Heat—See [Enthusiasm].
Heathen at Home and Abroad—See [Missions Approved].
HEATHEN RECEPTIVENESS
The heathen seldom express a longing for the gospel as clearly as in the following petition to the missionaries of the Swedish Missionary Society in the Kongo State from a number of black heathen chiefs in 1887. They said:
We, Makayi, Nsinki, Kibundu, and Mukayi Makuta Ntoko, chiefs in Kibunzi, and our people, desire that the missionaries of the Swedish Missionary Society come and make their home with us, and teach us and our people. We gladly give them the right to erect their buildings upon the high hill southeast from the village of Kibunzi in any convenient spot. We transfer to them all our claims to that hill. Of course, they have the right to use the forests, the rivers, the roads, and the fields for plantations within our boundaries in the same manner as ourselves. We have invited them to come, and we are glad to see them with us, and our one desire is that they remain with us and erect buildings.
(1373)
HEATHENDOM
An experience of my own in connection with the Kiang-peh famine in China illustrates the situation on most mission fields to-day. Tarrying in Chinkiang for a few days before proceeding up the canal, I saw considerable of the refugee camp outside the city wall. Altho one of the smaller camps, this one held perhaps forty thousand refugees from up country, all living on the bare and frozen ground, and the most comfortable of them having only an improvised hut of straw matting to shelter them. The tide of relief had not yet begun to flow from America and Europe. Moved by compassion for the suffering ones, Mrs. John W. Paxton made daily rounds to administer what medical relief was possible. One day I accompanied her, and she translated the words of the people. The commonest complaint we heard that morning from these starving Chinese was that they had lost their appetites! On their faces was the unmistakable famine pallor; hunger had driven them hither from their homes—yet they had no taste for food! The tragedy of it was overwhelming. They had no appetite, because they had reached the last stages of starvation, and were dying. They did not want food, for the very reason that they needed it so badly. Heathendom does not want the gospel, because it needs it. Starving for the bread of life, it yet protests no desire for this supreme boon. Heathendom does not desire Christianity for the very reason that it is heathendom.—William T. Ellis, “Men and Missions.”
(1374)
Heathenism Shattered—See [Miracles, Evidential Value of].