Facts from tke Foreign Field A Glimpse of China as It Is Today. First Hand News of Dr. Keller’s Great Work By DR. R. A. TORREY
ing on foreign vessels, as well as Chi nese, between Yochow and Changsha. When we, enroute from Mokanshan to Nan Yoh, reached Shanghai, a Christian friend, an old and experienced captain of one of the steamers running on the upper Yangtse, told me that we could not get to Changsha, to say nothing of Nan Yoh. Several officers and others had been killed on the boats on the upper Yangste and Siang rivers, the only available way to reach Changsha. It seemed risky to go several days up the Yangtse to Hankow only to be turned back. My wife wrote me, not in the way of protest against my go ing but of caution, “ It seems daring to say the least.” But I prayed, and said to Mr. F. C. H. Dreyer, head of the Bible Institute in Hundung, Shansi, who was to accompany me as guide and in terpreter (my son' having been called home by his wife’s physician), “ God led me to come to China more to go to Nan Yoh in September than for any other one purpose and I believe He will get us through to Nan Yoh somehow.” And He did. At Hankow we found the steamers still running occasionally from Hankow to Changsha, though they had armour plates around the decks and breast works of sand bags around the pilot houses, and the British Consul had sent directions to Kuling to keep the women there and not have them return to Changsha yet. We were fired upon from the shore three times between Yochow and Changsha, but the bullets fell harmlessly on the upper deck or struck against the sand bags. Our Captain replied with perhaps twenty-
(Dr. Torrey, Dean of the Bible Institute of Dos An geles,. has a most interesting story to tell of his recent four months’ visit to China, especially with reference to the Nan Yoh Bible Conference held under the auspices of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles in Hunan P rovince).
have attended this summer in China and Korea five English speaking Bible Conferences and three Bible Conferences
for Chinese students, pastors, evangel ists. teachers and other leaders of Chi nese thought and life. “ Comparisons are always odious;” and yet I think I ought to say that I am inclined to doubt if there were in any of. the other conferences such a deep spirit of prayer and such intense and systematic Bible Study and such a promise of long and wide spread definite soul winning re sults as there were in the conference at Nan Yoh. The one thing that turned the bal ances in favor of my giving up long cherished plans for work in America and going to China this summer, was that I discovered, in the midst of my deepest uncertainties as to what I ought to do, that Dr. Keller, without knowing that I had any thoughts of going to China, had stirred up people over Amer ica and in other lands, to pray that God would send me to Nan Yoh for Septem ber. But on reaching China, difficulty after difficulty arose to keep me from going to Nan Yoh. Nan Yoh was in Hunan and Changsha was the capital of Hunan and must be the point of our departure for Nan Yoh, and Hunan was in open and active rebellion against Woo-pei-fu, and we must pass through the battle lines, not once only, but sever al times, and the Hunanese were fir
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