en to us whatever excellence we have as a Nation. I
expect you to Christianize these representatives of the Orient, to
convert them to the worship of the God of the Bible." In this
expectation of the Master, lies at once our obligation and our
privilege. Much is laid upon us, but the trust brings with it honor, and
inspires to grandest service.
The progress already made in this work, the cheering tokens of success
that are reported by all laborers in this field, ought to awaken a far
greater sympathy for those in whose behalf we are called to make our
Christ-like expenditures. It is time we rose above the mean political
enmities which have embarrassed not a little this imperative evangelism.
Our treatment of these people is but another chapter in our history on
which other and larger hearted generations will look with shame and
sorrow. In the animosities born of our commercial greed, we have acted
as if our religion had made us neither in life nor doctrine better than
they. Eager to send the Gospel to distant heathen, we have been
reluctant to exemplify, and slow to practically apply, to the heathen in
our midst the teaching of Christianity. Now has come a new era, and the
evangelistic efforts among the Chinese are assuming greater proportions
than ever, and are engirt with every sign of gracious success. We have
yet to learn to respect the manhood in these emigrants from the great
kingdom beyond the Pacific. It is said of our Lord, when he came across
the Publican Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom, that "he saw a
man," and it was oftentimes the lowly, the shunned, the socially
despised he called to become his disciples. It is a great art, this of
seeing in a man the ideal, the possible man. When Jesus Christ looks
upon a man, he looks him into a nobler manhood. We need to rise above
class distinctions, to regard no one common or unclean, to speak of no
one as hopeless or worthless.
One word as to opportunity. God always matches opportunity with ability,
and when we stand face to face with opportunity, we must go forward or
be recreant to every trust.
Here is this man--the Chinaman--on our coast, for whom we are doing
exactly the same work that this Society has been urging us to do for the
black race, in raising up preachers amongst them to go back to the homes
in their own country and there become the proper evangels to their own
people. When we realize that this is our work, and this is the
opportunity b
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