There was a Memorial Service Union Church on Sunday ovening, memory of the late Dr. Edkins. The Rev. G.E, Darwent preached from St. John, I. 47, " Behold an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile." He said: The} dogtzine that what the good men do is oft interred with them, while the evil they have done lives after them is happily one of, the utterances of tha great post that needs much qualifying, if not contradiction. Ir would indeed be a melancholy -thing for the world if it were true. The good done by St. Paul is not buried yet, and Dr. Edkins has left behind him a work and a memory that cannot perish. The Doctor was so. good a man, such an honour to humanity and the Gospel itself, that I feel bound to preach about him. thos. Edkins, a Congregational Minister at Naileworth in Gloucestershire. It is obvious, therefore, that the impression abroad that all minister's sons ate bad himself to missionary work I do not know. One thing is certain—anyone who gave himself to mission work in China in the forties was in earnest. It was not then the plain sailing that itis now. Dr. Edkins arrived here in 1848, travelling round the Cape, and taking seven month: the voyage. From the date when be joined the London Mission staff ho has been identified with China, first as a missionary until 1881, when he left the fission owing to differences of opinion on methods of work and joined the staff of the Customs service. Still, even when he had left the Mission he preached whenever he could. The chapel in Shantung Road heard his voice every Sunday afternoon, while the Mandarin Union Church also re help. He never lost sight of object of his life, whether i Poking, or when in Customs—that of making Jesus Christ known as the Saviour.
Thoro was a grand unity in his whether as student, preacher or writer he always had splendid example of a full complete life. Numbers of men have full lives, but the fullness is often of folly and futility. His life was full of all thee best things—he was an example of the best kind of Christian life. Nothing that mau ought legitimately to sock or for was absent from' it. He was quiet and gentle, yet strong and brave, conciliatory yet tenacious. In travel—when to travel in China was neither easy nor safe—he among the fir along with Dr. Muithoad, vi the anti-foreign city of Huchou, He climbed the Tienmuh on the west side of the Tabu, in the early fifties and made " long touring Mongolia. The was nothing flabby about the Doctor's Christianity. He was one of the missionaries who lad an interview with the ping leaders at Nanking to try and bring the rebellion to an end. Dr. Edkine was a remarkable combination of learning and.enthusiasm. Some men are studious, but dislike public work, and,- if preachers, are dull and dry and lifeless others are full of life and mean well, but are grossly ignorant. It is very hard to say whether knowledge without zeal or zeal without knowledge is the most useless and mischievous. Dr Edkins had both knowledge and zeal. He retained his enthusiasm for study and preaching till the end. He was master of tongues:—Chinese in several dialects, Manchu, Mongolian, Tibetan, Sansorit, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Persian, Japanese, and of course French and German. He was a copious writer. His book on Chinese Buddhism is specially noteworthy. He wrote largely for the Asiatic Society; in fact there were few subjects in which he was not interested. Religions, the opium trade, ocean currents,. Chinese banking, the kinship of the languages of the East and West all claimed his. attention, The Peace Society, Zionism, movements interested men would run the risks to health by bad weather in order to hear. a lecture: like the Doctor. Atall missionary meetings
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.