Notable Women of Modern ChinaBurton, Margaret E. (Margaret Ernestine)
History
Notable Women of Modern China
Burton, Margaret E. (Margaret Ernestine)
China -- Biography; Women -- Biography
A few years later she writes: "In our morning prayers I have often looked
and seen a chapel full of people. I have carefully looked over the crowd
and I could easily recognize those who have just come to us, others who
have been here longer. You wonder how I know it? Well, their faces show.
Oftentimes our patients listen so attentively that they forget they are in
a crowd. Sometimes one, two, three, or even more, speak up with one voice,
'The Jesus doctrine is truly good. What the leader said is nothing but the
truth. Idols are false.'"
In addition to the morning services Christian work is constantly done by
the Bible women who work in connection with the hospital. They hold
meetings in the hospital wards, teach the hospital patients to read the
Bible, do personal work among those waiting their turn in the dispensary,
and visit in the homes. One of the missionaries who is a frequent visitor
to the hospital says: "No hour of the week brings more fully the joy of
service than the hour I spend in the City Hospital with the poor sick folk
there. They are always so glad to hear, and so responsive. No wonder the
Master loved to heal; and no wonder the Christian physician finds so many
open doors."
It is not to be wondered at that those who have been ministered to by this
tender, skilful Christian woman, and have watched her happy, busy life
poured out in the service of the suffering ones about her, have become
convinced that the beautiful doctrine which she teaches and lives is true.
Every year the hospital reports contain a record of those who have become
Christians during the year as a result of the medical work. Moreover, the
seeds sown in the early years of the hospital, some of which seemed to have
fallen on rocky ground, were not all in vain. Dr. Hü's sister, reporting
the work of 1908, writes: "After careful investigation we found that those
seeds were sown deep enough, and with such attention, that even though
seven, eight, or nine years have passed they are to-day still germinating,
growing, and bearing fruit. After hearing and accepting the gospel, their
lives are changed. They become brighter and more straightforward, and have
a love for other people."
Christmas is a great event in the Woolston Memorial Hospital, not only for
the patients and workers, but also for as many of the neighbours as can be
accommodated in the chapel. There is never any difficulty with regard to
unwilling guests; on the contrary, the neighbours invariably respond with
almost disconcerting enthusiasm. The first year that they were invited
to the Christmas exercises, red Chinese cards, reading "Admit one only,"
were distributed to one hundred and twenty families, one to each house, the
choice of the member who should use it being left to the family. Careful
explanations as to why all could not be invited were made; but in spite of
this, during the days preceding Christmas, the doctor was besieged by the
non-elect with requests for invitations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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