The siege of the Legations was only an episode
in a movement which reproduced in North China
the various details of horror visited upon the heroes
of the Bible and of the Christian faith as depicted
in the Epistle to the Hebrews : " They were stoned,
they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain
with the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins
and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented."
And then we learned for the first time in our
generation that the " blood of martyrs is the seed
of the Church."

Some would say surely the slaughter of nearly

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The Subsequent ATvakening

three hundred missionaries, and no one knows how
many thousand Chinese Christians, suffering untold
and untenable agonies under the horrid torments
of their enemies, and the scattering of the Ghurteh'
through persecution, must have been an irreparable
calamity to the Church in China. I answer, " Yes "
and "No."

There are many, compensating gains. God was
in the siege of Peking, and His right hand was
manifest. When men, women, and children have
been forced into His very, presence and have come
to know Him as Deliverer and Friend, higher
criticism, lower criticism, infidelity, or pagan attacks
on the Christians' God fail to shake the foundations !
The calm serenity of a Peking preacher as he came
forth to meet his doom, dressed in his best garments,
that he might be worthy of his " crimson coronet " ;
the songs of gladness with which even a Chineise
woman may go to a watery grave ; the bold con-
fessions of sfhoolboys who gladly die rather than
deny their lovmg Saviour ; tiie unquenchable wit-
ness of dying maidens quite as wonderful as that
of the early Church heroines— //lese are familiar
stories among unbelieving Boxers who now are the
humble followers of the Christ they persecuted.
