15th Oct.
Ir seems almost impossible to drive into the heads of the Peking Government that there is anything serious in the present tension between China and foreign Powers, hey have succeeded so well of late years in having their own way with the foreign Ministers, in evading inconvenient demands by procrastination and subterfuge, that they cannot see why the same arts should not serve them now, and they have not even the sense to conciliate when they can by ordinary courtesy. 'The Austrian Minister is in Peking awaiting an' audience with the Ewperor; he is not particular as to the place so long as he gets his audience, but he is in a hurry to leave Peking. In such a case it would have been thought that the Court would have arranged to grant him an audience as soon as possible, and thus endeavour to make friend, sorely upset as they are by the failure of their) attempt to detach Germany from the ranks of the opponents. Instead of taking this course, the Austrian Minister is put off until the French Minister arrives, and then the Austrian and French Ministers will be put off until to-day that Christ did heal the sick by the magic of his touch, and therefore they cannot consistently refuse togivecredence to the old-women's tales of miraculous foures which we still hear of from time to time. How many more generations must yet pass away before Christian thought will break free from the seri tural leading-strings which make it narrow and one-sided? The writer has known at least one truly good, honest, sympathetic woman, a woman of wealth and of some culture, who believes as fully in the efficacy of prayer to cure disease, organic or constitutional, as she does in a heavenly Paradise and, regret to add, in eternal punishment for sin. This good woman spends all her time in charitable and temperance But what ful subject to think of is the human mind, so warped and moulded by prayer and meditation that the most. common evidences of luuman experience are obliterated by extravagant faith in the efficacy of appeals to a deity whu is both loved and feared.
Not long since I was told of a certain missionary in China whose wife was almost. death's door from the effects of a dental operation. She was simply bleeding to death, and instead of calling the dentist the fellow engaged in prayer. Somebody called the doctor, the Russian Minister arrives. That is, just. in time to save her.
The same the fossils, Chinese and Manchu, who! person pretended to have cured his sit in the centre of the complicated, child of ophthalmia by prayer alone, as ill-adjusted, and rickety machine whic is recorded in the local papers, in which is called the government of China, have he was also publicly denounced as forgotten all they learnt in the last war, criminally negligent, and responsible for and still believe that foreign Pow condemning the child to pass its whole are tributaries who dare not use force life in a state of semi-darkness. against their suzerain, and whose repre-There lies before me an account of sentatives are to be treated with no a great meeting of " Christian Workers," more regard or courtesy than are shown recently held in the State of Illinois. to the envoys from Corea, or some Sick persons were carried to the meeting semi-independent Central Asian chiefs. ground on stretchers. Prestmably they walked away sound and well—for it, lis a remarkable feature of all cures
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.