Margaret E. Barber

Margaret Emily Barber was born in 1866, in England, in a family of the middle class. She grew up in a devout Anglican home and was a quiet and serious girl. She was well educated and trained as a teacher. In her youth, she felt a call to serve as a missionary. She was a woman who was drawn to a life of simplicity and devotion. She applied to the Church Missionary Society and was accepted. In 1899, at the age of thirty-three, she sailed for China and was assigned to the city of Fuzhou, in the province of Fujian.

She worked at first as a teacher in a girls' school run by the mission. She learned the language and became a devoted student of the Chinese people. She was a woman of deep spiritual hunger and was influenced by the holiness teaching of the Keswick movement. She read the writings of the mystics and sought a closer walk with God. As time went on, she became increasingly dissatisfied with the official mission and its institutions. She felt that the missionary organization was too bound up with the structures and finances of the Church of England and that it lacked spiritual life.

In 1910, she left the Church Missionary Society, after a period of heart-searching. She said that she wished to live by faith, depending on God alone. She moved to a village at the Pagoda Anchorage, on the river near Fuzhou, where she lived in a simple house. She took no salary and received only the gifts that came to her by the hand of God. She lived in poverty and was often short of money. She began a small ministry among the Chinese. She held prayer meetings and Bible studies in her home. She was joined by a few Chinese women, who were drawn to her way of life.

In about 1920, she met a young Chinese Christian named Ni Shuzu, who was then in his teens and who would later take the name Watchman Nee. He was a convert of the evangelist Dora Yu. He came to her, hungry to learn. She gave him books, and she taught him about the deeper life, about the cross and about the church. She also gave him the writings of the Brethren, including those of John Nelson Darby and others. She encouraged him to think about a church that was free from foreign control and from denominational divisions. He was deeply influenced by her. He called her his spiritual mother. She wrote to him and sent him books. She also supported him during his early ministry.

She also gave him a love for the writings of Madame Guyon and other mystics. She had a strong sense of the sufferings of Christ, and she taught that the believer must share them. She taught the importance of a life of prayer and of watching for the return of the Lord. She was a woman who spoke little but whose life made a deep impression. She was known for her gentleness and her purity. She wrote a number of hymns in Chinese, some of which are still sung.

She was a person of great courage, who withstood the criticism of her colleagues. She also was regarded by some as eccentric and was thought to have stepped away from the mission field. She suffered from poor health in her later years. She had a sense of loneliness. She also had to bear the pain of watching her flock be scattered. She remained steadfast. She was a woman who lived for God alone.

She died in 1930, in Fuzhou, at the age of sixty-four. The record of her life is limited, and some of the details given here should be checked against fuller sources. Her influence was great, even though she was not widely known. Through Watchman Nee, her teaching reached the Chinese church, and through him, the world. Her life shows the effect of a hidden life of prayer and the way a single teacher may shape a movement.