Gods Men Read Online Free PDF

for he hoped he was a true Christian. But to hear it shouted thus cheerfully in the streets by a white man who wore patched garments was not pleasant. He did not encourage his wife or his son when they criticized the Faith Mission family. Indeed, he reminded them that Christ could be preached in many ways. Now, however, he had to conceal feelings that he was too honest to deny to himself were much like theirs. It was humiliating to the foreign community of Peking to have the Millers there. It was even worse that they were missionaries of a sort, preaching at least the same Saviour. The Faith Mission family had caused wonder and questions even in his own well-established church.
    On the street Chinese began to gather about the two Americans, the immediate crowd that seemed to spring from the very dust. Henry Lane took it for granted that no Chinese spoke English and ignored them.
    â€œMiller, it occurs to me that I ought to warn you that there is very likely to be trouble here against foreigners. I don’t like the talk I hear.”
    He glanced at the crowd. In the pale and golden twilight the faces were bemused with their usual quiet curiosity.
    â€œWhat have you heard, Brother Lane?” Paul Miller asked. He rested his hands on the fender of the riksha, and admired, as he had before, the delicate spirituality of the elder man’s looks. It did not occur to him to envy the good black broadcloth of the missionary’s garments or the whiteness of his starched collar and the satin of his cravat. Dr. Lane lowered his voice.
    â€œIt is reported to me by one of my vestrymen, whose brother is a minister at the Imperial Court, that the Empress Dowager is inclined to favor the Boxers. She viewed personally today an exhibition of their nonsensical pretensions of inviolability to bullet wounds and bayonet thrusts. That is all she fears—our foreign armies. If she is convinced that these rascals are immune to our weapons she may actually encourage them to drive us all out by force. You must think of your family, Miller.”
    â€œWhat of yours, Brother Lane?”
    â€œI shall send them to Shanghai. Our warships are there,” Henry Lane replied.
    Paul Miller took his hands from the polished wooden fender.
    He looked at the watching Chinese faces, pale in the growing dusk. “I put my faith in God and not in warships,” he said simply.
    Henry Lane, good Christian though he was, felt his heart sting. “It is my duty to warn you.”
    â€œThank you, Brother.”
    â€œGood night,” Henry Lane said and motioned to the riksha puller to move on.
    Paul Miller stood ankle deep in the spring dust and watched the riksha whirl away. His face was square and thin, and his skin was still pink and white, although it had been twenty years since first he heard the call of God at a camp meeting in Pennsylvania, and leaving his father’s farm, to the consternation of that old man, had gone to China, as the only heathen land of which he had heard. Faith had provided the meager means for himself and Mary to cross the continent in a tourist coach, and the Pacific by steerage. Neither had been home since. He did not feel it fair to ask God for furloughs, although other missionaries took them every seven years. He was living by faith.
    His mouth trembled and his eyes smarted. Until now he had never faced the possibility of death. They had been hungry often and sometimes sick, and the sorrow over Artie continued in him, though he tried not to think about it. But death at the hands of cruel men, his Mary and his little ones, this he had not dreamed of, even in the nights when Satan tempted him with doubt and with homesickness for the sweet freshness of the farm life he had long ago lived. He was often homesick, but he no longer told Mary. At first they had cried themselves to sleep with homesickness, he a man grown. His mother had written to him now and again until she died, ten years ago, but he had never