Then in September, C.T. noticed a placard in the marketplace. His blood chilled as he read it. The placard announced that the following day everyone in the town was to shut the door to his courtyard and place burning incense outside it as a sign of worship to the rain god. He also overheard two men saying that a group of men were about to set out to get the rain god from a nearby town. The rain god would be paraded through the streets of Lungang-Fu so that he could smell all the incense offered to him. C.T. hurried home to tell Priscilla and Mary what he had read and overheard.
“What will we do?” Priscilla asked. “You know they will be very insulted when we do not burn incense, and they will blame us for angering their god even more.”
“I think it is one of the mandarin’s schemes. He has been looking for a way to get rid of us ever since we arrived, and what better way than to have people rioting outside our house,” Mary said.
C.T. sighed. What could they do?
That night C.T. and Priscilla stayed up late praying about the situation. When they awoke the following morning, the air was filled with the sweet smell of incense. C.T. locked the doors and waited to see what would happen next.
About midday they heard the procession at the top of the street. As it got closer, they could hear the chanting. “We want rain. We want rain. Kill the foreign devils. Kill the foreign devils!”
Crash! C.T. heard a thud against the back wall of the chapel, and then he smelled the choking odor of acrid smoke. The mob had set fire to the building. C.T. acted quickly. He scooped up Priscilla and carried her out into the courtyard.
“Look after her,” he yelled to Mary as he climbed over the sidewall and ran off in the direction of the mandarin’s hall. It was a mandarin’s duty to help those who came to him for protection.
C.T. sprinted all the way to the mandarin’s hall, only to find that the mandarin was not there. In fact, the mandarin was not anywhere in the city. He had conveniently left town when he heard about the parade with the rain god. No doubt, C.T. mused, so that he won’t have the blood of foreigners on his hands.
Since he could not plead with the mandarin to intervene, C.T. could do nothing but go back to the house and try to help the women. As he ran back up the street, no one paid him much attention. All eyes were fixed on the men who had set the chapel alight. The men had now turned their attention to the outer wall of the mission house and were attacking it with picks and axes.
C.T. stood for a moment, wondering how he was going to get back inside the mission compound, when he heard a voice raised above the crowd. It belonged to a scholar C.T. had enjoyed several conversations with.
“What are you doing?” the scholar yelled at the mob. “While you are wasting time, the day is passing. Look at the rain god—he is sitting in shadows. Pick him up quickly and take him into the sunlight. He needs the sunlight in order to bless us with rain.”
In an instant the shouting stopped, and the people turned to look at the rain god, a stone statue about three feet high that had been set down in a doorway.
“If you neglect him, he will neglect you,” the scholar continued, and that idea seemed to galvanize the mob into action. Above all, they did not want to anger the rain god.
The men quickly dropped the axes and picks they were wielding against the wall of the house, and with a cheer, six men picked up the stone statue and heaved it up onto their shoulders. The men set off marching toward the market, and everyone followed behind them.
C.T. stood with his head bowed, waiting for the mob to pass and thanking God for saving the three of them from death.
By now the south wall of the chapel was a smoldering heap of rubble, but Priscilla and Mary were unhurt, and the mission house itself had not been touched on the inside.
The mob did not return that day, and even though rain did not come for another six months, the missionaries were not bothered again.
Much to C.T.’s surprise, after the incident local people began to seek him out to talk to him about religion. As a result of talking to C.T., many of these people became interested in Christianity.
One of the first men to become a Christian was a visitor to Lungang-Fu. His name was Liu, and at first he doubted whether the Christian God would want to have anything to do with him.
“I am a murderer,” he confessed to C.T., “and an adulterer and an opium addict. I’ve broken all the rules of God and man again and again.”
C.T. assured Liu that God would forgive him if he repented of the things he had done. Liu did so and was converted. Soon afterward he told C.T., “I must go back home to the town where I have committed such evil sins and tell the people the glad tidings of Jesus’ love.”
After Liu left, C.T. prayed for him every day.
Two months later, in February 1889, Liu returned to the mission house in Lungang-Fu with a story to tell.
“As soon as I arrived home,” Liu began, “I started to tell my father and my brothers about the God who had changed my life from the inside out. They did not want to hear about this because it reminded them of their own wicked hearts. They took me to the mandarin, who ordered me to be beaten with two thousand lashes with a bamboo cane. I prayed as each lash fell on my back until I became unconscious.” Liu paused to pull up the back of his shirt. His back was crisscrossed with fresh scars.
“Praise be to God,” Liu went on. “I woke up in a Christian hospital. I learned that some of my friends had put me on an oxcart and taken me there. Of course, my first thoughts were that I must go back and keep preaching in my town, but my friends tried to restrain me. They said that the mandarin would have me killed the next time I showed my face there. But I was sure that God wanted me to go back there.”
A big smile spread over Liu’s face.
“So I climbed out an open hospital window in the night and returned to my hometown,” Liu continued. “In the morning I started telling people about Jesus. Sure enough, I was brought before the mandarin again, and this time he had me thrown in prison. What a wonderful place prison is!” Liu grinned. “I had all day to witness to the other prisoners through a hole in my door. Eventually the jailer released me, saying that I was causing too much confusion among the prisoners and the guards. God is good, is He not?”
“Yes, God is good,” C.T. agreed, amazed at the man’s simple faith and the price he had cheerfully paid for it. Listening to Liu made all of the cursing and spitting the missionaries had endured worth it.
Later that month Priscilla gave birth to a baby girl. C.T. delivered the baby, whom they named Grace. Their Chinese cook lingered around the baby until C.T. asked her why she spent so much time staring at the child.
“I was wondering if you intended to keep it, since it is a girl,” the cook said.
“What do you mean?” C.T. asked.
The cook shrugged her shoulders. “Many mothers do not keep their girls, especially if they don’t have a boy already. There are certain pagodas outside the city where a mother can leave a baby girl. The wolves make quick work of them.”
C.T.’s stomach turned. Although he did not doubt what he heard, he was still appalled at the thought that a parent could take an innocent baby and leave it for wild animals to devour. He looked down at Grace and shook his head.
“The Christian God tells us to value all life,” he explained patiently. “In His kingdom we are all one. Boys are no better than girls.”
Sadly, Priscilla had fallen gravely ill after Grace was born. C.T. was relieved when a CIM nurse named Jessie Kerr came to visit them in Lungang-Fu, especially since Mary Burroughs was no longer working at the station.
After spending a few hours with Priscilla, Jessie had grim news for C.T. “Mr. Studd,” she said, “I’ve tried every mortal thing that I can think of, but nothing seems to have any effect. Mrs. Studd is growing rapidly worse. I hate to say this, but I cannot give you any hope that she will recover. If by some miracle God does spare her life, you must take her home to England at once.”
As the words sunk into his head, something within C.T. rose up. Take his wife home? After God had called them to China! C.T. gathered a small band of Chinese Christians around Priscilla’s bed, and they anointed her with oil and prayed that God would heal her. C.T. prayed through the night, and by the following morning, Priscilla was well on the way to recovery. C.T. and the small band of Christians then held a thanksgiving service, and it was not long before Priscilla was up and about and able to get on with her missionary work as well as take care of Grace.
In the spring Stanley Smith, one of the Cambridge Seven, and his new wife joined the Studds at the mission station in Lungang-Fu. The four of them decided to set up an opium refuge for opium addicts. At first only a few homeless men dared seek help from Christians. However, as a result of prayer and dedicated nursing, some of the men were set free from their addiction, and other addicts began to come to the refuge.
Pastor Shi, who had officiated at C.T. and Priscilla’s Chinese wedding ceremony in Hoh-chau, joined the missionaries in Lungang-Fu, and the work began to flourish. Several large personal donations from friends in England allowed C.T. to buy a larger house so that the opium refuge could be expanded.
When Grace was one year old, Priscilla gave birth to another child. This time it was a boy, whom they named Paul. Sadly, Paul lived for only a few hours. C.T. buried him in the corner of the courtyard. He marveled that Priscilla never shed a tear in front of him. Instead Priscilla redoubled her efforts to reach the women of the community with the gospel.
Other obstacles occurred along the way. Since C.T. had given all his inheritance away, he and Priscilla had no regular means of support. Friends or churches in England would send them money from time to time, and because C.T. and Priscilla’s lifestyle was very simple, the couple normally had enough money to cover their expenses. However, one day soon after Paul died, they had no money and no food in the house. C.T. and Priscilla agreed to pray through the night about their situation.
After about twenty minutes on their knees, C.T. announced that they had prayed long enough. “We have told God everything,” he said, “and there seems no point in repeating it, as if He were deaf or could not understand the urgency of the situation.”
The following morning the twice-monthly mailbag arrived. C.T. and Priscilla quickly began to open the letters in the bag, hoping to find a check from someone they knew. But there were no checks in any of the letters. C.T. decided to check inside the mailbag one more time. This time he spotted a single letter that had gotten stuck in the corner of the bag. He pulled the letter out and studied the unfamiliar handwriting on the envelope.
“Do you know a Mr. Frank Crossley?” C.T. asked his wife.
“No,” she replied. “I don’t recall ever hearing that name before.”
C.T. slit the envelope open and unfolded a letter. Inside was a check for one hundred pounds. The letter also contained an explanation: “I have for some reason or another received a command of God to send you a check for one hundred pounds. I’ve never met you, I’ve only heard of you, and that not often, but God’s prevented me from sleeping tonight by His command. Why He should command me to send you this I do not know—you will know better than I. Anyhow, here it is, and I hope it will do you good.”
C.T. and Priscilla held a prayer meeting to thank God right there and then.
The mission work in Lungang-Fu continued on, and by 1894 the opium refuge was housing fifty people at a time, mostly men but also some women and even a few children.
By now the number of children in the Studd household had increased by three. Dorothy, Edith, and Pauline all were born about a year apart. Having given birth to five babies in less than six years had physically worn out Priscilla, and C.T.’s health was not much better. C.T. had developed asthma from the harsh climate and the smoke-filled rooms he spent so much of his time in while sharing the gospel with people.
