Biography
Hsi Shengmo, also known as Xi Liangzuo and by the name of Pastor Hsi, was born in 1835, in the village of Pingyang, in the province of Shanxi, in northern China. His family was of scholars. His father was a minor official and a Confucian. He grew up in a house of learning and was a precocious student. He passed the first level of the imperial examinations at the age of twenty-two, and he was a man of promise. He was a fierce and proud man, with a quick temper. He was known as an opponent of Christianity and of foreign missionaries.
He fell into opium addiction. In his thirties, he took to the pipe in order to ease the pain of an illness, and he became a slave to the drug. His life fell into ruin. He lost his health and his position. He was despised by his family. He tried to give up the habit again and again and could not. He was in a state of desperation. In 1879, he came into contact with a missionary, David Hill, of the China Inland Mission, who was working in Shanxi. Hsi was moved by a conversation, and he was given a copy of the New Testament. He read it and was struck by the story of Jesus.
He was converted after a period of struggle. He said that the Lord set him free from the desire for opium. He had a deep experience of release. He was baptized in 1880. He became a zealous preacher. He gave up the study of the classics and gave himself to the gospel. He was a man of great vigor, with a gift for leadership. He began to preach in his native area and drew a following. He had a particular concern for opium addicts, since he had been one himself. He started a number of refuges, called opium refuges, where addicts could be cured by prayer and care. He used a formula of medicine and prayer. Over the years, he opened more than forty refuges in Shanxi and neighboring provinces, and he treated thousands of people. Many of them were converted.
He built up a network of churches in the area. He worked closely with the China Inland Mission, though he insisted on his independence. He was a man of strong will, who ran his refuges as he saw fit. He did not take foreign money for the support of the refuges. He taught that the Chinese church should be free from the control of foreigners. He also took a strict view of the Christian life and of the need to put away idols and superstitions. He was known for his gift of prayer and for the stories of healings that were reported in his work.
He was criticized by some of the missionaries for his authority and for a few practices that they thought unwise. He was also a man who had a few failings of his own. He was quick to anger and sometimes harsh with his followers. He had a tendency to put his own judgment above that of others. His friends said that he was a man of great humility in prayer and a man of pride in the use of authority. He suffered a number of times from conflicts with the officials and from the opposition of the local gentry, who saw him as a traitor to the old ways.
He died in February 1896, at the age of sixty-one, of an illness that he had contracted while visiting the sick. His life was told in a book by Mrs. Howard Taylor, called Pastor Hsi: Confucian Scholar and Christian, which was published in 1900. It was widely read and inspired many. His life shows the way that a proud scholar who was enslaved by a drug could be freed by grace and become a source of help to many.