Coombs had resigned himself to the doctor’s orders and had tried to take a positive attitude, but thus far had been too stubborn to offer much friendship in Robbie’s direction. He now picked up the last bundle on deck to stow it in the cabin. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Robbie watching him. Suddenly he felt both guilty and foolish for his actions and his self-centered attitude. He was supposed to be a witness for Christ to this man who was, to all appearances, unsaved. Yet what kind of an impression must he be making?
Coming back out of the cabin, he cleared his throat as if that were his personal signal to take a new approach to the day.
“I believe we’re ready to cast off, Mr. Taggart,” he said. “Are you willing to handle the vessel?”
Robbie smiled. This was just what he had been waiting for. Quickly he loosed the rope from the dock pilings and pushed off into the current. A gentle southeast breeze helped guide them up Chai-chiang, the Little Stream, for some distance. Eventually they would meet one of the many canals that crisscrossed the region, and from there they would make their way to one of the tributaries of the Yangtze.
Once the yard was hauled to get the best from the breeze, Robbie stretched himself out and, with one hand on the tiller, lay back to enjoy himself. After all, the scenery was new and marvelous, and with the pagoda roofs and straw-hatted Orientals along the shore, he could easily imagine that he had escaped to another world—as indeed he had. He tried to forget the mission and imagine that all he needed to do was think about having a good time, in a world where his only care was deciding which tune to sing next. He might even be able to forget the glum missionary sitting opposite him.
Actually, Coombs was gradually doing much better. At that moment he was searching in his mind for some pleasant conversation to pursue with his new companion, even if he had to rely on facts he had learned from a textbook to make a beginning.
“You will soon see the Grand Canal,” he finally said, his tone congenial. “It was built in 608, during the Sui Dynasty.”
“Why did they build it?” asked Robbie.
“Contemporaries of the emperor, Yang-ti, accused him of merely trying to indulge his own comfort so he could travel more easily from the northern capital at Peking to the southern in Hangchow. Not to mention for the purpose of bleeding off southern tax grain to feed the imperial capital and army.”
“I should think it would have been a rather useful bit of architecture,” commented Robbie, glad for the apparent improvement in the missionary’s disposition.
“Well,” answered Coombs, “most of his critics were Confucian scholars, and there is perhaps nothing more alien to the Confucian way than progress. We still encounter that mind-set. But I suppose they had a point, when you compare the canal’s usefulness with its cost. It was all done by forced labor. Hundreds of thousands of workers were brought in—at one point there were a million laborers. Even women were conscripted when the number of men fell short. But despite the critics of the time, the canal does remain one of the primary transportation and communication routes in the country.”
“You seem to know a lot about this country,” said Robbie. “You speak the language quite well, too, though I didn’t think you had been here that long.”
“I hardly do the language justice,” answered Coombs, “and half the time it seems I unknowingly insult a native because I have used the wrong intonation. When I first arrived, I thought my four years of study had been for nothing.”
“Four years! Why, you must have been a boy when you started.”
“I was fifteen when I received God’s call to come to China.”
“Hmm,” mused Robbie. “That was the age when I struck out on my own.”
“That’s when you went to sea?”
“No, I didn’t discover the sea until I was eighteen—late in life. Most of the blokes my age had already been at sea half their lives. It’s not that unusual to find boys of ten or twelve aboard ship.”
“You must have had an exciting life.”
Robbie scratched his head thoughtfully, as a rather novel idea occurred to him. “Your own life hasn’t been dull either, I’ll warrant,” he said, then paused.
Since he had first encountered these folk at the mission, he had thought of them only as religious people—conservative and uninteresting for the most part. Now it suddenly dawned on him that perhaps they were different than the characters of his mental stereotype. The spirit of adventure must run high in persons like these who were willing to risk everything, even their lives, for a cause in which they believed in a far-off land—as high as for any sailor. They had broken away from the normal patterns and steered their own personal course for exotic lands, fraught with dangers and uncertainty and sacrifice. All at once Robbie looked across to Thomas Coombs in a new light. He too was an adventurer!
“And what does your family think about your chosen profession?” he asked at length.
Coombs laughed. It was one of the more abandoned laughs Robbie had yet heard from the serious young man. “They think I’ve gone absolutely insane!” he replied. “Though I think it is more the missionary part that troubles them than me being an adventurer in China. Had I come here as a diplomat or a merchant, I’m sure they would have been quite proud.”
“They don’t follow your beliefs?”
“It is difficult to judge one’s own parents,” answered Coombs, knitting his brow together as he considered how best to answer the question. “I suppose one might say that they believe similarly, but with a different intensity. They think I have gotten quite carried away. They see belief as something to hold in your head, so to speak, but not to ever do anything about. But perhaps that is your opinion also. That seems to rather be the norm in today’s world.”
The breeze had been gradually shifting to the port, and as Coombs posed his query, Robbie had to jump up and reset the yard. While he hauled at the lines he thought about the young man’s words. He had indeed thought that very thing on a number of occasions. He wondered if the present occasion called upon him to be so honest with his companion, notwithstanding the growing sense of camaraderie that seemed to be developing between the two who were such strangers to one another only an hour before. But why not be open and honest, thought Robbie to himself? Such a practice had never failed him before.
“As a matter of fact,” said Robbie, settling back into his place by the tiller as if there had been no interruption to their conversation, “I have thought that. Though perhaps not in strictly the same sense. I suppose people who try to push their religion off onto others rub me the wrong way.”
“We are not pushing anything, Mr. Taggart,” replied Coombs. “We are merely following the Great Commission issued by our Lord Jesus Christ himself, to go into all the world and preach the gospel. The response of another—any man or woman: Chinese or Englishman, banker or sailor, rich or poor—is something which rests entirely with that man in his own heart. We are merely proclaimers, not arm-twisters. The choice whether to follow Jesus in belief rests with each individual alone.”
“But you must admit that many in your position do try to stuff it down anyone’s throat who’ll listen,” said Robbie, a bit taken aback by Coombs’s sudden burst of enthusiasm.
“I suppose you’re right. And if you didn’t know me and my own motives, you might accuse me of the same thing,” replied Coombs. “But you see, Mr. Taggart, I have found Life! I have discovered something greater than my mother and father or anyone else was able to give me. What kind of man would I be if I kept the way to that Life to myself?”
“I never thought of it like that,” said Robbie. He could see how this young man’s parents might have questioned his sanity. And yet at this very moment, there was something very, very sane in his countenance, especially in his eyes. They were neither wild nor crazed. They were sincere and earnest, to the point of being compelling. Robbie said nothing, but looked away, pretending to be occupied with the tiller.
The conversation did not again approach that probing theme. A somewhat tricky stretch of water absorbed their attention for a time, and after that the talk focused on more mundane topics. By midday they had traveled in excess of fifteen miles upon various waterways. On and off they had met with much traffic and activity on their course, but now they merged with a quieter, backwater stream where a village soon came into view. Coombs announced that they should make for the stone moorings and make their craft fast there. While Robbie maneuvered the junk to the dock, Coombs began filling two rucksacks with supplies—mainly books, tracts, and food.
Their plan was to spend the remainder of the day traveling through this particular area of four or five small villages. They would then spend the night on the junk and cast off early in the morning, sailing upstream into another district. After a second night on the junk, they would sail for home. When Robbie asked about the territoriality of other missions, Coombs explained that these were areas that fell under no other mission jurisdiction and without any particular church connection. The established missions with an interest in such evangelism usually took it in turns to reach these backwater areas and to see that they received periodic Christian contact.
Robbie and Coombs each loaded up their packs with as many books and supplies as they could manage and climbed onto dry land. Then followed one of the most unique experiences in Robbie’s life, even as adventurous as it had been.
Even before they reached the center of the village, they had begun to attract a considerable following of locals. And indeed they made a curious sight—two Occidental men of imposing stature, one dressed in black Oriental garb, the other wearing navy blue canvas trousers and the white shirt of a Western sailor. But Robbie soon realized that it was not merely the oddity of their appearance that had attracted the folk. The moment Coombs handed out his first tract, word spread that a missionary had come with reading material. Robbie could not help being astonished at the response.
“The Chinese are eager to learn new ideas,” said Coombs when a lull came in the greetings and questions of the villagers.
“What about the riots and violence against missionaries? I thought you would be encountering opposition everywhere, like back in the village at the mission.”
“It depends on the area, and the particular mood of the time. And it also depends a great deal on how much the local priests decide to stir things up against us,” answered Coombs. “But things have calmed considerably in the last two or three years. Even at their height, those actions were not aimed only at Christianity. Take the trouble in Wukiang, for example. It was stirred up only because temple funds were threatened by Chang’s refusal to pay. Violence against missionaries usually springs up more as an expression of anti-foreignism than any resistance to the gospel itself. And this occurs only because the Chinese have suffered so at the hands of foreign powers.”
“Then why do they take it out against the missionaries?”
“Because missionaries happen to be here, ambassadors, so to speak, of those foreign countries. But the villagers, like these, are unbelievably open and receptive to the gospel itself when we can isolate it from all the larger issues that are more political. The Chinese react mostly against us when their political or economic stability is threatened. Otherwise they are extremely tolerant.”
“But I thought they were closed to any attempt to impose religion on them from the outside?”
“Did you know that Buddhism, the second largest faith after Confucianism, is a transplant from India? Yes, it had built-in similarities to the long-established religions of China, but Christianity has many of those also—ethics and virtue, and even the most basic of all religious ideas, the concept of God, is familiar to them, though the various religions disagree as to what God’s character and personality are like. The great Chinese leader, Kublai Khan himself, who lived in the 13th century, asked Marco Polo to take an invitation to the Pope asking him to send teachers of science and religion to China. So you see, historically, there has been an openness of this culture to new ideas.”
“Are you saying that if Christianity had come by another route, and things had been slightly different, it might have been totally absorbed into the culture?”
“Perhaps not completely into the culture, but at least more peaceably accepted. There are facets of the Christian faith that are foreign to Chinese ways, and must remain so in order for Christianity to retain its purity. The faith expounded by the Apostles and set forth in the New Testament cannot be altered in order to suit a different culture. There are essential aspects of it on which we must remain unyielding. That is what separates it from the other mere religions of the world.”
“Why do you say mere religions?” asked Robbie.
“Because all the other religions of the world are incomplete. They are mere religious systems. But at their core they do not have the one thing that Christianity has, the one ingredient that makes all the difference, the one thing that makes it true in the face of all other insufficient attempts to know God and discover the essential meaning of life.”
“And what is that?”
“Jesus, Mr. Taggart. Jesus Christ—God himself come to earth to reveal to men the truth, and the way to know Him, Jesus—the true man. God defined and manhood defined—in the same being. No other religion has Jesus. So you see, no other religion can possibly possess the ultimate truth about God.”
Robbie was silent for a moment. It had been some time since he had thought about the meaning of manhood. Now here was an unexpected twist—the idea of Jesus being the ultimate, the perfect man. It was certainly not something he had ever considered before. To Robbie Taggart, the Jesus of the Bible had always seemed rather an effeminate sop.
“And that’s why we call the gospel ‘good news,’” Coombs went on. “And that’s why we feel such an urgency to proclaim it. Not to cram our particular system down anyone else’s throat, but because of the wonderful news that we can know God personally and intimately through Jesus!”
Still thoughtful, at length Robbie said in a sincerely probing voice, “But it seems there is still an intolerance in it toward their religions. If you think you have the truth and they do not, how can you expect them to be open to what you have to say in return?”
“There is no particular virtue in tolerance for its own sake. Only a fool is open and tolerant to a false idea. The question is not tolerance, on either side of the issue. The question is truth. The things Jesus said, the claims Jesus made, the life Jesus lived—they are either true or they are not. And if they are true, we are fools to turn our backs on them. At the point of the truth of Jesus’ words, the truth of His character, the truth of His resurrection, and the compelling truth of His claim upon our own lives—at that point culture and religion and tolerance and education all fade into meaninglessness. That’s when the truth of Jesus Christ comes to bear upon every man, in the quietness of his own heart. And that is where the response must be made.”
By now they had reached the center of the village. It was just as well that their conversation came to an end, for Robbie had heard enough to keep his mind busy for some time. Coombs paused in front of the local teashop, which stood at the intersection of the village’s only two streets, actually little more than widened dirt paths. Then he turned to the crowd of about fifty people who had gathered around him.
For the next hour the verbal exchange was entirely in Chinese, so Robbie had no idea of exactly what was being said. But an understanding of the words themselves was hardly necessary to enable him to see that the young man Coombs was pouring out his heart in love and compassion and earnest belief to these people who had come to hear him. Coombs was a different man now, as Robbie had begun to see on the boat. Even while fumbling over the alien tongue, his voice was laced with passion. The villagers listened attentively, respectfully, with rapt attention riveted upon the young preacher, as if they had never heard such words before. And such was very likely the case for many of them.
For Robbie, who had grown up surrounded by nominal “Christian” society, the hungry looks on the faces about him was nothing short of astonishing. Here were people genuinely listening to “news”—good news. Suddenly the faith of his fathers took on a new dimension in Robbie’s mind. Listening as through the ears of these Chinese men and women, something new and vital and alive for the first time seemed to penetrate Robbie’s consciousness. Robbie found himself listening as he had never listened before—though he understood not a word. He listened instead with his eyes, and with a curiously softer heart than had ever opened itself to the gospel message before. When he came to himself some time later, he was shaken, realizing for the first time how absorbed he had been in the young missionary’s bold street preaching.
His thoughts were jolted out of their reverie by a sudden clamor toward the back of the crowd. The people parted, and three men came to the front where Robbie and Coombs, who had stopped speaking, were standing. Between two larger men, walking very slowly and with occasional assistance from his companions, came the one for whom the crowd had obviously parted. Old and extremely brittle in appearance, his back was humped, which thrust his wrinkled face forward, causing his long, thin, white beard to swing freely down and away from his body. One look at his ancient visage gave the word venerable new meaning for all time.
Coombs stepped forward and bowed graciously to the man. “Ni hao, lao-fu, greetings, old father,” he said.
The old man returned his bow, as best he could, and in reply spoke to Coombs at some length. His tone was not angry, but firm. In an odd sort of way he reminded Robbie of Wallace, and as with the doctor, Coombs seemed to defer to the man. He answered in an apologetic tone, bows were exchanged once more; then the old man, appearing satisfied, turned and made his way again back through the villagers, who immediately began to disperse.
Left alone on the street. Robbie turned to Coombs to ask what had just happened.
“That man was the village elder,” replied Coombs. “He said we must move on because we are disrupting the rice cultivation. He was most courteous and invited us to return in the evening.”
“What will we do until then?”
“There are other villages to be visited.”
“Won’t you encounter the same thing?”
“We won’t know until we’ve tried.”
They returned to the junk, loaded up with more supplies and reading material, then set off on foot. For the remainder of the day they visited another four small villages, though none proved as friendly as the first. In one a small gang of hoodlums heckled Coombs ruthlessly, finally inciting the crowd to such an extent that the missionary was forced to make a hasty exit.
“T’i-mien! T’i-mien!” kept being shouted at their backs until they were well outside the limits of the last of the town’s huts.
“What were they yelling?” asked Robbie, recalling the word from his own experience in Wukiang when he had accompanied Hsi-chen to Chang’s home.
“Haughty,” answered Coombs. “It has become a byword for Western missionaries among those who are not so eager to hear our message.”
“But from what you said before, and from the response at the first village where everyone seemed so eager to hear what you had to say, I thought the Chinese were open to the good news, as you put it.”
“Many are. But the Chinese are no different than people everywhere. It’s the same in Britain. There are those who are open to the truth; there are others who are not. Just because something may be true does not mean everyone is eager to hear it. Many are comfortable with their present lives. Truth in spiritual things is of no interest to them.”
Robbie was silent. He realized Coombs’ words could be applied to him. He had never made the truth a priority in his life. He had merely gone about with life as it had come. But his reply was not such a personal one. Suddenly he did not feel like exposing any more of his innermost self.
“But those young thugs seemed intent on more mischief than would have been likely if they just disagreed with your message,” Robbie said.
“You’re probably right. There are those in positions of power who are threatened by our presence. They could have been sent to incite the people against us.”
“Sent? By whom?”
“There are many who would rid their land of us if they could.”
“Who?”
“Priests of the old order. They can be a ruthless lot, despite all their supposed mellow and gentle ways. And then there are the ancient noble Chinese families who can sometimes be violent, often led by warriors like the samurai in Japan. And of course since the ancient days of the Mongol tribes, China has been famous for its independent warlords. There are still those who maintain their hold on their own private little medieval empires.”
“Warlords! In this modern day?”
“Oh yes, Mr. Taggart. And believe me, you don’t want to get mixed up with them!”