Life and light for woman . is throwing her life and talents away, and, tliough they do notsay it, she knows she can never have their prayers or money to help her inher work. They say they believe in Christ as the Saviour of the world, butnot in foreign missions ; that the Chinese have their own religion, which is HINDRANCES TO MISSION WORK IN CHINA. 295 good enough for them, and they need no salvation. Still unmoved by theirlack of sympathy and interest, final preparations are made, the good-bys said,and our new missionary is en route to the land of the Celestials. Once on the field, sh
Life and light for woman . is throwing her life and talents away, and, tliough they do notsay it, she knows she can never have their prayers or money to help her inher work. They say they believe in Christ as the Saviour of the world, butnot in foreign missions ; that the Chinese have their own religion, which is HINDRANCES TO MISSION WORK IN CHINA. 295 good enough for them, and they need no salvation. Still unmoved by theirlack of sympathy and interest, final preparations are made, the good-bys said,and our new missionary is en route to the land of the Celestials. Once on the field, she finds herself dumb before a people with whom shelongs to speak. The Chinese language, the most difficult in the world, isdoubtless the only one having tones or inflections. Some of its sounds it isalmost impossible for a foreigner to acquire, unless his tongue is more flexiblethan the average, while its idiom makes you feel as though you were dizzv-headed, so confusing is the arrangement of words into sentences. To make. MISS ANDREWS LEAVING FOR A VILLAGE VISIT. a mistake, if one can still understand your meaning, is not so bad. But when•one tells a medical patient to eat her stockings instead of tlie pills she hadhoped would cure her, or by giving one wrong tone, and a soft instead of ahard sound, one makes the unthought-of blunder of saying the omniverouspig instead of the Omniscient God, it will bring shame upon herself andridicule upon the very religion she wants the people to accept and love. So 296 LIFE AND LIGHT. \,Julyi, our young worker, even if she has a gift for languages, by oft-repeatedmistakes of greater or less gravity is sometimes discouraged, and feels thatshe can never be a successful missionary. In the study of the language it does not take long for one to see that manyof the words which describe the unchaste, immoral life have as their radicalor root the syllable for woman ; and in the work for women it is necessaryto so educate and train tiiem that they
Size: 1728px × 1446px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectcongregationalchurch
