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Show - 25 - i t is not we who are seeking them but they who are seeking us. Nor is this an isolated example. Hsien Loa Ts'un, the town before whose gates the Fen-chowfu missionaries were killed in 1900, has repeatedly asked for aid the past year in the same way as Si Ma Ts'un. It is likewise an important market town, and we should have a strong work here as a memorial to the martyrs, and as an object lesson to the Chinese of the forgiving spirit of Christianity, But while the meeting of these calls requires but a hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars a year we cannot promise it, unless other friends may be found who will do for these centers what Mr.,and Mrs. Harwood and Mr. Bates are doing in other places like them. STATION CLASS WORK Seven churches have studied a month each during the year. Classes in the central station have been impracticable because of the lack of room for accommodating them. Under the heavy pressure of work in the central station, too, it has been impossible for Mr. Jen to give any time to this work. We hope greater emphasis may be laid upon this side of our effort next year, for the great need of the church everywhere is a deep, general, spiritual quickening, which shall lead every Christian with greater love and zeal to l"-*» mninHM mi Typical Buddhist Temple the Gospel, and witness for Christ. From Buddha to Christ. A rather interesting incident developed in the class work at Tung Chia Chwang this year. Across the street from the meeting-place of the class was a temple, and in the temple a priest, a young man. His home was originally far to the south near the Ling Shih Pass. He is of good family, and in comfortable circumstances. He is one of those rare examples of a man who in his native state has grown dissatisfied with his moral attainments. An unrest of conscience from the ever-present consciousness of shortcoming in the presence of an unknown and unseen standard which he instinctively knew to exist, and a longing for holiness, led him at length to take the oath of renunciation of the Buddhist monk, whereby casting away all earthly wealth, and leaving father and mother, never to see them again (a requirement of the oath), he turned to the Ling Shih Mountains and disappeared from public view to tend his wounded heart, and weary and heavy-laden to seek for mental peace and rest. Failing to find this in the mountain solitudes he wandered from temple to temple, until he finally reached Tung Chia Chwang. One day he noticed a large group of men across the street. The next day they were there again. |
