The American Missionary — Volume 41, No. 7, July, 1887Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 41, No. 7, July, 1887
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
Oroville is a rendezvous for the Chinese scattered over a very
wide territory. Its resident Chinese population is also large;
not less than six hundred. Loo Quong had done a good work here,
and I found the school in better condition than ever before. It
was on a week-day evening that we gathered round the table of our
Lord. The room was well filled with Chinese, and we had several
Americans with us also. I think that more than twenty communed.
One was baptized and received to our little Chinese church. One
other would have been baptized—a brother very well reported of—but
he had been obliged to go away to his summer’s work, about eighty
miles distant. One brother walked about fifteen miles to be with
us at this service, and trudged back again early the next morning,
gladly sacrificing for it most of his night’s rest. Very generous
subscriptions (considering their deep poverty) were made in aid of
our work. Three on that evening expressed their new purpose to live
for Christ, by joining the Association of Christian Chinese—an act
which involves a confession of Christ quite as explicit as, among
us, attends reception to the church.
Lack of space forbids that I speak particularly of the other points
visited, except to say that we had in Stockton, after the school
session was ended—that is from 9 to 10:30 P. M.—a meeting with the
pupils at which the presence of the Spirit was manifest to us all,
and _seventeen_ rose to express their full purpose to leave all and
follow Christ.
I conclude with a single extract from a letter from Hong Sing, our
helper at Santa Cruz, in which he speaks of several attempts of his
heathen countrymen to catch him in his words. I ask our friends to
read it, remembering that Hong Sing is a house-servant, working in
the kitchen all day and teaching and preaching at night:
“I write a few words to tell you how we won the seven souls last
month. Since they found the way of light, and so they came with
us, with the same mind to worship the true God. Their cousins and
acquaintances are full of hatred, and try many ways to make fun of
them, to entice them to give up the worship of the Lord God. So was
fulfilled the word our Lord has said: ‘When men shall revile you
and speak evil of you for my sake.’ Sometimes one or two come to
argue with me after the school has closed, and pick out the hardest
questions to ask me—as this one: ‘Who made that God in Heaven? for
you said, only one God; where that one made from?’ I answer them:
‘Suppose you count anything, do not you say, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so
on? Now, 1,000 come that way from 100; 100 come from 10, and 10
come up from 1; 1 is the beginning. If we add one more, that would
be two. If that _one_ God made from another God. So we go on—no
end; but we all worship that only _One_ that is at the beginning,
who made all things.’ Then their tongues silent.”
Was it not “given him what he should say?”
WM C. POND.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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