Before the treaty ports were opened in 1842, the English missionary Morrison visited the country secretly and began Protestant missions by translating the whole Bible into Chinese. Equal in devotion and diligence and with a peculiar interest for us was another missionary, _Karl Frederick Gützlaff_, a Lutheran whose ardent appeal for China helped to quicken the missionary spirit in the American Lutheran Church and also inspired David Livingstone to give his life to missions. [Sidenote: A Letter to the King.] Gützlaff was born of humble folk in Pyritz in Pomerania in 1803. When he was twelve years old he was apprenticed to a saddler, but he had other intentions for his life, and wrote in poetical form his desire to become a famous man. This poem the lad addressed to no less a person than the King of Prussia, through whom he was sent first to Halle to school and afterwards to the institute of Jaenicke at Berlin. In 1826 he went as a missionary of the Netherlands Society to Java. After several years of labor, he determined to penetrate into closed and inhospitable China. When the Netherlands Society declined to give him permission, he left their service in 1831 and became an interpreter on a coast vessel. [Sidenote: Appeals for Help.] Meanwhile during his service in Java, Gützlaff had learned the Chinese language, the most difficult of the many tongues which his extraordinary gift for language enabled him to master. Now in the many journeys which he made up and down the coast, he began to preach and to distribute thousands of tracts of his own translating. He wrote to England and America earnest appeals that workers be sent to share in his labors. Presently he was made an interpreter in the English consular service, in which position he had wide opportunity for Christian work. At the end of the Opium War he gave valuable service by his knowledge of the country and the people. Tradition records that at this time among China’s vast population there were six Christians. Though five ports had been opened by the treaty of Nanking, foreigners were not allowed to go far beyond them. To meet this difficulty, Gützlaff began the training of bands of native workers who should carry the Gospel to the most distant of the eighteen provinces. He continued to preach and to call upon the home lands for aid. In 1849 he visited Europe. Travelling rapidly, he flew “like an angel” through most of the European countries, preaching, pleading and endeavoring to form societies, which should divide vast China into missionary provinces. Among the few who heard and answered his plea was, as we have seen, David Livingstone.