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1850-51
WE have already remarked
that Mr. Bums’ labours on Chinese soil had been hitherto mainly
preparatory and tentative. The question of a permanent centre of
operations for the infant mission had not even yet been determined. The
balance of opinion, however, in the home committee had been for some
time back turning more and more decidedly towards Amoy, and in this
judgment Dr. Young very strongly concurred. Mr. Burns himself so far
acquiesced in it as to have actually taken his passage for that port on
September 5th, 1849, when his course was arrested by an attack of fever,
brought on as he thought* by the anxieties of the decision and exposure
to the sun during the numerous “salutations” of a hurried leave-taking.
The decision, however, had clearly not been taken without some
misgiving. On his recovery from illness the suspended purpose was for
the present silently dropped, and was never afterwards resumed, until he
had fully proved by prayer and earnest effort whether another and still
wider door nearer at hand were not open to him. It is probable that from
the first, and whilst wandering amongst the villages opposite Hong-Kong,
his eye had been turned towards Canton, the great centre of life in
Southern China, towards which at each successive movement westward he
approached nearer and nearer. Cowloon, the point at which he first
landed, is distant from that city only about ninety miles, and the whole
district lying between, and which he had been since traversing, might be
regarded as in its immediate vicinity, and as the natural pathway of
advance towards it. It was the great centre, too, of that dialect which
for the last two years he had been so laboriously studying, and which
was the only form of the Chinese spoken language which as yet he knew.
Any one, therefore, that knew him might almost have predicted that he
would not pass it by without making some effort to bring to the ears of
its heathen myriads the message of life. It might indeed be that the
will of the Master as well as the growing conviction of the Church was
calling him elsewhere, and that He had no work for him to do, no people
for him to gather “ in that city;” but he was unwilling too hastily and
rashly to adopt so important a conclusion. He will at least knock at its
gates earnestly and patiently, and see whether there were an entrance
there for his message and his Master or not.
The prospect at the outset was not very encouraging, nor did it on
further trial greatly brighten. The door of entrance even to a settled
residence in the city was never fully opened to him. He succeeded,
indeed, at last, after many harassing disappointments, in securing the
expiring lease of a lodging from a brother missionary about to return to
Scotland; but that was only for a period of eight months, and at its
close his position would be as unfixed and as uncertain as ever. In
other respects, too, the aspect of the field was scarcely more
promising. Whilst he ejijoyed abundant opportunities of sowing the
precious seed, and was seldom without a goodly group of apparently
attentive hearers, yet it seemed to him that his words did not tell upon
them. There was attention more or less fixed, but no impression. They
listened to the truth, and possibly carried away some glimpses of it,
but it did not take hold and keep hold of them. Few of his casual
hearers *ever came back of their own accord to hear him again, or sought
the preacher out to inquire further of his message and his doctrine. He
was even tempted sometimes to doubt if the Chinese were in their present
state even susceptible of those deep spiritual impressions which he had
seen in former days and longed to see again; whether a lengthened period
of preparation, and the long and patient sowing of many labourers, might
not be necessary ere any one might hope to “ return rejoicing bringing
his sheaves with him.” Yet he went on patiently and hopefully, and
speaks of himself as as happy here and in the midst of his self-denying
and apparently unproductive work as “he could be anywhere in all the
world.” There is nothing in his life, as it seems to me, more admirable,
and in the whole circumstances of the case more remarkable, than this
patient and steadfast continuance in well-doing in the midst of the most
prosaic and uninteresting labours, and amid the dead calm of a more than
heathen apathy, equally as when borne along by the exhilarating breath
of sympathetic enthusiasm and almost uninterrupted success. “The two
works,” says Mr. Moody Stuart, “were singularly diverse in their
character, and were such as have rarely, if ever before, been allotted
to one man to accomplish. Those who knew William Burns only as the
enthusiastic preacher from town to town throughout the land would have
looked upon him as the last man in the Church who, after eight years of
what seemed the highest religious excitement, with thousands crowding to
hear him, would set himself to what was then reckoned the almost
hopeless task of thoroughly mastering the Chinese language; would
seclude himself from his own countrymen, and live among a people so
different, teaching their children that he might learn their language,
and then adopt their dress, and their ways, till in strange places the
authorities were sometimes slow to believe him when he claimed to be an
Englishman.” Such mainly had been his work for many months at Hong Kong,
and such too, at least not more exciting or spirit-stirring, was his
life at Canton. Meanwhile Dr. Young had gone on before him to Amoy, and
wrote from month to month most hopefully of the prospects of the work
there, and urged him earnestly to join him. He still hesitated. There
was not much indeed in the way of positive encouragement to detain him
at Canton; no “great and effectual door ” visibly opened to him and
loudly calling upon him to enter; but yet there was not, on the other
hand, any clear and decisive indication that God had no work for him to
do there. It even seemed to him sometimes as the months passed on as
though a prospect of ultimate success were beginning to dawn upon him,
and as he saw the stolid countenances of his hearers now and then
lightening up with something like intelligent and earnest interest, his
heart yearned over them with a wistful hopefulness, and he felt as if he
could not leave them so long as the faintest hope of a day of power and
blessing among them remained:—“If you do not hear,” said he, “so
interesting accounts from Canton” (as those recently received from
Amoy), “you must ascribe it in part to the defects of your
correspondent, but still more, it may be, to the difficulties of this
very important station—a station so difficult and important, that I
believe no agent who is in any degree suited for it, and who has a heart
to love and labour for its proud and suspicious people, should be
encouraged to leave it. Last Tuesday evening, when looking on an
assembly of from fifty to sixty engaged listeners, while a native was
addressing them before I did so, my heart said, ‘ How can I leave these
dear and precious souls for whom there are so few to care? I can now
tell them of the way of life with some measure of clearness and
acceptance, and so long as God gives me standing ground to gather and
address them, I must go on to do so, leaving the issues in His own hand,
with whom it is to bless and save! Help us to maintain the combat in
this great heathen city, until its gates are opened to the King of
glory! Brethren, pray for us that the word of the Lord may have free
course and be glorified!”
But those distinct intimations of the Master’s will, for which he had so
long waited, came at last. The door he had sought and hoped to enter was
finally closed; the, standing-ground which alone he desiderated as a
warrant to remain was taken from him. Shortly after the expiry of the
lease, he. had received notice to remove from the premises he had
hitherto occupied, and all efforts to obtain another suitable station
had failed. This, taken in connection with the open door and brightening
prospects at Amoy, seemed to him decisive of the path of duty.
Difficulties in the ordinary sense of the word had little influence with
him: rather only did they rouse him to a more determined resolution to “
go forward ” in the course of service set before him, in the strength of
Him before whom the mountains flow down, and whose word is “not bound;’’
but the slightest indication of His will, the faintest whisper of His
voice, was to him imperative. Such an intimation had now, he believed,
been distinctly given to him; and he prepared himself without delay to
obey it. He sailed from Canton, after a residence of sixteen months, in
July, 1851, and reached Amoy on the 5th day of that month.
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