MISSION WORK IN CHINA

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 17840, 12 October 1929, Page 18 (Supplement)

MISSION WORK IN CHINA

WHAT IT HAS DONE. AN OUTSIDER’S VIEW. 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 laboui 3 in the “Atlantic Monthly," written by Mr Kenneth S. Latourette. He says: “'Chinese Christians, moreover, are much better educated than the avertace Chinese about them. All told, there are to-day in China about three million professing Christians. Sixty per cent, of the men and forty per cent, of the women who are members of Protestant churches are sufficiently literate to be able to read the New Testament. This is many times the percentage of literacy of the nonChristian population. Particular, y have Protestants stressed Secondary and Higher Schools. “Missionaries, especially Protestants were pioneers in introducing the educational methods and materials of the West. The result has been that in the Christian and notably in the Protestant community China lias a body of men and women who are better prepared than the great body of their fellow countrymen for the transition brought by the coming of the West. "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 one the son of a Protestant clergyman. The largest publishing house in China —and, incidentally, in the world —the Commercial Press, which is doing more than any other’single agency to put China in touch with the printed form of the best thought of the new age and has provided a large proportion of the textbooks for the new Government schools, was begun by men trained in a Protestant mission press. “The new medical profession of China, embodying the best of modern science, and' an immeasurable distance beyond Hie older Chinese systems, has been largely the product of Protestant missionaries. The majority of the best hospitals are under Christian auspices, as are most of the 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 augurated by the Protestant missionary. The first hospital in all China for the insane was the work of a Protestant missionary, as was the I first successful attempt to teach the , Chinese blind to read, j “A large proportion of the famine i relief of recent years lias been adminI istered by missionaries, and missionarj ies have usually taken the lead in