The Answer Given to China’s Call
By W. A. S.
All will surely remember the stirring call from China, printed three weeks ago. Brother E. Pilquist reported the safe arrival of the medical missionary party in Honan, and told of the cheering reception accorded them by the people. He appealed for one thousand dollars with which to secure buildings and land suitable for chapel, training headquarters, and medical dispensary and hospital. The appeal was printed with the suggestion that some one or two individuals might find it possible to give immediate response, a thing that the mission treasury was unable to do before learning the full returns from the week-of-prayer offerings, and the regular calls from the fields for the new year. The Lord’s providence that led our workers in far China to discover the very favorable location in Sin Tsai Hsien, had also prepared hearts to answer the call when made. The following letter came last week from a brother and his wife in Wisconsin. We know the writers will naturally shrink from having the circumstances of the gift made public, but for the blessing it may be to others to share in the joy of the message they send, we are sure we shall be pardoned for printing the letter:— Last Sabbath, when reading the REVIEW AND HERALD, we became much impressed by the stirring appeal from China. God has blessed us, and by hard work and economy we have saved up just one thousand dollars, which we have decided to give to this needy mission field; but we have it out on interest, and can not get it before the first part of April. If there is money in the General Conference treasury that you can spare until that time, we would ask you to send Brother Pilquist that one thousand dollars at once, and we will surely send it to you by the first part of April. This is about all that we own in this world, but we feel assured that God will provide the necessities for us as long as we are to stay here, so we give it cheerfully, and hope and pray that much good may come out of it. Please write and let us know if you can do this, and oblige. Yours in the Master’s service, MR. AND MRS. PETER PETERSON. The draft for one thousand dollars is already on its way. Well may we thank God for the good cheer which so prompt a response will bring to our workers in China. The outbreak of hostilities in the far East is a warning to us that the time to work is short. It will mean much to the China Mission that plans can at once be laid to start the training and dispensary work in the very center of the “Great Plain,” the most thickly settled region in the world. There is a helpful lesson in the fact that this response to the special call from China does not come from persons to whom a thousand dollars is not a very large possession. It represents the surplus6savings of a life of hard work and economy. It suggests the resources that God can command for the missionary cause as his love touches hearts with a sense of the need. And even though such a gift represented the accumulations of a lifetime, is it an unwise or imprudent investment for one who is not well off in worldly possessions? Who would assert that it is? At a critical time in our work in the far East, when trained missionaries are on the ground ready to lift high the standard of the third angel’s message in the very heart of the most populous empire on earth, the appeal comes for a special fund needed to place the work on vantage-ground. The appeal is answered, and the splendid work goes forward. That thousand-dollar gift will go on working among China’s millions till the Lord comes. It is not a small thing that brethren and sisters on the farm or in the towns of America may by their gifts and prayers be actual comrades in arms with those who are face to face with the peoples of far-away lands and strange tongues. We are one band in this missionary crusade. Those who pray and give at home stand shoulder to shoulder in the ranks with those abroad. This gift from a source which only the Lord could have pointed out does all of us good who hear of it. And we can share by anticipation the joy it will bring to the little missionary circle across the sea, when the word reaches China. Truly it is a grand thing to be in God’s work to-day, and it is a cause to which we may gladly devote our lives and our all. As soon as the message is sounded as a witness to all peoples, the Lord will come.