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An Afterword to Pastor Hsi:
A Struggle for Chinese Christianity
by Geraldine Taylor
Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1997
(click on book for ordering information)
My mother-in-law gave me the original edition of this book, published in 1900. It is the true story of an educated man of China, Hsi (pronounced shee) in the late 1800s. As many others in China at that time, Hsi was addicted to smoking opium. But when he became a Christian, Jesus Christ delivered him from his addiction. As he grew in knowledge and faith, he ached to see his countrymen likewise freed not only from the oppression of opium addiction, but from the horrors of rampant, supernatural evil. What followed throughout Hsi's life, ably documented by Mrs. Taylor, was a fierce battle for the redemption of souls and bodies enslaved by Satan. There are accounts of miracles that some will find hard to believe. But despite intense opposition and missionary meddling, Hsi persevered to see the deliverance of Jesus on a mind-boggling scale (For reference, see How They Did It).
The book impressed me deeply. Here was living proof of what Jesus could do with ONE person who was totally committed to Him--in post-biblical times, yet, when miracles aren't supposed to happen anymore. But I had questions. The events of this book had taken place a hundred years ago, across the world. How could I verify that they really happened?--that Hsi even existed? How did these missionaries just happen to show up in droves in China at that time, and why were they hated so? To find answers to these questions, and to see just how accurate this book is, I went digging. And this is what I found:
The daughter-in-law of the founder of the China Inland Mission, Geraldine Guinness Taylor worked and traveled in China as part of J. Hudson Taylor's team before temporarily retiring with her husband to Switzerland to write. There, Mrs. Taylor authored this book, originally titled Pastor Hsi: One of China's Christians, as an educational and outreach tool for the China Inland Mission. She also authored a companion volume on Hsi, a two-volume biography of J. Hudson Taylor, and at least three other books.
That Mrs. Taylor had met Hsi is beyond dispute. But the veracity of her accounts of his ministry are supported by others. In the Preface to the original volume, she wrote:
"It began on our wedding journey; when far in the heart of China we visited Pastor Hsi's own home, and spent about two weeks in his company. Both he and Mrs. Hsi travelled with us from place to place for meetings . . . and we had the opportunity of watching their lives under all sorts of circumstances. . . . At our earnest request, Pastor Hsi subsequently wrote a brief autobiography, upon which this volume, and One of China's Scholars, are based.
"Shortly afterwards he was taken to be with the Lord; and that Chinese manuscript, with my own notes made in conversation with him, became a trust that I longed to put to the best account. From various friends who had known him, much additional information was gleaned; especially from Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Hoste, Directors of the China Inland Mission, with which Pastor Hsi was connected.
"Mr. Hoste, who had known Pastor Hsi intimately and laboured with him for ten years, was kind enough to spend several days in answering questions, and supplementing the information I already possessed. . . . This long interview was recorded verbatim, supplying an additional manuscript from which to work. Mr. Hoste also put at my disposal a number of incidents he had himself recorded from time to time."1
Others unconnected with CIM left accounts of Hsi. Eva Jane Price, an American missionary killed in the Boxer Rebellion, wrote in a letter to her family:
"We had a call the other evening from a Mr. Lutley, an Englishman who is preaching in the south of this province. He had a native evangelist with him who had been a Christian for ten years. Pastor Hsi seems to be a devoted man and is doing a great deal of good. He has been persecuted on account of his belief in Christianity--has been beaten twice but he is earnest and his faith is very strong. Mr. Lutley said all the Chinese like Pastor Hsi and have confidence in him. The work is more than twenty years old there in the south of this province and they are now beginning to reap what others have sown."2
Historian Kenneth Scott Latourette, in A History of Christian Missions in China, verified:
"Pastor Hsi was a native of Shansi, a scholar who had taken the first of the three literary degrees. While in Shansi to aid in famine relief, David Hill sought to awaken interest in the Faith by prizes for the best essays on Christianity. Hsi, although not then a Christian, wrote the winning paper, and so came in touch with the Gospel. He soon became Hill's teacher in Chinese, his conversion followed (1879), and as a result of his newly found faith he was cured of the opium habit. . . ."3
Despite such a glowing success, Latourette elsewhere noted:
"When all is said for the missionary that can be said--and it is much more than is usually realized--it must also be recognized that, especially during the three and a half decades after 1860, he was often the source of great annoyance to the Chinese populace and to officialdom. His teaching, intolerant of the customary honors to ancestors, seemed to threaten the Chinese family. Religious practices which formed an integral part of . . . life were anathema to him. . . . Moreover, the missionaries' activities were often misunderstood, and the most absurd rumors about them were widely believed--for example, that in Christian orphanages and hospitals the eyes and other organs of children were extracted for medicinal and photographic purposes."4
Why such animosity? Historians unanimously point to the Unequal Treaties mentioned early in the book. "During the entire reign of Queen Victoria [1837 to 1901], opium was exported from India [which was under British rule] at the rate of half a ton every hour of the day and night; almost all of which found its way to China. Half a ton of opium means about eighteen thousand ounces, sufficient to poison outright more than thirty thousand people."4a Having forced the Chinese to accept British imports of opium with these treaties, the European-United States alliance pressed their advantage to include special protection and privileges for Western missionaries in China, even dishonestly:
"An extraordinary coup by a French missionary, Father Delamarre, granted to missionaries the right to buy and lease property in the interior of China, outside the five treaty ports opened to all foreigners by virtue of other treaties. Delamarre extended this right to missionaries alone merely by inserting it into his Chinese translation of the French treaty, although his subterfuge should have been nullified by the stipulation in the treaty that in case of any discrepancy between the two texts, the version in the French took precedence. . . . A little over forty years later Delamarre's action came back to haunt the missionary establishment when a San Francisco editor discovered the French missionary's deception at Tientsin in 1858 and charged American missionaries with being parties to 'forgery' and 'fraud' in China."5
Perhaps because of this, the British and American missionaries, who were Protestant, were less willing to take full advantage of their treaty rights than the French, who were Catholic. The abuses engendered by these treaties became legendary:
"No one dared go to law against a priest, or one of the converts; the priests were immune, like diplomats, and the converts claimed the same immunity; protected by the Church, the converts could do anything they pleased, and escape the due process of ordinary law, for they always asked protection from the Church against what they called 'pagan customs'. . . .
"Tu [a Catholic convert] was despised by the others for having 'eaten religion,' but they were afraid of him. He bought houses and land for the missionaries, arranged for interpreters and servants, getting a commission on each transaction. . . . Whenever there was a law case against a convert, Tu arranged matters, threatening or bribing the magistrates, with the power of the Bishop behind him, so that the saying in Szechuan at the time was: 'Become a Christian sheep, and the judge will do obeisance to your dung. . . .'
"It was only later that we understood it was not Christianity as such, but those who used Christianity to rob us, who were to blame."6
So it was from the start that J. Hudson Taylor decided he and his people would do it differently. Whatever he thought of riding opium's train into China, he felt convicted to take advantage of the opportunity to go. Being unwelcome guests, they were to integrate themselves as much as possible into the society they were trying to reach--they would speak the language, wear the dress, eat the food, respect the culture. First and foremost, they were to present the Gospel one on one:
"Only the Chinese could evangelize China. Only they could develop a Christian community and permeate the enormous mass of people. They would have to form their own spiritual, moral, and conceptual relationship to God in Christ, develop their own sense of how the old life could be changed into the new. They would have to state their own faith in language and deeds meaningful to their neighbors. . . .
"To preach, teach, and print the central simplicities, always for Chinese eyes and ears, and for Chinese responders, were the essential guidelines. Let the Chinese develop their own statements and applications. . . .
"Perhaps the height of accommodation was achieved by the China Inland Mission [what is now the Overseas Missionary Fellowship, publisher of this book] and other proclamationists, who considered presentation of the faith as the missionary's prime duty. They earnestly and always sought to convert individuals. . . ."7
Did it work? Not on a large scale, because of the corruption of a few and the ignorance of many missionaries. Although sincere in their purpose, many went unprepared, and persevered through means other than divine. The sense of outrage fostered among the Chinese by opportunistic Westerners culminated in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. In the 1890's, secret Chinese societies grew up in opposition to Western and Christian influences. The members of the most well-known society were called "Boxers" by Westerners because of their ceremonial exercises. In the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, this systematic opposition culminated in the slaughter of hundreds of missionaries and native Christians and the burning of houses, schools and churches. The Boxer Rebellion was immediately quashed by Allied troops, who indiscriminately massacred and looted whole cities in retribution, all in the name of Christianity.8 The horrors are not forgotten in China to this day, a hundred years later.
But occasionally the light pierced the darkness, even from the most solitary sources. Those who lived the truths they were sent to teach saw truly great things happen, as the events of this book demonstrate. Regarding one such man, David Hill, Latourette says:
"Possessed, through his father's generosity, of an independent income, he remained unmarried, lived much of the time as simply as the humbler Chinese about him, and devoted his means to the Church and to the destitute, the aged, and the blind. His unselfishness and singleness of purpose made a profound impression upon both Chinese and Europeans. It was he who won to the Faith the devoted Pastor Hsi, and it was the spell of his life that attracted to China the majority of the members of his mission. It was . . . in keeping with his career that he should meet his death (1896) in his adopted home, Central China, of typhus, probably contracted while distributing among refugees alms entrusted to him by the Governor of Hupeh."9
My research satisfied me that the book is historically accurate. Moreover, it demonstrated that such is the power of the Gospel that one individual--Hill--leading one individual--Hsi--to the feet of Jesus changed an uncountable number of lives, the effects of which are not erased even by the most heinous crimes perpetrated by the Enemy.
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Hsi (center) and a group of Chinese Christians in a photo
from the original 1900 edition of this book.
Footnotes:
1. Geraldine Guinness Taylor, Pastor Hsi: One of China's Christians (London: Morgan & Scott, 1903), vii-viii. back to text
2. Eva Jane Price, China Journal 1889-1900: An American Missionary Family During the Boxer Rebellion (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989), 80. back to text
3. Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1929), 481. back to text
4. Kenneth Scott Latourette, The Chinese: Their History and Culture, 4th rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan Co., 1968), 298-99. back to text
4a.Taylor, Pastor Hsi, p. 67. back to text
5. Stuart Creighton Miller, "Ends and Means," in The Missionary Enterprise in China and America, ed. John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1974), 262-63. back to text
6. Han Suyin, The Crippled Tree (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1965), 64-65, 67. back to text
7. M. Searle Bates, "The Theology of American Missionaries," in Fairbank, The Missionary Enterprise in China and America, pp. 142-43. back to text
8. See Suyin, The Crippled Tree, pp. 112-13; Miller, "Ends and Means," pp. 273-74; Latourette, History of Christian Missions, pp. 519-20. back to text
9. Latourette, A History of Christian Missions, p. 376. For this information, he references David Hill, Missionary and Saint by Rev. W.T.A. Barber (2nd edition, London, 1898). back to text
copyright 2003 Robin Hardy
