Editorial July 31, 1915 ISSUE

Ways and Means

John B. Willis

Some years ago a minister went to Swatow, China, to found a mission. He was a man of unusual forethought and believed in success, hence first of all he acquainted himself, so far as possible, with the existing facts of the situation,—with the customs, the religious beliefs, the superstitions, the prejudices, the moral standards, the hopes, and the economic conditions of the people. He studied also the methods of propaganda which other missionaries had used, and then determined upon a course which was destined to become interestingly eventful.

Instead of standing at the street corners and speaking to the passing multitudes, as others were wont to do, thus sowing the seed under circumstances most unfavorable to its growth, he gathered a number of elderly native Christian women from other missions, and in the quiet of his own home taught and counseled them. Thus equipped, he sent them out two by two into the fields and shops where the masses spend their lives in a toil that knows no vacation or Sabbath rest, so that standing by them in their work by day, or lying down with them in their simple homes at night, they might find opportunity to tell them the sweet story of the coming of the Christ-man to comfort and to save. The touch was to be made intimated, sympathetic, and as it proved, effective, and no one could visit the mission and meet these workers without gaining a new assurance of the feasibility of the world's redemption.

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