I recall one scene at Ichang. There rises near the town a great orphanage, and when we visited it, we found the French sisters looking weary and whiter than their white robes. An epidemic of smallpox had broken out in the orphanage, and out of 140 orphans, 28 had died of small-pox, besides which the sisters had suffered themselves from malaria. One could but admire the devotion of these women living far off from their own country, tending children whom no one else would tend, and gaining as their reward hatred and misunderstanding from the Chinese. A Bishop belonging to this mission had been murdered, and a lay brother told me that it was because they were accused of stealing children to make Western medicine out of their eyes. This strange slander arises apparently from the desire, which is not understood by the Chinese, to save and preserve the lives of other people's children. Chinese ethics have no place for such altruism. Your duty never extends beyond your own relations, either by blood or from official position. There is another reason, however, for this notion. The Roman Catholics have a system of native agents who are prepared to baptize any child, whether of heathen or Christian parents, who is dying. This system is very well organised. Some of these agents perambulate districts and some remain at fixed points. Perhaps not unnaturally the Chinese cannot understand this methodical search for dying children, and as a reason must be found, and as the reason that seems most probable to the Chinese {195} mind is some form of personal gain, they have invented this slander. Whether we approve or disapprove the general action of the Roman Catholics--and our feelings are probably very mixed on this subject--we must recognise that they are a very great factor in the change that is coming over China. For centuries they have stood before the Chinese as associating with Christianity the science and the knowledge the Chinese have always admired. The wonderful work done by the Jesuits of the eighteenth century has established a tradition of excellent scientific work which is well maintained by the learned brothers of the Ziccawei Observatory. Many hundreds of lives have been saved at sea by the splendid meteorological service they have organised, and the sailor who cares nothing for Roman or for Protestant walks down on the Bund to see what the Ziccawei brothers can tell him about the probability of a typhoon. The benefit of their service, though great, is not limited to the number of lives of mariners that their science preserves; their science is an object-lesson to the Chinese--an object-lesson especially useful at a time when materialism is taunting Christianity with obscurantism.