Summary of the Seven Provinces
Looking on the state of the seven provinces now enumerated, the only
provinces in which Protestant missionaries were labouring before 1865, there is
an aggregate of perhaps 11 g millions, of whom, allowing a hundred thousand
souls to every missionary, there still remain over 80 millions, for whose direct
benefit nothing is being attempted, to whom no herald of mercy is designated,
and by whom the glad tidings of great joy have never been heard. Over eighty
millions famishing for want of that food which God has so liberally provided;
perishing for lack of that knowledge which it is the Church’s duty to diffuse.
Perishing, we say.
While we whose souls are lighted
With wisdom from on high,
To China’s sons benighted,
The lamp of life deny!
In 1857, the writer had on one occasion been preaching in Ningpo the glad tidings of salvation through the finished work of Christ, when a middle-aged man stood up, and before his assembled countrymen gave the following testimony to the power of the gospel: — “I have long sought for the truth — as did my father before me — but I have not found it. I have travelled far, but I have not found it. I have found no rest in Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism; but I do find rest in what I have heard to-night. Henceforth
Summary of the Seven Provinces.
I believe in Jesus.” This man was one of the leading officers of a sect of reformed Buddhists in Ningpo. A short time after this profession of faith in the Saviour, there was a meeting of the sect over which he had formerly presided. The writer accompanied him to that meeting, and there, to his former co-religionists, he testified of the peace which he had obtained in believing. Soon after, one of his former companions was converted and baptized. Both now sleep in Jesus. The first of these two, long continued to preach to his countrymen the glad tidings of great joy. A few nights after his conversion, he asked the writer how long these glad tidings had been kno%n in England. He was told that we had had the gospel for some hundreds of years. The man looked amazed. “What!” said he, “is it possible that for hundreds of years you have had the knowledge of these glad tidings in your possession, and yet have only now come to preach them to us? My father sought after the truth for more than twenty years, and died without finding it. Why did you not come sooner?” Ah! why, indeed, did we not go sooner? Why? Shall we say the way was not open? For fifty years it has been more open than we have been ready to occupy. And now that it is so much more open than ever before, why are we still so slow to enter in? Since the treaty of Tien-tsin, more new Romish missionaries and sisters of charity have been poured into China than the whole staff of Protestant missionaries. Why are we doing so little? While we hang back the multitudes perish.
Briefly to recapitulate our survey of the seven provinces, we find: —
Province.
Area.
I.
square
miles
FUH-KIEN
‘J
Cheh-kiang
J,
KlANG-SU
.. 40,140
S-Shan-tung
53,768
Chih-li
,j
HU-PEH
69,479
Totals
402,300
Population.
men
women
IS
“9
men
women
The average population of these provinces is 1 7 millions, and the average number of missionaries is 5 1. And after allowing a far larger sphere to each missionary than he can possibly fill, and allowing a similar sphere of 100,000 souls to each single lady missionary, there still remain more than 83 millions of that interesting but benighted people in these provinces alone, utterly and hopelessly beyond the reach of the existing agencies in China for the spread of the gospel.
32, The last eleven Provinces.
But deplorable as is the view thus presented by the seven provinces where missionaries have longest laboured, the prospect furnished by the rest of the empire is still more distressing, as a very brief survey will shew.