Review
Pastor Hsi by Mrs Howard
Taylor (China
Inland Mission Reprint)
Foreword
I count it a real
privilege to asked to write a Foreword to this great book, and to
have my name associated with it. It affords me an opportunity of
expressing my profound admiration for everything that I have ever
read by its distinguished author. Likewise I can thus express my
sense of gratitude to the China Inland Mission for deciding to issue
this Life of Pastor Hsi, which had formerly been in two volumes, in
one beautiful and compact volume.
A Foreword is really
unnecessary, and any attempt to underline or to call special
attention to the salient features of the book is quite otiose, as all
this is done by the book itself. Certainly no one who has ever read a
book by Mrs. Howard Taylor will need any kind of "appetiser".
To attempt to praise this
book would be almost an impertinence, but I may be permitted to say
that I regard it as a classic and one of the really great Christian
biographies. The ultimate way of judging the true value of a book is
to discover its effect upon our personality as a whole. Many books
entertain and divert, others provide intellectual stimulation or
appeal to our artistic sense, but the truly great book affects us
more vitally, and we feel that we shall never quite be the same again
as the result of reading it. Such is the effect produced by this Life
of Pastor Hsi. To read it is to be searched and humbled - indeed at
times to be utterly humiliated; but at the same time it is
stimulating, and exhilarating and a real tonic to one`s faith. In all
this of course it approximates to the Bible itself.
This one word which
describes the whole atmosphere and character of the book is the word
apostolic. One feels this about the character of Pastor Hsi himself.
and as one reads about his labours and the results to which they led
in the formation of little churches, one is constantly reminded of
the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. Whatever view one may hold on
apostolic succession, no-one can deny that in this account of Pastor
Hsi, and the churches in his district of China, we are reading of
something that is a direct continuation of what happened in the early
days of the Christian church. I have often felt that the history
recorded in the Acts is but an extended commentary on Paul's inspired
statement that the gospel "is the power of God unto salvation".
I felt exactly the same as I read this book. It thrills with power
and the only explanation of the extraordinary things which it records
is what the New Testament tells us about the ministry of the Holy
Spirit. it is indeed nothing but a record of what He did to and with
Pastor Hsi, what He taught him and enabled him to do.
As for the man himself,
he was by any standard a great man. His personality fascinates and
attracts, indeed there was in him that quality of lovableness which
is always a characteristic of true greatness. As a natural man he was
gifted with unusual intellectual power and an enquiring mind.
Moreover, he was cultured and well educated and deeply versed in the
learning of his won country. He was a strong character and a born
leader with perhaps a tendency, not unusual in such men, to be
masterful and imperious and utterly impatient of incompetence.
Likewise, he had great courage and determination and an assurance
born of the realisation of his own qualities.
When we look at him,
however, after his conversion as as he developed in the Christian
life, we see a change which as I have already said can only be
explained by the miraculous power of God’s regenerating grace. The
outstanding characteristic was his spirituality. He was truly a man
of God in the real sense of the word. His simple, childlike faith
which yet was strong and unshakable was astonishing. He took the New
Testament as was and put it into practice without any hesitations or
reservations he disciplined himself and his life in a most rigorous
manner. The result was that everywhere we are impressed by his
humility and his extraordinary balance and sanity. Indeed his
humility and his self-control and discipline at certain times move
one to tears, especially when one remembers what he was by nature.
What is the great lesson
taught by this biography? There are many, but if I were pressed to
single out one which is pre-eminent, it would be that we are shown
here that the Christian is most accurately described as the fight of
faith. Pastor Hsi had no difficulty in understanding what Paul means
when he says that "we wrestle not against flesh and blood but
against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness
of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Eph
vi 12). He not only believed in the Holy Spirit but also in the
reality of evil spirits, and he fought them not by trying to
cultivate the passivity of the mystics and the quietists but by
"putting on the whole armour of God" and using it with all
his might.
Much light is cast in
this book on several subjects which are of great interest and
importance and which have often led to controversy. For instance,
Pastor Hsi was a great believer in the value of fasting when he gave
himself to a season of prayer. Prayer and fasting seemed to him to go
together. Is it possible that the real explanation as to why so many
of us do not take the question of fasting seriously is that we have
never taken prayer as seriously Pastor Hsi did?
Again on the vexed
question of faith healing there is a great deal to be learnt from
this book. Pastor Hsi believed in it and practised it, and there are
some remarkable cures reported. But his attitude to this was
essentially different from that of many in this country and the
U.S.A. which make much of this subject. There was in him a complete
absence of the spectacular and the flamboyant, and he was
particularly careful not to make loose statements and exaggerated
claims; indeed it is here that his his sanity and balance stand out
most clearly. He believed in using drugs and other means, and he
organised a great system of refuges for the opium addicts. He was
acutely aware of the dangers connected with the whole subject and
always proceeded in a most cautious manner. It is particularly
interesting to note hoe he became increasingly cautious as the years
passed. the effect of all this is that one does not have the usual
feeling that most of the purported results can be explained in terms
of psychology. One feels rather that they are true, unmistakable
cases of faith healing which can be explained in no other way.
It is exactly the same
with the question of demon possession. Here again valuable evidence
is provided which establishes the reality of this condition as a
clinical entity and which shows that there is but one effective
treatment.
There are also other
matters of absorbing interest, but Pastor Hsi's ultimate rest was not
in the cultivation of his own holiness, not in faith healing or the
exorcising of devils or in any of the other phenomena of the
Christian life: it was in his Lord who had died for him and had
revealed Himself to him in his love and mercy and grace. He desired
to know him better and to serve Him more truly.
We thank God for the
memory of Pastor Hsi. We thank God for Mrs. Howard Taylor, who has
recorded the facts of the Pastor's life so beautifully and
faithfully. Our prayer is that God may so use this book to all who
read It that we all may be likewise filled with Pastor Hsi's love for
our blessed Lord, and may become so conformed to Him that He may be
able to use us in the work of his kingdom even as he used the great
Chinese scholar.
D M Lloyd-Jones
Westminster Chapel,
London
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