MACAO.
One of the most charming places in China, is Macao, three hours distant by steamer from Hong Kong, the people of which place resort to Macao in the hot season, as the fine sea-breezes there greatly mitigate the heat. The drives about the place, commanding in every direction an open sea-view, are beautiful. The old church of St. Paul, the most of which remains, though ruined by fire, is a fine specimen of architecture. The most notable thing in Macao is the grotto where Camoens, the Portuguese poet, died in banishment for publishing a satire on the viceroy. The wild botany of the place, and the geological upheavals which give clear signs of glacial action, are remarkable. Bowlders are piled up here in ways which show a hydrodynamic force beyond human skill. Near the grotto is a cemetery for foreigners; and, among the many sainted dead from missionary circles there entombed, the christian traveller lingers with deep interest around the burial-place of Morrison.
One Sabbath morning I went with a christian friend through a wild district, in the neighborhood of a large city in China, to a mission station. The people were everywhere at work; nothing suggested the Sabbath, till we heard the little church-bell, whose notes were in pleasing contrast to the hum of business. We came to the mission compound, where two missionaries and their wives had their abode. The joy with which they welcomed us made us feel most deeply their isolation from christian society. The sight of friends from America seemed to intensify their loneliness. Here were four beloved christian people who were living in these wilds, to teach these heathen tribes the knowledge of God and of his Son. On inquiring what encouragement they found in their work, we were told that two or three women had lately shown a disposition to hear religious conversation, and listen to the Scriptures. Immediately we thought of four hundred millions in China and its dependencies, who were ignorant of the true God. Here were three native women who were persuaded to listen to religious reading. As we were preparing to leave, our missionary friends seemed to cling to us with strong affection. We were going back to America, leaving them in the solitudes of heathenism. They were far from unhappy, and their few tears were only the natural expression of awakened memories. One of the missionary brethren, showing us the way to the gate, passed with us through a room where we saw, among gardening tools, some sheets of paper, lying loose. There were so many of them, looking alike, that they attracted our notice. We found that the specks on them were the eggs of silkworms. They were mere dots, as the reader familiar with the sight in books or nature, is aware. It occurred to me what a display of silk fabrics, with their rainbow colors, we had been looking upon! how many ships are freighted with them! how many millions of wealth they represent! what a world of thought and feeling is associated with them! On those pieces of paper were the beginnings of silk,—a word, taken in all its connections and associations, of mighty power. In those little specks one might fancy himself reading, “By whom shall Jacob arise? for he is small.” We told our missionary brother that, while he raised silkworms and saw their cocoons, he surely would never despise the day of small things,—a lesson, he assured us, which was often repeated to him, and gave him encouragement.
It is well for one who believes in the ultimate prevalence of Christianity to come into China by the way of the Sandwich Islands. He will receive confirmation to his faith, he will be defended against temptations to unbelief when surrounded as he will be in China with one-half the population of the earth ignorant of the true God, by having seen in the Sandwich Islands what the gospel has done among a race who were as unlikely to be converted as any portion of the human family. If he comes from his ship and steps ashore on the Sabbath in China, and sees coopers and blockmakers and boatbuilders busily at work, the tailors’ shops filled with men plying their needles, the stationers ruling paper, the coolies instead of horses and mules carrying everything which ever lades a ship, from the quay to the storehouses, the thought will come over him, What progress is the knowledge of the gospel likely to make among this people? Perhaps he spends a Sabbath in the country. Here he may look to see the people withdrawn from the requirements which the business of a seaport makes of the inhabitants; but in the country he will find the people as busy with their handicraft or trade as the people of the city, giving no sign that the idea of the Sabbath and of the God of the Sabbath has visited their minds. He will be overwhelmed with the contemplation of four hundred millions of human beings utterly destitute of the knowledge of God. He remembers how at home his heart used to glow on hearing accounts of additions to native churches, and the rehearsal was followed by joyful missionary hymns sung impromptu,—
“Yes, we trust the day is breaking;
Joyful times are near at hand;”
and he asks himself whether he is losing his confidence in the ultimate triumph of christianity, and in the sufficiency of divine power to turn the hearts of nations as the rivers of waters are turned. If he be a firm believer in the Bible, he will say that while he remembers the conquest of Canaan, especially its first great achievement, the capture of Jericho, his faith never can falter. Were not the aborigines of Canaan devoted to destruction by the Almighty, and their land apportioned to the tribes, with minute directions how to take possession of it, the very line of march prescribed, the great tribe of Judah in the forefront? And did not our Lord spring out of Judah? Has he not “upon his vesture and upon his thigh a name written,—King of kings and Lord of lords?” While, on returning to his christian ordinances at home a christian traveller in China may be less excited than he used to be there at the report of a few conversions among the heathen, because he will have an enlarged idea of the gross darkness which covers the people, he will only have exchanged his former confidence in man for a more entire confidence in God. The accumulation of difficulties in the way of the gospel he will regard only as those barrels of water which were poured on Elijah’s altar, serving to make the fire from heaven more triumphant.