One of the Chinese preachers, on refusing to apostatize, received a hundred blows upon his bare back, and then the bleeding sufferer was told to choose between obedience and another hundred blows. What would we have answered? Let us, who have never been called on to suffer for Him, be modest in saying what we would have done. But that mangled, half- dead Chinese gasped:--''I value Jesus Christ more than life, and I will never deny Him.'' Before all of the second hundred blows could be inflicted, unconsciousness came and he was left for dead. But a friend took him away by night, bathed his wounds and secretly nursed him to recovery. I saw him, when I was in China, and I looked reverently upon the back that was seamed and scarred with ''the marks of the Lord Jesus.'' Of the hundreds of Christians who were taken inside the legation grounds in Peking, not one proved false to their benefactors. ''In the midday heat, in the drenching night rains, under storms of shot and shell, they fought, filled sand-bags, built barricades, dug trenches, sang hymns and offered prayers to the God whom the foreigner had taught them to love.'' Even the children were faithful. During the scream of deadly bullets, and the roar of burning buildings, the voices of the Junior Christian Endeavour Society were heard singing:--

''There'll be no dark valley when Jesus comes.''

Such instances could be multiplied almost indefinitely from the experiences of Chinese Christians during the Boxer uprising.

Indeed the fortitude of the persecuted Christians was so remarkable that in many cases the Boxers cut out the hearts of their victims to find the secret of such sublime faith, declaring: ''They have eaten the foreigner's medicine.'' In those humble Chinese the world has again seen a vital faith, again seen that the age of heroism has not passed, again seen that men and women are willing to die for Christ. Multitudes withstood a persecution as frightful as that of the early disciples in the gardens and arenas of Nero. If they were hypocrites why did they not recant? As Dr. Maltbie Babcock truly said:-- ''One-tenth of the hypocrisy with which they were charged would have saved them from martyrdom.'' But thousands of them died rather than abjure their faith, and thousands more ''had trial of mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment; they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated; wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth.''

Col. Charles Denby, late United States Minister to China, declared:--''Not two per cent. of the Chinese Christians proved recreant to their faith and many meet death as martyrs. Let us not call them 'Rice Christians' any more. Their conduct at the British Legation and the Peitang is deserving of all praise.''[82] Beyond question, the Chinese Christians as a body stood the test of fire and blood quite as well as an equal number of American Christians would have stood it.

[82] Letter, April 28, 1902.

One of the most trying experiences of the missionaries has been the dealing with those who did recant. Some of the cases were pitiful. Poor, ignorant men, confessed their sin with streaming eyes, saying that they did not mean to deny their Lord, but that they could not see their wives outraged and their babies' heads crushed against stone walls. Others admitted that, though they stood firm while one hundred blows were rained upon their bare backs, yet after that they became confused and were only dimly conscious of what they said to escape further agony than flesh and blood could endure.

Still others made a distinction, unfamiliar to us, but quite in harmony with Oriental hereditary notions, between the convictions of the heart and the profession of the lips, so that they externally and temporarily bowed their heads to the storm without feeling that they were thereby renouncing their faith.

One of the best Chinese ministers in Shantung, after 200 lashes, which pounded his back into a pulp, feebly muttered an affirmative to the question: ''Will you leave the devils'

church?'' But he explained afterwards that while he promised to leave ''the devils' church,'' he did not promise to leave Christ's Church. The deception was not as apparent to him as it is to us whose moral perceptions have been sharpened by centuries of Christian nurture which have been denied to the Chinese.

When the proclamation ordering the extermination of all foreigners and Christians was posted on the walls of Ching- chou-fu, a friendly official hinted that if the Chinese pastors would sign a document to the effect that they would ''no longer practice the foreign religion,'' he would accept it as sufficient on behalf of all their flocks, and not enforce the order. Warrants for the arrest of every Christian had already been written. Scoundrels were hurrying in from distant villages to join in the riot of plunder and lust. Two women had already been killed. What were the pastors to do?

There was no missionary to guide them, for long before the consuls had ordered all foreigners out of the interior. The agonized pastors determined to sacrifice themselves for their innocent people, to go through the form of giving up the ''foreign'' religion. That word ''foreign'' must be emphasized to understand their temptation, for the Chinese Christians do not feel that Christianity is foreign, but that it is theirs as well as ours. Moreover, the pastors were made to understand that it was simply a legal fiction, not affecting the religion of their hearts, but only a temporary expedient that the friendly magistrate might have a pretext for giving his protection to the Christians. They were not asked to engage in any idolatrous rite or to make any public apostasy, but simply to sign a statement ''no longer to practice the foreign religion.'' ''So far from recanting,'' it was urged upon them, ''you are preventing recanting.''

Their decision may be best given in the words of Pastor Wu Chien Cheng: ''When I thought of these people,'' he said, his emotion being so great that the tears were running down his face, ''in most cases with children and aged parents dependent upon them, and thought of all that was involved for them if I refused to sign the paper--well, I couldn't help it.

I decided to take on myself the shame and the sin.''

As the Rev. J. P. Bruce, of the English Baptist Mission, who told me of this incident, truly says: ''Who could listen to such a narrative--so sad and painful and yet not without much that was noble--without sympathy and tears?'' In this spirit of tenderness, so marked in the Lord's dealings with sinful Peter, the missionaries dealt with the recanting Christians.

With the impostors, indeed, they had less mercy. The Rev. R. M. Mateer secured the arrest of two scapegraces who, under pretense of being Christians, had blackmailed innocent villagers. Very plainly, too, did the missionaries deal with Christians, who, like some people in the United States after a fire, placed an extravagant valuation upon what they had lost.

But these were exceptional cases.

On the whole, Christians in Europe and America may well have stronger sympathy and respect for their fellow-Christians in China who have suffered so much for conscience' sake.

Purified and chastened by the fearful holocaust through which they have passed, they are stronger spiritually than ever before.

Like the apostles after Pentecost, they are giving ''with great power their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.''

''The Chinese Church is not yet strong enough to stand entirely alone, but it is far stronger and more self-conscious of the eternal indwelling Spirit than ever before. It has learned the power of God to keep the soul in times of deadly peril, and to enable the weakest to give the strongest testimony. It has learned by humiliation and confession to put away its sins, and to gird itself for new conflicts and new victories....

Its ablest leaders are more trustworthy men than before their trials, and the body of believers has a unity and a cohesiveness which will certainly bear fruit in the not distant future.''[83]

[83] Smith, ''Rex Christus,'' p. 212.

XXIII

THE STRAIN OF READJUSTMENT TO CHANGED ECONOMIC CONDITIONS

THE economic revolution in Asia, discussed in a preceding chapter,[84] bears heavily on the Chinese Christians. So far as the pressure affects the rank and file of the membership, the mission boards cannot give adequate relief. Abroad as well as at home, it must remain the inexorable rule that a Christian must live within his income and buy new things only as he can pay for them. Any other policy would mean utter ruin. Here also, men must ''work out their own salvation''; and the missionary, while trying to lift men out of barbarous social conditions on the one hand, should on the other resolutely oppose the improvident eagerness which leads a blanketed Sioux Indian to buy on credit a rubber-tired surrey.

[84] Chapter IX.

But what about the native ministers and teachers, who find it impossible to live on the salaries of a decade ago? The problem of the ordinary helper is not so difficult. Springing from the common people, accustomed from childhood to a meagre scale of living, the small salaries which the people can pay either in full or in large part are usually equal to the income which they would have had if they had not become Christians. But some native ministers come from a higher social grade. They are men of education and refinement.

They cannot live in a mud hut, go barefooted, wear a loin cloth and subsist on a few cents' worth of rice a day. They must not only have better houses and food and clothing, but they must have books and periodicals and the other apparatus of educated men. These things are not only necessary to their own maintenance, but they are essential to the work, for these men are the main reliance for influencing the upper classes in favour of Christianity. It is not a question of luxury or self-indulgence, but of bare respectability, of the simple decencies of life which are enjoyed by an American mechanic as distinguished from the poverty which, for a cultivated family, falls below the level of self-respect. But this requires a salary which, save in a very few places, cannot at present be paid by the churches.

''Our pastors,'' writes a missionary, ''are supposed to live as the middle-class of their people do, but of late years, with the great rise in prices, they are living below the middle-class.''

The consequences are not only pinching poverty but sometimes a feeling of wrong, and, in some cases, a yielding to temptation. One Chinese pastor, for example, who was trying to support a wife and five children on $10 Mex. ($5) a month, shipwrecked his influence by trying to supplement his scanty income by helping in lawsuits. Can we wonder that he felt obliged to do something, almost anything?

But who is to pay the higher salaries that are now so necessary?

The first impulse is to look to the mission boards in Europe and America, and accordingly missionaries and Christians are importunately calling for increased appropriations.

But whatever temporary and occasional relief may be given in this way, as a permanent remedy, it is plainly impossible. If the conditions were simply sporadic and local, the case might be different. But they are universal, or fast becoming so, and they will be permanent. It is quite visionary to suppose that the income of the mission boards will permit them to meet the whole or even the larger part of the increased cost of living among the myriads of ministers, teachers and helpers in the growing churches of China. American Christians cannot be reasonably expected to add such an enormous burden to the already large responsibilities which they are carrying in their varied forms of home work and the present scale of foreign missionary expenditure. Even if they could and would, it would be at the expense of all further enlargement of the work, and at the same time it would still further weaken an already weak sense of self-reliance among the native ministers and helpers of Asia.

Moreover, the average Christian giver in America is feeling the same strain himself. The so-called ''era of prosperity''

has given more steady employment to the mechanic, has given better markets to the producer, and has enormously increased the wealth of many who were already rich. But the men on fixed salaries find that ''prosperity'' has increased the prices of commodities without proportionately increasing earnings.

Millions of American church members find it harder to give than they did ten years ago, for while their incomes are about the same, they must pay higher prices for meats, groceries and clothing. True, many salaries were cut down during the financial stringency of 1896-1897, but while some of them have been restored to their former figure, few have been raised above their original level, while others are still below it. Meantime official statistics show that the average cost of food is 10.9 per cent. higher than the average for the decade between 1890 and 1899, and that there has been an increase of 16.1 per cent. as compared with 1896, the year of lowest prices.[85] It is urged that the wages of workmen have increased in proportion. But however true this may be of organized labour, it is palpably untrue of the great middle-class who are neither capitalists nor members of labour unions. They form the bulk of the church membership and to them ''Mr. Wright's statement will carry no reassurance.

It is they who have been hit hardest by the increased cost of living for their incomes have not kept pace with it.

Indeed, they are actually worse off to-day than they were eight, ten or fifteen years ago.''[86] Dun's Review, an acknowledged authority, declares that not in twenty years has it cost so much to live as now, and that March 1, 1904, the average prices of breadstuffs were thirty per cent. higher than they were seven years ago.

[85] Report of the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labour, 1903

[86] The Youth's Companion, October 29, 1903.

In such circumstances, it is clearly out of the question for the Christians of the United States to meet these enlarged demands for the support of their own families and, in addition, meet them for the churches in China.

If then, the problem of the increased cost of living in Asia cannot be solved by increased gifts from America, what other solutions are possible? As an experienced missionary says:-- ''To ask for more from America seems like a step backward; but to leave matters as they are is to see our churches seriously crippled.'' Four possible solutions may be mentioned.

First:--Stop all expansion of the work and use any increase in receipts to raise salaries. This is undoubtedly worthy of thoughtful consideration. To what extent is it right to open new fields and enlarge old ones when the workers now employed are inadequately paid? Plainly, the mission boards should carefully consider this aspect of the question. As a matter of fact, many of them have already considered it. The Presbyterian Board has repeatedly declined urgent requests to establish new stations on the ground that it could not do so in justice to its existing work. But as a practicable solution, this method is open to serious difficulties. A living work must grow, and the living forces which govern that growth are more or less beyond the control of the boards. The boards are amenable to their constituencies and those constituencies sometimes imperatively demand the occupation of a new field, as, for example, they did in the case of the Philippine Islands, some boards which at first decided not to enter the Philippines being afterwards forced into them by a pressure of denominational opinion that they could not ignore. Moreover, the missionaries themselves are equally insistent in their demands for enlargement.

Some boards are literally deluged with such appeals.

The missionaries who have most strenuously insisted on the policy of no further expansion till the existing work is better sustained have sometimes been the very ones who have strongly urged that an exception should be made in their particular fields, without realizing that the argument from ''exceptions''

is so often pressed that it is really the rule and not the exception at all. And the churches and missionaries are usually right. God is calling His people to go forward. His voice is frequently very plain, and the boards, with all their care and conservatism, are then obliged to expand.

Second:--Diminish the number of native pastors, helpers and teachers and increase their work. In some places, this might be done by grouping congregations and fields. But the places where this could be wisely effected are so few that the relief to the situation as a whole would not be appreciable, especially as the native Christians would not give so liberally under such an arrangement. Their sense of responsibility would be weakened if they had only a half or a quarter of a pastor's time instead of the whole of it. Besides, the native force is far too small now. Instead of being diminished it should be largely increased. The great work of the future must be done by native ministers. If China is ever to be evangelized, it must be to a large degree by Chinese evangelists. To adopt deliberately the policy of restricting the number of such evangelists and teachers would be suicidal. As a solution, therefore, this method is quite impracticable, as it would be a relief at the expense of efficiency.

Third:--Require native leaders to earn their own living either wholly or in part. There is Pauline example for this method.

Some of the Presbyterian missionaries in Laos have adopted it by inducing the members of a congregation to secure a ricefield and a humble house for their minister. The Korea missionaries have very successfully worked this method by insisting that the leaders of groups shall continue in their former occupations and give their services to Christian work without pay, in some such way as Sunday-school superintendents and other unpaid workers do in America. This method is deserving of wider adoption. It would give considerable relief in many other fields. It was probably the way that the early church grew.

''Two opinions,'' says Dr. J. J. Lucas, ''have been held in regard to the basis on which the salaries of native agents should be fixed. One is that such a salary should be paid as would remove all excuse for engaging in secular work, demanding all the time of the pastor for spiritual work; another is, that acknowledging the salary to be insufficient, the pastors be expected to supplement it by what they can get from field and vineyard.

If self-support is to be aimed at, at all cost, then the latter plan is the only feasible one, with the dangers of its abuse. There is no doubt, however, that a man who loves the gospel ministry and is devoted to it can, without the neglect of spiritual affairs, do enough outside to lessen materially the burden that would fall on the church in his support.''

But this method of itself would hardly solve the problem.

However well adapted to the beginnings of mission work, it fails to provide a properly qualified native leadership. To do efficient work, a native pastor must give his whole time to it, and to that end he must have a salary that will make him ''free from worldly cares and avocations.'' We insist on this in the United States and the reasons for such a policy are as strong on the foreign field. The minister in Asia as well as the minister in America must have a salary. The labourer is worthy of his hire.

Fourth:--Insist upon a larger measure of self-support. The native churches must be led to a fuller responsibility in this matter. Grave as are the temporary embarrassments which the increased cost of living is forcing upon them and trying as is the permanent distress of some of them, yet as a whole the economic revolution will undoubtedly enlarge the earning capacity of the native Christians. Indeed, the new principles of life which the gospel brings should make them among the first to profit by the changed conditions, and as their wealth increases, their spirit of giving should, and under the wise lead- ership of the missionaries undoubtedly will, increase. For these reasons, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions took the following action July 2, 1900:--

''As having reference to the question of self-support of the native churches on the mission field, and in view of the fact that some of its missions are proposing to increase the salaries of native preachers and helpers on account of the increased cost of living, the Board is constrained to look with no little apprehension upon the prospect of continuing and increasing demands of foreign aid in proportion to the contributions made by the churches themselves. Increased intercourse of eastern nations with those of the west has led and will still further lead to a gradual assimilation to western ways and western prices, and unless the self-reliant spirit of the churches can be stimulated to a proportionate advance, there is a sure prospect that the drafts upon mission funds will be larger and larger in proportion to the amount of work accomplished. In view of these considerations, it was resolved that the missions in which such increase is proposed be earnestly requested to arouse the churches to the purpose and the endeavour to meet this increased expenditure instead of laying still larger burdens upon the resources of foreign funds. The Board deems this necessary not merely to the interest of its expanding work but to the self-reliant character, the future stability and self-propagating power of the churches themselves.''