The teacher in Yuan Ki's room was a six-footer, a college graduate, and an athlete. Yuan Ki was much impressed. He secretly admired him, but was ungraciously curt to him. This was Yuan Ki's way of making the teacher "keep his distance." But the teacher seemed not to notice it. He was always kind to Yuan Ki, even as he was to the others.
One morning at chapel teacher talked about his God. Yuan Ki sneered at what he told. Actually, teacher had said that his God had come down to earth and had given up His life on a cross, as a sin-offering for all people, even His own enemies. Yuan Ki wrote his father about this "ridiculous story."
One day Yuan Ki was taken sick with a high fever and placed in the school hospital. That night as he turned his feverish head from side to side on the pillow, he felt a cool hand laid on his brow. It was the teacher. Yuan Ki turned his face away, affecting not to see him. The second night, he kept the boy's feverish brow cooled with iced cloths until the fever subsided. Yuan Ki was distressed at the situation, but all the more determined to ignore the teacher's kindness.
At noon recess one day the boys were playing on the sloping grounds between the school building and the river. It was strictly against the rules for the boys to go past a certain low wall, toward the water. But Yuan Ki and Wang To, seeing the teacher sitting near one of the windows and knowing how it would disturb him, ran over the wall and jumped on to the deck of a house-boat moored near by. Yuan Ki saw the teacher look up in alarm and start as if to jump from the window, which was ten feet from the ground. Yuan Ki ran to the outer end of the house-boat, intending to jump to the deck of another house-boat alongside, but in doing so, slipped and fell into the swift current. The boy could not swim, and after a brief struggle he sank and knew no more.
It was two days later that Yuan Ki came to consciousness. He was puzzled quite a little until he figured out that he was in the hospital bed again, and it was in the early dawn of the morning. There seemed to be nobody else in the room. Yuan Ki could see through the open door, across the hallway, into the large reception room opposite. There was a long, strange-shaped, box-like thing, with some candles burning near by. Curiosity getting the better of him, Yuan Ki got up and crept across the hall. Coming close to the casket, he looked through the glass cover—and there lay the teacher.
Just then a hand was laid on Yuan Ki's shoulder, and the nurse hustled him back to bed, scolding him for his imprudence. "But," said Yuan Ki, "the teacher—how did he die?"
"Lie still," said the nurse, "and I will tell you. When you fell into the water, teacher jumped from that high window to the ground. It seemed to sprain his ankle, or something, for he limped badly as he made his way to the water. He reached you just as you went down the last time, and bore you up. A man ran out on the deck with a boat-hook and reached for you both. He caught your sleeve and hauled you in, but the current carried teacher out of reach, and then we saw him sink. He was an expert swimmer, but the sprain must have caused him to lose consciousness."
Yuan Ki's next letter to his father read in part like this: "My father, my heart is broken, for I shall not see your face again. I know that what I shall tell you means that your hopes for me will be crushed and that you will disinherit me; but, oh, my father, I have learned now what is the love of Christ. Teacher had tried to tell us about his Christ, who said: 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'
"And now, my father, there is but one thing for me to do, and that is, myself, to take the place which this noble servant of his Master has left vacant—his Master—now my Master, too, for He has accepted me and I have accepted Him. I have resolved to train to go to my countrymen and tell them of this wonderful God, the like of whom there is none other."
Jesus gave all of Himself for us. We cannot give less than all of ourselves for Him.