June 13.
A truly memorable administration came to an end yesterday when Mr.
iron Edward Hoste handed over charge of the China Inland Mission, after thirty-four years in office, 10 his successor the Rev. G. W. Gibb.
Mr. Hoste does not leave China. He remains here to give in retirement such counsel and encouragement as the Mission which he has so faith~ fully served, may still require of his ripe judgment and experience [Approaching his 74th birthday, Mr. Hoste has truly given the main portion of his life to China for he failed from England on February 5, 1885, a8 one of the famous "Cambridge Seven" for work in the mission field here. He thus has actually fifty years China service to/ his credit. The half-century has seen the Mission expand far beyond its original constitution. It. has assumed an international—com= plexion which has given it added authority and greater scope for usefulness." In this development the sage statesmanship of Mr. Hoste and his high sense of Christian prin ciples have been abiding influences for good. The Mission, in saluting his retirement from active direction, must be proud of the fact. that his only predecessor was Dr. J. Hudson Taylor, the founder of the organization in 1862, from whom Hoste took over charge in 1901. Dr. Taylor first came to China in 1853, 20 the two men between them have covered no less than eighty years of mission effort in this country.
Mr. Hoste, from his chair in Shanghai, has directed the Mission's labours with a deep knowledge of the Chinese people and warm affection for them, as the result of active travel in the interior and Tong years spent in intimate asso~ ciation with Chinese colleagues and Chinese friends. He exchanged a military career—to which heredity ary influences naturally dedicated him—for a life of social service, when as a young Gunner officer, four years out of Woolwich, fained the, high adventure of the Cambridge Seven in 1885. He had been born at Aldershot when is father was. serving in that. ime portant District, so the religious impulses which led to the abandon ment of military ambitions rust have been exceptionally strong in themselves. They have received splendid endorsement from the duality of the service in which they have found expression. It is not easy for all laymen, perhaps, to understand the zeal' and devotion Which men like Mr. Hoste give to mission enterprise. Aloofness from what are held to be the basic problems of civilization's existence seems to be the essential characteristic of the saintly singlemindedness of the true missionary's life. That is a superficial assessment. The world benefits greatly from the detach ment which the missionary assumes fu pressing on with his schemes for mental, social and physical betterment, just as much as it does from the austere seclusion of the research-worker in. the scientife laboratory. The missionary seeks to find the true common denomina-for of humanity and the search ts based on religious truths and principles, the test of which is not necessarily their relation to dogmas or creeds but their power in re-teasing the spirit of man's divinity.
In Mr. D. E. Hoste these compell-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.