We also visited a picturesque Buddhist shrine, where an old blind nun lives, the owner of much property, and of the orchards adjacent to the mission property. We found her seated on the khang immediately behind the figure of the Buddha, where she has spent many, many years in meditation. She welcomed us with cordiality, and made us sit down beside her, while she entered into a long and intimate conversation with our host, whom she had not met for some years. The nun had a remarkable head, closely shaven, of course, under her black cap, and looked more like a man than a woman. She told us that she became blind when she was only six years old, and now she was seventy-nine. She felt our hands with the subtle, searching touch of the blind, and had not a little to say on them; we much regretted our ignorance of Chinese, as our feminine curiosity to know what she said was left ungratified. The conversation then turned on the great problems of life, both this life and the next, but she seemed entirely ignorant of Buddhist philosophy, and took refuge in futile platitudes; as regards the future she said, “We die, and there is nothing more.” It is disappointing to find how utterly ignorant they are of anything beyond the externals of their religion. The Taoist monks, on the contrary, boast many men of learning, and have more conception of real religion. I understand this is also the case in other parts of the Chinese Empire. In contrast with the various temples nothing more charming could be found than the simple beauty of the mission church. It is always difficult to arrange for parts of a building to be screened off without spoiling the effect of it as a whole; at the present time this is still considered necessary in China, so that the men and women may be separated from one another, also they have separate entrances. In the Liao Yang church the difficulty was ingeniously conquered by making the transept the women’s part, and diminishing the space of the nave where it joins the transept, by erecting a smaller arch on either side containing a screen. The pulpit, being in the centre, commands the whole building. This church was designed by an architect specially sent out by the mission committee, and it is of no small importance that such buildings should be carefully designed to be in harmony with the architecture of the country, and not to seem European. At the great World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh, stress was laid by speakers from all lands on the growing desire of native Christians to have their own national churches. To this end every detail must be studied; not only must religion be taught them in their own language, but the churches in which they worship must have a homelike feeling, so that nothing may suggest to them that Christianity is a foreign religion. When all is said and done it came from the East and not from the West, so that its externals at least should have as little Western colouring as possible. CHAPTER V