The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
Referring to Dr. Goodwin's powerful address, I find myself transported
again to China; but the fact recurs to my mind that this is not a
foreign missionary society, but a home missionary one, and what we have
to do is to open our minds to the conviction that it is possible to do
at home plenty of work for the Chinaman. I am glad to give a little
personal testimony because what we need most of all is to be convinced
of the necessity to give time and strength and labor to win the
individual Chinaman to Christ. Not very long ago there came to my
knowledge in St. Louis an ordinary Chinaman, comparatively a young man.
He joined our church and I knew he desired to be recognized as a
Christian man. About a year before, he had been a member of a
Sunday-school where ladies were teaching Chinese. Before that our
newspapers had created great outcry about a case of leprosy in the city.
This Chinaman appeared at my house in great trepidation. He had been two
or three years in this country, and had been saving his money in order
to go back and see his mother's face before she would die, and he hoped
to be able to return to China in the following fall. He had learned that
there was a Chinaman, unknown to him, lying ill in a little laundry, of
a disease of which nothing was known, without friends and without care.
He took care of this man, leaving his own work for the purpose, and at
length he came to me asking where he could get a physician to attend the
patient. I gave him a note to one of the best physicians in my own
church, who went at once and saw the man, and he seeing it was a strange
form of disease, went to a specialist of skin diseases, who had the man
brought to a hospital in order to watch his disease. Rumors of this
reaching the newspapers, the reporters thought it a good opportunity to
make a story about leprosy, giving the number and street of an imaginary
laundry in the heart of the city. Instantly the patronage of the Chinese
laundries stopped. My Chinese friend was in the greatest distress about
it, and particularly about me, lest I should think he had brought the
contagious disease to my house. I could hardly persuade him to enter,
and then he told me there was no truth in the story of the newspapers,
and asked what he should do. What was the result of the story? The
Chinaman took care of his friend in the house and in the hospital,
paying considerable for his care, and when he recovered sent him to San
Francisco--in fact, spent about $180 on him, the whole sum he had saved
to take himself home to his mother, and he did this for a man who was as
utterly unknown to him as to you or me. He also came to me with a $10
bill to pay the doctor, saying it was not enough, but it was all the
money he had, and he would add to it by and by. All we want is testimony
as to the character of the Chinese. Here was a man not converted by
Moody or by any service, but by the ministry of an unknown Sunday-school
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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