Looking merely on the surface, a gloomy outlook is presented everywhere in China so far as Christian work is concerned. A great civil war is raging and the issue still hangs in doubt. Business and trade are slow. In the Yangsti Valley there is sure to be a terrible famine this winter. Millions will be destitute and with the terrible war on top of this the suffering will be awful to think of. Hundreds of missionaries have had to leave their fields of labor and flee to the coasts owing to disturbed conditions in the interior.But looking deeper we can see many causes for encouragement. The nation is being permeated with Christianity as never before. The people are accepting it more readily everywhere. Whichever side is victorious there can be little doubt but that this present struggle will make not only for a progressive China, but also for the progress of our Gospel. Indeed, it is my belief that now the time is coming when we are going to be overwhelmed with opportunity and our forces prove pitifully inadequate to our needs. If possible, our present force of missionaries in China should be doubled to meet an opportunity, the lack of which may never come again. If the China Inland Mission can be supported by faith - if this one mission of nine hundred and seventy missionaries in China, with no special denomination behind them, does so gloriously, why cannot we with some two and a half million members, besides adherents, not put five hundred in China? We need to pray for large things now.
In our interior work we have had a fairly good year. Several applied for baptism in Kaifeng. After examination we decided to wait until our autumn meeting to baptize them along with others who might come in then. In Pochow Bro. Bostick gave out supplies for tens of thousands of famine-stricken people last winter. This cannot but have a great effect on the people when they see how the Christian people pity the unfortunate.
In Chengchow there was a meeting of workers during the summer. Tent meetings have been held, and meetings in each of the outstations. While our work is young in the interior it is hopeful.
My wife and I were advised to leave Kaifeng-fu by the governor's secretary, as our mission compound was declared to be too far out in the event of trouble. So we left and went to the coast, taking steamer at Tientsin for Chefoo.
One scarce dare predict what the result of this present struggle will be. But it is safe to assume a newer China, a more liberal and open-minded China - a China wide open to the Gospel as never before. "Other men have labored and we have entered into their labors."
========== [From The Baptist World magazine January 18, 1912, p. 8; via Baylor U. digitized documents. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]
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