Page:China's spiritual need and claims.djvu/45

Rh I believe in ." This man was one of the leading officers of a sect of reformed Buddhists in Ningpo. A short time after this profession of faith in the, there was a meeting of the sect over which he had formerly presided. The writer accompanied him to that meeting, and there, to his former co-religionists, he testified of the peace which he had obtained in believing. Soon after, one of his former companions was converted and baptized. Both now sleep in  The first of these two, long continued to preach to his countrymen the glad tidings of great joy. A few nights after his conversion, he asked the writer how long these glad tidings had been known in England. He was told that we had had the gospel for some hundreds of years. The man looked amazed. "What!" said he, "is it possible that for hundreds of years you have had the knowledge of these glad tidings in your possession, and yet have only now come to preach them to us? My father sought after the truth for more than twenty years, and died without finding it. Why did you not come sooner?" Ah! why, indeed, did we not go sooner? Why? Shall we say the way was not open? For fifty years it has been more open than we have been ready to occupy. And now that it is so much more open than ever before, why are we still so slow to enter in? Since the treaty of Tien-tsin, more new Romish missionaries and sisters of charity have been poured into China than the whole staff of Protestant missionaries. Why are we doing so little? While we hang back the multitudes perish.

Briefly to recapitulate our survey of the seven provinces, we find:—

The average population of these provinces is 17 millions, and the average number of missionaries is 51. And after allowing a far larger sphere to each missionary than he can possibly fill, and allowing a similar sphere of 100,000 souls to each single lady missionary, there still remain more than 83 millions of that interesting but benighted people in these provinces alone, utterly and hopelessly beyond the reach of the existing agencies in China for the spread of the gospel.