CONVERTS IN MISSION FIELDS

[s. 213] : The grace of God will do in India, in China, in Japan, in Constantinople Converts Africa, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth, what His grace will do in the United States. In all mi ion fields large numbers of converts to Christianity prove their sincerity by their readine to follow the light at any cost to themselves; and their stability is proved by the strong front which they oppose to temptations and persecutions, and only right leadership is needed to keep them in constant activity in spiritual affairs. In this article reference is made to instances in China, both as familiar to the writer and as particularly typical of the world-wide field. In heathen countries the sincerity of a convert is subjected to severe testing at the outset. The demands of a Christian life bring the convert at once into antagonism with the social customs of his people. If he meets the demands he becomes a peculiar member of the family and of the community, and separation follows. Separation, ridicule and ostracism are difficult to bear anywhere, po ibly nowhere more difficult than in China. Neverthele , all this the Chinese converts bear cheerfully; not only so, but they often, by their zeal, invite attention to the fact that they are Christians. The writer once had under his supervision a newly organized church in China, which had met with much opposition from the community in which it was located. The chapels of Chinese Christians usually have, over the door, signs announcing that they are places of worship. The members of this church were advised to omit the sign and to proceed cautiously, seeking to Returning to quietly win over the community. the locality some months after our former visit, I found over the door of the little meeting place the usual sign, in large Chinese characters, “The Church of Jesus.” The members said that they were acting within their legal rights in organizing the church and they wished to announce their place of worship for the help of all. In countries where the Sabbath has not been known the sincerity of the native Christian is tested by the demand for Christian observance. It is a struggle for life in these crowded Oriental The Christian must compete for a nations. living with men who work seven days a week. All do not meet the test equally, but the church in mi ion fields affords numerous illustrations of loyalty to conviction and sincerity of purpose. Mr. Sun, a venerable man, was a cloth seller with his stand out on the great Hata Street, Peking. He became interested in the Bible, read it, pondered it, conversed about it with Christians, and was converted. His stand was well known, his patrons numerous. As a Christian he decided he must close his stand on Sunday. His patrons knew nothing about Sunday, and, finding every now and then when they came to make purchases that the stand was closed and the proprietor absent, began to transfer their patronage to This was a testing time for Mr. Sun, for others. But he was a large family depended upon him. loyal to his conviction, and held true until death, his influence being a power for good in the Peking community. There are young men, trained in our mi ion colleges in Western science, mathematics and English, who are entering the Christian ministry and Christian educational work, at salaries not more than one-fifth the amount they could command in secular employment. The writer knows of a young man who graduated from college and Converts Copiapo was accepted by the Imperial Maritime Customs, and was to be a igned to a position that would have paved the way for a succe ful financial He wished to enter the customs service career. had thought of visiting a distant village to tell the Gospel story to relatives there whom he had not seen since his conversion; “but,” he added, “they will be so busy, all the time that I am there, trying to get money out of me that they will have no ears for the Gospel. Since they are bound to go to hell anyway, they can go to hell. I shall not visit them.” Yet this man steadily preached the Gospel, and lived a life so exemplary that he was the trusted partner of the mi ionaries, and he finally gave his life for the Gospel’s sake and now rests in a martyr’s grave. The training of native preachers, teachers, Bible women and colporteurs; and special work in the schools and in connection with evangelistic meetings, is developing an ever-widening and deepening sense of personal responsibility; and, year by year, an ever-increasing number of men and women are taking arduous posts, enduring hardship and persecution cheerfully, and exercising strong faith and offering prevailing prayers in behalf of their countrymen. Converts from Hawaii are the evangelists of Mic rones i a; converted Samoans have a noble record as pioneers in work for the savages of Polynesia and Me lanes i a; Fiji Christians are now devoting their lives to the evangelization of New Guinea; a converted Muslim from Turkey has been laboring among Mohammedans in Chinese Turkestan. And the church members are more and more taking active part in the work of soul saving. They bring to the work a direct faith that is in order to help his father in the support of a After accepting the position he large family. spent a sleeple night in the conflict between desire and conviction, and the following morning reported that he must abandon his intention of a mercantile life, and give himself wholly to the work of the Church in saving others. To-day he Every is one of the most useful men in China. year graduates from mi ion colleges are man i their turning profe ion by festing the sincerity of aside from fine worldly positions to take up a life of toil, with small pay, for Christ’s sake. Stability: There may be sincerity of purpose, and yet purpose may fail under unusual strain. The cataclysm of 1900 in North China was calculated to test to the utmost the stability of the converts. Hundreds died in the persecution who, by burning incense and bowing the knee to idols, might have saved their lives. In the London Mi ion a man named Fan, a gatekeeper, was called upon by the Boxers to recant. He refused. He was carried into an open lot, a hole was dug when of a depth so that he was dropped into it his head was below the level of the surface. The loose earth was filled in up to his knees and he was called upon to recant; he refused. Up to the waist; he refused. Up to the chin as he stood erect, and again he was called upon to recant and save his life. Once more he refused and the loose earth was filled up over liis head, burying him lionored in inspiring results when a group — as, for instance, church members united in prayer for the salvation of a girl sold into a haunt of vice and contaminated by five years’ contact with the life there. Not knowing what to do, they prayed. They got the girl away from her vile keepers, and then did not know what to do with her; they prayed. A profligate young man, recently converted, said, “Let us begin the pure life together.” They were married and from alive. A student, a young man twenty-one years of age, a senior in college, was caught by the Boxers and called upon to recant. He told tbem he could not. They discu ed his case and agreed to compromise to let him recant by proxy, one of their number burning incense and bowing the head in the young man’s stead, and they offered if he would accept this substitute to let him go. Again he refused, saying, “If I did that, to say nothing of disobeying God, I could never go to — Peking and look my teachers and cla mates in the face again,” and he began to exhort them. Angered by his refusal and his exhortations they cut off his lips, his arms, his legs, and he died, faithful to the end. One young man, a preacher, whose father, mother, sister and brother were ma acred by the Boxers, when asked by the magistrate what he wanted by way of indemnity, replied that he asked only that he might have the privilege of preaching the Gospel to those who had put his family to death. One of the leading British njerchants of Tientsin, in a letter to the Peking and Tientsin Times, a secular paper published in Tientsin, called attention, shortly after the siege of Peking, to the fidelity and stability of the native Christians, which, he said, had come as a revelation to himself and to many of his friends of the busine world. Activity: Converts on the mi ion field often are earnestly active in attendance on public worship and in the performance of outward duties pertaining to their personal salvation, as they conceive it, while at the same time they are slow to apprehend their personal responsibility for the saving of their fellow-countrymen. This was the case with a certain preacher, who arose in a Methodist cla meeting and announced that he 196 ’ of thenceforth went in and out among the church members, honored and happy. They were to the membership a revelation of the po ibilities of faith, and their presence was, therefore, a ble ing to the church, and those who had prayed in such perplexity spoke of the result with bated breath and reverently, as if feeling the Master near. The Student Federation of the Young Men’s Christian A ociation is enlarging the horizon, of young men on mi ion fields and the ringing call of their motto, “The Evangelization of the World in this Generation,” is awakening many young converts to splendid service. In Peking the Christian young men have a umed responsibility for the street chapels, where they render effective service by their fervid testimony. They have also given themselves ungrudgingly to the distribution of Christian literature at the great examinations held in Peking, one of which, the Triennial Examination, calls together from ten to fifteen you sand students from all parts of the empire. This work calls for fortitude and forbearance and the efforts are not always well received. The Chinese have shown aggre ivene in mercantile life in stretching out to adjoining lands. We find them m Japan, the Philippines, the Straits Settlements, and in many other lands, and there is every reason to believe that when the Gospel is more widely diffused and has become more the dominant force in their lives, they will be equally aggre ive in spiritual matters. They are e entially the dom- 197 Converts Coplapo inant race of the East, and as goes China so goes the great Eastern world. The mi ion fields are not yet producing men who are capable of independent leadership. The leaders must come from among those who are born to the perspective and wide horizon, the traditions and teachings of Christian ing on the greatest undertaking yet witne ed in India.” lands. Tripoli, in Barbary, where he pursued his Arabic studies, and worked succe fully in a medical mi ion. The lamentable death of Mi Herdman, of Fez, in the spring of 1899, made it nece ary to find some one to take up the work; Such leaders, with faith to hope all things and believe all things concerning the character and po ibilities of the converts on mi ion fields, will find comrades there, talented and po e ed of a singularly direct faith, quick to apprehend, apt at suggestion, skilful in affairs, who will follow anywhere, dare any danger, bear any hardship, stand true before the persecutor, and all sincere, steadfast and active in the service of the Great Captain to the last. See Hbrvet Islands. 215