Conversions at St. Stephen’s College by PERCIVAL J. LAIRD

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 12, 1908

Conversions at St. Stephen’s College

By PERCIVAL J. LAIRD

The following is an extract from a letter received recently from the principal of St. Stephen’s College, of my old mission, Hongkong: “One lad asked that he might speak with me, and then declared not his faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God (that he said he had believed for some time), but his determination to confess him in baptism. . . . He was our dux, and had gained his A. B. in the Oxford senior examination. Through that week there followed others, all from the upper school, one by one coming quietly, some not knowing that others had decided to become Christians. . . . One dear lad said: ‘Sir, I want to be baptized.’ ‘Why?’—‘Because I must, for this is the last chance, I think. Six months ago I wanted to ask for baptism because I believed that Jesus Christ was my Saviour. My father objected, and I yielded. I do not wish to be undutiful to my father, but I must at all costs confess Christ in baptism.’ Acting on advice, on the following Sunday he told his father, and to his surprise, his father raised no further objection than to point out from a Chinese point of view some of the disabilities he would be under as a Christian.”

Fees at this college are one hundred ten dollars a quarter for boarders, exclusive of text-books. Boarders provide their own beds. Day boys pay thirty-seven dollars a quarter. One hundred thirty-three students were in attendance last year. I have just received a card which says that thirteen out of fourteen have passed the local Oxford examination. They held a meeting to thank God for their success.

Two young men to whom I taught English at Tokyo last year write me that they are still holding on to Christ. One, a medical student, has a weekly attendance of about twelve at a Chinese Bible class in his quarters.

Our Seventh-day Adventist Brother T. S. Fung, a man who would rather forfeit his M. A. degree than break the Sabbath, was brought to Christ as a result of attending Elder F. W. Field’s Bible classes in English. He has been disappointed in not being on time to begin this year’s course at the Japanese Imperial University. We trust that he may come here and help us for a time.

Teaching English was the entering wedge among the fifteen thousand Chinese students in Japan, from whose ranks a goodly number have been baptized since I left there last year.

It might be urged that these are meager results when compared with schools where the Chinese language is used exclusively, or where English is taught an hour or so every week. Not to go beyond my own experience and recent immediate associations, let me say that nearly fifty such schools failed to produce even one baptism in several years. Should such schools be closed as failures? PERCIVAL J. LAIRD.