growing classes of leaders in fundamental topics at frequent intervals; with treatment of multitudes of patients in hospitals and dispensaries; with spiritual care of the churches, and much genuine pastoral work; with translation of Scripture, and preparation of literature, periodical and other; and with the thousand and one other tasks the missionary hand finds to do, even so many toilers find that they have more than they can do. A door has been opened and the call is urgent from village after village, and from larger and ever larger numbers that the gospel be sent. The missionaries' hands are tied. The Church has not realized the situation, and has been sending out the missionaries by ones and twos and threes, and the work calls for dozens and scores, for only so can Korea be evangelized and saved by the Holy Spirit.

REV. W. B. HARRISON, Missionary, Presbyterian Church, U. S., (South) Korca.*

I come from Chung Ju, in the southern part of Korea. There we have somewhat different conditions from those of which you have just heard. We in the south rejoice in the triumphs of the Cross that have been wrought in the north. They are an inspiration to us, and they furnish a pattern for our imitation; but thus far they seem to be considerably in advance of what we have seen. God has written His law on the hearts of the people, but the hearts of these people are hard. They love sin and hate righteousness, and thus far we have noticed little effect of preaching upon the public life. Roman Catholicism is intrenched and has raised up a wall of prejudice. The people ask us if we are of the Roman Catholic Church, and after understanding that we are not, they will come and hear us. But we have signs of the coming day. Many of the people are not influenced by the Romanists, and the Spirit of God is reaching a few hearts, giving courage to us and inspiration to the multitudes. Often we go out into the highways because the men are so prejudiced they will not come to us; we talk as the stream passes by, and thus the seed is being sown broadcast in the country. Nothing that we can do produces any conviction of sin, nothing we say moves them. The miracles of Christ have no weight with them. They have greater stories of their gods than the work of our Lord, and the internal evidence of the Scriptures has no weight with them. I know the story of material advance moves them, but nothing but the Spirit of God can convict them of sin and righteousness, and of the august Judge, and of the things of the hereafter. I beg that you will remember southern Korea in your prayers.

Educational Work

REV. W. M. BAIRD, Missionary, Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., Korea.*

There are probably twelve million people in Korea. Until quite recently they were without gospel privileges. Within the past sixteen years the pure gospel of Jesus has entered Korea and wrought many changes. With the coming of Christianity has come a desire for

* Calvary Baptist Church, April 23.

an education in Christian knowledge. With the enthusiasm of their first love many of them are eagerly studying the Bible and other Christian books. Large numbers of books on science, history, geography, etc., besides religious books, have been sold. The evangelistic has run ahead of the educational work, but the time has now come when educational mission work for the Koreans must be undertaken in real earnest.

Christian boys have shown their willingness to subdue their natural prejudices against labor by engaging in manual labor in order to support themselves while securing an education. This is a victory. of Christian principle over inherited prejudice. It shows the eagerness of their desire for an education. In one station (Pyeng Yang) eight boys and young men secured a year's teaching by manual labor half of each day. Sixty had applied for these privileges, and were not received because of the lack of a sufficiently large industrial plant. Some of these applied repeatedly for educational advantages. The progress made by those accepted was most encouraging. In several cases they are already leaders of groups of Christians. Educational mission work in Korea needs and deserves your help and prayers.

Medical Work

O. R. AVISON, M.D., Missionary, Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., Korea.*

Medical work opened Korea in 1884 when Dr. H. N. Allen successfully treated the wounded prince, Min Yong Ik. This secured for him personally that royal favor which has ever since been extended to his colleagues and successors.

The opportunity thus gained to meet with the people on terms so favorable has not been neglected, and there is in Korea a feeling of confidence in the missionaries that makes it peculiarly easy for them to deliver their message.

The wisdom shown by that first medical missionary in securing a hospital under royal patronage when the opportunity presented itself, and the added wisdom he displayed in pledging his board to keep the Royal Korean Hospital supplied with physicians, kept the country open to the gospel in the after years when reaction had set in, and many officials would fain have closed the doors again had this little wedge not been firm in its place.

During the cholera epidemic of 1885 the lay missionaries, led by the physicians and nurses, worked day and night for weeks in the fight with that filthy disease-to the great wonderment of the Korean people; and, greater wonder still, the Korean Christians, moved by the example of their foreign leaders and touched by the love of Christ himself, worked as hard and as faithfully to save the lives of their fellows, irrespective of the rank, or wealth, or poverty of their patients, not refusing, but willingly performing the most menial duties, such as washing away the filth and handling dead bodies; duties which they would previously have scorned to do. "What is this our eyes see?" inquired the amazed Koreans; "if this is Christianity in practice it is not a bad thing."

* Calvary Baptist Church, April 23.

CHAPTER XXIII

CHINA

The Missionary Force-Stability of the Chinese Character-Chinese Women as Christian Workers-The Reform Movement-The Future of China.

The Missionary Force

J. HUDSON TAYLOR, Director China Inland Mission, China.* When I went out in '53 to China, there were only 300 native Christians to be found in the Empire of China itself, and also in the Straits Settlements, in Batavia, and Singapore, and Malacca, and Penang, and elsewhere, only 380 Christians all told. Now, thank God, there are about 100,000 communicants in connection with Protestant Christian churches.

Within the last 200 years there has been a change in the common language of China, and the Mandarin dialect, which is the language of all the law courts in the empire, is spreading and pushing the old and difficult dialects out of the way and preparing the way more easily for the diffusion of the gospel of the grace of God.

When I first reached China in '53, liberties for travel were not very great. We were at liberty to travel for twelve hours, but we were bound to report ourselves back again in the free port within twenty-four; and, consequently, one had to take that into account. If you stayed away a longer time than that, you were practically an outlaw, and had no guaranty of protection; you were liable to arrest. After a number of years' service in China, God blessed my colleague and myself to the gathering of a little church in the east part of Ning-po, and then I was invalided home. I thought it was a great misfortune, just as our work was extending and becoming intensely interesting. God makes no mistakes. While on the coast of China, traveling at most a few days' journey inland, one had not time to think of the great needs of the vast empire beyond our reach in the interior of China; but when invalided home and confined to one's study, one could not help looking at the whole area and feeling while we were feasting on this precious Word of God, millions in the interior of China have not got one crumb of that life, never have had one crumb of that life; there is no one in the interior of China carrying this gracious gospel to the people who are dying for lack of knowledge. We asked God to thrust out workers into these provinces; and we would have been so very glad indeed if some missionary society would have taken up this work. My colleague and I took the opportunity of seeing the committees of some of the great evangelistic agencies in London, or the secretaries of *Central Presbyterian Church, April 23.

other missionary societies. And what did we find? These noble societies were doing all that they could, and they could do no more.

It was very apparent that no effort would be made for definitely reaching inland China perhaps for many years to come; and, finally, I was constrained to form the China Inland Mission definitely for the purpose of carrying the gospel into the interior of China.

God had been working during the years that I was invalided home, and new treaties with China had been formed, perhaps not from satisfactory motives or in a satisfactory way, as already suggested, but there were increased facilities. Nominally, China was open, at any rate, to travelers, and Christian travelers could travel as well as any other travelers; and in that way we had the right, with passport in hand, to go into every part of the interior. The trouble would come, doubtless, when the attempt to settle and to live among those people was made.

I felt constrained of God to pray for laborers who would go out with me into the provinces of inland China. I did not do this will

ingly at all; I was constrained by the Spirit of God.

I was led to pray God to raise up, in the first instance, comparatively a small number of workers. There were eleven provinces without a single missionary in them. I felt in my heart that if we had two men led by the Lord Jesus into each of those provinces, to the Christian Church there would be a practical demonstration that it was possible to obey the commands of the Lord Jesus Christ; that it is possible to go under the auspices of Him who possesses all power on earth, all power in each one of these provinces as truly as in heaven above; and I thought when this was demonstrated that all the societies would be stirred up and would pour in men into all the inland provinces of China.

Well, it was a very long time before other missionaries came inland. We did not find it the easiest thing to get in. Sometimes we were knocking at the door of a province for many years. But perseverance has succeeded, and there are, praise God, to-day, in inland China thousands of souls-I can say tens of thousands of soulswho know that Jesus Christ is Lord, and trust and serve your Master and mine. Blessed be His holy name!

God graciously gave us men and women prepared to go out, and after some testing and praying a party of us were ready to go to China, and were met together and spent an hour every day asking God to provide what was necessary to send us out. I wrote a little pamphlet which I proposed to circulate among a good number of friends, whom I had gained during my stay in England, and in that little paper I said that we thought probably fifteen to eighteen hundred pounds, possibly two thousand pounds, might be needed for the preliminary expenses, outfit, and passage money and launching our enterprise, and that when that was sent in to us by the personally unsolicited contributions of God's children, we were prepared to sail for China. That pamphlet was printed, but it was not God's will that it should be circulated then, and the printing press was burned down and the pamphlets were burned with it. It had to be set up and printed again, and during that time we were still going on

asking God for whatever sum of money He thought necessaryfifteen hundred, eighteen hundred, or two thousand pounds-and when at last the bales of pamphlets reached my house and I opened them, I didn't know what to do with them, for God had been inclining people to send money in, and it had come to me through the post, and that day at our noontide prayer-meeting I added up our missionary money. It showed that nineteen hundred and sixtyfour pounds, fifteen shillings, and eleven pence was already in hand, and two thousand pounds was the total that we estimated would be needed. Now, what was I to do with these pamphlets? I couldn't circulate them and say this money was needed before we commenced the enterprise. And, more than that, the money had not stopped at that point-it kept on coming in. Finally, I thought of a plan. I was reading how Moses had too much material to work upon and sent a proclamation through the camp, and I thought, it is mighty seldom such proclamations as those are sent through the camp nowadays, and I shall have to adopt this at once; and I wrote a little leaflet asking friends not to send any more for this purpose, as we had sufficient in hand to go forward, and so I was able with this insertion to use my little papers.

We went out to China.

We soon found that our twenty-four men were nowhere. Places that were comparatively near the coast were opened before us, and the gospel began to spread, and missionary churches were gathered in, and these missionaries were not at liberty to go to more remote places if they had been opened. We were learning our business. But we had to pray for more workers, and that involved the need of more money, and we prayed for more money and the Lord sent it in, and he has gone on in this way hearing prayer until at the present time in that China Inland Mission we have over eight hundred missionaries from Europe, and America, and Australia, and New Zealand. God has given us, I believe, men who are business men, able to manage the finances of the mission. He has given us others that were qualified as teachers to take up educational work. He has given us medical men of considerable ability and skill to carry on medical work, and in various ways He has supplied our need and is supplying it still. He has given us about six hundred native missionaries, who are also co-operating and working with us, and about a third of them are supported by native churches, and the remainder by God's bounty-which never fails. God never fails.

God has opened about twenty-five thousand hearts to receive the Lord Jesus through the labors of those connected with the China Inland Mission. About twenty-five thousand souls have accepted and professed their faith in Christ, and not a few of them have gone before us to the gloryland. It is quite common for old people to accept Christ in China. Men of 50, 60, 70, 80, or 90 years of age have been known to accept Christ the first time He was offered to them. They are not gospel-hardened; they never had the offer before. The living God has been with our brethren and our sisters, our native brethren and native sisters, and there are at this time in