THE SANTA BARBARA MISSION—CHIN FUNG.
BY REV. W. C. POND, SAN FRANCISCO.
Among the compensations attending my service as Superintendent of our Chinese Missions is the annual visit I am called to make to Santa Barbara; and, notwithstanding the great void I found in the absence of my greatly beloved brother, Rev. Dr. Hough—now returned to his former flock at Jackson, Michigan—no visit ever made there was more pleasant to me than my last. The movements of the steamers were such that it had to be an unusually long visit; and I gained thus the opportunity, not only to see more of the homes and hearts of our English-speaking brethren, but to get much closer in Christian affection and confidence to the Chinese who have begun to believe in the Saviour. Of the six that from this mission, several years since, united with the Presbyterian Church, only two remain; but three others were found who have never yet been baptized, and who seemed to give good evidence of being born again. My conversations with them greatly interested me. There seemed to be a simple faith, a hearty and practical consecration, a readiness to testify, to work and to give for Jesus, which certainly looked like true tokens of a new life—the eternal life—begun. I expect that they will be baptized and received into the Congregational Church at its next communion. The following sentences from a letter written me by one of them express what appeared to be the spirit of them all: “Our school is grow up nicely, and have very good teacher now. Only one thing I be very sorry. I will tell you about. Some school-boy go to bad way, and disobey our Lord Jesus Christ. I, in myself, have no strength to make them to love Jesus Christ. * * * Oh, I hope you pray for them, and ask God to send the Spirit to change their heart, and make them to ’member Jesus Christ died on the cross for us, and make them to ’member continue in heart wherefore the heathen too. [I. e., if I understand him, make them consider wherefore they should continue heathen at heart.] Oh, we are ’member you always in heart, because you very kind to our countrymen. I have nothing to recompense you. But I pray to God for you, and ask God to bless you and comfort you, and give you reward in Heaven.”
The anniversary of the mission was held on Sunday evening, October 26. A large audience was present, and great interest was evinced. Besides the exercises by the pupils, there was the annual report, and brief addresses by the pastors of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches. The exercises indicated some good progress made during the year. I remember especially a recitation of the 115th Psalm, a responsive recitation of John, xiv. chap., and a little dialogue about our mission schools, and what is learned in them—“not only the English language, but about Jesus Christ our Saviour from sin.” One pupil recited the Apostles’ Creed, another the Ten Commandments, and none except one or two very recent comers were without some Gospel text, which, fastened in the memory, was recited in intelligible English. Sacred songs, in both English and Chinese, were interspersed, and the half-hour was fraught with blessing, I am very sure, to all concerned. I have never been so hopeful of the best results from our Santa Barbara work as I am just now.
CHIN FUNG
is one of our earliest fruits, a bright intelligent young man whom, years ago, I invited to become one of our helpers. He declined on the ground of being too little acquainted with Chinese, having had little, if any, opportunity of attending school in China. But I remember that he said, “I have wished very much that I could be prepared to go as a missionary to my countrymen at home.” I confess that I did not realize how deep that feeling was. Such expressions are frequent among our brethren, and I never have doubted their sincerity, but I have generally thought of them as consciously a wish for the impossible, and consequently never likely to grow to a controlling purpose deciding the life-work. But it was not so with Chin Fung. With the hope of this he has been saving all these years, with rigid economy, the slender earnings of his work as a house-servant. At length, encouraged by the excellent Christian lady by whom, of late, he has been employed, he determined to go to Hartford, Conn., and commence his course of study. Before this letter reaches you, I trust he will be there.
He did not get away without a struggle. The agony of inward conflict into which he was thrown by the representations of heathen kinsmen, as to the wrong he was doing his family, the difficulties and calamities in which he might involve his older brothers if he should thus turn his back on China, and disregard a possible betrothal which his elder brothers, it was said, had made for him, (although, with this great plan in view, he had charged them not to involve him in any such responsibility,) called forth my intense sympathy. But I felt that it was the Master’s call to which, these years, he had been listening, and that to go back to China in obedience to the summons of his brothers would be to turn his back on Christ. He himself saw it so at length—saw it for himself, and from that instant there was no hesitancy, “I will start tomorrow,” he said, with an emphasis which marked the conflict ended and the victory won. He certainly has some qualities which under skilful training would tend to make him a useful missionary.
IN GENERAL.
What I have written about the Santa Barbara school, I might have written of almost all of them. We have an excellent corps of teachers, and though one or two of our schools are suffering because our reviving business prosperity involves their pupils in evening work, others are steadily increasing in size, and increasing still more, I trust, in usefulness. At the last communion at Bethany church seven were baptized. A much larger number than that have recently united with the Association of Christian Chinese, thus avowing themselves as Christians, and coming into the process of test work and training, which we feel to be necessary before they are finally accepted in the church. But we need to do much more: to enter new fields, to send forth more laborers, and meanwhile in fields already occupied to bring to hear as never hitherto, the zeal, the wisdom, the living spiritual power of Him whose name is “God with us.” Brethren, pray for us.