Forty Years in South China eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 197 pages of information about Forty Years in South China.

Forty Years in South China eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 197 pages of information about Forty Years in South China.
was on his way to the United States with two of his own and two of Mr. Pohlman’s little ones.  The other members of their families—­the mothers and the children, all that was mortal of them—­were Iying in the Mission cemetery on Kolongsu; and to ‘hold the fort,’ so far as our Mission was concerned, Pohlman was left alone, and well he held it.  He had a new dialect to acquire, yet when health allowed, he daily visited his little mission chapel, and twice on the Sabbath, to preach the Gospel of Christ.  He was a man of work, of great activity.  When I arrived at Amoy in 1847, he was suffering from ophthalmia.  Much of his reading and writing had to be done for him by others.  I was accustomed to read to him an hour in the morning from six to seven.  Another read to him an hour at noon from twelve to one.  He was still subject to occasional attacks of the old malarial fever.  Besides all this he was now alone in the world, his whole family gone, two of his little ones in his native land, then very much farther away from China than now, and the others, mother and children, sleeping their last sleep.

“Yet he was the life of our little mission company.  Do you ask why?  He lived very close to God, and therefore was enabled to bow to the Divine will, to use his own language, ‘with sweet submission.’  Pohlman’s term of service, too, was short.  He was called away in his thirty-seventh year.  His work at Amoy was less than five years.  It, too, much of it, was foundation work, though he was permitted to see the walls just beginning to rise.  Two of the first converts were baptized by him, and many others received from him their early Christian instruction.  The first, and still by far the best church-building at Amoy, which is also the first church building erected in China expressly for Chinese Protestant Christian worship, may be called his monument.  It was specially in answer to his appeal that the money, $3,000, was contributed.  It was under his supervision that the building was erected.  To it he gave very much toil and care.  The house was nearly ready when he took his last voyage to Hongkong, and he was hastening back to dedicate it when God took him.  His real monument, however is more precious and lasting than church-buildings, as precious and lasting as the souls he was instrumental in saving, and the spiritual temple whose foundation he helped to lay.  There were many who remembered him with very warm affection long after he was gone.  Among them I remember one, an old junk captain, who in his later years, speaking of heaven, was wont to say, ’I shall see Teacher Pohlman there; I shall see Teacher Pohlman there.’”

V. AT THE FOOT OF THE BAMBOOS

The sad and sudden departure of Mr. Pohlman so affected a maiden sister, Miss Pohlman, then at Amoy, as to unsettle her mind and necessitate an immediate return to the United States.  No lady friend could accompany her.  It was decided that Mr. Talmage take passage on the same ship and act as guardian and render what assistance he could.  The ship arrived at New York August 23, 1849.

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Forty Years in South China from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.