Page 80 - GFA – A Different Drumbeat
P. 80
GFA – A Different Drumbeat 80
abridged Christian catechisms. That our visit was entirely unexpected was evidenced
by the fact that during our tour of the camp we did not meet a single missionary or
leading Chinese worker. Experiences in the Black Hill Camp in the Wuhan district
during the months of last winter furnished ample evidence as to the possibilities of
missionary venture in the fields of relief work.
So much then for the enlarged scope for direct missionary effort in relief work. Just a
few words with regard to the sphere of wider contacts for Christian influence. Quite
recently my attention was drawn to a report compiled by a foreign Government
official in which much emphasis was laid upon the noticeable decrease of anti-
foreign and anti-Christian feeling in a certain city in the interior. The report credited
this result, in large measure, to the relief work in which the foreigners, largely
missionaries, had played so large a part. This experience has been duplicated in
many parts of China during recent years. In 1930 it was my happy experience to be
the steward of a gift from friends in America to the starving people in the north-west.
By the fund we were able to maintain about one hundred thousand people through
the most terrible months of acute food shortage during that year. These people
would otherwise have died from starvation. The pestilence which accompanied the
famine had been responsible for a very heavy toll of life during the previous year.
This toll included some twenty missionaries of Protestant and Catholic societies, who
contracted the fell disease during the course of their relief work. Besides these a
number of others who got typhus recovered. This sacrifice made a profound
impression. At a great public meeting organized by the Tangpu in the provincial
capital, and reported in the Tangpu paper, the Chairman of Tangpu, which had been
so actively anti-foreign and anti-Christian during the previous two years, concluded
his speech with the following thought, “It is such demonstrations as this which
interpret to us in terms we can understand such truths of the Christian faith as ‘God
is Love.’ ”
As I have been unable to find any counter arguments in that journal or The Millions, and am
unaware of any personal correspondence on the matter, it is hard to say how much notice
was taken of his stance in the missionary circles. However it goes a long way to explaining
the decisions he made, and the terrible toll it took on him is highlighted in this quote from
the above article:
To be forced into a situation where you have to select a number of fellow creatures
to be preserved unto life, with the sure knowledge that many of those to whom you
are compelled to refuse assistance are as veritably condemned to death as though
they had passed under the sentence of the law, is an experience to be dreaded. I
know no greater strain than that consequent upon an outpouring of sympathy in the
face of the appreciation of one’s inability to aid.
Nor did it go unnoticed by experienced China Watchers such as Johan Gunnar Anderrson.
abridged Christian catechisms. That our visit was entirely unexpected was evidenced
by the fact that during our tour of the camp we did not meet a single missionary or
leading Chinese worker. Experiences in the Black Hill Camp in the Wuhan district
during the months of last winter furnished ample evidence as to the possibilities of
missionary venture in the fields of relief work.
So much then for the enlarged scope for direct missionary effort in relief work. Just a
few words with regard to the sphere of wider contacts for Christian influence. Quite
recently my attention was drawn to a report compiled by a foreign Government
official in which much emphasis was laid upon the noticeable decrease of anti-
foreign and anti-Christian feeling in a certain city in the interior. The report credited
this result, in large measure, to the relief work in which the foreigners, largely
missionaries, had played so large a part. This experience has been duplicated in
many parts of China during recent years. In 1930 it was my happy experience to be
the steward of a gift from friends in America to the starving people in the north-west.
By the fund we were able to maintain about one hundred thousand people through
the most terrible months of acute food shortage during that year. These people
would otherwise have died from starvation. The pestilence which accompanied the
famine had been responsible for a very heavy toll of life during the previous year.
This toll included some twenty missionaries of Protestant and Catholic societies, who
contracted the fell disease during the course of their relief work. Besides these a
number of others who got typhus recovered. This sacrifice made a profound
impression. At a great public meeting organized by the Tangpu in the provincial
capital, and reported in the Tangpu paper, the Chairman of Tangpu, which had been
so actively anti-foreign and anti-Christian during the previous two years, concluded
his speech with the following thought, “It is such demonstrations as this which
interpret to us in terms we can understand such truths of the Christian faith as ‘God
is Love.’ ”
As I have been unable to find any counter arguments in that journal or The Millions, and am
unaware of any personal correspondence on the matter, it is hard to say how much notice
was taken of his stance in the missionary circles. However it goes a long way to explaining
the decisions he made, and the terrible toll it took on him is highlighted in this quote from
the above article:
To be forced into a situation where you have to select a number of fellow creatures
to be preserved unto life, with the sure knowledge that many of those to whom you
are compelled to refuse assistance are as veritably condemned to death as though
they had passed under the sentence of the law, is an experience to be dreaded. I
know no greater strain than that consequent upon an outpouring of sympathy in the
face of the appreciation of one’s inability to aid.
Nor did it go unnoticed by experienced China Watchers such as Johan Gunnar Anderrson.
