took two actions which have affected China in a very special degree. First the American missions made the very greatest effort to get hold of intelligent Chinese men, both Christian and non-Christian, to teach them Western knowledge, so that they might understand how intimately Christianity was connected with Christian thought. The result of their efforts has been that there are a considerable number of enlightened Chinese gentry who are either Christians or who have a great sympathy with the Christian side of Western civilisation. Sometimes they educated these men in China, sometimes they induced them to go to America for their education; and there they were brought into contact with the intense, yet rather narrow, New England Christianity. I had the honour of meeting many of these men in China, and I was convinced that they have no small part in her awakening. The English and American missionaries, under the leadership of Dr. Williamson, inaugurated a second policy, which has had far-reaching results in causing the changes in China. The Christian Literature Society was started to supply the Chinese with translations of the best Western literature. They were followed by Chinese imitators who were also Christians, and who founded a Chinese Commercial {17} Press. These two bodies have given to China a vast amount of Western literature, the first on philanthropic lines with the definite intention of spreading Christianity, the second on a commercial basis but with the intention of presenting to their fellow-countrymen the purer and more beautiful side of Western thought. The publications of these two bodies reach, I am told, to every educated man in China. If the humiliations of public events made the Chinese willing to study Western civilisation, it was these men who afforded them the means of studying and understanding the best side of that civilisation. But perhaps those who have done most to give the Chinese a proper conception of Christianity are the Bible Societies, especially the British and Foreign Bible Society. Ever since, with the optimism of faith, the translation of the Scriptures by Dr. Morrison was published in 1814, they have been scattering the Christian Scriptures throughout the whole of China, from Mongolia to Tonkin, and I am told that those Scriptures are read by men in the highest positions and with the most conservative antecedents in the whole empire. It cannot be doubted that the indirect fruit of their work has been very great indeed. China has, through the agencies of these bodies, been brought into close contact with Christian thought, and has at last realised the true nature of our religion.