Peeps Into China; Or, The Missionary's Children

by E. C. Phillips

"And father will do it so well, mother," answered Sybil. "I wonder whether I shall be able to do anything to help him there?"

"I think you have long since found out, Sybil," was her mother's loving answer, "that you can always be doing something to help us."

Sybil and Leonard had as yet only learnt a part of the story. They had still to learn the rest. This going to China would not be all beautiful, all joy for them, especially for Sybil, with her very affectionate nature and dread of saying "Good-byes," for she and Leonard were only to be taken out on a trip—a pleasure tour—to see something of China, and to return to England to go on with their education at the end of six months.

Mr. Graham then calling his wife, the children were again left alone.

It was no easy matter to go as a missionary to China. This Mr. Graham well knew, for his father, although only for a short time, had been one over there before him, and had discovered—what so many other later brother missionaries have found out also—that to obtain even a hearing on the subject of religion from a Chinaman, who has been trained and brought up to be a superstitious idolater, very vain of his wisdom and antiquity as a nation, and to look upon Europeans as barbarians, is often a most difficult matter.

Eighteen years before Mr. Graham the elder went out to Peking as one of the first missionaries to China, and his only son, who had then just qualified for the medical profession, accompanied him. A year later, the father dying, his son returned at once to England, but with a changed mind, determined now to seek holy orders and enter the ministry, instead of following his profession, so as by thus doing to add one more to the number of earnest clergy that his short stay in China had shown him were so much needed. To carry out his resolution, he went to Oxford to prepare, and soon after his ordination he married, and settled down, in the little country village, where we find him, surrounded by his little family.

Often since then had he contemplated leaving England for missionary work, but until now he had been prevented from carrying his wishes into effect.

His knowledge of medicine had not been lost to him, for many a sufferer in the little, yet wide-spreading country parish, who lived at too great a distance to send for the doctor for a slight ailment, had been very thankful, when the clergyman came in to read and pray with him, to learn from him what his slight ailment was, and how he could prevent its becoming a great one.

And this knowledge would be most helpful and invaluable in China, where Mr. Graham knew that the science of medicine was held in veneration by the inhabitants, and gained a ready admission to those who were glad to be cured of bodily ailments, but knew not how sick their souls were.