Annals of the Propagation of the Faith Volume 9-10 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1848 Excerpt: ...oasis, where piety is so free as to be unapprehensive of giving loud vent to its expression, Ho-nan presents symptoms of fear calculated rather to excite our pity than justify palliation. Although persecution is not mooted here, the faithful grow alarmed at everything; in their eyes every neophyte is a Judas, every pagan a spy; if the missioner himself desires a good reception, he must become the prisoner of whomsoever gives him an asylum. They scarcely venture to come at night in order to make an annual confession, and after assisting once at the holy sacrifice, they repair back for one year to their village, where everything they see, hear, and breathe is paganish. Who can state how short the distance and how rapid the slide from this insulation to apostacy? Menaced more seriously, but also better trained to combat, the church of Su-tchuen seemed indifferent to the edicts of death, as it was absorbed in the anguishes of misery and famine. Besides the police here have quite enough to occupy them in the pursuit of the hungry banditti that spread conflagration and plunder over the whole province. As to the Christians, they are victims resigned to the scourge; sometimes they drag themselves in numbers like walking skeletons to the feet of the priest to ask him for extreme unction reserved for the dying, as they have eaten nothing for three or four days back. At the sight of such faith, that neither fails before the exhibition of torments nor the excess of misery, the dispositions of more than one mandarin have undergone a change in favour of the neophytes, and the viceroy of Su-tchuen heretofore declared that he would have no hesitation in becoming a Christian if he could reconcile the gospel with his functions.-f Hou-Kouang, in the centre of the empire, exhi...