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Show - 26 - He wondered who they were and what they were doing. He was told they belonged to the Jesus Church and "were studying the doctrine." Ready to jump at the remotest chance of a hope that he might attain the peace from the sorrows of his heart, which he had thus far sought in vain, he that morning quietly and unobtrusively made his way into the room where the class was at work. Something in the message of the leader that morning at once brought balm to his weary, wounded spirit, and from that moment, and thru the month the class studied, the most determined earnest member was this man of the shaven head and queer Buddhist garb. He had found what he was looking for and to it he gave himself, his all- Finding he had embraced Christianity the Buddhist Brotherhood at once cast him out. His family, of course, would not receive him. So some of the Christians joined together and agreed to help him to ' g e t over the days" as the Chinese expression is, until things could be adjusted. He went to the Loa Ch'eng Church, where early and late he pored over his Bible getting an ever deepening heart satisfaction from his new faith. He is still there faithfully at work. The Emphasis in 1915. As one thus hastily glances over the work of the year and the field as a whole, certain things stand out as needing special emphasis in the coming year. One of these is greater definitsness, an ore'ering of all our effort with a view to the far future, that there may be no wasted energy. The time has come for a full and patient consideration of the task of evangelism which is a problem as well as a duty. The proposed adoption of a District Evangelistic Policy ought to be a great help towards definiteness. • This should mean better organJ7ation of our country work, leading to new departures in self-support, if flood and famine can be obviated. In the older fields we need to do more intensive work, the making of a stronger impact upon the centers. It is true the ideal of self-support has not yet been attained in our other missions in churches which have twenty and thirty years of continuous history, while our oldest church in the outstation field had had but six years of growth, but we cannot too early begin taking steps towards this end. The thing of supreme importance is the deepening of the spiritual life of the church, upon which alone self-support and self-sustenance rests. If the production of a larger spiritual fruitfulness in the Christian life is to be achieved, there is need first of all to lead the church to see the importance of giving better training to her wo-r-en. and providing better facilities for doing the same. No problem of all the many now weighing heavily on the conscience of the Christian Church is more pressing and more intricate than are those connected with the education of her women. Every advance in Foreign Mission work only shows more clearly the need and importance of woman's work. We cannot hope to see that fine-grained type of spiritual life which we so covet for our people until the women of the church can be raised to new levels of moral and intellectual life. |