The Opium War
In 1839, Williams wrote to his brother, “I am glad things in this region are coming to a crisis, for almost anything is better than the old dull way…hampered and restrained beyond description.”[22] The crisis to which Williams referred was China's escalating conflict with England over the lucrative yet illegal opium trade. While Williams’s despised the opium trade because it ruined Chinese lives and taught the Chinese people to distrust Christian, he paradoxically favored England’s war to preserve the perniciuous trade. “As a nation,” he wrote, the Chinese “are inconceivably conceited & proud & cannon balls are a mean of disabusing them…Punishment [from] the hand of God [would be] of great…service to this wicked people.”[23] In short, behind the British military force, Williams discerned the Hand of God. The persistently pagan Chinese—“this wicked people” stuck in their “old dull way”—must open their hearts to Christianity, Williams believed, or face Divine intervention in the form of an English battering ram.
The war concluded in 1842 and, as a part of the Treaty of Nanking,the Chinese agreed to open five treaty ports to foreign trade and influence. Williams should have been ecstatic, but he was not. Ever since the war’s end, he had waited patiently for the boatloads of Americans missionaries he thought would come to take advantage of this historic opportunity to proselytize in China. After all, this was a moment of seismic importance in God’s war against Satan. China was opening, but where were the Americans? When he turned an ear to the United States, he heard only the deafening silence of apathy, and this left him feeling “depressed.”[24]
Adding to his melancholy, Williams also felt underused by God. At precisely the juncture at which he had expected God to give clarity to his mission in China, he instead felt abandoned and adrift. In God’s cosmic chess match against Satan, Williams had happily volunteered to serve as a white pawn—a selfless foot soldier committed to a divine cause. Understandably, God had relegated the eager pawn to the side of the chessboard during the Opium War. However, now that the great conflict had concluded, Williams fully expected to feel the hand of God putting him back into play. That nothing had happened left him feeling confused. He was heaven’s forgotten man.[25]
________________________
[22] Letter to Frederick Williams, August 29, 1839. Box 1. Series 1. SWWFP.
[23] Letter to Frederick Williams, November 30, 1840. Box 1. Series 1. SWWFP.
[24] Letter to Frederick Williams, May 29, 1843. Box 1. Series 1. SWWFP.
[25] Letter to Frederick Williams, June 15, 1843. Box 1. Series 1. SWWFP.
