ION AT HWOCHOW

SHOWING THINGS AS THEY SOMETIMES ARE

IN spite of the valuable help given by study-circles, training-colleges,
and other means by which the candidate for the mission field is equipped
for his work, I question if many are fully prepared, when they arrive at
the station to which they have been appointed, to find themselves
studied, summed up, and criticised by the people to whom they have come
in the capacity of teachers, and from whom they unconsciously expected
some measure of deference.

The Westerner, as such, has no prestige in the eyes of the Chinese, and
though his wealth, education, and business capacity may command more or
less respect, the deep-rooted feeling is a sense of the intrinsic
superiority of the Middle Kingdom and its sons to the barbaric subjects
of a vague territory known as the "Kingdom without"--that is, without
the pale of the ancient civilisation. By grace, the Christian will
welcome you as a fellow-subject of the Kingdom of God, but on this
ground only, and on no preconceived assumption of your superiority, will
you be accepted.

The fact that you have come several thousands of miles in order to
preach the Gospel, is not sufficient to place you unquestionably on a
pedestal. By temperament you are either impetuous or slow, easy-going or
exacting, courteous or brusque, and you will prove to be by nature more
or less reasonable or unreasonable when the Chinaman seeks to make you
understand _li_, an untranslatable word, which embodies the idea of the
complete range of all that it is suitable that you should be and do, on
every occasion.

Failure to readjust your mind to such conditions during the first years
of your missionary life may prove an eventual fatal barrier to mutual
sympathetic understanding, and the establishment of that barrier has
been one of the difficulties which has not been much spoken of by those
with whom you have conversed, though they have doubtless been keenly
conscious of it themselves.

We returned to Hwochow. The house was ready for us, and so were the
Church members. "New people," said some, "we are unaccustomed to each
other; they do not understand our circumstances, and we do not know
them."

"Why did they spend months in another district instead of coming at once
to make themselves acquainted with us, our affairs, and our homes?"

"It is a case of clear neglect," said another. "I have been a Church
member for fifteen years, and all the notice