[MacKay, George Leslie]. "Mission work in Formosa." The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal 26 (1895): 60-71.

[P. 60] In the Missionary Review for June the first place is given to an interesting account of Rev. Dr. MacKay's work in Formosa. By the courtesy of the publishers we are enabled to give extracts from the article to our readers. The notes are compiled from addresses delivered by Dr. MacKay at the great Missionary Convention in Toronto.−"My work began in Tamsui. Here the first convert was brought into the Kingdom of Jesus, and another soon followed; these were both young men, and they were just what I had prayed for. Our method of carrying on the work had been to travel around and preach Jesus and Him crucified. Every [p.61] month I made a tour down the west side, and very often had to spend the night in dark and damp places. On one occasion we started, as we had supposed and intended, at a very early hour in the morning; we kept travelling on and on for miles, wondering that daybreak did not come. Beginning to feel cold on account of the heavy rains we kindled a fire to warm ourselves, set out again over stones and weeds until we made fully ten miles more before daybreak. The fact was that it had been simply moonlight when we started, and we had mistaken it for the approach of daybreak; but our mistake turned to good, for we met a man at the place of our destination who was just going to leave, but who stayed because we arrived, and was thus brought to a knowledge of the true God. And a further and greater result was the building of a place of worship there. We went to a village far down on the coast, where a delegate met us with a strip of paper bearing seventy names, inviting us to remain. We erected a chapel in this village also. An earthquake turned it over a little, and the people cried out that the very earth itself was against the "foreign devil."

On my next visit, while sitting in a small dark room, I received a letter to this effect: "Now, you barbarian, with your followers, must either leave this village to-morrow morning or you must sit inside of the house for three days. We are worshipping our ancestors and cannot allow any outsider to remain in the village and witness our rites." We laid this matter before our Master, and decided to write to the party who had sent the letter as follows: "We will neither stay in the house three days nor start away in the morning to leave the village; we depend on the power of our Master to protect us." A little while after the whole village was in a great state of excitement. Some were suggesting one thing and some another. Most of them proposed that we should be taken out and beaten, but others opposed this. The morning came, and I said to the students: ''I do not want you to get into trouble, but I am going to stay here for life or for death." Everyone [sic] of them determined to remain at my side. After breakfast we walked out through the village. The people stood in groups, angry and excited. A number of them had broken pieces of bricks in their hands, and they had stones piled in heaps, ready for use. Only one stone, however, was actually thrown; it was evidently intended to strike one of the students, and was thrown by one of the aborigines. We remained most of the day. On the third day we went to where the chapel stood. Fifty or sixty came to hear us, and some spoke in a friendly way to us. On the fourth day they seemed ashamed of their conduct. The savages in the island afterward claimed me [p.62] as their kinsman and also as their great-grandfather. They said that their people had no queue, and, as I had none, therefore I must belong to the same race as themselves. We fixed up the chapel, and there preached Christ and Him crucified. We had one, two, and even three hundred, many times listening in that place, to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the world's Redeemer.

We went to another place further inland, among the mountains, and there put up a log church. Again, within sight of the lofty mountain ranges we preached Jesus to the people. The aborigines stood around the fires with us, and joined in singing praises to God in that territory of savages. One Sabbath, while at the place referred to above, I received a letter which read thus: "If you dare to come in again with your party the savages declare that they will shoot you. They are determined to put you to death, and I would advise you not to come again.'' I went out to the service as usual that evening, and also decided to go about my Master's business again in the morning, irrespective of any letter sent by men influenced by demons. When advancing toward these people in the jungle, and when on a peak, 1000, 1500, or perhaps 2000 feet high, we heard the shouts of the savages on the neighboring peak. This is savage custom. We hailed them. They came out and looked for a moment, and then fired a volley, pointing their muskets upward. The leader signed, "It is all right." Since then five, ten, fourteen, sixteen years have passed away−yes, eighteen years. During my last visit to the place an old man eighty years of age came to me and said: "Do you remember getting a letter from that place within the mountains? It was I who wrote that. I did my best to get the savages to put you to death. I did all I could. I dare not go to the savages myself, but live in these barren hills. I am very sorry for what I did. I have listened to the Gospel, and now believe that Jesus Christ is my Redeemer, and I want to be baptized." All who know him declare that he is an entirely changed man. Even his face does not look the same, now that his whole body and soul is given to the Redeemer. Yes, his very countenance, at eighty, was changed. I baptised [sic] him and enrolled him as one of the converts of Formosa.

I and my students travelled through many parts of this wild country. There are many changes in the island in twenty-two years. I love my native Canada, but not more than this beloved land. A bamboo like this that I hold in my hand is an old friend. I used it in fording streams, feeling the bottom where we were to step, and also supporting myself with it in travelling. We carried wild banana leaves to serve us as umbrellas during heavy rains.

[p.63] We went to one large city called Bang-kah, and tried to get an opening there. We succeeded in getting a house at the outskirts near an encampment of soldiers. We put out over the door, "Jesus' Holy Temple." A soldier came and told us that we must get out of that place, as the ground did not belong to the owner of the house. I told the students they would better leave me. The soldiers got excited, and I found it absolutely necessary to leave, as the land belonged to the government and the house to the soldiers. I started to leave, and the city got excited, and the British Consul came to see what the matter was. Dense crowds gathered. Some of the people threw bricks from the roofs of the houses. They reviled and hooted. The Consul said to me, "You would better go down to Tamsui for the present, as it will be impossible to get in here for three years at least." Then I asked God to open up a way for us into that city. At nine o'clock we walked back and got into the suburbs on the other side, where I entered another house, getting the proper legal documents from the owner of the house before midnight. I put up again over the door, "Jesus' Holy Temple." The people came from the streets and looked in for a moment. Some of them did not wait to give expression to their thoughts; but others said, "He is a perfect devil out and out." A great crowd gathered, and they were getting excited. Very soon they began to send in beggars; some were sitting down, others standing and pushing us about. Beggars and lepers coming in in such large numbers soon left us very little space even for standing. The crowd was getting more and more excited. I saw one or two from the places where we had been before and extracted some of their teeth for them. We overheard some saying, "He is not big; one blow would be sufficient.'' Day after day they were getting more aroused; and the third day, in the middle of the afternoon, they began to twist their queues around their heads and tie up their clothes around their waists, ready for action. One man threw a stone at the building, and then−if you have ever seen an angry Chinese crowd! It baffles description. The Chinaman is easily excited, and is ungovernable when enraged. Then they pulled the building down, carried it away, and took up even the very foundation. I directly walked with the students into a building right opposite. The owner of that inn came with tears in his eyes and begged us to leave. The British Consul came again, and a mandarin in his large chair. The mandarin told the Consul to order me out of the city, but the latter said he had no right to do that. I felt that Jesus was my Master, and He had said, "Go preach the Gospel.'' When the Consul started to leave they yelled and screamed at him with contempt. I walked with [p.64] him as he bravely stepped out of the city. The mandarin then tried another way−begging and begging that I would also leave the city. I showed him my forceps and my Bible, and told him I was there in obedience to my Master. He wrote officially to say that he would put up a building outside of the city for me if I would go there; but we had planted stations outside of the city already, and now we determined to plant our standard inside its gates. Finally we had another building put up on the very site of the one that had been torn down, not an inch from it one way or the other. That also was pulled down, and then we erected a larger one near it, and that shared the same fate. But there now, in Bang-kah, we have a church with a spire! There is a great change. We see what God has wrought. Dark, proud, ignorant Bang-kah, with all its bigotry, welcomes the worship of the living God. Some of the same headmen who at that time stirred up that mob of four thousand, who gathered around to kill us, called the people together a short time ago and said: "The missionary is now going to leave us to visit his native land, and we must show him what the meaning of our heart is." The people had done what they chose in village, town and city everywhere when I travelled through at first, and I decided they should follow out their own free will when leaving, though I neither wanted nor needed any of their honors, even as I do not want them from Canada. They did it with a purpose. They assembled in the large open space in front of the tent where the mob had assembled formerly; and many of the chief men ordered for us a grand parade, and came with eight bands of Chinese music and banners and umbrellas of state, such as they would carry before the governor. They formed a procession, beginning in front of a large temple; asked me to sit in a large sedan chair lined with silk, and went through the city with flags flying and thus they insisted on carrying me through the town, and escorted us to the boat, wishing us blessing and offering gratitude to God. There in foreign style they cheered us, while the converts sang what they knew:

" I'm not ashamed to own my Lord,
Or to defend His cause;
Maintain the glory of His cross,
And honor all His laws," etc.

This showed the great power of God, the living God. We do not acknowledge His power as we ought. I am afraid that many in Christian lands do not believe what they profess respecting the living God. At other places scattered about yonder we planted twenty or thirty churches, and then came to a plain, travelling with the students among the aborigines on the east side. The [p.65] people in one village said: "You have been going up and down through this plain for some time; if you will come to our place you will see what we can do." They fixed up a shelter with poles and sails, and we remained there the whole night. At daybreak the leader decided to erect a place of worship, and the people, instead of going out to fish, went to get rafters for the building. There we taught them the Gospel. Would to God many of the people of Canada were there to see−fishermen going out in their boats singing praises to God, and the old women weaving and singing. They were taking in the plain Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is ever fresh. In a short time the whole village of these aborigines, men, women and children, would meet; one would take a shell and blow on it, and then all would join and sing praises to God:

" All people that on earth do dwell
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;
Him serve with mirth, His praise forth tell,
Come ye before Him and rejoice.''

Here, back in Canada, I am quite at sea in the midst of ever-increasing machinery. There we have everything so simple−just the plain Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the plain asking for aid in His work−no ceremony about it. Yonder we are living back in the first century.

After that the people in another village came, and we soon had fifteen churches planted in that plain. We put a native preacher in each village, to preach Jesus Christ simply, and not waste time in declaring vain speculations, for we are not wont to spend our time on any such men-evolved schemes. My students in Oxford College−not Oxford, England, but Oxford, Formosa−study the Bible in the morning, at noon and at night; we begin with the Bible and end with the Bible, and preach Jesus Christ as the only Saviour of men. We can trust these students to preach what they know of Divine truth. Some people may suppose that these aborigines, or the Chinese, cannot get a clear idea of the Gospel plan of salvation. They do get a very clear idea of it, because God intended that they should. One of them went to a place on the plain further down and labored there. For eleven years I had purposed going in that direction; but now receiving a letter from him to come down I felt that I had a call to go. I got a boat and went down at night, lest the savages might see us. Four hundred soldiers had been killed there. We narrowly escaped a similar fate. When the boat came up to the place of landing a man met us and said: "You are MacKay, the missionary." A pony was brought for myself to ride on, and the students rode in an ox-cart. We got five villages to assemble, to whom we proclaimed the truth day [p.66] after day exhorting and discussing. One night all the headmen assembled in front of the house and began to talk very loud. I asked what was the matter; and they said: "Nothing, only we are angry that we have been so long deceived with the worship of idols." Who could sleep under such circumstances? I have spent many a sleepless night in Formosa, and I do not care how many more I spend for such reasons as these. Our Master suffered ten thousand times more than that. The people brought their idols in baskets from all around; and when they were piled in a heap we sang again:

" I'm not ashamed to own my Lord."

And then the heap was set on fire. Some of the people who were indignant at their having been so long deluded were shoving the idols further and further into the fire, so as to get rid of them the sooner.

In Northern Formosa we had twenty Churches here and twenty more there, and others further down; and after the French had bombarded us there we started twenty more. As we met eight Frenchmen in a ravine they were suddenly on their knees, pointing their guns at my breast; but their attention was turned at once to this white flag of truce in my hand. At that moment no American or British or German flag could have saved us as this flag of truce did. I have often thought that no flag of eternal forms of righteousness, or meritorious acts, or speculative theological dreams could save the perishing soul. The blood-stained banner of Jesus can save the sinner from pole to pole, and nothing but that. Young men attending the universities and colleges can do nothing without that banner.

We have thus established sixty Churches and put a trained native minister in each Church. I am enabled to be here, because of the sterling ability of my first convert, whom I have entrusted with the oversight of the whole work in my absence. He has stood faithful to the cause for more than twenty years. When my second convert told his mother that he was going to accept the Saviour she took a stone and nearly killed him; but now she is saved herself. One of my converts is a Taoist priest, who accepted the truth. Some might say that the poor aborigines who have no minds may be simple enough to believe in Christianity; but here is a priest who was brimful of speculative philosophy, and he is now a preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel has not lost its power. It is still the chosen instrument for bringing souls into the kingdom. Another convert is a Bachelor of Arts, who might be seen in his graduating dress, standing six feet high; and he who used to look down upon me with contempt now looks up to me with [p.67] respect. When he accepted the Gospel he was so humble, so gentle, that all were impressed. He is a man of great mental calibre, and is now in a city of 50,000 inhabitants, preaching Jesus and Him crucified. He was a Confucian of the Confucians, but is now a defender of the glorious Gospol [sic]. Another convert is a young man, who two years ago went up to an examination where there were 3000 candidates, and his name came out at the top of the list. He, too, is a Confucianist no longer, but has accepted the Gospel of Jesus.

I would not spend five minutes teaching the heathen anything, before presenting the Gospel to them; but I would teach them afterward what may assist them in preaching the Gospel. The religion of Jesus Christ has pervaded the public mind so fully that it would be impossible to trump up, in the northern part of the island, any such stories as that we missionaries were seeking to dig out the eyes of the Chinese children. What a change has been wrought there by the Gospel! The idea of a mandarin coming inside a chapel twenty-two years ago! But now they send in their cards and visit us with bands of soldiers!

For a long time we had trouble on account of the French invasion of the island. The French bombarded a town where we had a mission, and the shells fell all about us−some only a few feet away, but not one of us was hurt. Once we were intercepted by the French and taken prisoners. They blindfolded us and marched us for miles out of our way, but we escaped. Once on board a British man-of-war the balls from the French guns cut the air all about us, but we pulled out from the French lines and were saved. Once I wanted to go to the other part of the island during the invasion. I applied to the British Consul for protection, and then went, carrying the British flag, and the Chinese broke their ranks and divided before me. Once, as I have said, eight guns were pointed at my breast, for they took me for a German spy, but I held up a white flag of truce, and so again escaped with my life.

The natives had great resentment toward us after the invasion, and pulled down our Churches and persecuted the converts terribly. One convert, an old lady with considerable means, had everything she had in the world stolen from her. Her house was demolished and her body was bruised black and blue, but she would not deny her Lord. A young man had his fingers joined by bamboo splits and tied till the blood oozed out of them; they demanded of him to forsake his trust, but he did not turn his back on Jesus. In another place they pulled down the splendid Church and took every vestige of it off and buried it in a huge grave. They placarded it with these words, "MacKay, the black-bearded devil, is here." "Now," said they, "we have wiped out the work; now it is all gone." But they did not wipe it out. Men [p.68] and devils cannot do that; as well try to wipe out the universe. All these trials they endured for the same Jesus, the same Spirit, the same Word. I cannot understand people being ashamed of the Jesus that the people of Formosa can love. Oh, that book, the Bible! It is full. It teems. You can never get to the bottom of it. I have found it a spring which never can be drained. There is no use in telling me that the Chinese are not faithful, that they are double-minded. There are people with double minds in more places than China. Of course they are not all sincere, neither are they here in America; but I never saw more fidelity to Christ anywhere than in Formosa.

In the north I built not only Oxford College, for training native evangelists and teachers, but the girls' school and a hospital. In some places where we tried to preach to the people the men just deliberately left and the women and children crept into the house. You say that is discouraging when they will not stay to listen. "Discouragement!" Destroy that word! Blot it out of the Christian's vocabulary! With the living God in front of us, behind us, below us, within us, above us, where is the place for discouragement? I do not understand that word. Jesus says, "Go!'' and ''Come!" and no "ifs'' nor "buts'' nor "ups'' nor "downs" about it.

I have found it a help to my work to minister to bodily ills. I extracted twenty-one thousand teeth in twenty-one years, and thirty-nine thousand in all; and have dispensed considerable medicine. Extracting teeth is cheaper than dealing out medicine, for after you have your instrument there is no outlay. The natives have lost all faith in their old doctors. Here is one thing that most people do not know−that a commander of a British man-of-war helped the Lord's work wonderfully there in Formosa in its inception. More than can be told in words or put on paper he helped. He would repeat sentences and ask me to translate and repeat them to the natives. He said, "Tell them that I am a Christian. Tell them that I am on a British man-of-war of Queen Victoria, but I serve a greater king." May his name go down with Formosa−he stuck to it.

Once, where we began to build a chapel, and the natives went in bands to the mountains to get timber for the rafters, they had to fight their way, weapons in hand, and many came home at night bleeding. Now, in that village−I repeat it−you could hear the fishermen, as they rowed their boats out into the sea, keeping melody with the oars, singing,

" I'm not ashamed to own my Lord,
Or to defend His cause."

I have heard them and the poor old women in their huts singing, "There is a happy land''−the whole village worshipping God. When the people in the neighbouring villages witnessed this they [p.69] said, "We must have something like this," and thus Churches were established around, and so it came to pass that we have sixty Churches in all and two thousand converts and native pastors in each Church.

Once we were confined in a chapel all night with the savages from the mountains on the outside. They would creep up with long poles and try to fire the building. We had no human protection, but we had God, and if it had been His will every one of us was ready to welcome death. As the morning began to dawn the cowardly savages skulked away to the mountains.

Once, with two converts, I started for the southern part, where we wanted to establish a Church. We arrived near the small village just at dark. We inquired at a house if we could stay with them for the night. They shut the door in our faces. The next place we asked to stay, they said, "No place here for foreign devils." We inquired at another place, and the man said, after a long hesitation, "There's an ox-stall; you can stay in there." He did as much as give us each a bowl of rice, which we were thankful for. The ox-stall was very much like the old stall in this country, with upright poles. One of the converts with me was an old man who had owned rich tea farms, and had lost all for Christ's sake. He was not used to sleeping in an ox-stall, but it humbled him, and afterward he did better service as a preacher to his people. How all this does make one think of the Redeemer, who came down to do His best for us! The Lord of glory was rejected. It is of little consequence if we do not get quarters for the night. I hope no one will ever mention my name in connection with persecution in Formosa if he does not speak of those natives who, with me, carried the banner of the Lord Jesus. Over and over again I have seen men shed tears when they remembered the way they had treated us, when they thought how badly they had persecuted us. They are themselves astounded at what they did.

In a large city toward the north-west of the island we searched for a little room to begin work in. We got a small room, where pigs were kept; we drove two pigs out and got a man to come and clean up a little and whitewash the place. A mob stopped the work for a while, and we remained out in the streets till they left us to go on with the building and cleaning. They spit on us and taunted us, but that was not anything. It is there that to-day the converted Confucianist, a graduate, a B.A., preaches in a large Church. Crowds come to converse with him.

An old man over seventy walked to our services on Saturday for three years, and brought others with him a long distance. Some of the converts sent $10 back with him to help start a chapel where he lived. Talk about self-supporting Churches, self-propagation! There [p.70] is self-propagation in a score of Churches in Formosa, and the work is but twenty-two years' old. In each Church is a map of the world, and through the week the native preacher announces that he will speak at night on Germany, or England, or America, or some other country, till they go through every country in the world. He tells them of Toronto and of the university there, etc.

I once fell in with an English Church clergyman at sea, coming from the Philippine Islands. He said, "I have just been speaking with a Baptist missionary and telling him that this missionary business is all stuff. You're a missionary, are you? '' I said, "Yes." "Well, I want to tell you it's all bosh and sham. I've been at the Philippine Islands a while, and let me tell you, you are just fooling away your time. One day a man will say he is a Christian, just to get employment, and the next day he is a heathen, just to get employment. It's all fraud." "Now," I said, "I have listened and treated your statements courteously; will you do the same to my statements?'' He said he would have to do so. I told him that men in Formosa were not saying they were Christians or heathen as it suited them, to get employment. They were not getting and keeping money there, but they were rather giving out their money. In one place they pay their pastor $17 a month. During the famine they took up a large subscription and sent it to their suffering brothers on the mainland. I told him, as I have told you, that there are double-faced people all over the world who are characterized by duplicity, but they were not all so. He admitted that when he left there were a few who came to see him off and were grieved to see him go.

I do not agree with the popular notions about the Chinese. I claim to know something of Chinese character, and think I have a good right to know their dispositions, virtues, vices, etc., for my own wife is Chinese. The first five students who were baptized have remained faithful during these twenty-one long years; and they have passed through many trials and persecutions. Whenever we arrived at a stopping-place they would always go and get water to wash our feet, and would help change our clothes and do our evening work, attending to sick people and preaching Christ.

Some will say that it is all very well to talk of converts in Formosa in a speech; but we all know the duplicity of the Chinese. I can say that I know of similar traits in many Canadians. Christian Chinamen in Northern Formosa are just as true as any disciples that I know of anywhere. Four hundred of those converts in Formosa have come to the end of the fight, including men, women and children; and they have fought a [p.71] good fight. I have stood beside death-beds in Scotia, my native land; I have seen men die in Canada, in Africa, in China, and I have found these four hundred converts, who have died in Formosa, showing evidences of the same faith in God. The first convert, my main helper, still remains faithful, and is now taking charge of the whole work in my absence as a sort of bishop. Let us work on, press on for our Redeemer, for the time is short. "Not unto us, O Lord; but unto Thy name give glory." −The Presbyterian Review.