1900 - Shen Jie

June 1900

Yanshan, Hebei

Shen jie.

One of the Yanshan martyrs was a bright-eyed Christian schoolgirl named Shen Jie. During her time at the missionary-run school she became interested in the gospel and gave her heart to Christ. None of her other family members or relatives were Christians, so great hope was expressed that Shen Jie might be used by God to influence them in favour of her new faith.

The whole of Yanshan County was filled with Boxers in June 1900. Shen Jie and her mother and sister fled their home. For ten days they “wandered homeless…lying down in ditches by the wayside at night, or hiding among the thick mazes of the tall millet, or sorghum, which grows so plentifully over this great North China plain.”[1] Finally the trio were captured by the Boxers and dragged to a nearby temple for a ‘trial’. Shen Jie stood up in front of her captors and bravely did all she could to save the lives of her mother and sister, neither of whom was a Christian. She said, “They do not belong to the Jesus religion. It is I alone who am a Christian. If you wish to kill me, I am quite ready to die; but let them escape.”[2] At first the persecutors seemed touched by the girl’s appeal, and told Shen Jie’s mother and sister to flee for their lives. Her sister was a fast runner and soon escaped into the millet fields, but her poor mother, who was fifty years of age, was paralysed with fear and unable to move at all, worried about the fate of her youngest daughter. At once the Boxers

“unsheathed their murderous blades and began to thrust at and wound the elder woman. Shen Jie threw herself upon her mother’s bleeding form and strove to protect her, receiving in her own young body the cruel thrusts of the spears…. The child cried out in a loud, clear voice, first to her Lord, and then to her mother; but in a very short time the voices of both the mother and her brave little daughter were stilled in death.”[3]