages. Of course, under such circumstances, there can be no courting going on between two young people of the village, even if that were allowable in Chinese social economy, which it is not. The ground upon which this arrangement is based is the law universal in this country, that a man may not marry a woman of the same surname. What a mighty influence this must exert in the formation both of individual character and of the social life of the Chinese, as well as in the dominant influence it must give to the male sex in any village. In this part of China a country doctor's harvest-time is the first month of the New Year, when children are . . . inoculated. The process is performed, according to the testimony of Dr. Tai, on this wise: the doctor is on the lookout for any child who has just undergone the process, from whom he procures the dried matter or a scab from one of the pocks ; with this he mixes the medicine made from the musk deer, and with samshu (spirit) and water. Into this infusion, or rather tincture, a roll of cotton wool is dipped, and then stuck up the infant's nose ; if a good case, it will take in about the same time as inoculation does in England ; but the scab must not be more than twenty days or so old, or it loses its virtue. In the case of male infants it is stuck up the left nostril, and in that of female up the right. Walking past a country village with a native Christian named Liu, he said, "It was in that village that the man lived who joined with me in buying Economical a buffalo." " Indeed," said I ;" your home arming. -^ ^ j^^^^^ ^^^ from this village, how is it you joined with him ? " " Well," he said, " you see we had neither of us money enough to buy a whole buffalo SOME DISSOLVING VIEWS OF CHINESE LIFE 143 so we clubbed together and bought one ; and as in our part of the country, fifteen miles away, we grow rice chiefly, I had the use of him during the first half of the year to plough the paddy-fields, and as they grow wheat here chiefly, he kept him during the second half of the year ; and so we each were served at half the expense we should have been at had we been compelled to buy one each." Mr. Tsai, an innkeeper in Wusueh, was recounting the goodness of God to him yesterday in my study, and, amongst other things, he told me the nl"^ '" ," following, which, however strange it may Hoifse'^^ sound in English ears, evidently impressed him deeply; for I had heard of it before from another party, and given in the same strain, and as conveying the same moral. At the begin- ning of last year a man from Kiukiang stayed at his inn. He departed after a few days, but, not having enough to settle his bill, left an amount due to Mr. Tsai of above one thousand cash, promising to pay at the end of the year. In the eleventh month he came again to Wusueh, but brought no money, said he had been sick (and his looks confirmed his state- ment), and hence found himself unable to settle his account. "But," said he, "I have brought two pawn- tickets, which I will give you. The clothes in pawn are worth much more than I have pawned them for, so that this will go so far towards settling." The innkeeper took the tickets, and the man stayed three or four days more at the rice shop. At the end of that time the other guests came to Mr. Tsai, and said, "You had better not keep that man in your shop any longer ; he is very ill, and hasn't a cash with him." Whereupon the innkeeper told him it was very inconvenient for him to stay there, and that he had better go back to Kiukiang, where he had friends, and gave him eighty cash for Ms boat fare. Next day someone called at the 144 JDA VID HILL inn, and said, " That Kiukiang man, who left your shop yesterday, is lying dead near a little Josshouse on the river side." "Now," said Mr. Tsai to me, "wasn't it providential that he did not die in my house? I do feel so thankful to God that he did not ; " and went on to tell me how he went out to see the corpse, and gave forty cash or so for a mat to wrap the man in — for there was no one to buy a cofBn — and he was buried. Of course I told him that I looked on his conduct in a very different light, and that Christianity taught us a very different lesson. But the explanation of his conduct is plain enough to anyone acquainted with the manners and customs of the Chinese. Had the man, who was a stranger to Mr. Tsai, died in his house, some members of the dead man's family would have forthwith commenced an action against him, and demanded com- pensation ; and if they could have raised money enough to carry the case through a Chinese yamen, they would have probably won it, and ruined the innkeeper. Or else he would have had to come to terms with them, to prevent a lawsuit, and perhaps to spend forty or fifty thousand cash, which also would have brought him to beggary. Hence his gratefulness to God for having turned the man out into the cold when just at the point to die. And I have no doubt he would receive the congratulations of all his friends for it too. " What is the reason that you foreigners are perpetu- ally walking backward and forward up and down on the bows of the steamships we see plying in the Yangtsze?" said a stranger to me. in the chapel to-day. "Simply for exercise," I replied. "Then it's not that you reckon your accounts by counting your steps in walking, as people say it is?" So firmly do the Chinese believe in the guilt of those who are struck down by lightning, that it is customary SOME DISSOLVING VIEWS OF CHINESE LIFE 145 in such cases to fix a long bamboo pole into the cof&n of the deceased, so that after interment it may protrude through the mound of earth which marks ig ning. ^^^ deceased, though undiscovered by men, is seen by the eye of Heaven, which pierces through the hollow bamboo tube and reads the guilt for which a retributive Providence has struck the fatal blow. Preaching in Kwangchi Hsien on Sunday, and iirging the duty of seeking Christian holiness, old farmer liu interrupted me, and said, " Why, if we all i^iyb.p ri tv" live Uke that we shall be so many Jesuses XP^"'^ ' over again." " The very thing God wants us to be," said I. " To live Christ, reproducing His life, is the great purpose God has concerning us." After preaching in the street this evening at Kwang- chi, I had a long conversation with one of the most sensible young men of the literati class Mn"ZZ *^^* ^ ^^^® ^^^^ ™^*- ■'^* ^^^ evident *^^ "p^earla ^ *^^* ^® ^^^ inquiring not from mere curiosity, nor to show off his learning, nor to catch me by his talk, as most do, but as a searcher after truth, a corroboration of which slipped out when he told me that for am, hov/r or two every rtwrniTig he read the Confucian classics on his kriees. On my way to Wusueh I fell in with another man whom I recognised as a Wusueh tradesman. Having several times had conversation with him Ancestral Wor- ^^ ^j^g subject of Christianity, I asked Ch ''tan'tu ^™ ^^^ ^ ^^^ ^^^ decide to become a Christian. He replied, " I would do so if it were not for my parents." " Are they both living ? " I asked. " Yes." " Then they are afraid they will have no one to worship at their tomb if you become a Christian ? " I said. " Yes, that's the reason." " Then give them this 146 DA VID HILL little tract od Ancestral Worship, which puts that prac- tice in its true light." After a little further conversation we parted. This is one out of a vast and increasing number of persons in China who are hindered from becoming Christians by this very thing. The ordinary Chinese fears — more than we foreigners have any conception — that he will come sadly to grief in the next world if he has no one to celebrate the rites of Ancestral Worship at his tomb ; hence the intense anxiety of the Chinese lest they should not have a son born to them, for a daughter would not meet the difficulty seeing that she must by marriage go out of the family, and, besides, women never join in these rites, so that daughters are of little account in China ; hence, too, the Christian difficulty above referred to. Distant from Kwangchi some two or three miles there is a pagoda built on a low hUl. Passing by the other day on a wheelbarrow, the barrow- CA/nese ^^^ gg^^^j^ "That pagoda is the great upers I ion. jj^^^j-ance to the prosperity of this district. Many years ago there was a magistrate appointed to this district who understood geomaney, and on examining this hUl he found out that unless a pagoda were built there, there would arise in Kwangchi some men who would be endowed with such extraordinary abilities that they might prove dangerous to the State, so he made a representation to the Throne, with the result that this pagoda was built, and now Kwangchi cannot produce a single man of note." Hearing the sound of gong and drum beating, I ran to the door this evening to see what the procession was, and found that it consisted of, first, two unera i es. -^^^^ carrying between them a gong and a drum, which they were beating vigorously. Then followed two more boys, each carrying a white paper SOME DISSOLVING VIEWS OF CHINESE LIFE iA7 lantern twisted on a pole; after whom came two or three youths with burning incense sticks in their hands, which they stuck rapidly here and there in the ground on each side of the street. This was night-time. On inquiry I learnt that they were " k'ai low," or opening a road, a road for the dead — the dead who is to be buried to- morrow ; when, with the coffin, or rather before it, a man will walk with hands full of paper cash, which he scatters on the way, to pave the path for the spirit of the dead to his last resting-place on earth. In some places, three days after death, they call the spirit of the dead back to his home, and invite him to take tea, tlie popular belief being that the spirit, after three days of un- consciousness, wakes up again to know that he has passed into the unseen world ; or, as the Chinese express it, that the spirit ascends the Wang Shiang, the "Terrace of Homeward View," and so recalls his earthly life. And then, when thus waking up to a recollection of the past, he hears perhaps his brother calling him, "Brother, come, the tea is ready," he is supposed to be cheered in his spirit state, gratified that he is not forgotten. "Is the present district magistrate popular?" I inquired o^ a native friend in Kwangchi Hsien the other day. "No," he replied, "and de- FlrZ'nd'th servedly so." Only the other day he " Mother ^ ^^^ ^^^^ °^*' ^^ *^** ^"^"^ *° meet his mother; of course he went in his official chair, and on the return journey, instead of following his mother's chair he actually rode in his own at the head of the procession. Now anyone who saw that would set him down at once as a man who did not know his place, who forgot the kindness and love of those who had given him birth. As I was walking in the country a straw hut was 148 DAVID HILL pointed out to me as the residence of a dutiful son. This hut he had erected on his mother's grave, and there he resides for the three years' term Dutifulnesa to ^f mourning. He is a well-to-do man,, aren s. ^^^ ^^ family reside in a respectable house, which for the time being he forsakes. CHAPTER VIII CHAEITY, PERPLEXITY, AND CONFEEENOB IN the latter half of 1876, an extraordinary and mysterious panic spread through the whole of the Yangtsze valley, such as could occur only ia an Eastern land. It began to be whispered with bated breath that persons had been deprived of their queues without visible agency ; that a momentary gust of wind had passed by, and lo ! the queue was lying on the ground ; that little boys coming home from school had turned their heads a moment — only to find themselves queueless ; that even the very fowls in some places were losing their tail-feathers ! It was obvious that demons were haunting the country-side, and every man went about in fear and trembUng. There is no doubt that many such cases did occur, and so mysteriously that even some of the missionaries seem to have hesitated as to whether evil spirits might not have unknown powers in realms of superstition and idolatry. Eumour grew wilder and wilder, and not a few were disposed to lay the blame upon the "foreign devils" who had come into their land. What the real explanation may have been it is difficult to say ; the matter was never cleared up, and the cloud of terror gradually passed away. A few facts may suggest the line along which the reasoijs 148 150 DAVID HILL are to be found. The queue is not a mere portion of the Chinese dress, it is the sign of submission to the Throne. For near three hundred years the throne of China has been occupied by Manchu invaders from the north, who, while they adopted the religion, politics, and manners, learnt the language and studied the literature of the race they had conquered, yet imposed upon them their own mode of dress. Part of this was the shaving of the front of the head, and the plaiting the one long lock left at the back into the queue or pigtail, so characteristic of the Chiaaman in the idea of the Western of to-day. Many suffered death rather than thus own fealty to the invader, but now custom has so inured the mass of the people, that it seems to them as though they have imposed their dress as well as their literature upon their conquerors. But, for all that, China is honeycombed with secret societies which aim more or less directly at the dethronement of the aliens. The first sign of open rebellion is the cutting off of the queue and allowing the front hair to grow. Thus the Taiping rebels already mentioned, who nearly established their revolution and ousted the Manchus, were popularly known as the " Long Haired." It requires but little imagiaation to see that this fact may suggest the meaning of the mysterious tail- cuttiag. An Eastern race is not scientific iu the matter of evidence, and the skilful tricks of the emissaries of these secret societies might be described by the bewUdered victims in all honesty as without human intervention. Some curious disease in the fowl yard (the livers of the maltreated hens were found to be diseased) happening at the same time. CHARITY, PERPLEXITY, AND CONFERENCE 151 excited fancy seized upon the whimsical resemblance of symptoms, and hence the Chinese world in wild alarm ! The remedies were characteristic. A message was sent to the Taoist Pope, that " mystery of iniquity " as HUl calls him, the hereditary head of the necromantic superstition of the land, in his remote grotto in the mountains ; a written charm purchased from his facile pen was posted on the doors of timid houses, a few priests and others found in possession of magic formulas were punished, and the world was once more pigtailed and calm. Let us stand for a moment and watch the missionary casting out one of these spurious devils with a little wholesome physic and common sense. He writes: — One day a farmer came to me in Wusueh bringing his son with him, and asked if I could do anything for the youth (he would be about eighteen years of age), who two days previously had lost his tail, and was dreadfully afraid of the consequences. Of course I told him he was not to alarm himself, that the issues of life and death were not in the hands of evil spirits but in the hands of God, and that he was to abandon idolatry and turn to the living God. But this evidently did not satisfy the man, for he pressed me again for a charm, or at anyrate for a counteractive. The former I told him was a simple fraud, as to the latter I must first know the disease before I could prescribe. " If you mean you would like him to vomit," I added, " I can help you there." This he evidently wanted, for he jumped at the proposal, and I gave him an emetic forthwith, whereupon he began to retch most uncomfortably, seeing that, as he afterwards informed me, he had purposely come with an empty stomach. A basin or two of warm water, however, soon met that difficulty, and he soon vomited freely. The 152 DAVID HILL water he threw up brought a worm out of his burrowing, the father catching sight of it, cried out, " There, he has vomited a snake," and would have gone home with this story if I had not stopped him, and showed him that the worm had just come out of his own habitation and not out of his son's stomach. When the operation of vomiting was over, the man, and his son too, appeared very much relieved, and after thanking me heartily, returned home again. In January 1876 the mission circle was gladdened by a visit from the Kev. Ebenezer E. Jenkins, himself for many years a distinguished missionary in India, who inspected its Eastern missions on behalf of the Wesleyan Missionary Society. Mr. Jenkins records how on the river steamer by which he was travelling he fell into conversation with a fellow voyager who did not detect his ministerial office, and heard the oft - told de- nunciation of missionaries, which is the universal stock - in - trade of steamer - gossip throughout the East. " But," said his informant, " there's one man whom everybody knows and all believe in. His name is Hill ; he is a true Christian if ever there was one. A man who has seen the inside of missionary life as well as the outside, never finds difficulty in duly ap- praising the dislike and criticism born of lack of inter- course and understanding, but none the less we can appreciate the force of the Ufe which could win such praise from such lips. HUl records the refreshment of the intercourse with the distinguished visitor, and characteristically doubts the wisdom of the advice, natural in an Indian mission- ary, tq attempt higher education as a means of reaching CHARITY, PERPLEXITY, AND CONFERENCE 153 the upper classes, a scheme which he ardently advocated himself at a later stage of his life. It was now twelve years since he had left England, and he was beginning to fear that he should not see again the dear father whom he so highly honoured. It was a very tender tie that bound the two together. His father's approval was always the highest human standard by which he tried all things. He used to tell in after times how during his first year in China he was bathing in the Moon Lake near Hankow, when, getting out of his depth, he sank, sank again, and sank a third time, till he gave up hope and struggle. Just then the thought flashed into his mind : " What would my father think of my coming all this way to preach and then getting drowned like this before I've been of any use to China ? " and the thought stimulated him to one last despairing attempt, which ended in his being saved just at the last gasp. This little incident was most characteristic of the honour in which he held him. When the claims of his Wusueh work (and the necessity of furlough for his married brethren) seemed to prevent his return to England, the one point of hesitation was the longing to see his father again. He fully expected to do so, but it was not to be. It cost him a great deal to hear of increasing feebleness. To HIS Eathee. ■WusTTEH, Oadb«r 13, 1875. The news of your illness, which Edward's letter brought me, has led me to ask the Lord again to teach me His will as to returning home. "I have not yet heard the command " Go," and would be guided by God rather 1 54 DAVID HILL than take my own way. A heaviness of heart comes over me when I think about your nearing the journey's end, but the Lord will not leave you, His eye will guide you, His tender mercy will sustain you. " He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust ; His truth shall be thy shield and buckler." It was in October 1876 that a black-edged letter forwarded from Hankow with the usual mail by his friend Foster told him that he would never grasp again on earth the kind, strong old father's hand. To THE Eev. a. Foster. Your surmise was correct, for I read such a surmise / in your inquiry. Those mourning envelopes meant that my father, dear old man, is gone. He fell asleep in Christ almost literally at last. The news came upon me so lightly that I wonder at, and feel half ashamed at, my unfeelingness. But the hardness, the just going on as though nothing had occurred, is so strange and so different from what it was when my mother died. Once and again deep sorrow comes; one day a heavy bitter regret that I have not lived more wholly to God in the past, for then I'm nearly sure I should have had my way opened homewards, and I know my father longed for my return. Now I feel in some measure how much I have lost by not seeing him again, and deep down I am reminded of that line in "In Memoriam," which speaks about a " dull, narcotic, deadening pain " ; the numbness of sensibility is as though there were some- thing of that sort — earthliness, unspirituality it some- times seems like, but you will excuse my talking all this about myself. My father lived a life that cannot die. Shortly before he died he told one of my uncles that he had during the last year lived on less than ever, and given all the rest away. I have been very glad to see CHARITY, PERPLEXITY, AND CONFERENCE 155 how much he has been doing for the poor lately. He was a grand man ; I can honestly say I don't know another his equal in moral character. In writing to his brothers he dwells longingly on the recent letters he has received from his father : — On December 15 he says: "lam better, praise the Lord; but don't come home to please me; as long as you remain, the Lord may let me remain. The Lord bless you and lift upon you the light of His countenance." Again, " People ask me when you are coming home. I answer, when the Lord commands ; your duty appears to be to sow the seed of God's word in China. You may not reap the harvest, but the sowing is what you are called to, and God has rested the reward on labour, not on success. How long the Lord Jesus Christ has had to wait before the end is accomplished for which He humbled Himself ! Let that mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus our Lord." His last letter says : " The doctors say I am mending ; I am in God's hands, very much cast down, but looking to Christ for His salvation, and not even choosing as to the future. The Lord bless you and keep you His, and use you for the glory of His holy name. " And now I sign myself your most loving father, " David Hill." These were his last words to me. Mr. and Mrs. Bryson were staying with him when the news came, and on their departure leaving him without a single English friend, he felt deeply the consolation of the spiritual communion of saints, finding what many a bereaved missionary has felt, that in the case of one dearly loved who has been long separated by thousands of miles, death reaUy seems to bring nearer, and that though the well-known handwriting 156 DAVID HILL comes no more with messages of love, there is a union in Christ which is very real and true. To one so keenly sensitive to the duties of riches, the bequest of his share of his father's property led to many earnest thoughts upon the subject. To HIS Brother. You refer to Father's will. The burden of so much money is more than I can bear, unless, indeed, God calls me to it — and therefore I pray and hope that some way may be shown me of disposing of at any rate the greater part for the relief of the poor and the suffering either in China or in England. Your prayers on this behalf will be appreciated, for I don't wish by imprudent haste to go wrong in this. It is out here a most difficult matter unless a man gives himself wholly to it. Being called to give myself to prayer and the ministry of the Word, I cannot see my way to do that ; but the Lord will not leave me in this question, I trust. More and more was his mind drawn to philanthropic work as the necessary accompaniment of the preaching of a purely spiritual gospel. Ideas which had long been forming now began to assume definite shape. He pictured to himself a Christian Church which should feed the starving, clothe the naked, give up all to show the overmastering love of Him who went about doing good. He applied this ideal not only to the Christian individual but the Christian nation too. To J. K. Hill. Mani 10, 1876. John Wesley saw clearly enough that the rules of Methodism regarding temperance and sobriety resulted CHARITY, PERPLEXITY, AND CONFERENCE 157 in the temporal prosperity of Methodists, but he saw at the same time, and no less clearly, that as Methodists increased in wealth they tended to decrease in godliness, and the problem to be solved was how to reconcile the two. It is in this connection that he repeats his well- known rule, " Get all you can, save all you can, give all you can." The neglect of the latter is sure ruin to a really Christlike life. These thoughts passing through one's mind in a country like China, where the people are perhaps not a tenth part so wealthy in respect of money as the English, lead one to look at the subject in a still wider aspect. Christianity has made England what it is, has raised it socially, commercially, intellectually, spiritually. How then can England retain its, Christianity ? WiU not this abounding wealth be its ruin ? Yes, unless it exercise a world-wide beneficence, and that not only, though chiefly no doubt, in sending missionaries to other lands, but in other benevolent institutions by which an outlet may be found for the overflow of its wealth to the poor of other lands, thus placing a guard against the increased expenditure of money, which implies too an expenditure of time and thought and care on oneself in unnecessary luxuries which have a directly demoralising tendency. But, on the other hand, with a higher civilisation there are necessities felt of which a poorer people know nothing, the meeting of which in the one case exercises no enervating influence on the Christian life, whereas in the other case it would. God thus graciously provides to some extent for the increase of wealth which Christianity brings, leaving, however, the fact still true that the possession of worldly wealth is one of the severest tests either a nation or an individual can be called to pass through, and that it is exceed- ing hard for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of heaven, — to be stripped of everything is gain immeasurable if it but bring us into that kingdom. 158 DAVID HILL He did not blind himself to the difficulties and the dangers of such a path of charity. Nor did he give in that indiscriminate way which is simply due to the impulse to be rid of the unwelcome sight of sufferiug. Most usually his giving in times of distress took the form, familiar to Governments, of relief works, of course on a small scale. The starving poor would be set to raise Wusueh street, or to perform some such other labour of public utility. He pours forth his difficulties — To J. E. Hill. JwM 19, 1877. As to help to the poor, I find that here in Wusueh these representatives of our King come right before me, and the thought comes home that I ought to do something for them. The sight of suffering poverty is very touching, very mysterious, very sad. If we saw and knew as much of it as Jesus did we should be men of sorrows too ; and the real philosophy of life is to live near to it, mix with those burdened with it, and, as far as we can, relieve it. To J. E. Hill. November 24, 1877. Last evening I had a conversation with on the subject of charity. His views differ widely from mine, though we both believe that we are following our Lord. He sees the evils which have arisen from distribution of charity to be so great that, unless in cases of actual starvation, he would refuse to give, and even then in a manner disconnected as far as possible from evangelistic work. The history of missionary work in China, and the East generally, he thinks is so strongly corroborative CHARITY, PERPLEXITY, AND CONFERENCE 159 of this view, that he would hold it as simply ruinous to go in for any large and widespread plan of benevolence in connection with the work of preaching the gospel. In favour of this view he quotes the life of our Lord. Twice only, he says, did He give supplies of food ; and after one of these distributions refused to repeat the act because of the impurity of the motives of those professedly seeking His instruction. With the affluence of Divine power at His disposal, he asks why but these two times ? seeing there were so many thousands of poor around. I need hardly say that this view is strangely out of accord with my reading of our Lord's life. Its fundamental principle, its Alpha and Omega, was sacrifice for others, and that not only of preaching time, hours of study, etc., but of comforts and enjoyments. Given a poverty like that of our Lord, who had not where to lay His head, I can understand the limitation of charity distribution to a few isolated instances. But where all one's surroundings are so comfortable, and where hundreds around are so wretched, I can no more conceive of our Lord's living so than I can conceive of His abdicating His throne and disowning His cause. How he healed the sick ! " But," inquired , " did He ever heal them irrespective of their moral preparedness for His teaching ? " I asked what meant His teaching about the Good Samaritan, and I might add His requirement to love and do good even to our enemies, — not only those in suffering, but our enemies even. But holding views which mean universal love, the loving one's neighbour as oneself implies on the part of a single man no lieavy encumbrance of wealth, for he has no children to provide for and no responsibility on that score. This free, full outpouring of himself is the only consistent course for one so situated, and this honestly done, it seems to me, will tell not against but for the kingdom of God — if Christianity means anything at all. i6o DA VID HILL Looking at the whole subject, not in the brief course of a few months or years, but judging of it in the light of eternity, and of the Spirit and Life and Triumph of Jesus, I see very differently from , and shall be judged for my convictions as he for his. To such a nature with such a mental and spiritual history, filled with the passionate desire to realise the old conditions of the days of the Acts of the Apostles, convinced that to present before the eyes of heathen- ism the Christ-life was the one hope of renewing the wonders of Pentecost and St. Paul, certain that the atmosphere of every nation is ever quivering with the beat of the wings of the Holy Dove who broods over its moral chaos — to such a one there is sure to come in time a magnificent disregard of traditionary methods, a sublime neglect of earthly consequences. More and more David Hill did what seemed right, leaving results to God. The multitudes were poor, — he risked the dangers of rice- Christianity, and administered his charity as discreetly as possible. Work of special types was needed, — he started such work believing that God would tend its future development. The need of English workers was appalling, — in later days he called to China numerous helpers, selected as best he could, who should work for a few years. He expected that the evolution of their more complicated needs would be accompanied by an evolution of more complete support. In such a method there is a mixture of strength and weakness. John Wesley, George Miiller, Hudson Taylor, William Booth, are instances of men similarly led whose schemes have resulted in great successes. CHARITY, PERPLEXITY, AND CONFERENCE i6i David Hill made a similar attempt in association with the hard-set lines of an organised Society. The problem of the adjustment of the business methods of such a Society, and the uncalculating actions of an individual saiat, was left not fully solved at his death. In May 1877 there met in Shanghai the first General Conference of Protestant Missions in China. There were at this time nearly five hundred mission- aries, men and women, scattered over the empire, and it was thought that such a Conference would be an object-lesson in unity, and at the same time would be of great value for the comparing of experiences, the uniting of counsel, the cementing of friendship, and the invigorating of solitary workers with the sense of a great company. In preparation for the reports to be presented to this Conference, statistics were gathered from every missionary. Hill comments — To J. K. Hill. KWANGOHI. I have not much sympathy with the gathering of statistics to make a fair show on such occasions. Human nature is the same as of old, and there was one numbering of the people which boded them ill. Unless the nature be very pure, we are in much danger of glorifying ourselves in this. It is a strange thing that frequently when public mention is made of, and attention directed to, any particular member of our Mission — I refer now to native Christians — we have almost invariably had something to grieve over in that person ere long, as though the devil made special assault on those most prominently before the eyes of the Church and the world, being permitted to do so because i62 DA VID HILL there has been too much glory given to man and too little to God ; too much of self, too little of Christ. He was asked to go as a delegate, but declined, with the natural shrinking from the dangers of mere talk, expressing his preference for a week of united fasting and prayer, but eventually he decided to attend with his friends Griffith John, Foster, and Nightingale. It was eleven years since he had journeyed as far as Shanghai, and he was much re- freshed by his contact with the outer world, and the hundred and twenty brethren and sisters who formed the Conference. The gathering proved of great value. Drs. Carstairs Douglas and Eobert Nelson were the chairmen representing respectively the British and American Missions. The proceedings, in a volume of near five hundred pages, present a number of papers on subjects of burning interest, and the discussions thereon. Hill took his share in the discussions, speaking earnestly in favour of the method of itinera- tion, of which we have already heard in his letters; criticising the existing versions of the New Testament in their loose representation of the same Greek word by many different Chinese terms, and supporting the Eev. A. E. Moule in urgently protesting against the opium traffic between India and China. His opinions on this subject, always and growingly strong, are indicated by the following summary of his remarks : — " There appeared to be some doubt existing in certain quarters as to the evil effects of opium-smoking. This was a question, however, on which no doubt existed in the minds of the Chinese themselves. Again and again CHARITY, PERPLEXITY, AND CONFERENCE 163 he had heard Chinamen say, ' If you want to be re- venged on your enemy, you need not strike him, you need not go to law with him, you have only to entice him into smoking opium. If you can give him that taste, you will take the surest means in your power of ruining him utterly.' Another evidence of the immoral tendency of the practice is, that opium smoking is generally found to be closely associated with prostitution ; large numbers of opium dens being infested with prostitutes. Opium also is a common cause of suicide. He thought that as missionaries we should raise our protest against the conduct of the English Government on moral grounds. It mattered not whether it were eleven million or eleven hundred million, if the source of revenue be immoral the amount of it cannot justify its collection." After the Conference it was suggested that it would be a good thing if Mr. Moule's paper, together with the discussion and the resolutions passed by the Conference, were printed for distribution in England. Mr. Hill, on his way back from the Conference to his station, wrote, " We ought not to let that idea drop — about printing the essay and circulating it." Shortly afterwards he ordered at his own cost an edition of five thousand copies, and caused them to be sent to a number of ministers in England as well as to all members of both Houses of Parliament, and to some, if not all, of the Mayors in England. Characteristic- ally, when writing to his friend Foster as to certain arrangements for the printing, in which he wished his help, he added: — As to the opium question, the great point with you and me is to make it a matter of most earnest prayer, i64 DA VID HILL and if we do, the Lord may put some burden of work upon us, or open the way for some action in the matter when men are prepared for it. No man is fit for public work of this character, as a rule, unless there has been a struggle all unseen. This is one point in which we may and ought to enter into and know the fellowship of His sufferings. Hill thus records his impressions of the Conference. To Edward Hill. May 29, 1877. The Conference is over. The impression it has left on me is the need of being a holier and more Christ-like man, of living a more self-sacrificing life. May God help me to live this out, for mere sentimentalism is a poor substitute for practical piety. The unanimity of spirit was very manifest, the more so from the very variety of opinion held on most matters. The views which are laying hold of me more and more were hardly represented, — only touched upon here and there. Such extreme and simple views could not be advocated without a living exemplification to back them up. Tor this, for light towards it, for strength to follow the light, I pray. The lives of all great missionaries have influenced others in this way by perfect self-abnegation and sacrifice; but surely influencing others is not and should not be the ruling principle of life; pleasing God is more than influencing men — and the surest way to it indeed. After the Conference the missionary, invigorated by communion and intercourse, returned to his lonely station ; but great events were happening in the north which soon led to an entire change of scene and work. CHAPTEE IX MEDITATIONS DUEING much of his life David Hill used to write down the thoughts that impressed his mind on the spiritual life and work of the individual and the missionary. It was his regular custom, on the advice of his uncle Lyth, each day at his time of devotion to record in brief his meditations on the passage of his reading ; these formed really a commentary on the whole of the New Testament. At intervals, especially during his periods of more solitary residence, he filled up note- books with thoughts less purely expository. One of these survives, and from it we cull a certain number of the most characteristic. Here wUl be seen reflected many of the incidents which have been recorded in the past pages, many of the spiritual and mental trials through which he had to pass. In such a collection it is true to life that we should find but little joy, — such a soul does not record its joys in black and white ; rather the experiences of God's training, the visions of His mode of working in the world, the glimpses of his own heart are given. Nor can it honestly be said that joy in the Lord was a main characteristic of this life. Supreme unselfishness, absolute absorption in his work there was, and at such times, specially when speaking of 1 66 DA VI D HILL God's love, his face would become radiant, and his loving soul leap out glorious at his eyes. None who knew him will ever forget that smile ; it is as smiling thus that we think of him now in the company of his Lord. But such a radiant smile cannot be recorded on a printed page. The extracts which follow are glimpses into the sober thoughts of a soul always tryiag to trace Grod's hand training him : — In life's pathway we have somethimes to walk through the street of honour, sometimes that of dishonour. The street of honour is slippery, the surroundings gaudy and attractive, and the eye is easily taken off from the path of one's feet; whilst that of dishonour is rough and rugged, painful to the tread, insult and reproach are heard on either side, and the surroundings are anything but attractive ; so that the thought is directed first to getting out as quickly as possible, — many a look is cast towards the journey's end, — and secondly, to the sure tread of one's foot. It is a noticeable feature in the Psalms of David that the sense of shame and reproach and the tendency to despair should be so often and so deeply deprecated. One of man's greatest, strongest, deadliest foes is this crushing sense of sin, — this hopelessness of rising above it and triumphing over it; and hence a ministry of encouragement and hope is a ministry of power and salvation. As the annual flood of the Yangtsze tests the houses on the river-bank, whether built of solid walls or hollow ; as it tears away the untempered mortar with its fair white face, and sweeps down the unreal remnant of a wall ; so there are in the life of most men times of a like testing, when hollow structures and fair whitewashed exteriors of untempered mortar will not stand the press MEDITATIONS 167 of affliction, trial, disappointment or temptation, but, borne down by the overwhelming tide, leave gaping hollows in the character, or worse still, one mass of ruin. And yet, well is it for us that we have these times, far better in this life to be able, when the water has receded, to begin afresh and erect a solid fabric, than to go on until the last great and world-transforming flood shall sweep down for ever structures that shall know no reconstruc- tion but perish in an everlasting ruin. God knows exactly what are the tests for each man, just as a chemist knows the particular test for any given substance, and as we read of Abraham, " when he was tried he offered up Isaac," so we have in him one example of this knowledge. In his case it was not said, " Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor ; " nor was it, " Let the dead bury their dead, but follow thou Me," etc. These were not his tests, though they might be so to others. These he would probably have given up without a thought almost. But God said, "Take now thy son, thine only son, Isaac." This was the touchstone of the man, and these touchstones we each have though they differ in each case. He is a brave man who dares to look every man in the face without a blink ; but he is a bolder far who dares to look himself and his own heart in the face and never blink. A MISSIONARY should ever keep in mind that it is not man who is his great enemy and opponent in the work, but it is the devil in man, and he should carefully dis- criminate and distinguish between the two. And in dealing with men remember that one common enemy assaults both him and his hearers ; that each has to struggle against the devil and all his fearful machina- tions; that he thus ever has the better side of man's nature with him in the work ; that every man has some- 1 68 DA VID HILL where or other this better side, that it is the preacher's duty to seek it out and work from that. He should remember, too, in his preachiag day by day, that there is some avenue whereby he may have access to every soul in his congregation — some way of getting to the heart of each one ; and he is the ablest man and most successful who by the help of God discovers and enters that way, taking with him into the affections thus gained the truth of the love and grace of Christ. Matt. xii. 43. The strong emphasis of this passage has, it has lately struck me, to be placed on the s'IsX^jj. The unclean spirit got,s out, not s^e^Xjj6fi has been cast out. It is the voluntary movement of the evil spirit, as opposed to the constrained and unavoidable ejection of which Christ had been speaking in the earlier part of the chapter; and hence it is that his return was so dread and malignant. "When he is driven out of the heart it means that Christ has entered in and holds possession ; there has been struggle, but it has resulted in the overthrow of Satan's dynasty and the establishment of that of the Lord Jesus. But when the spirit of evil goes out volun- tarily, without any fearful struggle, then it is to be feared that the need of an indwelling Lord Christ will not be felt, and the self-sweeping and garnishing, the self-reformatory endeavours be carried on without that vital change, that indwelling of Christ and His Spirit which alone can ensure safety against the more terrible onset of the unclean confederacy in the future. Nothing can be substituted for an indwelling Christ. " My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me and to finish His work." Thus was the Saviour's life sustained and satisfied, and thus also is the life of His followers. Nothing at times can enable a man to go on in a course of sacrifice and self-denial, and that in the face of reproach and shame MED IT A TIONS 1 69 and contrary advices of friends, but the feeling that this is the will of God. " I am suffering," he says, " suffering acutely, but I am doing the will of God." And with that knowledge he is sustained. It is his meat, and he is satisfied and at rest. God trusts His people more than their best friends even dare to do. Who, for example, would have confidence in Abraham when he left his early home and started on his first mission in obedience to God's command, leaving, as men would say, a certain for an uncertain good ? They would call him a fool, and tell him to mind his work and look after his farms and pastures and give no heed to wild imaginations. And to follow these Divine impres- sions he must break with old friends, and see them one after another dropping off, until he was left alone following the Invisible God, pressing forward in solitary grandeur in the solemn march of faith. God trusted him here with a commission with which his friends would not have dared to. Paith seems (of course it is only a seeming) sometimes like taking the initiative, if it is not irreverence to say so, with God. And hence faith implies holy boldness — higher courage than any other act of a man's life. But when the Son of Man cometh shall He find faith on the earth ? — such faith ? Faith borne on the wings of feeling may transcend reason; but higher still, it may soar upwards when feeling flags or faints or dies away: and that faith is the highest of all. Professional preaching and professional praying is the curse of the Christian ministry. It is like a Chinese corpse dressed up in its niost gorgeous suit. One great fault both of missionaries and journalists 170 DAVID HILL in China is that instead of seeking for correspondences of doctrine and policy between the Chinese sages and Christianity, and between the policy of foreign nations and China, they devote all their strength to discover contradictions, differences, antagonisms, and errors. Man's mind in China and man's mind in England being subject to One supreme Power, and His truth being one, there must be multiplied coincidences both of doctrine and policy, which, though finding expression differently in either case, are well worth drawing forth and exhibiting in their harmonious oneness. The journalists of the present day can see this fault in the missionary body, and can talk about it. It may be that missionaries, too, can see it in the journalists though they do not everlastingly rave about it. To have no inward sympathy with light, and every movement which brings and increases the light, whether of science or nature or revelation, — to have no inward pulsation which beats in unison with the great heart of Love Divine, — no response to benevolent efforts, — no burnings of compassion for those in wretchedness and distress, — that is ^dmng, death in its reaUest and most awful meaning. It is a cold icy benumbing of what is highest and holiest and purest within, — a severance from the eternal life, — a wandering away from the Father's house of love. One of the most unrestful and unsettling feelings which a man can have is the consciousness of some secret unsubmissiveness to God. In the great inward struggles of a man's life he is almost always, as far as I have seen, intensely alone. This indeed constitutes the terribleness of the struggle. No one can go with him ; God intended that he should be isolated from all his fellows and work out the problem alone. And hence it is not from unkindness but from MEDITA TIONS 171 actual inability to sympathise with such a struggle that friends can give no, or very Uttle, aid, but He can who " was tempted in all points like as we are." The man whose soul the devil has plied with the fears and despairs and remorse of reprobation by God, who has stood on the brink of that terrible vortex and only escaped by the skin of his teeth, can ill afford to play with, or joke at, the religious convictions of any other man. There are some men with whom if you would be friendly you must bow down and worship the golden image which they have set up. It may be the image of a calf, but that is not to the point; Faith is not only a receptive but an attractive power ; it wins on men as hardly anything else can. We cling to those who believe in us, and we can't help it ; and we shrink from those who doubt us, and withdraw into ourselves again. It was a Divine wisdom which made faith the sine gud non of Christianity ; but it necessitated a Divine and spotless Man to do so. In building a Chinese chapel, I would always contrive to have a side passage with a kind of side door, and this generally kept open so that those who come could enter without having to wait in the front street. The fact is, that nine out of every ten Chinamen are so afraid to be seen coming to a Christian chapel in a place where they are known, that if they can't get in quietly by a side door they will not come in at all. " To the weak," said St. Paul, " became I as weak that I might gain the weak ; I am made all things to all men that I might by all means save some." It would be an interesting study to trace out the different character which prayer and worship bear in 172 DA VID HILL different countries. A friend once told me after his return from a trip in Italy, in which he had seen several of the Protestant Christians there, that he was struck with the much fuller adoration to which the Italians gave expression in their prayers than do the English churches. Here in China they inform Grod of all ; earnest supplica- tion, profound adoration, mighty intercession are not so much the mark of the Chinaman's prayer as minute information. Some Christians are very thick-skinned, and it takes a long time to get the thorn pushed through into their flesh so that they feel the smart and the prick of it. It seems strange that through the long range of Old Testament history there should be so few spontaneous inquirers of the way of salvation. Those earnest interrogations so frequent in the New Testament find hardly any expression in the Old. " And what shall we do ? " said those repentant crowds to the Wilderness Preacher. " What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life ? " said the thoughtful young man, who was also very rich, when he came to Jesus. Thus also inquired a certain lawyer. Then after Christ had ascended on high, when the Spirit was poured out on the Pentecostal crowds, they too cried out, saying, " Men and brethren, what must we do ? " And so again, when the gospel of the kingdom moved Westwards and entered Europe, the first inquiry was that of the stricken jailer, " Sirs, what must I do to be saved ? " It would seem as though there were periods in national history as in individual life when this momentous inquiry presses more heavily on the national mind than it does at other times. In China the unsatisfactory reply which Confucianism gave to the question, or the utter ighoring of the whole subject, led to the introduction of Buddhism, which is for the masses here the most trusted response they have. MEDITATIONS 173 The profoundness or superficiality of a nation's sense of sin may be measured by the character of its worship. Where that is attended by costly sacrifice and severest penance, the reaUty and sting of sin is much more keenly felt ; but where, as in China, worship is a commonplace routine, a matter of considerable indifference, a service which costs at most the expenditure of but a few moments and almost as few cash, one may safely conclude that the exceeding sinfulness of sin is hardly known and rarely felt. He who does not learn the lesson of serving his fellow- man on earth will never be summoned to the higher service of God in heaven. The Eomish confessional necessitates a celibate priest- hood. The secrets it reveals would almost surely ooze out between man and wife, and then . Theke will in due time arise a Protestant Ignatius Loyola who will cut off the growing excrescences of the missionary work and reduce it to a severer and more self-denying type ; dissatisfied with, and breaking away from,those ever-increasing conventionalisms which cluster thick around an old institution, he will, by deadness to the world, and by the concentration of all his force on the one work of saving souls, and the consequent com- munication of the Lord the Spirit, shake the whole heathen world, which is even now by the introduction of more rapid means of communication being prepared for that day. Most people say that for a man to remain unmarried he should have some special work to do and a direct and well authenticated call of duty to such work ; but is it not the New Testament ideal that a man should hear the voice of God and duty calling him to marriage ere he ventures to enter upon it ; that he should remain in the 174 DA VID HILL state wherein he is called till the Voice Divine summons him to change, rather than that he should expect some special call to continue a single man ? Teue peace is based on knowledge, as opposed to that ignorant, uninquiring indolence in which some appear to rest. Many a time and oft does God come to us in prayer, and with a touch point out to us our exceeding sinfulness, thus withering up our strength as when He touched Jacob, and the hollow of his thigh was out of joint as he wrestled with Him ; and then, when tears and supplica- tions (Hos. xii. 4.) are the expression of the earnestness of wrestling and the weakness of the supplicant, then have we power over the angel and prevail, then is God found of us in Peniel, and speaks to us His name. One means of awakening men is to point out the possibilities which are within their reach; mental and spiritual awakening both may in many cases be effected by this means, and this is the great principle which underlies the gospel of Christ. It is faith in a grand possibility opened up for us by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, — a possibility of which all men are capable to a greater or less degree. The losing sight of, and faith in, this possibility is the very ruin of a man's life. God lengthens out man's capability for faith according to his sincerity of action, and hence our Lord said, " Whatsoever things ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them." There are times in the lives of most Christians when they kneel down to pray, in much the same condition as was that of the ship which carried Paul to Melita — when neither sun nor stars in many days shine forth, and they are all in doubt and sore perplexity as to their MED IT A TIONS 1 7 5 exact position, and day after day they feel themselves unable to lay it down upon the chart, for they have not taken sight these many days. But even then God knows exactly where they are. He can fix the longitude and latitude, and tell how much the ship has made, or how and where she has been rolling uncertainly and uneasily all these days. And well it is for us not to forget this fact whe?:* thus we kneel us down to pray ; well to assume it all before we begin. Many of the houses of the poor in China have a rope thrown over them with a large heavy stone tied to it at either end to preserve it from being blown over in time of high and gusty winds. So the Lord in His great mercy frequently weights His people with some bodily infirmity to prevent them being lifted up above measure or blown over altogether. An ambition for the honour of reaping the greatest results for Christ may be quite another thing from the ambition to he most self - sacrificing, most humbly devoted to, and most ardent in love for Him. The former m.ay be of the earth earthy, centring in and reverting to one's self ; the latter cannot be. The test, severest and most crucial of religious life, is in some respects %ot when, isolated from all other enjoyments, the intercourse of friends, the pleasures of society, etc., we are driven to seek rest, satisfaction, repose, in communion with God; but when other attractions would call us away, when we have to sacrifice some pleasure, some agreeable society, some looked -for recreation, for lone communion with God; when through such circumstances we faithfully adhere to the hours of prayer, we attest our conviction of the high, the inestimable, the incomparable blessedness of fellowship with God. He then, who in the daily round of an isolated life enters into and enjoys such blessed- 176 DAVID HILL ness, may not boast him of his superiority to another who may be more irregular in such enjoyments ; rather let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. The Church of the present day has not the miracle- working faith of early days. The question often occurs, " Can this be recovered ? " And why may it not ? if only the Church, i.e. its individual members, be willing to revert to that simple literal faith in matters pertain- ing to practical life, e.g. 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,' etc., or, ' Grive to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away,' and the like. When such duties as this bearing upon the self-sacrifice of daily and practical life are fulfilled, then might not the further gifts of the Spirit be fairly expected to follow ? As things are at the present day, how can Christian believers dare to expect these more extraordinary gifts when they them- selves are unwilling to make those more than ordinary sacrifices ? Theee are times in a missionary's life when the sense of loneliness, the keen want of human sympathy, cuts home like a bleak and bitter east wind. And to learn to stand alone in any course of action, duty, or sufiFering, without one word of human sympathy, is a great lesson to learn. To belie conviction for the sake of a friend is the very ruination of friendship. When a Christian man is crucified with Christ, God Himself takes in hand the selection of the nails whereby he is fastened to the cross. Se, knows what are best suited to each one, and the crucified believer rejoices in the Divine selection. So it was with St. Paul when counting over the nails which nailed him to the cross, he said, " I take pleasure in infirmities," that was one ; MEDITATIONS 177 "in reproaches," that was another; "in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses?' He felt that these it was which ensured communion with Christ, and hence he blessed God for every nail, though they tore the tender iiesh and pierced the delicate framework of the hands and feet; though they caused the painful smart, and though they left him bleeding, faint and dying, yet he gloried in the cross. Veey valuable are the two years or so which at the commencement of a missionary's career are usually spent in studying the language, for though he is unable to do much active and aggressive mission work, he is every day in the minds of those around him forming character, — a character for himself, I mean, — which may be of immense and untold service to him in his work in the future. Self-denial, like every other grace, must grow or it will die. The very terms of discipleship which our Lord laid down most implicitly teach this. "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me " (Luke ix. 23). But what is self - denial to - day is not so a month hence. The very same act by its constant repetition becomes natural and easy, and ceases to be an act of self-denial ; and that for the very reason that we ourselves have so far changed. Hence the requirement of daily cross- bearing and self - denial implies a daily growth and advancement in this grace and duty. It is a more difficult, more thankless, but really a kinder act to put a person into the way of helping himself rather than doing all for him ; which latter is often much the easier. This applies both to the conduct of missionary operations and to almsgiving. There is a possibility of knowing and doing the will of 12 178 DAVID HILL God in everything. The recognising the possibility is the true inspiration of life. It has more than once occurred to me of late that whereas in the commencement of missionary work in any town great prominence must be given and much time devoted to the public proclamation of the gospel, the witnessing for the true God and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent, yet there may come a time when it is well to go into retirement and spend days alone with God. First prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, " ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord ; " then prophesy unto the wind, and say to the wind. Thus saith the Lord God, " Come from the four winds, breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live." This thought has been suggested to me in thinking over the case of Li Mung Chiao, where preaching seems like a drug in the market; where the people seem to count the pearls you offer them a common thing ; where after some years of preaching there is not one earnest Christian. At such a place is it not duty to pause, to retire into one's self, to go alone with God, and in confession and penitence, with prayer and supplication and faith, lay the matter before Him ? The Lord has certainly a regard for His servants keeping face before those to whom they are sent. Cramming too much food into a child is always an unhealthy process : so cramming all the great truths of Christianity into a Chinaman's mind all at once before he has had time to digest one, cannot forward his spiritual life. One truth thoroughly explained, clearly illustrated, and pointedly applied, is better than a cursory glance at all gospel truth. Foe a long time past my most earnest prayers have been for guidance in practical life ; for light as to duty, rather than for a loving spirit wherewith to discharge that duty ; and yet to love is more than to know, and MEDITATIONS 179 love too is the surest light. " If any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know, but i£ any man love God the same is known of Him." England's relation to the world ought in many respects to resemble that of Lady Burdett Coutts to London. Mistress of a large fortune, our country should exercise a constant yet discriminating benevolence towards every nation under heaven. France, Persia, India, have all shared England's benevolence in the past, but as nations are year by year drawn nearer to each other, she should stand ever prepared for the alleviation of distress and relief of poverty wherever found in the great family of man. And in these Eastern lands year after year the cry of the suffering, the moan of poverty, ascends to heaven from un- numbered myriads of starving, Hl-clad, wretched men and women, who might be amply supported by the mere superfluities of English homes. Threepence a day would place many a man in a better condition as far as daily food is concerned than he has been in all his life. As this state of things becomes known there will arise the need of a Benevolent Society for the relief of the poor in foreign lands, and a call for men to give themselves to this work. Missionary societies are doing a great work in presenting spiritual sustenance to these vast heathen lands, but as the spirit without the body is dead, so faith without works is dead also. When the natives of India and China see not only a dazzling display of wealth, as they almost invariably do when they meet with foreigners, but also a striking display of self- sacrificing benevolence, of self-denying, Christ-like love, then will they see and know that this pure gospel of the Man Christ Jesus is the gospel of the Son of God, a gospel for universal man. It is possible to get into a way of preaching to the i8o DA VID HILL heathen and preaching sincerely and faithfully and prayerfully, and labouring hard too in the work, and yet rarely to feel really moved with compassion towards them, rarely enter into the aTkayx^iahtg which Jesus knew; the entXay/ya Xfiaroij 'iTjeou of which St. Paul speaks. And yet, without this, how far we must fail of that effectiveness which we desire. To attain this then should be our aim, and to this end, besides the spiritual aids of meditation on the life of Jesus and on the spiritual destitution of the people and prayer, no greater help perhaps can be found than kindness to and con- sideration of the poor around us. The visitation of the wretched sheds found in every Chinese town, or rather suburb of the town ; the very sight of, not to say any- thing of conversation with, the ill-clad, ill-fed, ill- protected inmates, mostly without fuel, often without bedding, will move him ; if then some feeling of com- passion is not stirred within a man, let him go home and abandon mission work till he learns to be a man. But such cannot be the case; he must feel often not only compassion but shame and confusion of face ; and the feeling cherished practically will not end there, it will reach to the spirit of the man ; the streams, or rather the fountain, of pitying Christ-like love will mount up far higher than to a mere bodily commisera- tion, it will give tenderness to his spirit which will melt away his indifference, or, at anyrate, add an element of real genuine compassion to his prayers for and preaching to the people, and thus bring in that touch of sympathy so necessary to success: howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural aad after- ward that which is spiritual MisslONAET work calls for three leading classes of agents, namely, to use Scripture phraseology. Sowers, Eeapers, Builders. First come the Sowers. Their field is the most extensive: they are as it were the centrifugal force of missionary agency; they are the MEDITATIONS r8i pioneers of missionary triumphs ; the world is their parish. In China these have been chiefly represented by the agents of the Bible Society, by stray missionaries here and there, and now by the organised body of the China Inland Mission. Next come the Eeapers, those who seek to gather together into one visible body, one elect community, the results of the broadcast sowing of the Word. With- out them much of the harvest will be lost. They are the centripetal force, the conservative energy of the Christian Church; their individual sphere is more contracted than that of the Sower, their continuance in one locality more protracted. Their work is closely linked with the very root idea of an Ecclesia, which in the wisdom of God is indispensable to holiness, the calling out and gathering in of men from the world to the Church and family of God. This class of agents needs at the present time more labourers, and more clearly defined plans of operations. Men who will give themselves up to visit and revisit and visit again towns where the passing Sower has scattered the grain ; who will stay in such towns a week, a month, six months, a year, two years, or longer still, as the Spirit of God may dictate, till the "much people" in such cities are gathered into one, and churches are formed which can be left in the hands of those we term The Builders, who should be men as a rule of the place, elders ordained out of every city ; whose province it is to build up those gathered into the Church in faith and pureness and charity and knowledge of the Son of God; men with whom the missionary Eeapers may leave the ingathered fruits, who, to change the figure, will build them up in all holiness to be a habitation of God through the Spirit. Thus the work is rendered permanent, and many sons are brought to glory. This work at the present time is chiefly done by foreign missionaries, perhaps for lack of men of the place, perhaps because it is easier than going out sowing or 1 82 DAVID HILL reaping and having no settled home. At anyrate there is an overplus of Builders and a great lack of Reapers at the present day. The great Societies send forth chiefly missionary Builders. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth labourers into His harvest. I HAVE been thinking this morning of sonship. What a blessed thing it is ! It is the ideal life, to realise that we are sons of God, that to Him who is the ideal of all perfection, the Highest, Purest, Holiest, Noblest Being we can have any conception of, we stand in the relation of sons, the relation of loving obedience and filial con- fidence ; that we are His offspring and are to seek His likeness. Yes, " sonship is everything," as Erskine says. Oh, if it were only a reality to us every day ! It is the relationship which is to abide ; no slavery in the aeons to come, but the son abideth ever. Slavery is an accident of time, dependent on the changing circum- stances of wealth and position; sonship is based on origin which cannot change. Beloved, now are we the sons of God. Place and plans of mission work are quite secondary to character. The vast possibilities resultant from certain plans of work seem to follow as natural effects to given causes, but what is wanted is character — spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Benevolent enterprise no less than effective preaching, all depends on that, and the groundwork of that is Faith — the cultivation of which is entrusted to us, and it can only be cultivated by exercise. What should be the attitude of the various members of the body politic when a Christian State comes in contact with a heathen nation ? Should the propagation of Christian truths be left entirely to a distinct caste, a separate body of men? M EDIT A TJONS 1 83 Is Christianity — the kingdom of God — a priestly- hierarchy ? If not, what are the duties of each member of the Christian brotherhood ? Are not the consuls responsible for the representation of Christ to the native of&cials, and their wives to the wives of these officials ? And merchants to merchants, and their wives to the wives of native merchants ? CHAPTEE X FAMINE WOKE UP to the time we have now reached, while the missionary enterprise was creeping inland from the open ports, all the north-west and west of China was still unreached by a single Protestant evangelist. That at the present day there is a fine chain of prosperous and self-supporting Christian Churches in the north is due under God's Providence to the practical love shown during the awful famine which devastated the region during the years 1877 to 1879. The drought commenced in 1876, and that winter the province of Shantung was famine-stricken. The missionaries there, foremost among whom stand the honoured names of Nevius and Kichard, administered much relief; but the next year the drought was repeated, and famine of more or less intensity was reported from thirteen of the provinces. Among all these regions of hunger the worst was the province of ShansL The peculiar formation known as the loess, a dry, porous, friable soil, whUe giving great fertility when well watered allows moisture to run away with remarkable rapidity. Thus, when there was no rain at all for three years the barrenness of the land was appalling. What rendered the disaster the harder to 105. Lone" y.a£i of GipfDMi-h 110 Stari/arcL's Gboq^ Estai* Lan^j^n, i86 DA VID HILL seen, renders the establishment of the Government granaries doubly necessary in this province, and the more so because of the lack of that abundant water communication which in other provinces answers in some measure to the railway system in our own country, and marvellously facilitates the transport of grain. This district, five hundred miles from the seacoast, is more- over cut off from the outside world by the formidable mountain ranges of the Han Shin Lin, which crosses the province from east to west, and of the frontier hills which separate the provinces of Shansi and Chihli. These mountain barriers to intercourse with the outside world have kept the people of Shansi — the masses, I mean — a good deal to themselves ; their mental as well as their mineral resources are largely undeveloped. The literati of the province are not equal in point of culture to their brethren in other provinces. Their enormous treasures of coal and iron still remain unlocked, a very trifling portion of the latter, and none of the former, finding their way out of the province because of the heavy cost of transport. Thus the mass of the people in Southern Shansi have been a little world unto themselves. "With rich resources both as regards their vegetable and mineral products, they have for years been practically independent of the outer world, and the substantial character of their houses and public buildings attests the comfort and comparative affluence of the people. Indeed, the wealthier classes, failing to find in bricks and mortar sufficient scope for the investment of their increasing wealth, have stepped beyond the bounds of their own province, and as the greatest bankers in the nation have made themselves a name throughout the land. But years of continuous plenty had rendered them unmindful of the possibility of a reverse. Like the tanks in India, the Government granaries had fallen into comparative disuse; the opium poppy had over a vast area supplanted the cereals of former days, and its abuse FAMINE WORK 187 was sapping the strength of the people, — the abundance of recent years had been employed to repair the ruin which the Taiping Eebellion had caused when it swept through these populous cities, and now, when like an armed man grim famine sweeps down upon them it finds them all unprepared to meet it. As one season of drought succeeds another, their stock of grain dwindles down, until at last it is entirely exhausted. Prices rise to double and treble their ordinary rates, adjoining provinces transmit their surplus stores, but they too are suffering seriously, and this source of supply soon fails. The local officials proclaim a fast, the pity of the gods is invoked ; the elders in the villages and the mandarins in the cities present themselves at the shrine of Lung Wang, the god of Eain ; piteous cries ascend to heaven, but the heavens are as brass, and from their deep blue look pitilessly down upon a parched land and famishing multitudes. Appeal is made throughout the fifty counties of Southern Shansi to the local magistrates for Government relief. They in their turn appeal on the one hand to the higher authorities for Government aid, and on the other to the county families for voluntary contributions. This form of benevolence is not unknown in China, but there is nothing like the generous, open-handed charity which is to be found in Christian lands. The mandarin, who is never a native of the place in which he holds office, and whose term of office is not usually more than two or three years, first inquires of con- fidential advisers as t-o' the reputed wealth of the local gentry, and then according to their wealth fixes on a certain amount which he will expect them to contribute ; they are then called together, and the matter is laid before them. Some perhaps will beg a reduction of the amount of this benevolent tax which has been levied upon them, and after discussion the various amounts will be determined upon and in due course honourably, though perhaps reluctantly, paid by the 1 88 DAVID HILL respective donors. In the mpantime the village elders and the parochial wardens of the cities have petitioned the county magistrate, and the magistrates have petitioned the prefects, and the prefects have petitioned the provincial governor, and the governor has petitioned the Throne, and now the cry of distress heard in the palace at Peking is echoed throughout the eighteen provinces; but Government machinery is cumbrous, great bodies move slowly, Eastern means of communi- cation lack the lightning wings of the West. China has no Flying Scotsman, nor could she wire a daily bulletin. News travels slowly, and credence more slowly still, especially where it affects the pocket and the purse of the money-loving Eastern. But, though slow and stately, China's step is sure and steady, and if tiiM be but allowed her, she will reach the goal at last. But in the case before us this is the one condition of success which is wanting, there is no time to be lost in tardy measures or tardy movements. If never before, delay is dangerous now. Yet, alas! delay is inevitable, and as a consequence the people perish. Memorials have reached the Throne, they have been published in the Peking Gazette. That of the 11th November 1877 states that the southern section of the province is absolutely bare. "There remains," it goes on to say, " neither the bark of trees nor the roots of wild herbs to be eaten, the land [is filled with the sound of lamentation, and the corpses of those who have perished by starvation are to be seen on every wayside — no less than three or four millions of people are reduced to absolute want." And yet in the other provinces throughout the empire the harvests are plenteous, the crops heavy and the people prosperous. And now comes the difficulty, how can space be annihilated and delay defeated ? In Western nations the advance of science has solved the problem, and when an Irish famine overtakes us the weird spectre with his evil eye vanishes before the FAMINE WORK 1S9 railroad car which pours in the bread of life and disappoints the monster of his prey. But China lags behind, and though she has a compact, if small fleet of steamers, she has not a single mile of railway. Still her steamers carry the news all round the coast, and six hundred miles up the river Yangtsze. The wealthier provinces (each one as it were a kingdom within itself) are taxed by the Imperial mandate, and steamers are chartered for the conveyance of the grain from distant provinces and tributary States to the northern port of Tientsin. But another difficulty arises — the winter is ap- proaching, and not only would the northern snows obstruct the overland transport of the grain, but the frozen sea of the Gulf of Chihli renders maritime com- munication impossible from Christmastide till March ; hence it was that in the time of her deepest distress the Government was helpless, her hands were tied, her powers paralysed. But the far-seeing eye of Christian charity had caught sight of the distress, and two noble men, whom I am proud to speak of as personal friends, undaunted by difficulty or danger, on the fleet feet of love sped to the suffering province. One to ascertain accurate information with regard to the rumours of distress recently so rife, which having done he set himself first to stir up his missionary brethren to run to the rescue of the perishing multitudes, and then proceeded to the more self-denying task of abandoning the field and returning home to England to awaken sympathy and collect funds in our own country, and it is to the labours of the Eev. Arnold Foster that the success of the enterprise in England is most largely due. The other pioneer in this good work was Timothy Eichard of the English Baptist Mission, who after labouring hard in a previous famine in the neighbour- ing province of Shantung started with only two thousand ounces of silver (say £600), with no Govern- igo DA VW HILL ment escort, with only two or three personal attendants, into a new and almost untrodden field. Unwelcomed, misunderstood, repelled even, in the first instance, by the Government authorities, he faltered not in his mission of love, but by patience and tact and courage and independence swept aside initial difi&culties and cleared the way for those of us who afterwards entered into his labours. The reports of these two brethren certified to the Western world the fact of the famine, and sent at the same time a thrill of horror through the foreign communities at the open ports. Our countrymen in the East are not slow in re- sponding to the cry of distress when certified of the fact. Hence, when the ice-bound sea relaxed its hold of the waterways of the north, funds were forthcoming, and men were found eager to bring relief and join the man who single-handed in the Shansi province had begun his work; 17,000 taels (Chinese ounces) had been subscribed, and were now entrusted to the three of us who had the honour of next engaging in the work. It is not hard to picture the eager response in Hill's heart to such a call for the practical living out of the gospel He instantly subscribed several hundreds of pounds to the relief fund, and warned his brothers that he might be telegraphing for another thousand. Joined by Messrs. Turner of the China Inland (who had seen the famine and travelled over- land to report it at Hankow), and Whiting of the American Presbyterian Mission, he took the first steamer northward after the melting of the ice, so that March 1878 found him at Tientsin. The relief com- mittee at Shanghai, under the secretaryship successively of the Eev. James Thomas of the Union Church (now Metropolitan Secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society), and the Eev. William Muirhead, was FAMINE WORK 191 the means of forwarding altogether, as the gifts of Christendom, no less than £50,000 to the various relief parties, and a good portion of this was sent to Shansi. The capital of this province was now the point to be aimed at. It was four hundred miles inland, a journey of twenty days by the rough modes of land travel which were alone possible. Hill adopted the Chinese costume in Tientsin, shaving the front part of the head and plaiting his hair into the queue — a dress which he adhered to while in China for the rest of his life.'' Across the plains of Chihli the mode of travel was by a rough, springless cart, which bumped and jolted excruciatingly along tracks much worse than an ordinary river-bed. Euts a foot deep are ordinary occurrences, and he who rides must pack all his quilts and bedding on his baggage so as to make as soft a nest as he can for his own aching form, and even then he will do well if he emerge unstunned from some dozens of violent blows to his head. A more com- fortable method is a sort of litter carried by two mules, one before and one behind. Travelling here differs a good deal from travelling in Hupeh ; no waterways, hence no boat travel and no fish, very few wheelbarrows and fewer chairs. Carts and waggons, mules, donkeys and camels meet you all the way. The carts are very primitive constructions; the driver walks by the side, generally cracking the long whips with which he dexterously manages his mules. Women ride on ponies as men do in England. The inns are large, something like a fold-yard in an English farm- stead in arrangement, with guest-rooms instead of the bar opposite to you as you enter. Of these you may ' See the portrait on the cover, which was taken in 1885. 192 DA VID HILL make your selection, paying 50 cash each (2d.) for a night's lodging. These inns have no beds, but what is called a Kwng, i.e. a recess having a kind of raised brick platform, covered with a large mat, and heated in winter by a flue. In these inns rice is rarely to be had ; it is generally vermicelli soup, with a plate of bean curd, cabbage, or mutton. The transport of the relief money was no easy matter. There are no other coins in China save the copper cash, which are used in thousands strung on a stout string. But as a thousand of these were worth, at the then rate of exchange, less than four shillings, and weighed five or six pounds, it was clearly impossible to use copper. Lump silver is the ordinary medium of exchange in large transactions, and ingots to the weight of twenty thousand Chinese ounces (more than three-quarters of a ton) had to be carried. The Viceroy, Li Hung Chang, after some demur, gave an escort and a special passport. Ere the party reached Taiyuen, the signs of famine were evident in the gaunt skeletons that staggered along the road, and occasional corpses lying in the houses. The pestilential famine fever stalked round them in the sluggish air. The missionaries had been warned of this peril at Tientsin, but were determined to accept the risk, sometimes wondering which of them would be the one to go. The Sunday after they gladdened the heart of Timothy Eichard in Taiyuen, Mr. Whiting, who had but recently recovered from a serious illness, and had come against advice, sickened with it, and in three weeks the sorrowing little band had to lay his worn body in the cof&n. The Governor of the province (an uncle of the man FAMINE WORK 193 afterwards famous in England as the Marquis Tseng) was at first enraged and suspicious at the arrival of these foreigners who " wanted to steal the hearts of the people," but explanations and the sight of the passport soon disarmed him. When the mourners sought to buy ground in which to bury their dead, this governor sent to say that he certainly should not allow those who came to help to be obliged to buy a grave. He would give a grave, but offered 400 taels to transport the body to America for burial. The considerate offer was gratefully declined, and the dead was reverently and honourably laid to rest in a native mausoleum. Of the course of procedure which followed, his friend Foster writes : — " Mr. Hill's own leanings were always on the side of lowliness in Christian service ; to be identified with the poor, and to place himself as far as possible on a level with them, was his ideal of what, in his own case at least, was involved in the close following of the Son of Man. At the same time he would often, at a greater cost to himself than most of his friends ever knew, set aside his own predilections and cheerfully and uncom- plainingly accommodate himself to the views of others with whom he was working. He had no dead mechanical theory of self-sacrifice that must always act in the same way whatever of pain and inconvenience it may cause to fellow-workers. One illustration of this out of many that came under my notice may be given. In going to Shansi to administer famine relief, Mr. Hill's own wish would have been to work independently of the patronage or control of the rich and great ; here, as in everything else, simply relying on the favour and approval of his Master, and imitating his Master's 13 194 DA VID HILL methods as closely as he could. His fellow-workers, however, though imbued with the same spirit of self- surrender as he himself was, had on some points a different conception of what was required of them and of what were the best plans for accomplishing the end they had in view. While as little disposed as Mr. Hill himself to put themselves into the hands of the Chinese officials, or to follow their bidding blindly, some of them favoured paying more deference to these officials than he would have felt inclined from his point of view to do. Writing from Taiyuen Pu, the provincial capital of Shansi, a few days after his arrival in April 1878, he says: — We are advised to see the district magistrate first, and inquire of him what has been and what needs to be done, and where the distress is greatest, then try to get a list of the families in actual suffering, visit them if possible, and see for ourselves and distribute relief accordingly, — this, in brief, is the plan proposed. It is with a good deal of fear and trembling that I go forth. This official connection is a matter which necessitates the exercise of no ordinary amount of caution, but we must cast ourselves on God; the hearts of all men are in His hands, and it may be that He is by this means bringing salvation to a class of the people rarely reached. . . In this official plan and its concomitants I have thought it advisable to act in harmony with , and consequently appeared in full [Chinese] dress at the Fu Tai's Yamen [the Governor's official residence] the other day. The word which runs in my mind is, "Suffer it to be so now, for so it becometh," etc., though I am not unaware that thai was a step down, this — as the world goes — a step up; but I don't thiuk it will b§ the lifelong plan. I can't but FAMINE WORK 195 think that officialdom, here at anyrate, is opposed to the life of Christ, though perhaps just now, as in the earlier ministry of our Lord, there may he no expressed antagonism ; yet what of the future ? " The area of famine was divided among the mission- aries, and Messrs. Hill and Turner went first to the neighbouring county of Shukow, fixing their head- quarters at its chief town, some thirty miles distant from Taiyuen. There they relieved some sixteen thousand who were destitute. They divided the county between them, visited the villages, going from house to house and writing down their own register of the poorest. This involved great toil, and the incurring of a good deal of hatred through the determination to seek the very poorest. The contrast between this and the method of the officials charged with the Government bounty was very marked. They universally gave their money in the lump, leaving rich and poor alike to receive. In fact, the difference between the Christian and the heathen mode of dealing throughout was the best object-lesson that could have been desired by the missionaries. The Government did its very best to bring in supplies from all quarters, and by the rough and difficult roads came quantities of millet and other grain. The missionaries felt themselves unable to bring in food, they provided money. The habits of corruption familiar to Chinese officialdom were too strong to be conquered even by so terrible a suffering as this, and every hand through which Government relief funds passed took care to grasp something during the passage. Mandarins of all grades took their percentage, one county magistrate was beheaded for peculation. Even the bankers for changing the sycee 196 DAVID HILL (lump silver) insisted on the exorbitant rate of 7 or 8 per cent. After the relief of Shukow, Hill returned to Taiyuen, and hearing terrible reports of the distress in the south of the province, went with the same companion to Ping Tang, its chief city, two hundred miles south. The road led over a mountain range, four thousand feet high, through the singular loess forma- tion. The ruts, scoured clean by the blasts of wind, had in the course of years worn down till the route was one long pass with perpendicular cliff walls of from thirty to fifty feet high. By these roads, utterly choked with dust, and through a land entirely barren, without a blade of grass, the carts slowly bumped their way for eight days. Mr. Eichard had seen the worst of the famine, now a little past ; from his description and comparison with the awful distress still visible, the travellers could picture the horrors. HUl writes : — To Eev. J. W. Brewer. Now a line about Shansi. The stress of affairs is over, — indeed the real stress came on and passed before we arrived in Ping Yang Pu, — whilst I was cogitating over the matter, men and women were dying by thousands in this district. During the last week I have been trying to realise the scenes which would be witnessed in the villages all around here in the second and third moons. It would prove one of the most weird and ghastly pictures ever produced if one could but paint it to the Ufe, Men and women walking about with death and starvation depicted on every feature — consciously wasting away. Haggard skeletons meeting each other at every turn. Those a little stronger whom you met on the way conveying furniture or bricks or any household utensil FAMINE WORK \on to anyone who would buy. Then, a few days after, — disappearing from the scene, lying in the house — a skeleton breathing out its last breath. The door open, dogs rush in, or — if one member or two of the family is left — man feeds upon the fleshless corpse, and only leaves the bones for the dogs to gnaw. Oxen slaughtered, then mules and horses ; the stench of dead bodies lying in houses by the side of the living, who had not the strength or means to bury them, spreads disease and fever on all hands. Wailing and lamentation and woe wafted on every breeze. The wealthy steeling their hearts against their higher humanity — closing their doors, shutting their eyes, hardening themselves for resistance to the claims of a common humanity pressing in upon them with ever-increasing torrent-like force. The dead-carts, or hands only too habituated to the work, filled daily with lean corpses which they cast into the general pit. The roads strewed with men and women who had sunk down unable to move farther. From what I have seen since those days of terror I know enough to realise some little of the state of things then. A little lad I asked the other day whether he had parents or friends told me that his parents were both dead and his little sister died the other day. " Was she buried ? " I asked. " Who buried her ? " Tears came to his eyes, and he said, " No, dogs gnawed her up." To see mothers with dry breasts clasping little children, yellow and aU bony skeletons, in their arms as I have often seen, makes one dread to think of those days. The ruins of fine houses, finer than any one sees in the ordinary Hupeh village; the piles of bricks here and there, some unsold yet, some purchased by the well-to-do ; the furniture which crowds the houses of such men tells us what must have been the occupation of the people then. And the assertion in almost every village that human flesh (not however the bodies of the living, but dead corpses) had been consumed there, suggests the state of things to which the people had been reduced. /98 DA VID HILL No wonder that they press for all the money they can get ; no marvel that they often beset you on the road- way and clutch at your clothes — not content with touching the hem of your garment. One of the great trials of this relief work is the danger we are in of, whilst refusing aid to those who have been sufficiently relieved or do not stand in need of relief, refusing others who are really suffering, and so hardening our- selves against the claims of our higher nature, — and a further danger of becoming so accustomed to sights of suffering that they fail to affect us as they should. Mr. Eichard describes the horrible scenes : the huge pits with the lean, naked, frozen dead men and women, piled up indiscriminately ; the gaunt creatures piteously staggering along the road — then a sudden puff of wind, and the weakened frame collapsing into a mere pro- strate skeleton never to rise again. At such a time man was reduced to the one elementary passion of craving for food, cannibalism became horribly common; women in their agony would change children and then kill and eat; men at all stout dared not leave their village alone for fear of being killed and eaten ; a man and his donkeys went out to one of the surface workings for coal — all were eaten ; children were sold by the thousand ; women were clamouring round a slave-buyer from a distance, eager to be bought. Such is the scene into which comes Christian charity and help. The Prefect of Ping Yang, a Manchu of the Imperial Clan, received the foreigners with the utmost friendliness, and assigned them as a residence the roomy and quiet " Iron Buddha " temple, " too far from the people and too near the idols." A complete plan of campaign was arranged, and the same FAMINE WORK 199 careful conscientious methods adopted. It was im- possible to even think of supporting life continuously, all that could be done was to eke out a bare living at critical times and tide over the worst. The Govern- ment had an immense machinery which only resulted in two pints of rice a month, and failed, largely through the lack of thoroughness and honesty of the workers. The missionaries, after careful inquiry, made a first distribution of money to the starving wretches, taking ten to twenty villages a day, and followed this up by months of continuous house-to- house work. After going through a hamlet dispensing charity amidst the moving skeletons with their gaunt apathy or shrill implorings, they would pause for a few kind words on the village square and then pass on. It was no time then to preach any gospel but that of deeds. Sometimes the rapacity of the money- changers would induce the missionaries to decide to give silver instead of copper. It was impossible to divide this small enough to give to individuals, so each family would receive as a unit. The village blacksmith received the ingot of solid silver, put it in his smithy fire, hammered it out, cut it into small, two-ounce squares, which were weighed out to the applicants. Then these, scattering over a compara- tively wide area, would be able to defy the avaricious monopoly of the local banker. We get glimpses of the work from extracts : — To Eev. a. Foster. Ping Yano Ff, Jvme 19, 1878. Death has mowed down tens of thousands of the people. Idolatry is looked upon as useless as far as 20O DA VID HILL obtaining rain is concerned. Lao T'ien (Ancient Heaven) is the last resource. He alone it is to whom they must now look for showers. He it is who is slaying the people. God is teaching them terrihle things in righteousness. And the next lesson — that righteousness is love — who will teach them, and how? To J. E. Hill. Ping Yang, June 23, 1878. Messrs. Eichard and Turner are both here. They do most of the country work; the plan adopted being to gather together twenty or thirty villages to one centre of distribution, and give to each head of a household. In this way they relieve large numbers of persons in one day. Of course we get registers of the poor in the first instance, and distribute according to them. For rapid distribution this is perhaps as good a way as any, but there is a danger of wrong names being entered and of squeezing on the part of those who make the registers, whilst in the house-to-house distribution one may see for oneself. This is the plan I have adopted in the town, and I have distributed a million cash in notes of one thousand each. To E. Hill, Ping Yang, September 15, 1878. The death-rate in this district is 73 per cent. That is a terrible fact for a single year, isn't it ? The food which the people have been compelled to fly to com- prises elm bark, roots and stems of wheat and maize, leaves of plum, peach, apricot, and persimmon, willow, mulberry, etc. ; dried earth, roots of rushes, etc. ; and alas, in too many cases, human flesh too. Five women were burned alive, hands and feet tied, for killing and eating children they had kidnapped from the. streets. FAMINE WORK 201 To Eev. a. Fostek. PiNQ Yang, Augiist 1, 1878. In the village of Tan Chiao a youth came to me complaining that the son of the headman had deprived him of the 2000 cash I had just given him. On in- quiring if such were the case, the man said, "Yes, 1 did, and I had reason for it ; that youth killed and ate his own mother," and the looks of the poor lad only too plainly confirmed what the man said. In another village my guide said that he would not have dared to go there alone even now, for it was well known that travellers passing that way had been killed and eaten. On our arrival, for some time we could find no one in the village; we shouted, but no one repUed, We went to one house where lay a pair of shoes at the open door, the furniture inside all presenting the appearance of an occupied house, but on looking in, saw only the skeleton of a woman on the sleeping k'ang. In a neighbouring house I saw the skeleton of a man ; farther on, however, we reached a square where baskets of apricots were drying in the sun. After some time we found three or four persons engaged in gathering wild apricots on the hills, on which alone they were sub- sisting. One man, thin and haggard, with blood oozing from his nose, came forward, and we distributed a few thousand cash to them all round, just saving them from death. At another village 1 was told that a woman sitting close by had strangled her seven-year- old little girl because she couldn't support both her children, and preferred keeping the boy alive. To E. Hill. Pino Yang, January 8, 1879. I think I haven't mentioned to you the ravages which wolves have been making in this district during the last few months. I heard of this on my way from Taiyuen, 202 DA VID HILL but did not give much heed to the story. Since arriving here, however, I have proof only too plain of the fact. In one village a poor woman told me with tears in her eyes that only the day before her little boy had been torn to pieces less than a mile away from the village, and that at that very time the other members of the family were out burying what few remains they had been able to gather of the poor little fellow. In another village I was shown the stains on the ground made by the blood of a girl of seventeen that had been dragged out by a wolf on to the village square in the sight of one or more women. They dared not attack the brute, but had to stand and watch the girl seized by the throat and devoured — all except the skull and one big bone. Thank God we have been kept safe from them, though one night I might have been in for it but for the good providence of G-od. Late at night — ^it must have been midnight or after — I heard a piteous howling outside the temple I am living in. Fearing it might be some poor miserable beggar, half-starved, and moaning badly for relief, I went to the gate, never for a moment sus- pecting wolves. Happily I found the gate fastened, and, as I had no light, could not see to open it, so I went back to my room. The howling continued, and I felt uneasy at the thought of some poor man being outside there, so this time I took a candle to see if I could not get the gate opened. I found it was locked, and as the key was in the hands of the priest who had gone to bed some hours previously, I did not like to disturb him. So with some qualms of conscience, which I tried to still by the thought that the poor man must be in pretty good condition to be able to make so loud a wailing, and that he would last out till morning, I went back to bed. What was my astonishment to find next morning that it waa some hungry wolf who had found its way into the city, and first on one side, then on the other, had been howling and prowling about this temple, which stands on a little eminence away from the streets in the midst of FAMINE WORK 203 cornfields. I can assure you that I felt glad enough, and thankful too, I trust, that I had not opened the gate for so unwelcome an applicant for relief. Mr. Timothy Eichard was the leader of the mission- ary band engaged in relief work ; he remained for the most part in Taiyuen, the capital of the province. From time to time other workers came ; Canon (now Bishop) Scott and Mr. Capel of the Society for the Pro- pagation of the Gospel, Mrs. Hudson Taylor, Misses Crickmay and Horn, and Messrs. EUiston, Clarke, and James of the China Inland Mission. Of these some took up their residence at Ping Yang. In February Hill duly records the presence of seven Englishmen together in that city, including Mr. (now Sir) Walter HUlier of H.B.M's. Consular Service, who had come out to report. The old temple was vacated for the new-comers of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and Hill succeeded in hiring a commodious house at a rental of fifteen shillings a month ! From this centre the work in every direction was carried on still more effectively. While it was felt that at such a time the maiu work must be the satisfying of material needs, Messrs. Hill and Turner after the first period of seven-days-a-week work, com- menced a quiet Sunday's worship service in their own house, and certain devout persons, mostly vegetarians, who were thus attempting to obtain merit with Heaven, gathered round them for more perfect knowledge. Sometimes the workers separated, and each lived his solitary life, letters not reaching them for months, and only to be obtained through a special messenger to Tientsin whose journey cost £3, 10s. During one of these separations Hill was summoned to what seemed to 204 DA VTD HILL be Turner's dying bed, and tenderly nursed him through the agonies and weakness of dysentery back to life again. But the missionaries were not spared the afflictions of the curse of corruption. It was with great sorrow and indignation that Hill found that one of his most trusted agents had embezzled 150,000 cash (some £40), and that several of those coming around him and some of the village headmen were implicated. He succeeded in ensuring the return of a considerable portion of the ill-gotten gain, but betrays the rudeness of his awakening from the heavenliness of the Christ- like mission of relief to the earthliness of finding a Judas in the midst. How far to prosecute the offender weighed upon him heavily : — To Eev. a. Fostek. Ping Yang, April 5, 1879. What should one do ? " Vengeance is Mine, I will repay." Are we to rest it there ? It seems the only calm for me. Tossed about on an open sea, with my own planks creaking, I must put in there, and seek quiet waters in the great Unseen Governor who will rectify all wrongs and avenge all oppression in His own time. The lying of this place, even to me who have had four- teen years of Chinese lying, is immensely trying ; and to let it all go unrequited, unredressed, has wearied and anguished me not a little. Then I have fired up too often instead of taking it calmly and meekly, and now feel like a broken-winded horse, unequal to the pursuit. The Uttle Sunday service, which he had been holding among a few apparently interested, he now discontinued, because it was reported that some of the attendants were involved in this dishonesty. CHAPTEE XI AFTEE THE FIEE, THE STILL SMALL VOICE BY the middle of the yeai; the worst of the famine seemed passed ; the weakest had died off, there were left practically no children under ten years of age save a few who had been gathered by the missionaries into orphanages, and the whole race of professional beggars was wiped out of existence. Hill, however, saw work to be done, and determined to stay on till the next spring. There is no doubt that in the freedom from the organisation of an old established church he found a very great enjoyment, and the warm friendship he had formed with Mr. Eichard strongly coloured his views and thoughts on mission modes of work. It was indeed a happy time, and a happy circle of friends. The worship in Taiyuen had not yet crystallised into the separate services supported by separate societies, but all joined in one strong central service, Perhaps, as human nature is con- stituted, it was unavoidable ai}d best that subsequent work should be separate ; but the earliest stage has a charm of unity and simplicity all its own. Extracts show the lines on which Hill was feeling his way as to work. 205 2o6 DA VJD HILL To J. E. Hill. There are a great many more idols in this province than in Hupeh. In the doorway of every house you may note a niche in the wall, and one or more idols stationed there; these are in addition to the rude pictures of the door gods, which are placarded on the door itself. By the way, these door deities, which in one form or other appear Ho be recognised all over the country, are honoured in Hupeh by the placarding of this ugly daub on the front door of the house every New Year. In Hankow, however, the preaching of the gospel is successfully battering down the superstition, for Mr. John told me some time ago that there were now only about one-tenth of the pictures to be seen there that were found when he first arrived. Here they still abound, and not only they, but another form of idolatry is very prevalent. Trees are worshipped. It is a very common thing to see a piece of calico hung up around a tree, with some such sentence as this: "Protect my offspring," "Prayer answered," "Ask and ye shall receive," etc., and a little incense-stand placed on a shelf at the front of this inscription. Then the temples here are very numerous and very large. Most are endowed, having from thirty to seventy acres of land attached. This land has, like aU the rest, been unpro- ductive the last few years; hence there are scores of temples where the priest has simply starved to death, and now the temple has no one to look after it. In some instances they have been pulled down by the priests, and the wood has been sold for fuel to meet the bare necessities of existence, and yet official support is continued to the system. A mandarin in office cannot be a Christian ; the state-ceremonial requires the Ko tow at stated periods before an idol. A mandarin may despise the whole business, but he is compelled to go through the ceremony. AFTER THE FIRE, THE STILL SMALL VOICE 207 To E. Hill. May 29, 1878. Mr. Eichard does not preach in the streets, and he thinks works of charity should form a great part of our plan. In this latter point I agree with him. He thinks, too, that what I may call the eclectic plan should he the one we ought to act on more; probably, in the first instance, this is the better — finding out, making selection of the worthy men of a. place and working out from them, though not to sound abroad the gospel differs from my plans in the past, and I am not exactly satisfied yet which is the better to begin with. To one of his colleagues, in view of the annual meeting in his distant district, he writes as follows : — To Eev. J. W, Bkewer. Pino Yang, April 13, 1879. What if each one of us, when settled in any place, would make it a point to look out say half a dozen poor families and visit them regularly, and add any little thing we could to their comfort, or, to say nothing of comfort, relieve their pressing need ; be, in fact, a living gospel to them, bringing thus at least to six homes the light which shines from Jesus upon us. We might supply half a dozen poor widows with cotton to spin, or set up half a dozen poor lads as hawkers, or give half a dozen poor labourers some road to put right, or half a dozen poor women some shoe soles to make, and thus by an individualising love reflect some feeble rays of the great Eternal Love. This is the evidence the Chinese want, not historic but practical, not -proe, but •post. The country needs a long Niebuhrian indoctrina- tion before it is able to discuss historical evidences, or any other, in fact, than the plain matter-of-fact evidence 2o8 DAVID HILL which a child accepts when you meet it with a smile and give it a few sweetmeats and a kiss. To J. E. Hill. Taiyubn, June 20, 1879. The science of missionary evangelism has heen very cursorily discussed. I saw that the Manchester mer- chants held a meeting the other day to organise a kind of Commercial Scientific Society to inquire into the different characteristics of the countries we trade with, their respective wants, with a view to the adaptation of trade manufactures to the various countries supplied. It seems to me that in the spiritual world a similar kind of spiritual science would be of immense advantage. We want more appreciation of the raw material of good- ness which God's Spirit has sown in the hearts of men, more discrimination and discernment, and more adapta- tion in presenting the fuller blessings which the Son of God brought to all men. For lack of this we do not make persecution turn to so much account as we might. Let men feel that we are doing God's work, then will their consciences be on our side; and though they for a time oppose and repel us, yet there will be such a witness against them within themselves sooner or later that they will be bound to heed it. Just recently some good Bible colporteurs have been in Hunan. They persisted, against the wish of the local authorities and people, in attempting to distribute books in the capital of the province. The result was a disturbance — not, as they say, against them as missionaries but as foreigners. Now, if instead of coming to this they had gone peaceably away, stating to the authorities their mission from God and the responsibility of rejecting their message, they would much more probably have left an impression that they could not with impunity resist peaceable men whose only idea is to do good, and the AFTER THE FIRE, THE STILL SMALL VOICE 209 probability is that the next time difficulties would be in a measure removed. As it is at present the people do not know what they have come for, and hence it is that to oppose them is hardly a matter which touches their conscience. To E Hill. OOoler 21, 1879. One of the brethren in Ping Yang Fu has undertaken the distribution of 20,000 Testaments for the B. and F. ; we regret the arrangement, inasmuch as we venture to think that the time has not come for the free distribu- tion of the Scriptures. We believe that the revelation of the truth should be gradual and according to the capacity of the receiver, who cannot as a rule under- stand the New Testament when placed in his hands. It is on this account that the Eoman Catholics do not dis- tribute the Scriptures apart from the living interpreter, and in this they have a measure of truth although they carry it to an extreme. Our aim is to train men by gradual manifestation of the truth to be themselves fitted to receive the Word itself, dig into its mines of truth, and wait upon the Holy Spirit themselves for His own teaching and interpretation. But I question whether there is not almost as much error in the Protestant way of indiscriminate distribution of the Scriptures, apart from the living human interpreter of the same, to a heathen people, as in the Eoman Catholic plan of withholding it except as made known from the Ups of the priest. To Eev. a. Foster. Taitukn, December 7, 1879. The matter which weighs on me now is the question of what to do for the lost of Chinese society. These people are the very class Jesus would seek out and save, though I am not quite sure that the publicans and sinners 14 2IO DA VID HILL were quite so low in the social scale as the lost I speak of. The people I refer to are simply the scum of Chinese society, chiefly opium smokers and gamblers. They have no bedding and very few clothes. They somehow or other scrape 10 cash (a halfpenny) together during the day, and thus are able to pay for a night's lodging in the 'poor Tnan's inn, where they sleep on a warm k'ang, and drink or smoke the morsel of opium they have been able to get through the day. When they come into the streets they are unshaven, wretchedly ragged, shivering in the cold — "lost." Xow what can be done for such men ? Give them money — they gamble it away, as they do the clothes you may give them. They have lost name and fame and money and face and self- respect — in fact everything except life. And yet it was amongst such men that Jesus found more that was salv- able than amongst the religious and the orthodox. Is it really so now ? They follow me in the streets, drag my clothes, holloa out at the top of their voices, will not be satisfied if I say I have no money, but continue to follow right up to my door, and stay there shouting and groaning for a few cash. Now, here is a problem. Money, without work to do and opium-medicine and removal from old associations, is like encouraging them in their wretched manner of life. But how are we to provide these things? I have sometimes thought that I might or ought to give my whole time to try to do something for these "lost." In his attempt to help the " lost " Hill was in the habit of regularly making his way into the awful fcetid half-subterranean poor men's refuges, where round a huge fire the poor wretches warmed their steaming, naked, filthy bodies, jealously excluding the sweet out- side air, and there he conversed with them and relieved their necessities. In a rough MS. book we find elaborate plans " How AFTER THE FIRE, THE STILL SMALL VOICE 3ii to evangelise a province," and careful schemes of detailed work among, high and low ; " Our aim during the year," "Principles to guide me in mission work," etc. On the opium curse which was working such havoc before his very eyes he had the very strongest feelings and views. To J. E. Hill. Ping Yakg Fit, May 1, 1879. The officials here under the inspiration of the Famine Commissioner have been very diligent in suppressing the growth of the poppy. This is certainly a triumph of moral principle over pecuniary policy, seeing that the poppy would yield a crop about double the value of any ordinary cereal ; and to take this course when the people are reduced to utter penury shows a determination and a faith which we might do well to study. It is said that the iron has entered into the Commissioner's soul, his own son or nephew having been ruined by indulgence in the drug. At anyrate he means business, and he has such influence in this quarter that the lower officials dare not but obey. Hence I hear of the district magistrate of this town, going to a village on his round of inspection and finding a patch of land sown with the poppy, punishing summarily the policeman of the place, and compelling him forthwith to root it up and out entirely. . . . Hear the voice, the one unequivocal testimony of the millions of this country, and they are the best able to judge, and no doubt should remain as to the wrong which has been and is being done by us. We find amongst his MS. books elaborate plans as to dealing with the opium smoker, his medical treat- ment, mode of conducting refuges, etc. He wrote to 212 DA VID HILL England offering a prize of £50 or £100 for the best essay on the subject of the cure in opium refuges. To the end of his days it was a wonder and an indignation to him, as it is to all Chinese missionaries, that his Christian country allowed the mere question of money profit to override what it recognises as a clear moral necessity. It is a remarkable thing that the south of the province of Shansi is much more religious in spirit than is the north. There flourish there numerous religious sects distinguished by vegetarianism (abstin- ence from taking life), abstinence from strong drink, tobacco, opium, etc. These societies possess a literature of their own, containing moral and mystic sayings which represent a reaching after higher truth than that which contents the mass of their sense-bound countrymen. Mr. Eichard has in later years unearthed the fact that Ping Yang was the home of one of the main supporters of Nestorianism during the seventh century, when, according to the record of the famous tablet found at Singan, then the capital of China, that form of Christianity was highly influential. The theory ad- vanced by the same investigator is, that the seed of spiritual truth thus introduced has been handed down in this region, and has sprung up in some of these sects. Certain it is that pure forms of Taoism are found there, and that the doctrine of immortality, and at anyrate some glimmering of the idea of a new birth, are familiar to the minds of some' of these sect-leaders. Several of these men were attracted to the preachers of the gospel, and one of them named Lung became a Christian. Another, named Hsi, the head of the Kin Tan Chiao (sect of the Golden Elixir), though he did AFTER THE FIRE, THE STILL SMALL VOICE 213 not at first request baptism, was much impressed, pro- fessing to discover in more distinct form in the Bible that which in misty outline was contained in their own books. With such a foundation for interest, it is not difficult to imagine that when famine necessity had passed away, Hill determined to remain a while for directly spiritual aggression. It was impossible to visit all the hundred and eight counties of the province, therefore it was clearly necessary to use books as a means of reaching all within its borders. As there were none prepared exactly suitable, Messrs. Eichard and Hill set them- selves to write or adapt some. The various missionaries then took about a dozen counties each, and by judicious arrangement and good emissaries succeeded in the course of the year in distributing books in every county and at all the chief market-places. But a special opportunity presented itself which he and Mr. Eichard were not likely to allow to pass un- improved. Once in three years in China the graduates of the first stage, those of " Budding Talent," gather from all the prefectures of the province to its capital for examination for the second degree. These men, by the hoary tradition of the people, are the natural leaders of the country, from whom the mandarins are chosen. The occasion which gathers the whole of the mental and social aristocracy into one city is one naturally seized upon by religious reformers. Native moralists use such occasions to distribute literature in favour of some special cult of saint or hero, or in condemnation of taking life, and other sins. The missionaries were not behindhand. A special booklet was prepared, and 214 DAVID HILL copies were given to the seven thousand graduates who presented themselves, a number, owing to the recent distress, far below the average. Valuable prizes were also offered for essays on certain moral subjects. An extract from the syllabus will make clear the nature of the scheme : — Notice. — Wishing to make plain the knowledge of the Heavenly Way, I have determined to propound six theses, and respectfully to invite all the scholars of Shansi to express their sentiments in regard to them, and treating each one separately to write a composition upon it. The six theses are as follows : — 1. The Origin of the Bight Way. — " The great origin of the right way is said (by the Chinese) to proceed from Heaven." The sages of antiquity both in China and in the West " inquired into the lucid decrees of Heaven." But the tradition of the Heavenly Way was not trans- mitted. Later, the ancients composed scriptures and precepts supplementing books of ceremony and of music. They spoke of transmigration, recompenses, immortalities, and so on. Now one meets again with those who pro- claim a right way. If one examines whether this is from Heaven or from men, what clear evidence is there whereby to distinguish its source ? 2. The Regulation of the Heart. — The Confucian School desire to make their faults few. The Buddhists desire to get rid of their lusts. The Taoists wish to refine the elixir of immortality. The Mohammedans wish to ac- knowledge God. All desire to give prominence to the regulation of the heart. But what is High Heaven's method for regulating the heart ? '6. Prayer. — Man's virtue is limited; the favour of Heaven 'is infinite. How should those who wish to receive the blessing of Heaven sincerely seek that they may imitate it and avoid all calamities ? AFTER THE FIRE, THE STILL SMALL VOICE 215 4. Rewards and Punishments. — That good is to be rewarded and evil punished is a great principle with all the rulers of the world. God loves living beings, and for the sake of virtue rewards and punishes the people of all times. How does He turn calamities into happi- ness, so as to lead men to avoid Hell and to gain Heaven ? 5. Images of gods. — May those who reverence God and respect the right way of (the ancient Chinese worthies) Yao and Shun worship images ? 6. Opium. — Those who wish to break off the opium habit, and to respect the good rules of the Government (in regard to this), know well the injury caused by this habit. What good method is there for stopping the cultivation of opium, the consumption of it, and the sickness caused by it ? The 15th day of the 8th month of the 5th year of the Kwang-hsii reign. The English missionary Li issues this. Hill secured the services of thoroughly competent scholars to pass judgment on the style and subject- matter of the one hundred and twenty essays sent in; those selected as best worth consideration were carefully read by Messrs. Eichard and Hill, and the prizes finally awarded. One essayist only defended idolatry. Hill was enthusiastic over this new mode of approach to that haughty and jealously exclusive literary class so hard to reach by ordinary methods. He writes to his friend Foster : — To Eev. a. Foster. Febrnuvry 20, 1880. It presents the Chinese plan of examination for office in a very different aspect from that in which I had seen 2i6 DA VID HILL it before. Men seem to appear before you as they really are, the way they handle things, the spirit they evince, views they hold, all seem to limn forth the man — some repel, some attract. And in this way one feels of certain men that they are not far from the kingdom of God, that there are mutual affinities which awake a desire to become acquainted with the writer, to learn of him and to teach him things he has not yet learnt. There seems to be now existent between us a bond of unity, a link of common interests, that touch of nature which makes men kin, a something which has done much towards breaking down the middle wall of partition between native and foreigner. Among the multitudes who rented houses for the examination, a notice, posted according to usage near the city gate, informed the country visitors of the address of the English missionary Li Siu San (David Hill), and published the fact that he would be " at home " to any who chose to visit him. A good number, fired by curiosity and by the report of the good deeds done during the famine, accepted the invitation, and many an interestiag conversation was held. The prize- essay scheme naturally increased the number of guests. When the examiners made the award it was found that the chief prizeman was the Mr. Hsi whose name we have heard at Ping Yang as an interested inquirer. He and his successful companions called to receive their prizes, with the result of a growing and abiding friendship which led finally to his open profession of Christianity. The accession of a man already so distinguished in his own neighbourhood for spiritual doctrine and life had a great effect, and in after days, with whose details these pages have nothing to do, Hsi, the first pastor of the prospering native church under AFTER THE FIRE, THE STILL SMALL VOICE 217 the care of the Inland Mission, the unwearied founder of opium asylums, the leader and adviser in all good things, carried on right worthily the lessons he had learned from David Hill. When in 1886 a great Christian Convention was held in Shansi, both Hsi and many others in their testimony traced their first knowledge of Christ and His blessings to those early lessons. No wonder that to no period of his mission life did Hill look back with greater pleasure. The revisitation of the villages in the south of the provmce where relief had been administered roused the anxieties of the people, who were eager to find out whether the foreigners had returned in order to claim back the money they had given; but, this suspicion once removed, they were warmly received. Gratitude took the usual Chinese forms, men and women often prostrated themselves to the earth before them. It was proposed to present them with a "myriad-name umbrella," that is a handsomely embroidered silken double canopy emblazoned with the names of the donors, but this testimonial was respectfully declined. Finally the magistrate set up a tablet recording the famine and the special good deeds of the missionaries, Eichard, Hill, and Turner, who had saved so many lives, with the characteristic Chinese conclusion, " What beneficence and grace does this display on the part of His August Majesty the Emperor of China, that men should come from the ends of the earth to succour and aid his people ! " Complimentary mandarin rank was offered to Messrs. Eichard and HUl, but declined, as serving rather to separate them from the poor than bring them nearer. In the beginning of 1880, Hill began his return 2i8 DAVID HILL journey ; a few weeks were spent in Taiyuen with his dear friends there, and the memory of the spiritual intercourse of those days was always fragrant to all who had part in them. At no time perhaps are we permitted to see more of the inner workings of his spiritual experience. A little MS. book lies before us, marked " Private and Personal," and it is with hushed footstep that we venture into the inner shrine of a soul's dealing with its God. It contains the records of prayer and answer. " A Eegister of matters on which I have been much pressed in spirit, and for which I have been largely drawn out in prayer." There are two divisions, headed " Personal " and " General." Some prayers occur again and again, some are speedily marked as answered. There occur as subjects of supplication the names of missionary secretaries in England, English friends — missionary, consular, and mercantile — in China, Chinese with whom he has been talking, statesmen and mandarins, the Chinese money-changers, etc. There are pathetic confessions of sin, of fear of excess in food and sleep, of faults of temper, and again and again is the record aKaXr\Toi^ areva'^liol'i " with groanings which cannot be uttered." There are thanksgivings for conquest over parsimony and impatience, and for the conscious- ness of guidance. Here is an entry : — Carried out in rapturous love to Christ whilst on the road ; the dear friends at Taiyuen Eu must have been praying for me. This was early in the morning, but in the afternoon wounded badly by Satan, — cartman very trying, impatience, etc. AFTER THE FIRE, THE STILL SMALL VOICE 219 Here is a form of daily self-inquiry — 1. What is my present relation to God ? A son ? A slave ? An enemy ? 2. What to my fellow-men ? In love and charity ? 3. What act of self-denial have I done or can I do to-day ? 4. What prayer has been answered ? Give thanks. 5. What " lost " ones have I sought to save ? 6. What duties arise out of the prayers I have put up to-day ? 7. What grace of Christian character do I need especially to foster to-day ? By what means ? But let us stay no more in this inner Holy Place. The redeemed soul now rejoicing in the inmost joy of close communion with the triumphant Lord will forgive those who have ventured in, and now in deep self-searching drop the veil over the sanctuary, and silently go on life's way solemnised and humbled by the echoes of a soul's supplication alone with God. It was in the month of May that HiU turned his back on Shansi, leaving behind him to development by other missions, churches that are among the most prosperous in China to-day. In Peking he eagerly sought and obtained the sympathy and assistance of Sir Eobert Hart, the enlightened and able Inspector- General of Customs, in the scheme of utilising the triennial examinations all over the empire for the distribution of suitable literature to the scholars of the various provinces. By June we find him once more among his old friends at Hankow, but he ever had a wistful memory of, and desire for, the scenes he had left behind. CHAPTEE XII ENGLAND ONCE MORE WHEN Hill left Shansi in May 1880, it was with the intention, after a few months, of a return and two or three more years' work there, with a possible furlough to England in the distance. But circum- stances occurred ere long entirely to alter his plans. Eich in his new experiences, and filled with a great enthusiasm for the press as a missionary agency, we find him presenting a paper in June before the assembled Hankow missionaries urging the formation of one central Tract Society for China, with a view to the economy of labour and the production of a superior style of publication. Need had already led to the formation of a number of separate societies at such various missionary centres as Shanghai, Hankow, Canton, and Peking. It was proposed that one central committee, with representatives from the various regions of work, should dii-ect and control the output of Christian books for the whole empire. Local difficulties and magnificent distances proved too strong for this proposal, but for some years the Eeligious Tract Society of London contemplated the accomplishment . of the plan, and at one time approached Mr. Hill with the request that he ENGLAND ONCE MORE 221 would act as the general director of the enterprise. He did not, however, feel called to this special work, and, though with considerable hesitation, declined the offer. No appointment would have been more univer- sally welcome. Since then some half-dozen Societies have been independently working, each with a special style of its own. The Hankow Society alone, of which Griffith John and David Hill were long the presidents, has during the past ten years sold no less than ten million publications of a directly evangelistia character. Another idea born of the successful essay scheme in Shansi was to offer prizes to all Chinese teachers and preachers for the most suitable tracts on various Christian subjects. The plan roused a good deal of interest. More than a hundred essays were sent in from all parts of China, some of them of considerable merit of literary style and reasoning. The prize essays were published, and several of them still command a good circulation in tract form. Into the midst of these schemes and prospects came suddenly the shock of death. It had been a trying summer. Three of the missionary families lost children ; now Mr. Eace, who had brought his family from Wusueh, was laid low with typhoid fever, and, notwithstanding all that careful nursing of his brethren could do, early in September he died. Mr. Hill found himself named as executor, and recog- nised in the necessary care for the young widow and her three children — one born after its father's death — the call to go to England. He wound up affairs with all possible speed, took the opportunity of a quiet fortnight to go into the Shanghai hospital for a slight 222 DA VID HILL operation, rejoicing in the rest and the nursing, and finally sailed in the s.s. Teucer with his charges on November 24. The vessel called at various ports, at each of which he interviewed his missionary brethren on the subject of the United Tract Society and the distribution of books at the examinations. From Swatow he wrote to his friend Brewer as to the distribution of a work entitled China and her Neigh- hours, by Dr. Y. J. Allen, asking for five hundred to be sent to Fooohow, as well as some half-dozen other capitals, and to the very last inch of Chinese waters he continued full of schemes for work. The Eev. J. Sadler of the London Missionary Society at Amoy returned to England by the same steamer, worn down by illness and separated from his family. He writes : — " It was like the coming of an angel of God to have Mr. Hill travelling in the same boat and sharing the same cabin. . . It was affecting to discover what his self-abnegation in the service of the Saviour had cost him. For such a man to remain single must have been a peculiar trial, because he was of a wonderfully sociable nature. That he felt his position was clear from the fact that he consulted Griffith John on the matter. The reply was, ' If you are smitten you will fall, but if you wish to do the work you think of you need to be single.' " There was a great source of secret joy to our friend in communion with God. Clad in his greatcoat he would pass hours of the night on the upper deck, drawing strength from on High, like one of those devoted Catholics and Protestants whose lives were to him a study. He was so fearful of becoming too easy in faith and too little earnest in work that when ENGLAND ONCE MORE 223 considering the Atonement he would give particular attention to what is called the moral side." More than sixteen years had passed, when in January 1881 David Hill found himself once more on EngUsh soil. Perhaps no time in a man's life is more trying than the return to the home in his native land where the place he once occupied is fiUed up. But the intensity of purpose, the sense of a mission, saved him from any such distress. His own friends in York welcomed him warmly; his brothers' homes, now bright with the merriment of children, were opened wide to him; his old leader and classmates rejoiced to receive him once more into Christian fellowship. But the more abundant labours to which he felt called prevented his remaining very much in York to enjoy home life. He never spared himself, but journeyed all over the country to visit churches where he might preach on the great duty of missions, and speak on the unequalled opportunities and claims of the great country of his choice. Missionaries on furlough rarely get much rest, but a man of selfless zeal so untiring was sure to regard no strain as heavy enough to justify the loss of any opportunity. He was not a great, but neverthe- less a most impressive, speaker. Any who heard him preach will remember the deep glow of conviction, the spiritual insight and sympathy with the mind of holy Scripture, the intense earnestness that seemed to make visible the unseen. When he spoke on the missionary platform he would sometimes, if weary, be a little hesitant in utterance, but if he "had a good time," his face would glow, his eyes flash, and his descrip- tive powers carry his audience with him in strongest sympathy. His aim in missionary deputation work 224 DA VID HILL cannot be better put than in his own advice written on his return to one of his colleagues : — To Eev. J. W. Beewek. August 28, 1882. You have a fine field of labour before you. The friends will greet you warmly, but don't be killed by kindness. The morning and evening hour is the great point. If late sitting up be unavoidable at times, take the hour earlier on. Make missionary meetings spiritual; get a prayer - meeting where you can. Seek the conversion of the children in the homes. The Lord help you to do more than I have done in this. My time is just gone, gone for ever. It has been a time of hard but joyous work, — of much help from God, of richer blessing than I anticipated, of feeble and very imperfect service, but to the mercy of God in Christ I now commend it, praying Him to forgive all that has been wrong or imperfect, of self or sin, cleanse by the precious blood and empower by the quickening Spirit what He can employ. To Eev. A. Foster. 1881. To have so little time alone for quiet, calm thought after the blessed, quiet, calm onflowing of Eastern life, is a change to which it takes time to become reconciled. And the attenuated spirituality which too often accom- panies the perilous publicity brings a painful conscious- ness of feebleness after it. But after all that is only one, and that the darker, side of this ministry. It has a brighter and a happier, the privilege and opportunity of bringing the China Mission before the people, and the being employed to excite a deeper interest in it, a broader charity and a vaster vision is no small honour. ENGLAND ONCE MORE i.2i, To no department of work did he pay more earnest attention than to work among the young. Ere he had been a month in the country we find him at the Leys School, Cambridge, where his own much honoured old college tutor. Dr. Moulton, was headmaster, and his nephews were pupils, addressing the boys and urging the claims of a missionary life. Wherever he got the opportunity he visited boys' and girls' schools and the theological institutions, claiming young lives for the highest service. In many cases he formed permanent friendships with the children of those with whom he stayed, and kept up correspondence with them for years after. We find him writing to a friend in York of how after a sacramental service his mind was so filled with thoughts of her children that he realised he had not been praying enough for them, but would alter. The impression he made upon those who had known him before will be shown by what Miss J. E. Hellier says : — " After seventeen years he came back on his first furlough. We were now living at Headingley College, and my father was governor. I wondered if any man would satisfy the recollections of this childhood's friend. Surely I had exaggerated. We heard of his landing, and very soon — only about a week after — my father came one morning into our dining-room bringing with him a thin, slender, bronzed, bearded and middle-aged man. Who was it ? Ah, I knew directly ! His eyes and his smile were unchanged. He was very quiet in these first days; absorbed and seeming hardly to notice what went on ; but gradually he grew more and more like his old self, with his wonted smile and quick sympathy in the interests of the life around him. IS 226 DA VID HILL During his stay in England he came often to see us, coming in for a night's lodging perhaps when on one of his many journeys all over the country, and gradually I came to see that the old childish reverence had had a very sure foundation. His energy and selflessness, his kindness to everyone, and above all his 'utter enthusiasm, deeply impressed me. He seemed to find it his meat and drink to do the will of God. " Two incidents of that time I may mention. He came one day to address the students in order to ask for volunteers for China. Knowing how deeply he had the matter at heart, I waited with great interest and sympathy for this appeal. Prayer time came, the students gathered in the dining-hall and took their wonted places. The Scripture was read, and then Mr. Hill rose. I can see him now at the head of the long table. Quietly, simply, and clearly he described China as the grandest mission - field in the world, and as presenting the greatest opportunities for serving Christ. He pictured the great cities with their large populations, and told the means of travelling He spoke, too, of the millions to whom in one language the gospel could be preached. A simpler, less impassioned appeal I never heard. Clearly to his thought the knowledge of the need was call enough, the description of such unparalleled opportunities sufficient appeal. We sang our hymn, and quietly the brief service ended. Next morning my father entered our dining-room, where Mr. Hill was, to tell him that one student had responded to the call. That one was Eev. Joseph Bell. The Eev. W. H. Watson also volunteered as the result of this appeal. " The other recollection is of another kind. Mr. Hill ENGLAND ONCE MORE 227 found time to come and visit my children's class. It was his own proposal, and he made all the arrange- ments himself. He knew that some of those children daily prayed for him, and he desired to meet these young fellow-helpers. They must have tea together, he said, and an old friend was written to and asked as a kindness to get the tea ready. It was done with glad alacrity, and on the appointed day we all met together. After tea he arrayed himself in his Chinese dress, and talked to the children for more than an hour. How they listened ! How they clung to him ! And when he left, for he was goiag back to York that night, they followed him up to the college, waited till he came back again to the gates, and, when the tram-car came, went with him to it, and only when he was quite lost to sight did they turn away, saying wistfully, ' Gone to China on a tram-car ! ' " He took his share in the great missionary anniver- sary of the year, speaking at the Saturday Breakfast Meeting under the chairmanship of his brother John. His mind became very full of schemes for securing extra workers who would make little or no demand on the funds of the Society. The two succeeding extracts show how the matter was presenting itself to him: — To Eev. a. Foster. MoffcTi 10, 1881. From one of our colleges I hear that some of the men are thinking of coming out independently as regards funds of the Society. There is evidently a supply of men only waiting for the call of God and an open door. How to meet this state of things, embrace this oppor- tunity, is now becoming a serious problem to me, requir- 228 DAVID HILL ing all and more of meekness, wisdom, courage than I possess. But a corps of men coming out in this way would, I am persuaded, revivify fainting faith and flagging zeal in missionary work as would few things else. Whether to suggest a Methodist Inland Mission, Lay Mission, or in what way to lay the matter before the church is a serious question. One thing is certain, that if of God it will stand, if not it will fall — unless in the first case the puny faith and feeble life of the church thwarts His purpose or postpones the highest possibility of service He opens up before us. To Eev. T. Bryson. Augvst 12, 1881. Mr. John writes stirring me up to action this morning, but says not how, — the point I long to know, — though he does give more definite lines than most friends do. He proposes a medium course between the old Society and the China Inland Mission. Lay agency at less cost than the ordinary missionary, and unmarried. This latter point I don't feel free to press. He attended the Conferences held in 1881 at Liverpool and in 1882 in Leeds, and spoke at the first of the two advocating the employment of laymen. This idea, the germs of which we have seen in his earlier Chinese days, now took definite shape. The main object seemed to him to be the formation of a light skirmishing force, who, as a mission formed itself into fixed central churches requiring the care of resident European missionaries, should keep up a perpetual evangelistic enterprise into new and un- reached regions. To this end he hoped that a number of men who did not feel called to enter the ministry, yet believed it to be God's will that they should ENGLAND ONCE MORE 229 become missionaries, would go out without the longer and more expensive training necessary for ministers, and as unmarried men at smaller incomes for pioneer work. The success of the China Inland Mission, which was perpetually sending out men and women for whom the organisation of the Wesleyan and other Societies found no room, and the immense needs of China, seemed to him to be strong arguments for this course. As the authorities of the Missionary Society, while not unsympathetic, did not see their way to enter upon this new enterprise, he eventually, with the help of Dr. Moulton and others, formed the Central China Wesleyan Lay Mission ; which, through his own gifts and those of his family and friends, has for more than a dozen years supplemented the agencies of the parent Society. It must be confessed that, as a whole, the scheme has not won all the success its founder hoped for ; it has done good work, and sent out good men, but has not commanded the support of the Wesleyan Church as perhaps it might have done if more organically con- nected with its regular missionary organisation. He also spoke earnestly and with effect for the anti-opium movement, and gave a considerable sum of money to produce a series of coloured native pictures, a sort of Chinese opium edition of The Bake's Progress, in which the misery and degradation of the habit is graphically shown. In addition to unnumbered speeches, Mr. HUl used his considerable gifts of writing in several articles and booklets in which he urged the same claims. Mupeh, Its Claims and Call and an account of the Central China Mission were widely distributed and read. He was often downcast as to the result of all his work. 230 DAVID HILL To Eev. T. Bktson. Leeds Confeebnce, August 3, 1882. Whether we shall soon have more men or not I don't know. Not a few are thinking about it; but, on the whole, the immediate result of more than one and a half year's work seems meagre. I say seems, for who can judge of results of this sort ? I am glad to say that in many places in England there are signs of revival, and the promise of a still larger shower. We shall not want men when this comes down. My own feeling is that we already in the field must do our best to train up native evangelists, whilst we go on to pray that the Spirit of the Lord may move the young men of England ; and as their hearts are in His hands He will by some instrument or other effect His purpose. One feeling I have in common with your colleague (Mr. John), namely, that missionary prayer -meetings are not so well attended as they used to be. This is, I fear, true of Methodism as of Congregationalism, and till this is altered things will not go right. Another thing we want is a weekly prayer - meeting at our Mission House like that of the China Inland Mission. But surely never was a missionary campaign more successful. We have already seen that his visit to Headingley College secured two men, one partially self- supporting, one maintained apart from mission funds by a circle of friends. One of his visits to the Eichmond students, and his presentation of the crying need for a medical man who should build up the ruined hospital and heal the multitudes, led S. E. Hodge to take the medical course and give his life to the work he superintends to-day. His pamphlet, pointing out the splendid opportunity for higher ENGLAND ONCE MORE 231 educational work among the upper classes in Wuchang, it was which led to the going out of the colleague who now writes this Life. It would be no exaggeration to say that directly or indirectly for the next ten years almost everyone who went to Central China was a direct volunteer for that field through the influence of that visit home. The point which with most earnest insistence he pressed upon the home churches was the passionate plea for sympathetic and intelligent prayer on behalf of missions. Like another Peter the Hermit he went through the length and breadth of the land calling to a new crusade, and bringing home to men's consciences the partnership in responsibility involved in their sending their brothers out to lonely and difficult toil in the high places of wickedness. He would claim gifts of self-denial, money, and work, and would ask for regular prayer as the gift which would cost more than money — and would multiply the power of money many-fold. By his efforts, and those of his colleague Mr. Brewer, whose furlough followed his own, was founded the Central China Prayer Union, by which gradually several hundreds of friends were banded together to pray regularly for the work in Hupeh. The bi-monthly letter of this Union, long edited by himself, which has for nearly fourteen years offered to its members the subject-matter of prayer, is the truest, most accurate picture of the inner history of a mission's work that is anywhere to be found. In August. of 1882, the missionary, leaving his message with the home churches and bearing with him the love of a host of new friends, set sail from Bristol for New York ew route, for China. His stormy 232 DA VID HILL fortnight's passage, disturbed by sea-sickness, was full of work, writing an article for the Sunday Magazine on the famine, conducting services, taking care of little children, writing to his friends at home. One characteristic glimpse we may give : — To E. Hill. September 1882. Whilst the doctor was conducting a concert and recitations in the saloon, I found these good Cornish brethren didn't come up, so I slipped out and we had what suited me better — an hour of prayer together, and it really did me good to hear them pray. I was thinking the other day of our life, how we ought to seek progressive holiness and progressive usefulness. Year by year, rightly or wrongly — for I sometimes feel a little uneasiness about it — one part of my nature remains almost entirely uncultivated, and its barrenness leads me to further neglect. I mean the aesthetic, the " Son of Man's eating and drinking " aspect of life, the sanctified conviviality side. Yet when I think of the Lord Jesus dining out I nearly always revert to those terrible, bold, fearless, unexampled denunciations which He poured across the table of the Pharisee. Who is so impolitic, so impolite, so true, so strange, so unworldly to-day ? He stayed but a short time in New York, found his American Methodist friends a little cold as he thought, — from the fear, as he discovered afterwards, that he might be wanting to make a little money towards his expenses (!), — went into Canada, visited the General Methodist Conference then in session, went also to Oberlin (Congregational) and Evanstown (Methodist) Theological Colleges, to Chicago, and, ENGLAND ONCE MORE 233 leaving Salt Lake City reluctantly on one side, to San Francisco. For fear that any who have read these pages should imagiae that his goodness had to make up for any mental lack, we venture to give the following por- tions of a brilliant and characteristic description of Niagara : — After an early breakfast, off we went first to see the Horse-Shoe, that is the falls on the Canadian side. Of course we had to cross the Suspension Bridge, but that is lost in the vision of the falls. The first thing that struck me was the green, the lovely but not unchanging emerald. It is just where the water as it rolls over that mighty precipice is the deepest. They say you have at least twenty feet of water pouring over, and a volume of such depth retains more than its original green. It is lovely in its contrast with the rising clouds of white spray and with the whiter mass of descending water on either side. This green is charming — you look, and look, and look again, and it becomes greener and lovelier as you look ; but it is not a changeless green, for in the afternoon I looked on the same, and for the same, but it had gone. It might be another aspect, or it might be the stronger light. Then up above, as you look up the Niagara towards Lake Erie, you have a picture of the sea when ruffled by a brisk breeze, yet apparently all unconscious of the fate which so soon awaits it as it nears this awful leap. We approach nearer, and then the thought which afterwards meets you at every turn, is the thought of irresistible power — a power peerless in Nature — a power to which the raging of a stormy sea seems as nothing in its impressiveness — there it comes, rushing onwards till it spends the fulness of its strength, sweeping all before it, baffling man's conception to suggest a mightier force. Then, in the midst of this thought you are reminded of 234 I>A VID HILL the music of its roar. Not a cruelly deafening sound, relentlessly monopolising, or drowning, or stunning the ear — but the sound of these " many waters " allows you still to hear the whisper of anyone with whom you are conversing. There's a fulness, a sweetness, and a music and a grandeur in the roar of old Niagara which has been ascending to the throne of GOD for countless ages. You lift your eye again to the upper waters, and you notice that besides the breezy sea-like centre you have an almost tranquil sheet at the side — with here and there a gentle ripple laughing in calm unconsciousness of the next moment's fate. Then again you follow this rushing river in its mad leap, and gaze down into the boiling, seething cauldron, and through the mist and spray and foam you wonder what the depth may be to which these waters have plunged, and you are wrapt up in the thoughts of the mysteries of wreck and ruin and of untold perdition. Again you move forwards till you are ahead of the falls, and only see the cloud of spray shifting here and there as it is played with by the winds, and you stand by the wide stream, which now looks like an angry child fretting and chafing, and here and there an angrier foam than a child can make. Then one's thoughts revert to the old figure of a soul carried forwards, hasting on to an awful eternity, — and so one might go on hearing, reading, think- ing, imagining; but we had only a short time, so we moved on. The morning has gone, and after dinner we go to see Goats Island, which divides the waters of the river above the falls into the Horse-Shoe Falls on the Canadian side and the American Falls on the other side of the island. And when we reached this island the view certainly surpassed anything we had yet seen, for we could go right close up to the water and dip the foot in it when one step more would have hurled us head- long a hundred and sixty four feet over the rocks. Now ENGLAND ONCE MORE 235 it is that the pure candescent white, sparkling as it rolls down wrapped in the sunny spray, tells of the unsullied purity of GOD'S awful power ; but round this nearest approach to so awful a vision of Divine purity and power is thrown the loveliest rainbow, so beautiful, so gentle, so full of peace and promise, that it blends your thoughts of an awful majesty in those of a loving mercy ; but we were hurried, and it was a question whether we should visit the Cave of the Winds. Our guide urged me not to lose the opportunity, so I went into the dressing-room close by, stript everything off, put on a suit of flannels, and then of oilskin, and started off down a circular York- Minster like staircase, then down a pathway under over- hanging cliffs which was rather painful to the feet now booted with felt, then to business, — and it was a business. You look up one hundred and sixty feet, and there, almost perpendicularly above you, rushes the water you are just under the edge of ; there's a ladder down into the boiling cauldron, step by step you near it. The spray pours over you till your face is wet all over, and when a gust of wind drives it this way it is like a blinding shower-bath. Down you go still, now on a ledge of rock so narrow that you tremble to go on; the guide seizes your hand. On he goes, each step bringing us into danger unparalleled in my experience, then he leaves your hand and you clamber by the rocks, and now he has put his foot down into the boiling surge which is eddying round his legs, and he says, " Come on," but who knows whether you may not slip over the ledge into the deeps below, and one step would take you right under the hundred and sixty feet of descending torrent. You can hardly look round you, the spray is half blinding, but he seizes your hand and down goes the first step ! — rock, solid rock, firm rock ! what a comfort ! Another step or two and you are on a wooden plank, and you grip the rail ; and then a little bit farther he stops and shows you at every turn the rainbows, not semicircular and unfinished arches, but three hundred and sixty degrees, perfect circles, some larger, some smaller, 236 DA VID HILL but there they are with all the colours of the most perfect rainbow you ever saw ; but the roar, the danger, the spray, the shower - bath, the slippery rocks, the helpful rails, the smooth and half seaweedy planks, the conglomeration of excitements, prevent you thinking it over ; but he pauses on the wooden plank and points out what he calls a fiery diamond in one of the rocks, the best description of its fiery sparkle that I can give, for I don't know what it was. Then we emerge, clamber up the wet rocky staircase to the place we started down the wooden stairs, having thus completed the circle, the most wonderful circle I have ever taken or probably ever shall. " Did you see the shadow I pointed out to you ? " said the guide, as we went up the York-Minster stairs. "Yes," I said. "You saw us both, did you?" "Yes." "Well, hardly one in five thousand can see that," he said. This was the shadow of guide and guided, two men on the white spray, which he had pointed out just before we descended the first wooden stairs. But I must stop. You'll be tired out too. But I thought I should liie to recall and recount this wonder- ful day when I have seen one of the most marvellous sights on this green earth — if not the most marvellous of all. What would our LOED have said, I asked myself this morning, if He had been here ? And I tried to recall any word or circumstance which might suggest a reply, and after turning over and from one and another, I rested on the words, " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Ceaselessly flowing, falling, roaring, the ever- lasting Worker fainteth not nor is weary, His power and His beauty abide for ever. From San Francisco passage was taken to Honolulu, where he made the acquaintance of kind friends, and thence by s.s. City of Peking to Yokohama. ENGLAND ONCE MORE 237 To J. E. Hill. S.8. "Peking," OrfoJcr 24, 1882. On board this steamer I have a cabin all to myself, and the quiet it gives is most refreshing ; a possibility of being alone, if desired, is a great element in the comfort and strength of my life. To tell the truth, I had taken a steerage passage. Mr. J. T. Waterhouse, on my inform- ing him that I was leaving by the Peking, told me that his son-in-law, the agent, would see that I had a good berth. I thanked him, but said I was going steerage and wouldn't need any such intervention as I wished to be be treated just as other passengers. A day or two after, he begged me to accept a first-class ticket ; after much entreaty I did so, though why he should be at this expense rather than I, I can hardly see, but I yielded when he urgently pressed me for Christ's sake to accept it. I thought it would be a rebuke to my inde- pendency, that it was of the Lord's providing, and so acquiesced. The Lord bless him for his kindness. His purpose was that I might bear witness for Christ among the passengers. That "witness among the passengers" on this and on scores of other journeys was borne with great wisdom, grace, and effect. The obvious natural- ness of the interest in religion, the broad charity, the unsparing humility, the winsome face and manner, all combined to disarm opposition and to make a profound impression. He had the great art of not saying too much, and of never seeming to speak down from a pedestal. To Eev. a. Fostbk. You speak in your letter about conversing with men on the subject of religion. Is it not true here too that the 238 DA VID HILL life is the light of men ? When one does feel uneasy and dissatisfied for not doing so, it seems to me that the life demands that we should ; but to be natural is the great thing. When a man's whole thought and life are taken up with God he will naturally find expression somehow, and in that expression find rest and life. As to the mode, whether to press home the claim of G-od on the indi- vidual conscience or to deal more generally with the question of the world's salvation, that will have to be left to each individual case. With me, the form of approaching men has not recently been the interrogative, whether bearing on men's position individually or on their attitude towards the salvation of the world. There are other ways besides questioning men, though that perhaps is the most pointed. His mind was full of missionary schemes. He refers to movements which have since become great powers in the world : — To Ebv. J. W. Bkeweb. "City of Peking," Ifovember 8, 1882. There is one movement, two years old in America, which might be of service if attempted in England. It is a Missionary Convention of the Theological Seminaries throughout the States. Some thirty have joined it and send delegates every year. It is wholly of the students, young America, and the object is to fire afresh with missionary zeal the rising ministry. But the missionary lectureship is as much needed. This, undenominational in character, would gather the men about it. If it were a man of high order like Dr. Arnold, how he would make it tell 1 Dr. Duff started something of the sort in Edinburgh. We ought to have one in London, New York, Kome. Indeed, if the Eoman Catholics would join, it would add greatly to its wide ENGLAND ONCE MORE 239 efBciency, though their doctrine might sometimes he unpalatable and unwholesome. His observation of the hundreds of Chinese passengers, one only a declared Christian, while the multitude were careless sense-bound materialists, who brought little from Christian America save hard-earned dollars, led him to think much on the relation of the Church to the emigration movement : — To Ebv. J. W. Bkewee. s.s. " City of Peking," November 3, 1882. The Canton and Hong Kong Churches ought to ponder this fact ; — five hundred or one thousand Chinese return- ing by every P. M. S. Co.'s steamer, partly acquainted with English, well off in worldly possessions, plucky above the average Chinaman. They lack education and position, it is true ; yet, with these other characteristics, are men of influence who if won for Christ might do a great deal in His service. I don't think this question of emigration has been half studied by missionary societies as it ought to be. When shall we deal more scientifically with this great missionary question? A missionary "Notes and Queries " might be of service to this end. If you meet with a suitable editor, push it. After transhipment in Yokohama, a few days' un- eventful passage brought him to Shanghai on November 1 9, two years less five days since he had left it. CHAPTER XIII NEW SCHEMES AND DEVELOPMENTS EVEEY missionary who has spent years amidst the mental and spiritual torpor of a heathen land feels most keenly the profit of a visit to his own Christian country. The whole atmosphere of life is different. The air of heathenism lacks oxygen, at best it is nitrogen which is in excess, — too often poisonous gases abound. That the missionary retains the level of the life of the church at home is a witness to the special grace of God in his heart. Hence it is absolutely necessary for health of mind and soul, as well as body, that from time to time he return to the tonic air of a Christian land, with Christian ordinances and Christian companionship everywhere. But, ere bis separation from the work of his choice be too long, it is well that he return with new vigour and hope, with the fresh focussing of vision which distance and time have given him, with the new balancing of a complete co-ordination of the facts of his previous experience viewed from afar and as a whole. HiU returned to China rich in many sympathies and prayers evoked at home, and full of new schemes all-embracing in their objects. To preach the gospel from street to street was as much as ever his intention ; no NEW SCHEMES AND DEVELOPMENTS 241 the star of philanthropic work rose higher and higher in his sky ; what he had seen in the north gave him enthusiasm for higher education, he was full of hopes of providing a less expensive and less encumbered agency than the carefully trained married pastor ; he was determined to urge the need of unmarried women workers, and rejoiced in the prospect of the renewal of the medical mission which in earlier years had been so fruitful At Shanghai he took the river-steamer for Hankow. These steamers, built on the American pattern, have a small portion luxuriously fitted up for the officers and the few European travellers, a second class which provides private cabins for the wealthier Chinese, and a lower after-deck where the multitude congregates in one long room. Each man reclines or squats beside his wadded quilt, the babel of tongues is never ending, the sickening fumes of opium float heavily from many a little lamp where pale smokers are inhaling. China unadorned is everywhere around. On most of the boats foreigners are not allowed to travel among the natives; but we find the newly returned missionary on his first voyage up river rejoicing in the fresh opportunities for contact and conversation afforded by his succeeding in securing a native passage for about £1 for the six hundred mile trip. He landed at Wusueh, and took a journey round his old circuit in the company of Mr. Bramfitt, who was now in charge. As. he walked through Wusueh streets in the chill winter dawn, he noticed the beggars rising from their lair of straw on the cold pave- ment, and found himself face to face with his old problem. 16 242 DA VID HILL To J. E. Hill. December 7, 1882. Here comes the difficulty. How are the poor to be relieved ; how is help to be administered ? It is a very difficult matter, and a man who undertakes it will have to stand alone. Alone or almost alone, for the difficulties and dangers are so great that others think our business is with the dispensing spiritual blessings chiefly, and that it is well to keep mostly to that. But whilst this may be right for those who have not the responsibilities of money, it is, I think, different with me, and hence I am almost driven to do something. Meanwhile he noted the signs of growth or decline in the places of his old country circuit, and rejoiced specially in the improvement at Tai Tung Shiang, the home of his old friend and convert Liu Tsow Yuin. Our journey took us through a beautiful stretch of terraced hills, where little patches of springing corn are crowned with clumps of fir or groves of bamboo, and here and there a deeply tinted maple tree. The weather was lovely, and we enjoyed the walk ; but two or three miles before we reached the end of our journey we were met by one of the native brethren with a wheelbarrow, on which he would have us ride, one on each side, while he wheeled us along. We walked and rode till we reached the village of Wang Ch'iang, there I found a small room in Brother Liu's farm-cottage set apart for Christian worship, and mounting up a very respectable ladder, entered a much brighter and more comfortable private room on the upper storey, with walls and ceiling papered with newspapers, and containing table, chair, and bed — a veritable prophet's chamber. To his pleasure he found some score or so of NEW SCHEMES AND DEVELOPMENTS 243 Christians, who appeared to be earnest in their faith and works. Then, after completing the round which he had walked so frequently ten years before, he took the steamer again at Wusueh and reached Hankow. He ■ returned with good hope, knowing that Messrs. Watson and Bell were coming as extra workers, but alas ! Mr. Tomlinson had been ordered home owing to his wife's complete breakdown, and within a very few weeks of Hill's arrival, Mr. rordham was obliged to give in after a long struggle with malaria. The new men who were to have been extra thus merely replaced by their inexperienced and voiceless zeal the seniors who had been obliged sorrowfully to leave the field. Hill's own expectations had been that he should be given a roving commission for itinerant evangelism throughout the district, but the vacancies led to his being appointed once more to Wuchang with the companionship of Mr. BeU during his study of the language. With this it was intended that he should combine a certain amount of itineration. During his absence the work had spread outwards from each of the centres — Wuchang, Hankow, and Hanyang. A specially interesting movement had taken place in Tehngan, the capital of the prefecture north of Hankow, some one hundred and twenty miles distant. Some three years before, a Christian colporteur named Hu Tehlin, hailing from the province of Kiangsi, and blessed with a particularly unintelligible Kiangsi brogue, in the course of his journeys came to this city, and was cordially welcomed by one of his fellow provincials there, engaged in business. Conversation on the book - selling enterprise on which he was engaged led to the rousing of a good deal of interest. 244 DAVID HILL and an invitation to one of the missionaries to visit Tehngan. Mr. Brewer went up, was offered the use of a room in the Kiangsi Guild, and from the vantage ground of this hospitality received the visits of a number of the local gentry. A deputation headed by a citizen of some influence, sent to entangle him in his talk, resulted in the eventual conversion of the leader, a man whose subsequent falls and risings again have given both joy and sorrow to his pastors. But the immediate issue was the more cordial reception of the message, a number of visits from time to time, and ere long in the formation of a little church. A house was rented, and Mr. North, who had been out some two or three years, was appointed to the solitary life of resident pastor. In January 1883 we find Hill going with North to inspect this newest outpost of the church and noting its prospects, then returning to Wuchang, where his young colleague, though unable to speak the language, was winning his way among the people, taking his violin into chapel, playing the tunes, and diligently using the few words he possessed. Wuchang to Chinese ideas is far more important than Hankow, though possessing, perhaps, but a quarter the population. Its of&cial character as the capital of the province and the residence of the Viceroy causes it to occupy a far larger space on a Chinese map than the mere trading mart of Hankow on the opposite side of the river ! Hill's endeavour to assimilate himself to Chinese ideas led him to a kindred preference for Wuchang as a site of work. Indeed, as a strategic point for missionary influence, and as the residence of some thousands of literary graduates expecting office, NEW SCHEMES AND DEVELOPMENTS 245 its importance was evident to a much less imaginative man than Hill. He studied with keen interest its social life. It may not be generally known to English readers that, at anyrate of recent years, the practical Chinese mind has in some of the large cities started a number of charitable institutions for philanthropic deeds. The oft-repeated statement that in Christian lands alone can be found the public hospital is scarcely true. China can show something of the kind. Hill was deeply interested in going over the native dispensaries and almshouses, in watching the distribu- tion of rice and matting to the multitudes of refugees, and in observing attempts at charity beyond the pale of Christianity. Subsequent investigations into the Virtue Halls of these three great cities of Central China revealed the fact that their aggregate annual income amounts to no less than £10,000 sterling, a sum which, to find its value ia proportion to the general standard of wealth in the country, must be multiplied by seven or eight. These expressions of charity have their origin in the practical nature of the Chinese applied to the later Buddhist theories of a heaven in which award is made directly proportioned to merit earned. Those who aim at such righteousness are wont to keep a regular debit and credit account with heaven, in which are entered marks, bad or good according to evil or virtuous action, and the charitable institution is a frequent means of judiciously obtaining a good credit balance with which to start the New Tear. Though the motive be impure, yet we cannot but rejoice in so much conscience and 246 DA VID HILL SO much practical benevolence. Free schools, inocula- tion, dispensaries, cofBns, rice-kitohens, lifeboats, such and many others are the ways which Chinese " virtue halls " find for charity. Unhappily the universal curse of corruption in administration is rampant here too ; charitable funds have to pay toll to all manner of officials, and the poor often get but little of what was intended for them. Notwithstanding the selfishness which is so largely the root motive, yet a standard of practical morality is thus set up among the Chinese which is deserving of serious attention. Hill's name became spread far and wide as one who "does good deeds." Such a reputation has its special embarrass- ments and difficulties. For instance, to anticipate a little the course of narrative, the first Christmas of the sojourn in Wuchang with which we are now dealing, in his pity for the abounding poor. Hill issued a number of tickets which procured for the happy possessors a good quantity of rice at certain specified shops. When next Christmas Day came round it was Mr. Brewer who, with his family, was occupying the mission house. While he was in Hankow at the English Church a multitude of the abject poor surrounded the door, blocked the street, and refused to believe that no tickets were to be had, concluding, not unnaturally from general experience, that the new foreigner was pocketing the money allowed for the purpose. There was great perU of actual violence to Mrs. Brewer and the children, and of the storming of the premises ; and even the mandarin, who came with his escort to calm the riot, narrowly escaped being dragged out of his sedan and unceremoniously getting his fine robes torn off him by NEW SCHEMES AND DEVELOPMENTS 247 infuriated old women. Verily, San men Ian k'ai. " It is hard to open the door of virtue." Hill felt keenly that his action in this particular case had led to suffering and risk to ladies and children, but, as a whole, felt bound to face the risks and, creaks of rusty hinges notwithstanding, to set that door at least ajar. It is needless to say that while his whole heart went out to the poor around him, he did not forget the interests of the land he had left behind him. Scattered through his letters from first to last we find inquiries about the poor of his native city, directions for an anonymous sovereign to some humble friend, a £20 note " posted from somewhere else than York " for an impecunious student, "£250 or £500" to such a chapel, £100 to the founding of the Leys School. Philanthropic institutions of all sorts, within and without his own church, must often have received gifts which remained the produce of bare initials to the end. Never was man more Catholic in sympathy. The early summer of this year (1883) gave the missionaries a glimpse of the fires always burning beneath the apparently solid surface of Chinese political and social life. Hill had been called in April up to Tehngan, where there had been a disturbance in the streets leading to the stoning and maltreatment of Mr. North and some of the Christians, and returned to find Wuchang in panic. A conspiracy had been formed under the leadership of certain desperadoes connected with a secret society. The conspirators were armed and drilled, a number were gathered from the country ; they were to rise during the night to attack the Viceroy's yamen, kill or imprison him, seize the city 248 DA VID HILL and mandarins, kill all the foreigners so as to embroil the Government with foreign powers, and finally to loot the native city of Hankow and its foreign settle- ment. Thus a general rebellion was to be started. The authorities detected the affair in the nick of time, and seized upon the chief conspirators while actually assembled. The measures taken were short and simple : thirty-six heads were smitten off by the executioner's sword in a single afternoon. . As many more fell later on. HUl met some of the bleeding, headless corpses being carried from the Governor's courtyard ; the face of every passer-by was ghastly pale with fear, for none knew where, when, or how random the strokes might fall. The city gates were shut fast for several days, and the little missionary band, including Mr. and Mrs. Watson, who happened to be paying a visit, were obliged to remain quietly within their own walls, unable to reach the river. Wild panic raged in Hankow, and many fled into the country ; but a few days later men began to breathe again, and the revolt was over. Even the widow in whose house the meetings of the rebels had taken place and her ten- year-old boy were put to death. By such stern lessons is rebellion checked in a land whose seventeen hundred walled cities tell their own tale of insecurity. Happily the special evil intention against the lives of the foreigners was not known to the missionaries until some weeks afterwards, and, thankful for restored quiet, they went on with their work. The preaching in the open chapel into which stray passers-by would enter, listen a while, and depart, was hard work. Spiritual interest was shown by but few, yet Hill enjoyed this most thoroughly. With no set mode, with every NEW SCHEMES AND DEVELOPMENTS 249 variety of adaptation, with insight quick to detect anything approaching spiritual sympathy, he found himself in closest touch with native life, and had from time to time signs of good being done. He writes : — To-day, after preaching some time to large congrega- tions in the chapel here, a man between fifty and sixty years of age stopped me when I was just recommencing preaching, and said, " You need not tell us about anything else, only let me know how to be saved from sin. I don't want to know anything else, for I have been a very great sinner, a very wicked man ; now I am fifty-six or fifty-eight years of age, but there's hardly any sin I have not committed;" and then he went on to recount the catalogue of his crimes, tod a black one it was. " What I want to know is," said he, " whether there is salvation for such a sinner as I have been ? " and the perspiration, even on this cold March day, gathered thick upon his brow. " I have been," he went on to say, " to the Temple of Tung Yoh [the god of hell], and worshipped there the one hundred odd idols in that temple, and the priest told me it was all right, I need not fear; but not being satisfied, I went to the top of the pagoda on the Hung San [a hill behind Wuchang], and the priest there gave me a paper assuring me of the god's propitiation; but yet I was not satisfied, and I have been to your chapels here and in Hankow, and all I want is assured salvation, for I have had to suffer already for my sins and I fear the judgment of the world to come. I had nine children, but five of them are dead and the other four are un- dutif ul. What must I do to be saved ? " I took the Testament and pointed him to the words, " GOD so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son," etc. ; then to Paul's, " He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin," etc., then to St. John's, " If we confess our sins," etc., and the following verses : " If any man sin we have an advocate with the Father," etc., and 250 DA VID HILL invited the man to come in the evening, and I am glad to say he has just been in to our evening prayers, and I pray and hope that he may find peace through believing in Jesus. Thank GOD for this token of His presence amongst us. Then last week, whilst Brother Chu was preaching, a tall man near the platform stood up and held out right before the preacher one hundred cash in his open hand. I did not know what he meant, but beckoned him to come into the vestry, and when there inquired what he meant by holding up the one hundred cash, to which he replied — "What you preach here is so good, I should like to purchase one hundred cash worth of books for dis- tribution amongst my friends. I can't read myself, but I can distribute good books," said he. So I got him twenty books for his hundred cash, and gave him a few more, and after further conversation, in which he told me that he was messenger to a mandarin, and had come down with a despatch from Chin Chow, some two hundred and fifty miles farther up the Yangtsze, and returned in the morning, he bid me good afternoon. . . After preaching yesterday afternoon in the chapel, a well-dressed gentleman — black satin jacket and blue silk gown — said to the people around, "What these missionaries preach is all true, and their intention in coming to China is simply to do good to us Chinese. They don't believe in idolatry, and it is manifestly false; they do believe in Jesus Christ and He died to save us. Yet the mass of people doubt their motives, suspect their intentions, and will not believe their word. I have met many of them, seen much of them, conversed long with them, and know all about their proceedings, and tell you that it is simply for your good that they have come to China." He went on for some time in this strain, and as it is a rare thing to meet with independent testimony of this sort I did not interrupt him, but after a while asked him his NEIV SCHEMES AND DEVELOPMENTS 251 honourable home; he said Chin Chow, strange to say, where that man who bought the books the other day came from, but he said, "I live now in Wuchang, am a military officer and waiting an appointment." " Well," I said, "you seem to know a great deal about the Christian religion. Why don't you become a Christian ? You might do a great deal of good if you were one." " I can help you more," he said, " by continuing inde- pendent. If I were to join the Church my friends would cut me, and others would say I was pre- judiced." " But then," I said, " according to your own testimony, if you do not you will lose your own soul." "Well, if I should become a Christian, what am I to do? ' I have three wives, and children by them all." " Well," I said, " you certainly can't be a Christian, and retain three wives, but if you keep to your first wife, support the other two, and train up your children right, you can." "Ah, but they wiU not leave me," he said. And thus it is true as our Lord said, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God." . . To-day, after preaching in the chapel, a gentle- man sitting right in front of me asked if a man who had been a great sinner trusted in Christ could he be saved ? " Yes, certainly," said I. " But suppose he re- fuses to alter his course of life, can he not be saved seeing that Jesus died for sinners ? " " No, certainly not," said I again. "Thank you," he said; "I should like to have further- conversation with you, but there are too many people here to allow of it so I'll come some other time." He called this evening and sat a long time, and in his conversation showed a very wide acquaintance with the Scriptures, with the history of the Church, with the elements of natural science, and told me that he was related to the Viceroy of this province, but that his home was in Nganking; that he desired truth, and was willing to seek it in all quarters, foreign or native, and that he desired truth on all points, religious as well as scientific: " But you 252 DA VID HILL place religion first, I suppose ? " said he. " Yes," I said ; "its blessings live when earthly knowledge has passed away." "True," he replied; "when this present world is past and gone, natural science will be of no further use, but religion abides for ever." Here is another typical case of a class in the Chinese empire, not a large one it is true, but a growing class, most inter- esting and most promising, who if truly converted to God might do great things for God in this land. . . In some parts of this province there has been a good deal of sickness. Only three days ago a man from Chin Chow told me that a fearful epidemic had raged in that neighbourhood, and when at its worst as many as eight hundred deaths occurred daily — altogether between ten and twenty thousand persons have been swept away by it. Whilst at its height, the Tartar General had a dream, and saw the destroying angel at the door of his tent, and was told by him that he would not leave that district till the new year. The people therefore resolved to celebrate the New Year's festival on the first of the seventh month, and if you ask them they say that they have entered the new year, having closed their shops for the customary three days' holiday, and gone through all the New Year's ceremonial five months before date, to cheat the destroying angel into leaving them five months sooner. ! Eepeated country journeys, the building of a boys' school, the starting of one for girls, visions of a print- ing press and Christian newspaper, schemes for the poor, the using of the gift of an English friend in build- ing a little house for a decayed gentleman and setting him up as a seller of scientific books among the man- darins — such are the notes of the varied activity of this year. Then came a great sorrow. June came with its rains and heat; one of its unhealthy days dawned on the Hankow circle to find all well, the next NEW SCHEMES AND DEVELOPMENTS 253 dawn looked at the gap whence cholera had torn Mrs. Scarborough after her fifteen years of quiet, godly work among the women. Hill felt the loss keenly, and sorrowed much for his old friend. Life in a mission in China is very much like life in a family in England; links are very close, their severing with the cruel suddenness of hot unhealthy climes most terribly felt. All the more welcome was the return of Mr. Brewer, who took the Wuchang Church ; and Hill, once more characteristically considering his lack of family life as ground for his being the one to move, rented a Chinese house in Wuchang, being appointed to the "district mission," i.e. definitely for itinerant evangelism. The description of his life at this time may be taken from the words of Mr. A. H. Harris of the Chinese Imperial Customs, whose intimacy with Mr. Hill continued by correspondence and personal intercourse to the end : — " During my year at Hankow I spent several evenings with him, chiefly in the mission house; once in the native house he rented, — somewhat primitive as to furnishing; I slept on his native bed as it had a mattress, he slept d la CMnoise in an opposite room. It was winter, and to warm us we had a pan of charcoal brought in ; I well remember sitting over this in the evening, cap, coats and boots on, and warming our hands at its glow ! He gave me on this occasion ordinary Chinese fare, and I think I had a hearty meal of rice, chicken, scrambled eggs, etc. The dim light of the small oil-lamp, the fumes of the charcoal, the heat and discomfort of my greatcoat, hat and boots, together with the fatigue of an early study, office work, and walk with him after arrival, made me very sleepy 254 ^A VID HILL and I was not able to enjoy much conversation after eight or eight-thirty, though we stayed up late, he talk- ing, and had a basin of tinned cocoa before going to bed. I remember he had no comfortable chair, I used the only one there was and he had a stool. About seven we went to an ample side-room on the compound for evening prayers, to which a few neighbours came in — he always enjoyed these times ; and I still recall his eager look and voice as he was explaining a New Testament lesson that night. I awoke with a head- ache and some indigestion ! On another visit to Wuchang at the mission house, he told his servant I was coming, and to his surprise and amusement a good roast leg of mutton appeared at dinner: the first he believed his servant had cooked — he him- self had been living on native fare. That servant was a treasure too; my boots were somewhat dirty, he cleaned them — and, having no blacking, polished them up with stove blacklead ! "On October 21, 1883, I heard Hill preach in the Concession Church, Hankow, the text was Phil. 3. 10. 'That I may know Him.' This sermon made a lasting impression on me which has not yet passed. I learned more of the loveliness of Christ, of the ardency of desire to follow after Him, and the treasure He was to Hill and so what He could be to me, than I had ever dreamed of before. Tears of sympathy stood in my eyes. ' Tell me Thy name and tell me now. Wrestling, I will not let Thee go, till I Thy name. Thy nature, know,' he quoted so pleadingly. He also quoted ' Thou art the King of Glory, Christ,' after recounting some of the wonderful features of Christ's life on earth, and these words in the Te NEW SCHEMES AND DEVELOPMENTS 255 Deum always recall him to me. His face beamed, his eye shone as he lifted up his face in the pulpit and acknowledged Christ's triumph, the words are sacred to me, and I am jealous of the apparent emptiness of them to many who continually sing them." The urgent need for additional workers who should press out to regions yet unvisited, rested heavily upon the missionaries in their Annual Synod. It was obvious that the overburdened Missionary Committee would be able to send but few reinforcements. Hill records with great satisfaction: — To E, Hill. December 7, 1883. We have to-day passed, by a hearty and unanimous vote, the proposal to employ lay agents in this district, and to this effect I must write some of the gentlemen who have so kiudly consented to act as committee in the selection and examination of men. May the LOED succeed this new departure with His blessing. May I ask your prayers on behalf of it ? Some circumstances connected with other missions make us rejoice with trembling as we look forward. Farther up the Yangtsze the Scotch Presbyterians commenced a Lay Agency scheme which has proved a failure. In the South of China, Bishop Burdon also had six laymen with him who in six months all left save one, and Bishop Scott has lost most of the men he got out. So we shall need much grace to steer clear of the rocks on so many hands. May the LORD guide those who have so kindly consented to act as examiners of candidates, etc., that they may be led to select the man chosen of GOD for the work. Eighteen months were yet to elapse before the first layman came out. 256 DA VID HILL Buoyed up with these expectations of reinforcements, HlU set speedily to work to itinerate, and for weeks together lived in the rough country inns with which previous pages have made us familiar. But ere long events once more proved too strong for him, and broke in upon his plans of continuity. Mr. Nightingale, who had returned only about two years before with his bride, was seized with malarial fever, and after a brief illness died in Hankow. The poor young widow, whose whole heart had been in her Chinese work, was obliged to return to England, leaving the Hankow Mission with no lady worker. Another very heavy burden was laid on Hill in the guardianship of eigM children, left with their Chinese mother by an English- man to whom he had been useful. No wonder that he pondered much on the family burdens which fell upon one who had elected a single state as freer for missionary work. But he undertook, and manfully carried out till the end of his life, the many responsibilities involved in such a charge. Three of the missionaries of the London Mission fell dangerously ill one after another, and he took his share of the nursing. Meanwhile matters were taking place in Tehngan which involved much responsibility and care. Mr. North had been succeeded by Mr. Bell, who was accompanied by Mr. Mitchil. The missionaries were most happy in their work, and Mr. Bell gained quite a reputation for elementary physic and surgery. The growth of the church and the approach of Mr. Bell's marriage seemed to justify and necessitate the purchase of a place suitable for a lady's residence. After some time a house was purchased on one of the main streets, not far from the North Gate. Preaching NEW SCHEMES AND DEVELOPMENTS 257 hall and dwelling were made ready, and in July 1884 the missionaries moved to their new premises. Almost immediately the mob began to show signs of dislike, and within a fortnight, late one Sunday night, the house was stormed, some of its contents smashed, and the missionaries driven out from their beds into the night. The mandarins induced Mr. Bell to give up his house, to receive the purchase-money back again, and to move if possible into a quieter street. It was evident that someone of greater experience was needed, and Hill speedily went to his young colleague's support. After the first rage the people seemed to be ashamed of what they had done, explanations were given, and matters began to settle down. Messrs. Bell and Mitchil returned to Hankow. Unfortunately the degree examinations came round at this time. The little city, which ordinarily has a population of twenty-five thousand, suddenly received an addition of ten thousand coimtry undergraduates with many of their frienda Many of these men were exceedingly wild and unruly, and of course full of the ordinary ignorant contempt of foreigners. The Prefect, a man of sinister character, set the spark to the train by giving as the subject for essay the passage from the Sacred Edict, " Destroy Strange Sects." The hint was enough, and the crowd rushed raging to the mission house. Hill's calm courtesy induced them to retire for a while ; but finally lq his absence they returned once more, dashed in the door, smashed the windows and broke the furniture. He returned on hearing of the outbreak and quietly stood in their midst. One ruffian, seizing a huge splinter of the smashed door, gave him a terrific blow on the wrist, almost breakiug 17 2S8 DA VID HILL his arm. He rolled up the wide Chinese sleeve and showed his assailant the livid bruise, with the calm inquiry, " Don't you think you've done enough ? " The crowd parted and let him go out while they completed the wreck of the premises. After some time's quiet meditation Hill decided to return to Hankow, and sent for a boat. On his way down to the river the crowd discovered him, but allowed him to embark and quietly leave the city. Thus, in perfect and peaceful self- possession and the deep sense of communion with God amidst the rage of men, the dangerous hour was past. There is a deep joy in actually suffering physical violence for Christ's sake. It would have been difficult to gather these facts from Hill's letters, in which his allusions are incidental as to personal injury but direct as to the blessing of preservation in mental calm. All that we find is a reference some months later in response to an inquiry from home. " If there was a bone fractured it seems now to be reunited and all right again. I am thankful to say that I sustained no permanent injury, for some weeks I could not use my wrist freely." He also mentions, by the way, when writing from his Wuchang home: "My hand is hardly right yet, I twisted it one night by throwing my shoe at a rat that was climbing up my bedpole ! " Such glaring injustice as the wanton destruction of Mr. Bell's house and property after so much kindness and popularity among the poor and sick, and the obvious determination of the Prefect to prevent the county magistrate, who was an honest man, from doing justice, necessitated the referring of the matter to the Consul. Negotiations of this sort are proverbially tedious in NEW SCHEMES AND DEVELOPMENTS 259 China, and Hill was involved in many journeys and much official work which vexed his soul. No end would be gained by reproducing here the tedium of slow arrangement which yet formed so large a part of a man's life for nearly a year. Suf&ce it to say that after many proposals, subterfuges, attempts to cheat, suggested exchanges, plans to extinguish the Mission by unsuitable premises — all of which were met by simple honest appeal to sense of right, and consent to suffer loss if the officials felt in conscience able to insist on it, and after the most marked interferences of Providence in causing the machinations of the Prefect to recoil on his own head, finally, with the free and full consent of all, the Mission was re-established in its old premises, which were rebuilt at the public expense. HUl requested the magistrates to make no mention of reparation for his personal battering and loss, and thus undoubtedly paved the way for the good relations of the future of the prosperous Tehngan Church. Mean- while Mr. Bell had never recovered from the shock of the first riot, active disease soon revealed itself, his bride, when she reached Shanghai, married the man on whose face was written so sad a tale of suffering, and after a few months carried him home to die in England. On the very day on which the restored Tehngan Chapel was opened by the rejoicing Christians, July 5, 1885, in his far-off English home Joseph Bell breathed forth his soul and entered into his reward. As one writes the record in which so often recurs the story of early death, there comes home to one afresh the heaviness of the price paid by the Church when called into inmost communion of service with God in the salvation of the world, — the heaviness of the price, but if we 26o DA VID HILL suffer with Him shall we not also be glorified with Him? In the intervals of the slow Tehngan negotiations, Hill continued to itinerate; one of his journeys he extended by a hasty trip down to Shanghai to see his friend Eichard, who was on his way home for furlough. He accompanied him to Nanking, where Eichard made an attempt to interest the Viceroy in schemes for progress and religious freedom. The congenial inter- course with his old friend greatly refreshed him. He thus describes one meeting which took place during this visit. He was always on the watch for souls who were responding to the light which they had, and eager to recognise the good in them : — To J. E. Hill. Jcmuary 8, 1885. We met yesterday and had a long conversation with a gentleman named Tang, who, after studying Confucian- ism till he was twenty-seven, commenced the study of Buddhism, and, finding the teaching so much deeper than that of Confucius, he has for twenty odd years devoted himself to this study, and is better acquainted with the Buddhist books than anyone I ever met. He said he was converted to Buddhism by reading a Buddhist book on which he spent twenty days, and finding in it what his soul was craving after he turned his whole attention to Buddhism, and has printed quite a library of its literature. If he were won to the Lord Jesus he might prove of immense service. I thought he was not quite at rest in his soul, and Mr. Eichard talked to him of the power of prayer, but we didn't quite get into his position. The next Synod brought two more young missionaries NEW SCHEMES AND DEVELOPMENTS 261 who were the direct response to his own urgent appeals. The Eev. F. Boden and the writer of these pages came — the one to take Mr. Nightingale's place, the other to attempt educational work in the capital. How can I ever forget the first morning on the river-steamer, when on coming to the breakfast-table I met the long-robed Chinese figure with the eager, deep-lined but wonderfully winsome face. After breakfast he took me into his cabin to pray and thank God for the safe long four months' journey during which I had been wandering over India and Ceylon ; how he spoke of the splendid possibilities of winning a place in the hearts of the jealously guarded rising race of the literary class, and at the same time of bringing the blessed Christ into those hearts ! My whole life was conscious of a purer spiritual air while he was with me, my whole aims I felt were on a higher plane. How we loved him, all of us ! I remember in every detail the pleasure of my first inland journey made in his company. We were in a little boat vrith its mat covering ; anchored for the night, and fast asleep, we were subjected to a tremendous downpour of rain, which the leaky matting filtered in upon us in copious streams ; he rose and did his best to protect me, and when with the strength of healthy youth I woke refreshed next morning from damp slumbers, I found he had taken off his own rug and covered me over from harm. So throughout the journey, amidst the constant rain and gaping crowds, in the wreck of the ruined Tehngan premises, in visiting the mandarin, shielding me and belittling himself always. And then those prayers ! the pouring forth of the whole soul, face rapt, voice thrilled, the zeal of the Lord's house consuming him. Prayer has been a different 262 DA VID HILL thing to me since I heard him pray. But no need more for panegyric. I have always found it easier to image St. Paul since I knew David Hill. The second visit of the Eev. Ebenezer E. Jenkins, then one of the Secretaries of the Missionary Society, in April 1885, gathered all the missionaries together, and inaugurated the crowning era of Hill's missionary life. Mr. Scarborough had never recovered from the shock of his wife's death, and found it necessary after twenty-one years' work to return to England, there to render a few years of honoured service and then to die a year before his old colleague. This departure rendered it necessary for Mr. Hill to take the Chair- manship of the Mission. The whole work was passed in review under Mr. Jenkins' inspiriting and genial presidency. Several movements which were to radiate widely were just starting from their central germ. The Central China Lay Mission, of which Dr. Moulton was the secretary and Mr. J. K. Hill treasurer, was sending its first worker, Mr. George Miles, still honourably associated with the field; two voluntary lady workers had just arrived in the persons of the sisters of Mr. Watson, and the Synod's request went home to the Women's Auxiliary for other women workers; the scheme of the High School for the reaching of the upper classes and the raising the Christian youth to a higher level, was cordially welcomed by the whole body of brethren ; the most careful attention was bespoken for the raising up of a native ministry; and the hallowed powers of the Central China Prayer Union were daily being received and applied. If David Hill had to do violence to every instinct by giving himself to all the business details NEW SCHEMES AND DEVELOPMENTS 263 involved in the direction of the Mission, he took command at the very moment when new interests and hopes and possibilities were springing to the front, and it was largely through his own influence that hopes and possibilities were so large. As showing the communion from which he drew his strength for the constant service demanded of him, let me flash a momentary picture on the screen. One night Hill was staying with me. The usual heavy round of unceasing duties sent us wearied to our beds, and ere long I fell asleep. He occupied the next room to mine, and the French windows of our rooms opened on to the verandah with its outer Venetian shutters. After some hours of sleep, I awoke, to see a broad band of light upon the Venetians opposite me. Fearing fire, I went out on the verandah and looked into his room, from which the light was streaming. The lamp was burning on a table by his bedside ; his Greek Testament and notebook lay open. After the day's work he had spent the hours in inmost quiet commimion with the Word, till, to end aU, he knelt to commend his soul to God ia prayer. But, worn out with work, he fell asleep upon his knees, and as the grey morning dawned he was still kneeling as he slept. No strain of daily toil, no weariness, was allowed to justify curtailment of that gazing into the face of Incarnate Love whereby he renewed his strength. When his earthly life ended, it is thus we think of him : he fell asleep upon his knees. CHAPTER XIV HONOUKS AND EESPONSIBILITIES HILL had once acted as General Superintendent of the Central China Mission during Mr. Scarborough's absence in England, but the permanent responsibility for its general policy never rested upon his shoulders until April, 1885. He had now attained to the fulness of his power. The earlier passionate desire for freedom from buildings, and the hard-set forms incidental to an established Mission, was stUl in some measure present to him ; but he recognised that for regular work a Mission must be thoroughly organised, and, characteristically laying his prejudices aside, with a view to the development of his various schemes — educational, medical, philanthropic — he set himself to suitable purchase and erection. He still, however, feared above everything the "red tape" which might tie hands and make unready for the Spirit's activities. But he threw himself with vigour into every branch of the work, infusing his sympathy into each worker's life. No single missionary, lay or cleric, man or woman, but felt that the Chairman was in closest touch with him' in his disappointments and successes. At first his headquarters remained in Hankow, 26t HONOURS AND RESPONSIBILITIES 265 which is the best centre for a general director. While superintending the growing native church there he continued to oversee a few out-stations up the Eiver Han, which gave outlet to his itinerating tendencies. We find in a diary the following laconic entry : " August 27. Took passage on a boat of smugglers. Free fight at Tsaitien during the night. Detained there ; " which shows that there was some danger in his habit of paying a trifle so as to join with some chance passenger craft and chat with its inmates instead of enjoying the more comfortable solitude of a private boat. Life became more and more thronged with work. The care of all the churches, the large correspondence, the multitudinous appeals from the Chinese, Christian and heathen, so filled up his days that he had sometimes to hurry to some lonely hillside for meditation or to find time to get his mail off. The same diary records : " Went to Wuchang. Preached on the Shin Kai [new street]. After dark went on the hill, — the watchman cut short my time there." There is a little hollow in the low hill which divides into two the city of Wuchang, which used to be pointed out by the Chinese Christians as Mr. HUl's prayer- place ; no doubt it was that hollow where in the evening gloom he was seeking to bathe his soul in calm communion after the dust and turmoil of the streets, when the prying watchman came to see what anyone could possibly be doing there at such a time. The autumn of 1885 brought round the great triennial examinations for the provincial degree; the missionary communities have for years past always seized this opportunity of distributing Christian 266 DA VID HILL literature to the assembled graduates. The Great Hall with its ten thousand cells stands desolate and weed-grown for three years, then suddenly a multitude of workmen is set to restore it to its needed trimness for the great occasion. The " men of flowering talent,*' possessors of the first degree, come, fifteen thousand strong, from all parts of the great province ; the city streets begin to throng with bronzed faces and to re- sound with country brogues. With the candidates come friends and attendants, and traders flock to possible markets, so that the city population must be some fifty thousand greater than the normal. Meanwhile the great examiners, men of highest degree, journey in a sort of triumphal progress overland from Peking; city after city opens its gates and pours forth its presents to do honour to the representatives of learn- ing. The great day arrives for " entering the veil " ; the streets are lined with an expectant throng to see the examiners pass by. Half a hundred mandarins form the escort, but they are thought little of to-day ; then a wave of dead silence, which sweeps impressively along the noisy multitude, marks the passage of the great men themselves. They enter the Great Hall, their attendant mandarins follow, bribing their bearers to hurry them in for fear of evil spirits lurking at the door ; and the Hall is occupied by a host of several thousands, examiners, writers, workmen, cooks, and even executioner! Then for the livelong day the various candidates stream in to find the places assigned them, and the great doors are shut. The essay themes are announced, printed, distributed, and for two days and a night the first test goes on ; after a rest of twenty-four hours, a similar test ; after HONOURS AND RESPONSIBILITIES 267 another interval, a third; and the great examination is ended. Such a gathering together of representatives of all the gentry of the province Hill had seen before in Shansi, and his experience there made him eager to join in the larger enterprise in Wuchang. Ten thousand presentation packets, containing each a Gospel and a volume on Christian evidences, were prepared and stacked in the London Mission Chapel not far away. Several of the missionaries and a score of native volunteers were present for the distribution. When a suf&cient number of the candidates have completed the task, with a sudden blare of trumpets and a salvo of artillery, the great gates swing open to allow the jaded essayists to come out ; their friends are there to receive them and escort them home for their well-earned holidays. This is the moment for the distribution of the Christian books. On this occasion all was ready in the chapel, but the gun- fire was not expected till seven or eight in the evening; when therefore at four in the afternoon its roar was heard, the distributors had to rush frantically off without full preparations, with the result that amid the struggling crowd of soldiers, attendants, and loafers, some of the volumes were snatched away ; order was, however, soon secured, and for the next fifteen hours relays of the Christians presented respectfully the volumes, which were for the most part pleasantly received. The hot weather suddenly changed, and the cold night rain chilled the lightly clad Chinese to the bone, but they declared next day how the glow of heart in useful work for Christ made them disregard the cold discomfort. 268 DA VID HILL A fortnight later, when the list has been issued and the sixty successful candidates are made famous for life, the tide sets from the city, and these men, the most influential in their respective countrysides, go home- wards. In their boxes are carried the presentation volumes ; the dreary monotony of their uneventful lives will surely bring some time the opportunity of reading — who knows the after results ? At anyrate, no more productive way can be thought of for spread- ing Christian knowledge. The bread is cast upon the waters, after many days in distant villages copies of the books thus given have been found, and individual cases discovered of men brought into the kingdom of God through their agency. And vast as the population is, it is safe to say that the circulation of Christian literature has been so extensive in Central China as to make the bare outline facts of the gospel very generally known. It is not wise to do more than to touch in outline on all the many-sided activities of the next ten years. Hill succeeded in buying a large plot of ground close to the Hankow Mission " Compound " ; one portion of this he reserved for the erection of the hospital which Dr. Hodge would need for his work, on the rest he put up buildings for the Blind and Industrial School which was gradually shaping itself in his mind. But before either of these could be set to work he fulfilled one of the desires of his heart by instituting a row of almshouses for the most destitute old men he could discover. He fully reaUsed the risks of "rice-Christianity," and sometimes was almost dis- posed to make it a rule that none of the recipients of HONOURS AND RESPONSIBILITIES 269 this charity should apply for baptism. Needless to say that such a restriction was impossible, and that for the most part the old men did become Christian, and we will trust, notwithstanding the obvious temptations to insincerity, that the life of their benefactor really did give them the saving glimpse of the great Life of Love. We are by this time famiHar with Hill's mode of the use of money. The following is his advice to a friend who consulted him for his own guidance : — I read your letter as I walked down the Bund, and then as I thought it over I felt how neglectful I had been of you in not praying more for you, and so began at once as I pursued my lonely walk. In meeting with the leaders and stewards of our Hankow Church I have recently been dwelling on the necessity for the sake of their own spiritual life of giving one- tenth of their income to the Lord's work. I certainly do not think that too much for the majority of them, and I do think it too little for many of us, — of course for myself, but then I stand on exceptional ground. My plan is to live economically, spending comparatively little on myself and giving all the rest of my income away; should God's work increase, and demands of incumbent work and duty increase, then cut into capital if need be. . . I don't think you would be wrong in parting with one-tenth if you live with fair economy and study a wise disposal of that tenth, and, above all, give it direct to Him — Too much to Thee I cannot give, Too much I cannot do for Thee ; Let all Thy Love, and all Thy grief, Graven in my heart for ever be. 270 DAVID HILL To J. E. Hill. March, 4, 1887. This year my drafts will, I suppose, exceed my income. In this case if you would draw on capital I should be glad, and as I expect to require more money year by year as the work increases, my capital will have to be reduced steadily in this way. Having no family, and no claims imperial of that sort, it will be more restful to me to have less and do more. With the suffering around and means to relieve it, the Great Example before, and a too loud profession abroad, it will be more consistent for me to reduce my possessions and live more as one who desires to be dead to the world. As there is now some hope of employing funds in this aggressive bene- volence it will be a relief to pour forth in this direction, and may help others to do so too ; at anyrate it wiU enable me to speak more forcefully on the subject to others. So in regard to laymen offering we may add several more before all is exhausted. We have recorded the commencement of the Lay Mission with the arrival of Mr. Miles for evangelistic work. During the next year another missionary followed, to develop an industrial school. The following autumn Dr. Arthm- Morley, the brother of the Mission's old friend and worker Mrs. Josiah Cox, arrived for medical work in a new district, others came subsequently, and thus gave important auxiliary aid. Hill delighted in this growth, his attitude towards it is accurately shown in the following extract from an appeal made in the Methodist Becorder of April 9, 1887 : — The brethren of the China Inland Mission are now preparing for one hundred more missionaries this year. HONOURS AND RESPONSIBILITIES 371 Surely we may ask for few. As to funds also we have to thank God for answered prayer, and to take courage for future enlargement. . . When the Lord gives men He guarantees the funds, for the life is more than meat and the body than raiment. Granting the greater gift. He will not with- hold the less. Let our first prayer, then, be that the Lord of the harvest would send forth more labourers, and then that He would move His people to give. It may give the truest impression if, disregarding date, we follow out the various activities of the Mission successively. Itinerant evangelism from first to last was Hill's chief joy. Again and again had he visited the district of the Liang Tsz Lake and attempted to find an entrance in the city of Wuchang Hsien (fifty miles down the Yangtsze from Hankow, and not to be confounded with Wuchang Pu, the capital). At one time he tried the experiment of setting up a catechist named Fu in business in that city as a seller of English medicines and a preacher of Christianity, but the gentry summoned the people by tuck of drum and turned him out. In 1886 Hill records that he has gone through the city preaching and selling books on the different expeditions during twenty years with no apparent result. The work has continued with similar lack of success since then, and it is only since his death that a peaceful entrance and some degree of welcome have been given to a resident catechist. Later on, the region of Taye with its river port of Hwang Sz Kang began to respond to the visits paid it by the first lay missionaries. Hill writes a letter in 1887 full of memories of past visits. Once he met a party of 272 DAVID HILL English mining engineers, sent there by the Chinese Government, bruised and bloodstained from an attack by the villagers ; once he received the protection and hospitality of the mandarin on the ground of kindness and healing in the mission dispensary in Wuchang; once a poor man came with presents of fruit in gratitude for similar help; again and again he had had earnest inquirers. Now at last the work began to produce souls obviously transformed by Christ's power. The first to be baptized was at a farm-house eight miles in the country, a druggist named Chia. Years before he had heard the gospel in Hwang Sz Kang, had bought a Christian catechism, other tracts, and finally a Testament. He left a message in the town that when the preacher came again he should be asked to visit him. So the intercourse had commenced, and through visitation he had been gently led through the pathway of prayer to penitence and the foot of the Cross. First Mr. Hill himself, then Mr. Miles, then Mr. Protheroe, subsequently others, by frequent stopping journeys through the region, then by longer residences, fostered the growth of the little companies of believers, until finally some seven or eight village churches were formed. When one of the first members attained his sixtieth year, the Christians came with congratulations and offerings of affection, but at his wish diverted these gifts into the nucleus-fund for purchase of land for a chapel, so that on Easter Sunday, 1894, Hill had the joy of opening for worship a sanctuary to seat one hundred and twenty, entirely the free-will offering of humble communicants who but a few years before HONOURS AND RESPONSIBILITIES 27^ knew nothing of Christ. This circuit of village churches was handed over to the parent Society, while the pioneers pressed on to other regions. Three hundred miles up the Han stands the pre- fectural city of Nganluh. This was the next link in the chain beyond Tehngan, of whose occupation we have already heard. The pioneer laymen, following their chief, occupied this as headquarters for evan- gelistic work throughout that prefecture. The city is wholly given to idolatry, and success has been phenomenally slow, but within the last few months the hearts of patient workers have been rewarded by the first considerable baptisms. These two central nuclei have given the opportunity for multitudes of journeys. From market to market the missionaries have gone two and two, one foreign and one native, selling books and preaching; after an interval the journey has been repeated ; after several such journeys there has been a timid knock one night at cabin door or inn — it is Nicodemus come to inquire. Soon Nicodemus brings a friend, then the house-hall has been thrown open for the neighbours, and so the little churches in the house have grown up. The whole of the district is now covered with such a nerve network of itineration with ganglia of spiritual hfe. Beside evangelism, the cause of industrial schools occupied much of Hill's thought. On the large plot of ground which he had purchased at Hankow he put up buildings which might be used for such work. To his disappointment the man who came out from England for this service grew faint-hearted and retired. But meanwhile a new opportunity presented itself. The blind in China are terribly numerous. Any day as 18 274 DA VID HILL one walks along the street there may be seen a long string of ragged folk, the first feeling his way with a stick, the rest each with hand on shoulder of the one in front of him ; it is the blind going to their haunts of beggary or fortune telling. For Confucianism, full of directions as to duty in the five relations of life, has nought to say for its poor wastrels. Promiscuous inoculation for smallpox, early filth and carelessness, have multiplied the blind from childhood ; for the multitude of the boys life has nothing but idleness or roguery, for the girls nothing but shame. The open-eyed missionary in the long blue gown, walking the streets and mixing in the life of the great city, yearning to bring to darkened souls the Light of the World, bethought him that he could do it by no better way than by gathering some of these sightless waifs into a school and teaching them useful trades. A work of this sort had been started in Peking by the Eev. W. H. Murray, and when Hill determined to put his new buildings to this use he obtained one of Mr. Murray's pupils, a youth who could see a little, as the first teacher. Two or three boys were gathered for a start. Much could not be done, however, until there arrived in Hankow at Hill's invitation a strange and notable figure. A man of fair face and long auburn hair, clad in the coarsest coolie garb, a short calico jacket and loose knickerbockers, legs bare from the knee, and rough straw sandals, he was obviously no Chinese. Years before, the Eev. J. Crossett, a member of the American Presbyterian Mission in Shantung, had felt himself called to give up all — home, income, even wife — that he might follow what he felt to be the Christ model. None can justify his leaving his wife HONOURS AND RESPONSIBILITIES 275 in her father's home to support herself, but it seemed to him that the call was to him to give up all, and she accepted for the time his decision. He returned to China without money, earned his livelihood by chair- making, and lived with the poorest. In Peking he obtained funds of considerable amount from the foreigners resident there, and shared the money with the poorest beggars, shared even houseroom and food with them, working for the few pence a day which sufficed for his needs. It was of course violently eccentric, but there was great blessedness in such eccentricity. Sometimes the spirit of restlessness would come over him, and he would wander over the country accepting the hospitality of the strangers he might meet with, and preaching the good news of salvation from sin through Christ. The Chinese, with the Eastern sympathy for the ascetic idea, would do almost anything for him. When HUl's invitation came to him he set off to walk the thousand miles overland to Hankow. Everywhere he followed literally Christ's command, entered the house, gave it peace, and remained or departed according to his reception. In one place he found a tradesman who so received his word of exhortation that on his departure he gave up his shop and followed him, was baptized and rendered years of faithful service as an evangelist preacher before he went home to God. Such was the man who, travel-stained but calm- faced and souled, came in 1888 to the missionary circle in Hankow. He would occasionally visit the ordinary homes of his brethren, but would not sleep in their comfortable beds or sit at their tables, insisting on faring exactly the same as the poorest servant. 276 DA VID HILL His mind teemed with origiaal ideas on Scripture and religious subjects, and he kept up a large correspondence with learned men in all parts of the world. Money he would not possess — and would have found it difficult to get on without it but for the fact that others did not adopt his plans. To such a man Hill was naturally greatly drawn. He was ever severe on himself. Speaking of two Methodists belonging to the China Inland Mission who had just passed through, he remarks : " Their faith and simplicity made me feel how far ahead of myself they were — and yet the scars of conflict, the experience of life counts for something." Now when Crossett arrived he writes : — It makes one feel how far one comes short of anything like self-denial in these things ; indeed, my life is like a prince as compared with his. He has given up all,' and for Christ counts as dung and dross what most prize. The Lord have mercy upon a poor laggard like myself. Crossett at once began to teach the blind boys to cane chairs. He and Hill together adapted the Braille method to the Hankow dialect, thus obtaining a raised system of dots indicating words by the initial and final sounds, and providing an easy method of reading for the blind. After a few months, during which the two missionaries lived with the boys, after much intercourse and heart-searching, Crossett was allowed to go on his way. He had given the blind school a start, and now the restless spirit came upon him and he departed. We may here summarise the rest of his story. After a few years of life amongst and for the poorest he fell ill, refused to see a doctor, begged a HONOURS AND RESPONSIBILITIES 277 steamer passage that he might reach the Manchurian highlands whose breezes would certainly make him well — and died upon the passage. We must acknowledge the great mental peculiarity of the man, and admire a whole-souled devotion which, apart from the great fault which gave up duty to the wife of his vows, blamelessly showed a wondrous life of self-denial. The work he left behind him developed; it has been the subject of repeated disappointments as workers have retired or died, but useful trades have been taught to those who had no hope of anything but uselessness. Some of the boys can knit, some net hammocks, some make baskets, some can play music, all can read and write, some have written the whole New Testament, many can repeat large portions of it, most can sing sweet hymns, the great majority have been baptized. I can see still the tall, blue-gowned, long-queued figure moving amidst the little sightless boys, who would stop in their play at the sound of his step, flock round him, tell him by touch, — they had never seen him, but they knew what his smile was like, for they knew his voice and his heart. For months he lived with them, sharing their coarse food that cost perhaps three halfpence a day. No wonder that they loved him ! It has been a difficulty in China, or in England, to find remunerative woi'k for these boys. The competition of the seeing is so keen, and the market for anything but rough native work so small, that the school can never be self-supporting. A certain number will find occupation as musicians. Scripture-readers, or teachers ; for the rest the future must develop; and meanwhile more than once the 278 DA VID HILL tears have sprung to the eyes of those who have been involuntary listeners to the confessions and exhortations of the prayer-meetings of those who once sat in darkness but now see a great light. Another great desire of Hill's heart was the starting of a Foundling Home. When the story of the first stages of the Tehngan work was being told we mentioned the Manchu Prefect who privately hounded on the students to riot. This man ere long astonished Hill by urging him to undertake a Foundling Hospital in that city for the many baby girls who were constantly abandoned to die, and promising his support. This made a deep impression, and for years it was a cherished purpose to carry out the scheme. Eventually buildings were erected in Tehngan for that purpose, and Mr. and Mrs. Poole were detailed for the work. Just as they were ready to make a commence- ment came the terrible riots of 1891, and the illness and death of Mrs. Poole. This destroyed the scheme for the time, and, as it was clear that the inflamed state of public superstition and ignorance had founded much of its mistaken hatred upon the action of Eoman Catholic Orphanages, it was thought unwise to found such an institution so far inland. This scheme has therefore never been carried out. But the Medical Mission, which had been sadly neglected, received a new lease of life. The early work of Drs. Porter Smith, Hardey, and Langley had during Hill's residence in Shansi been allowed to lapse for want of a successor, and the hospital had fallen into decay. Dr. Morley joined the Lay Mission in 1886, and ere long started his medical work in the old mission house in Tehngan, the scene of the HONOURS AND RESPONSIBILITIES 279 early riots. The place was fitted up in a rough-and- ready way as a hospital, in which much good was done. The Eev. G. G. Warren was appointed to the station, and by judiciously following patients to their homes and itinerating regularly through the district, a large and healthy church was built up. The examina- tion times, once so provocative of danger, were specially used for deeds of medical kindness among the influential visitors. It is true that once again a riot occurred. A house was being built for the Orphanage and for the residence of ladies ; some of the undergraduates who went to see were rough and rude, raised a cry of murder, pretended that a man from their own neighbourhood had been slain, seized Dr. Morley, drew his queue over a beam and kept him on his tiptoes in torture for more than an hour, did much damage to the house, and finally became quiet only on the interference of the county magistrate. The dispute was settled without much difficulty, for Hill publicly refused to accept any com- pensation, and rebuilt the premises himself. He merely insisted on the public reprimanding and apology of the ringleader — a course which was followed by the happiest results, so that now the work is strong, the church healthy, and the hospital famous throughout the prefecture. Meanwhile in 1886 Miss Sugden came out for medical work among women, and in 1887 Dr. Sydney E. Hodge to resume the long interrupted Hankow hospital. The London Mission had for years carried on a most successful hospital, but it was three miles away, in the region most touched by the foreign trade and there was abundant need for the resumption of 28o DA VID HILL this work in the part of Hankow where enters the inland trade from north and west. A well-built hospital for women was erected on the site of the old ruins by the liberality of English ladies during the year of Her Majesty's Jubilee ; and subsequently, on the large plot which Hill had purchased on the other side of the street, a small but thoroughly equipped men's hospital. The opening ceremonies, attended by the British Consul and other foreigners, and also by the Chinese officials and gentry, were great occasions for the assertion of the philanthropy of the Mission enterprise, in which Hill naturally took great joy. These hospitals, under the charge, the one of Dr. Hodge, the other first of Miss Sugden and subsequently of Dr. Ethel Gough, with out-dispensaries in Hanyang and Wuchang, have continued their blessed activities ever since. The difficult work of curing the opium smoker has been one of these activities. In Hupeh, as in other parts of China, the evil habit has been continuously growing. The use of the Indian drug is rapidly de- creasing ; but the native opium is largely imported, and in some parts of the province there is to be seen the vivid colouring of the poppy-fields where used to be the cereal crop. The moral sense of the people is universally against the habit : fathers feel the same woe when a son takes to its use as is the case with drunkenness at home ; the vice is always linked ia the popular category of sins with gambling and adultery ; no one will trust an opium smoker, — and yet there is no moral power to stay the ravages of the plague. Many are unwilling victims, and would be glad to be freed from the thraldom, but the will power is utterly sapped. There are many native estab- lishments which profess to cure the habit, but these are HONOURS AND RESPONSIBILITIES 281 merely quackery ; and many cases are constantly being presented to the mission doctors. The plan usually adopted is to break o£f the drug immediately, to rigidly confine the sufferer to the hospital bounds, to provide good food and pleasant occupation, to carefully watch and to administer medicines for the terrible sufferings which shortly ensue, and thus gradually* after weeks or months, to wean from the drug. But, though the patient is sent forth cured for the time, he frequently relapses. It used to be a sorrowful joke against one mission hospital that a man was recommending it as a splendid place for opium curing : " I've been cured there myself three times ! " Very rarely, except when Christianity contributes new moral fibre to a man's being, is the patient finally cured. But many a one has through Hill's generosity been able to make the attempt in the mission hospital, and some at least who learnt while there of a higher healing are now living decent and God-fearing lives. Another department of work in which Hill took the keenest interest was the attempt to reach the higher classes in Wuchang by the establishment of a High School. Land was bought, but the ofBcials exhausted every effort to find objections, and finally succeeded in evoking the opposition of a neighbouring widow. On this plea possession of the ground was refused, the seller thrown into prison and kept there for a couple of years. After much difficulty a native house was hired and the school started therein. A certain number of the youth of the literary and mandarin classes were found willing to pay the fees, and to request training in the mathematics and science of the West. 282 DA VID HILL After several years of fluctuation the scheme has secured for itself a firm place in the city, and has achieved a considerable degree of success. Eound it as centre there came about a good deal of intercourse with such of the young literati as were turning their attention towards Western subjects. It was in the beginning of 1889 that Mr. Hill, leaving the Hankow Church in the charge of Mr. North, crossed the river and once more made his abode within the walls of Wuchang, intending thence to itinerate and to direct the general work of the Mission. On the plot purchased for the High School was an old house. Although the mandarins had refused to seal the deed and to permit buildiug, this house remained in possession of the Mission, and Mr. Hill by a few repairs fitted it up as his residence. A year or two later, as no objection was raised to his living on the premises, a waU was thrown round them, and the High School was boldly transferred to the disputed plot. It was not, however, until two or three years ago that the deed was finally sealed, and the plot, which had been originally bought with the consent of all parties nine years before, was legally assured to the Mission. Mean- while, Hill entered enthusiastically into the life of the school which was thus around him. He used to gather the boys for prayers and Scripture catechising, and used, when convenient, to take a share in the abundant receiving of iuquiring guests from a distance, which gave so frequent an opportunity for interesting con- versation. All his old hesitation as to this being work for a missionary had entirely vanished, and in the long uphill fight and soul-sickeniag delay which its founder had to endure, nothiag was more helpful HONOURS AND RhSPONSIBILITIES 285 than the strengthening and heartening of the Chairman's sympathy. During all these years of increasing activity the missionary circle was growing steadily. The Eevs. W. A. Cornaby, G-. G. Warren, and a number of others successively joined the band, until the community became quite large. The depletion due to death and breakdown, alas ! continued also. The Eev. J. W. Brewer, owing to the sad and unexpected death of his wife in 1886, was obliged to take his motherless children to England, there continuing however to do good service to the Mission by keeping up the organisa- tion of the Prayer Union which he had been instru- mental in starting. This Union gradually increased in numbers and was a source of great strength to Hill and his colleagues. He felt, too, the responsibilities of securing the prayers of so large a band of friends, a side of the matter perhaps sometimes overlooked by the missionary in his natural yearning for the prayers of the home churches : — To J. W. Brewer. The fact that six hundred Christian men and women are daily pleading for us impressed me much, and the obligation which such a fact places upon us weighed upon me for days after hearing it. " What have we to show for it ? " was practically the question put to me recently, and an address at our recent monthly prayer- meeting gave me the impression that has to battle with unbelieving fears on the subject; I fear we have not helped his faith very much by what may as yet be seen as the result of our Union for Prayer. But it always seems to me that to limit the prevalence of 284 DA VID HILL prayer to one or two, or five or six, years is an error. The sweep of God's eye and power and influence is not limited to such narrow bounds. But I should like to see and be able to point to more manifest results from the prayers of six hundred Christian men and women. The doings of the home churches were watched with a keenly sympathetic eye, but often with much independent criticism. The man who gave up so much for missions was naturally sometimes tested by the decline in the income of his Society, and disposed to doubt the reality of the interest taken by the great mass of his Church: — To J. W. Brewer. 1888. Missionary discussions at Conference did not go to the root of the matter to my mind. The Cross and all it means to us should have been brought more to the front ; and till that is done, and we all get down upon our knees, all this talk about finance and retrenchment and economy and cutting down will not come to much. In many of his remarks on methods there is visible a great broadening, a determination to see other sides of questions on which he had held strong views. We are by this time thoroughly familiar with his desire for free movement unfettered by the necessities of consultation and compromise in committees, yet he writes : — To J. W. Brewer. As to committees, true. The string on which often harps is true, but is the Lord confined to his one plan of a single-man movement ? Cannot He work by a HONOURS AND RESPONSIBILITIES 285 committee ? Nay, is not the ideal plan the safest and surest one in the long-run, the united movement of the Church of God ? He maintained a large correspondence, recognising it as his duty to keep in touch with the circles of influence open to him in England ; he also threw him- self with all his heart into the life difficulties of his friends, and was ready with advice. To a friend in China, not a missionary, who was meditating what to do with his life so as most to bring glory to God, he writes : — ■ Morley has just sent an article to the Medical Missionary Jowrnal which you will be interested in, especially in the discussion of the question as to doing good irrespective of what people think of it. This he would carry so far as to warrant his doing a good, though risky, service to a patient without considering its influence on outsiders. The objection is that you may do less good that way than by greater caution, inasmuch as you might prevent others coming to be treated by so doing. But again the greater or less good done is a matter very difficult to decide. What you say with regard to your own life bears upon it. You feel that you are not doing work that is of any help towards the extension of Christ's kingdom, and go on to judge by immediate and net results. But can we so judge ? Are we justified in so judging ? Is not the truer test for our life and its usefulness the question. Am I now doing faithfully the will of God ? — God, who from a very circumscribed earthly life has brought about the most world-wide effect ever known. The effect of our life cannot be fully known, till the clearer blaze of light from the world to come and the nearer approach to the throne of God reveals it, 286 DA VID HILL Needless to say, life to the missionary, as to the Christian in every station in life, brings multitudes of distractions, in which all Christian grace is tested to preserve a calm and spiritual tone. As a corrective to the unthinking idea which some home people have of the missionary who has nothing to do but to preach the gospel all day to multitudes of inquiring heathen, let us set the following sample of a day's work : — To Edward Hill. December 10, 1889. . . . And now, on thinking over the day the variety strikes me. I can't recall in order, but as they come up I will jot down. 1. Two gentlemen from Wuchang Hsien to sell a plot of ground, as they had heard we wished to purchase in that city from which we have been twice turned out. B. Not in the market — may want to rent soon but not buy. 2. Mr. Lo, teacher to Miss Lyon, to say that whilst away at his home in the country for a few days his clothes-trunk had been unlocked and a jacket extracted, etc. It was in the Blind School, and only four seeing men had been in during the time. B. Must inquire into it. 3. Mr. Tsung, to report on land in Hanyang; one plot owners refuse to sell to the missionaries, or rather to foreigners, and price reduced by 100,000 cash, but still much higher than we would give. Another plot in Chancery, and difficulty about title-deeds. He explains as far as he can circumstances connected with Mr. Cornaby's robbery by his boy, a matter still unsettled, etc. B. (1) Will write district magistrate about robbery. (2) Try again for plot in Chancery. 4. Mr. T'eu, my steward, — accounts not clear, B. Eecast them. HONOURS AND RESPONSIBILITIES 287 Wants money to go on with. jB. Exchange this cheque. 5. Mr. Hoo, the cook, — accounts not clear. B. Eecast them. Did so — squared up, but says he has not received money from the basket maker for his board, who has lied about his wages. jB. Will speak to him. 6. Mr. T'sen Chang Tsow, to request me to speak to Dr. Hodge about his selling sulphur ointment to patients at door of chapel. B. Will do so. 7. Mr. Yu, looking pale and poorly, to say that he has had great trouble; he had two wives, the younger died in the sixth month — he buried her in Hanyang. The flood of the ninth month covered the grave, and he wants to remove the coffin to a higher place near his old home a hundred miles away, and to invite geomancers and be at all this expense would be very heavy on him. Could I help him ? R. No, not to throw money away on geomancers and only remove the coffin so far. Hanyang is as good as Tehngan. If too low, remove to a higher plot near by. Can you find me a post in Mr. Barber's school ? I did not venture to ask last year as I understood he wanted only a man with M.A. degree, but I see he has now one with only B.A., and as I am a B.A. could you not recommend me ? jR. No opening in Mr. Barber's school, but there may be in Tehngan if you go there and live with your first wife and have the children with you. 8. Mr. T'ao, to seek a post as private teacher or day- school teacher. B. Wait till District Meeting closes, then shall know better what to say. 9. Mr. Fortune, half a dozen times for half a dozen things. 288 DA VID HILL 10. Mr. Cornaby's messenger to borrow two tins of milk. 11. Mr. North, to go through list of district and foreign members of the Hankow Church. 12. Dr. Hodge, to inquire how my rheumatism is and talk over hospital matters and next year's appoint- ments. 13 and 14. Mr. Archibald and Mr. Sparham to return Mr. Fortune's call. ' 15. Mr. Mow Shin Lung, foreman, to explain delay in building wall and outhouses. So you see how varied and how secular our lives may be, and how we do need to say to the inflowing tide, " Thus far but no farther," and have a great sea-wall; for besides these there are numberless other things, letters to write and letters to read, etc., which leave but little time for dmct evangelisation, and, without the sea-wall, for private communion. Such is life. How different from the popular notion of a missionary's work — but you would guess it I imagine. The work of each year found its climax in the Annual Synod, at which every missionary was present. The Synod was always looked forward to with keen interest and enjoyment. Mr. Hill's plan was to allow full and free conversation on every point in the hope of unanimity. Undoubtedly this plan did not always succeed, and sometimes a more self-assertive and less considerate Chairman might have driven on the business and secured greater promptness than he did. But the beautiful spirit of the leader spread itself all around, and the devotional meetings were the great events of the whole year. One whole day was given up to spiritual exercises. Most of the missionaries lived lonely lives, themselves constantly giving out and having little or no human help from which they couli^ HONOURS AND RESPONSIBILITIES 289 draw in. To such, the luxury of the Christian fellow- ship of the Synod was unspeakably great. The morning used to be devoted to prayer and a conversa- tion on the work of God, ia which the difficulties, problems, successes, joys, conversions of the year would be detailed by one after another. In the afternoon came a Methodist Love Feast, when confession, experi- ence, triumph, sorrow, expressed often with faltering lip and brimming eye, would knit us together in holy brotherhood. Hill himself used to take part often in humblest mood, confessing shortcomings in a way that made his hearers, who knew his saintliness, full of shame at their own shreds of self -content. How he would receive advice or utterance from the younger members of the meeting as though his own experience were worth little beside theirs ! Those who shared in those meetings will never forget them. Then came the evening, when one or other preached the official sermon, and all united in the Lord's Supper. The memory of that Day of Holy Assemblies lingered with us all the year round, differences on details of policy or action are sure to occur among any body of men with character enough to induce them to become missionaries, but as these passed through the purifying crucible of the spiritual atmosphere of those happy services, all that might have been bitter or noxious was purged away. HlII's ideals of spiritual life were so high, that it would be untrue to indicate great joy as the leading characteristic of his experience. I have seen his face grey and stern with spiritual conflict, have known him in profound depression when he longed to find a human confessor that he might humble himself and find peace. 19 iijd DA VID HILL I remember his remarking of, one good friend who had spoken much of lofty spiritual privilege, " was one of those who found it easy to believe in entire sancti- fication." We find in a letter to Mr. Foster, who had inquired as to Wesley's teaching on this point, the following : — To Kev. a. Fostee. The possibility of a far, I was almost writing an infinitely, higher Christian life than I live or see lived, is so indisputable to reasonable minds, that the employ- ment of this or that term in expressing the same is to my mind a small matter. The Church needs, and John Wesley felt, as he pro- ceeded with his great work, the great benefit of the setting forth of a high ideal towards which to aim, — an ideal if you like to call it so, but not an impossible ideal, which, if faithfully and honestly taught, sets men a-longing for it by the power of the concurrently witnessing Spirit. But you will find as clear exposition of John Wesley's teaching on this subject in his hymn- book as anywhere. To the end Hill's keen perception of the work of the Holy Spirit, and strong desire to allow Him to work His will with him, went side by side with a clear perception of the messenger of Satan sent to buffet, and of the blessings to be gained through conflict: — To A. H. Haeeis. You refer to 's trials, and remark how some men are called to suffer. Is this not the ballast by which God steadies the ship ? and is it not better to have this suffering and the fellowship it often brings, and always HONOURS AND RESPONSIBILITIES 291 may bring, than an easy-going life without it ? To me, on looking back, it certainly yields more peaceable fruits than the other jog-trot. One element of Christian perfection is that humility which strives but does not claim. That element was eminently present in this life, which those who knew it will aU consider the most truly apostolic they have ever seen. In 1888 the Weslpyan Conference elected David HUl into the "Legal Hundred." This order of ministers, vested by John Wesley with all legal powers of administration of property and law in the Wesleyan Methodist Church, still retains those powers, but, by the development of the modern Conference, has now a purely honorary distinction. At any one time these men are the hundred ministers whom by character and standing the Church wishes most to honour. Mr. Hill's case was the first in which an Eastern missionary was so distinguished. He had had a hint of the possibility of his being proposed, and seriously debated whether he should not prevent his name being even mentioned. When he was congratulated, he merely remarked that this new prominence would expose him to new temptation and would need new special grace. In 1890 was held the Second General Missionary Conference in Shanghai. During the thirteen years which had intervened since its predecessor the work had vastly developed, and there were now over thirty- seven thousand communicants, and forty-one societies, sending thirteen hundred missionaries, of whom some four hundred and fifty gathered to the Conference from regions stretching from Manchuria to Hainan, from 292 DA VID HILL Corea to the borders of Burma. It was decided that one American and one English missionary should be chosen as presidents. The choice fell upon Dr. J. L. E'evius for the one nation, and, by a very large vote, on David Hill for the other. It was no light thing to control a vast assembly of men and women, all possessing a certain amount of independence of character and accustomed to much speech. The Americans especially are all trained from childhood to public debate, with its elaborate rules, and a president needs to have all his wits about him. For the first day or two. Hill, who was troubled by a feeling of outrage to his humility by the honour thus thrust upon him, suffered somewhat by comparison with his more experienced colleague. But the gracious Spirit of his utterances soon won its way, and his natural ability speedily made him a most effective Chairman. The Conference lasted over ten days, fifty-eight papers were read and discussed; many sub-committees dealt with questions of missionary polity, and presented reports which were accepted or modified; and the records of the Conference form a most valuable volume of seven hundred and fifty pages. Three committees were appointed to revise the Scriptures in high literary, low literary, and colloquial style; the missionary education of China was syste- matised, and resolutions arrived at as to medical, industrial, literary and other work. Mr. Hill had been previously requested to prepare a paper on " The Desirability and Conditions of the use of Lay Agency in the Mission Field," and presented a well-written claim for such service, for purposes educational and medical, charitable and commercial, with a strong HONOURS AND RESPONSIBILITIES 293 desire that the great societies should make provision for the organic connection of such lay agencies with themselves. As a result, an earnest appeal was made to the home churches for such workers. The most notable feature of the Conference was the spirit of unity which pervaded the whole. With every variety of gift and disposition, many differences of church organisation and race, there was but one spirit of mutual encouragement and help. A united appeal was made to Christendom for a thousand missionaries in the next five years, and a committee was appointed to tabulate and record the results. In about five years the full number was reached. One occurrence well-nigh turned the joyous inter- course of the Conference into a tragedy. Arrangements were made for a photograph, and some three hundred members were stationed on a bamboo-staging, rising to a height of twenty feet, erected for the purpose. Unfortunately this proved too slight, and at the critical moment it bent over, hurling the multitude of men and women, with the Presidents in the centre, in one indistinguishable mass to the ground. Provi- dentially, perfect calm was maintained, all panic avoided, and no rush took place or many must have been killed. As it was, except for one or two broken bones and one or two cases of shock, no harm was done. Thus the remembrance of a great deliverance combined with memories of much happy communion to send the missionaries back to their distant stations with new determination and heart for their lonely work. CHAPTEE XV SOEEOWS AND WOEK THE year of the Shanghai Conference was an eventful one in the history of China. There began to be manifested signs of new internal move- ments which betokened mighty changes after the inactivity of generations. Inquiries were issued from the Throne to all the great officials of the empire as to the desirability of introducing railways into the country. Among many answers of various styles, that of Chang Chih Tung, the Viceroy of Canton, attracted most attention. His verdict was that railways should be constructed, but that first the mineral resources of the country should be developed and the rails and plant for the roads should be made in China. Whereupon, with characteristic Chinese sarcasm, the Emperor removed the memoralist from his fat viceregalty to the poorer post at Wuchang, with orders to put his ideas into practice, to set up steel works, and to make the rails for a great trunk railway a thousand miles long, from Hankow to Peking. The arrival of this enterprising and able Viceroy marked a new era. He was fully determined to use Western methods, but remained thoroughly unfriendly to the foreigner, not unnaturally fearing SORROWS AND WORK 295 the fate of other Eastern lands, which have become the financial prey of the European, and seeking to keep China for the Chinese. His advent brought new currents of activity into the sleepy conservatism of Wuchang. Several foreigners, mining engineers and technical instructors, were imported from Europe. At Hanyang, steelworks; in Wuchang, a cotton factory, gun foundry, mints, and assaying school ; in the country, coal and iron mines, were projected. So revolutionary an intruder, although his past history in Canton had proved his anti-foreign spirit, roused all the animosity of the self-contented and corrupt mandarindom which surrounded him, and the blunders which, through his ignorance, vastly increased the expense and retarded the progress of his designs, gave his enemies many causes for obstruction and triumph. Meanwhile another great current was iadueed in Hunan, the province south of Hupeh. This province has for long past given the sturdiest race of soldiers to China ; during the Taiping EebelHon it was the Hunanese who principally stemmed the tide and saved the country. Their inland position has left them less touched by foreign influence than any other part of the empire, and in their isolation and conceit they determined to set themselves against this inrush of foreign ideas, and, if possible, to oust the foreigners from the Middle Kingdom. They began with the missionary as the most prominent and most defence- less. Their leading gentry, with the encouragement of the Governor and other mandarins, formed them- selves into an Opposition Literature Society. Those graceful pencils, which knew so well how to write in 296 DA VID HILL flowing essay style, demeaned themselves to indite for the populace the most horrible and filthy calum- nies about Christianity. Wuchang was the first large city in which the experiment of publication was made. One morning the walls of the streets were found placarded with highly-coloured coarse cartoons, picturing the Hog hanging on the cross, while round the cross were filthy representations of the obscenities of Christian worship. This was a blasphemous pun founded upon the similarity of the Chinese sounds for Lord and Sog. The little boys were singing doggerel songs, whose burden was "Drive out the devil religion, cut the foreigners into a thousand pieces"; booklets were in everyone's hands describing how foreigners gouge out eyes for refining silver, dig out hearts and livers for medicine, etc. Immediate action was taken; the Consuls made representations to the Viceroy, and for a while the circulation was suppressed. The great cities could thus be brought under control, but all the while the filthy torrent poured on and the mischief continued in the country parts, and events proved that most of the mandarins were only too pleased privately to encourage this foreigner-baiting. While affairs were thus apparently quieting down, the mission circle went on its course of joy and sorrow. New workers continued to arrive. The Eev. Thomas Champness had for some years been evolving in England an order of village workers whom he called Joyful News Evangelists. The principle of their support and discipline was that of the family; Mr. and Mrs. Champness acted as father and mother, and the evangelists received from them all the SORROWS AND WORK 297 necessary expenses of life and no more, going out into the villages for work and returning from time to time to the central home. The Joyful News Evangelists became more and more numerous, and with the natural, and historically universal, growth from Home Missions to Foreign their leader began to think of sending some of them to help on the mission field. Such an idea found a warm welcome from Hill, and the first Joyful News Evangelists reached Central China at the end of 1889, to be followed twelve months later by two more, and subsequently by several others. Other friends in England, the same who years before had guaranteed the support of Mr. Bell, renewed a similar offer, and thus enabled the Eev. Eobert Bone to come as an additional man making no claims upon the ordinary fimds of the Mission. This was a response to an earnest appeal to the younger ministry of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, which had been signed by Messrs. Hill and Watson, urging the need of missionary pastors, and claiming the service of those who could support themselves entirely or partially, or who were willing to come out on the smallest possible allowance, with no margin beyond the bare necessaries of life. These reinforcements gave great cause for gratitude, but Mr. Bone had been but a few months in the country when he was carried off by dysentery, and buried in the Hankow Cemetery which is now so full of missionary graves. The same autumn brought to Hill the great joy of the arrival of the first of the next generation of his family in the mission field. It was in December, 1890 that the Eev. J, K. Hill, the son of his brother John, 298 DA VID HILL reached Wuchang, and took up his residence with his uncle in the little house in the High School Compound where he still lived. This happy arrival took place just at the time of Hill's jubilee, and the twenty - fifth anniversary of his landing in China. The Synod that ensued was made the occasion of a quiet , little demonstration which touched him very much. The native Christians joined with their pastors in presenting their Chairman with a cheque for £100, whose investment would support a boy iu the Blind School in perpetuity. Earely in his letters do we find more joyous expressions than those in which he refers to this spontaneous outburst of love and appreciation. The New Year, destined to be the most trying in the history of the Mission, thus dawned on many hopes. In May, Mr. Tollerton, one of the Joyful N"ews Evangelists, who had been Mr. Bone's colleague at Lung Ping, contracted malignant small- pox from a child he was trying to heal, and not- withstanding most devoted nursing, died. Hill went down to assist, but arrived too late. The news of this great loss of a most earnest and useful brother was scarce received, when it was discovered that a catechist who had been much liked proved untrust- worthy, and had to be suspended. The very same day a huge fire, raging next the Hankow Mission premises, came within an ace of consuming some of the houses. But these trials were but the preliminaries to the tragic sorrows of June 5, 1891, a date burnt in upon the history of Chinese Missions. For some weeks previous there had been signs of serious unrest, and anti-foreign riots had occurred farther down the Yangtsze. No special anxiety was, SORROWS AND WORK 299 however, felt by the Mission in Hupeh, least of all in Wusueh, where for twenty years the missionaries had lived on remarkably friendly terms with mandarins and people. Two years before, a sanatorium bungalow had been erected on the beautiful hills opposite this town ; the event proved that the vile reports circulated by the Himan literature had foimd in this innocent buUding a focus -point of suspicion. It was widely beUeved that the foreigners on this lonely spot were carrying out their devilish arts of boiling babies' bodies, etc. On the fateful date Mr. Fortune of the Hankow Mission was in the bungalow, recovering from pleurisy, and Mr. William Argent, a Joyful News Evangelist, who had been in China some six months, after nursing him for a while, was waiting in Wusueh at the river-side home of the English customs officer, Mr. Green, so as to catch the night up-river steamer. The two resident missionaries, Messrs. Boden and Protheroe, were on country journeys, leaving with- out fear their wives and families in the mission houses. Towards night a countryman entered the town carrying four children in his coolie-baskets ; it is probable that mischief had been deliberately planned, for a number of men with swords had been gathering into Wusueh during the day. The countryman was stopped and interrogated as to his destination. He replied that he was carrying the children on his way to the Eoman Catholic Orphanage at Kiukiang, thirty miles distant. Instantly the popular imagination took fire ; here was proof positive of the villainies of the foreigner, and a rush was made for the yamen. When the magistrate made light of their charges the crowd returned to the mission premises, began to stone the buildings, set 300 DA VID HILL them on fire, drove out the ladies and little children, and kicked and beat and bruised them along the streets. How Ijhey escaped it is most difficult to understand ; but, by God's great mercy, finally, faint and bleeding, they were all gathered into the shelter of the magis- trate's house, several hours elapsing before the last of the children, from various hiding - places offered by kindly friends, were restored to the arms of their distracted mothers. Meanwhile the infuriated crowd gutted the burning premises, tearing up even the floors in their raging search for proofs of the foreigners' guilt. At the same time Messrs. Green and Argent were roused by the glare of the conflagration, and, knowing the defencelessnesB of the premises, rushed to save the mission families. They were warned of what was going on, but, like truly brave men, found in the danger all the greater incentive to rescue. The mob turned upon them ; Argent was at once smitten down with his brains knocked out, and Green fell later on, fighting for his life like a lion. The bodies were horribly mutilated and left lying in the streets. During the early hours of the morning the up-river steamer passed by; it was not until several miles above the Wusueh stopping-place that a torn scrap of paper was put into the captain's hands. This had been written by the ladies who were spending the nightmare of the dark hours in the magistrate's yamen, and told in a sentence of the awful catastrophe. The captain at once turned round and steamed back to Wusueh, where he anchored. After a while a little procession of sedan - chairs came stealing down the . SORROWS AND WORK 301 river-bank, and ere long the band of bruised, bleeding refugees was safe on board. The children were in their night - clothes, the ladies faint and horror- haunted with memory and fears for their husbands still in the interior, but the relief was immense. It was some days before all the inland missionaries safely reached Hankow, and no further damage was done. In the early dawn of Sunday morning, June 7, a messenger entered the just opened gates of Wuchang to bring the news to the head of the Mission. Who that went through it can ever forget that day ? Eoused from our beds we instantly crossed the river, boarded the steamer, and heard from the wornout ladies the horrible story. As we walked through the streets the air seemed seething and alive with excitement ; the news had sprea,d like wildfire, every face was turned towards us as we walked, with every variety of expres- sion from hatred to, fear. Ere night the great cities were thriUed with rumours of intended attacks on the various Missions; but the Viceroy took instant pre- cautions, set guards of soldiers round the foreigners' houses, and for the time quelled the possibility of further disturbance. That Sabbath day had indeed little of peace about it. Hill was requested by H.B.M.'s Consul to go down to Wusueh and Kwangchi to be present as his deputy at the trial of those who had been arrested. While he was there, suffering the usual vexatious delays and obstructions of Chinese justice, such a scene was being enacted in the Hankow Cemetery as left a mark on the memories of the whole coimtryside. The bodies of the two murdered men were carried to their graves by the 302 DA VID HILL bluejackets of the British, French, and German gun- boats, which had hurried up the river. All the foreign residents, many of the native Christians, representatives of the Chinese authorities, and a huge crowd of un- sympathetic onlookers united to form the largest funeral that had ever been seen in Central China. The trial of the rioters resulted in the execution of two — according to the old Chinese idea of a life for a life — and the heavy punishment of a number of others. Long before this sad but necessary result had been reached Hill had returned to Hankow, leaving his place as assessor to be supplied by Mr. Bramfitt. Mean- while, the Hankow Compound was filled with the families of the missionaries from the interior, who had come in under the orders of the Consul. A week or two later the officials received warning of a con- templated attack on these premises, and, by the Consul's orders, the whole missionary community was hastily removed one night to the European Concession or to the protection of the gunboat. AU missionary work was for a time much hampered, but gradually quiet was restored, and, notwithstanding many alarms, accentuated by a riot at Ichang, four hundred miles farther up the Yantsze, in which the residences of the foreigners were all destroyed, finally affairs settled into their old grooves. Another blow fell upon the sorely- tried mission band. Mrs. Poole, who had but just entered on residence in Tehngan for the work of the Orphanage, and had been obliged with the rest to return to Hankow, feU a victim to the various heavy strains that had befallen her and died. Once more the sorrowing missionaries stood by an .open grave, while the little blind boys, to whom she had been as a SORROWS AND WORK 303 mother, sang " Eock of Ages " and " Jesu, lover of my soul," for they had caught a glimpse through her life of the tender love of God. It was on August 14, the last night of Hill's second term of Chinese life, that the funeral took place. He shared in the Burial Service, then went on board the river-steamer on his return to England. At the time there seemed no fear of further danger, and he had already considerably overstayed the date fixed for his departure. He left behind him a mission-machiaery vastly developed and perfected during the nine years since he had left England. It is to be doubted whether Hill would have decided to visit the Old Country once more but for the fact that he had been elected by the Wesleyan Conference as one of its delegates to the (Ecumenical Methodist Conference which was to meet in Washington in October, 1891. This action forced him to a decision, and he made his way thither md Japan, Vancouver, and the Canadian Pacific Eailway. Hearing that the Methodist Church of Canada was proposing to send out a band of missionaries to China, he made it his business to persuade the authorities to unite their forces with the Mission already at work in Hupeh, but found himself too late, as the more distant province of Sz Chuan had been already chosen. He had but little time for travel before the date of the Conference, but a story is recorded of the impression he made. Two travellers met ia an American city; in the course of conversation one remarked to the other, " I have just met a man who has given me an idea of what St. Paul must have been like." " That is strange," rephed his companion, " for I made the same 304 DA VID HILL remark only last week about a Chinese missionary named Hill whom I met at ." " That's the very man I'm speaking of," said the first. At Washington he met many of his old English friends who were attending the Conference, and after its great and successful meetings proceeded on his journey, reaching England in November, 1891. The passing of the years had made the name of David Hill a household word throughout Methodism, and he was instantly absorbed in the whirl of unceasing missionary deputations. At the end of his previous visit he had said that never again could he work as actively as he had done then; but it was not in his nature to spare himself, and we find him travelling to all parts of the kingdom, not infrequently setting off after an evening meeting to travel through the night so as to be present at some morning or afternoon gathering in quite a different part of the country. He was the main speaker at the Annual Meeting of the Wesleyan Missionary Society under the Chairmanship of his brother, thus repeating the happy combination of the Breakfast Meeting of twelve years before. He gave on that occasion a statesmanlike view of the whole of the work of his district, conscientiously anxious to give to each of his colleagues the due degree of public notice and commendation to the sympathy of the Church. This very anxiety to do justice to the whole field under view robbed his utterance of some of the spontaneity which is necessary to a great speech. But in the succeeding autumn and winter he was able to organise a still more active campaign. It happened that Mr. Watson was home on furlough, and that successive breakdowns in health of wives forced the return of the SORROWS AND WORK 305 writer of these pages and of Mr. Boden. That four men from one district should be at home at the same time was indeed lamentable, but Hill turned it to the best account possible. His name and influence were sufficient to ensure a hearty reception of his proposals in a number of the largest towns in the country for three-days' Conventions, at which the four representa- tives of Central China might present their work. It was all the more easy to arrange these, as he insisted on paying all the expenses himself, and asked for no collections. Each day of the Conventions commenced with a prayer-meeting, which was succeeded by an after- noon meeting — generally for children or women's work, then by a conversational gathering over the teacups, and by a more or less crowded evening meeting. The whole area of the work in its different departments was thus brought before the public, and a deep impres- sion was made. He was more absorbed in his advocacy than ever, and it is to be feared that his own friends saw but little of him, or received him to short visits, fully preoccupied with correspondence or the working out of his plans. But, though thus almost exces- sively a man of one idea, he was always ready to enter thoughtfully into the plans and prospects of others, as those of his friends whose lives were in the crucible at the time will ever gratefully remember. He had a special power of winning children to him- self. In the homes they came to him with their love, responding to his tenderness and the naturalness of his claims upon their service for their Saviour. Here is part of a letter to a child who had given him her 3o6 DA VID HILL hoarded pocket-money. It is adorned with rough sketches of a castle, himself in a pigtail, etc : — Nbwoastle, December 12, 1892. My Dear Annie, — What a happy party you will be when your brothers join you all. They are sure to want you to sing and play to them. It reminds me of a little girl I used to know at college who afterwards grew up to be a good singer, and used to go and visit some old people and sing to them — poor old folk who couldn't get out. She brightened their homes by her visits. I was glad to hear Edith and Grace had not forgotten the man with the pigtail. I hope you will get good news from Northampton, and all have a very happy Christmas, and love and serve that Saviour who gives us all. With all Christmas greetings, — Yours affectionately, D. Hill. I was quite forgetting to say that I thought your kind subscription might be devoted to beds for the Blind School. We may add here another playful letter to a little friend, aged seven, though of quite a different date: — My dear little friend, The letter you send Is written so clearly and well. That your learned Papa (And perhaps your Mamma) Will have to look out, I can tell : Or his dear little daughter (Whoever has taught her) Will be writing better than he. And then if you should Be' also as good What a dear little A you will B; And soon we shall C How exceedingly D- -lighted with A and with E Is your learned Papa And venerable Mamnia And a friend of the Sisters 3. SORROWS AND WORK 307 One of his addresses to children will long be remembered. He instantly won their attention; then, listening amidst breathless silence, he bid them hear the multitudinous cry from starviag heathendom, " Gome." After explaining the need and pathos of that cry, he once more, amidst the breathless silence of the little hearers, bid them hear God's cry, " Go" and brought home to their consciences the possibility that to some of them might come God's command to go to the lands of darkness with the light. It was ever his way to see the potential missionary in the trusting face of a little child. That the schools of the Church should be regularly visited by missionary deputations had been his conviction for many years, and he seized every guch opportunity. He eagerly visited also the theological colleges, and pleaded for the consecration of the lives of the rising ministry to missionary service. Again and again were there instances of those, both lay and ministerial, who in response to such appeals volunteered for China. Although he made no collections, many friends entrusted him with funds for his work. Interested as he was in pressing on his Church the Lay Mission he had started, he yet felt bound to set the £800 placed in his hands at the service of the General Funds of the Missionary Society, and on his return it was made the nucleus of an Extension Fund which was to be devoted to assisting the resources of ministers or laymen wishful to come to the mission field, but able only partially to support themselves. He constantly recurred to the idea of an additional agency which should be free for evangelistic journeys outside the bounds of the regular stations. The 3o8 DA VID HILL Missionary Committee agreed to a scheme of his, by which young ministers should be sent out without claim upon the funds of the Society, consenting to draw for bare necessities up to a certain amount, and to remain unmarried for half a dozen years, during which they might supplement the insufficient staff alpne possible to the hampered Society. Friends at home joined with Hill himself in contributing the extra funds which made this possible, and two were sent out. The actual result of this scheme has really been that men have been in training ready to step into the gaps made by frequent breakdowns, deaths, or furloughs. The one great claim, as always, which Hill burnt in upon the consciences of the home churches was that for abound- ing prayer, — prayer that would cost more than gifts of money, prayer that would take the kingdom of heaven by violence. With this as the beginning and end of his message of urgency, he returned to China, escorting a number of new or returning members of the Mission. He left Genoa by the German mailboat Oldenlerg on March 11, 1893. Amongst his fellow-passengers were some Swedish missionaries, part of a company of two hundred which the awakening evangelistic zeal of the Lutheran Church was sending out to China. Hill occupied himself, amidst many other occupations rounding off his work of advocacy, in giving them some first lessons in Chinese, and comments longingly on the contrast between the " two hundred Swedes and no Methodists." CHAPTEE XVI MADE PERFECT IT was late in April, 1893 that David Hill reached once more the place that had become so dear to him, and commenced his third term of service. Eager as ever for work, full of new plans, he was yet con- scious that his strength was not what it had been. Many men are in their finest prime at fifty-two, but the strenuousness of his missionary life and the exacting and unceasing labours of his English advocacy sent him back a white-haired man, who could write to a friend that he finds " less labour goes further than in earlier years." He returned expecting never to see England again, but yet hoping for a number of years of continued activity. The missionary band in Hupeh had been considerably increased since the Shanghai Conference. Scandinavian Missions, Danish, Norse and Swedish both from Europe and from America, had chosen this province as their field, and from the centre at Wuchang and Hankow were seeking spheres of work. A Dane had settled at Hwang Chow, on whose streets HUl and his colleagues had so often preached, but he was almost immediately expelled by the people. Two others, Swedes, Messrs. Wiekolm and Johannsen, had rented premises in Sung 309 3IO DA VID HILL Pu, some fifty miles from Hankow ; in July a mob ten thousand strong gathered round the house, and after baiting the missionaries for hours under the blazing sun, hacked them to death so brutally that it was only by an examination of their teeth that their bodies could be identified. The proceedings which followed were such a travesty of justice as to rouse the utmost indignation. The maia instigator of the riots sat as assessor on the Bench, and the only people who were punished were those who had shown kindness to the foreigners. Thus were the onlookers only too clearly taught what would be the penalty of such assistance in the future. Hill, for all his tenderness for the Chinese, yet burned with a passion for righteousness, and on this occasion, as on others only too frequent in these later years, strongly expressed his conviction that China should be punished : — To J. E. Hill. August 7, 1893. You will have seen the account of the murders. The Chinese authorities appear to be treating the matter very lightly, and, as we see things, giving encourage- ment to others to repeat these barbarities. In the name of humanity they ought to be stopped, and any Government which can and will not stop them should be punished. Christian lands took the slave trade in hand, and should now give these semi-civilised countries to know that these things cannot be done with impunity. It would do them good. Most of us think that if not vigorously dealt with there will be a repetition of these thmgs. Terrible as this murder was, it created far less stir than the Wusueh outrage of two years before ; and MADE PERFECT 311 Hill was able, while directing the general policy of the Mission, to itinerate freely, especially in the Wusueh region, which was for the while without a resident superintendent. The Wusueh Church itself had not recovered from the shock and terrible strain of the riot, hut in the country round there were many signs of growth which cheered him much by comparison with what he remembered a quarter of a century before. His mind dwelt much on two things. The province of Hunan, whose literati were mainly re- sponsible for the riots, seemed to him especially to appeal for the Christian revenge of a preached gospel. And he still longed to increase his company of light skirmishers who should perpetually itinerate, free from tie of home or wife. Some of his friends in England were instructed to send out to him any, conscious of a divine call, who would be willing to receive a yearly sum barely sufficient for their needs. In several cases such men and women did join the Mission, but most were restrained by a natural and not blameworthy desire for prospects more certain of continuity. At the end of 1893 Hill moved for the last time to Hankow, taking up his residence in the Blind School. Kecords of fever became more frequent, but he was active as ever, developing a scheme for a girls' boarding school, much needed for the training of the Christian mothers of the next generation, and perpetually visiting the countryside of the district. His correspondence with his English friends was more abundant than ever, and formed almost his only recreation, but the marks of hurry and overwhelming occupation are upon all his letters, making them less suitable for preservation. Sometimes the old longing 312 DA VID HILL for simple evangelistic work would assert itself, and he would debate the possibility of giving up the chair- manship; sometimes physical weakness would beget depression ; but again he would throw himself with joy into his old, patient, loving service amongst individual Chinese. "We find , letters to English friends — sometimes children — who had entrusted money to him, detailing the need of some poor prodigal, some opium sot, some destitute widow, and showing how the money had been applied and what hopes he had from its use. The various industrial improvements attempted by the Wuchang Viceroy were presenting new chances for missionary work. At Wuchang a large cotton - mill gave employment to some thousands of operatives, and the apprentice boys became regular attendants at the Mission Chapel. The large ironworks at Hanyang gave new opportunities for the medical man at the Hankow Hospital, which was not far away. The iron mines and mineral railway near Hwang Sz Kang, the scene of so many missionary journeys in early days, brought in new ideas and made easier the spread of the gospel, while beneath, and counter to these streams of new life, flowed the sullen poisonous current of anti- foreign prejudice. On the whole, encouragement largely preponderated. The results of the war with Japan were no surprise to the missionaries, who watched the issue with intensest interest. They knew of the hopeless corruption of the mandaria class ; they knew of the skeleton regiments of unarmed, hastily drilled, miserably paid peasants; of the men-of-war commanded by landsmen whose sole recommendation was relationship to someone in of&ce; they knew of the arsenals with rusty guns and no ammunition ; they MADE PERFECT 313 knew of the extensive opium smoking which was sapping the strength of the nation — and it was a foregone conclusion that China must fall. The result, though painful, has been undoubtedly wholesome ; for the first time it appears really to be penetrating the self - satisfied intelligence of the nation that it is ignorant and poor and naked, and the result has been a wilHngness to learn which is the first step towards true knowledge. The issue of the Eeport of the British Government Opium Commission, with its contemptuous disregard of the evidence of the Chinese missionaries and the apparent dishonesty of its summing up, roused in Hill both indignation and fear. With his firm belief in God's government of the world, it seemed to bode ill for the future of his country's power in the East when, for the sake of mere money advantage, it was evident that a Commission of representative men were ready to allow bheir names to be attached to a document whose verdict was obtained by omitting all that was weighty against, and laying sole stress on what seemed to speak for, the foregone conclusion of the continuance of the traffic. The results of the eclipse of moral enthusiasm in Parliament remain yet to be fully seen. Meanwhile the cycle of life and death went on in the Hankow Missions. Death came again and again, to claim, now a mother from her seven little children, now a newly arrived missionary, now a just wedded bride- groom, now a medical man whose first work was being done. Never had death seemed so busy. Marriages founded new homes, births gladdened them, and the bachelor-Chairman shared sorrows and joys with his brethren. In the autumn came the news of the sudden 314 DA VID HILL death of his old friend Scarborough, on which he wrote with deep feeling, but hoped for himself some years yet of work. The year 1895 opened with an extensive journey up the Han, which HUl much enjoyed; he visited all the country up to Nganluh and returned full of the sense of vast opportunities. He had walked nearly three hundred miles, and had travelled four hundred by boat. The middle-aged man who could, with enjoyment to himself, successfully undertake such an expedition seemed far indeed from any failure of strength. Such journeys, with their exposure to sun and storm, their rough sheds for night shelter, their lack of all privacy, their coarse food, might well test the endurance of the young and strong. But he was to enter immediately upon a new sphere of settled activity. The Hankow work on the old premises, with all its manifold activities, was overflowing its borders ; a new plot of ground was obtained a mile farther down the street at Kung Tien, right in the thickest part of the better-class shops of the town. By the liberality of an English friend a preaching-hall was erected, with rooms for dispensary and other work and quarters for a missionary. To the development of this new work Mr. Hill was appointed, and in April he took up his residence there. The chapel was opened by a sermon by Dr. Griffith John, who thirty years before, had begun his Mission in Hankow on that very spot. There, immersed in the flood of population of the great city, HUl commenced his last piece of work in China. He rejoiced in the new opportunity of reaching a class somewhat higher in the social scale, and made the most of private con- versation as well as public preaching. A nucleus of MADE PERFECT 31 5 inquirers was formed, and before the end he was privileged to baptize the first-fruits of his work in the KuTig Tien Chapel. He looked forward to the renewal of evangelistic work, and eagerly anticipated the possi- bility of entering the sealed gates of Hunan. Mean- while meetings had been held, in which the native church had decided to send two of its oldest, therefore most respected and safest, members as missionaries to that province. Sufficient funds were cheerfully given for the expedition, no foreigner being allowed to con- tribute ; and the courageous old men, one nearly seventy, the other over that age, set forth, bearing all the hard- ships of Chinese travel to preach the gospel amidst the people who were blamable ' for the deaths of the Christian martyrs of recent years. When they returned, it was to tell of souls whom God had touched and changed even amidst that hostile province. The anti- foreign virus continued to show its results. Sz Chuan saw seventy missionaries ousted from house and home ; Ku Cheng sent its tale of horror from far-off Fuhlden, and all Christendom shuddered at the picture of murdered women and children ; but in Hankow itself the signs of spiritual blessing grew and multiplied. The Annual Synod of 1896, over which HUl presided, under his inspiration sent a most earnest appeal to the youth of Methodism on behalf of the heathen world. A picture was drawn of the wondrous opportunities, evangelistic, educational, and medical, in China, and paralleled in India and Africa. " In this light we would urge upon you, when making choice of your future career, in courage and fidelity to face the inquiry whether you will not respond to the claim of Christ most fully, and meet Him at last with the 3l6 DA VID HILL greatest joy, if you enter upon missionary service." It was David Hill's characteristic last appeal. The present Governor of the Province of Hupeh, whose home is in Wuchang, was promoted to his post from the Governorship of Hunan, where he had been the most influential supporter of the anti-foreign literature which led to the riots. He had given his imprimatur to the foul and blasphemous publications which sent people mad with fear and wrath at the enormities committed by Christian missionaries, the eye- gouging, heart-extracting, liver-eating, child-debauching, orgy-worshipping which he and his friends, forsooth, had seen and knew of a surety. His transference to Wuchang brought him into closer contact with the men whom he had maligned. Amongst the entourage, of the Viceroy he met with a certain number of men of Western education and enlightenment. Under the iufluence of a few of these there was being started a scheme of lectures on general and scientific subjects to the under- graduates of the city college. Naturally missionaries were the only possible lecturers, and were not slow to seize the opportunity of influence thus presented. Dr. Mackay, a young medical man originally of the London Mission, had started iadependent practice among the Wuchang mandarins, and found a ready entrance into many homes, where he always judiciously bore his Christian witness. The Governor was led to call him in for a case of illness in his family, with the happy result of friendship, and the introduction of missionary ladies to the intimacy of the wife who held highest rank in his home. All these circumstances combined to give missionary life a new status in the MADE PERFECT 317 capital, and to a certain extent throughout the province. The winter which introduced the year 1896 saw multitudes of refugees camped round the capital. The failure of the crops of the previous autumn had forced into actual destitution scores of thousands who chronic- ally live on the sharp edge of want, and they came to the seat of Government to receive the public doles of matting for huts and rice for food which would keep body and soul together till the spring. Amidst these abodes of squalor and want, typhus fever, the product of want, began to lurk and prowl. Happily England, with its improved sanitation and social con- ditions, knows little or nothing of this low, foul fever, this smouldering fire which slowly consumes the corruption of which it itself is the product. The heart of the Governor's lady, doubtless made more tender by the lessons of the Life of Love Incarnate which she was learning, was touched by all the suffering around. The Intendant of Hankow, a high official who had been Secretary of Legation in Washington and was now the mainstay of the Viceroy's industrial schemes, joined her in subscribing for these poor. But when they sought to make best use of their gifts, experience of Chinese dishonesty led them to choose as their almoner no other than — David Hill, the representative of the creed and practice which had been set in its pillory of shame by the very mandarin from whose home the charity now was flowing. This was the conquest of character over calumny which opened the last year of David Hill's mission. The unfinished diary that lies before us sketches in bare outline the busy life of management, interview, charity, preaching, prayer, correspondence ; 31 8 DAVID HILL the sermons he listened to or preached are summarised and characterised; the sunshine and the cloud fleck the record as they flecked the hUls and valleys of the life. His friends tell how tired he began to look. Day after day he went amongst the poor, but he records how he was obliged by their clutching eagerness to stay away. Then with a Chinese friend he used to go round from hut to hut during the hours after midnight, waking the sleepers, thrusting money into their huts and hastily going on. There is little doubt that it was in some such service as this, when the earth was steaming with the dank vapours of the night, that the lurking typhus, the "pestilence that walketh in darkness " leaped forth from its lair upon his enfeebled frame and gripped it in the death- grip. Would he have chosen a better death than that? Proving that Christian love can conquer heathen calumny and hate, and dying in the act of seK-denying charity to the poorest and the lost,^-it was a fitting end. When Easter drew near, business of the Mission took him down to Wusueh. The Eesurrection glory shone on his last active Sunday on earth. He preached morning and afternoon to the Christian Church, taking his texts in the fifteenth chapter of the Krst Epistle to the Corinthians ; in the morning, " death, where is thy sting? grave, where is thy victory ? The sting of death is sin ; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory by our Lord Jesus Christ;" and charac- teristically going on in the afternoon with the Apostle to a claim for continuous service: "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always MADE PERFECT 319 abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord." Those who shared in the worship speak of the hallowed influence and the eager earnestness of the speaker, and of his delight over his final conversation with the members at evening prayers when they told him what they had learnt from the Eesurrection of Christ. It was Hill's intention to return immediately to Hankow, but he missed the steamer and spent a night or two in the comfortless waiting-room of the steamer office. When he did reach his little rooms at Kung Tien in Hankow he was obliged, reluctantly, at once to take to his bed. After a few days of fever the doctors thought it wise to move him from his cramped quarters up to the Mission Compound, where he could have every advantage of fresh air and constant attend- ance, and yet be carefully isolated. Loving hands tenderly nursed him. As long as consciousness con- tinued he was eager to save those around him from trouble, ready with faint smile or gesture to acknowledge each act of tendance. Then for several days the fever bore him away on fiery wings of delirium. In his unconsciousness it was the ruling passion still which ever found expression. " We want more of the Spirit's power, we can do nothing without that," he cried. Sometimes he thought he was preaching in Chinese, sometimes in English. Amidst broken sounds, un- intelligible through the physical and mental turmoil, now would emerge into distinctness the praises of the Doxology, now such an utterance as this, " The life of God in the soul is a Power and must manifest itself." Then again, his face lighted up with his radiant smile as he clasped his hands and looked upward, " Lordj 320 DA VID HILL tor all those both high and low who in every land love and serve Thee, we bless and adore Thy Holy Name ... Lord, bless that little parish. . ." And thus his soul still hovered on wings of protecting prayer round the little church he was building up in the great heathen city. The Chinese Christians came constantly to inquire of him they loved; the unemotional wept when their inquiries met only a headshake in response. So the week dragged on, delirium giving way to stupor, till Saturday April the 18th came; at 8.25 in the evening, when ia the various homes of the Mission every knee was bowed in prayer, and the Christians were gathered in the chapel, there was a momentary struggle and groan, and the loving soul of David Hill went home to Love's unclouded vision. Not long before he had written to a friend : — What a thrill of joy it gives to meet with one who has fallen in love with Jesus, to find one enamoured with Him whom we wish to love most of all. He had "fallen in love with Jesus," and now he beheld Him face to face. Surely he feU down and clasped His feet, exclaiming, " My Lord and my God ! " and entered into the joy of his Lord. A solemn hush fell on the bereaved Mission.' The Blind School carpenters worked all night to make the coffin; the worn body with the calm triumphant smile upon the face was laid in it. The Chinese passed by, crying like children, to take their last look of him who had loved them better than life. When the Tuesday morning came, a solemn service was held in the Chinese Chapel at seven o'clock, and at nine a procession of boats carried the mourners to Hankow Concession. MADE PERFECT 321 Notwithstanding the deluge of rain which poured continuously aU day, the cemetery was packed with a great silent crowd, Chinese and foreign. The repre- sentatives of the various Missions took part in the service, his oldest friends leading with quivering voice ; the music of faith rang out in the singing of " Eock of Ages," which was the last hymn he had had sung to him, the native Christians joined in " Peace, Perfect Peace," and the first great act of David Hill's life was ended. The loving service, the apostolic zeal, were taken to some other sphere where love fails not and zeal knows no let. That life is hid with Christ in God, but is manifest somewhere in God's great uni- verse, made perfect in eternal love. 21 CHAPTEE XVII LAST GLIMPSKS THE life which has been unfolded in the preceding pages is its own best commentary. It has been of set purpose that the central figure has been left to stand alone, and that the attention has not been distracted by the introduction of others. But it would be a total mistake to imagine a real isolation. Hill's sympathy of soul always won the ardent love of his colleagues, and the intimate communion he held with some of them was a large part of his life. From a memorial number of the Prayer Union Letter we make a few extracts, necessarily condensed, as affording glimpses of his relations with these colleagues, and also emphasising some social aspects of his character. The Eev. T. Bramfitt : " During those early months of my colleagueship with him he impressed me with the importance of village work, for he strongly urged me to preach in every vUlage throughout the county of Kwangchi. I accomplished perhaps a tenth of the task, but he must have preached over the whole ground; insomuch that there were few people in the whole county who did not know Li Mung Sz (Pastor Hni) and the gospel he preached. . . . " He was a noble man, a faithful pastor, and a LAST GLIMPSES 323 missionary of the apostolic type. In every phase of the Christian life, and in every department of Christian work, he was our leader and our example. His self- denying life, his loneliness, his fasting, his vigUs and his prayers, his study of the Word and his culture of his heart, his preaching and his teaching, his charity and his affection, all marked him out as one man in a generation, even amongst Christian missionaries." The Eev. T. E. North : " Few men with such strong convictions as he possessed have been able to show the same breadth of sympathy for those who held contrary views. Once he said to me, referring to one of our youngest missionaries : ' tries to carry out my wishes and to conform himself to my views more than he ought to do. It would be better for the develop- ment of his own strength of character and spiritual life if now and then he would boldly state his own opinion, and act upon it.' . . . " How helpful were his prayers ! Years ago I shrank from preaching or speaking in Chinese before him. My appointment to the Hankow circuit left me no option but to frequently stand before the Hankow congregation with Mr. Hill as one of the auditors. It was not long before I learnt there was another side to his presence — a power and freedom in preaching not so fully experienced in his absence. . . . " How kind he was to children ! The mere announce- ment of his presence in our house or garden served as a signal for an avalanche-like rush of juvenile humanity into his arms. Happy the family who could secure his presence on Christmas Day, when he seemed to become a child once more, and fling himself with characteristic enthusiasm into the children's games." 324 DA VID HILL The Eev. W. H. "Watson : " Though naturally fitted to enjoy the companionship of his countrymen, and the social pleasures of refined society, yet on his journeys he seemed to find all he needed in Chinese society, chiefly that of the illiterate and poor. . . . Both at home and on his journeys he was always accessible for private conversations. No part of his time was kept strictly for himself, and no kind of distress or need was considered out of his province. . . . " It was characteristic of Mr. Hill never to despair of men or places, but still to toil on when others were discouraged. This may have caused his work to have less immediate effect, whilst, on the other hand, it has saved some places to the mission, and only The Day will declare the effect of his patience on individual souls." The Eev. Dr. Hodge : " Others have dwelt on his invariable courtesy, his self-forgetfulness and thoughtful- ness for others, and his love for little children. Let me add two personal recollections about the last matter. Shortly before his death he invited two or three of the children of the mission to what he called a children's party. My own little girl was immensely excited by receiving a quaint note in Mr. HiU's own handwriting, saying that carriages and servants would be ready at a certain hour. The said carriages were, of course, Chinese sedan-chairs, in which Mr. Hill himself escorted them to Kung Tien. When I arrived later on to see the Dispensary patients, I found him in his guest-room romping with the children and playing skipping-rope ; he had also gladdened each child's heart by the present of a doll. When he died, one of these little ones amidst her tears said, ' I am sure we children LAST GLIMPSES 325 shall miss Mr. Hill as much as anyone, for he was our best friend, and always had a smile and a kind word for us.' Can we wonder ? " Mr. T. Protheroe : " I well remember one evangelistic journey. He was really too weak to walk, having, I learned afterwards, but recently recovered from one of his malarial attacks. Yet he declined any conveyance, anxious, as he always was, to sow the seeds of Christian truth by the wayside. We read from a booklet. Blessed he Drudgery, the story of our cheering and inspiring the poor helpless soul by the kind grasp and loving look and helpful words, ' I am your friend.' In a quiet vale we halted for a few moments, touched and inspired, and, standing, thanked God for the Great Friend Jesus, and once more resolved with tearful eyes to be His representatives to the Chinese. Later on in the day he was obliged to confess, ' I cannot finish the walk ; shall we stay here ? ' . . . " Once he had a servant in training for the work of an evangelist, who was rather proud. The servant had given over the bundle of Mr. HUl's bedding to an old man who escorted us, and showed unwillingness even partially to relieve him of his burden. It was a hot day. One word from Mr. Hill would have been sufficient, but he preferred to teach him the much- needed lesson in another way, and expressed his deter- mination to carry the load himself. ' Do let me have it,' he said ; ' I want to teach him humility.' " Mr. E. C. Cooper : " I remember once having to sleep in the same room with him. He was provided with a mosquito net, while I had none. I retired earlier than he, and had a bad time with the mosquitoes. Eventually I got off to sleep, but was awakened to find 326 DA VID HILL him just putting the finishing touches to the netting, which he had ungrudgingly taken from his own bed, and, by means of chairs and forms, had managed to noiselessly throw over me. . . . " Mr. Hill ever redeemed the time. On boats, travelling long distances or only crossing a ferry, sitting in the house or at the wayside tea-shop, meeting a man on the road — coohe, workman, or teacher — no matter when, no matter where, he was instant in season and out of season, preaching the good tidings of the Kingdom. He was as earnest and faithful with one as with a hundred, and yet, whUe he never had an idle moment, he always seemed to have time to give to anyone who had anything to ask." The Eev. E. F. Gedye : " I remember one night during the Synod he and some other missionaries were sleeping in my house. I had had a bed made up for him in a room where there was a stove, for it was winter; but whilst I was out he himself changed all the bedding, and when I came back I found he had taken his own upstairs, and was rolled up in it asleep on the floor, leaving the room that had been prepared for him for a younger missionary." Miss Parkes (now Mrs. North) : " In visiting a poor member's home, Mr. Hill and I . . . received a warm welcome ; but one little child of three screamed with fright at sight of the foreigners. With a look that irresistibly recalled the face of our Lord when blessing little children, he laid his hand on the child's head, saying, ' Do not fear.' The child looked up into the kind eyes and gentle face, smiled at once, and, taking his hand, showed no further signs of alarm." The Eev. Gr. A. Clayton, who lived with him last : LAST GLIMPSES 327 "... About ten o'clock I used to see the light of his lamp lowered, heard his footstep in the passage, and knew that the treat of the day had come. Then he would lean back in a lounge chair at his ease, and tell me the story of the day's work and troubles, and mention men and topics for which he wished our united intercessions. Then we opened our Testaments, and I read aloud to him from the original. When I had finished, , he expounded the passage in his own inimitable way, and we joined in prayer. . . . " Here in China the distribution of relief in daylight means that the distributor will be robbed. Mr. Hill therefore went out at 3 a.m. and distributed the tickets in quietude till 6 a.m. The marvellous thing to me was, that he never seemed to think his self-imposed labour entitled him to work less hard at his ordinary tasks ; nor would he allow me to assist him, on the ground that a man who was studying Chinese needed the fuU amount of rest." Eev. Gr. G. Warren : "His views on the best method of training native preachers led him to oppose any scheme for building on the model of our home theo- logical institutions. He held that the right pattern was that given by our Lord in His training of the Twelve, that the larger part of the training should be given in and by the actual performance of practical missionary work. He often used to take native Christians on a journey; at the various towns they would be able to hear him preach, and he encouraged them to say a few words. He made his journeys in short stages, so that neither he nor his pupils would be too tired to have an hour or two's Bible study in the inn at night. . . 328 DA VID HILL " I could not trust myself to attempt any description of what Mr. Hill was to us, his English colleagues. At first it was a matter of surprise that one who was so hard to himself would be so indulgent to others. Often, when he was far from well, he would work on without relaxation, and it seemed quite a hardship for him to allow anyone to ease him of labour that others could do as well as he himself. ... On one point only was he severe on his fellow-missionaries ; if he had any suspicion that any of us had been unjust, or even only just and not merciful, to a native, — whether Christian or heathen, it mattered not, — his whole nature was roused. Very few of us have escaped without receiving at some time or other a sharp letter, or, if he were able to have an interview, the most piercing look of his flashing eye, and quite a stern rebuke for what seemed even a slight error on this score. He demanded that in all our dealings with those who had offended we should always produce such a conviction of sin that the culprit should have no desire to complaiu of his judge." Eev. W. A. Cornaby : " We were talking together in Hankow as to what could be done to revive the interest in missions, when in came the mail from England. Opening a newspaper, Mr. Hill saw that Bishop Hannington had been killed. With a sudden outburst he exclaimed, ' That is what we want, — we want martyrs ! Nothing but martyrs will rouse the home Churches.' . . . " His humour came out at times in the Chinese meetings. Some of the members had grown very long- winded, and one of them, not the most satisfactory, managed one evening to break the record. With the LAST GLIMPSES 329 gravest face, the leader said, ' Brother , let us make it a rule to pray double as long at home before the meeting as we do in the meeting itself. Now, if you will pray for an hour at home, we shall be delighted for you to pray half an hour here.' A golden rule, that ! . . . "From his exhausting work in England he went back an old man. He had to admit that he could not do what he once did, yet he was very little kinder to himself than in former days. In a sermon on ' Even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many,' he spoke on his favourite subject of sacrifice for others, and drew forth the lesson that we must sell our lives dearly. At times his failing strength seemed but an incentive to crowd in all the more deeds of ministry. This was his way of selling his life dearly." Let us add a few words from letters of others who knew him. The Eev. Dr. Griffith John writes: "David Hill was a great missionary. His grasp of the fundamental truths of the gospel was firm and strong. When he spoke on these high themes he spoke as one who knew, as one who had been taught of God. His devotion to Christ was entire. To him Jesus was Lord. He might sometimes be ia perplexity as to what the Master would have him to do, but never as to whether He should be obeyed. To obey Christ was a passion with him. He was a man of prayer. It is well known that he would sometimes spend days and nights in earnest communion with God. He dwelt in the secret place of the Most High, and hence his saintly life and his great influence in dealing with men. Hence, also, his faithfulness and fearlessness in rebuking sin 330 DA VID HILL whenever and wherever he came in contact with it. He had learnt the secret of instantly and directly going to God, and of holding face-to-face communion with Him. He was an ardent student of the Bible, as the very Word of God. He loved it, fed upon it, and delighted his soul in it. "He was an indefatigable worker, capable of much physical effort and endurance. He took an interest in every department of missionary work. Whilst truly devoted to his own mission, his love and sympathy went out to all; every worthy application for help met with the heartiest response. Every mission in China felt that it had a share in him. This devolved upon him a great deal of extra work, but it also made him what he was. He might have been a devout man, and an earnest student of the Bible, without this, and we should have loved him as a saint; but he would not have been a Paul, and we should not have admired him as an apostle. " His devotion to China was very conspicuous. He felt that he had been brought to China by God Him- self; that he had been separated and called to the great work of bringing China to Christ, and that the well-being of China must be the grand aim of his life. He thoroughly identified himself with the Chinese. I never heard him speak contemptuously of either the country or its people, and no one could do so in his presence without meeting the reproving glance of his eyes. He loved the Chinese, and they knew it. They looked upon him not only as an earnest mis- sionary who was trying to introduce a new religion into their country, but as a true friend who had taken them into his heart, and who had made their happiness LAST GLIMPSES 331 his own. To the converts David Hill was an ideal shepherd. He watched over them with the utmost care, sought them in their wanderings, and entered deeply into all their trials and sufferings. Their burdens, their joys, their sorrows were his. He knew well the temptations to which they were exposed, and sympathised deeply with them. He could be stern when there was real necessity, but his general bearing towards them was that of deep compassion and thoughtful forbearance. The bruised reed he would not break, the smoking flax he would not quench. " Mr. Hill was noted for his gentle and refined manners. He was the Christian gentleman every- where and always. Whether in his intercourse with foreigners or natives, he was always polite, civil, refined. He had his strong convictions, and held them tenaciously, but always in the spirit of unfeigned meekness and true charity. Honest, gentle, generous, brave, and wise, David Hill was a perfect gentleman in every sense of the word. But he was more — he was a Christian gentleman. Over and above all these natural and acquired qualifications, there rested upon him something which lifted him far above the mere gentleman, and which those who knew him best could only recognise as the beauty of the Lord." Sir Walter 0. Hillier, K.C.M.G., writes : " My per- sonal intercourse with David Hill was confined to a brief period of ten days or so in Ping Yang Fu in the Shansi province. I made a journey through the famine districts of North China in the year 1879 to render what assistance I could in the distribution of relief, and also to report to the Committee of the China Famine Eelief Fund. 332 DA VID HILL "The intercourse I was enabled to hold on that occasion with David Hill, and the other missionaries associated with him, I considered, and still consider, as one of the great privileges of my life. The friendship then formed was continued by correspondence — fitful, it is true, but much valued by me — until a few days before his death. " Of his missionary labours and successes I am not able to speak, as they did not come under my observa- tion ; but it may be gratifying to his friends to know that — in spite of the harsh criticism of missionaries and their work that is so often, and frequently so unfairly, indulged in by Europeans in the Far East — I never heard David Hill or his labours spoken of in anything but terms of the highest respect and admiration. To me he was the type of an ideal missionary, and I have quoted him and his life scores of times in refutation of unfriendly criticism of missionaries and their work. The influence which men of his stamp — unconsciously often to themselves — exercise upon Europeans, as well as upon natives, is not perhaps properly appreciated until we have lost them. One cause, to my mind, of the distinct line of demarcation which unfortunately characterises to so large an extent the intercourse of missionaries and laymen in the Far East, is want of tolerance on the part of the former, and of sympathy, among other things, on the part of the latter. "We find in David Hill a bridge between the two. While his life was saturated, so to speak, with religious ideas and aspirations, he was absolutely tolerant ; and as he was a man of high education and refinement, — a gentle- man in the highest sense of the word, — one felt in his presence that one was not dealing with a man who LAST GLIMPSES 333 placed himself on a pedestal of lofty moral superiority ; but one who was sympathetic, liberal minded, and appreciative of the doubts and difficulties with which so many conscientious men have to struggle; while his transparently simple and self-denying life was beyond the reach of hostile criticism. For myself, I can only say that he will always hold a revered place iu my memory. I owe much to his talk, his influence, and his example." We add a few further extracts from his old friend Arnold Foster : " To attempt to tell others all that Mr. Hill was to me as a friend during his lifetime, or all that his memory is to me, would be quite impossible. Others who knew him iatimately, who felt the charm of his personality and his influence over those with whom he felt free to utter all his thoughts, will probably feel, as I do, that they can never give to others an adequate idea of the power he exerted over them. All one can do va. writing an account of him is to mention some of those characteristics of his work which everyone can understand and appreciate. " One prominent feature of his character was his intense earnestness of purpose. When he had once heard the call of God to the missionary work ia China, that work became the absorbing interest of his life. It may be said that probably he would have Hved longer if he had paid more attention to his health, and been more willing to accept advice from his friends when they urged him not to attempt work for which at the time he was physically unfit. This is very likely true, and yet perhaps the lesson most of us need to learn is not to surrender our work in good 334 DA VID HILL time to preserve our health, but rather to consider health and everything else in subordination to the claims of duty and of finishing the V70rk that God has given us to do. " It is not given to every man, when a conflict arises between the apparent claims of health on the one hand and of duty on the other, to hit exactly the right mean between over-prudence and over-rashness, but the man who prefers to run the risk of sacrificing health to duty, to the risk of sacrificing duty to health, leaves behind him an example which in these days is more rarely met with than the example of seeking to preserve health at all costs. "Another feature of Mr. HUFs character and work was his constant self-recoUectedness, — a virtue, I some- times think, that is seldom natural to any man, but is in almost all cases the result of stern self-discipline and repression, and still more of a constant recollection of the presence of God. It was partly this that made Mr. Hill uniformly on the lookout for opportunities of showing the utmost courtesy to the Chinese. The gospel of the Son of Man had taken possession of his whole soul. Few things grieved him more than to see Chinamen treated with indignity, as if they were less than men, or as if they were at best only third-class passengers on the journey of hfe, to be hustled out of the way, or kept waiting continually on the con- venience of white men. If he had always been a host, and every Chinaman had been one of his specially invited guests, he could hardly have been more gentle, courteous, and considerate to those about him, or to his Chinese fellow-travellers on steamer or native passage-boat. But amidst it all T never saw him lower LAST GLIMPSES 335 himself, either with his own coimtrymen or with Chinamen, in such a way as to invite that familiarity which breeds contempt. " Another trait in my friend's character has often impressed me deeply, and made me envious of his power. He had, to an extent I have never seen equalled, the power of getting at the best side of every man. Meeting with European and American Christians of all sorts and shades of opinion, he seemed always able at once to penetrate the shell of individual pecTiliarity which so often keeps one Christian from any near approach to fellow - Christians who hold ecclesiastical or theological opinions different from his own. With High Churchman, Presbyterian, Baptist, Plymouth Brother, or anybody else in whom there was religious earnestness and sincerity, he seemed equally at home. " Of Mr. Hill's missionary work I wUl say nothing. His biography will be from end to end the biography of a missionary. No man I have ever met or heard of had more of the true missionary spirit. I must, how- ever, say something of his English preaching. " He would never have been a popular preacher — he would never have drawn together a large crowd of miscellaneous hearers ; but for some he was an almost ideal preacher, I never listened to anyone who had a greater power to move me, nor from whose discourses, as a whole, I derived more help or instruction of the highest kind. Behind the preacher always stood the man, and in the man dwelt in rich measure the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was a close, intelligent, and earnest student of Scripture ; deeply imbued with its teaching, anxious at all times to understand its 336 DA VID HILL hidden truths. When he preached, he generally spoke from that part of Scripture which he happened to be studying for his own private edification at the time ; and for some at least of his hearers it was a rich treat to hear him quietly unfolding those treasures of divine wisdom and knowledge which he had tried to apprehend for himself, without any special intention of discoursing on them to others. " I have sometimes thought it is well for us that there are limits to the strength of the strongest and most heroic characters we ever meet amongst our fellow- men. Were it otherwise, we might accord to them a reverence which is more than should be accorded by any man to a fellow-sinner. Again, we might allow them to overawe our judgments, we might abdicate our own out of deference to theirs, or look to them in all things to do work which it is our part, not theirs, to accomplish. I have known men who were more shrewd in discernment of men's motives than Mr. Hill was, and less liable to be imposed on, men who had greater powers of organising work, men whose Christian life was more joyous, men who in other ways would have been more successful ia carrying on certain forms of missionary enterprise ; but I never met one whose spirit of consecration seemed more complete than his, whose godliness and piety seemed to me more impress- ive, or who, lookiag to his work and character as a whole, has more awakened in me a desire to have for myself such a life, such a character, and such an influence as he possessed." The story of David Hill's life is ended ; the energy and impulse of that life will never cease. Those of us who knew him gained a new idea of LAST GLIMPSES, 337 that Love which inspired his. The Chinese Christians, for whom he lived and died, were led from that self- denying life to the great Self-Denial which has opened heaven. And thus would he have wished. I have often seemed to feel his reproachful eyes upon me as I have written. " Speak not of me, but of my Master," would have been his cry. Let us merge our thought of the saint in the saint's Saviour. Those who look upon his tombstone read most fittingly of him the words that describe his Saviour : " The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.'' FEINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH tjxdw '■'H^Mi'!^\*itT':-fJf: ilTMimm^^i^.'^i 'r-ni-ffifrraffi!!?! ;;■!& ;