CHINA-ITS NEEDS by Lizzie Nelson Fryer

Pacific Press Publishing Association

CHINA—ITS NEEDS.

By Lizzie Nelson Fryer

BY LIZZIE NELSON FRYER.

[For many years a missionary teacher in China.]

FOUR hundred millions of people living without hope and without God; taught from early childhood to pray to heathen deities represented by hideous idols, and to look to them for aid and guidance; living for no object beyond the gratification of self; their good deeds done only with the idea of bettering their condition here and gaining merit in the other world; bound down by a constant and heavy upon their time and means by their obligations to keep up the worship of their ancestors; enduring all manner of privations in order to continue this tremendous expenditure, which affects nearly every family over the whole empire,—this in part is a picture of the people of China. Priest-ridden are they, with millions of Buddhists and Taoists, who, like wolves, prey upon the people and rob them of their hard-earned money because of boasted powers to ward off evil and threatening influences.

The people are everywhere oppressed with a corrupt officialdom and an iniquitous government; their women degraded and kept in ignorance, but little better than slaves. Among the higher classes each official usually has two or more wives and several concubines, so that the lives of the women are most neglected and unhappy, and their dispositions trained to jealousy and depression—"no cheer in this life, and no hope for the next" have I often thought after talking with them.

Add to these things the curse of the opium habit, which is increasing its power over men women, and children of all classes, deadening the voice of conscience within them, and the China of to-day reveals a picture of an immense, downtrodden mass of humanity, which human help can never relieve or lift to a higher plane.

What has been done for China?

It is now more than fifty years since a little band of noble Protestant men and women began their life-work in this empire. Now in many stations Christian Chinese are sending out laborers from their own numbers into the neighboring towns and cities, bearing the whole burden of their support. In the country may often be found churches wholly carried on by the native Christians.

During the last five years a great change has come over mission work in China. Where the people were difficult of access, they are now crying out for more help to be sent from the home lands. Schools are crowded as never before. The Bible has been translated into the many different dialects and taught in the schools of the various missions, and portions of it scattered by native colporters, until the "Jesus doctrine" has been heard of in nearly all parts of the empire.

The day of her long-talked-of and prayed-for "awakening" has, in the providence of God, arrived. The burden of those who have her best interests at heart will no longer be in regard to her conservatism, but will be about the influence that shall direct her progress as she enters into a freer intercourse with the rest of the world. Just at this time seems the hour for Christianity with a new impetus to press its truer and purer religion upon the people of this whole empire. While there is special encouragement among the different workers in China, still the seventy thousand Christians scattered here and there are only as a handful compared with those who have never been in the least influenced by Christianity.

The greatest need is for many more consecrated men and women to come to their assistance, who will be willing to give up home and country and friends, and devote their whole lives for the help of that people; for the chiefest influence one can have among such a people is a consistent, true, earnest, every-day life. I speak what I do know of this matter. Those are wanted who will not fear sickness or the trying climate, who have a knowledge of the laws of our physical being and obey them as far as possible, and will leave all the rest to Him who careth for such, and will sustain and guide in their labors. Above all, Bible teachers are needed, for it is the entrance of the Word that giveth light, that giveth understanding to the simple.