"Shanghai is just as deeply steeped in hegtheniem to-day as it was 60 years ago," said the Rev. J. M. W. Farnham recently in conversation with a representative of the "North China Daily News." Some Chinese friends and former pupils of the venerable missionary gave reception in his honour on Sqturday last in celebration of the 56th anniversary of Dr. Farnham's arrival in Shanghai, and, when speaking tothe reporter, Dr. Farnham was in reminiscent frame of mind. He was referring to the native city", and said that the people inside the wall had never really been reached by the missionary workers, Much more had been accomplished in the way of conversion to Christianity in cities of the interior than in Shanghai.
When Dr. Farnham arrived in Shanghai in 1860, he found missionaries preaching in the streets within the walls of Shanghai, and this practice was continued for many Believing that it wae folly to attempt to preach the gospel to people so ignorant as totally to be incapable of understanding it, Dr. Farnham determined that in order to bring the light of Christianity tothe people of China, they would first have to be educated. He reached within a few weeks.
before ithe end of the year in arrival in March, 1860,
spite of the contrary advice of his friends, he was attached to the South Gate schools which' to this day are doing such valuable work in teaching manual training.
Dr. Farnham was the lite of the South Gate schools for nearly a quarter of a century—for 24 years to be exact—and there are to-day China many Chinese men and to the training they received in those schools. For example, the Commercial Press, which is the largest printing and publishing establishment in the Far East owes its origin to the training ita organizers received in those schools, and the late Mr. Z. F. How, the manager of the Commercial Press, who was assassinated a few years ago, always said he could never pay the debt of gratitude he owed to the South Gate schools where he reoeived his boyhood training.
In 1885 Dr. Farnham joined the Presbyterian Mission Press with which he was connected until 1888 when he became associated with the Evangelistic Church in North Honan Road. For 36 years he was actively concerned in the Chinese Tract Society editing the "'Child's aper" and "Illustrated News" in Chinese. But it is Dr. Farnham's present work, a work on which be
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.