Chinese Diamonds for the King of KingsGoforth, Rosalind
Religion
Chinese Diamonds for the King of Kings
Goforth, Rosalind
Missions -- China
On one occasion the Mission premises were practically surrounded by an
unruly mob and for many hours the missionaries were in imminent peril.
One thing helped greatly in living this danger period down safely. The
missionaries of whom I have already written had moved from the poor,
unhealthy Chinese house with the cement floor into a semi-foreign house,
the first of the kind to be built in that region. As this house was
being built they feared it might prove a barrier between themselves and
the Chinese, and perhaps hinder the progress of the work which had begun
to be very encouraging, so they prayed that God would make their new
home a blessing and a means of reaching the people still more, and like
so many of our prayers they came to see the answer lay largely with
themselves—so they determined to allow all who wished, to see through
their home. Many thousands took advantage of this permission. The high
water mark in numbers was reached when eighteen hundred and thirty-five
_men_ passed through the missionary’s home in one day. Many hundreds of
women were received that same day by the wife and her colleague in the
work. On ordinary occasions the missionary had his wife play the organ
for the bands of men he led through, but on this particular occasion she
was too much engaged with the women to do so. The missionary therefore
was forced to be his own organist. Though he did not know one note from
another, he could at least pull out all the stops, lay his hands on as
many notes as possible, and pump the bellows vigorously. The result
called forth from admiring crowds the gratifying remark, "Why he plays
better than his wife!" The Gospel was faithfully proclaimed to all who
came. The missionaries soon began to see good fruit from this plan of
reaching the people.
During the second year at Changte hundreds of students had come to the
city for the tri-annual government examinations. Many of these visited
and showed plainly their anti-foreign attitude—sometimes causing quite
serious trouble.
Before the next examinations came round, three years later, the
missionary was well prepared for them. At first they came as before
full of self-satisfied convictions that they were quite superior
representatives of the most superior race. Curiosity alone led them to
the foreigner’s home. But no sooner would they catch sight of the large
astronomical charts on the missionary’s study wall than their attitude
invariably changed. The missionary knew well the importance of
reserving his ammunition till the right moment! The proudest of those
scholars in face of those charts became like children.
As the man of God led them (at their own request) step by step on into
the wonders of creation of which they knew nothing—often would come the
cry, "Teacher stop, have pity on us—you make us feel like the man in the
well who thought he saw the whole heavens!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account