the darkness around them. At the ratio of one man to a hundred thousand Chinese, 200 would be needed for this province alone! Who shall tell the mass of this people of a Saviour's love? Who shall minister to their souls' need?
DIAGRAM OF RELATIVE AREAS. Hu-peh has 22 Missionaries. Great Britain, 35,000 Ministers. Scotland alone, 3845 Ministers. |
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The Lord said, "Go ye." The Word still says, "Go ye." Christian brothers, Christian sisters, does not that "ye" mean you?—you who are created in Christ Jesus unto good works—a peculiar people zealous of good works?
SUMMARY OF THE SEVEN PROVINCES.
Looking on the state of the seven provinces now enumerated, the only provinces in which Protestant missionaries were labouring before 1865, there is an aggregate of perhaps 119 millions, of whom, allowing a hundred thousand souls to every missionary, there still remain over 80 millions, for whose direct benefit nothing is being attempted, to whom no herald of mercy is designated, and by whom the glad tidings of great joy have never been heard. Over eighty millions famishing for want of that food which God has so liberally provided; perishing for lack of that knowledge which it is the Church's duty to diffuse. Perishing, we say,
While we whose souls are lighted
With wisdom from on high,
To China's sons benighted,
The lamp of life deny!
In 1857, the writer had on one occasion been preaching in Ningpo the glad tidings of salvation through the finished work of Christ, when a middle-aged man stood up, and before his assembled countrymen gave the following testimony to the power of the gospel:—"I have long sought for the truth—as did my father before me—but I have not found it. I have travelled far, but I have not found it. I have found no rest in Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism; but I do find rest in what I have heard to-night. Henceforth
