IN the spring of the year 1894 I received a clear call from God to the privileged service of the Mission Field in China. Little did I imagine, as I heard His voice saying to me, “Depart; for I will send thee far hence unto the heathen,” that the call was to mean primarily, “I will show him how great things he must suffer for My Name’s sake.”
Two years later, in the autumn of 1896, I left for my appointed sphere in connection with the China Inland Mission, joining Mr. Stanley Smith (the well-known Cambridge “blue,” and leader of the missionary band known as “The Cambridge Seven”) at the prefectural city of Lu-an, in the Province of Shansi, North China. In association with him (truly a brother beloved), I passed, with my wife and family, three happy years, preaching among the heathen the unsearchable riches of Christ. In 1899, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Smith took their furlough, and the charge of the Station thereupon devolved upon me. Our party at the Mission Station of Lu-an Fu consisted of five souls—my wife, a son and daughter (Hedley and Hope, aged four and three respectively), Miss Gates, and myself.
The following year the work was broken up by the Boxer Rising, an outbreak which affected not merely our own locality, nor merely even our own Province, but, in a greater or less degree, the whole of China.
The accompanying record is offered as a humble contribution to the literature of that phenomenal and epoch-making crisis in the history of China. It professes to be nothing more than a plain, unvarnished recital of simple facts in their sequence, as they actually occurred in my own personal experience. But those facts were, by the very circumstances in which they were set, so altogether unique in character that I came to view them in the light of a testimony entrusted to me by God for His glory. When, therefore, I was invalided home, to find myself debarred from giving it to the public vivâ voce, the thought of committing it to writing took hold of me, and eventually crystallized into the narrative herein presented, of a humanly desperate situation on the one hand, and of a Divinely miraculous salvation on the other.
In retracing the marvelous acts of the Lord recorded in these pages I have felt indeed that I am on holy ground. So sacred is the memory of that solemn past that I almost shrink from bringing it to public notice. The only thing that enables me to do it now is the persuasion that the experience we were called to pass through was not for our sakes only, but also “for His body’s sake, which is the Church.” It seems clearly to be in the will of God that the course of His servants’ “sufferings” should be “fully known” (2 Tim. 3:10, 1110But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience, 11Persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me. (2 Timothy 3:10‑11)) for the glory of His own Name and the strengthening of “all who will to live godly in Christ Jesus.” In this confidence I commit the record, however imperfect, to the blessing of Him Who in all our affliction was Himself afflicted, and the Angel of Whose Presence saved us. “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy Name give glory.”
I desire to express my grateful appreciation of the valuable help rendered by Miss Gates in my preparation of certain parts of the narrative; of the generosity of the China Inland Mission in furnishing the beautiful map and the illustrations on pp. 12, 242, 302, 369; of the courtesy of Mr. William Heinemann in permitting the use of Mr. A. H. Savage-Landor’s realistic picture “A Boxer Recruit;” and of the kind services of Mr. Heinrich Witt (C.I.M.), who, guided by Sheng-min, visited, at my request, the various places connected with our flight in the neighborhood of Lu-an, and thus supplied me with the photographs of special local interest.
A. E. G.