THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2323, 8 September 1898, Page 28

THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY.

Dr Sewell M'Farlane, who has represented the London Missionary Society for several years as a medical missionary in North China, and is now in Dunedin, occupied the pulpit on. Sunday morning in First Church, and preached in the evenng in the Moray place Congregational Church. In the afternoon there was a united Sunday schools' demonstration in Knox Church, where Dr M'Farlane thoroughly interested a large congregation of children. Indeed, he more than interested them — he succeeded in entertaining them. Wearing a dress, which, he said, was such as might be worn by a well-to-do tea merchant in Shanghai, he exhibited various Chinese articles, and explained a number of the customs of the country. He told his young hearers of the barbarous practice of mothers putting their feet on the necks of female infants and strangling their lives out, and said that at the present day in Pekin, at 4- o'clock in the morning, bullock drays might be seen in the streets picking up little bundles in which were the bodies of the babies that had died or been strangled in the night. One day a woman brought to Mrs M'Farlane a baby which she had found in a bundle under a tree outside a village, and which she had, on inquiring, found to have been put out there to die by another woman. A couple of hours later the woman who had found the infant brought another woman, and the latter, having lost her own little baby a few days before, asked that she might have this one in place of it, but if she had still been heathen, instead of converted, she would have put her foot on the neck of the child and strangled it. That woman took the child home and looked after it until it was six years old, when she had to leave the village for another place. Dr M'Farlane also narrated how, as the result of a visit he had paid to a boy who was very I thin and weak and suffering from bed sores, a I pretty little church was now built in one place j in China. The parents of the boy were Buddhists, and objected to their son being told about the "Jesus religion," but he (Dr I M'Farlane) told them that if they would nofc ' allow him to preoch the Gospel, he would not heal their son. That boy was now quite well and in their Sunday school, and his father and mother had come out of darkness into light. Before concluding this address Dr M'Farlane besought the prayers of his hearers on his return to China, and sang in Chinese a verse of a hymn which the congregation had sung. There was a very large attendance at tho Congregational Church, Port Chalmers, on Friday, when Dr M'ifarlane, who appeared in the costume of a Chinese tea merchant, delivered an able and instructing lecture, in which he explained the manners and customs of the Chinese, and dwelt specially on the barbarity of deforming the feet of their women, so greatly persisted in. He stated: that a society had been formed to crush out such barbarity. Several of the girls attendingthe Mission schools were being allowed to let their feet grow naturally. Dr M'Farlane stated that his station was at Chichow, 200 miles west of Tientsin. It had about 1-000 villages and a population of 4,000,000, while there were only four missionaries amongst them — the Rev. Mr Hopkins and his wife, with the speaker and Mrs M'Farlane. He pointed oiit the great advantages of sending medical missionaries to China, ivnd stated that there were 552 members attached to the churches in his district, and the London Mis- , sionary Society supplied the greater part of the means for its support. Dr M'Farlane stated that during the time he had been in China he had charge of the Mission Hospital at Chichow, which contained 60 beds, and had a medical hospital attached to it from which the young Chinese graduated. The lecture was very attractive and attentively listened to, and at its close a vote of thanks to the lee- , turer was unanimously carried. The annual meeting in connection with ; the London Missionary Society was held at the '. Moray place Congregational Church on Monday night. Dr Gordon Macdonald presided, ' and there was a large attendance. ! The Chairman, in referring to China as a medical mission field, said that that country ■ had unbounded mineral resources, an excel- [ lent soil and a healthy climate. These conditions tended to keep the eyes of Europe upon China. Now England wished to have a share in the country, and English citizens wished to have a say in the affairs of the country. People might ask what induced young men like Dr M'Farlane, possessing health and vigour, to go out to China. He believed the true explanation was to be found in the words of Shakespeare: "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may." Men might form their own schemes, but there seemed to be something above which mado them go on in a particular course. Dr M'Farlane, medical missionary under the London Missionary Society, said he had often been surprised how few people knew what a medical mission was. Medical missions were one of the most powerful things in China or elsewhere, if properly conducted. A medical man could go where a missionary could not, and that was where the power came in. He proceeded to give an account of the work of a medical missionary at Chi Chou in China, where he had been stationed for some years. The district comprised seven cities, 4000 villages, and 4,000,000 peo.ple. The mission was started in 1888. Ten years ago 36 of the Chinese had been converted to Christianity as a result of the missionaries' work. Now they had 552 members of tl>o> churches. They had one little church wbci. the mission started. Now they Lad 32 churches, 29 of which. were built by Chinese and were supported by Chinese. They bad ajso five schools now, one medical school, and one hospital. In ISO 7, when the first medical missionary went to China, there was not one native Christian in all China. In 184-3 there were less than 10 native Christians. In 1857 there were 500 ; in 1873, 50,000 ; in 1598 there were 70,000 members of churches and a Christian population of 200,000 souls. Christianity had gone ahead, and God had abundantly blessed the mission work. The speaker concluded by appealing to the congregation for their sympathy, their prayers, and their help on behalf of missions.