The City of the Iron Hill

A Gospel Triumph in Manchuria

by Tony Lambert

It is surprising what one can find in secondhand bookshops. Recently browsing in a dingy little shop on the south coast of England I came across a small missionary book about China priced at 15 pence (25 cents). It is a work written by Rev. James Webster of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland in 1894 detailing the start of gospel work in the city of Tieling in northeast China—then known as Manchuria. It is such a lost spiritual gem that I thought our readers would like to have an abridged version.

A City of Manchuria

Among the cities of Manchuria you will find Tieling, or the City of the Iron Hill. It stands about 45 miles due north of Moukden [Shenyang]—the capital of the country—on one of the main highways that intersect Manchuria from north to south. About a mile to the west of the city is the river Liao. Some say the people number 30,000; others, there cannot be less than 100,000.

In mid-winter of 1884, Mr Ross and I [James Webster] set out from Moukden for the purpose of prospecting the district north of that city, with a view to further develop the work of the mission. Up till then Moukden had been the extreme northern limit of our missionary operations.

First Things

The beginning of the work in Tieling was but another link in the chain of other links which had been already forged during years of patient toil by our first missionaries in Manchuria—Messrs. Ross and Macintyre. The man who was the means of opening the door for us in Tieling was himself one of the fruits of those years. He was named Chiao, a man of between 50 and 60 years of age. Of venerable appearance and a mild and kindly aspect, old Chiao was withal a humble and sincere Christian—one of those sinners saved by grace who love much because they have been forgiven much. He was already old and worn when Christ came to him and he bore about in his body the marks of long years’ indulgence in the opium vice. In former times he had occupied a good position. But bit by bit the fell habit into which he had drifted blighted all.

But there came to this old man a great longing to be free from the thrall. He would fain have given up the evil habit: he tried again and again, but only tried to fail. At last he gave up and in helpless despair threw himself on his couch, and, drawing his opium pipe to him, abandoned himself to the unhallowed passion. It happened one day when he was thus engaged that a wayfarer dropped into the roadside inn where he was staying.

“Brother”, he said, “look at me! Once I was as you are. My whole soul was enslaved. I forsook my aged mother, my wife and children. So it was with me until the Great Deliverer came. He burst my bonds and let me go free, and He can do the same for you!”

There was at that time only one man in all Manchuria who could speak thus, and that man was Old Wang, the first convert, the great Manchurian preacher, the man who was the means of winning so many for Christ in his short day that he has been called the founder of Protestant Christianity in Manchuria. He went on to tell how he came to know the True God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: how he prayed to him out of the depths with strong crying and tears. When on his knees there came divine strength to his soul, and after three days and nights of agony, he went forth for ever free. This conversation led to the conversion of old Chiao. But he too, had a long and weary battle with the opium and he came out of his conflict with a spirit wonderfully chastened, a faith simple as a child’s, and a heart burning with love for his fellow men, and a desire that they might be saved.

When he heard that it was proposed to send him to Tieling to preach the gospel his joy was boundless. At last he met a man who was willing to rent him a house—a miserable hovel in a side street. The old man was glad of any corner he could call his own where he could quietly speak to men about Christ. It was our first chapel in Tieling.

The Chapel Sacked

The long fierce Manchurian winter passed away and the spring of 1885 came round. At the end of April, Mr. Ross went eastward to visit the Korean valleys on the banks of the Yalu where a wonderful work of grace had been going on for months among the Korean settlers in some mountain valleys there. We started our homeward journey at the end of May returning by way of Tieling. The roads were bad, the inns execrable hovels and we often had six or eight hours in the saddle under a burning sun. When we arrived we found the chapel had been sacked and old Chiao had fled in mortal fear. After the renting of the house, people abused him for daring to introduce the “devil’s doctrine.” At last the mob smashed doors and every breakable article, turned Bibles and hymn books into the street and burned them and attacked old Chiao in the most brutal manner. The moving spirits in all this opposition were the scholars of the city. We felt we were only adding fuel to the fire so we resolved to return to Moukden.

Preaching from the Window Sill

Having rested for a week we returned a second time to Tieling. We sent old Chiao with our cards and passports and a courteous request for an interview with His Excellency the magistrate. We did this to conciliate the officials, to explain the cause of our coming and generally to move them to take action to prevent disturbances. But we failed: a message came back that His Excellency was indisposed and could not see us. In plain English—he refused to see us. We mounted our ponies and rode to the chapel. We barred the door and opening the window, preached the gospel from the window sill. “We have come to proclaim to you the way in which the heart of man can be set right, so that the noble doctrines of Confucius may be exemplified in your daily life. The religion of Jesus purifies the heart and renews the conscience so that it can and will make the teaching of your revered sage a living power and not a mere dead letter, which it hitherto has been in China”. The crowd listened with wonderful patience. But during the night placards had been posted all over the city calling on the people to rise in force and drive us forth beyond the city bounds.

Seekers after God

We were beaten, but not in despair. The Chinese are a most reasonable people, all that was needed was a little patience. The instigators of all the opposition were the Confucian scholars, and if they could be brought around we knew there was nothing to fear. Four months passed away, and I returned to the city once more! What a change! The city roughs, with no one of influence now to back them up, kept out of our way and the people received us, if not gladly, at least respectfully. God had made the wrath of man to praise Him. Old Chiao was jubilant. He preached morning, noon and night. He would get hold of an inquirer and inviting him to a teashop would talk with him about his soul for half a day. This was the sort of work he delighted in. Men began to gather round him—men who had been striving to find rest in some form of worship. For those who have joined the Christian church have for the most part been earnest Buddhists all their lives, seeking by contemplation and self-renunciation in some form to attain to salvation and soul rest.

They do not come to the foreign missionary in the first instance, so long as there is a native Christian to whom they can go. The foreigner, be he ever so near the Chinese in dress or manner or speech, is worlds apart from him in the deepest things. Although every foreign missionary must be an evangelist it must ever be remembered that it is the Chinese evangelist and not the foreign missionary who is the great soul-winner in China.

First Fruits of Blessing

We were in no hurry to baptize people in Tieling lest by over-haste we should admit those who would be a heartbreak to us, and a reproach to the name of Christ. We waited for many months. And then one Sabbath day a few simple, earnest men stood up and professed their faith in Christ and were baptized. The greatest thing in all the city’s history had happened that day, for the first stones in the Temple of the living God had been laid that day in Tieling. The first company were all men; it is almost always so. Chinese women can never hear the gospel so as to understand it, until their husbands or sons teach them, unless they receive it from lady missionaries or native Bible women.

Shu Wen Ming was a scholar, a young man of 24, whose heart was captivated by the gospel as soon as he heard it. He practically gave up everything to study it. Persecuted by family and friends he betook himself to the chapel, and stayed there for weeks, reading, asking questions and discussing points of doctrine with the preacher. In 1887 he came up for a first examination and was appointed a student evangelist. Mr. Fulton of the Irish Presbyterian mission speaks thus of him: “He is a good man, a man of spirituality of mind and an earnest student of the Bible. Many hundreds have been led into the church through his instrumentality and now he is practically doing the work of a pastor as well as an evangelist.”

Another man was named Shing, a small farmer from a hamlet among the hills. We elected Shu for the preachers’ list; we should never have dreamt of placing Shing’s name there. But God put His seal upon him, and this poor illiterate farmer has probably introduced more men to Christ than all the foreign missionaries in Manchuria put together.

Deepening of the Spiritual Life

After a lapse of two years when the number of converts was about twenty, I invited some of them to Moukden. Before they left we celebrated the Lord’s Supper. After that first communion and deepening of the spiritual life dates the beginning of a new era in our Tieling mission. The work now began to break out on the right hand and on the left. Family after family, village after village heard and echoed the gospel story. Within the next few years we expect to see at least twenty organized congregations wholly self-propagating and to a large extent self-supporting and self-governing. How does it come to pass that in distant Manchuria the harvest of the gospel has been so early, so abundant and so joyful? There is only one answer:

“The grace of faith, whereby men are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, and is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the Word.” The End.

POSTSCRIPT: THE GOSPEL IN TIELING TODAY

In view of the fact that missionaries sometimes have had a bad press both within China and overseas, it is heartening to read how the gospel was brought to Tieling. Right from the very start the intention was to plant indigenous churches according to the biblical “Three Self” principles. It is hard to believe that this little book was printed over a hundred years ago, long before the political organization known as the Three Self Patriotic Movement was established. Faithful preaching of the gospel and clear-sighted application of biblical principals of church planting were honored by the Holy Spirit. Today, in Tieling there is a vigorous church—the direct descendant of that first planted in the 1880s.

In 1994 the population of the Greater Tieling municipality was 3.58 million of which 327,000 lived in Tieling Town itself. It was reported in a letter from a Christian dated 26 April 1996 that over 3,000 people packed the main TSPM church in Tieling which had erected a large tent in the courtyard to cope with the overflow. Another report spoke of growth from about 1,000 believers in 1948 to nearly 10,000 in 1993 in the Tieling area. (This figure does not include unregistered house-church believers). 95% reportedly still follow Presbyterian doctrine and practice.

In the enormous Dongguan church in Shenyang (formerly Mukden) the modest room where Rev. John Ross first translated the Bible into Korean has been kept as a memorial; many South Korean Christians come to visit, and many are active throughout China in the course of their business spreading the gospel. Methods of evangelism may change, but it is the same gospel which transformed old Chiao over a century ago which continues to transform lives today in northeast China.

Copyright OMF International