Page:The stuff of manhood (1917).djvu/73

 of the world what would be left to uphold us? It is because we know it is Saturday night in human history that we can live through it.

We know that as in individuals so in all the races of mankind, God has planted these great dormant energies and powers. For scores and scores of years the Chinese had despaired of their power to throw off the opium curse. They knew it was sapping the very vitality of their land, and yet they wondered whether the day would ever come when they would have power enough to break those hateful chains that had been forged upon them, and get back their freedom. Twenty years ago, as we went to and fro in China, the most striking odour in the Chinese streets was the pungent stench of smoking opium. One could scarcely go into a Chinese city or walk in a Chinese highway without seeing the wretched ship-*wrecks who were the products of that vice. Poppy fields bloomed red over the Empire, and the race had almost come to despair. And what do we find to-day? There is scarcely a great poppy field in the Republic, scarcely a fume of opium that you can smell on the public street in any Chinese city. The bonfires flared across the land as they burned up the signs of the old bondage. A great race arose in power and in a massive moral upheaval shook itself free. God had planted the energies there that needed only the touch of a living faith in Him, a new assur