The Chinese.
"The Unbelieving Wife Sanctified In The Brother."
I Cor. vii: 14. (Revision.)
Our Chinese brethren have their full share in the family feeling which for ages has been nurtured in their race. This feeling is even intensified by their new life in Christ. They long for what they hope to make a Christian home, and greatly desire to perpetuate themselves in children who may follow them in following Christ. But what are they to do for wives? Many live in a virtual celibacy that is hopeless, because enforced by the betrothals made for them in China by their parents or elder brothers. These are accounted sacred, and are honored by our brethren with an oblivion of their own fancies or affinities that will be adjudged to be either stolid or heroic, according as the person judging is disposed to think kindly or unkindly of this people. Many have returned to China for the express purpose of consummating this betrothal in marriage. They remain a few months with their wives, and then return to California to find work and provide for them. Such persons are obliged by their principles to live in virtual celibacy.
Some greatly desire to send for their wives, but not only does the Restriction Law bar the entrance, but the father in China will probably raise effectual objection. A son is as much the property of his father at sixty as at six, and all he has, not only in property, but in wife and children as well, is under the father's control. The daughter-in-law, if strong and willing, is a very serviceable person about the old homestead in China, and the appeals of the son for the enjoyment of his wife's society in California are answered with the advice to get him another wife here. One in China and one in America seems to them a very safe arrangement. Eight thousand miles of ocean intervene and assure against domestic broils.
Some, however, of our brethren have in one way or another been set free from these early betrothals, and are at liberty to seek wives for themselves. Such are very glad if among the inmates of the mission-homes for Chinese women they can find a Christian for a help-meet. But this is often impossible. There are not enough Chinese Christian women to meet the demand. And therefore it has seemed to me not to be my duty strenuously to insist on the restriction placed on union with unbelievers, but rather when such a union has been arranged for, and is to be consummated, to hold out a hope that the unbelieving wife may be, not only in form and in her relation to the church—which seems to be the sense of the text cited—but in truth and fact sanctified in the brother.
This hope was fulfilled some years ago in the home of our oldest missionary helper, Jee Gam. His father having at last yielded to the son's entreaties and sent his wife to him, the narrow quarters in our Central Mission House to which the bride was brought became at once a sanctuary, and the Family Altar was established and the Family Saviour recognized and worshiped. When a son was born to them, he was brought in due time to our Bethany to be baptized, the heathen mother consenting and attending. It was not long after that the mother herself stood with us to enter into covenant and be baptized, and since then,—though preferring to live in her home in a seclusion which American ladies would regard as imprisonment and torture,—she has sought there to do service to her Master in bringing up her children in the nurture of the Lord. In her husband's absence from home she takes his place at the family altar, and many an American mother might well pattern after her fidelity in teaching her children the good and right way.
Several years ago, one of our steadfast Chinese brethren in Sacramento requested me to come and conduct his marriage service. He had procured the bride in Marysville, purchasing her (I suppose) of her parents after the Chinese custom. I obeyed the summons; obtained for him the necessary license, and then at the Mission House awaited the coming of the bride. That which at length arrived resembled more a moving package of rich and brilliant dry-goods of Chinese manufacture than a bright and blushing bride. Something could be seen of the shoes she wore, and when at length, in the course of the service, I somewhat firmly insisted on a joining of hands a hand was made to appear, but there was no bridal kiss, nor any sight or semblance of a face beneath the quadrupled or quintupled veils. However, the marriage was effected in a Christian way, and the next morning there came to me an invitation to call upon the bride. I found her to be the most beautiful Chinese girl I had ever seen, with manners all the more pleasing because so very shy. Her husband had prepared quarters for her which, as compared with the average Chinese home, were almost palatial, and everything seemed to promise a future peaceful and joyous.
After a few months the mother-in-law made her daughter a visit as she passed through Sacramento on her way back to her native land. What passed between mother and daughter we do not know, but a few days after her departure, Fong Bow returning to his home was shocked to find his little wife suspended by the neck in an attempt at suicide. He rescued her, and when she was restored asked for the reason. She acknowledged that she had a good home and a kind and generous husband, but there was no shrine in the house, no ancestral tablet, no Joss, and she was convinced that some great evil must be impending from spirits thus neglected and provoked. She preferred to sacrifice her present comfort rather than incur the woes approaching,—all the more dreadful in her apprehension because utterly unknown. Whereupon Fong Bow told her that while he himself could not worship such things, and knew that an idol was "nothing in the world," he did not and would not forbid her to do what she thought right, and thus she provided herself with a shrine and gods and was comforted.