When the proclamation ordering the extermination of all foreigners and Christians was posted on the walls of Ching- chou-fu, a friendly official hinted that if the Chinese pastors would sign a document to the effect that they would ``no longer practice the foreign religion,'' he would accept it as sufficient on behalf of all their flocks, and not enforce the order. Warrants for the arrest of every Christian had already been written. Scoundrels were hurrying in from distant villages to join in the riot of plunder and lust. Two women had already been killed. What were the pastors to do? There was no missionary to guide them, for long before the consuls had ordered all foreigners out of the interior. The agonized pastors determined to sacrifice themselves for their innocent people, to go through the form of giving up the ``foreign'' religion. That word ``foreign'' must be emphasized to understand their temptation, for the Chinese Christians do not feel that Christianity is foreign, but that it is theirs as well as ours. Moreover, the pastors were made to understand that it was simply a legal fiction, not affecting the religion of their hearts, but only a temporary expedient that the friendly magistrate might have a pretext for giving his protection to the Christians. They were not asked to engage in any idolatrous rite or to make any public apostasy, but simply to sign a statement ``no longer to practice the foreign religion.'' ``So far from recanting,'' it was urged upon them, ``you are preventing recanting.'' Their decision may be best given in the words of Pastor Wu Chien Cheng: ``When I thought of these people,'' he said, his emotion being so great that the tears were running down his face, ``in most cases with children and aged parents dependent upon them, and thought of all that was involved for them if I refused to sign the paper--well, I couldn't help it. I decided to take on myself the shame and the sin.'' As the Rev. J. P. Bruce, of the English Baptist Mission, who told me of this incident, truly says: ``Who could listen to such a narrative--so sad and painful and yet not without much that was noble--without sympathy and tears?'' In this spirit of tenderness, so marked in the Lord's dealings with sinful Peter, the missionaries dealt with the recanting Christians. With the impostors, indeed, they had less mercy. The Rev. R. M. Mateer secured the arrest of two scapegraces who, under pretense of being Christians, had blackmailed innocent villagers. Very plainly, too, did the missionaries deal with Christians, who, like some people in the United States after a fire, placed an extravagant valuation upon what they had lost. But these were exceptional cases.