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THE K I N G ' S B U S I NE S S
war spirit pervades every avenue of human life, and a large number of the churches are given up to patriotic serv ices, no attempt being made at wor ship.” This, on the one hand made my heart very sad, and stirs me to renewed prayer for you all at home, but on the other hand it emphasizes the contrast in the conditions here, and this contrast stirs my whole soul to praise. A few days ago Mr. Hwang, leader of party No. 5, came in on busi ness and said to me: “ Oh, the oppor tunities at this rtime are wonderful! The people are listening to the Gospel as if very hungry and thirsty, they welcome us to their homes and large numbers come out to our public preach ing services. Some of these are defin itely deciding to believe in Jesus Christ.” ~ Similar reports come from other parts of the province, one of the other leaders using the very same words, that the people seemed just hungry and thirsty for the Gospel. One mission ary wrote me recently: “ Can you not possibly send a party of your workers to a certain one of our districts? There is a great uprising throughout the dis trict, everywhere the people seem ready to hear the Gospel and to accept of Christ, if only we had someone to lead and teach them.” It was a real grief not to be able to respond to this urgent invitation, but all our parties were just as busy as they could be in equally needy and open fields. An extract from the last report of Mr. Ou-Yang, leader of party No. 4, will give you a good idea of the dif ficulties as well as the successes of these strange days. As our workers are strangers in fields where they are at work, you will readily see how easily the soldiers will suspect them of being spies, and the people will suspect them of being brigands and robbers. How we do need to pray for them constantly. I pray every Wednesday for your Wed nesday evening church prayer meeting,
and last Wednesday I wondered whether or not the Church of the Open Door was unitedly praying for us in the weekly church prayer meeting. I hope that you are for the opportunity and need are both great. Well, Mr. Ou-Yang writes that as they entered one village they saw some women working in the fields trans planting the young rice, and the women called to them asking why they had come distributing those books, was it that they might get into the homes of the people and then dig out their hearts and eyes, or what was the real reason? Many of the people were afraid to admit them to their homes, and were even afraid to accept copies of their books. Going on a little further they saw a woman and her son working in the field, the men told them of Christ and the way of salvation, but they too were afraid to accept one of the books. Passing on they soon heard a voice eagerly calling to them: “ Please sirs, come into our home,” gladly they responded and there met two men, one about seventy years of age, the other about fifty. These men said: “ Please tell us, are you preachers of the Gospel?” On being told that they were they said that a couple of days before they were at work on the hillside and had called to our men but they had not heard them, and that the day before they had seen them passing and had rushed out to invite them in but when they got to the gate they were out of sight. They said: “We too are trying to he good, and we like to read good books, please give us some of your books, and tell us the Gospel.” They called in the members of their families and their neighbors and our men had a large and most interested audience right there in that home. Two of the guests, a father and son named Liu, were much moved by the Gospel mess age, while the two men, named Hwang, who had invited them in, with their entire families joined in urging the
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