DAVID HILL
AN APOSTL^ i-^^ TO THF- C/
BER.D.D.
Moulton Library
Bani®r Th#ol#gl#al Seminary J
Miniature
School of
Theology Library
Edited by
REV. JOHN TELFORD, B.A.
DAVID HILL
. An^^^-^Jr^^^
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DAVID HILL
AN APOSTLE TO THE CHINESE
BY THE
REV. W. T. A. BARBER, D.D.
HEAD MASTER OF THE LEYS SCHOOL
SIXTH THOUSAND
ROBERT CULLEY
aS-3S CITY ROAD, AND 26 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.a
PKINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD..
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
PREFACE
Ten years have passed since David Hill went home to the Lord whom he loved with his whole soul. These years have witnessed some growth in the missionary conscience of the Church. But much more is needed. Methodists still require every assistance in realizing their collective and individual duty to Christ and the heathen world. David Hill's hfe is such a help. Most fitting is it that in any series of short sketches of the men of our Church whom we most desire to remember and to follow, such a man should be pictured, burning with love and missionary zeal. He broke the alabaster box to anoint with its treasure the feet of his Lord. Let the whole house be filled with its fragrance.
W. T. A. BARBER.
Cambridge,
March, 1906.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGB
I. The Making of a Missionary . 9
II. The Mission Field in China ,
III. The Missionary at Work
IV. The Missionary's Spirit .
V. The Famine
VI. The Preacher of the Mis siONARY Crusade .
VII. The General Superintendent
VIII. New Developments . • .
IX. True to the End .
Appendix ....
15 26
39 47
61
74 89
103
To the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain Tews. . . ,
To the weak I became weak, thai I might gain the weak :
I am become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some.
DAVID HILL
AN APOSTLE TO THE CHINESE
CHAPTER I
THE MAKING OF A MISSIONARY
What is it that makes a missionary ? To all the Church, through the first Christians, was given the command to evangehze the world ; why is it that to some more than others comes the call to give up all other claims and to set hfe to that one direct aim ? There are men on whom flashes the sudden blaze of enlightenment, brighter than the noonday sun, which instantaneously shows them the path of duty hitherto undreamed of. More frequently a man is the product of his age, the expression of the thought of
lo David Hill
his family and generation, the result of his moral and spiritual heredity. It is no wonder that David Hill was a missionary. He was a Methodist ; he was a York Methodist. His father, whose Christian name he bore, in his young manhood gave all his savings, nearly £ioo, to foreign missions. His saintly mother's brother, Richard Burdsall Lyth, was an early medical missionary in Fiji. His mother's grandfather, ' Dicky ' Burd- sall, was one of Wesley's itinerants for a time, and when he settled in York * sold nails to the glory of God,' and preached in village chapels over half Yorkshire. In 1840, when Da\4d HiU was bom, foreign missionary enthusiasm was thrilling through all the Wesleyan churches in York. AH its children were taught to collect for this work, and he and his brother, by the time he was twelve years old, had more than eighty subscribers on whom they called each quarter. The robust sense and intelligent spirituahty of the sturdy Yorkshire father, the gentle and deep piety of the self-denjdng mother — who died before her son was sixteen years old — the vigorous and practical rehgion of a healthy church, expressing its experience in
The Making of a Missionary ii
words and living it out, — all these shaped the future missionary.
The boy was full of merriment and witty repartee, active, well-grown, and vigorous. He shared with the sons of other citizens the advantages of a good classical and mathe- matical education at the ancient St. Peter's School of the old city. Along with this healthy ph3^sical and mental endowment there was in him a deep perception of the spiritual. Religious experience, throughout life, was with him the record of a reahty. From the time he was twelve years old he sat in Mr. Wright's society class and Ustened to what his elders told of confhct or triumph, riches or poverty, of religious hfe. On a Sunday evening soon after his mother's death he knelt at a penitent form in Centenary Chapel, and came away with a face transfigured and radiant with the new sense of peace. The ordinary activities of a Christian youth in Sunday school and tract district were followed by village preaching, and ere long it was mariifest that he was called to the ministry. After due testing, the Wesleyan Conference of 1861 accepted him for that work. It is characteristic of
12 David Hill
the diffidence which marked him through Ufe that he did not venture to choose be- tween the spheres at home or abroad, and it was the Church which, by the voice of its responsible counsellors, settled that he was to be a foreign missionary.
All the past had prepared for this designa- tion. Now that the Voice of God, as he believed, had definitely focussed his life on the conversion of the heathen, he bent all his energies to specially fitting himself for it. The three years of ministerial training at Richmond College were formative in the highest degree. Alfred Barrett and John Lomas, Benjamin Hellier and William Fid- dian Moulton, were men to help a willing student to his best. Every true missionary is conscious that he needs the very best mental and educational outfit obtainable. The Church and the individual alike must give the very best to its greatest work of winning new nations to Christ. Mr. Hill gave himself, heart and soul, to mental im- provement, and especially to the study of the inner meaning of Holy Writ. He formed the habit, never afterwards changed, of minutely studying his Greek Testament every day.
The Making of a Missionary 13
The whole curriculum at Richmond was a judicious blending of the academic with the practical. Lectures occupied four days of the week and claimed strenuous attention and preparation ; Sunday was generally spent in supplying the pulpits of surrounding churches ; one week-day was given mainly to evangelistic and pastoral work in the neighbouring town of Kingston. The pic- ture gained of this period of life is that of a vigorous young man, modest and even diffident, warm in friendship, and very fond of little children. He is capable of much breezy, hearty laughter, and enjoys humour; but he is stern with himself, rigid in early rising, keenly watchful against any triumph of flesh over spirit. He has no doubts as to the existence of the Evil One, and wages war with him, both for the welfare of his ov/n soul and that of others. To other men he is generous in appreciation and warm in admiration, though not without discrimina- tion.
So passed three years, enriched with the love of many friends, till the course was complete.
The Wesleyan Missionary Society had
14 David Hill
recently determined to develop its China Mission. Josiah Cox, after eight years in Canton, had searched out a new field of opportunity at Hankow, one of the newly opened ports up the Yangtsze, and had been joined by Dr. F. Porter Smith for medical work. To strengthen this new mission David Hill and William Scarborough were chosen. All York Methodism seemed to be gathered in Centenary Chapel on October 25, 1861, when the two were or- dained. The prayers of the church gathered round the son it had borne, loved, trained. The children of the Sunday school promised to pray for him daily ; the members of his society class never failed in the same great gift and duty. Forth from the midst of the warmest family affection he went, the free and proud gift of his father. Henceforth Central China and York were bound together by spiritual forces of prayer and faith, daily doing God's work.
CHAPTER II
THE MISSION FIELD IN CHINA
There is something mysterious, both repellent and attractive, about the vast Chinese nation crowding with its countless multitudes the far rim of the world. For millenniums it has been self-contained and self-sufficing. It possessed civilization, hterature, art while the West was still bar- barous. The wonderful sixth century before Christ gave China, as it gave to other Eastern lands, its great teacher. Confucius, the tjrpical Chinese, focussed in himself the lights of earlier sages, and by the dignity of his influence stereotyped the nation's re- ligious views. The system which for a thousand years has given mandarinates for skill in writing essays on the Books of the Sages has set these Books permanently as an all-sufficient spiritual and mental outfit for man, and has encased the Hterary class
IS
1 6 David Hill
in a security of social aristocracy and super- cilious self- content which makes the appeal of a foreign religion specially unattractive.
During the nineteenth century intercourse with Western nations has been one long friction ; each step allowing trade and residence has been taken unwillingly.
When, fifty years ago, the Wesleyan Methodist Church proposed to extend its missionary work from the Canton province 'in the south, a succession of shattering blows had opened the country but had closed many hearts. The memories of the humiliations of the second war with Great Britain were still fresh. The better section of the rulers of the country bitterly associated the name of England with opium, and were streng- thened in their opposition to foreign imports, religious or material. The great T'ai P'ing rebellion had been more or less associated with the name of the Christian Bible. Its leader — half-fanatic, half-rogue — had used it, especially the books of Joshua and Judges, to justify the smashing of idols and the unre- lenting destruction of the mandarins. He had published an edition of the New Testa- ment in v/hich he declared himself to be the
The Mission Field in China 17
Son of God, while one of his comrades was the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ was his great elder brother. The rebeUion was crushed, but all this did not make the Sacred Name and the Cross less of an offence among the people. On the other hand, the terrible woes attendant on the rebellion had softened men's hearts. Ten millions of Chinese are said to have perished during its course. Hankow, the great commercial centre at the junction of the Yangtsze and the Han, had thrice been given over to pillage ; and, with its three-quarters of a miUion inhabitants, had one single house alone left standing. Thus new chances were made for the gospel of the consoling Christ.
Let us centre our attention on one young man as type, prosperous and of good family, Chu Sao Ngan by name. His business was ruined, his home pillaged, his parents had disappeared, his wife had killed herself, his child was dead of starvation. For him, as for many others, life seemed to have nothing of desire left, and he was meditating giving up its pleasures and entering a Buddhist monastery. One day, a few months after the port of Hankow was opened, in his sad
2
1 8 David Hill
walk up the street, he was attracted into an open hall, where one of the newly arrived foreigners was preaching. The words that fell upon his ears were, ' Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh.' ' Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.' It was the message he needed ; Christ, the helper of the downcast, came in and won His victory : Chu Sao Ngan was the first convert in Central China. When Josiah Cox came to Hankow, Griffith John introduced to him the young Chinese, who thus became his teacher, and subsequently was for many years the only ordained native minister of the Wesleyan Church in Central China. Thus, conflicting currents were flowing stormily through the great inert life of the heart of China — currents towards and against the new gospel. It was into such a vast, fresh world that young David Hill entered with a rich inheritance of spiritual experience, a profound belief in prayer and the Unseen, an enthusiasm for the coming of Christ's kingdom, an ardent love for men and a passion for their souls. The long sailing voyage of five months in the Para- matta, which had been the opportunity for
The Mission Field in China 19
much Christian work among the crew, came to an end at last on April 2, 1865, and the young recruits were warmly welcomed by Mr. Cox and Dr. Porter Smith.
It had needed but little insight to guide the Society to choose this centre for mis- sionary work. At this point the Yangtsze, six hundred miles from its mouth, is a mile broad, and in summer bears on its bosom ocean-going steamers. The Han joins it, bringing the shipping of a thousand miles of inland navigation : hence an immense mart, where converges the commerce of all Central China. In the northern of the corners formed by the waterways lies Hankow, the trading centre, with a ' con- cession * at one end where foreign merchants live. On the opposite side of the Han is Hanyang, the capital of the prefecture, while across the river lie the eight miles of crenellated wall which surround Wuchang, the seat of the Viceroy and the capital and centre of administration for the province of Hupeh, an area larger than England and Wales. A million residents give sufficient material for work ; beside that, in the course of the year many hundreds of thousands of
20 David Hill
business men from the far corners of the empire pass through Hankow, while all the mandarins expectant of office throughout the province reside in Wuchang.
It was clear that, whatever the chances of the future might be, such a site could be nothing other than of great importance. The years which have intervened since the London and Wesleyan Missionary Societies settled there have made it the terminus of trunk lines of railway, joining it with Pekin in the north and Canton in the south, so that its outlook is more influential than ever.
When Hill arrived no single baptism had taken place in the Mission. After three miles of steady walking through the narrow streets and endless jostling throngs he reached the mission premises. Half a dozen rooms were ready, and here the two new- comers and Mr. Cox made their home. A preaching-hall and dispensary formed their complete outfit for work ; but this small apparatus was quite as much as the small staff could use.
The new missionaries fitted at once into their bachelor estabUshment, gleefully taking their turns at housekeeping, instructing raw
The Mission Field in China 2i
Chinese servants in the mysteries of dusting and cooking, developing skill in darning and button- sewing, and, above all, toiling day by day at the stiff task of the language. Hill was at some disadvantage here through lack of musical ear. The famous Chinese aspir- ates and tones vary entirely the meanings of the monosyllabic words, according to subtle alterations of sound which are at first very difficult to catch and reproduce. Inas- much as there is no connexion between the printed sign and the sound, such as is gained by spelling, the art of reading is entirely distinct from that of speaking and the labour of acquisition is more than doubled. Add to this the fact that literary style uses a language as different from the spoken as is Csedmon's English from our own, and the task of becoming a scholarly missionary is formidable indeed.
The close contact with a Chinese involved in the daily lessons appealed to the young missionary as a chance from God. He was specially drawn out to pray that a man might be given him who might be brought to Christ and be a power for evangelizing his own people. What later years revealed
22 David Hill
gives us a glimpse of the way God answers prayer. Just at the time that David Hill was praying, a graduate named Low was thinking of going to a distant province to take up a tutorship. Ere deciding he went to a temple in order to consult the idol. On drawing the lot and referring to the oracle, he was bidden to ' wait a while till he should hear of the Great Creator, and should find rest and peace.' He waited accordingly, heard of the foreigner's need of a teacher, gained the post, and after a few months recognized in the Scriptures he had to read with his pupil the true revelation of the Great Creator. So it is. A fervent soul prays ; and, right in the heathen temple, in the presence of the idol itself, God's Spirit answers, till the slow and sure process of His action changes the heart of man.
The unremitting toil of the language was relieved by not infrequent preachings on the British and American ships lying in the river. Everything was being directed to a division of the field by which the great city of Wuchang should be assigned to Mr. Hill as his parish. But there were sad interrup- tions before this purpose could be accom-
The Mission Field in China 23
plished. The Yangtsze valley, with its vast deposits of alluvial mud, is exceedingly malarious. Its very hot, damp summers, followed by autumns often made pestiferous by drying fioodlands, are generally most testing to new-comers.
Mr. Hill speedily began to show signs of weakness, was frequently laid up, constantly unable to work, until it was manifest that he must have change. Before the end of the year he was obhged to take a voyage down the Yangtsze and to the coast ports of Canton, Amoy, Swatow, and Ningpo. His diary is full of intelHgent and keen observation of men and things, but, above all, of mission- ary methods and success. He returned much improved, but the distressing symp- toms were renewed, and ere the summer came he was forced to go to Japan. He had lost a third of his weight, and his Chair- man, Mr. Cox, in considerable alarm, went with him to watch over him. Happily the change did its work thoroughly, and before the end of 1866 he was back in Hankow, henceforth a conqueror over his ailments.
His stay in Japan was most interesting, as that country was just entering on its new
24 David Hill
Westernizing career. Sir Harry Parkes, H.B.M.'s minister in Yedo, anxious to help the Japanese in their new course, and think- ing that Mr. Hill would never stand the Chinese climate, sought to induce him to take charge of a college in Japan for teaching English. But the proposal was at once put aside. The more direct evangehsm appealed to him at that time too strongly to allow of any other method, and, though letters from Sir Harry followed him to China with further proposals, he continued in adherence to his first love. He set himself diligently to his interrupted study of the language, at the same time seeking an entrance into his desired city of Wuchang. He was at length suc- cessful in securing a small house in a quiet street off the main business-artery of the city. A small hall which could contain perhaps thirty people occupied the centre, while two tiny rooms on each side were to afford living-space for two missionaries. Roughest native carpentry left plenty of chinks and air ; rats were abundant ; two or three chairs and a table were thought sufficient in the way of furnishing ; but th« young missionary was eagerly proud of his
The Mission Field in China 25
new home and his new work. He took possession of the city for Christ, This is the entry in his diary : * Now with Wuchang before me I teel much my need of a close walk with God and a mighty faith in Him, that these small and feeble beginnings may but the more gloriously magnify His power whose strength is made perfect in weakness.'
CHAPTER III
THE MISSIONARY AT WORK
When David Hill moved over to Wuchang and occupied his tiny native house he could talk but httle Chinese, and there was but scant native help available. Dr. Porter Smith came over once a week for dispensary work, and the waiting patients gave oppor- tunity for conversation or exhortation. On other days the doors of the guest-hall were thrown open, and either Mr. Hill or some visitor from the Hankow mission addressed any passers-by who might be attracted by curiosity to enter. The considerable number drawn thither by novelty soon dwindled down. But few seemed attracted by the spiritual message of the preacher. For many months the only attendants at the Sunday services were the teacher and the servant. It was some little time before even 26
The Missionary at Work 27
these were baptized. The eager soul of the young missionary evidently scarcely realized the human unlikelihood of speedy results. He writes in his journal : ' We have been now four months in Wuchang and have not gathered a single soul. O God, is there not a cause ? And is there not need of earnest heart-searching on this account ? First, my feebleness in the language is undoubtedly one reason. This can only be overcome by continued hard work. Second, a want of closer sympathy with the people round about is, I think, another. They all suspect, many dislike, and some detest the foreigner ; how to remove this and exhibit a more kindly feeling, a Christlike tenderness and sympathy, is a difficult problem. Access to their homes is in a great measure impossible. Relief of the poor, the genuine needy cases, is difficult to accomplish, inasmuch as there is so much deceit and lying practised even for a single cash amongst all classes. Indis- criminate bestowment of charity is of very questionable benefit on this account. For this loving sympathy I must pray more earnestly, as well as for means to develop it. Third : But the great want is the gift of the
28 David Hill
Holy Ghost. Thank God He has not alto- gether left us ; we do feel again and again His inward working, and witness it in one or two, but the Pentecostal awakening we have not had. Oh for the coming of God the Holy Ghost amongst us ! Fourth : Ano- ther cause may be the but partial attention to the means of prayer and fasting. There- fore, I give myself unto prayer, and would look to the fasting, too, more regularly/
The work continued but slowly, and even when he was joined by the Rev. F. P. Napier, a cheerful and sensible comrade of his Rich- mond days, he writes bitter things against himself because of the dead weight of heathen indifference around him. His journal con- stantly laments his sloth — when he did not rise at six for prayer and meditation ; his self-indulgence — in meals composed of rice and eggs and such simple food. He ever searched first into his own life for causes of the stagnation of the work of God. Mean- while the steady routine of conversation, preaching, bookselling, dispensing, went on, and once in every few months there is the joy of recording a baptism. It became increasingly clear that for any extended
The Missionary at Work 29
work a more public site was absolutely necessary. The soul-sickening delays in the purchase-negotiations, and, when they had been completed, in overcoming the factious objections of the mandarins, so reacted on Hill, once more left solitary through Napier's marriage and removal to Hankow, that he grew morbid, imagined that the Chinese around him were in league to blacken his name, and felt himself the centre of the opposition of the Evil One.
The imagination of the Home Churches often fails to realize the intense strain and loneliness of its missionaries. David Hill was of an exceptionally social and loving nature, and home, wife, child, would have meant more to him than to most. Often in his journal and letters do we find the question of marriage referred to ; always it is the effect on the work that is the deciding consideration. Gradually he came to the clear conviction that he was called to a special hfe of evangeHsm in which celibacy W£LS of great advantage. It is when we read of his gloom and self-reproach in Wuchang that we realize what this decision cost him. One of Mr. Hill's letters says : * What a thrill
30 David Hill
of joy it gives to meet with one who has fallen in love with Jesus, to find one ena- moured with Him whom we wish to love most of all ! ' Such love was his ; precious, but costly.
Five years of such work in Wuchang saw the slow gathering of a church of sixteen members, and the building of a mission-house and chapel on the main street. His friend Napier had lost his young wife ; and, after himself lying at death's door, had been forced to return, permanently enfeebled, to Eng- land. Mr. Hill had, therefore, been obliged to continue alone. He made repeated evan- gelistic journeys among the multitudinous villages and hamlets scattered along the Yangtsze and its lakes and affluents. A few heard the word gladly, and gradually here and there was to be found the nucleus of the churches of the future. In op-e such neighbourhood a Christian was oppressed, and the district magistrate, when appealed to, rudely refused aid, and expressed ig- norance of treaty rights. An accidental mention of the circumstance led to its com- munication to H.B.M. Minister in Pekin, and subsequently to the dismissal of the erring
The Missionary at Work 31
official The effect on the countryside of this evidence of influence was immense, and a number professed desire to become Christians. Such times are the peril of the Church. Care must be taken to keep out those who come from unworthy motives, and yet the opportunity must not be lost for showing what the gospel is and does. Mr. Hill was sent down to Kwang Chi and Wusueh to foster the new work, leaving Wuchang to the charge of Mr. Cox, newly married and returned from furlough.
Wusueh is a thriving mart on the Yang- tsze, one hundred and twenty miles below Hankow and thirty miles above Kiu Kiang. The region of the new Mission centred round its county town, Kwang Chi, twenty miles inland from Wusueh. The main body of inquirers came from a village named Li Mung Chiao. It seemed clear that the stage of development required constant itineration, and for the next six years Hill perpetually preached throughout the county. It was a pleasure to him to have the virgin soil of an untried field, where he was not bound by any previous organization, but could follow out his own ideas. He endeavoured to
32 David Hill
realize the New Testament ideal of mission- ary life. He lived in two rooms of a little house in Wusueh, expounding the Scriptures and principles of Christianity to any that would Hsten, and riding on his pony through a circuit nearly a hundred miles wide, preaching in all the villages through which he passed.
From an old notebook we transcribe what he heads : Principles to guide me in Mission Work.
1. All aggressive work I enter into to be the expression and development of the kingdom of God within. What inward Hfe demands, that do ; what conduces to holi- ness, to a completer imitation of Christ, that follow up, and thus Hve in the Spirit — e.g. work suggested when at prayer, and the thought of which is attended with enlarge- ment in prayer — that go in for.
2. By personal intercourse with inquirers seek to stamp upon them all the life of Christ which I possess, thus making them a reproduction of myself, as I am to be a re- production of the Lord Christ. This, when attained, will put me in a position to devolve further aggressive work on them for the
The Missionary at Work 23
accomplishment of the same in others and by them, and go on in this way extending the kingdom of God.
3. Lay all plans so as to develop and foster that personal faith in the Unseen, the Eternal, in God, which I press on others. If this principle requires the disposing of all personal effects, do so. Ever have on hand some work demanding this.
4. Throw myself as much as possible upon my fellow-men, native or foreign, Christians or not, so as to throw them on their own consciences. Let that be their condemnation when they injure me, and their commienda- tion, or at any rate some part of it, when they aid me. If this involves my receiving from them more than I otherwise should, receive it.
5. Exercise extreme simplicity in my manner of life, in food, dress, expenditure, &c., making need the rule of desire, as it is the limit of promise, attesting by this that there is something of greater value to me than the enjoyments of this life.
6. Let evangelistic work be accompanied by benevolent activity to the physical wants of men so long as I have it in my power to
3
34 David Hill
do so. Go on spending and being spent for others as God opens my way, even to the disposal of all personal property. Let me do all I can to the bodies and souls of men, remembering that ' first that which is natural, then that which is spiritual ' is generally the order of God.
7. Try our Lord's plan of seeking out the worthy in promulgating the gospel in the first instance, then proclaiming it to the promiscuous crowd ; first deal personally with the few, then publicly with the masses.
8. Seek to deliver the gospel to men ac- cording to their ability to receive it, as God has revealed it to the world, requiring moral change to answer to the measure of revela- tion, expecting the teaching of the incarna- tion and death of the Son of God to bring men to the fullness of the measure of the stature of Christ.
9. Avoid all that fosters reliance on the power of the State in myself and the natives in regard to the spread of Christ's kingdom. Practise and teach suffering and patience rather than an appeal to the civil power.
10. Seek to understand native Hfe and customs as thoroughly as possible, and, in
The Missionary at Work 35
all matters that I possibly can, conform to the native manner of life. Co-operate when- ever and wherever possible with the natives in their charities, and seek out plans by which to do this.
The question of the right use of money became a vital one during this period of life. His father's letters told more and more of the longing to see him again, and betrayed the consciousness of waning health. Hill was weighing the question as to a return to England on furlough, when one day, on his return to his Wusueh rooms, he found the black-edged letter telling of the loved father's death. His hero was gone. It was his father's approval, his judgement, which had been the test for action. David Hill used to tell how, in the first year in China, when bathing, he sank, and sank, and sank again. When he was about to give up, the thought flashed into his mind, * Whatever would father say at my getting drowned in this useless way before ever I have preached in Chinese ? ' Whereupon he made one more struggle, and was rescued. His father had repaid the Missionary Society the income they had given for the first two years, and
36 David Hill
since then had kept his son as an honorary worker. His death put a considerable amount of money in the missionary's hands, and the burden of its proper use weighed hea\aly on him. Hudson Taylor, when asked his ad\'ice, pointed to the ' rich young man ' in the Gospels, and urged a Hke immediate renunciation. But Da\'id Hill's own con\'ictions pointed him to a more difficult road, in which all money was regarded as a gift needing constant and careful stewardship. He hved on the abso- lute minimum of need, often at the rate of two or three pence a day, giving aU his income and much of his capital to the work. He recognized the perils of gathering roimd him those who would come for the loaves and fishes, but he dehberately took the risk, considering that he was following in Christ'b steps, and manifesting the Christ-hfe.
Among the \'illagers of Kwang Chi county he had many disappointments; but some remained faithful, and Httle churches were formed at six or seven centres. One of those who came at first from unworthy motives was Liu Tsow Yuin. He soon found that his hopes of lawsuit help were
The Missionary at Work 37
vain, but was attracted by the life he saw lived before him, was convinced, converted, baptized. WTien a chapel was built at Kwang Chi he became the honorary chapel- keeper, scrubbing and cleaning ^\ith his own hands wdthout pay. After a while he built in his own village in Tai-tung-shiang a chapel with preacher's rooms attached, and gave it to the Society for the continuance of the work of God. Finally, he went home to his reward, leaving behind him a happy witness of Christ's power to save. From such human centres the church life grew and multiplied itself. The needs of the increasing churches were in due course supphed by young colleagues : first the Rev. Joseph Race, then the Rev. Thomas Bramfitt, who came to share \vith him. In such colleagueship some of the special beauties of Hill's charac- ter shone out. His asceticism was for himself. Others might not feel called to such a pitch of self-denuding ; he never judged them. His possession of and use of money in helping the poor seemed to some too dangerous an experiment ; he accepted the divergence of point of view, and his friendship was unimpaired.
38 David Hill
So, meditating on the deeds and sayings of the Acts of the Apostles, David Hill journeyed, preached, helped, healed, lived, possessing that mind which was in Christ, who emptied Himself that others might be filled
CHAPTER IV
THE missionary's SPIRIT
Let us attempt to realize the picture of the missionary at his itinerant work.
A coohe is hired to carry the bedding, with any other of the impedimenta necessary, and the party is completed by the company of some attendant, either domestic or evangelistic. There are no roads. A ' great road ' is a path two or three feet wide, with a deep rut in the middle made by the countless wheelbarrows, by means of which the heavy traffic is carried on. Other roads, infinitely curving, are simply the well-trodden mud heaped up between the rice-fields. Walking is the quickest and pleasantest mode of pro- gression ; and, save in the hottest weather, quite safe. It is a delight to leave behind the narrow, evil-smelling streets of the town. The fresh air and bright sunshine ; the variegated colours, like patchwork, here of
39
40 David Hill
crops — rice, millet, wheat, indigo, rape — yonder of the broad yellow Yangtsze, far away of blue lakes flecked with white sails, — all these invigorate and delight. The passing coolie, balancing burdens on his shoulder- pole, the barrow-man, the country traveller, are greeted and drawn into conversation. Ere long a hamlet is reached, and at the door of the teashop the stranger sits down, while the cups and their farthing's worth of tea are set out on the rough table. Round him gather the children and the old men, more shyly the women. Taking out some little book, or using some passing sight as his starting-point, he talks in friendly and explanatory fashion of the love of the Creator, His claim to service and worship, the folly of idolatry. Multitudes of questions as to the missionary's clothing, his appear- ance, his country, have to be patiently answered, and friendly relations established for a future basis of intercourse. Then, after half an hour's talk, and perhaps the selling of a few booklets, the low bows of Chinese ceremony are exchanged, and the villagers left talking of this break in their monotony. So on from village to village.
The Missionary's Spirit 41
or through towns, smaller or greater, the missionary walks the whole day. Sometimes in a town he is beset by eager curiosity, which crowds, and pushes, and grows rough ; occa- sionally he is hustled or stoned ; sometimes a scholar will attempt by scorn or argument to defend his countrymen from pernicious influence, and will urge him to depart. Sometimes religious men will tell of their attempts after righteousness, and will impart their methods, or, more rarely, ask after the stranger's. Often the afflicted will bring their sore eyes or aching limbs, their sickening eruptions, or tumours, or leprosies, with requests for medicines, which in the simpler cases are freely given. Occasionally the missionary is called to save a would-be opium suicide ; once in a while to revive a dead man, for great and vague is the fame of foreign medical skill.
Towards nightfall the attendant looks out for an inn as shelter. There it is — a rough shanty, open to the road, with earthen floor and no privacy beyond a wattle-and-daub partition off a comer. An Englishman would never dream of stabling his horse in it, but it is all the accommodation the mission-
42 David HM
ary will find for the night. Coarse rice and a little vegetable — appetised, if he is lucky, by a httle egg or fish — svUl be the food. The neighbours gather in to watch the foreigner ply his chopsticks, and offer the tired man an added congregation when his meal is over. To them he talks till late into the night, when the impatient innkeeper drives them out, and sets up and bars the shutters. If the missionary is particular, he will not He on the floor by the side of his cooHe, but will have a door taken off its pivot- hinges and set across two trestles. If he is fortunate enough to have a hght, he pulls out his Greek Testament, meditates on the mind of Christ, and WTites dowTi his comments ; then he climbs upon his trestle-bed and composes himself to slumber, while the rats scurry and the bats fly about on the open roof above him, shaking dowTi dust and vermin. But he is tired and sleeps well, till the crowing of the cocks on the rafters and the noises of animals sharing his shelter wake him \^dth the dawn. When he rises the friendly neighbouring world comes in to watch him wash and dress and eat. Then he pays his sixpence and goes on his road.
The Missionary's Spirit 43
So day after day, till the round is ended and the comparative peace and comfort of his modest home is reached. Thus he sows the seed in journey after journey, till here and there it springs up, and the inquirer receives him. The careful nursing of the tender young churches follows ; and slowly, slowly, the result of years is seen in httle gatherings of peasants whose narrow outlook has been broadened into the great horizons of God's love. It is a rough and trying hfe, often discouraging, but to one with the perspective of faith intensely, absorbingly interesting.
Such itinerating evangelism always lay nearest to Mr. Hill's heart. In later years, when he was burdened with the cares of chairmanship and general superintendency of the District, and was largely tied in the great central cities, he loved to get away into the country, and many a time went walks hundreds of miles long, all over the central section of the province. It was in order to be free for this that he came to the conclusion that he must forgo marriage. It was for this that he adopted the Chinese dress, sha\'ing the front part of the head and
44 David Hill
plaiting the queue. He sought to follow the apostle; and, in order to save the Chinese, he became like unto the Chinese. The wearing of the Chinese dress involved, of course, the using of the Chinese punctilious and elaborate code of manners, and generally the eating of Chinese food. Much is to be said on both sides as to the advisability of such assimilation. Certain it is that David Hill succeeded in attaining an unsurpassed closeness of friendship ^^'ith those among whom he labomred. His deeds of charity hke\\d5e recommended him to the practical rehgious sense of the community, and he was known far and wide as a doer of virtuous deeds. He dehberately worked, as far as possible, along with native charitable or- ganizations, claiming for such work, imper- fect and unenhghtened in motive though it might be, the beginnings of that which finds its crowTi in Christianity.
This exemphfi.es his whole attitude to- wards the Chinese creeds. Along with his deep-souled loyalty to Christ, he went about always expecting to find traces of the work of God's Holy Spirit, often among those who knew Him not, and a soul thus attuned
The Missionary's Spirit 45
caught His subtle hannonies when grosser ears heard nothing but the monotone of heathenism. He had the first great gift of a missionary — spiritual imagination, and set himself earnestly to understand the position and aspirations of those with whom he dealt. Repeatedly he had friendly and appreciative intercourse \^^th leaders of the Buddhist re\'ival, or votaries of ascetic and other sects which were seeking after truth.
Among his fellow-countr^Tnen he acted in a similar spirit. Too frequently in the East the mis5ionar\- is altogether apart from the European residents. His intense occu- pation with his work gives him httle time for social intercourse. The Englishman, too often careless about rehgion, interprets the missionary's aloofness as condemnation, and resents it. The result is a distrust and dislike which finds expression in contemptu- ous tales and a professed disbehef in the missionar^-'s motive. Mr. Hill was well known on the river-steamers ; and, amidst the random talk of the saloon, was always honourably excepted from criticism. Many a ship's officer found himself asking for spiritual ad^-ice ; many a loose-hving man
46 David Hill
was checked by a wise word which never gave offence. His friends can tell of cases when some young fellow who, in that land of fiery temptation, was taking the first downward step towards hell, received a visit from this man of earnest face and loving eyes, and by him was brought back, saved, yet so as by fire. David Hill followed Christ, and all the world, irreligious as well as religious, heathen as well as Christian, believed in him.
CHAPTER V
THE FAMINE
Six years passed in continuous work in the Wusueh district, broken only by a visit to Shanghai in 1877 for the first General Conference of China Missions. But events were already taking place which were to make a great change in Mr. Hill's life. We must turn away from the well-watered Yangtsze Valley to the province of Shansi, in the north, where there are no rivers of any size. Four hundred miles from the coast runs a range of considerable hills, shutting in the pro\'ince from the east ; formidable mountain ranges running east and west further separate the southern section. A succession of good years had so developed internal resources that Shansi was known as one of the richest provinces of the empire, and to this day its merchants are famous everywhere for their success as bankers.
47
48 Da^id Hill
Long prosperity had made the authorities careless, and the pubhc granaries had become depleted of grain. The soil is of the formation known as loess, which when watered is very fertile, but, being exceedingly porous, allows the" moisture to drain away quickly. Hence, when there came about an almost entire cessation of rainfall in 1876, the crops soon withered up, and when the drought continued during the two following years the people were reduced to an appalling condition of misery. The Government re- cognized its responsibility, and orders were given for the import of grain and the alle- viation of distress. But there was added the tragedy of difficulty of transport. The only roads from the coast were paths by difficult passes over the mountains, and subsequently by cuttings through the friable loess, scoured out by the winds to a depth of fifty or even more than a hundred feet, smothered in sand, and too narrow to allow of the passing of two carts. Great stocks of grain brought from the fruitful harvests of other parts of the empire lay waiting on the quays at Tientsin, but Shansi had to starve because the food could only so slowly
The Famine 49
be transported. Thus in November, 1877, The Pekin Gazette reported : ' In southern Shansi there remains neither the bark of trees nor roots of herbs to be eaten ; the corpses of those who have perished by starvation are on every wayside ; no less than three or four milHons of people are reduced to absolute want.' The drought continued till five of the neighbouring pro- vinces were more or less famine-stricken. When information came to hand missionaries at once bestirred themselves. Arnold Foster, Mr. Hill's closest friend at Hankow, went to England to stir up the sympathies of Christendom ; Timothy Richard went to the scene of famine. Now came the new horror of the intense cold of winter. The whole of the northern seaboard of China is ice-bound for from four to five months ; the sufferings of the anaemic, thinly clothed wretches who had struggled through a year's hunger can be barely guessed.
The pitiful heart of David Hill, ever eager to live out the practical mercy of the Life of Christ, leaped at this call to action. He drew largely from his capital, and went on board the first steamer that ventured to
4
50 David Hill
Tientsin after the winter's ice. Thence under a Government escort, he, with two others, took the twenty days' journey inland, carrying on pack-mules three-quarters of a ton of lump-silver. This was the most portable form of currency. Christendom in all sent a splendid gift of £50,000, almost the whole of which had thus laboriously to be carried as silver bullion — a total weight of nearly six tons ! Some who bore this relief were repulsed by the suspicions of the ofhcials, but ere long the obvious love of the offering won its way, and the mission- aries were frankly and warmly welcomed. Timothy Richard was already in the capital, Tai-yuen-fu, and gladly received them, but within a week one of the new-comers died of the famine-fever which brooded over the stagnant land.
It needed courage and faith to face the daily scenes of distress. Along the roads haggard skeletons were staggering about with glaring eyes and twitching hands ; then a sudden puff of wind would blow them over, too weak ever to rise again. In the homes was heard the wail of starving children and despairing women ; then there came
The Famine 5 1
the silence. Here one would come upon a huge pit filled with the lean, naked bodies of men and women piled up indiscriminately. Everywhere the dead lay by the side of the living, who were too weak or apathetic to bury them, and the stench spread putrid fever around. Dogs gnawed the corpses, and cannibalism was not uncommon. Women in their agony were known to change children and devour the flesh; children were sold by the thousand, and slave-buyers from a distance found multitudes of willing victims. The death-rate in a single year rose as high as 73 per cent.
The Government had an immense ma- chinery, but it resulted in the distribution of only two pints of rice a month to each person ; and even in these times of horror the rapacity of official workers made pro- fit out of the needs of the starving. The missionaries divided the regions of greatest distress among themselves ; Mr. Hill's main centre was at P'ing Yang, the chief town of the south of the province. He and Mr. Turner, of the C.I.M., were comfortably housed in the Iron Buddha Temple, and thence they went forth to the
52 David Hai
numerous \-illages around. It was im- possible to do more than to eke out bare life. At great personal toil each \'illage was visited, and a Hst made of the necessitous, then from house to house the missionaries went with their gifts. It was no easy task to make sure that no deserving case was omitted, and to ensure that- there was no dishonesty. \Miere the people were not silent in apathetic despair they surrounded their \'isitors with shrill clamourings and eager clutchings. In many cases it was necessary to give small lumps of silver cut at the village smithy in order to avoid the rapacity of the local bankers, who insisted on seven or eight per cent, as their commis- sion for changing it into copper. After a while it became possible to use the registers, and to assemble at a single centre the claimants from a score of \-illages, thus effecting distribution. The main food of the people consisted of bark, straw, leaves, dried earth, roots, anything to fill the stomach and still the gnawings of hunger. Such diet tended to starve out the humane, and there was left the elemental craving which drove men to eat even human flesh.
The Famine S2
Mr. Hill records that five women were lashed and buried ahve for kidnapping, killing, and eating children ; that passing travellers were killed and eaten ; that a coal-hawker and his donkeys were aU eaten ; that a youth had killed and eaten his mother. Wolves ravened over the whole countryside and acquired a taste for human flesh, daring in some cases to drag people down in broad daylight on the village square, and to eat them in the sight of helpless onlookers. ^Ir. Hill himself had a narrow^ escape one night from a huge wolf, whose moaning near the temple drew him to the door under the impression that it was some one in distress. As it happened, he failed to get the door open, and was thus saved from the dripping fangs awaiting him outside. No w^onder that the people lost faith in their idols and were earnest in their prayers to Ancient Heaven, who, they felt, was punishing them. During the worst of the distress the missionaries saw that preaching was a mockery, and confined themselves to the gospel of deeds. But after the acutest stage was past, Messrs. Hill and Turner, who had moved to a private house, commenced quiet Sunday services
54 DavJd Hill
where Christian instruction was given to serious-minded persons who were attracted by the hfe of love they had seen.
Such a soil, prepared by long suffering, has always proved suitable for the seed of Christian truth, and ere long the first convert, a man named Sung, was baptized. It was felt by the missionaries that when the need of their deeds of mercy had passed away it was important to reach as wide a con- stituency as possible by literature. A careful division of the field was made, and a portion assigned to each, so that in each of the eighty county towns of the province, an area as large as England, Christian books were distributed from house to house. The large and statesmanlike views of Timothy Richard made a great impression on David Hill ; we find in his notebooks careful details of ' How to influence a province.* He gained a clearer view of the value of strategic points in the Christian campaign. One of these was at once occupied.
The triennial examinations for the pro- vincial degree bring together to the capital the graduates of the whole province. Such a general assembly of the intellectual aristo-
The Famine 55
cracy gives a magnificent opportunity of touching the springs of influence and thought, and it is a regular custom for social and religious reformers to spread their tenets by presents of books to the students as they come out from the Great Hall. Messrs. Richard and Hill .thought out a scheme, quite in accord with Chinese custom, by which they hoped to come into intimate relations with the scholars. A notice was issued offering substantial prizes for four essays, to be written on subjects which were dealt with in certain specially prepared Christian books. Then, when the examination was held, packets of these books accompanying the notice were presented to the seven thousand examinees as they left the HalL The missionaries set themselves to pray foi blessings on the result. Just at this time, too, a friend in England set herself to pray, and received the conviction that there should be given to Mr. Hill some special gift of conversion, that one might be given through him to the Church who should be as Paul was to early Christianity. The result of this combination of prayer and work is found in the record which follows^
56 David Hill
Not far from P'ing Yang there dwelt a scholar of the first degree, named Hsi, who had grown much interested in the study of Taoism, which professed to deal with the attainment of immortality. He was a man of character and influence, but had become an opium-sot, and was rapidly deteriorating. He had not presented himself at the examina- tion, but determined to compete for the essay prizes of which he had heard.
Some of the most competent literary men of the province had been engaged to adjudi- cate, and when the award was made it was found that, out of the hundred and twenty essays sent in, Hsi had written the best three. To receive his prizes he was obliged himself to call on the foreigner, whom he still suspected of uncanny intentions. Mr. Hill's courtesy and dignity speedily drove away all suspicion, Hsi became his teacher, was increasingly impressed by the life which he was observing so minutely, and growingly interested in the New Testament wherein lay the source of its strength. In a few months he applied for baptism. Then came the terrific struggle with the opium habit, in which it seemed as though body and soul
The Famine 57
would be torn asunder. It ended with a complete submission to Christ and a com- plete victory. The souls of the two me-n thus united became closely linked in a deep spiritual friendship, in which the senior im- parted of his experience and set the impress of his character on the new convert.
In a very few months Mr. Hill had to return to his distant station in Central China, but the man who had been given to his prayers and those of his English friend remained to become the leader in a great movement towards Christianity. His re- cord ^ has been charmingly written in two popular volumes, and we must not here be led away beyond the barest outline. He was mighty in spiritual power and prayer, became famous as a caster-out of evil spirits, developed a large opium-curing work, was the means, with others, of opening many village churches which grew up in the track of the Christian charity of the famine, and became the beloved and influential general pastor of the China Inland Mission churches of the region, finally going home with a
' One of China's Scholars, and Pastor Hsi, one of China's Christians, by jMts. Howard Taylor.
58 David Hill
radiant expectation a few months before the friend who had brought him to Christ.
Mr. Hill dearly loved the work in Shansi, and was eager to continue there ; it was one of the great disappointments of his life that his own Society could not venture on a new mission. The initial stage of church life, unencumbered with the inevitable organiza- tion which was bound to develop, was always specially congenial to him. His Christian intercourse with the brethren who had gone through such fires in his company was particularly close and frank. There lies before us as we write a set of notes of a * band-meeting ' with a friend, in which the criticisms and suggestions as to spirit and conduct of each on the other are faithfully recorded. The friendship was unbroken ! Another document is headed * What am I sent for ? Who sent me ? Why ? ' 'It is that, freed from the conventionalities and routine of long-established institutions, I should, whilst alone here, take the Word of God and, seeking light from Him, find out as nearly as I can how the work should be carried on in a heathen country. En- trusted with the gospel of the grace of God,
The Famine 59
I must now search out by prayer and the study of God's Word the best means of making it known/ Then follows a careful tracing out of the New Testament idea of the kingdom of God and the apostolic practice in seeking to bring it in. There are many records of subjects of prayer, some marked ' Answered ' ; and many names of people, friends in England, or those he is brought in contact with in China, who are on his prayer-list.
Here is a form of daily self -inquiry :
* I. 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 ? '
6p David Hill
The reference above to the * lost * brings up the memory of what was a constant burden with him. China is accustomed to see filthy, unshaven, ragged loafers, hopelessly besotted with opium, begging, gambling, stumbling on to death — lost. Hill writes: ' And yet it was among such men that Jesus found more that was salvable than amongst the religious and orthodox. Is it really so now ? . . . I have sometimes thought that I ought to give my whole time to try to do something for these '* lost." '
In his attempt to reach them he would patiently submit to their clutching, scream- ing, begging, and would visit them in the fetid caverns where their foul, naked bodies steamed before a roaring fire. He ever sought to follow where He went who came to seek and to save that which was lost.
In May, 1880, David Hill took a reluctant farewell from Richard, Hsi, and aU his northern friends, and returned to Hankow.
CHAPTER VI
THE PREACHER OF THE MISSIONARY CRUSADE
Sixteen years continuously spent in China detach a man from English thought and Hfe. It was the death of a young colleague and the resulting guardianship of his family which finally made it clear to David Hill that God's way for him was towards home. Ere leaving he took part in the initiation of several schemes with which his Shansi experience had made him sympathetic. He was deeply impressed with the mission of literature in the Christian propaganda. He even considered a proposal made to him to put himself at the head of a general Tract Society for the whole empire. Ulti- mately, instead of this, there was formed, in addition to several other organizations in south and north, the Central China Tract Society, having its headquarters at Hankow. During the quarter of a century of its
6i
62 David Hill
existence it has issued and sold a score of million of Christian publications. Mr. Hill was always a warm supporter of the Religious Tract Society of London, through whose generous assistance all the Chinese societies continue their work. Part of the programme of the new society was based on the plans which had been so successful in Shansi. Prizes were offered for the best treatises by Chinese Christian workers, and more than a hundred tracts were produced, the best of which were at once available for evangelistic use.
Full to the last moment of schemes of work, Mr. Hill took ship with his charges ; and, during the weeks of voyaging, set his thoughts in order for the crusade on behalf of missions amidst the home churches. On board he was always bright, thoughtful for others, helpful, a prime favourite with the children ; but there, as elsewhere, he kept up, above all, his communion with God. This was always his distinguishing mark. In Wuchang the quiet hollows on the hill that runs through the city are still shown by the native Christians as the place where he used to go at dusk or dark to pray. So
Preacher of the Missionary Crusade 63
on the ship the sharer of his cabin tells how he would wrap himself in his overcoat and spend long hours on deck during the quiet night, communing with God. When he reached England and entered on the dizzy- whirl of missionary deputation, he was ever careful to secure this communion. Many a missionary on furlough will understand his advice written to a colleague :
' The friends will greet you warmly, but don't be killed with kindness. The morning and the evening hour is the great point. If late sitting up be unavoidable, take the hour earlier on. ]\Iake missionary meetings spiritual ; get a prayer-meeting where you can. Seek the conversion of the children in the homes.*
During all the furious travelling which modern railways make possible and modem claims make imperative for the missionary who loves to advocate his work, for hours after hospitality had done its kindly but testing utmost, the light would burn long in the missionary's bedroom while he thought and prayed. Reference has already been made to his habit of writing out his medita- tions on his Greek Testament. The manu-
64 David HiU
script volumes lie upon our table as we write. We can trace his missionary itinerary by the entries. Many an entry is made at some remote Chinese inn ; but in England the date, and name of the host, is attached at the end of two or three or more pages of devotional and scholarly thinking into the inner meaning of Holy Writ. While the friends and hearers were comfortably in bed, the man who, with eager face and kindling eye, had been talking to them of China's need, was rene\ring his strength by looking into the mind of Christ. Space is lacking to give an idea of the contents of these %'olume5, so precious with memory and suggestion to those who loved him. We may venture, perhaps, to subjoin a few specimens taken almost at random :
' Rom. i. 10, " Always in my prayers making request." We ought so to be h\ing as to expect and beheve that we may be em- ployed to COmmumcate n ^^opta/xa Trvev/JAiTLKOv (some spiritual gift) to friends we visit, but to do this such visits must be preceded by prayer and assured to us as being in accord- ance with the will of God. We are further taught that it is no sign of true humihty
Preacher of the Missionary Crusade 6^
to suppose that one can be of no use to one's friends. God intends that we should, and the wealthiest spirits are those that communicate the most.'
' Rom. ii. 29, " Wliose praise is not of men, but of God." How much apparently good work is due to the influence of newspaper reports — Society's records — ^subscription lists — popular applause — pubhc opinion ! "Before men " — this is the great he of life.*
* 2 Cor. i. 5» "^ -^adij^JLara tov X/xotcv (the
sufferings of Christ). With St. Peter the thought of the sufterings of Christ was more objective, \s-ith St. Paul more subjective. St. Paul yearned to have fello\^*ship, closer communion with Him through these suner- ings. Has the Church of to-day any such yearning ? Have I ? Do we ever enquire what are the rraOTJ^ra tov ^S^uttov not yet hlied up ? Tra&iifjuiTa which / may suffer and so fill up the bXu!/L<; tov Xpurrov (aiffiction of Christ). Who now feels the pang which Jesus felt when He witnessed the wTongs of men, the injustice, the greed, the selfish- ness of those aroimd, of some even in the high places of ecclesiasucism ? Who is pained when he considers the evils of the
(^^ David Hill
opium traffic or when he meets the reeling drunkard or the gaudy courtesan or reckless youth or godless age ? Suffering with Christ means all this. Idolatry wounds, selfishness hurts, sin pains the Christlike man. Then there are the actual o-riy/xaTa some have to bear in their body.'
' 2 Cor. V. 9, " We make it our aim to be well-pleasing unto Him." What others say or think matters little ; the great question is, what does He say ? What does Re think ? If at that great day we can but say that the course we have taken was the one which we thought would please Him, however strange it may seem, however it may have been understood. He will not frown upon it then. For as on earth He excused error and the taking liberties with Him and dullness of perception, if there were but, with the error, the presumption, or the dullness a true faith in Him, so from His judgement throne He will rule a like decision at the last great day.'
* Matt. xxvi. 40, ovK l(Txva-aT€ (Could ye not) — though addressed to Peter, yet in plural. Mark xiv. 37, ovk taxva-as (Couldst thou not) — only to Peter. Each man has at one time
Preacher of the Missionary Crusade 67
or other the /xia wpa of watching, an awful hour — to watch while the Holy One wrestles in lone conflict hard by — only to watch, unable to aid. How apt are we then to say " But what can watching do ? If I were with Him, near Him, by His side, to support and strengthen, then it would be some use. But only to watch — what help will that afford ? " And yet if He return and find us sleeping, will it not wound His gentle heart ? He will make all allowance, it is true, but He will feel it none the less. And He will gently change the personal argument, the natural craving for sj^'mpathy in sorrow, the yp-qyopCne /x€t ijxov (Watch with Me) of His first request for the yp-qyop^iTe . . . Tva fir] da-iXOiqT^ (Watch . . . that ye enter not). It is a more blessed thing, bespeaks a higher culture in the Christian life, to watch out of sympathizing love for others rather than the fear arising from impending personal danger. '2 Cor. V, 15, " He died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto them- selves." It was love with a purpose — and that the highest purpose — viz. the purpose of creating and completing unselfish lives. Love which does not look ahead, which has
68 David Hill
no purpose, no aim, lacks the true ring Love which in its aim allows any selfishness of life in those it loves, which cannot bear to see all selfishness swept away, removed root and branch at any cost, is not the genuine article. He lived and died that men might not live unto themselves.'
He who wrote this comment ever sought to follow out this purpose of his Lord's death.
Such was the man, brimming over with a passionate desire for China's conversion, and with the longing to bring home to his own Church her responsibility for the spread of the kingdom, who early in 1881 saw once more the shores of the home-land. Almost immediately he commenced his long cam- paign of appeal. He was not an orator, but was a most impressive and forceful speaker, and a preacher of true insight and deep spiritual power. In every visit he aimed at conversation-meetings with the few and, above all, at friendship with the children. When he * had a good time ' at the public meetings his face used to become radiant, and his eyes fairly blazed with love and faith. Some used to say of him, as they
Preacher of the Missionary Crusade 69
went home, ' St. Francis of Assisi * ; some, ' St. Paul ' ; not a few, reverently, * He is like our Lord.'
He visited especially the colleges and homes of the young. In the theological colleges he put forward the claims of China on the consecrated culture and service of the rising ministry. He visited The Leys School, where his old tutor, Dr. Moulton, was head master, and wherever possible other boys' and girls' schools through the country, eagerly putting before the young the noble life of self-sacrifice. Almost all the recruits to Central China for the next ten years were due directly or indirectly to his personal advocacy during this visit. He made but little appeal for money, but he perpetually claimed the gift of earnest, sympathetic, intelligent prayer. He laid emphasis on the partnership between the man sent into the field and those whose money sent him, and insisted on the responsibility of the home giver for the man in lonely places of spiritual peril. Thanks to his initiative and the work of the Rev. J. W. Brewer, whose furlough followed his own, there was formed a Prayer Union which linked in
70 David Hill
promise of daily prayer some hundreds of the friends of the Mission. For more than twenty years regular letters have been exchanged between the missionaries and these friends. Till his death Mr. Hill was one of the editors of these letters, and from time to time he set himself gratefully to appraise the results of the prayers of the Union.
He used to teach his younger colleagues that the earnest prayers of the Church at home constantly made all the difference out in the field, and it was his ardent wish that the whole praying force of Methodism should be organized and directed toward that end.
He was a man of one idea, but it was an idea much broader than that of Chinese missions. He was intensely interested in all the spiritual life of the home Church. When- ever he v/as in York he used to meet in fellowship with the members of his old class. The home mission and other efforts of the Church were eagerly and sympathetically watched and helped. The many friends he made were shown in the long lists among his private memoranda of people to be prayed for. Among them we find the names of boys who have since become active
Preacher of the Missionary Crusade 71
and well-known workers for God's kingdom. What arithmetic will ever find the sum of the influence of such quiet, unobserved supplications ?
Mr. Hill took his share in the burning indignation felt by all missionaries at the outrage of England's connexion with the opium traffic. He paid the expenses of publishing in England a series of sketches of The Rake's Progress, wherein a Chinese artist had depicted the gradual downfall due to the vice, and to the last of his days he prayed and worked for the ending of what he felt to be the greatest hindrance in the way of Christianity in China. He also used his considerable gift of literary style in writing several booklets setting forth the history of the Mission and the unrivalled opportunities for service in China,
His mind was full of new schemes for extending work. The hospital, which had done such good service in the earliest years of the Mission, had been for some time left without a medical man, and had actually fallen into ruins. It required but little imagination to realize the tremendous loss involved, and Hill set himself to seek for a
71 David Hill
volunteer who would resume this lost portion of Christ's work. In this he was amply successful, as we know to-day, when we think of the long and invaluable service of Dr. Sydney Hodge and those who have followed him.
Mr. Hill also pointed out the fine oppor- tunity of touching the intellect of young China by the offer of higher Western education. The result has been the good work of the High School in the city of Wuchang. He eagerly weighed the possi- bility of doing more in the way of practical philanthropy, but the actual working out of any such matters became merged in a larger scheme, which a few years later became a reality in the establishment of an auxiliary Lay Mission.
The limitations of the resources of the Mission House led him to urge self-supporting men and women to give themselves to the work, and his appeal led to the coming out of several, partially or entirely without charge to the burdened funds of the Society. But these results could only gradually be seen.
The eager missionary who preaches his crusade from place to place, full of ideas and
Preacher of the Missionary Crusade 73
burning with the supreme importance of his work, is generally disappointed, feeling that the Church is too full of its own local and self-centred affairs, seeing no response of individual service, and imagining that he has failed. This was Mr. Hill's impression when he left England for his well-loved field. But to those who know, it is evident that the whole field has been enriched ever since, and multitudes of lives have gained a nobler idea of service and responsibility, because of the seed he sowed. No time in his life was really more fruitful than the two years during which he was absent from China.
It is characteristic of him that, on his return journey, he took a steerage ticket along with the Chinese passengers from Honolulu to Shanghai. It is equally charac- teristic that when Mr. J. T. Waterhouse, a Methodist merchant there, entreated for Christ's sake to be allowed to pay for a first-class cabin, HiU yielded ' because it would be wholesome for his sense of inde- pendence.*
It was in November, 1882, that he landed once more in Shanghai.
CHAPTER VII
THE GENERAL SUPERINTENDENT
The Central China Synod held in Decem- ber, 1882, appointed Mr. Hill to Wuchang. The knowledge that the Revs. W. H. Watson and Joseph Bell were coming out without added strain to the Mission finance had led to the hope that he would have been free for evangelistic itinerant work, but the speedy breakdown of two of the missionaries al- ready in the field soon made it manifest that the number of the workers would be barely maintained at its old level. Hill submitted to the disappointment of his hopes, and threw himself heartily once more into the interesting experiences of the capital. The lifelong care of the poor and the lost was pressing in upon his soul. He writes :
* With regard to works of benevolence, as things are at present spiritual benevolence is the easiest to organize for, educational or 74
The General Superintendent 75
intellectual the next, and physical the most difficult, and that simply because for the last there is so much greater a demand. If the Christian Church would but take note of the actual demand, the conscious need of the peoples to whom she goes, she would win her way more rapidly and, perhaps, awaken a sense of higher and deeper want amongst peoples preoccupied through po- verty with mere physical craving.'
He searched out the native institutions. In one place he found a free dispensary where a hundred and sixty patients were prescribed for in the course of a morning, and he remarks on the arrangements of the guest-room as giving hints for Christian hospitals. To this dispensary, which was free from idolatry, he became a subscriber. He visited also the refuges for the destitute, where the miserable wrecks of opium and other vice found shelter for the night after their day's beggary. * They reminded me,' he says, * of the publicans and sinners with whom our Lord companied.' Mostly, how- ever, he found that the native virtue halls were too corruptly administered for him to be able to associate himself with them ; and
76 David Hill
he ventured more and more, notwithstanding all the very real risks of mobbing and rice- Christianity, to relieve distress by direct gifts.
Residence away from treaty ports was not without its dangers at this time. The reports of the Tonquin war with France provoked much restlessness. There were more hidden causes of unrest. One day, as Hill was walking from the city gate, he met several bleeding, headless, human bodies being carried from the Viceroy's yamen. A rebellion had been discovered in the nick of time. It had been intended that the man- darins should be slain ; and, in order to embroil the government with foreign powers, all the foreigners were to have been killed and their houses burnt. Thirty-six execu- tions in an hour promptly stopped the rebellion.
An interesting extension of work had taken place during Mr. Hill's absence in England through the work of a Kiangsi colporteur in the city of Teh Ngan, a hundred and twenty miles to the north of Hankow. The members of the Kiangsi Guild had rallied round their fellow-provincial, and as a
The General Superintendent 77
result had invited one of the English mis- sionaries to come to the city as their guest. The leader of a hostile deputation of inquiry stayed to inquire in a different spirit, and ere long a promising settlement was effected and a httle church began to form. The needs of the district were such that only younger missionaries could be appointed to the new centre. In 1884 Mr. Brewer's return and settlement in Wuchang allowed Mr. Hill to settle in a native house there and to do more for itinerant work. The purchase of land in Teh Ngan led to a riot, in which the mission-house was stormed and the missionaries were driven out. Mr. Hill went to the disturbed city and re- heved them. Matters were quieting down when the date for the degree examinations came round. The country undergraduates, rough, ignorant, and anti-foreign, came flocking in. At such times the few local troops are utterly powerless against the ten or fifteen thousand strangers. The Manchu prefect gave out as the essay-subject a sentence from the Sacred Edict, * Destroy strange sects.' A nod from a mandarin in China is quite sufficient ; the examinees
78 David Hill
instantly realized what was meant, rushed in crowds to the mission-house and wrecked it. Mr. Hill, who was out at the time, returned on hearing of the disturbance, and stood quietly in their midst. One ruffian struck him a heavy blow with a huge timber- splinter, nearly breaking his arm. Rolling up his wide Chinese sleeve and showing him the hvid bruise, he calmly asked him, ' Don't you think you've done enough ? ' There- upon the crowd parted and let him depart. He walked awhile meditating his action, calm in the deep rejoicing of being allowed to suffer for Christ's sake, and then took boat quietly for Hankow. His friends at home heard only incidentally : * I am thankful to say that I sustained no per- manent injury ; for some weeks I couldn't 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.'
It was clearly necessary that some penalty should be put on such glaring unrighteous- ness, in order that future good relations might be estabhshed between the Teh Ngan
The General Superintendent 79
Christians and their fellow-townsmen. For the next year a great part of Mr. Hill's time was spent in negotiations between the British Consul and the Chinese officials ; and after soul-sickening delays of every sort the Mission was, with the full consent of all, re-established at the pubhc expense. The absence of all request for punishment of individuals or of reparation for personal injury laid the foundations of a most flourish- ing and healthy church, which stands well in public esteem up to the present day.
The years to which we have now arrived proved the commencement of a period the most costly in life which the Mission was to know. Death after death, breakdown after breakdown of men and women, checked the hopes of extension which were ever being fed by the new reinforcements being sent from England. In 1885 Mr. Scarborough, broken by the sudden death of his wife, retired to England, leaving the chairmanship to David Hill. The Synod which made this appoint- ment was presided over by the Rev. Ebenezer Jenkins, one of the Secretaries of the Wes- leyan Missionary Society. The whole field was passed in review, and plans were laid
8o David Hill
for advance in every direction. It went sorely agdnst the grain with Mr. Hill to tie himself down to so much business work, and thereby to be cut off so far from the direct evangelism which was his joy ; but it was obviously a suitable thing that at this point of new departure the charge should be put into the hands of the man whose imagination and Christian foresight had had so large a share in the initiation of the new schemes.
The General Superintendent in a Methodist missionary district is much more of an ideal bishop than his brother Chairman in an English district, or even than the actual AngUcan bishop. He is the representative of the Missionary Society, whose funds he administers, and he is ultimately responsible for all that is done in his district. Never was there a Chairman who more fully entered into the work of all his brethren than David Hill. He knew every corner of the District, was known personally by all the old members, and kept himself in constant touch with every new region opened up. He was always ready with prayer and gift to help in any fresh enterprise, and every missionary felt sure of the most careful and sympathetic
The General Superintendent 8i
consideration of any local difficulty or trouble. He was always accessible to any poor old woman with some trifling ailment, and sometimes the perpetual interruptions inevitably made his burden of business and correspondence almost unbearable. Often he had on mail day to take refuge on a country hill a mile away from the Hankow mission-house in order that his letters might get written. But he cheerfully did his duty and brightened the work of his colleagues by his faithfulness and sympathy.
Let us seek to gain a picture of the activi- ties which in any well-equipped mission attempt to present to heathenism the work of God in Jesus Christ towards men. We shall, perhaps, best secure this by paying, in imagination, a visit to this Chairman in Hankow, when the lapse of a few years had brought ideas into the realm of practice. Let us become his companions as he shows us round.
After breakfast the various servants, with any of the country members who may be on a visit, come in to family prayers. The Scriptures are read verse by verse ; diffi- culties are explained, questions are asked, a
6
82 David Hill
little exhortation is given, prayer is offered up. The quiet hour before the wheels of the daily machinery of the city life attain fuU speed is spent in the study with one or two native preachers who are being trained in the devotional use and comprehension of Scrip- ture and in the art of preaching. These will afterwards go with us and our host into the street chapel, where wide-open doors attract the passer-by from the crowded street. The apprentice on an errand, the farmer in to market, the merchant from a distant pro- vince, the scholar sauntering superciliously by, the coolie resting from his burden — all enter and sit down, so that very quickly from a score to a hundred are ready to listen to the foreigner's speech. He begins in a conversational style, drawing in those on the outer circle by courtesy and interest till very soon religious topics are reached. Skilful parable, proverb, quotation from the classics, win attention, and often a hush stays the crowd (which otherwise goes in and out at will) and teUs how the word has laid hold. At the close of the address attention is directed to the book table, and Gospels or tracts are sold to those who desire to know
The General Superintendent 83
more. We leave the native assistants to take up the tale to new crowds — for the preaching goes on for hours each day — while we go with the missionary to the guest-room, where we shall find a few interested hearers paying a call on the courteous guest-receiver. We will not hnger here, for the Chinese fashion is to use the middle-man always ; these \asitors, if sincerely impressed, will ultimately come into contact with the missionary himself ; but they are shy, and will watch hfe and make many inquiries before they commit themselves.
Leaving this, we go on till the babel in a neighbouring room proclaims the elementary school. No ideal of Christian life can be complete which does not train the children of the church ; the wdllingness of outsiders to send their children gives an additional evangelistic opportunity. Hence it is that when we turn into the room where thirty or forty pig- tailed urchins are shouting out their lessons under the care of their big-spectacled teacher, our leader is at once greeted with smiles as a friend. He comes in at regular intervals to examine, and will frequently find pupils who Ccin repeat the whole of a
84 David Hill
Gospel ; very likely he has these boys two or three times a week for a simple Scripture lesson. Not far away is a similar school, where tiny-footed little girls are taught to read and write, to sew and sing. When the Sunday comes round the large chapel stands ready, cleansed from the constant trampling of strangers during the week ; its outer doors are closed for Christian worship, and it is filled with a large and reverent assembly of worshippers, including the children of the schools. To the pulpit, in his turn, Mr. Hill will come with his face all alight with the word of love he is going to expound to them, his rapt earnestness in prayer, his graphic and graceful style of preaching. If he is in the audience, the missionary who preaches recognizes the uplifting power which tells him that one of his hearers is mighty in sympathetic prayer. So far we are dealing with the more ele- mentary and fundamental modes of work, which had been carried on for many years before Mr. Hill took charge. Before we go further and see the later developments, let us add a description taken from one of his own letters of the multitudinous details
The General Superintendent 85
which were bound to come to the busy head of a mission, but which friends at home rarely think of in their necessarily idealized picture of a missionary Hfe :
Dscemher lo, 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.
R. Not in the market — may want to rent soon, but not to 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, &c. It was in the Blind School, and only four seeing men had been in during the time.
R. Must inquire into it.
3. Mr. Tsung, to report on land in Han- yang ; one plot owner refuses 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
86 David Hill
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, &c.
R, (i.). Will write district magistrate about robbery, (ii.). Try again for plot in Chancery.
4. Mr. Teu, my steward — accounts not clear.
R. Recast them.
Wants money to go on with.
R. Exchange this cheque.
5. Mr. Hoo, the cook — accounts not clear. R. Recast 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.
R. Will speak to him.
6. Mr. Ts'en Chang Tsow, to request me to speak to Dr. Hodge about his selling sulphur ointment to patients at door of chapel.
R. 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,
The General Superintendent 87
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 to remove the coffin so far. Hanyang is as good as Teh Ngan. 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 ?
R. No opening in Mr. Barber's school, but there may be in Teh Ngan, if you go there and live with your first wife, and have the children with you.
8. Mr. Tao, to seek a post as p«:ivate teacher or day-school teacher.
R. Wait till District Meeting closes, then shall know better what to say.
9. Mr. Fortune, half a dozen times for half a dozen things.
10. Cornaby's messenger, to borrow two tins of milk.
88 David Hill
11. Mr. North, to go through list of district and foreign members of the Hankow church.
12. Dr. Hodge, to inquire how my rheu- matism is, and talk over hospital matters and next year's appointments.
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 direct evangelization, 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.
CHAPTER VIII
NEW DEVELOPMENTS
In the round which we imagined ourselves as taking with our missionary host we broke off to hsten to the category of interruptions of the last chapter. We resume in order to gain ghmpses of the other portions of the work developed since the Synod of 1885. As we cross the main street, leaving the preaching-chapel behind us, we shall see our guide's face obviously brightening. The huge piece of ground running back for three hundred yards has been privately purchased by him in order to provide space for some of those philanthropic activities which are so dear to his heart. Right at the far end stands a row of almshouses, where his loving care has housed half a dozen old men worn out with the toil of life. No test of creed is imposed ; they are simply worthy people of good character whom he has known. He 89
90 David Hill
knows what will be said if any of them become Christian, but he is showing the mind of Christ in helping them, and he leaves results. Is it any wonder that the old men who totter towards us in the sun- shine are mostly regular attendants on Sunday worship ? Is there any doubt that their poor clouded old minds feel the sun- shine of Christ's love through him ?
Now we turn towards a playground, where a score of boys are playing about. As we draw near they stop, approach us, and by their uncertainty proclaim what they are — the blind. With what cries of joy they feel Mr. Hill over and recognize their friend ! Often had he seen the long strings of bhnd beggars filing down the crowded streets, often known bhnd children cast away as burdens, watched the boys trained to fortune- telling, the girls sold to shame. Hence it is that he has built this house and gathered a few of the wastrels of heathenism for whom Confucianism has no message. The work was difficult to carry through its initial stages. Happily some work of the same nature had already been attempted in Pekin, and from Mr. W. H. Murray ther*-
New Developments 91
Hill had obtained the trained services of a partially blind teacher named Yu. The same man is stiU, as we write (1906), in success- ful charge of the Blind School. The problem of self-support for the inmates, imperfectly solved in Christian England, has become growingly difficult. Trades such as basket- making, hammock-netting, knitting, have been taught the boys. After much thought the BraiUe system was adapted to the Hankow dialect, with the result that they have aU learned to read fluently, and have gradually accumulated a good-sized library copied out by the boys. They have also been trained in music and singing, and form the choir at the public services. The school is fragrant with memories of those who have helped here. Who that saw him will ever forget Crosette, the American missionary, who felt called to give up all income for Christ's sake, who learnt to make chairs for a living, dwelt in Pekin, sharing his home with the poorest who would live with him, won absolute devotion from the Chinese, and came at Hill's invitation to help him in the new enterprise ? The man with the wonderfully attractive face, strangely sug-
92 David Hill
gestive of our Lord*s, was clad in the roughest garb and refused any quarters but those of the servants. He and Hill lived together with the blind boys, faring on their coarse fare, getting near to them, talking together of the Way of the Cross and God's deaUngs with the world. Then, after a few months of help and converse, the restless sense of call elsewhere came, and the ascetic passed from our sight for the few years of service that were left him.
Later on the missionary lady who loved these little fellows had to die amidst dangers and riots, and to leave them. But in more recent years there has been continuity of management ; many a time have the hearts of the teachers been touched as they have heard the simple prayers and testimonies of these children, whose narrow darkness has been widened into the great horizon of God's love.
Now we turn away to that well-built pile which is the home of all the heaHng deeds by which the medical missionary seeks to follow in the footsteps of his Lord. Dr. Sydney Hodge came in response to Mr. Hill's appeal, and on the site which
New Developments 93
he eagerly made ready, built bit by bit a hospital where any poor suffering Chinese peasant may obtain the same skill and assistance as an English duke. We enter and find the waiting-hall full of patients, with whom catechists and other Christians are conversing in friendly fashion, telling of the meaning of the title, ' The Hospital of Universal Love.* We pass on into the doctor's room, where the assistants trained by himself are at work, the symptoms are carefully recorded, the medicine dispensed. Or we follow with other patients whose case is more serious into the wards, spotlessly clean, brightly, airily comfortable, where all that Western science can do is brought as an offering for Christ's sake, and poor suffering bodies know a touch of sympathy and care of which they have never dreamed before. Is it any wonder that in multitudes of cases animosity has been changed to friendship, and in many that he who came for bodily healing found the heahng of the soul ?
Not far away is another building where Christian womanhood has brought hke gifts of heahng to the service of Chinese women.
94 David Hill
Lives have been given and laid down since then in connexion with this work, the pioneer in which came out as the result of the en- thusiasm of the Synod to which we have already made reference. From it, as from the men's hospital, have sprung activities and in- fluence touching the houses of rich and poor. Chinese nurses have been trained to know the joy of ministering ; missionary ladies, visiting in the Kung Kwans, or official residences, have formed friendships with their Chinese sisters, and the close touch of loving sympathy has linked together the hearts of East and West.
Not far away across the river in Wuchang, near the house which in old days Mr. Hill built, we enter with him from the main street through a doorway with gracefully curved eaves, and find ourselves in an open square, round which are ranged a number of improved native houses. This is the High School, to which a number of the sons of the best families in the capital have come for the mathematics and science of the West. It has had a laborious struggle into existence. All the usual armoury of op- position has been exhausted ; finally Mr. Hill
New Developments 95
himself has lived in the little Chinese house attached to it ; but at last it has justified its claim to life, and has become a centre for those of the young literati who are in- terested in new ideas. Here the clever sons of poor Christians have their chance side by side with, and win respect from, the sons of mandarins. Later on are to follow the results, to-day being realized, of a better organization of country schools, a normal and a theological institution.
From the school let us go into the mission- ary's study ; there we shall find manuscript tracts through which he must look in order to take his share in the Tract Society Meeting which will decide for or against their publi- cation. Beside this there is all the multi- farious correspondence which he carries on with his friends in England and throughout China.
The most characteristic and laborious enterprise which owed its origin to his ini- tiative yet remains to be described. In the face of China's immense need two things had very much impressed him. The first was the severe limitation on the power of his own Society to send more men, and the consequent
^^ David Hill
impossibility of opening up new country. The second was the great growth of the China Inland Mission, which sent out men and women if they seemed to be called of God, irrespective of denomination, ordained or unordained, with or without training. He asked himself why within Methodism there should not be found young men who had not had the more elaborate and costly training for the ministry who would come out un- married for a term of years, hving on the bare minimum of necessity, and forming a band of pioneers perpetually evangelizing new districts. The Missionary Society, unfor- tunately, had not then the power, which it has since gained by act of the Conference, of using laymen. Mr. Hill, therefore, formed a Central China Lay Missionary Society, and, with the help of old friends at the Mission House and elsewhere, thus secured the assist- ance of a number of valuable missionaries. He was himself the Director of the Mission, and its activities were the outcome of his own ideas and spirit acting on most willing and cordial colleagues. He hoped at first to do something in the way of technical training in handicrafts, but the man on whom
New Developments 97
he relied broke down, and that scheme was given up. The Bhnd School already referred to was another section, and its medical department was started in Teh Ngan by Dr. Arthur Morley, the brother-in-law of the founder of the Mission, the Rev. Josiah Cox. The first missionary of the organiza- tion, Mr. George Miles, is still in the field. He and several others, with Mr. Hill, went numerous journeys outside the areas of the circuits already existing. On these journeys it would happen again and again that after the toilsome day, in the quiet night, there would come a knock at the cabin door of the missionary's boat : it was Nicodemus come to inquire. Next time Nicodemus would bring a friend, then a few more would be added ; after a while they would ask the stranger to one of their houses. Evidences of fruit from sowings of many years before were found, the church began to grow, till eventually there are to-day, as the result, hundreds of Christians and whole chains of churches, with worship-halls built entirely by the people's generosity.
It was not long before Thomas Champness, who had started a scheme of Joyful News
7
98 David Hill
evangelists, young men whom he took into his own home, treated as his own sons, and sent out into the Enghsh villages to evan- gelize, decided to extend his work to the foreign mission field. The China Lay Mission offered at once an organization to which such agency could easily be joined. Hence a succession of valuable auxiliary workers came to the District, and bravely and cheerily fed the flock of outlying churches, or developed new work outside old boun- daries. The relations between Messrs. Hill and Champness were always most sym- pathetic and cordial.
Never was David Hill happier than when he could get away from the inevitable business of the main centres, and wander through remote regions where the solitude and silence were beginning to quicken under the brooding of the Holy Spirit. Then he would return to us his colleagues in our fixed stations with the fresh breeze of God's open air, always ready to sympathize with our routine of work and hope and fear.
What he was to his colleagues it is difficult for one of them, even after the lapse of ten years, to tell without emotion. What a joy
New Developments 99
it was to see him coming into the house ! Though of set choice he hved in a native house, using only its bare roughnesses, no one was more susceptible than he to the simple refinements and comforts which gathered round a lady. The writer will never forget the triumph of sheer brute force which once carried Mr. Hill, when ill, bodily to the mission- house from the pallet in his bare little sleeping- room with its chinky walls and carpetless floor. After the battle the Chairman gave way, and sunk back with a sigh of content on the clean sheets in the airy room where we could minister to and nurse him. And what a spiritual atmo- sphere of blessing he brought with him ! Memories come back of the man whom we loved. He often had to pursue a lonely way where his friends' judgement did not allow them to follow ; but he never judged or con- demned them for differing from him. The one thing that roused him was hard, hasty utterances or judgements of the Chinese for whose salvation we were sent. More than one of us has recognized the blessing of loving, convincing words of rebuke from him on that score. He fought a stern battle for himself
loo David Hill
along the road to heaven, and often wrote bitter things against himself while those around him were looking up at him from afar. He never thought of his own comfort. The writer remembers, on a boat- journey taken within two months of his arrival in China, waking up in the early morning under the heavy leakage of torrential rains through the mat covering to find Mr. Hill taking off his own rug in order to shelter the strong, healthy young new-comer. Another tells of finding him rigging up his own mosquito curtains for his young colleague's comfort ; and these are tj^pes of constant action — himself nothing, others everything. Nothing was too much to do for the ladies and children of the houses around him. But he thought that often the self-denial called for from a married man was in being willing to see the discomfort and trial of his loved ones. How children loved him ! They rushed to his arms and fearlessly expected him to play Vv^ith them, assured that he understood them. His lustrous eyes used actually to overflow vrith the light of love when he was with them. Service was his joy. At one time of great heat and sickness a Concession
New Developments loi
medical man used to tell how three times in a single day he found Mr. Hill before him at serious cases of illness, helping to rig up punkahs and giving the help that is so invaluable at such times.
But it is in prayer that we remember him most of all. The intense conviction, the pouring forth of the whole soul, face rapt, voice thrilling — these are sacred memories that have made prayer a different thing ever since. The service of prayer which he claimed from others he ever gave himself.
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
I02 David Hill
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 communion with the Word, till, to end all, he knelt to commend his soul to God in 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 IX
TRUE TO THE END
The passing of the years had made David Hill's name a household word in the Metho- dist Church throughout the world and amongst all missions in China. His sym- pathies were of the broadest. In his letters to England we find directions for small gifts to poor individuals, large sums to chapels, gifts to many schemes and people far outside his own Church. In each case anonymity is insisted on. His considerable income was for years overtaxed sometimes by hun- dreds of pounds, but he spent only a few pence a day on himself. His avowed aim was that gradually his resources might be absorbed in the work of Christ. He ever walked humbly with his God. When he was told that he was to be nominated for the Legal Hundred of the Methodist Conference X03
I04 David Hill
he consulted his brethren as to whether he ought not to intervene to forbid it ; when congratulated on his election he merely remarked that such a token of his Church's confidence was a new warning to keep him humble. When in 1890 the General Mission- ary Conference for China held its sessions in Shanghai, David Hill was elected the British President in company with Dr. Nevius as the American. His modesty was so outraged that he was with the utmost difficulty restrained from refusing the dignity, and was some days before summoning to his aid sufficient self-assertion to rule well that great assembly. But he could not be hid ; ' all missions felt they had a share in him.'
The period that followed the Conference was one of anxiety and danger. For years preceding, the conservative forces of the nation had been looking on with growing disgust at the inrush of foreign ideas. The Imperial Customs Service under Sir Robert Hart and a large corps of foreigners for- warded direct to the Throne large sums of money which would otherwise have been handled by the mandarins ; there were
True to the End 105
rumours of changes in the subjects of exa- mination for degrees, rumours of the coming of railways and the opening of mines, and the missionary propagandist was more and more in evidence. A determined attempt was made to get rid of the foreigner. Hunan, the province immediately south of our Central China Mission, was the centre of the agitation. It was unsullied by foreign residence ; its race was the most vertebrate of all China ; it would remove the stigma from the rest of the empire. A number of its gentry formed a strong society, subscribed very large sums of money, issued a number of booklets descriptive of the licentious orgies -of Christianity, of the eye-gouging, baby-boiling habits of its votaries, published vast numbers of crudely coloured cartoons depicting these horrors and blaspheming Christ as the Hog of Lust. These were posted on the street walls of the Yangtsze cities and the literature was given away by the hundred thousand. The common people believed, and the whole length of the river valley was fairly seething with superstitious and ignorant hate. The first blow fell at Wusueh, hitherto
io6 David Hill
the most orderly and quiet of all the mission stations. Rowdies from the country gathered unobserved ; the sight of a man carrying children to a Roman Catholic orphanage was made the pretext of a cry that the missionaries were kilhng children ; the popular imagination took fire, and a mad rush was made for our mission-houses. Only ladies and children were at home, and they were hounded out of the burning houses and hunted along the streets, kicked, beaten, and finally saved as by a miracle. William Argent, recently arrived as a Joyful News evangelist, had been nursing a sick friend, and was awaiting at the house of Mr. Green, the customs officer — the only other foreigner in the place — the arrival of the river steamer. These two saw the blaze, knew the danger to the ladies, and, notwithstanding warnings of their danger, bravely went to the rescue. The crowd turned upon them, murdered them both, and horribly mutilated their bodies. Next morning the river steamer was able to rescue the bruised and battered missionary families ; the rage of riot died down, and there only remained the payment of the punishment by such offenders as the
True to the End 107
doubtful course of Chinese justice could discover. For months there was the greatest uncertainty and risk, and at several of the ports other riots took place, attended by much destruction of property, though happily without loss of life.
This sad event made a lasting impression on Mr. Hill and all the missionary band. The Hunanese had thus in their ignorance and superstition blasphemed our Lord, and to the Wesleyan Mission had been given the honour of the first martjn: through their hate. It became an unchanging purpose that, when their province should be opened to the gospel, ours should be a first share in the glorious Christian revenge of taking them the truth about the Saviour they had defikd with their filthy imaginings. The native Christians, while their white brethren were excluded, sent, at their own expense, their own missionaries into the hostile province. Their volunteers were men of over seventy, whose white hairs were a protection in a land that respects old age. Patiently the work was continued until the united purpose of noblest Christian revenge was gratified by the founding of the present
io8 David Hill
Hunan mission ; but David Hill died without the sight.
When the danger seemed passing away, Mr. Hill left China for his second furlough, visiting on his way the (Ecumenical Methodist Conference of October, 1888, at Washington, to which he had been elected a delegate. This second visit to England was a repetition of the former abundance of labours, and the strain undoubtedly aged him considerably.
During this stay it happened that, through breakdown, no less than three of his colleagues were obliged to return to England. This disaster was used by him to organize a series of China Conventions in various big centres, in which he paid all the expenses, and the four men had full opportunity to put the various aspects of their work before the public. His deep devotion threw its own spirit over all the meetings, which made a very deep impression both on those who spoke and those who listened. He made no requests for money, but various gifts were forced into his hands. The £800 thus raised he handed over to the Missionary Society that it might make the nucleus of an Extension Fund for additional workers.
True to the End 109
He also wrote to several papers asking for volunteers who should accept from him for sustenance the bare necessaries of life, and should carry on pioneer work. Several such workers ultimately came out.
It was in 1893 that David Hill returned to China, white-haired, and never expecting to see England again, but anticipating a good number yet of years of active service.
He came to a China more and more thrilling with unrest and the shadow of change. The Shanghai Conference had asked for a thou- sand missionaries from Christendom in the next five years, and large numbers were being sent, especially from Scandinavia and America. The old poison of evil rumour was still working under the surface, and the uneasiness induced by the Westernizing of Japan, which was daily becoming more evident, made on all sides an unsettlement which was both useful as giving new oppor- tunities for the missionary, and dangerous as opening the door to more disturbances. Two of the young Swedish missionaries were most brutally murdered not far from Han- kow, and cynical injustice was meted out by the Chinese authorities. The schemes
no David Hill
of the progressive Viceroy Chang Chih Tung were making the Mission headquarters an increasingly important centre of life. Great ironworks were built at Hanyang ; a cotton mill, mint, and arsenal at Wuchang. Iron mining was developing in the neighbour- hood of Hwang Szkang, the scene of so many of Hill's early missionary journeys and later work with the Lay Missionaries. The result was a breeze of foreign influence and a large addition to work, specially for the hospitals, where the accidents in the works were tended. The sharp and rapid lesson of the Chinese war with Japan, which was a foregone conclusion to all who knew the two countries, brought an immediate bewildered sense of need which was the first step towards the willingness to learn, so imperative a necessity before the possibility of improvement.
Hill's experience and guidance were of great value amidst all this movement. He took up the Genera] Superintendency again, and made his headquarters for a time in the Blind School at Hankow. He soon made the opportunity for a long itinerating journey among the Lay Mission stations up the Han,
True to the End m
and returned rejoicing after his walk of three hundred miles and four hundred of boating. Such journeys were not always pure pleasure. Witness the laconic entry in his diary on another occasion, * Took passage on a boat of smugglers. Free fight at Tsaitien during the night. Detained there.' At any rate the ability successfully to take so long and arduous a journey augured well for his strength and health.
The year 1895 saw the commencement of the last bit of work that he was to under- take. The city of Hankow is a rather narrow strip of houses more than five miles long. Near the two ends of this are the Wesleyan and the London Missions. Through the generosity of an old friend it became possible to effect a new settlement half way between these two extremes. Rooms, dis- pensary, and preaching-hall were erected at Kung Tien, a densely populated business region of Hankow, not far from the premises originally occupied when the London Mission started its first Christian work in Central China more than forty years ago. There Hill immersed himself in the ocean of native life which flowed in fuU tide all round him.
112 David Hill
and more than ever sought, by personal intercourse and conversation, to win those with whom he came in contact. His neigh- bours here were of the soUd, commercial class, and he was ever open to their calls for sympathy or friendship. The young colleague who shared the home with him during the last few months tells of the con- tinuous round of work, study, devotional exercise, preaching, exposition, that filled up the day. Here, too, as in previous years, he found time to cultivate the ac- quaintance of the English residents at the Hankow Concession, always feeling it his duty to gain influence over any souls with whom he came into relation. After ten o'clock at night he would come into his colleague's room, talk to him of his work, advise him, warn him of possible pitfalls, or with animated gesture go through the history of the past, of itineration, famine rehef, riot, development. Then came the Greek Testament and his exposition and prayers. After prayers, while he expected the younger man to go to bed, the older would return for long watches of work and prayer in his own study.
True to the End 113
So in happy occupation the Christ-Hfe was Hved, and Christ, being Hfted up, drew men unto Him.
The Annual Synod of 1896, over which Hill 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 paraJleled 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 greatest joy, if you enter upon missionary service.' It was David Hill's characteristic last appeal.
Meanwhile changes were taking place among the influential Chinese society in Wuchang. The Governor of the province was one of the men who had given the prestige of his position in Hunan to the foul, anti-Christian propaganda of some years before. In Wuchang he came in contact with more enlightened men among the entourage of the Viceroy. A case of
8
114 David Hill
illness in his family led him to call in a Christian medical man who had settled in Wuchang. This led to a friendship and to an introduction of his wife to the missionary ladies of the city. The death of this Gover- nor's child and the sympathetic care of the doctor broke down the last barrier of distrust.
When the winter followed there came to the central cities scores of thousands of destitute refugees whose crops had utterly failed in the previous autumn. These squatted outside the walls in the mat huts which official charity assigned them, and settled down to pass as best they could the rigours of the winter. The Governor's lady, whose heart had been softened by her own sorrow, desired to give money for the relief of their sufferings, and was joined in this charity by the highest official in Hankow, who had formerly been Secretary of Legation in Pekin.
Seeking for some one whom they might safely trust to administer their gifts, they passed by their own countrymen and chose as their almoner — David Hill, the represen- tative of the creed which but a few years before had been, with the Governor's help.
True to the End 115
held up to public reprobation and disgust ! It was the final triumph of character over calumny.
He had already commenced his labour of love amongst these poor. The fatalism of the East leads to a submissiveness amidst its suffering multitudes which makes com- paratively easy the official deahng with great masses of the starving where the West would be convulsed. But when relief is offered, the very number of the needy makes the embarrassment of the charitable. At the time here referred to, as so often before, it was found impossible to give relief during the daylight. The huge crowds gathered round those who brought help, each eager to secure a share of what was obviously not enough to go all round. There- fore Mr. Hill and a Chinese friend used to go out at three o'clock in the morning till six, when all were asleep, and stealthily to sHp inside the wretched mat huts rice- tickets or money. The young colleague who shared his rooms was not permitted to accompany them, ' because a man studying Chinese needed his full amount of rest.'
In thus seeking to save that which was
ii6 David Hill
lost Mr. Hill never counted any cost. The hour was the chillest of the twenty-four, when the vital force is lowest and when the sodden ground is most noisome with its rank miasma. Amidst the huts of the starving the low, foul, typhus fever was always burning, and it is practically certain that it was this last service of love which cost the friend of China his life. The long and arduous life had lowered resisting power, and wheit the pestilence that walked in darkness leaped upon him it gripped him with a hand that could not be loosed.
Easter Sunday came to him at Wusueh, whither he had gone to the funeral of an old Christian. He preached morning and afternoon, and these were the last words of Scripture he took as text : ' Death is swal- lowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory ? O death, where is thy sting ? The sting of death is sin ; and the power of sin is the law : but thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abound- ing in the work of the Lord.' Those who were present tell of the eager, earnest
True to the End 117
triumph and gracious influence of the preacher. The httle band of behevers then met round the table of the Lord. The day of blessing was crowned by a long conversa- tion over evening prayers, when the members told their English friend what they had learnt from the Resurrection of Christ.
A night or two spent in the comfortless waiting-room of the steamer office brought the first active symptoms of illness ; after the journey to Kung Tien, Hankow, he was obliged at once to take to his bed. A few days later the medical men removed him to the more airy quarters at the Mission Com- pound. While consciousness lasted he was eager to save trouble, quick to acknowledge each act of tendance. Then, as the fever burnt up his body, his thoughts were borne away by delirium. It was the ruling passion which asserted itself still. Sometimes he preached in English or Chinese ; sometimes he murmured sounds occasionally emerging into distinctness which revealed the un- intelligible remainder. ' We want more of the Spirit's power; we can do nothing without that.' ' The Life of God in the soul is a Power, and must manifest itself.' Now
ii8 David Hai
i t would be the Doxology ; again his face lighted up with his radiant smile : * O Lord, for all those both high and low who in every land love and serve Thee, we bless and adore Thy Holy Name. ... O Lord, bless this 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 i8, 1896, came. At 8.25 in the evening, when in 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.
A solemn hush fell on the bereaved Mission. The Blind School carpenters worked all night to make the cof&n ; 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
True to the End 119
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. Notwithstanding the deluge of rain which poured continuously all day, the cemetery was packed with a great, silent crowd, Chinese and foreign. The representatives 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 ' Rock of Ages,' which was the last hymn he had listened to; the native Christians joined in * Peace, perfect Peace,' and the first great act of David Hill's Hfe was ended. The loving service, the apostolic zeal, were taken to some other sphere where love fails not and knows no let. That hfe is hid with Christ in God, but is manifest in God's great universe, made perfect in eternal love.
APPENDIX
We add as an Appendix, first, the last entry in Mr. Hill's early journal ; second, the notes of his last sermon ; third, the last entry in his Greek Testament Commentary.
The journal ends on October 27, 1876, with the news of his father's death.
* Bryson pointed out a hymn of Keble's, which has been a source or rather means of much comfort, and also of much heart- searching. It is that for the Fourth Sunday after Easter, commencing :
My Saviour, can it ever be
That I should gain by losing Thee?
It is based on John xvi. 7. In loss, deep, bitter loss, God intends our gain. What gain for me in this heaviest loss I can now suffer on earth ? The thought that had I been holier, more simply, readily respondent to the voice of the Spirit, I should have been guided homewards before I lost my dear father, and thus added comfort to his last hours. The reading of father's letters shows how he has as a father longed to see me again,
120
Appendix 121
whilst as servant of God he said, *' Don't come on my account, but wait till God points your way home." This makes me feel that I have too little tenderness and sympathy for others. That in doing the work of Christ I have been guilty of much hardness,
inhumanness. Mr. 's illness is a case
in point. Whilst we think we are doing God service we may, in reality and truth, be wounding His dear children.
* My dear father's removal shows how I desired his approbation in my course ; and now that he is gone there is no human ap- probation which, rightly or wrongly, I parti- cularly desire ; but I would all the more earnestly seek the approbation of God, the praise which cometh of God. The caring little for human approbation sometimes results in a lack of enthusiasm in work, which ought indeed to be supplied by the thought of being accepted of Him ; and yet, along with this carelessness about pleasing any one in particular in this world, there is in me such an eagerness to re-read any letter of mine which may appear in print that I am far from being free from that great snare — of seeking the praise of men.
' Another change which the loss of my father has brought about is the throwing the responsibility of a larger income and personal property upon me. And this shows me that the responsibility of action rests upon me ;
122 David mil
and the thought broadens out, not only covering this one particular, but the whole spiritual life. God gives us a will, a solemn and awful power ; a will He expects us to employ, a will which He will not use for us. He will not do for us in willing and deter- mining what we can do for ourselves. " Our wills are ours " — emphatically so — but they are ours " To make them Thine." And the evangel of the Son of God is to the effect that these wills, which had lost the power of exe- cuting their mandates, may regain that when we make them God's by receiving His Spirit within us. But — and here has been my great error — God still requires of us the exercise of this faculty ; He requires that we do will ; He demands the concentration of all our force, the surrender of our whole man to this dominant power, and then the subjection of this power itself to the divine will. And He gives us power to will, thus restoring the lost image of God, bringing back our per- fected humanity in Jesus Christ, on whose cross all self-will is crucified. And con- sciously to possess this power of wiUing is as a resurrection from the dead ; it is gladness and joy, an inspiration and a life to all who know it. And to doubt this is death, paralysing and kilhng ; whilst to beHeve it through Jesus, through faith in Him to be mine, this is life and victory ; and it relegates the responsibility of action which sin would
Appendix 123
have us throw off or ignore, and indolence would have us throw back upon God, to the right party — to him to whom God gave the power of willing ; to me, who may not guilt- lessly throw it off.'
The last sermon was preached on Easter Sunday, 1896. The notes are written roughly on the back of a letter from a friend.
The morning's text was i Cor. xv. 55-57, and Mr. Hill's notes read —
Read Isa. xxv. 8 ; Hos. vi. 2 ; Ezek. xxxvii. 12 ; but more definitely Hos. xiii. 14.
Of these sayings the Apostle sees fulfil- ment in the Resurrection of Christ, and all that it involves ; not only Christ, but all believers, so that death is a conquered foe.
Look (i) At the power of Death and Hades ; (2) At the Victory of Christ.
I. (i) Sting. Point of sword ; sting of serpent ; indication of pain at thought of death.
Dislike of mention. Severs relationships, affections. Fear of death (though often painless, rapid, freeing from present troubles) universal. Rich and poor, civilized and barbarian.
For (2) Hades (dark regions) has had victory.
Conquered Adam, conquers all men. A King (Rom. v.)
124 David Hill
This world a battle-field. Death victorious everywhere.
The Apostle gives explanation : Sting, sin, conscience. Strength of Law not known without law; but law means authority, punishment. Thus threefold enemy — death, sin, law. • Victorious, powerful, dreaded, but —
II. Conqiiered. Giveth us victory.
How conquered. (i). Death by dying, not evading ; dying and triumphing over. Rising again. Heb. ii. 14, Humanity attracted. Devil : assault ; fell ; rose again ; triumphed. (2). Sin by atoning for ; put away by sacrifice of Himself (Rom. iii. 25 ; Heb. ix. 26). (3). Law by fulfilling, yet suEering ; all subjected, conquered, and for us in Him. Giveth us : free, unmerited, unbought. Through our Lord : union with Jesus by faith. Fear gone. (Heb. ii. 15.) Polycarp. Martyrs' brave endurance. Spirit freed. With Christ. Thief. Paul. Body raised ; germ there ; Spring-time coming.
The afternoon text was the last verse of the same chapter. The argument for stead- fast continuance in effort arising from the Resurrection. Doubters of Resurrection no motive for life to cf^me.
Appendix 125
I. The ground- truth of Retribution. Jesus connected both together (John vi.) [? John
Not in vain ; sometimes apparent here, but certainly hereafter.
II. Bodies reflect what we have been doing. Every one give account of himself. Why those scars ?
III. Differentiation in glory. One star from another. Wesley and Whitefield.
Upper Towns, &c., Distress and [word illegible].
The last note in the Commentary was made on the night of the same day. It is on Col. iv. 12 ff. :
' '* Always striving for you in his prayers, that ye may stand perfect in the will of God.'' This wrestler had a high ideal of Christian life and character revealed to him.
'Tis not in plains, but on the height The soul attains the purest light.
So this soul must have often been on the mountain-top, and seen there visions of possible stability and steadfastness, of perfection and full assurance, which ordinary commonplace Christians had little conception of. He had toiled up those heights, and the Apostle had watched him in his unselfish much labour for the three cities God had placed upon his heart. It is a noble sight,
126 David Hill
this plain pioneer, burdened with the care of the Churches of the Lycus. He wrestled in a lone 7rd\7) that he might guard his charge from assault, that so they might stand fast in the secret place of the Most High, perfect, ini- tiated into the deeper mysteries of the in- dwelling Christ, and fully assured in all the will of God.
* And yet it may be that his influence was being undermined by these false teachers, and that on this account the Apostle wrote this letter and bears his testimony from Imperial Rome to the much labour Epaphras had whilst there for his beloved Colossians. There was no selfishness in his toil, as the repeated for you here, and the same expres- sion, Col. i. 7, attests ; his persevering struggle that his beloved Colossians might stand perfect and fully assured in all the will of God was in striking contrast to the show of wisdom in will worship and humility and severity to the body of the false teachers who would undo his work.
* If he did take turns with Aristarchus in being the voluntary fellow-prisoner of the Apostle, that too would evidence his dis- interestedness ; and if he had travelled from Colossae to Rome to take counsel with St. Paul, that would show his docility also, whilst the otir beloved fellow-slave suggests what a congenial colleague the Apostle had found him. He was both a slave and a fellow-slave.
Appendix 127
a slave of Christ and a fellow-slave of the Apostle and Timothy ; and this we can well conceive, since he must have himself been perfect, a fully initiated disciple, versed in the deeper mysteries of faith and fully assured in all the will of God, or at any rate have had the possibiHty of such a life revealed to him. The much labour the Apostle speaks of in connexion with these three cities may have become known to the Apostle by his (Epa- phras*) looking up men from them when in Rome, or from the agony of desire expressed in his prayers, or from his recounting to the Apostle his travels between the three cities. " Fiilly persuaded, fixed and firm " (Cremer says) for the most part only in patristic and biblical Greek. From this word, and from the whole prayer, we may gather that Epaphras was a man of stable character, not driven to and fro by every wind of doctrine, but a man who had convictions and stuck to them ; and that the ground of his firmness was his waiting upon God, his wresthng, prayerful spirit. The striving suggests that he was uncompromising in his principles ; he would rather fight than surrender them ; that the will of God was to him the rule of Hfe. * In all the will of God. It has been sug- gested that, as the sphere in which the perfectness and full assurance of the Colos- sians was sought was all the will of God, Epaphras himself must have been a very
128 David Hill
practical man, and in this the opposite of the false teachers of Colossae, whose vain speculations only tended to the pufiing up of a fleshly mind.
* If the reading i. 8 be on behalf of us, not on behalf of you, then Epaphras appears as the Apostle's representative. Unable him- self to leave Ephesus, the Apostle may have deputed Epaphras to visit his native place and there promulgate the truth, and so Epaphras becomes one of St. Paul's evangelists.
* Luke, the beloved physician. Luke's name is handed down as a physician, a beloved physician. His medical skill and care were his chief marks. With that he doubtless had much of human kindness, but it was as doctor he was remembered. It may be that he had been called in years before when the Apostle was so ill in Phrygia, and that he was so drawn towards the Apostle that he deter- mined to accompany him on his journeys, and had now the Apostle's confidence and love. But it was rather as physician, and not as bondservant of Jesus Christ, that he speaks of him. In this he differed from Epaphras : more cultured probably, but not in such dead earnest. It is noticeable that the Apostle had drawn two out of the four evangelists to his side at this time.*
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