Page:The Chinese Empire. A General & Missionary Survey.djvu/34

4 the population worked out at 2129 per square mile. Commenting on his own experiments, he has said: "For the plain of North China as a whole it is probable that it would be found more reasonable to estimate 300 persons to the square mile for the more sparsely settled regions, and from 1000 to 1500 for the more thickly settled regions."

Colonel Manifold, in a lecture before the Royal Geographical Society in 1903, expressed his belief that the population of the Chengtu plain was no less than 1700 to the square mile; and Consul W. J. Clennell, in China, No. 1, 1903, gives the population of Shanghai as "something like 160,000 to a square mile." When it is remembered that the population in London ranges up to 60,000 to the square mile, and that in the poorest parts of Liverpool it is nowhere above 100,000 per square mile, the density of population in some of the Chinese cities will be more easily appreciated.

It is more easy to speak of millions than to appreciate the significance of the word. It is less than one million days since Isaiah penned his prophecies, and less than one million hours since Morrison landed in Canton. The death-rate of China alone would in six months blot out London, or in a fortnight the British army, while one day would remove the entire population of Canterbury. This is not mere sentiment, but actual fact. Could we but realise the misery, the hopelessness, the fear and dread which encircle one death in the land where Christ is not known, we should surely be moved to greater efforts and to a more supreme consecration and willing self-denial that the true Light might shine upon those now sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death.