p. 745 | Converting China by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 10, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 47.

Converting China

By Editor

THE New York Sun, noticing the recent appropriations for foreign and domestic missions, made by the Methodist Church, says:—

"We observe about one-fourth of all the money contributed for missions by the Methodists is to be sent to China. We have here more than one hundred thousand Chinamen, who are as far away from Christianity as when they first landed in the United States. The best way, the only way to convert China, is to send back as an enthusiastic, devoted Christian every Chinaman who comes to the United States."

If that is the best and only way, then China will never be converted; for, with but few exceptions, it is as the Sun says, the one hundred thousand Chinamen who are here are still "as far away from Christianity as when they first landed in the United States." Most of them are doubtless farther away. And why? Simply because there are a good many hundred thousand Americans who have lived in this country longer than the Chinamen have, who are no nearer Christianity now than the Chinamen were when they came. No entire nation ever has been or ever will be Christianized; but we are confident that missionaries among the Chinese will have a more hopeful task if they take them in their own country, before they lose confidence in Christianity by seeing the vices and wickedness of so-called "Christian nations."