Fifty years in China; an eventful memoir of Tarleton Perry Crawford, D. D.

Dedication

To all persons everywhere who love "the old paths"

and seek to walk therein is this book

affectionately dedicated

Preface

I esteem it both an honor and a privilege to write a preface to this book.

While the book is prepared as a memoir of Dr. Crawford it will necessarily also set forth, to a large extent, the life and work of Mrs. Crawford, because they were not only one by God's law of matrimony, but for half a century their lives were so interwoven in labors and sorrows, hopes and joys, that it is impossible to entirely separate them in any account of their life work.

During the last decade of the fifty years they labored together in China, it was the writer's privilege to be associated with them almost as a son with parents, and it is a joy to still be associated with Mrs. Crawford in the work.

In the more than one hundred years of modern missionary history, it has been granted to probably less than five couples to labor together fifty years on any mission field of the world as did Dr. and Mrs. Crawford. This fact alone is sufficient to impart peculiar interest to any account of their lives. Then considering the sum of the years of their united labors, it amounts already to one hundred and seven years, while Mrs. Crawford's continuance in active work is even increasing this total. Then again the period covered vi PREFACE.

by their lives is perhaps the most remarkable half century in the history of the human race. This is true whether we consider the events of the military, the political, the commercial, or the religious world. The following are some of the epoch-making wars of this period: On her own soil England, France and Japan have each gained important victories over China; the brief but very important victory of the Allied Powers in 1900; and Japan's noted victory over Russia in 1905 ; also several very important internal wars, the most important of which was the Tai Ping rebellion, in which it is probable that more lives were lost than in any other war in history. In other parts of the globe have occurred the Crimean, the Indian mutiny, the Franco-German, the South African, the American Civil, and Spanish-American wars.

Political changes have also been quite as remarkable. China herself, a monarchial form of government, hoary with forty centuries of age and reeking with cruelty, has so far advanced as to agree to offer her people a constitutional government. Some one has well said that she has advanced more during the past two than during the two thousand previous years ! Japan has awaked, Rip Van Winkle-like, from centuries of ignorance, cruelty and selfishness of government, and has taken her stand in the front rank of enlightened nations, while our own loved country has arisen from being a weak and unconsidered power to perhaps the second place in the family of nations. England has in this time gained the ascendency in Egypt and the control of the Suez Canal. Almost

PREFACE. vii

the entire remarkable reign of the great and good Queen Victoria also fell within this period. In Europe the German Empire has been formed, Italy has thrown off the yoke of the Pope, and Spain has lost the last of her colonies. Africa, from being a region marked unexplored, has become a continent, traversed in its length and breadth by missionaries and commerce, and over which diplomats of the great powers match their wits. Slavery has also practically ceased in all the world.

In the commercial world, too, progress has been phenomenal. In 1852, when Dr. and Mrs. Crawford reached China, the railroad mileage of the world could easily be counted within thousands of miles, while now it rolls far up into the hundreds of thousands. Then there were comparatively few telegraph lines, now overland throughout the world is a network of telegraph and telephone lines, while all the great oceans are crossed by cables, and wireless telegraphy has become a common means of communication with ships on the high seas. Then sail vessels of perhaps never over a thousand tons capacity carried the commerce of the world at a snail-like rate, requiring often six or more months to convey goods and passengers from New York to China; now all the waters of earth are rapidly plowed by huge ships of from three to thirty thousand tonnage— almost cities afloat. These huge steamers now carry passengers, mails and freight from New York to Shanghai in from twenty to thirty-five days ! One line is now delivering mails to Hong Kong viii PREFACE.

from London across Canada and the Pacific in about twenty-five days.

In the religious world many of the most noted characters of the Christian era have come upon the stage and finished their courses during this half century. Suffice it to mention only one. The London ministry of Charles Hadden Spurgeon began two years after Dr. and Mrs. Crawford arrived in China, and he laid down his cross to receive the crown ten years before Dr. Crawford was called to his reward.

But most wonderful of all have been the triumphs which Christianity has won in her conflict with the heathen and uncivilized peoples of the earth. The increased facilities for reaching the ends of the earth with the gospel, which have developed in connection with the commercial progress of the world, are most marked, and have greatly aided in these gospel triumphs. In 1852 these young missionaries journeyed in much discomfort from New York around the Cape of Good Hope to Hong Kong in one hundred and two days — at that time a record-breaking trip. When just fifty years later Mrs. Crawford was returning, it was possible for her to travel from New York to Shanghai, in superb comfort and luxury, in twenty-three days ! The time has since been shortened to nineteen days! Then there were in China from all Christian nations about one hundred Protestant missionaries, confined for residence to the then five open ports, and for travel to an absence of not more than twenty- four hours from any of these ports ; now there are nearly four thousand missionaries residing in all

PREFACE. ix

parts of the Empire, some requiring three months' travel to reach their interior homes, and with unlimited privileges of travel. Then about one hundred of China's four hundred millions professed Christianity; now there are over two hundred thousand church members. And this takes no notice of the hundreds of missionaries and tens of thousands of native Christians whose graves are in every province of the Empire. What has thus taken place in China is only a sample of what has been going on in all heathen countries, even to a more marked degree, especially among the savages of the Islands of the Seas. This period has also been eminently marked by the extra attention given to the study of the science and methods of missions. During all his missionary life Dr. Crawford was a close student of the methods of missions, as these pages will clearly show; and it is this that will render this book invaluable to those interested along these lines.

I have only hinted at many of the great events of these fifty years in order to emphasize in what an eventful period these two closely knitted lives were spent in earnest and faithful effort to make known to benighted China the light of life. The book in treating of their lives and work must needs touch many of these events. Moreover the record of these long and faithful lives cannot fail to have much that will be interesting, instructive and helpful in the absorbing and most important of all the questions now engaging the human mind, namely, that of the complete evangelization of the whole world.

x PREFACE.

Most earnestly and heartily therefore, do I commend the book to the attention of the reading public. I sincerely pray that its reading may be blessed in stimulating many to emulate these lives as herein portrayed in a more earnest, enthusiastic and intelligent service of him "who loved us and gave himself for us." May many of the young who read it be so touched and fired by the Holy Spirit as to offer their lives unreservedly to labor in behalf of the world's yet unevangelized millions. G. P. Bostick.

Nashville, Tenn., December, 1908.

Introduction

There are but two chapters in ecclesiastical history. One of them deals with the brief times in which individual Christians and worshipping congregations were living beings, having Jesus as the head of the framework, which was also the shrine of the Holy Spirit who was ever present to guide and inform. Oneness of heart and soul was the characteristic of this heavenly phenomenon. "I and the Father are one." "That they may all be one even as Thou, Father, art in me and I in Thee, that they may also be one in us." They "shall become one flock, one shepherd." I Cor. xii : 27.

In these first congregations, the abundant life and energy overshadowed mere organization ; and fraternal love with abounding charity was a stronger bond than external unity or loyalty to an institution. The ecclesias were electric lights, each distinct and separate, yet connected with the same great dynamo which sent out its currents to each and made them the light of the world. They were all shining in the 'world of darkness, being one in dependence upon the same source for life, unanimity and success. For the building up of this body there were gifts of the Holy Spirit. 1 Cor. xii.

In our ordinary sense there were no officers — no democracy, aristocracy, nor monarchy; no laity, no clergy, no rulers, no ruled. It was something new xiv INTRODUCTION.

under the sun — a Christocracy in which the greater served the less and all were brethren. The ecclesia was to interpret by its manner of life the foundation words of its Architect : "I came not to be ministered unto but to minister.''

The second chapter deals with the transmutation of this divine ecclesia into one that lived and moved on human levels. The Greeks loved wisdom, and the Romans loved system and organization. Following the trend of the times Christocracy by degrees became monarchical. The churches began to lose contact with the source of divine power, and in their consequent weakness and isolation they began to turn to each other for help. First association, second confederation, third suppression of freedom, and conformity, fourth unification which ended in a spiritual empire, homogeneous with the Roman empire, which as an organization had already been depicted by an inspired writer as a beast with ten horns and seven heads, whose image had to be worshipped on the pain of death and whose mark on their person was the only license for buying and selling. There was always a protest against the inverted Christocracy and the enthroned orientalism under religious auspices. In modern times the protest comes from two sources, one political, the other religious — the modern political movements in favor of a fuller democracy, and the smaller religious movements to cut loose from tradition and return to New Testament theory and practice. The point of contact between these movements is the recognition of man's worth — his individuality.

INTRODUCTION. xv

Dr. Crawford went to China as a missionary under the direction of the Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, and was faithful in the performance of his duties. Cut off from home and immersed in the surrounding paganism, he began to scan New Testament times and preaching models. His experience on the field led him apart from some workers and in the simplicity of his truth-loving and truth-seeking heart, he returned to America to lay before the Board the truths as he saw them. Of course it ended in his being "dissolutioned," and in the loss of reputation at home in consequence of official opposition. True to its instincts an institution cannot say "I must decrease but he must increase." It is voiced rather by a certain high priest: "It is expedient for you that one man should die for the people and that the whole nation perish not." That is still the honest and very prevalent opinion that an institution is worth more than a man, that its welfare is more important than the prevalence of a particular truth.

Dr. Crawford returned to his work. The majority of the Baptists at home favored his views, but power of an organized minority made it dangerous and unpopular for a minister to follow the leader who was trying more nearly to follow Christ. The truths he was upholding were partly handicapped by a following which was more political than religious in its natural distaste for an oligarchy, and which entirely missed the deeper meaning of self-abnegation in carrying out their marching orders. Others who were profounder in their convictions and clearer in their views xvi INTRODUCTION.

stood with him to the end; while here and there the weaker and less conscientious began to seek more verdant fields of service, or a refuge from shafts of ridicule.

He came to the grave in a ripe old age. He loved his brethren and was infinitely pained by their loss of fraternal regard and by the misrepresentations of his non-admirers, but he was moved by none of these things. "A man who is born the second time is born honest/' was one of his characteristic expressions. He bought the truth and sold it not. He loved his brethren, but he loved the truth as he saw it more than his brethren. When it came to a choice between loyalty to an institution and to the truth, it seemed to him also to be better to obey God rather than man.

In the current judgments of the day his life would not be called a success. No man out of the swim can succeed in the eyes of the many; but a juster estimate puts him into that class of men who stand apart and see more clearly the issue of things, and in their love of, and search for, the truth are separated from their fellows. He was wise by experience, deeply versed in the sacred writings, a profound philosopher, and' yet he was simple and kind-hearted as a child, affable and instructive in his conversation, free from duplicity and guile, and, in short, a man whose presence was of a positive, elevating order. Most men find it hard to pull together occasionally their practice and their theory, but our brother Crawford's theory

INTRODUCTION. xvii

could be gathered from his practice. May his kind never perish from the earth !

H. T. Cook.

Furman University, Greenville, S. C.

Chapter I. Why Write?

In an epistle to one of the New Testament churches, the Apostle Paul exhorts the brethren that they seek to know those who labor among them in the Lord, and esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake. It was a favorite maxim and fundamental principle of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of Roman Catholic Jesuitism, that, to be successful in any enterprise, every leader "know his men." He established a complete system of espionage around all the workers of his order, and knew their every movement. He knew his men. But this was in order that his organization might the more successfully tyrannize over the hearts and consciences of men. For a higher and nobler purpose we should seek to know those who have been called to special labor among us in the advancement of the Redeemer's kingdom, that we may have an intelligent and sympathetic appreciation of their personal qualities and the conditions that surround them. Thus we may be able to have fellowship with them in their toils, and by our prayers and sacrifices render a really sustaining support. Thus alone, too, can we gain the often invaluable benefits of the lessons to be learned from their lives.

These pages are written that our people may become the better acquainted with two among the most earnest missionaries sent to China by Southern Baptists. While it is unusual to write a memoir of the living, it will be evident to all who are conversant with these persons, Tarleton Perry Crawford and Martha Foster Crawford, that their aims, labors, joys, sorrows, hopes and sufferings for Christ's sake were so completely interwoven and identical as to render it quite impossible to write the history of the one without, more or less, that of the other. The former exchanged the cross for the crown in 1902; the latter, advanced in years, still lingers upon the shores of time and is continuing her life work in and around Taianfu, China.

Aside from the privilege of knowing these two servants of the blessed Master, it is a great pleasure to become acquainted with the stirring events and thrilling experiences which have been crowded into their lives. If we mistake not, the mere perusal of these narratives will prove more fascinating than any romance.

It is in the hope that the plain, unvarnished history of Dr. and Mrs. Crawford, taken apart from all controversy, may glorify God and edify His people, that the writer has consented to tell this story of their lives. But who could properly depict such lives, having never been on the field where they have been lived ? Indeed, who could justly portray them, even though moving in the same scenes, and beholding personally the same panorama ?

WHY WRITE? 21

Nevertheless, it was eminently fitting that some one who loved and appreciated them, and as far as possible sympathized with their Christian heroism, should present a memorial of their consecrated lives. While there is absolute certainty that the recital will fall immensely below their just merits, the writer yet lays this meager contribution to missionary annals as a tribute to their memory on the altar of consecration.

Chapter II

EARLY LIFE OF T. P. CRAWFORD.

John and Lucretia Crawford, both Baptists, were living in Warren County, Kentucky, in 1821. On the 8th of May, that year, there was born to them a baby boy. This humble Christian home was about midway between Bowling Green and Glasgow, a mile north of the main road, and three-quarters of a mile east of Pilot Knob, which is an interesting landmark.

The newcomer, the fourth son of his parents, was not immediately given a name, but, after the lapse of several years, was allowed to select one for himself. His father had purchased a new family Bible and was about to fill the records. When he came to the fourth son he said to the mother, "What is hts name? What shall he be called?" The mother brought him in from his play and asked him. He promptly replied, "My name is Tarleton Perry," and so it was recorded.

John Crawford, his father, was an industrious and thrifty farmer. According to the standard of that day he had a moderately good, common school education. He was for many years clerk of the Baptist Church of which he was a member. He was a descendant of the Scotch Crawford family, which settled at an early day in southern Virginia and northern North Carolina. His wife, Lucretia Kemble Crawford, was of Philadelphia Quaker parentage, and was educated partly in the Moravian school of Salem, North Caro-

GRAVE OF DR. CRAWFORD'S MOTHER, AT SINKING SPRINGS CHURCH

SINKING SPRINGS CHURCH, KENTUCKY, INTO WHICH DR. CRAWFORD WAS BAPTISED

EARLY LIFE OF T. P. CRAWFORD. 23

lina. She was a woman of excellent mental endowments, and possessed an insatiable thirst for knowledge. This intense desire for a higher education was inherited by her son, Tarleton Perry.

John and Lucretia Crawford, early in their married life, settled in Missouri which was then an almost uninhabited wilderness. Before the birth of their fourth child they had removed to Warren County, Kentucky. Of the seven sons, the first and second, following the footsteps of their father, chose farming as their occupation. The third and sixth became successful lawyers, one of whom, Judge Thomas Crawford, of Louisiana, was murdered for the faithful performance of his duty during the lawless times succeeding the civil war. He and a colleague had just held court and condemned a man to be hanged. The criminal escaped from jail, waylaid them on their homeward journey and shot them both dead. The fourth son, the subject of this memoir, the fifth (the father of the first Mrs. Z. C. Taylor of Brazil) and the seventh chose the ministry. The three sisters were all younger than the brothers, and had better educational advantages. After the death of the parents the brothers consulted together and gave to the sisters all the paternal estate. The three, each in turn, married, and died shortly afterwards.

Kentucky was at that time also a very thinly populated country. School privileges were very pooii Straightened circumstances demanded that the young farmer keep his seven boys quite busy at farm work, but the mother industriously taught them during the interims of labor. Indeed, she "kept regular school with them when farm work was slack, and taught them at night, on rainy days and at other seasons." "Like his mother, Tarleton was a voracious reader, soon mastering the books in his father's limited library, and borrowing all he could from his neighbors."

"He was about sixteen years old at the time of his conversion. One day he was entertaining several of his brothers and a large number of playmates by preaching a mock sermon, as he stood mounted on the stump of a fallen tree, imitating some of the preachers he had heard. In the midst of his discourse, which was very amusing to most of his auditors, his brother Thomas, next older than himself, raised his hand at him and said, 'Tarleton, haven't you enough sins upon yourself already without adding the sin against the Holy Ghost, which has no forgiveness in this world nor in the world to come?' This remark went to the heart of the mimic preacher, who with all dispatch climbed down from the stump, and, with hair 'standing on end,' as he often said, went home. Unperceived, he got a large Bible, and, going behind an open door to secrete himself, he there lay on the floor face downward, and began to search it in order to find what it said about the sin against the Holy Ghost. Deep conviction seized him. He lost his appetite — could not work — read only in the Bible, and finally took his bed almost in despair. About a week after his brother's rebuke, as he lay telling his mother of his deep sense of sin and of his lost condition, she said to him, 'My son, whom did Jesus come into

EARLY LIFE OF T. P. CRAWFORD. 25

the world to save?' 'Sinners/ he replied promptly. 'And are you not a sinner?' 'Yes, a great sinner/ 'Then He came to save you. Give yourself to Him. Trust Him fully, and He will save you/ At this he turned himself on the bed toward the wall, and, suiting in part the outward action to his mental effort, he cast himself soul and body into the arms of Jesus, to be saved by Him or otherwise to be eternally lost. Instantly joy filled his soul and he began to sing and praise God. He said, "I will spend my life in telling of His great mercy/ "

He seems thus to have been called to the ministry from his conversion; but temptation came afterwards, and many years passed before he finally, once for all, surrendered himself fully to this work. The great temptation was to enter the profession of law with his brother Thomas, who urged him to do so. His mind also taking hold of a remark he had heard from an old preacher, "Don't enter the ministry as long as you can keep out," he endeavored to "keep out/' but he could never entirely get rid of the conviction, and finally gave himself up to be, as he said, "a poor Baptist preacher. "

Having been thus converted at home in the spring of 1837, under his mother's instruction, he was afterwards baptized into the fellowship of Sinking Spring Church by Ephraim H. Owing, of Calloway County, Kentucky. He was now almost a man; his opportunities for an education had been meager, and for whatever profession lay before him he felt that some adequate preparation was indispensable. Several years passed without the possibility of his giving himself, as he most earnestly desired, to regular, systematic study. Seeing no other hope, at the age of nineteen he decided to leave home and contrive by some means to secure his wishes. Obtaining his father's reluctant consent, and the only ready money he had in hand, two dollars and fifty cents, he started off with an uncle, who was taking a drove of horses from Kentucky to Mississippi. By the time the horses were sold he found employment as manager of a small farm for a widow and her only son. While here a little incident occurred which will illustrate the abhorrence he always felt for mean or unworthy motives.

One Sunday afternoon as he was strolling along the country road at random, he came upon another farm house also occupied by a young widow. As was the custom in those sparsely populated regions, he went in, introduced himself and received a kindly welcome. In the conversation the widow informed him that several years previously her husband had left home to purchase a drove of horses in Kentucky, taking money with him for the purpose, and she had never heard from him since; she feared he had been robbed and murdered. Mr. Crawford asked what means she had taken to obtain news from him, and suggested that she advertise in some of the Kentucky newspapers. She replied, "I don't think it is worth while to spend money about it." With keen sarcasm, while his soul rose in indignation, he said, "True, madam. We can't afford to be spending money on every foolish

EARLY LIFE OF T. P. CRAWFORD. 27

little matter that comes along." She did not seem to recognize the sarcasm, and the visit soon ended.

After the close of the engagement on the aforementioned farm, he attended school until the means thus obtained were exhausted. He then taught a small school and used his earnings in like manner. This process continued until, after a struggle of nearly seven years, he finally yielded himself up to God to enter the ministry. About this time he became a member of the Bird's Creek Church, Henry County, Tennessee, and began more definitely his preparation for the work to which he had committed himself. He studied one year at Clark's Institute in company with John Bateman and Granville H. Martin, which latter became a very eminent and eloquent preacher, dying in early life, in the midst of great usefulness. Young Crawford's funds being again exhausted he taught school a session and thus obtained means to continue his studies. About this period Peter S. Cayle (a minister of blessed memory) heard of his efforts and invited Crawford to go to Denmark, Tennessee, live at his house and pursue his studies in the Denmark Academy. He gladly accepted this offer and continued there until he was prepared to enter college.

"At the beginning of 1848 he entered Union University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, being sustained in part by the West Tennessee Baptist Convention. He was a most indefatigable student, never leaving anything until it was thoroughly mastered — thus early exhibiting those qualities of persistence and patience in study that characterized him through life. He graduated in 185 1 at the head of his class."

It having become generally known that Mr. Crawford had dedicated his life to mission work in China, the Big Hatchie Association adopted him, before his graduation, as their missionary to that country, and agreed to support him there, instead of Henry Goodale who had died in Africa. At the close of 1850 he was appointed as missionary to Shanghai, China, by the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in Richmond, Virginia, Dr. J. B. Taylor being then Corresponding Secretary of the Board.

On March 12, 185 1, he married Miss Martha Foster, of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, and they began their life work together. In the following April he was ordained to the ministry by the Denmark Baptist Church, Tennessee, of which he was at the time a member. The following is the council of ministers by whom he was ordained : Champ C. Connor, pastor of the church and moderator of Big Hatchie Association; Henry L. Pettus, Archibald McClay, D. D., of New York ; George Tucker, pastor of the church at Jackson, Tennessee; Abraham Whitson, George Thomas, Hugh Coffey, and William Nolen.

Chapter III

EARLY LIFE OF MRS. CRAWFORD.

John Lovelace Savidge Foster, son of Col. John Foster, of Revolutionary fame, was born in Columbia County, Georgia, June 14, 1800. He married Susana Holifield, June 21, 1821. From that time until November, 1 83 1, they made their home in Jasper County, Georgia, where Martha Foster, the sixth of their children, was born January 28, 1830. When she was about two years of age her parents removed to Tuscaloosa County, Alabama.

John L. S. Foster, or "Uncle John," as he was known among a large family connection, early became a member of the old historic Grant's Creek Baptist Church, in Tuscaloosa County, and one of the most active and consecrated of its board of able deacons. He always took a deep interest in the welfare of the church, and was known throughout the southern part of the county as a most efficient soul-winner. He was especially able in public prayer, and often with streaming eyes pleaded with the Lord to raise up and send more laborers to the foreign field. It was a most staggering blow to him when he at length fully realized that the Lord, in answering his earnest prayers, had come into his own family and laid his hands on his beloved daughter.