A Message from Missions to the Modern Ministry 101 population, there was a little street chapel. When nothing else would reach those stolid Chinamen, the story of the cross, the sufferings of Jesus, reached them when told by ignorant “Old Wang,” the converted confirmed dpium smoker. Thirty years ago there were on the roll of the Presbyterian Church in Manchuria three members; four years ago there were in Manchuria, won mostly from Mukden as a center, twenty-seven thousand Presbyterian Christians. Would you know the secret of this remarkable work? “In order to gain the Chinese to Christianity, all other conceivable methods combined cannot compare in efficiency with public preaching. But, however the vessel of the preacher may be led in all directions by the flowing or the ebbing tide of his hearers’ inclinations, though it move up and down on the waves of a thousand various subjects, and however long its chain, the anchor must ever be fast immovably in what is known as the cross of Christ. The mercy and love of God as revealed in the life and confirmed in the death of His Son, must be the center around which all the preaching revolves, and on which it is based. This is the great central truth on which the church in Manchuria has been founded” (Ross, “Missionary Methods in Manchuria,” p. 332). Such is the testimony to the power of the cross from far distant and different witnesses. The conclusion drawn by the Scotch professor and by the missionary in China are one and the same. “There is nothing in the world,” says Prof. Denny, “so universally intelligible as the cross ( Death of Christ,” p. 200). And Dr. Ross from China says: “The cross of Christ with its implied doctrines satisfies the soul of the Chinese. It is the intelligent response of love to the cry of their distressed heart” ( “Missionary Methods in Man churia,” p. 90), Nothing more impressively, than the preach ing of the cross to every creature and its acceptance by them, demonstrates to us so conclusively that our Gospel is an eternal
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