China by J. N. Anderson

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 21, 1906

China

By J. N. Anderson

SHANG-TSAI HSIEN.— I am now in the province of Honan, where I have been visiting the different stations, and studying the work. The last week in January we spent in counsel and Bible study at Sin-tsai Hsien, where, as you know, the workers first located, and where now the two nurses are alone, carrying on the work. Nearly all the workers were present, and our coming together was not in vain, for the Lord met with us, and we all felt that it was an occasion of real profit and blessing to us and to the work. Many questions relative to our work were freely talked over, and plans were agreed upon as to its future.

Since the Russo-Japanese war, an indescribable intensity has laid hold of every phase of Chinese life. Tremendous forces, here and there seeming to rise up like menacing giants, are blindly struggling for the mastery. An ominous unrest and suspicious foreboding prey upon the minds of all classes. The officials—corrupt, venal, and unscrupulous—belonging to, and living in, the past, are unable to stay or direct the oncoming reform or destructive revolution. The national spirit of China is at once both antidynastic and antiforeign, as the clearest minds read the events of the day.

Again China is consciously and definitely turning her back on the past, and just so surely is her face set toward the modern; but she wants the foreign, Western civilization, without the foreigner. To effect these ends, many agencies and forces are now in operation. Some of these are educational and reformative, while others are destructive and revolutionary. China is honeycombed with secret societies that are a unit in crying “China for the Chinese,” and “Death to the foreigner.” These are anxious and eventful days to this race, and who is sufficient for all these things?

In such a situation as this, God must, and surely will work; and it is in view of this that we are anxious to have counsel and help, that the cause of truth may run and be prospered in China. At our recent meeting we voted to ask that a man be sent out to visit China this fall and winter, beginning here in Honan not later than next November, and then going south to the other provinces of Fukien and Quangtung in time to get back to Shanghai for the Centenary Conference to be held there not later than May, 1907, representing all the missionaries of China. This conference celebrates the hundredth anniversary of Morrison’s entering China, and it will be a very important gathering, and we here feel that we should be well represented there. We are planning to hold our general council for all China at Shanghai, just after the close of the Centenary Conference.

I am sure you realize something of the magnitude of these Oriental fields, and that you are planning to enter them with all possible dispatch. It seems to me that the next two years will be full of meaning and of possibilities to us in our work, in this hour of China’s crisis. We all feel that now is the time for us to organize our work, and so carry forward the message in these parts. J. N. ANDERSON.