EVANGELISTIC WORK.
All that I can report on this point is that we are feeling our way towards something effective—praying continually, and watching diligently for an answer to our prayer, that God will raise up some Chinese believer and endue him with such power that he may not only disciple those already gathered in our schools, but may make his voice to be heard among the perishing crowds that now refuse to enter our opened doors, and love darkness rather than light.
For three months past we have had Loo Quong in the field—a faithful and beloved missionary helper, previously serving in our Central school in San Francisco. He spent one month in Oroville, one in Marysville, and is about completing a third in Stockton. At each of these points he was joyfully welcomed, and his abundant labors were rewarded by some measure of success. But that for which we pray we have not yet secured, though it waits for us, I am sure, in the gracious purpose of our Lord.
In March, I visited these three missions, and the one in Sacramento also, to which our brother will go as soon as his labors in Stockton are closed. As usual, my observations both lifted me up and cast me down. Most of what is discouraging might have been averted if we had fit Chinese helpers in sufficient numbers, and the means to sustain them. The American teachers at these points are specially faithful, skillful and devoted, but nothing can make up for the loss entailed by the absence of effective Chinese helpers.
Oroville is a rendezvous for the Chinese scattered over a very wide territory. Its resident Chinese population is also large; not less than six hundred. Loo Quong had done a good work here, and I found the school in better condition than ever before. It was on a week-day evening that we gathered round the table of our Lord. The room was well filled with Chinese, and we had several Americans with us also. I think that more than twenty communed. One was baptized and received to our little Chinese church. One other would have been baptized—a brother very well reported of—but he had been obliged to go away to his summer’s work, about eighty miles distant. One brother walked about fifteen miles to be with us at this service, and trudged back again early the next morning, gladly sacrificing for it most of his night’s rest. Very generous subscriptions (considering their deep poverty) were made in aid of our work. Three on that evening expressed their new purpose to live for Christ, by joining the Association of Christian Chinese—an act which involves a confession of Christ quite as explicit as, among us, attends reception to the church.
Lack of space forbids that I speak particularly of the other points visited, except to say that we had in Stockton, after the school session was ended—that is from 9 to 10:30 P. M.—a meeting with the pupils at which the presence of the Spirit was manifest to us all, and seventeen rose to express their full purpose to leave all and follow Christ.
I conclude with a single extract from a letter from Hong Sing, our helper at Santa Cruz, in which he speaks of several attempts of his heathen countrymen to catch him in his words. I ask our friends to read it, remembering that Hong Sing is a house-servant, working in the kitchen all day and teaching and preaching at night:
“I write a few words to tell you how we won the seven souls last month. Since they found the way of light, and so they came with us, with the same mind to worship the true God. Their cousins and acquaintances are full of hatred, and try many ways to make fun of them, to entice them to give up the worship of the Lord God. So was fulfilled the word our Lord has said: ‘When men shall revile you and speak evil of you for my sake.’ Sometimes one or two come to argue with me after the school has closed, and pick out the hardest questions to ask me—as this one: ‘Who made that God in Heaven? for you said, only one God; where that one made from?’ I answer them: ‘Suppose you count anything, do not you say, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on? Now, 1,000 come that way from 100; 100 come from 10, and 10 come up from 1; 1 is the beginning. If we add one more, that would be two. If that one God made from another God. So we go on—no end; but we all worship that only One that is at the beginning, who made all things.’ Then their tongues silent.”
Was it not “given him what he should say?”
WM C. POND.