o be His helpmate."
DANTE.

"He went out to seek wisdom, as many a one has
done, looking for the laws of God with clear eyes
to see, with a pure heart to understand, and after
many troubles, after many mistakes, after much
suffering, he came at last to the truth."--H.
FIELDING HALL.

CHAPTER XIII

THE LIFE STORY OF PASTOR WANG

IF Pastor Hsi may be spoken of as the Paul of the Shansi Church,
Barnabas finds his counterpart in Pastor Wang of Hwochow.

Though possessing none of the peculiar gifts which made Hsi a leader
amongst foreigners and Chinese, he has exercised a remarkable personal
influence upon hundreds of lives, winning by consistency and sincerity
those with whom he has come in contact. On our first arrival we found
him already in charge, conducting the Sunday services and generally
caring for the Church members.

His unfailing courtesy, consideration, and tact simplified many
difficult situations, and the exercise of his natural gift for gathering
people around him and drawing out the best in them soon resulted in a
rapidly growing work. He was almost immediately chosen as Deacon, and
before long the office of Elder was given to him. All turned to Mr. Wang
in difficulty, sought his advice in perplexity, and by the unanimous
desire of the Church he was in 1909 ordained Pastor at Hwochow.

He has developed his gifts in the school of adversity, for trouble
overtook him in his childhood when his father died only a few years
before the great famine which was to sweep over the province of Shansi.
Poor they always were, and his love for his mother was intensified as he
saw the self-sacrificing devotion with which she earned enough by her
spinning to enable him to continue his schooling. At the age of fifteen
he was married, and on the bride's arrival the falsity of the middleman
through whom the engagement had been long ago contracted was revealed,
for the bride was a helpless cripple and a serious burden on the already
overpressed household.

Food soon began to be scarce, for the rains failed and the prospect of
the wheat harvest was poor. They endured and hoped, being mercifully
saved from the knowledge that they must now enter upon a period when the
inhabitants of Shansi should touch the depths of human suffering and
call on death to end their woes. No pen can fully describe the horrors
of that