A change, too, takes place in him who resists. Icy apathy becomes burning, bitter hatred. The whole enginery of iniquity is set in motion to sweep off this strange foreign propaganda. Malicious placards are posted before every yamen and temple. Basest stories are retailed. "The barbarians dig out men's eyes and cut out men's hearts to make medicine of them." The thirst for revenge is engendered, until, like an unleashed tiger, the mob springs upon the missionary's home, and returns not till its thirst has been slaked with the blood of the righteous. That is the dark shadow hanging over missionary life in nearly every part of the Chinese Empire.
We have had no name to add to the foreign missionary martyr list, from the region of Amoy.
Chinese martyrs there may have been. Men who have endured the lifelong laceration of taunt and sneer and suffered the loss of well nigh all things, there have been not a few. Though the fires of persecution have burned with fiercer intensity in other parts of China, yet we have not escaped having our garments singed in some of their folds.
Perhaps the most widespread anti-missionary uprising in China occurred during the years 1870 and 1871.
It was during the summer of 1870 that Dr. Talmage was compelled to go to
Chefoo, North China, for much-needed rest and change.
On August 8th he wrote to Dr. J. M. Ferris:
"The next day after my arrival at Chefoo the news was received of the terrible massacre at Tientsin on June 21st. (Tientsin is the port of Peking, and has a population of upwards of one million.) Nine Sisters of Charity, one foreign priest, the French consul and other French officials and subjects, and three Russians—in all, twenty-one Europeans—were massacred. Many of them were horribly mutilated. Especially is this true of all the Sisters. Their private residences and public establishments, as well as all the Protestant chapels within the city, were destroyed."
Not long after, the American Presbyterian Mission at Tung chow, Shantung
Province, North China, was broken up, for fear of an intended massacre.
The missionaries were helped to Chefoo by two vessels sent by the British
Admiral, Sir Henry Kellet.
At Canton, vile stories about foreigners distributing poisonous pills were gotten up, and such was the seriousness of the crisis that two German missionaries had to flee for their lives, one having his mission premises utterly destroyed. A people whose credulity is most amazingly developed by feeding on fairy tales and demon adventures from their childhood, are prepared to believe anything about the "ocean barbarians" whose name is never spoken without mingled fear and hatred and suspicion.
The ferment, started at Canton, spread along the coast. The people of Amoy were inoculated with the virus.