William Soothill
William Soothill traveling by 'sedan chair' in the 1890s.
The Methodists also played a prominent role in the evangelization of Zhejiang in the second half of the nineteenth century. Chief among the Methodist missionary contingent was the brilliant scholar William Soothill from Halifax, England.
Soothill was pursuing a career in law when his plans were interrupted by a clear call from God to serve on the mission field. He set aside his own goals and determined to follow Christ no matter where it took him.
After arriving in Wenzhou in 1882, Soothill forged an outstanding career of Christian service. Among his accomplishments, Soothill translated the New Testament into the Wenzhou dialect, and during the 26 years he lived in the city he founded a hospital, a Methodist training college, schools and 200 mission preaching stations. Throughout his career in China, Soothill also challenged some accepted Methodist traditions and exposed them as unbiblical, including the practice of infant baptism. He instead taught the Chinese to dedicate infants to Christ, but to baptize only those adult believers who had demonstrated fruits of repentance and had a solid grasp of the truth.
In October 1884, two years after Soothill commenced his work, an anti-foreign riot broke out because of war between China and France. During the church's Saturday morning prayer meeting the mission was attacked and set on fire. Soothill and the other believers escaped with their lives, but the Methodist work in Wenzhou suffered a setback until new facilities were built.
At the time of the riots Soothill was engaged to Lucy Farrar, also from Halifax. She was told of the dangerous developments in Zhejiang but was completely unmoved by the news, and set sail for China just weeks later. William and Lucy were married in Shanghai in December 1884, and they enjoyed a long and productive union together for the kingdom of God.
Lucy Soothill proved herself a gifted instrument in God's hand, and she contributed greatly to the work in Wenzhou. On Thursday mornings she led a Bible class for women and girls, and the attendees were so touched by the Spirit of God that before long dozens came each week, bringing their friends and relatives with them.
Lucy Soothill's Thursday Bible class in Wenzhou.
Blessed with a brilliant mind, William Soothill went on to become President of the Imperial University in Shanxi Province in 1911, and later returned to England where he became Professor of Chinese at Oxford University. He was one of those rare individuals with the ability to mix a great academic mind with simple, practical living. Many of his writings dealt with very down-to-earth subjects. On one occasion he exhorted his fellow missionaries not to abandon common sense in their zeal to evangelize the masses of China. Soothill wrote:
"Without common sense, a missionary will neglect his own health and become a burden to his colleagues, his friends, and himself, as did a certain young man, who on being urged to wear a sun-hat and carry an umbrella, smiled serenely, and quoted, 'The sun shall not smite thee by day'... He is now at home with an enfeebled brain, which, one surmises, can never have been very strong.
Without common sense, a man will change his methods of work so often that his people are quite unable to keep pace with him, or, on the other hand, he may become so conservative that his church will become as lifeless as himself. There are 'cranks' at home; there are 'cranks' also in the mission field; and few of them succeed in doing enough good work with one hand to cover the harm they do with the other."1
On another occasion the always blunt William Soothill shared a humorous yet true story of how local Chinese viewed the missionaries living among them. He wrote:
"On every side there are eyes, many eyes, which apparently see nothing, yet which see everything; and lips which, behind his back, probably nickname him for whatever peculiarity asserts itself. One man of my acquaintance was known as 'Old-wait-a-bit,' because of his habit of procrastination; another as 'Turnip-head' because of his obtuseness, and a few months ago I read of three others, living in the same compound, who were respectively known as 'Bath every day man,' 'Bath once a week man,' and 'Never bath at all man'."2
Footnotes:
1. W. E. Soothill, A Typical Mission in China (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1906), pp. 21-2.
2. Soothill, A Typical Mission in China, p. 16.
© This article is an extract from Paul Hattaway's book 'Zhejiang: The Jerusalem of China'. You can order this or any of The China Chronicles books and e-books from our online bookstore.