``The Taku forts have been retaken by the Chinese. Gen. Tung Fu Shiang has led the Boxers and the goddesses, and has destroyed twenty foreign men-of-war, killing 6,000 foreign soldiers. The seven devilish countries' consuls came to beg for peace. General Tung now has killed all the foreign soldiers. The secondary devils (the native Christians) must die. General Tung has ordered the Boxers to go to the foreign countries and bring out their devil emperors from their holes. One foreigner must not be allowed to live. All who are not Chinese must be destroyed.'' It requires no large knowledge of Chinese character to calculate the effect of such official utterances on the minds of lawless men. Word sped from a Chinese city that on a certain day all Christians who had not recanted could be pillaged. From every quarter, the lawless streamed in, eager for the shambles. Ruffians pointed out the women they intended to take. And there was no foreigner to protect, no regiment or battleship for the Chinese Christian. Those poor people, hardly out of their spiritual infancy, stood in that awful emergency absolutely alone. Could an American congregation have endured such a strain without flinching? Let those who can safely worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences be thankful that the genuineness of their faith has never been subjected to that supreme test. Those were grievous days for the Christians of China. Two graduates of Teng-chou College remained for weary weeks in a filthy dungeon when they might have purchased freedom at any moment by renouncing Christianity. Pastor Meng of Paoting-fu, a direct descendant of Mencius, was 120 miles from home when the outbreak occurred. He was safe where he was, but he hurried back to die with his flock. He was stabbed, his arm twisted out of joint and his back scorched with burning candles in the effort to make him recant. But he steadfastly refused to compromise either himself or his people and was finally beheaded. The uneducated peasant was no whit behind his cultivated countrymen in devotion to duty. A poor cook was seized and beaten, his ears were cut off, his mouth and cheeks gashed with a sword and other unspeakable mutilations inflicted. Yet he stood as firmly as any martyr of the early Church.