J. Steele

“ When native evangelists are equipped and sent out the number of converts grows rapidly. The next stage, then, is the organisation of native churches. In this matter each mission follows the Church order to which it belongs. In some places there are bishops, priests, and deacons ; in others ministers, elders, and deacons ; in others again, no settled ministry is recognised ; but, in all, there are congregations gathering from Sunday lo Sunday for worship, preaching, and the celebration of Holy Communion. The diversity of forms is not as confusing to a Chinese as it is to a Western mind. ”

“ The Conference also declared for " the right of the Churches in China ... to organise themselves in accordance with their own views of truth and duty." What form of government or variety of doctrine the Church of China will adopt, no one would venture to predict to-day. The missionaries have made it clear to their converts that they stand to them in the relation of nursing-fathers, and only desire that the new Church, when it comes, shall be true to its Lord, and true to all that is best in the genius and character of the Chinese race. ”

“ The aim of missions in China is to proclaim the Evangel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Mission operations stand to be judged by the faithfulness and efficiency with which they do that work. Converts, scholars, hospitals, printing presses. Bibles, and newspapers, all have their places as auxiliary to this end, and are viewed in relation to it.
Methods.
The methods in use to compass this end are various. First comes preaching. Every missionary is first of all a preacher — not often from the pulpit, nor always with the tongue. ”

“ But after the division, the Reformed Church was so occupied with the work of reconstruction, and, later on, so pressed down with the weight of intellectualism little tempered with love, which issued in the deism of the eighteenth century, that she failed for long to realise her duty to non-Christian nations. ”

“ It has been accepted on all hands that China can only be evangelised properly by the Chinese. Acting upon that assumption most missions have devised methods for training their native preachers. Some missionaries, as Mackay of Formosa, take their students with them on their itinerations ; others gather promising men at centres, and train them there. A training school and theological college is a feature of every well-found mission to-day. ”

“ The standard of education is being gradually raised, in order that students may be prepared to assume the charge, as pastors, of the native churches. Simpler courses equip men who through age, or defective education, are unfitted to grapple with the subjects of an advanced curriculum ; but young and well-educated men are taught all the subjects, with the exception of Greek and Hebrew, which a student in a home theological college studies, though not as yet with the same thoroughness. ”

“ Separate spheres are arranged for the different classes of workers, but there is an identity of aim and a unity in operation that is both visible and effective. The unity of the Protestant missionary body in China has been promoted by three general Conferences, in 1877, 1890, and 1907. At the last of these, when every Protestant missionary society in China was represented, it was resolved to form a Christian federation of missionaries working in China, (n) to encourage everything that will demonstrate the existing essential unity of Christians ”

“ In time, even this assessorship will disappear, and the Chinese Church will stand entirely alone, making its own laws, shaping its own doctrine, and "dreeing its own weird." This is the aim of the foreign mission work, and all approximations to it are welcomed by the missionaries.
Self-Support.
Chinese Christians are rice-eaters, but the rice which they consume is their own, and not a foreign dole. The home societies necessarily support a staff of preachers, teachers, and hospital assistants. Beyond this, money subscribed in the West is not expended on the support of Chinese. ”

“ In the hospitals the preaching is done in "deeds More strong than all poetic thought." The missionary evangelist goes out to the villages, or into the streets of the cities ; and on the ferries, and by the wayside ; he speaks as he has learned, and, as far as the difficulties of the language and the convolutions of minds, alien to his in all but their humanity and common need, will allow. ”

“ Motiveless volitions are unknown to the Chinese; intangible motives are moonshine to him. So the preacher is an object of extreme suspicion, and, therefore, of intense dislike. But the skill and devotion of the doctor opens for the patient a window, through which he dimly sees the substratum of a common humanity beneath the outlandish exterior, and the rest is easy. The hospital door has been the widest door to the Church in many a town in China.
In 1905 there were 301 mission doctors in China, of whom 94 were ladies ”

“ Special attention, however, is now being devoted to the scholars and officials, and to the student class from which the ranks of both these classes are recruited.
Christians are organised into Churches, which are developing rapidly along the three lines of self-government, self-support, and self-propagation.
Self-Government.
In every Protestant mission it has been the object of the foreigners to train a native ministry which shall, in time, assume the lead in the native Church, controlling, teaching, and guiding it. ”

“ The native Churches have long recognised their duty to their non-Christian neighbours. Additions to the Church are more the result of work done by unofficial Church members than through the immediate agency of their leaders and teachers. ”

“ The amazing thing about all the troubles that the Chinese Church has been called to pass through is that these have not imposed more than the most transitory check upon its advance. The Church has always issued from the fire strengthened and purified ; and larger and more suitable premises have always risen upon the ruins of those destroyed, not seldom without any indemnity having been exacted from the destroyers.
SOCIETIES.
At the end of the year 1905 the Protestant missionary societies in China numbered : — British 18 American 29 Continental 8 Bible and Tract Societies ... ”

“ None is more conscious than he of his limitations, and it is a mighty uplift when one and another (of their honesty let the section on results tell) responds, and he can begin to train native evangelists. ”

“ Efforts have been made to reach the so-called aboriginal tribes, who occupy a large part of the provinces of Yunnan and Kwelchow, and of late these people, the Nosu, and Hwa Miao, have responded to the work done among them in a movement similar to the mass movements among the jungle tribes in India. ”

“ That great society unites under one directorate Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Independents, baptizers of infants and adults, and of adults only, natives of the four divisions of the British Isles, and the Colonies, and associated missionaries from Sweden, Norway, Germany, and Finland. ”

“ Elijah C. Bridgman, who joined Morrison in 1830. In 1831 Karl Gützlaff, deputed by the Nederlands Missionary Society, made the first of his seven voyages along the China coast. The American Episcopal Mission, and the American Baptist Mission also took up positions before the opening of the Treaty ports, the first in Canton in 1835, and the second in Macao in 1837. When the ports were opened societies began to send workers in much larger numbers. The Dutch Reformed Church (American) occupied Amoy in 1842 ; the Church Missionary Society began work in Shanghai in 1844 ”