The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 161 pages of information about The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889.

The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 161 pages of information about The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889.

Referring to Dr. Goodwin’s powerful address, I find myself transported again to China; but the fact recurs to my mind that this is not a foreign missionary society, but a home missionary one, and what we have to do is to open our minds to the conviction that it is possible to do at home plenty of work for the Chinaman.  I am glad to give a little personal testimony because what we need most of all is to be convinced of the necessity to give time and strength and labor to win the individual Chinaman to Christ.  Not very long ago there came to my knowledge in St. Louis an ordinary Chinaman, comparatively a young man.  He joined our church and I knew he desired to be recognized as a Christian man.  About a year before, he had been a member of a Sunday-school where ladies were teaching Chinese.  Before that our newspapers had created great outcry about a case of leprosy in the city.  This Chinaman appeared at my house in great trepidation.  He had been two or three years in this country, and had been saving his money in order to go back and see his mother’s face before she would die, and he hoped to be able to return to China in the following fall.  He had learned that there was a Chinaman, unknown to him, lying ill in a little laundry, of a disease of which nothing was known, without friends and without care.  He took care of this man, leaving his own work for the purpose, and at length he came to me asking where he could get a physician to attend the patient.  I gave him a note to one of the best physicians in my own church, who went at once and saw the man, and he seeing it was a strange form of disease, went to a specialist of skin diseases, who had the man brought to a hospital in order to watch his disease.  Rumors of this reaching the newspapers, the reporters thought it a good opportunity to make a story about leprosy, giving the number and street of an imaginary laundry in the heart of the city.  Instantly the patronage of the Chinese laundries stopped.  My Chinese friend was in the greatest distress about it, and particularly about me, lest I should think he had brought the contagious disease to my house.  I could hardly persuade him to enter, and then he told me there was no truth in the story of the newspapers, and asked what he should do.  What was the result of the story?  The Chinaman took care of his friend in the house and in the hospital, paying considerable for his care, and when he recovered sent him to San Francisco—­in fact, spent about $180 on him, the whole sum he had saved to take himself home to his mother, and he did this for a man who was as utterly unknown to him as to you or me.  He also came to me with a $10 bill to pay the doctor, saying it was not enough, but it was all the money he had, and he would add to it by and by.  All we want is testimony as to the character of the Chinese.  Here was a man not converted by Moody or by any service, but by the ministry of an unknown Sunday-school teacher; as the result of that simple agency he found a charity

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.