Mission Notes

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Sep 15, 1904

“FOREIGN missions are the embodied courage of the church, the touchstone of her faith and hope.”

A CHRISTIAN heard a heathen woman praying passionately in a heathen temple. She had in her arms a pitifully misshapen baby, and she was praying that it might grow beautiful like other babies. As she turned to go away, the Christian asked her: “Friend, to whom have you prayed?” “I do not know,” she answered; “but surely there must be some one somewhere to keep a mother’s heart from breaking!” The message of missions is that there is this Some One.—Selected.

THE fear that Chinese opium-smoking fathers have that their sons may follow in their steps is strikingly shown in the fact that they will put their sons in charge of the missionaries, on purpose that they may be shielded from opium-smoking and other vices. Mr. T. James, of the China Inland Mission, gives us two instances of this. In one case, the two sons of a wealthy man named Yang came, the one by conviction, and the other by his father’s express wish. The father told Mr. James that, having read some of the books, he knew that his sons would receive only good from the missionaries, and that if it had not been for his opium, he himself would have become a Christian. In the other case, the son was sent by the father to Mr. James, for the express purpose of keeping him from secret societies and opium. One result of the young man’s association with the missionaries was that he refused to burn incense to the idols or paper money to his ancestors. Whether such a result had been foreseen by the father or not, we do not know, but apparently he was willing to run the risk of his son’s becoming a Christian rather than let him become an opium-smoker.—Britain’s Opium Harvest.