WORK OF MISSIONS

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 83, 5 October 1922, Page 4

WORK OF MISSIONS

TRANSFORMING HEATHEN

PEOPLE,

MISSIONARY ADDRESS.

_ The annual public meeting of the Wellington Auxiliary of the London Missionary Society was held in the Cambridge terrace Congregational Church yesterday evening. Mi. Frank Meadoweroft, the president of -the auxiliary, occupied the chair. Interesting addresses were delivered (by the Rev. G. J. Williams, organising agent of the London Missionary Society for Australia and New Zealand, and Mrs. Williams. Mrs. Williams gave her impressions of China, received on a recent visit after twenty years' absence. Her greatest joy, she said, was to'see the growth of missionary work there. One's first impression was .the , economic development of that great land; the. big, centres were now great centres of industry. Anothei thing that impressed hei was the patriotism and national zeal of the students. This was .manifested by a determination to boycott 'Japanese goods. In Canton, the boys were responsible foi a great crusade against gambling. A third impression waf tbf way in which the Chinese are taking . the leadership of the Church into their own. hands.

The Rev. G- J. Williams took for his topic "The Magic of Missions." All missionaries, he said, wen either witches or wizards. When one saw the difference between cannibals and the cannibals' children, one realised the magic of missions. Missions, he said, inspired men with the love of work. Sir, H- H Johnston, tbr African- explorer, said: "The beneficent being \who' has inspired the native to work is the missionary." Missions were achieving wonderful success in the production of new types of character. In Papua, said the speaker, one would come to a cannibal villag and see men and women degraded and bestial, and then go into a mission school to find boys and girls whom one would ndt hesitate to take into one's own home. And. those boys and girls were the sons and daughters of the cannibals.

The speaker concluded by' pointing outHhe great work which yet remained to be dove by the society, and made a plea for assistance in order that the work might be carried on.

Ml". Meadowcroft expressed the gratitude of those present to Mr. .and Mrs. Williams, and closed the meeting with prayer.- <.