An Outsider's Opinion that the Missionary Now "Is More Needed Than He Has Ever Been": Three lion Professing Christians Those who value mission at work) modern science, and an immeasurs in China and dispute the view of those who assert that present conditions are an unhappy sequel to their work will be heartened by remarkable but careful appratssl of onery labours in the "Atlantic Monthly," written by Sr. Kenneth S. Latourette. He says:—
"Chinese Christians are much able distance "beyond the older Chinese systems, has boon largely the product of Protestant mission. aries, The majority of the. best hospitals are under Christian furpices, as are most of the best medical schools. The China Medical Association is an outgrowth of the Medical Missionary Association. better educated than the average Chinese about them. All told, there are to-day in China about' three million professing Christians. Sixty per cent. of the men and forty per cent. of the women who are members of Protestant churches fare sufficiently literate to be able to read the New Testament. This many times the percentage of literacy of the non-Christian population, Particularly have Protestants stressed secondary andj I higher schools, "Missionaries, especially Protestants, were pioneers in introducing the educational methods and materials of the West. The result been that in the Christian and notably in the Protestant community' China has a body of men and women who are better prepared than the great body of their fellow countrymen for the—transition brought by the coming of the West.
"Six it of ten of the present! heads of the executive departments at Nanking are Protestant Christians, some of them the prod-nct of Protestant schools, and one the son of a Protestant clergyman. The largest publishing house in China—and, incidentally, in the} world—the Commercial Press, which is doing more than any other single agency to put China in touch with the printed form of the best thought, of the new age and has provided a Inrge proportion of the textbooks for the new Government schools, was begun by men trained in a Protestant mission press.
The Medical Work "The new medical profession of China, embodying the best of China maintains unselfish service and. disinterested scientific accuracy, it will be largely because of its missionary parentage. The promotion of public health has much of it been inaugurated by the Protestant missionary. The frat hospital in all China. for the insane was the work of a Protestant missionary, as was the frst success ful attempt to teach the Chines read, largo "proportion of the famine eelier of recant years has been administered by missionaries, and missionaries have usually taken, the lead in stirring up Europe and America to give to famine funds. The even more dificult problem of preventing famines has been attacked by missionaries, partly through improvements in' agricul tural methods, "If "a newer and finer China emerges, as some of us have faith to anticipate, it will be in part because in the days of its transition there were unselfishly labouring in thousands of foreigners "who sought to bring it in touch with the best that the Occident had to give.
"The day of the missionary is by no means done. His position is more dificult and more. fraught with personal danger than it was a decade ago, but in some respects the missionary is more needed than he ever has been, "It may be a hundred years more before stability and order return to China, "In that. interval the missionary enterprise offers one of the most effective ways for the West to ensure and hasten the coming of a better day to that great country."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.