The Cross and the Crown

How The Children Of China Died For Jesus

The Boxers were a group of people calling themselves ‘United Fists’. Foreigners in China nicknamed them ‘Boxers’. They worshiped the god of war in Buddhist Temples which was normally where most Christians were taken and offered as sacrifices to the idols.

Prince Tuan of the Chinese imperial government along with the Empress Dowager gave permission for the Imperial Army and the Boxers to destroy all foreign missionaries and all Chinese associated with the ‘foreign barbarians’. During this uprising, 20,000 Roman Catholics along with 5,000 Christians including 188 foreign missionaries were killed.

According to the author of the book from which the following story is taken, people in the UK were horrified at the tortures and hideous deaths inflicted upon the martyrs. When standing in one of the temples after the massacres were over, she looked at the drawings on the walls where there were brilliantly painted figures representing the tortures of the Buddhist Hell. In the pictures she saw a man surrounded by demons engaged in tormenting him. Too frightful to describe in any detail, some were of a man being thrown onto a hill of knives. Another is being sawn in two, another is having his tongue or heart torn out and yet another is being boiled in oil. It’s not hard to see why this terrible group of killers were so merciless and violent.

Among the large number of Chinese Christians who refused to save their lives by burning incense at the idol shrines, choosing death rather than denial of their Lord, were many children and young people who had learned to love the Saviour in our Yen-shan Mission School. As many as 14 suffered martyrdom. One was a girl named Shen-chieh who had given her heart to Jesus. When the troubles broke out, the whole district was teeming with Boxers. Scared of being arrested, she fled with her mother and sister, wandering homeless for 10 days, sleeping in ditches by night and hiding in the tall grass by day. Finally they were captured by the Boxers. Standing up, this brave girl did her best to save her mother and sister. “They do not belong to the Jesus religion” she said. “It is I alone who am a Christian. If you wish to kill me, I am quite willing to die; but let them escape”. At first the boxers were touched by the little girl’s brave pleading and told her relatives they could flee for their lives – so her sister fled on foot into the fields but her mother froze. She trembled with fear, unable to move. At once, the Boxers unsheathed their murderous blades and thrust at the woman. Shen-chieh threw herself upon her mother trying to protect her but was soon killed by the spears. The bystanders remember the child cried in a loud, clear voice, first to her Lord and then to her mother, but the voice of this brave little daughter was stilled in death.

Extract taken from ‘Cross and Crown by Mrs Bryson’ – first published in 1905 and used with the kind permission of the Council for World mission