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Feeling After God

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 2, 1903

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 80, No. 22.

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Feeling After God

By Mrs. J. N. Anderson

MRS. J. N. ANDERSON
OUT in the country two or three miles from the village of San-li-tien, we came across a home having over the entrance of its enclosure, in large Chinese characters, this inscription: “May the great truth come to this door.” It is quite common for these people to express their wish for the New Year in proverbs over the doors of their dwellings. Such expressions as, “May riches enter here,” “May peace reign within,” “May the five blessings [long life, riches including sons, a sound body, love of virtue, and a peaceful end] enter this door,” are common. The house referred to was much like the other dwellings of the fertile plain, with walls of sun-dried brick and mud, sheltered by a thatched roof of rice straw laid on bamboo rafters. Inside were all the necessities of this simple country life, despite the absence of a floor. As usual, no flue had been provided the big brick stove, where the two daily meals were cooked over a fire fed with twisted straw, and the interior walls and the roof were brown with smoke; but an atmosphere of thrift and neatness prevailed, not common in these homes, while the blue cotton garments and white cloth stockings of the inmates were cleanly beyond what one might expect under such circumstances. But, as might be known from the mute witness over the gateway, these temporal things were not the chief concern of the occupants of this home, or, at least, were not so with the wife, who at her first visit related her experience to the missionary.
She said that her husband was a very good man, and although she had never borne him a child, yet he never scolded her, and they lived in peace. Still, being childless, she felt that she really had nothing to live for, and wished to die. Some time last summer a portion of Scripture had fallen into her husband's hands, and through his reading, the suggestion of a new and fuller life had come to her. But how to obtain it, how to follow to its source this ray of light, was what baffled her. She could not read, and her husband would not be troubled to grant her earnest request to hear all that the book contained. Besides, some things she did hear were so foreign to her mind that she could not believe that she understood aright. She did so earnestly desire to know of this heavenly doctrine, as she called it, that she had committed to the arch of the gateway the longing she knew not how to satisfy.
No one who was present to see how eagerly she pressed to the side of her new teacher, gazing almost rapturously into her face as she read from the beautiful words of Jesus, her own large expressive countenance radiant with the light kindling within her soul, and saw how tenderly she stroked the New Testament given to be her very own, could for a moment doubt the sincerity of her words. Long ago she and her husband had ceased to worship idols directly, but knowing no better way, had sent out their petitions to earth, sea, and sky, into the vast universe of the vaguely known, in search of the Great Unknown. Feeling after God, she had found him, and now, past the meridian of life, for the first time she knelt in reverent thankfulness before the Creator of earth, sea, and sky.
At the second visit a number of women from the neighboring villages and hamlets flocked into the house, eager to see the foreigners. They chatted like magpies, and were interested in our speech, our clothing, our complexion, everything but our teaching. The hostess remonstrated with them, begging them to hear the good Book, to which they replied, “O we do not understand her words.” “But if you really desire to know, you may know,” she replied. “Your hearts will be opened to understand. I understand all that she speaks.” As the interruption continued, we decided to go on to the next village. Taking in the situation, she whispered to the missionary, “Please stop when you come back. They all will have gone to the dragon show in the city, and we can be quite alone.”
As we left the village to return, we could see her in the distance, standing by the winding path through the fields, watching for our coming. As our wheelbarrow which carried the children came to a halt before her door, she, with the friend whom she had called to share in our visit, escorted us into the house, and seating themselves, one at the side and the other on a stool directly in front of my companion, signified their readiness to hear. When the reading was over, we all bowed together on the beaten earth with the smoky rafters overhead, but the King of glory came in.
Perhaps we in more enlightened lands often pray for God to bless his workers in foreign fields, and even for the poor heathen themselves, but they are faraway across the sea, and at best the prayer is but general. It is in such experiences as these that our sympathies are quickened, and we are awakened to find that that distant heathen is our own lost sister, possessed of the same spiritual longings and capable of the same mental suffering that we ourselves have known. The story of the cross inspires in her the same joyous faith with which our own hearts are blessed. No more faithful or devoted Christians may be found than these confiding Chinese women become when once their apparent childishness gives place to the simplicity of faith.
Hongkong, China.