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Up and down the length and
breadth of north Formosa, seeming to
be in two or three places at once, went Kai Bok-su, during this
time of reviving after the war. He would be in Kelung to-day
superintending the new chapel building, in Tamsui at Oxford
College the next day, in Bang-kali preaching a short while after,
and no one could tell just where the next day.
But every one did know
that wherever he went, Christians grew
stronger and heathen gave up their idols. The Kap-tsu-lan plain,
away on the eastern coast, seemed to be a sort of pet among all
his mission fields, and he was always turning his steps thither.
For the Pe-pohoan who lived there, while they were simple and
warm-hearted and easily moved by the gospel story, were not such
strong characters as the Chinese. So the missionary felt he must
visit them often to help steady their faith.
Not long after the close
of the war, he set off on a trip to the
Kap-tsu-lan plain. Besides his students, he was accompanied by a
young German scientist Dr. Warburg had come from Germany to
Formosa to collect peculiar plants and flowers and to find any
old weapons or relics of interest belonging to the savage tribes.
All these were for the use of the university in Germany which had
sent him out.
The young scientist was
delighted with Dr. Mackay and found in
him a very interesting companion. They met in Kelung, and when
Dr. Warburg found that Dr. Mackay was going to visit the
Kap-tsu-lan plain, he joined his party. The stranger found many
rare specimens of orchids on that trip and several peculiar spear
and arrow heads to be taken back as curios to Germany. But he
found something rarer and more wonderful and something for which
he had not come to search.
He saw in one place three
hundred people gather about their
missionary and raise a ringing hymn of praise to the God of
heaven, of whom they had not so much as heard but a few short
years before. He visited sixteen little chapels and heard clever,
bright faced young Chinese preachers stand up in them and tell the
old, old story of Jesus and his love. And he realized that these
things were far more wonderful than the rarest curios he could
find in all Formosa.
When he bade good-by to
Dr. Mackay, he said: "I never saw
anything like this before. If scientific skeptics had traveled
with a missionary as I have and witnessed what I have witnessed
on this plain, they would assume a different attitude toward the
heralds of the cross."
Not many months later Dr.
Mackay again went down the eastern
coast. This time he took three of his closest friends, all
preacher students, Tan be, Sun-a, and Koa Kau. With a coolie to
carry provisions, their Bibles, their forceps, and some malaria
medicine, they started off fully equipped.
By steam launch to Bang-kah,
by a queer little railway train to
Tsui-tng-kha and by foot to Kelung was the first part of the
journey. The next part was a tramp over the mountains to
Kap-tsu-lan.
The road now grew rough
and dangerous. Overhead hung loose rocks,
huge enough to crush the whole party should they fall. Underneath
were wet, slippery stones which might easily make one go sliding
down into the chasm below.
As usual on this trip
they had many hairbreadth escapes, for
there were savages too hiding up in the dense forest and waiting
an opportunity to spring out upon the travelers. Dr. Mackay was
almost caught in a small avalanche also. He leaped over a narrow
stream-bed, and as he did so, he dislodged a loose mass of rock
above him. It came down with a fearful crash, scattering the
smaller pieces right upon his heels; but they passed all dangers
safely and toward evening reached the shore where the great long
Pacific billows rolled upon the sand. They were in the
Kap-tsu-lan plain.
Their journey through the
plain was like a triumphal march.
Wherever a chapel had been erected, there were converts to be
examined; wherever there was no chapel, the people gathered about
the missionary and pleaded for one. They often recalled the first
visit of Kai Bok-su when "No room for barbarians" were the only
words that met him.
But Dr. Mackay wished to
go farther on this journey than he had
ever gone. Some distance south of Kap-tsu-lan lay another
district called the Ki-lai plain. The people here were also
aborigines of the island who had been conquered by the Chinese
like the Pepo-hoan. But the inhabitants of Ki-lai were called
Lam-si-ho an, which means "Barbarians of the south." Dr. Mackay
had never been among them, but they had heard the gospel. A
missionary from Oxford College had journeyed away down there to
tell the people about Jesus and had been working among them for
some years. He was not a graduate, not even a student--but only
the cook! For Oxford College was such a place of inspiration
under Kai Bok-su, that even the servants in the kitchen wanted to
go out and preach the gospel. So the cook had gone away to the
Ki-lai plain, and, ever since he had left, Dr. Mackay had longed
to go and see how his work was prospering.
So at one of the most
southerly points of the Kap-tsu-lan plain
he secured a boat for the voyage south. The best he could get was
a small craft quite open, only twelve feet long. It was not a
very fine vessel with which to brave the Pacific Ocean, but where
was the crazy craft in which Kai Bok-su would not embark to go
and tell the gospel to the heathen? The boat was manned by six
Pe-po-hoan rowers, all Christians, and at five o'clock in the
evening they pushed out into the surf of So Bay. A crowd of
converts came down to the shore to bid them farewell. As the boat
shoved off the friends on the beach started a hymn. The rowers
and the missionaries caught it up and the two groups joined, the
sound of each growing fainter and fainter to the other as the
distance widened.
All lands to God in
joyful sounds
Aloft your voices raise,
Sing forth the honor of
his name,
And glorious make his
praise!
And the land and the sea,
answering each other, joined in praise
to him who was the Maker of both.
And so the rowers pulled
away in time to the swing of the Psalm,
the boat rounded a point, and the beloved figure of Kai Bok-su
disappeared from sight.
Away down the coast the
oarsmen pulled, and the four missionaries
squeezed themselves into as small a space as possible to be out
of the way of the oars. All the evening they rowed steadily, and
as they still swept along night came down suddenly. They kept
close to the shore, where to their right arose great mountains
straight up from the water's edge. They were covered with forest,
and here and there in the blackness fires twinkled.
"Head-hunters!" said the
helmsman, pointing toward them.
Away to the left
stretched the Pacific. Ocean, and above shone
the stars in the deep blue dome. It was a still, hot tropical
night. From the land came the heavy scent of flowers. The only
sound that broke the stillness was the regular thud, thud of the
oars or the cry of some wild animal floating out from the jungle.
As they passed on through the warm darkness, the sea took on that
wonderful fiery glow that so often burns on the oceans of the
tropics. Every wave became a blaze of phosphorescence. Every
ripple from the oars ran away in many-colored flames--red, green,
blue, and orange. Kai Bok-su, sitting amazed at the glory to
which the Pe-po-hoan boatmen had become accustomed, was silent
with awe. He had seen the phosphorescent lights often before, but
never anything like this. He put his hand down into the molten
sea and scooped up handfuls of what seemed drops of liquid fire.
And as his fingers dipped into the water they shone like rods of
red-hot iron. Over the gleaming iridescent surface, sparks of
fire darted like lightning, and from the little boat's sides
flashed out flames of gold and rose and amber. It was grand. And
no wonder they all joined--Chinese, Malayan, and Canadian--in
making the dark cliffs and the gleaming sea echo to the strains
of praise to the One who had created all this glory.
O come let us sing to the
Lord,
To him our voices raise
With joyful noise, let us
the rock
Of our salvation praise.
To him the spacious sea
belongs,
For he the same did make;
The dry land also from
his hand
Its form at first did
take.
Dawn came up out of the
Pacific with a new glory of light and
color that dispelled the wonders of the night. It showed the
voyagers that they were very near a low shore where it would be
possible to land. But the helmsman shook his head at the
proposal. He pointed out huts along the line of forest and
figures on the shore. And then with a common impulse, the rowers
swung round and pulled straight out to sea; for with Pe-po-hoan
experience they saw at once that here was a savage village, and
not long would their heads remain on their shoulders should they
touch land.
The scorching sun soon
poured its hot rays upon the tired rowers,
but they pulled steadily. They too, like Kai Bok-su, were anxious
to take this great good news of Jesus Christ to those who had not
yet learned of him. When safely out of reach of the head hunters,
they once more turned south, and, about noon, tired and hot, at
last approached the first port of the Ki-lai plain. Every one
drew a sigh of relief, for the men had been rowing steadily all
night and half the day. As they drew near Dr. Mackay looked
eagerly at the queer village. It appeared to be half Chinese and
half Lam-si-hoan. It consisted of two rows of small thatched
houses with a street between nearly two hundred feet wide.
The rowers ran the boat
up on the sloping pebbly beach and all
stepped out with much relief to stretch their stiffened limbs.
They had scarcely done so when a military officer came down the
shore and approaching Dr. Mackay made him welcome with the
greatest warmth. There was a military encampment here, and this
was the officer as well as the headman of the village. lie
invited Dr. Mackay and his friends to take dinner with him. Dr.
Mackay accepted with pleased surprise. This was far better than
he had expected. He was still more surprised to hear his name on
every hand.
"It is the great Kai
Bok-su," could be heard in tones of deepest
respect from fishermen at their nets and old women by the door
and children playing with their kites in the wide street.
"How do they know me?" he
asked, as he was greeted by a
rice-seller, sitting at the open front of his shop.
"Ah, we have heard of you
and your work in the north, Pastor
Mackay," said his host, smiling, "and our people want to hear of
this new Jehovah-religion too.
The cook-missionary had
evidently spread. wonderful reports of
Kai Bok-su and his gospel and so prepared the way. He was
preaching just then in a place called Kale-oan, farther inland.
When the officer learned that Dr. Mackay wanted to visit him he
turned to his servant with a most surprising order. It was to
saddle his pony and bring him for Kai Bok-su to ride to Ka-leoan.
The pony came, sleek and
plump and with a string of jingling
bells adorning him. A pony was a wonderful sight in Formosa, and
Dr. Mackay had not used any sort of animal in his work since that
disastrous day when he had tried in vain to ride the stubborn
Lu-a. But now he gladly mounted the sedate little steed and
trotted away along the narrow pathway between the rice-fields
toward Ka-le-oan.
Darkness had almost
descended when he rode into the village and
stopped before a small grass-covered bamboo dwelling where the
cook-preacher lived. For years the people here had looked for Kai
Bok-su's coming, for years they had talked of this great event,
and for years their preacher had been writing and saying as he
received his reply from the eager missionary in Tamsui, "He may
come soon."
And now he was really
here! The sound of his horse's bells had
scarcely stopped before the preacher's house, when the news began
to spread like fire through the village. The preacher, who had
worked so hard and waited so long, wept for joy, and before he
could make Dr. Mackay welcome in a proper manner the room was
filled with men, all wildly eager for a sight of the great Kai
Bok-su, while outside a crowd gathered about the door striving to
get even a glimpse of him. The ex-cook of Oxford College had
preached so faithfully that many were already converted to
Christianity, many more knew a good deal of the gospel, and
crowds were ready to throw away their idols. They were weary of
their heathen rites and superstitions. They were longing for
something better, they scarcely knew what. "But the mandarin will
not let them become Christians," said the preacher anxiously. "It
is he who is keeping them from decision. He has said that they
must continue in idolatry, as a token of loyalty to China."
"Are you sure that is
true?" cried Dr. Mackay.
The converts nodded. They
had "heard" it said at least.
But Kai Bok-su was not
the man to accept mere hearsay. He was
always wisely careful to avoid any collision with the
authorities. But remembering the kindness shown him back in
Hoe-lien-kang, he could not quite believe that the mandarin who
had been so kind to him could be hostile to the religion of Jesus
Christ.
To think was to act, and
early the next morning, he was riding
back to the seacoast, to inquire how much of this rumor was true.
His reception was very
warm. It was all right, the officer
declared. Whatever had been said or done in the past must be
forgotten. Kai Bok-su might go where he pleased and preach his
Jehovah-religion to whomsoever he would.
It was a very
light-hearted rider the pony carried as he galloped
back along the narrow paths, with the good news for the
villagers. The word went round as soon as he arrived. Kai Bok-su
wanted to know how many were for the true God. All who would
worship him were at once to clear their houses of idols and
declare that they would serve Jehovah and him only. At dark a
great crowd gathered in an open space in the village.
Representatives from five villages were there, chiefs were
shouting to their people, and when Dr. Mackay and his students
arrived, the place was all noise and confusion. He was puzzled.
It almost looked as if there was to be a riot, though the voices
did not sound angry.
He climbed up on a pile
of rubbish and his face shone clear in
the light of the flaring torches. His voice rang out loud and
commanding above the tumult.
"What is this noise
about?" he cried. "Is there a difference of
opinion among you as to whether you shall worship these poor toys
of wood and stone, or the true God who is your Father?"
He paused and as if from
one man came back the answer in a mighty
shout:
"No, we will worship the
true God!"
The tumult had been one
of enthusiasm and not of dispute!
Kai Bok-su's heart gave a
great bound. For a moment he could not
speak. He who had so often stood up fearless and bold before a
raging heathen mob, now faltered before this sea of eager faces,
upturned to him. It seemed too good to be true that all this
crowd, representing five villages, was anxious to become
followers of the God of heaven. His voice grew steady at last,
and. standing up there in the flickering torchlight he told those
children of the plain what it meant to be a follower of Jesus
Christ. It was a late hour when the meeting broke up, but even
then Dr. Mackay could not go to bed. Never since the day that A
Hoa, his first convert, had accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior,
had he felt such joy, and all night he walked up and down in
front of the preacher's house, unable to sleep for the
thankfulness to God that surged in his heart.
Morning brought a
wonderful day for the Ki-lai plain. It was like
a day when freedom from slavery was announced. Had there been
bells in the village they would certainly have been rung. But joy
bells were ringing in every heart. Nobody could work all day. The
rice-fields and the shops and the pottery works lay idle. There
was but one business to do that day, and that was to get rid of
their idols.
Early in the morning the
mayor of the place, or the headman as he
was called, came to the house to invite the missionary and his
party to join him. Behind him walked four big boys, carrying two
large wicker baskets, hanging from poles across their shoulders;
and behind them came the whole village, men, women, and children,
their faces shining with a new joy. The procession moved along
from house to house. At every place it stopped and out from the
home were carried idols, ancestral tablets, mock-money, flags,
incense sticks, and all the stuff used in idol worship. These
were all emptied into the baskets carried by the boys. When even
the temple had been ransacked and the work of clearing out the
idols in the village was finished, the procession moved on to the
next hamlet. The villages were very near each other, so the
journey was not wearisome; and at last when every vestige of the
old idolatrous life had been taken from the homes of five
villages, the happy crowd marched back to the first village.
There was a large courtyard near the temple and here the
procession halted. The boys dropped their well-filled baskets,
and their contents were piled in the center of the court. The
people gathered about the heap and with shouts of joy set fire to
these signs of their lifelong slavery. Soon the pile was blazing
and crackling, and all the people, even the chiefs of the
villages, vied with each other in burning up the idols they had
so lately besought for blessings.
And then they turned
toward the heathen temple and delivered it
over to Kai Bok-su for a chapel in which he and his students
might preach the gospel.
And so the temple was
lighted up for a new kind of worship. It
had been used for worship many, many times before, but oh, how
different it was this time! Instead of coming in fear of demons,
dread of their gods' anger, and determination to cheat them if
possible, these poor folk crowded into the new-old temple with
light, happy hearts, as children coming to their Father. And was
not God their Father, only they had not known him before?
The heathen temple was
dedicated to the worship of the true God
by singing the old but always new, one hundredth Psalm. The
Lam-si-hoan were not very good singers. They had not much idea of
tune. They had less idea of just when to start, and there was
very little to be said about the harmony of those hundreds of
voices. But in spite of it all, Kai Bok-su had to confess that
never in the music of his homeland or in the more finished
harmonies of Europe, had he heard anything so grandly uplifting
as when those newly-freed people stood up in their idol temple
and with heart and soul and voice unitedly poured forth in
thunderous volume of praise the great command:
All people that on earth
do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with
cheerful voice.
For a whole week with his
pony and groom, which were still his to
do with as he pleased, the busy missionary rode up and down this
plain, visiting the villages, preaching, and teaching the people
how to live as Jesus Christ their Savior had lived; for it was
necessary to impress upon their childlike minds that it would be
of no use to burn up the idols in their homes and temple unless
they also gave up the still more harmful idols in their hearts.
But at last the day came
when the pony had to be returned to its
owner and the missionary and his helpers must leave. It was a sad
day but a joyous one--the day that great visit came to an end.
Crowds of Christians, fain to keep him, followed him down to the
shore, and many kindly but reluctant hands shoved the little boat
out into the surf. And as the rowers sent it skimming out over
the great Pacific rollers, there rose from the beach the parting
hymn, the one that had dedicated the heathen temple to the
worship of the true God:
All people that on earth
do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with
cheerful voice.
and from the rowers and
the missionaries in the boat, came back
the glad echo:
Know that the Lord is God
indeed
Without our aid he did us
make.
They were soon out of
sight. The rowers pulled hard, but a stiff
northeaster straight from Japan was blowing against them, and
they made but little headway. Night came down, and they were
again skirting those dark cliffs, where, here and there, along
the narrow strip of sand, the night-fires of the savages flamed
out against the dark tangle of foliage. All night long the rowers
struggled against the wind. They were afraid to go out far for
the waves were wild, they dared not land, for, crueler than the
sea, the head-hunters waited for them on the shore. And so all
that night, taking turns with the rowers, the missionary and his
students toiled against the wind and wave. The dawn came up gray
and stormy, and they were still tossing about among the white
billows. No one had touched food for twenty-four hours. They had
rice in the boat, but there was no place where they dared land to
have it cooked. There was nothing to do but to pull, pull at the
oars, and a weary task it seemed, for the boat appeared to make
little headway, and the rowers barely succeeded in keeping her
from being dashed upon the rocks.
They were becoming almost
too weak to keep any control over their
boat, when about three o'clock in the afternoon they managed. to
round a point. There before them curved a beautiful bay. Behind
it and on both sides arose a perpendicular wall several hundred
feet high. At its foot stretched a narrow sandy beach. It was an
ideal spot, secure from savages both by land and sea. A shout of
encouragement from Kai Bok-su was the one thing needed. Tired
arms and aching backs bent to the oars for one last effort, and
when the boat swept up on the sandy beach every one uttered a
heartfelt prayer of thankfulness to the Father who had provided
this little haven in a time of such distress.
The rest of the journey
was made safely, and just forty days
after their departure the four missionaries returned, worn out,
to Tamsui. |
