TWICE-BORN MEN
REMARKABLE CONVERSIONS OF WELL-KNOWN MEN
IN DIFFERENT AGES AND IN VARIED RANKS OF LIFE
Compiled by HY. PICKERING
A Chinese Opium Smoker
PASTOR HSI was born probably in the autumn of 1836. Till he was seven years old the little His lived the usual free life of the son of a Chinese scholar, and was encouraged in every way to be overbearing and self-willed. Then he was sent to school, a school where a shrine of Confucius occupied the place of honour. Here the boy begins the studies which, it is hoped, will make him a “Princely Man.”
But, favourable though circumstances are, they do not satisfy the heart of this boy. At the early age of eight years, as he wandered through the incense-filled Temple and gazed at the hideous idols and vivid representations of punishments and terrors beyond the grave, he would ask himself , what was the use of living. “Men find no good, and in the end— ?” he said to himself.
When told that he could win fame, and wealth and become a great Mandarin, the thought would come: “What good is there in that? Sooner or later one must die.” And with his years this fear of death and the hereafter increased. Dark and dreary years they were. He married at 16, but lost her whilst quite a young man, and though he was in great repute, and looked up to by all who knew him, holding an honourable position in his village, the death of his wife brought back all his dread of the terrors of the hereafter. He set to work to study the various “faiths” around, if haply he might find rest to his soul, but so great was his distress that he became quite ill. Then came the opium fiend. “Just a little, enough to make him forget—he could always leave it off,” his friends said. Could he? He knew full well the awful power of the drug, for he had seen its victims—scholarly men, like himself, some of them—sitting in the dirt and dust of the highway, and begging for a bit of opium, without which they could not live, and having it must die. He succumbed to temptation at last , and became a confirmed smoker, hating the depths to which he sank, but sinking deeper still.
Then came David Hill with the message of salvation—the good news of sins forgiven and eternal life. Later on he went to David Hill’s house to help him with “essays” (the net David Hill used to catch this scholarly gentleman), and had, perforce, to study the New Testament ; the Book answered all his doubts, set all his fears at rest. “Joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Peter 1. 8) was his indeed. The darknessof past years was lost in the glory of God which he saw in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ was everything to him from that time. The chains which opium had flung around him were snapped by the Holy Spirit’s power.
Hsi spent himself in his Master’s service until his Home-call came, after some months’ of illness, on Feb. 19th, 1896, at the age of about 60.