The American Missionary — Volume 37, No. 5, May, 1883 — John Shaqi
The American Missionary — Volume 37, No. 5, May, 1883Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 37, No. 5, May, 1883
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
I think, however, that American civilization is at last making
itself felt among our Chinese, for I believe that I have passed, in
this city, one small saloon where a Chinaman stood behind the bar,
and some of his countrymen in front of it. I never saw a Chinaman
drunk, though I have heard that the sight might be seen. But this,
too, is recent, and my impression of the aversion to intoxicating
drinks, as a national characteristic, was, till lately, so strong,
that for many years I had nothing to say to our Christian Chinese
on the subject, except as it came up incidentally in the course
of Bible study. It is within a year that it came to my knowledge
that a stimulating and slightly intoxicating drink, which they
call in English, wine, is made from rice, and used among them
more or less at banquets, though not, I think, at ordinary meals.
The discovery of this fact, and that even our most advanced and
reliable Christians were not total abstainers, has led us to preach
among them this gospel also. It has been readily accepted. The
duty, under _our_ circumstances, of _total_ abstinence seems to
be understood, and duty understood becomes, I believe, with these
brethren, unquestioned law.
Respecting opium, the voice of the mission has from the first been
clear, positive and unmistakable. I cannot claim that we have
reached many who had become addicted to this vice; indeed, I cannot
now recall one among those whom I have baptized who had used the
drug enough to make it hard to do without it. Generally I have been
told that they have never used it at all. It ought perhaps to be
a shame to us that we have not reached and rescued slaves to this
vice. Certainly, if any door should open by which an effectual work
of this sort could be set forward, it ought to be entered upon with
intensest zeal. But the most that we have seen it possible to do
thus far has been to pledge all who come into our Congregational
Association of Christian Chinese, not to gamble and not to use
opium. These are the items of external conduct upon which special
emphasis is laid. A brother overtaken in either of these faults
would be dealt with at once in a discipline, the chief danger of
which would be that it might be too prompt and too severe: a zeal
to make the protest of the brotherhood against the sin decisive
and unmistakable preventing due patience and long suffering in the
effort to “restore” and “gain” the erring one.
* * * * *
CHILDREN’S PAGE.
* * * * *
SEQUEL TO TED’S TEMPERANCE SOCIETY.
BY MRS. THOS. N. CHASE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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