Seven hundred and fifty of these men already members of the churches
connected with our mission on the Pacific Coast! and who will say how
many more on the rolls of our churches from St. Louis to Boston! What
are these Chinese converts, the fruitage of our Sunday-schools and
prayer-meetings, our personal labor, but God's blessed seal set upon our
Christian faith! Here is the evidence. Ours is the conquering faith of
the world. It will save every man, for it has saved these men, no less
than you and me.

But this is not all. China's day has come. We hear from beyond the sea
of the new railway, the awful floods, the burning of the "Altar of
Heaven," and the strange stirrings of the mind of that mighty people,
the oldest, and judged by its persistent life, the strongest now on the
globe. Merchants tell us of its limitless trade: diplomatists speak of
its astuteness and of its new navy, second only to that of England;
scholars wonder at a nation of heathen with whom learning determines
rank, and where the "boss" and the fixer of elections are unknown.
Missionaries write of the throngs that gather in strange cities to hear
them preach, of the new gentleness and courtesy everywhere shown them,
and of the increasing number of young people pressing into the mission
schools.

In the midst of all this, when the Lord's voice is heard calling us to
lift up our eyes and look on the fields now white for the harvest, comes
word from our solitary watchman upon the watch-tower in Hong-Kong that
when he returned to his post, as he did last year, perplexed and
down-hearted, because not one Christian in all America heeded his call
and went with him to his field, to his surprise and joy the Lord has
been preparing his own servants in the person of Chinese emigrants
coming home from America, bringing with them not money only and
knowledge of the wide world, but the new-found faith; graduates of
laundries, but also of our Sunday-schools, members of our churches,
filled with an eager spirit to tell their parents, their brethren, their
neighbors, of Jesus Christ. Ah, dear friends, God's ways are not as our
ways. Let us not be slow to catch his thought and walk where he leads.

Here, then, is the call to us. Begin with the Chinaman at your door.
Recognize that the Lord Jesus stands before you in him. You prove your
own faith; you "do it unto" your Lord; you forward the plan of God when
you take him by the hand and gently entreat him for Chri