Directors: Rev. George Moor, D. D., Hon. E. D. Sawyer, Rev. W. E. Ijams, James M. Haven, Esq., Rev. Joseph Rowell, E. P. Sanford, Esq., H. W. Severance, Esq.
Secretary: Rev. W. C. Pound. Treasurer: E. Palache, Esq.
The Chinese New Year—Mob Denunciations—The Great Commission Lessened—Conversions.
REV. W. C. POND, SAN FRANCISCO.
The Chinese New Year festival began Feb. 1st. It was observed for five days, the first three being “the great days of the feast.” As the Chinese excuse themselves from manual labor during those days, worship and business, and sociality absorb the time. At this festival, accounts must be squared, or, at any rate, brought to some settlement. Votive offerings, with the smoke of incense, abound in the temples—bribes with which good luck is purchased from their gods. The city authorities had forbidden the use of fire-crackers, greatly to the chagrin of the Joss-worshippers, but the din of the gongs was such that even an idol, it would seem, might almost be made to hear. For our Christian Chinese it was, first of all, a week of prayer. Not to be out-done even by their own former-selves, they began their meetings at eleven o’clock on the last night of the old year, and welcomed the new one in its first hours, with worship to Jesus, their new friend and Saviour. They say that it would be a shame, if they were not willing to give hours to Him, which, but for Him, they would still have been giving to senseless blocks of wood, or to pictures hung upon the wall. Each day there was more or less of time devoted to social worship, and the rest to friendly calls among the brethren of different missions, and the reception of calls from American friends, or else to the transaction of the annual business of their Association. The carefulness with which they attend to this business, might well be emulated by many a strong church. The amounts involved are small, of course, while the talk might seem superabundant to taciturn people like us; but the exactitude in accounts, the watchfulness against debts, the punctuality in their mutual settlements, if grafted into the working of many a church that I have known, would greatly help its peace and growth, and even its good name.
The “era of good feeling” towards the Chinese, is, doubtless, nearer now than it was eight months ago. I affirm this by faith, and not because I can see, as yet, even the first streaks of its dawning. It seems as though the out-cries, “Down with the Chinese!” “The Chinamen must go, peaceably if they will, forcibly if they must,” would have become, by this time, monotonous and wearisome, but every Monday’s morning paper reports a gathering of from 3,000 to 6,000 people standing on a sand-lot near our new City Hall, in the midst often of wind and rain, and listening for an hour or two, while Kearney and Willock repeat their barbarous refrain. We cannot prevent a depressing effect of this upon our work. Christians get afraid of it. One of our pastors, entering upon temporary service with an inland church, wrote me as follows a few days since: “On my first Sabbath here, a poor Chinaman came to church to hear me. The next day I found him out, and he is a Christian. He is hungering and thirsting for the word of life, and I thought—what a splendid nucleus that would be for a class. I sought the officers of the church for their consent and approval to such an organization. Then came swiftly the ominous shake of the head, which I now so well know, and I was told that ‘public sentiment would not bear it.’ My heart aches for them, and I pray fervently to know my duty.” I am utterly at a loss to know how such church officers read the Great Commission. I understand what the plain English of it is: I think I could study it out in the Greek. Does anybody know of any rendering of it, according to which the Chinese are left out? It not, how is it that we have so many of these head-shaking Christians all over California?
Furthermore, prejudice breeds prejudice, and the heathen Chinese are beginning even to hate the language thus abused to curse and slander them. They have no longer any appetite for the bait with which we have been fishing for their souls. But if our schools are thus unavoidably less attractive to them, and some of the seats get empty, we try to do the better work with such as remain. And the gracious Spirit adds His blessing still. Five were received to the First Congregational Church in Oakland at its last communion. This week two from the Barnes school have been reported to me as persuaded to be Christians, and desirous of joining the Association. What I have several times before said is still true, I think—that no month passes in which I do not hear from some one or more of our schools, of souls coming out of darkness into light. The consequence is that hearty Christians once fairly engaged in this work become enthusiastic in it. One teacher writes: “To try to prepare the way for the enlightenment of these darkened minds has been the highest privilege of my life. I do not forget the blessedness of leading my own children and other young people to Jesus, but in the offices of mother and teacher, this work has come to me as a matter of course, while the other is the realization of one of my earliest and most fondly cherished desires. I have found it pleasant, even when I could get no word or sign that the faintest shadow of my meaning was comprehended, for I felt that I might be starting thought and opening the way for truth to come in by and by; but when, in some instances, there has been a sudden interest manifested, and such half-incredulous, half-delighted responses come as ‘What! Jesus died for me?’ ‘What! Jesus Christ my best friend!’ ‘Yes, I will love Him!’ I have felt one such moment a complete compensation for a whole lifetime of sorrow and toil.”