The Centenary Volume of the Baptist Missionary Society, 1792-1892 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: for the conversion of strange peoples moves the truest friends of foreign missions to give money and time to bring to the Saviour their kinsmen after the flesh. An earnest spiritual life will force itself into all the relations we sustain to our fellows. When the Divine Spring visits a Christian community, it is not one bough alone which gets clothed with leaves and adorned with blossoms, for the sap rushing up all the black stems, makes them fruitful; nor will the life-streams ever sink from the branches which go over the wall without, at the same time, withdrawing from those parts of the tree which are entirely within the favoured orchard. The medal which was issued as a memento of the Jubilee indicated the countries to which Baptist missionaries had been sent. The empire which is the most populous of all had no symbol on the medal. The gates of CHINA were then shut to the foreigner. The Chinese rebellion in 1852-3 aroused much Christian thought, and in response to an appeal for a million copies of the New Testament, the Bible Society provided double the number at a cost of 32,000. The treaty with China? negotiated by Lord Elgin?had the effect of opening the long-closed doors, and the various denominations, ours among the number, endeavoured to utilise the opportunity. John Angel James, who had originated the idea of giving China the New Testament, published in 1858 a fervid and impressive argument for 100 missionaries, and this call was a powerful incentive to action. We sent to Chefoo Messrs. Kloekers and Hall. But for a long period we merely kept in touch with the Chinese, as is evident from the circumstances that on China we spent 850 in 1874, about the same sum in 1875, and we let the contribution fall as low as 412 in 1877. Then we did a little better. Addition...