Serious trouble has broken out at one of the mission stations in the neighbourhood of Wenchow. Only a week before the troubles began the popular feeling in favour of Christianity wae most oncouraging. During the visit of the Rev, W. Ey Southill nearly a thousand people nssembled to hear the preaching. It took nearly quarter of an hour for them to settle own to quiet and order. Addresses lasting for about free hours were kept up. When: most of the outsiders had colan their d parture, the remaining enquirers and Obris tians had a meeting for prayer, and over hundred knelt down, Sixty-six have given in their names as enquirers, although the work in that locality is only fifteen months old. Six were examined and baptised, and the day's work appeared to be most satisfactory.
On the 14th instant, however some of the villagers came down in haste to Wén-chow to report that while holding the usual Christian service ubout 70 of the more disaffected among them had come to the chapel and smashed up lamps, furniture and everything they could lay hands on.
be hymn books and Testaments were taken ait and burned and the Christians were brutally attacked, one being kicked most se yerely and left senseless on the ground.
On the 15th instant further persecutions were reported. The two leading men of the: village led their adherents out again and. this time every Christian house was despoiled. Only four were injured the previous day. The ivnates were driven out, young and old, and the doors closed and. sealed up. Those families whu denied having anything to do with Christianity were unmolested. Nearly twenty houses were thus closed and the people left without homes. In one case the wind blew a door open and the marauders thought its owner had opened it to show he was ® convert to Christianity. The house was attacked, and the occupant maltreated while his property was destroyed, although he had not a cepted Christianity at While the English Missionary was writing to his Consul on the subject, another deputation of converts came to say that in four other villages near Wenchow a similar attack had been made on a house, of which the Christian owner had refused to make feast for the idols on the occasion of his wedding. The rowdies poured filth into find, knocked his wife down, and threat a his rice pans, broke every thing they could to leave nothing standing the next evening, In both these cases the motive seems to be that the tendency of Christianity is to displace idolatry, and thus the idols and temples will be neglected. "The prosperity of the place being supposed to depend on these idolatrous arrangements, which have been kept up for ages, it is feared that if
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.