Our communion on Sunday was very interesting. There were added to the church four colored students and three Indian boys. These three are representatives of three different tribes. One of them was an Apache. He came to us sixteen months ago with no knowledge of Christ, and none of God, with the exception of what he had gained from an old medicine man. He told me that God was like the wind that came in at one window and went out at the other. He has been very earnest in his study of the Bible and has come to my study night after night when he had had a hard day’s work and an evening study hour that he might read the Bible with me. Not long ago he told me he wished to pray in meeting and asked me if I would write out what he wanted to say. So I took my pen and after long pauses he told me what he wanted to say to God. I wrote it down just as he gave it to me. He has carried it away to learn so that he may take part in our weekly meeting in English. The other two boys have come to me twice before and asked to join the church but I have told them to wait. But now it seemed as though they could wait no longer and they were glad to profess their faith in Christ.
THE CHINESE.
THE PENALTY OF PROSPERITY.
BY REV. W. C. POND.
Our schools were never before so prosperous as during the last six or eight months. Each successive budget of monthly reports showed a larger enrolment and a larger average attendance, in the aggregate, than had ever been secured before. Notwithstanding that we have closed our schools in Oroville during these hot months, and have given a month’s vacation to the Berkeley school, the reports for June call for their superlatives as cheeringly as did those of April or of May. The rolls for June showed the names of 908 Chinese pupils, and the average attendance was 437. During the ten months now past of the present fiscal year, no less than 2,152 Chinese have been enrolled as members of our schools, and thus, for longer or shorter periods, have been brought to hear something of the true God and the only Saviour. Many have been with us but a short time, but not one, I believe, has failed to get some new idea which, it would seem, must have set him to thinking, and thus may prove to be in him the seed of the everlasting life.
But what is the “penalty” of all this? and why should there be any penalty for it? The penalty is a depleted treasury, and the reason for this is the unavoidably increased expenditure. How many of our readers know what it is to have more than $1,600 coming due, and less than $600 at command? As many as have had this experience will understand the penalty I am just now called to suffer. I could not turn the dark souls away from what seemed to be for them the only possible path to light, and I could not bid them welcome without increasing our corps of laborers. I could not add new workers without adding some new bills. The increase of expense is not at all proportioned to the increase in work fulfilled, for while we have reached nearly 40 per cent. more Chinese than we did in any preceding year, the expense will be greater by only about 10 per cent. But I have been working all these years up to the utmost limit of our resources, and now, towards the close of this fiscal year—the annual appropriation from the parent society exhausted and the gifts of most of our regular contributors already used—it comes to pass that that 10 per cent. extra begins to be felt, and as the mission purse gets lighter your superintendent’s heart gets heavier with thoughts and plans and cares.
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” some of my readers are asking. I answer, first of all, I mean to pray. Nothing else ever availed in my experience to replenish a depleted treasury, like appealing to the Giver of all good. He knows the work; He gave the opportunity; He has, many times before this, verified His promise, and answered my prayer. I mean to trust Him; ask His counsel and His help, and so move on. While His pillar of cloud and of fire goes before us, we need never be dismayed. “Difficulties will be removed, in proportion as it is necessary that they should be removed.” But I do not mean to stop with prayer. That is Müller’s way, and, in his case, it succeeds. When he was consulted as to the failure of others who wrought on his plan, it is said that he replied: “They were not so called.” Every man according to his own calling. For myself, I read the promise thus: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find.” And so I feel called to follow up my asking with seeking, and to enter every door that my master causes to be opened to my knock. That is just what I am doing now, in writing this paragraph. It may not reach all our readers till after our fiscal year has closed; but the books can be kept open till October 1, and gifts sent to make up what is now lacking, will be gratefully acknowledged, and most carefully used.