David Hill : an apostle to the Chinese

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^^^

~^

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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