Waiting Ones by Mrs. J. N. Anderson

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Dec 27, 1906

Waiting Ones

By Mrs. J. N. Anderson

MRS. J. N. ANDERSON

“We have been waiting a long time for you to read to us something out of your Holy Book.” They were sitting on a pile of stones and timbers under a big banyan tree, talking quietly among themselves, looking now and then toward the houseboat where we were taking our meal of rice and native vegetables. There were well-dressed gray-haired matrons, mothers-in-law escorting daughters-in-law with their babies on their backs, young girls becomingly attended, and a sprinkling of children in the group aloof from the crowd of men and boys. We had seen them coming two by two or in small companies on their way from the theater,—for it was play day,—back to their homes inside the walls of a quiet country village, and after a few words joining themselves to the continually increasing company. Some came nearer to look into the boat, and then went away.

When we had finished and gone ashore, one said, “We have been waiting a long time for you to read to us something out of your Holy Book.”

Waiting, yes, and still waiting,—thousands, yea, millions of women in China who themselves can not read a line, waiting for some one to read to them the first syllables of that wonderful revelation which shall be to them “the power of God unto salvation.”