``I do not mean that one sees the results of preaching directly on the spot. In China at least one seldom does. But by the power of God the results come. We have seen unclean lives made pure, the broken-hearted made glad, the false and crooked made upright and true, the harsh and cruel made kindly and gentle. I have seen old women, seventy, eighty, eighty-five years of age, throwing away the superstitions of a lifetime, the accumulated merit of years of toilsome and expensive worship, and when almost on the brink of the grave, venturing all upon a new-preached faith and a new-found Saviour. We have seen the abandoned gambler become a faithful and zealous preacher of the gospel. We have seen the poor giving out of their poverty help to others, poorer still. We see many Chinese Christians who were once narrow and avaricious, giving out of their hard-earned month's wages, or more, yearly, to help the church's work. We see dull and uneducated people drinking in new ideas, mysteriously growing in their knowledge of Christian truth, and learning to shape their lives by its teachings. We have seen proud, passionate men, whose word was formerly law in their village, submit to injury, loss and insult, because of their Christian profession, until even their enemies were put to shame by their gentleness, and were made to be at peace with them. And the men and women and children who are passing through these experiences are gathering in others, and building up one by one a Christian community which is becoming a power on the side of all that is good in the non-Christian communities around them. . . . Everything is hostile to it. It is striking its roots in an uncongenial soil, and breathes a polluted air. It may justly claim for itself the beautiful emblem so happily seized, though so poorly justified, by Buddhism--the emblem of the lotus. It roots itself in rotten mud, thrusts up the spears of its leaves and blossoms through the foul and stagnant water, and lifts its spotless petals over all, holding them up pure, stainless and fragrant, in the face of a burning and pitiless sun. So it is with the Christian life in China Its existence there is a continuous miracle of life, of life more abundant.''[81] [81] ``Mission Problems and Mission Methods in South China,'' pp. 29-31, 240.