``The condition and outlook of the Church's work in the province of Kiang-su are more encouraging than ever before. Hitherto we have had to persuade people to be taught. Now they come to us themselves, not one by one, but in numbers. . . . That there is a strong movement towards Christianity setting in is evident.''[100] [100] ``The Spirit of Missions,'' July, 1904. Not only has the old work been resumed with vigour but much new work has been opened. Within a year and a quarter after the relief of the Legations by the Allies, twenty-five new mission stations had been opened and 373 new missionaries had entered China, and each succeeding year has seen considerable additions to the number. The Rev. Dr. George F. Pentecost, who visited China in 1903, writes-- ``The outlook seems to me most encouraging. I find the more thoughtful missionaries enthusiastic in their forecast for the future. My own judgment is that the cause of missions, so far as foundation work and increased power for work, has been advanced at least twenty-five years by the massacres of 1900. I think the common people are thoroughly convinced that missions cannot be destroyed, and I am equally convinced that the authorities are also convinced that it is vain for them to rage and set themselves against Christianity. The one thing which an Asiatic recognizes is power and facts accomplished, and in the rebuilding of our missions and the awakening already begun and the reinforcement of the missions in men and material means they see and recognize power. Their own temples are falling into decay and ruin and our new buildings are rising in prominence and beauty. Their ignorant priesthood is sinking deeper and deeper into degradation, while our missionaries are every where known and recognized as men of `light and learning.' . . . It seems to me from all I can learn that there is no fear of another anti- foreign outbreak.'' And these are but a few of the many illustrations that could be given. Everywhere, the doors are open and Chinese are now being baptized by Protestant missionaries at the rate of about 15,000 a year, while a far larger number are enrolled as inquirers or catechumens. The interdenominational conference of missionaries at Kuling, August 7, 1903, declared:--