Evangelistic Department INTERESTING STORIES from REAL EXPERIENCE AS TOLD BY B I B L E I N S T I T U T E W O R K E R S
On the Sunday after I returned to Changsha I told the story of what I had mused upon during that week from a hot heart and Dr. Keller was as moved by what Xsaid as I had been by what I had seen. The next year, with other companions, we both went to the scene of the pilgrimage. Dr. Keller put the story of what he saw into words and illustrated it with matchless photo graphs, the outcome of the best of in struments and equipment, the most painstaking care on the part of the photographer and of prayer. If any reader of these words in a western land is inclined to put this third condition as unneeded after the former two, all that I can say is th a t such a sceptic might have taken Dr. Keller’s camera and used Dr. Keller’s care and would have been much more likely to have caused a first class riot than a collection of good photographs. God used these photo graphs for the founding of this autumn Bible School. New Method of Evangelism Closely linked with the Autumn School and now forming its nucleus has been a new method of evangelism—a method which could only have been sug gested to the mind of a missionary en gaged in the actual work in China and one who reads his Bible not for mere in formation as to what took place thou sands of years ago, but for what should take place today and the day after. House to house visitation is the precise form which the work takes. The visi tors are men each of whom has been a Christian for at least two years and who has received a recommendation from his ^ m s t o r on the ground of his suitability for such work. The men are grouped in “bands” of twelve under the direction of an experienced leader. The first hour of the day after rising is spent by each member of the Band in study of the Word of God. Then they all meet with the leader and talk over the result of their meditation. Then follows break fast. After th a t comes the wofk of the day. Setting off in twos, they visit every house on the road mapped out for each pair. On entering they ask permission
THE NANYOH BIBLE SCHOOL (By Be>v. G. G. Warren)
One of the most fruitful weeks of my life was th a t in September, 1908, which Xspent on the slopes of the sacred moun tain called Nanyoh in the very center of the province of Hunan. Its name, which means “Southern Peak,” connects it with the peaks of the east, west and north whose fame extends back to the earliest ages of Chinese tradition when Abraham’s fathers were still in the Land of Ur. Tradition does not tell us when the mountains first became objects of pilgrimage. Stone tablets erected from time to time for the past three hundred years are still standing in one of the temple courts testifying th a t each em peror for those centuries sent once and again accredited deputies to perform the pilgrimage in his name. My actual visit was a great surprise to me. I had heard nothing, seen noth ing, imagined nothing a t all like it. I was impressed by the multitudes of the pilgrims, b'y their evident sincerity, by the set phrase which answered mjr every inquiry, “Why have you come here?” “To give thanks for /the grace received from my parents.” I was still more im pressed with the fact th a t they were as sheep' without a shepherd. No word of encouragement or of exhortation was ever spoken to them by anyone. I was most impressed with the climax of the worship: humble prostration and earnest prayer before an idol swathed in gor geous robes but invisible in the recess of the lofty shrine: it was not only like other idols, a thing having ears which could not hear, it was the idol of a for mer man whose very name is unknown by most of the worshippers and this man, as far as I have been able to find out to this day, has nothing to do with anybody’s parents or with the “grace” received through them! My heart fairly ached a t the thought of these tqns of thousands of men and women thus obvi ously desirous of thanking the Giver of Grace and knowing nothing about “The Father from Whom every fatherhood in heaven or on earth is named.”
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