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NORTH CHINA UNION COLLEGE, PEKING.

Women's College and Academy, Bible Women's Training School.

During last year-1908-there were admitted 249 patients.
Discharged cured, 80, or 32 % of the admissions.

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improved, 56, 22/2

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This rather high percentage of cures is probably due to a larger proportion of acute cases admitted than is found in the home lands.

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Medical Philanthropies.

BY DR. W. E. MACKLIN, NANKING.

HE typical medical missionary is the Good Samaritan. We should all learn of this parable. It should be our duty to obey the positive command, Go thou and do likewise, as much as to obey the moral law, Do not steal. The Christian should ever stoop to relieve the suffering or save the dying. Even the heathen have more or less of this idea, as we can learn from their proverbs: "Do not add a new flower to a tapestry; send coals to the poor in the snow storm. "The princely man helps the poor; he does not reach after the rich." "Take from the rich to help the poor." Philanthropy is not a monopoly of our faith, but we as Christians should evidence it more completely and with greater consistence.

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If we only attempted to relieve the ills of the comfortable classes we should do good, but there would be no necessary element of Christianity in our work. "The Gentiles do this and have their reward." To energize over the poor and needy, who cannot reward us, shows the true spirit of the Gospel. To do good hoping for nothing again, is our distinctive duty.

After residing in Nanking a few months I was walking through the Drum Tower and saw a very sick man lying under a mat. I passed on, but my conscience would not ease, and I must return and try to act the Good Samaritan. I took him to a rented school building, but though I worked long, I failed to restore him. My efforts made a good impression however. For the past twenty years, especially since I have had a hospital building, I have picked up many hundreds of the sick poor. If they die, I call for the police officer (Tipao), and if he refuses to bury, I send for the magistrate to hold an inquest. Now merely the threat of an inquest makes the Ti

pao get a coffin and bury the body. This work makes a good impression on the people. It does not become a burden on account of the cost, as rich people give freely to such disinterested philanthropy. It opens the doors of the heart to us on all sides and provides full proof of our disinterested sincerity.

Medical missionaries could and should do more of this type of work. We should trust in the Lord to supply the means, and take in all the cases we see. He will provide the means.

We should have sheds for the care of contagious cases. To preach by act the message of God's care for the body, and to open the road to health by diminishing wherever it is possible the danger of disease, is a pioneer work specially incumbent upon the missionary from the West with his knowledge of the causes and means of prevention of disease.

We should open up fresh air sheds for the care of the consumptive. This much-needed work is only in its beginning. It is our privilege to teach the Chinese how best to fight against this terrible scourge, so deadly in this land.

Special places or colonies should be established for lepers. Such work as has been done for this afflicted and loathsome class calls forth the admiration of the Chinese of all classes. Our Lord's example in reference to the lepers is one we must follow in this land. It is a door open to our hands, a saving work of mercy our Master has set His servants here to accomplish. Existing leper institutions should be enlarged by the united efforts of all missions in the empire and new ones opened in needy places.

The church of the future will plan for large tracts of land on which consumptives can work in the open air, and even partly disabled cripples could earn a living. Dr. Harris Cooley, head of the charities in Cleveland, Ohio, has several thousand acres of land on which he enables the the poor to make a living. Consumptives have a place to themselves. He tells me that a man with one arm or one leg can earn a living on free land. It is not necessary to pauperize this class of people, but possible to put them in the way of being independent and self-supporting.

In his work of philanthropy, energized by the love of Jesus Christ, the medical missionary finds avenues for service open all around him. There is no limit to the scope of his labours, for the sick and afflicted crowd upon him everywhere. His service of love is a mighty weapon for the establishment

of the kingdom of God. Our hospitals should be models of efficiency to the Chinese; they should also be models of that practical, self-denying, saving work of love which is the very crown of Christ's teaching. "Above all things, love."

The-An Eastertide Suggestion.

BY W. S. PAKENHAM WALSH, B.A., FOOCHOW.

T was, I believe, a Greek usage that a man coming forward with a suggestion should do so with a rope round

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his neck. He thus became himself a suggestion, and no doubt a little gentle pressure from time to time helped to set certain limits to his imagination. For him, the ropebound, the invitation to relieve his mind could hardly be spoken of as pressing, nor would he be likely to appear often before the public. His best hope would doubtless lie in proving that his suggestion, though possibly novel to his hearers, had its sanction and inspiration in the old history of their common fatherland, and in those time-honoured precedents laid down by ancient worthies, respect and reverence for whose memory was still fresh as the new spring flowers. Therefore in making my suggestion, I shall endeavour to ease the pressure on my cricoid cartilage by referring briefly to the early story of our common Christianity in England. After Augustine had landed on the isle of Thanet in the late summer of 596 A.D., and his missionary work was beginning to meet with a certain measure of visible success, he wrote to Gregory the Great to ask him what attitude he should adopt towards the many rites and religious festivals of the Anglo-Saxon people round about him. Gregory was for a time uncertain what was the best course to pursue, and was at first inclined to think that it would be the most faithful and effective policy to condemn the old religious customs en bloc, and do away with them root and branch. However, as he thought more carefully over the matter, he was led finally to a very different conclusion-and let us remember that he was not a man to be led to important conclusions apart from much prayer-and this conclusion at which he had arrived, be proceeded to embody in a letter to Augustine and sent it to him by the hand of Mellitus, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. In this letter he states that he is expressing the opinion to which he has come after mature deliberation (Diu

cogitans tractavi), and the great principle which he laid down for missionary work in England was this, that instead of utterly condemning and destroying the old religious customs of the people, the spirit of Christianity was, as far as was possible, to take possession of and transform them, eliminating all that was superstitious and false while preserving the old names with whatever of truth the old ideas might contain, "to the end that through having some outward joys continued to them, they may more easily agree to accept the true inward joys. For assuredly it is impossible to cut away all things at once from minds hardened by evil custom just as the man who strives to reach the summit of perfection, climbs by steps or paces, not by leaps or bounds."

Now while not being prepared to support every action of Augustine in his missionary work, nor to contend that any one missionary policy, however blessed, is necessarily binding upon all, I should like to point out what is a matter of quiet fact, namely, that the carrying out in England of these principles did not do that injury to the Christian cause which some of us might have been inclined to foretell with no uncertain sound. Thirteen hundred years have given that missionary policy a fair testing, and as we look back now we can see that Gregory was not overstating the power of the Gospel when he maintained that Christian truth could use whatever was of value in the old systems without final injury to itself. The traces of his missionary policy remain and are enjoyed to-day over the whole English-speaking world, and are seen in the very language of the Anglo-Saxon race. For instance, as a result of this policy we still retain the old Teutonic names for the days of the week: Sunday (the day on which the sun was worshipped), Monday (the moon's day), Tuesday (Tuisco's day), Wednesday (Wodin's day), Thursday (Thor's day), Friday (Friga's day), Saturday (Saeter's day), nor has our common Christianity suffered because of this link with our heathen past. Yet there can be but little doubt that not a few in those early days held up their hands in dismay and prophecied terrible things, should the old pagan names be retained. Well, thirteen hundred years have passed, and these forebodings have not as yet been fulfilled, nor does there seem any reasonable likelihood that they ever will be fulfilled. How many missionaries in China as they go to church on Sunday or to the weekly prayer-meeting on the day of Wodin or Saeter, how many even feel the temptation to

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