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bility and his willing devotion to his work. We tender our sincerest sympathy to his widow and family.

The St. John's Echo is, as far as we know, the first attempt which has been made in China toward College Journalism. The November issue has taken on a new form, and appears in a magazine shape with eight well-filled pages. Its first article is an editorial by Mr. Pott, and this is followed by News Columns. There are essays on "Should China employ Foreigners in Public Offices," on the "Postal System," on "Vegetarianism," on "How Tea is grown and prepared in our Country," and "Put Yourself in His Place." These essays show that the minds of these pupils are being directed to useful and important topics. The English style is, of course, not beyond criticism, but reflects credit upon the instruction given in the school. This paper will develop freedom of thought among the pupils, as shown in the article on "Put Yourself in His Place," which says: "A teacher of high temper, sitting in his comfortable chair with a line of school boys in front of him, will very often employ his 'ferule' upon any one who mispronounces a word or because he does not perform his duties well." We detect in this an inuendo, which probably some member of their school faculty also appreciates. We congratulate the young men of St. John's on their energy and wish them continued success.

A new work on "Qualitative Analysis" is in preparation by Dr. G. A. Stuart, of Wuhu. Dr. Neal, of Shantung, has handed over his valuable manuscript on this subject to Dr. Stuart, whose work will be based on it. This book promises to be a very valuable one to our schools, and will supply a felt need.

Much good work is being done in the new Naval College at Nanking. In the examinations held December 4th-8th papers were set in the following subjects: Arithmetic and Algebra, Geography, Grammar, Composition and Translation, Euclid, Trigonometry and Mensuration, Statics, Steam Engineering, Navigation, Magnetism, Winds and Currents and Nautical Astronomy. These papers were prepared in English by Dr. Fryer and printed in good form. The examinations were conducted by Dr. Fryer and the papers worked by him, which ensures thoroughness. They were by no means easy papers, but the young men passed creditable examinations. Great credit is due to the foreign Professors, Messrs. Penniall and Hearson for the advancement which their pupils have been able to make during the two years in which the College has been in operation. Such thorough work in Government Schools is a stimulus and help to all other schools in China.

Theological Instruction. Its Place in Mission Work in China.

BY REV. D. Z. SHEFFIELD, D.D.

[American Board's Mission].

MISSION work has the same ultimate end as has all Christian

activity, namely, to lead men to Christ and to build them

up in that knowledge and virtue which has Christ as its centre and its life-giving power. It follows that those forms of Christian activity which have proved the most valuable in the past history of the Church should find an early introduction into mission fields always of course with a wise reference to the altered circumstances and the stage of progress already reached by the mission Church in its upward evolution.

One thought needs to be emphasized at the outset of this discussion, that Christian evangelization, while it is of supreme importance as marking the beginning of the Christian life, is but a stepping-stone to the higher work of Christian edification. Christian evangelization opens the fountains from which flow forth the waters of life, while Christian edification deepens and broadens the channels through which these waters flow, to enrich and ennoble all the capacities of mind and heart. Christian evangelization plants the seed of the new life, while Christian edification cultivates the soil and nourishes and protects the growing tree until it at last brings forth its perfect and abundant fruit. We must not then think of Christian education as only an ornament to character, to be added or omitted at pleasure. Rather should we think of it as the essential condition of that mental and spiritual growth which can alone fit men for the difficult work and the grave responsibilities of Christian leadership in the future life-and-death conflict with heathenism.

In the training of a body of Christian leaders for the Church of China we should study with care the lessons that are written for our instruction in the record of the planting of the apostolic Church; but in applying these lessons we should keep clearly in mind the free and expansive spirit of Christianity, which is universal in its scope and all embracing in its methods of propagation. Christianity uses imperfect instrumentalities until it can prepare for itself others of a higher order of excellence and efficiency. She lays her hands upon the ever widening lines of human learning and declares that they are all her witnesses. She urges upon men that all their talents and acquirements and opportunities belong to her, and

should be freely offered upon her altar of service. Christianity is spirit and it is life, and God is jealous that this spirit and life should propagate itself from age to age, but He leaves to the wisdom and experience of the Church in each generation of its development the question of selecting those who are to become the future leaders of the Church, as also the scope and manner of their education and training for their work. The great leaders of the Apostolic Church had already received strong intellectual and spiritual impressions from the teachings of the Jewish Church, giving to them lofty conceptions of the divine character and deep convictions of truth and duty, before they were called to become the followers of Christ and to lay the foundations of His universal Church in the world. They were especially selected for their work by Him who knew what was in the heart of man. They listened to His words who spake as never man spake. They looked upon those works of power which witnessed to Christ as the incarnate Son of God. Their lives felt the transforming influence of contact with His perfect life. They saw their beloved Master as He submitted Himself to the power of His enemies, and His lifeless body hung upon the cross of calvary. They saw Him again when He had conquered death, and to strengthen their faith lingered for a little time upon the border-land between the two worlds, before He returned to His heavenly glory. They were further fitted for their work by the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit, anointing them to witness with power for Christ and His great salvation. Surely men thus selected, thus educated and thus endowed for their work, may well be taken as models for Christian leadership; but in these men we find no justification for placing men of imperfect training in responsible positions as leaders of the Church of China. Moses and the prophets were divinely appointed teachers to prepare men for the reception of the teachings of Christ, and when the new life of faith in Christ as the world's redeemer was begotten in the hearts of Peter, James and John, of Paul, and Barnabas, and Timothy, the divine grace had poured itself into vessels of a depth and capacity which a mixed Confucian and Buddhistic civilization has not produced. Still again, the flowing together of diverse national types and the blending of differing civilizations in the time of Christ, with Judaism to emphasize the claims of conscience, with Greece to train men's intellects and with Rome to make men firm in decision and bold in action, produced a type of character, which, when touched by the life of Christ, gave to men a moral earnestness, a courage of conviction and a self-assertion in the cause of truth, which we have no right to hope to see reproduced in the preparatory stage of mission work in China. Confucianism as a system of

ethics and social life subordinates the individual to the family, and the family to the state, and binds all with the iron bonds of fixed. traditional requirements. Thus the individual finds himself cemented into a system. The young are in slavery to the authority of parents and elders, the family is in bondage to the demands of custom, conscience is cramped and often misdirected in its exercise, and the spirit of fear and servility is begotten rather than that of courage and self-assertion.

This does not mean that Chinese character fails to supply the material out of which may be built up a noble, Christian manhood, but it does mean that preceding the revelation of the new worldreligion there was a special preparatory work in the hearts of men, which does not exist in China as an introduction to modern Christian missions. This is a sufficient explanation of the fact that Christian leaders are slow to take their places in the Church of China. Peter and John, and Paul and Apollos do not appear at once, since such characters are the products of intellectual and spiritual forces in which the elements of culture and of time for growth must enter. Missionaries must plant and water and nurture and prune and wait before the fruits of the Christian life, perfect in form and rich in flavor, ripen for their hands. It is only through a process of education in which the work of the human teachers is interpenetrated with the work of the divine teacher, that a strong and symmetrical Christian manhood can be built up, and men learn to know themselves in their true dignity as the sons of God, writing their names with an unwavering confidence in the promises of God and knowing in their own heart-life the sacredness of truth, the beauty of holiness and the sweetness of love. These remarks are general, applying to the entire membership of the Church of China, but they have a special bearing upon the question of raising up Christian leaders for the Church and point with emphasis to the necessity of thorough and protracted training for such leadership.

Should students be selected and trained for Christian work in advance of the ability of the native Church to give them support? Christianity in its first introduction, owing to the special providential preparations, expanded with great rapidity, both among the Jews and the surrounding Gentile nationalities, and men appeared who were fitted in a good degree to take the place of leaders in the newly established Churches; but three centuries later, when Christianity became the state-religion, and crowds were everywhere knocking for admission at its doors, the number of trained Christian leaders was wholly inadequate to supply the needs of the Church, and this defect was an important element in the decay of the intellectual and spiritual life of the Church. Christianity meets with peculiar

difficulties in its attack upon the ancient and petrified civilization of China. Its conquests must be necessarily slow at the outset, and the missionaries must be both the founders and the leaders of the infant Churches. It is found in experience that boys and young men, often of excellent ability and promise, can be selected and trained for Christian work before there is a native Church of sufficient numbers and means to undertake their support. Through the aid of such assistants, if Christian truth has taken a deep hold of their lives, the missionary can multiply his own efficiency. They go before him to prepare his way, they follow after him to confirm his teachings, they correct prejudices and explain difficulties; above all they illustrate in their lives what it is to be a Christian within the environments of heathenism. It is often objected that the employment of such men in the use of foreign money embarrasses the problem of a vigorous and self-propagating Church. To this it may be answered that the missionary ought not to neglect the use of a vital agency in the work of creating a native Church because there are incidental dangers to be guarded against in the use of such an agency. In the experience of my own mission the native preachers who have received the most careful education in the mission schools have caught most fully the spirit of the missionaries, and are the leaders of the Church in its aggressive work and in its efforts at self-support.

Shall young men be trained for Christian work by individual missionaries, or shall they be educated in mission schools? We have already pointed out reasons why missionaries in China need not hope to call at once to their assistance Christian workmen of the spirit and previous preparation of Mark and Luke, of Timothy and Apollos. He must at first be content to look for assistance to imperfectly prepared instruments, and if in addition to his evangelistic work he undertakes to give systematic instruction to his assistants his gifts must be extraordinary, and his capacity for labor pre-eminent, or his work will lack proportion and completeness. Usually under such circumstances the work of the evangelist will encroach upon the work of the professor, and the education of the assistants will be narrow and imperfect. Again, such training would naturally confine itself to strictly Biblical or Theological lines, while students gathered into Christian schools would pursue a wider line of preparatory study, under teachers especially fitted for their work, and would at length enter upon their theological studies with their capacities quickened and their minds enriched with a broader range of knowledge, which ought to fit them for places of especial usefulness and responsibility in the Church of the future. Again there is a mutual inspiration and helpfulness in study when a body of young men are congregated

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