Page:The Chinese Empire. A General & Missionary Survey.djvu/143

 twenty Societies working in the city, and the total number of missionaries engaged in evangelistic, medical, literary, and educational work is close on 200.

It is impossible even to glance at the manifold activities of the Societies working in Shanghai. The literary work of the Christian Literature Society, combined with the printing establishments of the American Presbyterian Mission and the American Methodist Episcopal Mission, has been to China what the initial impulse is to the great ship as she leaves the stocks to launch herself upon the waves. Such educational institutions as St. John's University (American Episcopal Mission) and the M'Tyiere Girls' Boarding-School (American Methodist Episcopal Mission) not only fulfil the purpose of their existence by turning out Christian men and women educated and equipped for their life-work, but they also serve as models on which the Chinese are shaping their own educational institutions. The well-managed hospitals, St. Luke's (American Episcopal Mission) and the London Mission Hospital, Shantung Road, have often elicited eulogies of approval from enlightened Chinese officials. The ordinary daily preaching in the street chapels is also having a twofold effect. It is not only turning men to righteousness, but is introducing the new and democratic method of direct appeal from the platform to a popular audience.

It is worth recalling for a moment the names of the great missionaries who have laboured in this field and are now gone to their rest: Medhurst, Milne, Muirhead, Wylie, Williamson, Edkins, Faber, Hudson Taylor, and others. These men laid the foundations of the Church in Mid-China; they were giants in faith and intellect, and they shall be had in lasting remembrance as long as the Church of Christ in China shall endure.

Dr. H. C. Du Bose in his book on "Beautiful Soo" says:—"For years the missionaries in Shanghai looked upon Soochow as a great evangelistic centre, and longed for the time when its gates should be opened. Before the city was taken by the Taiping rebels, young Griffith John,