THE CHINESE by Mrs. Susan Birdsall Roberts

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 1, 1899

THE CHINESE.

By Mrs. Susan Birdsall Roberts

Typical Chinese. The Central Figure is a Hat-maker.

WHAT a difference there is in people about communicating what they know! Some possess a natural gift for imparting interesting information, while others pass over facts and incidents which they might have made most entertaining and profitable.

It was my pleasure to listen to a returned missionary from China recently, and I should like to tell some things he said. You have no doubt seen Chinese idols, and have been sad to think there were people so ignorant of the knowledge of the true God. This missionary said that these idols are all over the country in China, not only in homes and shops, but by the roadside. In some places there are many together, the middle one the tallest, and the smaller ranging along down the row. A Chinaman will not enter a ship where there is no idol. Superstition covers the whole empire like a pall. They do most absurd things to appease evil spirits. They have no horses, mules, or beasts of burden of any kind, the men and women being their own burden-bearers; consequently they have no roads, but only footpaths, which they make very crooked and circuitous indeed, in order to cheat the evil spirits, who they think are ever on their track.

Now, would you not like to tell them the true way to escape evil, that is, to keep in straight paths morally, and close to the side of the dear Redeemer in prayerful living? I am sure I hear you say, "Yes, indeed." You can tell them by denying yourself some things, and thus saving the money, which is so much needed to send the Gospel to them. Some of you can go yourselves and teach them when you are older. They are eager to learn, and when converted make very earnest Christians. They believe in a great spirit, that he is omniscient and omnipresent, but they know so little about Him! How pleasant it seemed to this missionary to break to them the bread of life, to explain to them the truths of the Bible as he journeyed with them in their boats to and from market, and sat in their shops, mingling with them and seeking opportunities to do them good, as did the Saviour when He was here among men!

Only a few years ago China kept her doors closed against foreigners, and the Gospel could not reach her. Now missionaries may preach and teach without let or hindrance.

O, how white the fields for the harvest! The Chinese are reverential, but so superstitious! If they find a stone that they can fancy bears any resemblance to a human being with arms folded, they count it good luck, and make it an object of worship. Only think of the difference the Gospel makes in our condition. To it we owe the best that we have—schools, churches, and all the blessings of a Christian civilization. Even the common comfort of a bed the Chinese do not enjoy. A lady physician says they sleep on shelves, almost packed in, and one smokes his pipe of opium until he drops asleep, when another takes it up and smokes it, and so it passes on. Not very fastidious, you say. No, no. With the Gospel, they receive our ideas of cleanliness and sanitary habits, as well as of morals and religion.

A missionary said long ago that when a man was converted the first thing he wanted was a clean shirt. The refining, elevating tendency of the Gospel is felt in all lands wherever known. Is it not, indeed, heaven born? Yet so condescending, ever reaching down to the poor and degraded, but ever to lift them up, to bring them into a higher life, a life above mere animal enjoyment—even eternal life, already begun in the soul, with all its sweet and hallowed influences, joys, hopes, anticipations, and expectations!

How anxious we should be to bear some humble part in this great work of spreading the Gospel, and cheerfully give up some of our superfluities! If half these, and the diamonds, and other jewels went into the treasury of the Lord, how soon would the heathen world rejoice, and blossom as the rose!

MRS. SUSAN BIRDSALL ROBERTS.

Elmira, N. Y.