452
PARTISAN REVIEW
of unreality where my mission on earth, my dubious fight with the
Communists all became very remote and I felt more like a child
in
a nightmare than a prisoner under persecution.
"Then I saw the old Taoist votive tablet hung on the pillar.
Its gilt inscription struck me as if
it
were written in fire when the
lamp came so close to it. It contained nothing more than an ancient
Chinese proverb, but those few familiar characters, read under such
circumstances and in such a light, became a sort of revelation to me.
They afforded a reason, a theological interpretation to everything
around me. In one flash I saw I was lost. At once the world was
in
chaos, my will broken, my strength gone, my faith shattered.
"For thus it was written: 'The Heaven covers everything like a
net; its meshes may be wide, but from it there is no escape.' To a
man already troubled with the feeling that he was caught in a net,
this came not only as a timely reminder, but also shocked him into
a new realization of his situation, that the net was l:>eing tightened
by a supernatural force. And that force was identified with Heaven.
"Perhaps ever since the People's Liber.ation Army marched into
my parish I had been prepared for such an ordeal. But distressing as
the prospect had seemed at that time I had seen no cause for alann.
If
I had derived comfort from the hope that, with Providential inter–
vention, I might still regain freedom and swim in His blessings, my
faith had at least not been affected by fear. I had even secretly wel–
comed the idea of dying at the hand of the Communists, which, as
you can see, would not have been an unworthy end to my long life
as a missionary and a Christian. I had seen the battle clearly defined:
on the one side stood the Communist persecutors, wicked, proud,
brutal, cunning, who represented Hell; opposing them were the per–
secuted, the innocent, the humble, the meek, the servants of Heaven,
the believers who might suffer from the necessity of lying prostrate
before the secular power but who would be happy and strong in
their faith, dying with a hymn on their lips. The outcome of such
a battle had not been hard to foresee. For I was not afraid of death,
and the Devil had seemed to be a bully that could be repulsed with
little difficulty by a simple heart bolstered by the stubbornness of one's
character.
If
the battle between good and evil, the mystery; of cosmic
forces in perpetual fight, could be reduced to such simple terms,
then even a stupid old man like me might have snapped his fingers
