Page:China's spiritual need and claims.djvu/22

8 larger territory than Europe. Australia, vast as it is, together with Tasmania, New Zealand, and all the archipelagoes of the South Sea Islands, put together do not equal the Chinese empire in extent. Some, again, as they look at the lines representing North and South America will, perhaps, be surprised to see the extent of China in comparison. What must be the spiritual need and claims of a country like this?

It may further impress the mind if we take some smaller and more familiar standards of comparison: the area of the Chinese empire exceeds 44 times that of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 104 times that of



England alone, and 176 times that of Scotland. Could the empire of China be changed from its present form to that of a long strip of land a mile in breadth, a person walking 30 miles a day would require more than 483 years to walk from one end of it to the other. Of its area, Chinese Tartary and Thibet contain rather more than three-fifths, the remaining two-fifths being contained in China Proper.