Boxer Rebellion

And Russia added to former gains by a twenty-five-year lease of the Liaotung Peninsula.

China’s Boxer Rebellion of 1900 interrupted the march of events, but two treaties in 1902 indicated that Japan and Russia would soon be at each other’s throats.

Japan acquired an ally in England as a result of that nation’s alarms over Muscovite designs so that the neutrality of European powers was practically assured.

Russia and China drew closer meanwhile with a new treaty of alliance.

By 1900, the local riots had become an anti-European rebellion, and the European legation quarters in Peking, filled to overflowing with frightened foreigners, were besieged by fanatical Chinese.

This was the Boxer Rebellion or Boxer War, so called because the leadership was taken by a Chinese organization whose name was rather inaccurately translated as the Society of Boxers.

The Boxers were not professional pugilists, but patriots who believed in using force to expel the foreigners.

That the Boxers believed themselves invulnerable to European bullets and considered their campaign as a religious war to prevent the desecration of Chinese soil by foreigners and their railways will perhaps indicate the nature of the movement.

By 1900 the local riots had become an anti-European rebellion, and the European legation quarters in Peking, filled to overflowing with frightened foreigners, were besieged by fanatical Chinese.

This was the Boxer Rebellion or Boxer War, so called because the leadership was taken by a Chinese organization whose name was rather inaccurately translated as the Society of Boxers.

The Boxers were not professional pugilists, but patriots who believed in using force to expel the foreigners.

That the Boxers believed themselves invulnerable to European bullets and considered their campaign as a religious war to prevent the desecration of Chinese soil by foreigners and their railways will perhaps indicate the nature of the movement.

And I felt a bit cheated because think of what those two notional predecessors lived through and worked through.

The first guy started in the office when Australia was fighting the Chinese in the Boxer Rebellion as well as fighting in the Boer War.

But of course what they really focused on in that first decade was building an army and a navy for Australia from scratch.

And then, 14 years into his career, the First World War.

All urged Li Ming to do the same and to worship the locust god, or his grain would be destroyed.

Li Ming replied, i worship the one only true god and i will pray him to keep my grain that you may know that he only is god the locusts came and ate on all sides of li mings grain but did not touch his when mr goforth heard this story he determined to get further proof so he visited the place for himself and inquired of li mings heathen neighbors what they knew of the matter one and all testified that when the locusts came their grain was eaten and lee ming's was not the lord jesus once said after a conflict with unbelief and hypocrisy i thank thee o father lord of heaven and earth because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes our little gracie became ill with a terribly fatal disease so common in malarious districts enlarged spleen the doctors pronounced her condition quite hopeless one day a chinese christian woman came in with her little child of about the same age as our gracie and very ill with the same disease the poor mother was in great distress for the doctor had told her also that there was no hope she thought that if we could plead with the doctor he could save her child at last mr goforth pointed to our little gracie saying surely if the doctor cannot save our child neither can he save yours your only hope and ours is the lord himself the mother was a poor hard-working ignorant woman but she had the simple faith of a little child some few weeks later she called again and told me the following story when the pastor told me my only hope was in the lord i believed him when i reached home i called my husband and together we had committed our child into the lord's hands i felt perfectly sure the child would get well so i did not take more care of him than of a well child in about two weeks he seemed so perfectly well that i took him to the doctor again and the doctor said that he could discover nothing the matter with him that chinese child is now a grown-up healthy man and our child died yet we had prayed for her as few perhaps have prayed for any child why then was she not spared i do not know but i do know that there was in my life at that time the sin of bitterness toward another and an unwillingness to forgive a wrong this was quite sufficient to hinder any prayer and did hinder for years until it was set right does this case of unanswered prayer shake my faith in god's willingness and power to answer prayer no no my own child might just as reasonably decide never again to come to me with a request because i have in my superior wisdom denied a petition is it not true in our human relationships with our children that we see best to grant at one time what we withheld at another what i do thou knowest not now but thou shalt know hereafter and one of the most precious experiences of god's loving mercy came to me in connection with our little gracie's death we had been warned that the end would probably come in convulsions two of our dear children had been so taken only a mother who has gone through such an experience can fully understand the horror of the possibility that such might come again at any time one evening i was watching beside our little one miss p being with me when suddenly the child said very decidedly call papa i want to see papa i hesitated to rouse her father as it was his time to rest so i tried to put her off with some excuse but again she repeated her request and so i called her father asking him to walk up and down with her until i returned going into the next room i cried in an agony to the lord not to let gracie suffer but if it was indeed his will to take the child then to do so without her suffering as i prayed a wonderful peace came over me and the promise came so clearly it was as if spoken before they call i will answer and while they are yet speaking i will hear rising i was met at the door by miss p who said gracie is with jesus while i was on my knees our beloved child after resting a few moments in her father's arms had looked into his face with one of her loveliest smiles and then quietly closed her eyes and had ceased to breathe no struggle no pain but a falling on sleep like as a father pitieth so the lord pitieth ever darkening clouds gathered about us during the months following gracie's death and while the storm did not burst in all its fury till the early summer of nineteen hundred yet the preceding winter was full of forebodings and constant alarms on one occasion thousands gathered inside and outside our mission evidently bent on serious mischief my husband and his colleagues moved in and out all the day among the dense crowd which filled the front courtyards while we women remained shut within closed houses not knowing what moment the mob would break loose and destroy us all what kept them back that day what but trustful prayer and the lord heard that day and wonderfully restrained the violence of our enemies

We did not know then, but those experiences

were preparing us for the greater trials and perils awaiting us all.

God is unto us a God of deliverance.

Psalm 68, 20 Who delivered us out of so great a death, and will deliver, on whom we have set our hope, that he will also still deliver.

2 Chronicles 1, 10 many times we were asked in the homeland to tell the story of our escape during the boxer uprising and often the question was put if it was really god's power that saved you and others on that journey then why did he not save those of his children who were so cruelly done to death for a time this question troubled me why indeed one day when seeking for light on the matter i was directed to the twelfth chapter of acts there i found the only answer that can be given we are told in the second verse that james was put to death by the sword then the rest of the chapter is given to the detailed record of peter's wonderful deliverance in answer to prayer verse five twelve in that day when all things shall be revealed i am convinced that we shall see that prayer had much to do in the working out of our deliverance when the first cable was received in canada informing the home church of our party starting on that perilous journey we are told a great wave of prayer went up for us from the christians of all denominations the presbyterian assembly of canada was meeting at the time and one session was given up entirely to prayer on behalf of the missionaries in china never had that body witnessed such a season of intense united intercession later when giving the story of our escape in the homeland repeatedly we have had people come to us telling how during the weeks which elapsed between the first cable informing the home church of our danger and the second cable which told of our safe arrival at the coast they had never ceased to cry to god to save us then too after all is said we must believe god was glorified and god's purposes were fulfilled in the death of some as in the saved lives of others the blood of the martyrs is still the speed of the church it was in the month of june eighteen ninety five that an incident occurred which has never been linked in my mind with the events of nineteen hundred i was about to leave toronto with my four children to join my husband in china when a cable was received telling of the cruel massacre of mr and mrs stewart and others deep and widespread sympathy was expressed and much anxiety felt for the missionaries generally in china many urged me to delay our return but i felt it best to keep to our original plans and a few days later found us bidding farewell to friends at the union station toronto just as the train was leaving a lady stepped forward quickly to the window and said you do not know me but i have prayed the lord to give me a promise for you it is this take it as from him and handed me a slip of paper i opened the paper and read no weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper isaiah fifty four seventeen then and there i raised my heart to god in prayer that he would fulfil this promise to me and those dear to me and as i prayed there came the clear assurance that the lord heard never can we forget that winter of eighteen ninety nine to nineteen hundred the clouds had begun to gather and the mutterings of the coming storm were heard on all sides of us repeatedly we were as a mission in gravest danger and at such times were literally shut up to god the temper of the people was such that any little thing angering them would have been as a spark to gunpowder from the time of the government crisis of the autumn of eighteen ninety nine we in company with all other foreigners in china realized that the conditions were becoming serious yet never did we expect or prepare for such a cataclysm as took place when the storm clouds suddenly burst in the early summer of nineteen hundred the first indication we had of coming danger was when our mail carriers running to and from tientsin were stopped and our mails returned thus cut off from the outside world we had to depend solely upon the wild rumors afloat among the chinese for information the country around us became daily more disturbed day by day we could hear the beating of drums and the cries of the people for rain the darkness and horror of those days in the midst of which sickness and death entered our home can never be forgotten on the nineteenth of june our eldest daughter florence after a week of intense suffering was released from pain it was while her life was still hanging in the balance that we received the first communication from the american consul of hsi fu urging us to flee this message was quickly followed by another still more urgent the question was where could we flee our usual route was by river boat two weeks to tientsin but this way was blocked the whole region being infested with boxers and tientsin even then in a state of siege The only possible route left open to us was southward by cart, fourteen days to Fancheng, then ten or more days by houseboat to Hankou.

We faced such a journey at that time of the year with fear and trembling because of the children, the danger from heat and sun being very great.

By nineteen hundred, the local riots had become an anti-European rebellion, and the European legation quarters in Peking, filled to overflowing with frightened foreigners, were besieged by fanatical Chinese.

This was the Boxer Rebellion or Boxer War, so called because the leadership was taken by a Chinese organization whose name was rather inaccurately translated as the Society of Boxers.

The Boxers were not professional pugilists, but patriots who believed in using force to expel the foreigners.

That the Boxers believed themselves invulnerable to European bullets and considered their campaign as a religious war to prevent the desecration of Chinese soil by foreigners and their railways will perhaps indicate the nature of the movement.