CHRISTIANS IN CHINA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20384, 12 October 1929, Page 13

CHRISTIANS IN CHINA.

TOTAL OF THREE MILLIONS.

THE MISSIONARIES* WORK.

" MORE NEEDED THAN EVER."

Those who value missionary work in China and dispute the view of those who assert that present conditions are an unhappy sequel to their work will be heartened by a remarkable but careful appraisal of missionary labours in the Atlantic Monthly, written by Mr. Kenneth S. Latourette. "Chinese Christians aro much better educated than the average Chinese about them," says Mr. Latourette. "All told, thero aro to-day in China about three million professing Christians. Sixty per cent, of the men and forty per cent, of the women who aro members of Protestant churches aro sufficiently literate to bo ablo to read tho New Testament. This is many times the percentage of literacy of tho non-Christian population. Particularly have Protestants stressed secondary and higher schools. "Missionaries, especially Protestants, were pioneers in introducing the educational methods and materials of the West. Tho result has been that in the Christian nnd notably in the Protestant, community China has a body of men and women who aro better prepared than the great body of their fellow-countrymen for the transition brought by tho coming of the West." A Large Publishing _ House. "Six out of ten of the present heads of the executive departments at Nanking are Protestant Christians, some of them the product of Protestant schools, and ono the son of a Protestant clergyman. The largest publishing house in China —and, incidentally, in tho world—the Commercial Press, which is doing more than any other single agency to put China in touch with tho printed form of the best thought of the new age and has provided a large proportion of the text books for the new Government schools, was begun by men trained in a Protestant mission press. "Tho new medical profession of China, embodying the best of modern science and an immeasurable distance beyond the older Chinese systems, has been largely the product of Protestant missionaries. Tho majority of tho best hospitals aro under Christian auspices, as nro most of tho best medical schools. The China Medical Association is an outgrowth of the Medical Missionary Association. "If the future medical profession of China maintains ideals of unselfish service and disinterested scientific accuracy, it will be largely because of its missionary parentage. The promotion of public health has much of it been inaugurated by tho Protestant missionary. Tho first hospital in all China for the insane was tfie work of a Protestant missionary, as was the first successful attempt to teach the Chinese blind to read. Famine Relief Funds. "A large proportion of the famine relief of recent years has been administered by missionaries, and missionaries have usually taken the lead in stirring up Europe and America to give to famine funds. Tho even more difficult problem of preventing famines has been attacked by missionaries, partly through improvements in agricultural methods. "If a newer and finer China emerges, as some of us have faith to anticipate, it will bo in part because in the days of its transition there were unselfishly labouring in it thousands of foreigners who sought to bring it in touch with tho best that the Occident had to give. "The day of the missionary is by no means done. His position is more difficult and more fraught with personal danger than it was a decade ago, but in some respects the missionary is more needed than he ever has been. It may be a hundred years or more before stability nnd order return to China. In that interval the missionary enterprise offers ono of the most effective ways for the West to ensure and hasten the coming of a better day to that great country."