THE CANTON MISSIONS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 16, 24 May 1913, Page 6

THE CANTON MISSIONS.

DR. KIRK’S ADDRESS. Dr, John Kirk, of the Canton Presbyterian Mission,, gave an address on Mission work in Canton, in St. Andrew’s Hall last evening. The Hall was packed to the door with an interested audience. The Doctor spoke for an hour on his works in the Canton-villages. His fine grasp of the Missionary problem; his clear presentation of the 'facts of missions; his own enthusiasm,,and hopefulness: for the evangelisation of China; hi? revelations of the ignorance, superstition, and suffering Of the Chinese, made a great impression on the audience. The Presbyterian Mission, he said, had grown rapidly in Canton • since they first occupied the field eleven years ago. Then there was only one missionary, now there was a

staff of seventeen efficient workers. The speaker gave ,his hearers a bird’s eye Canton,, which he * described most rity’ in the pagan hrOt-Jd, : with a population larger than the i whole of New Zealand. Over a hundred thousand people lived all the year round in houseboats, on the Cahtpn river. North of the Canton,oity was a plain bounded by mountains. This- plain was about forty miles from north to southland from east west,. "It was studded with towns; and villages, and contained over a raijliojij inhabitants,. Here the ■ New Zealand Presbyterian Church was at work ' seeking, to evangelise and uplift the Chinese. The mission work included the educational, the evangelistic, and the medical. Educational work was rendered necessary by the frightful ignorance of the people. - Then- there was the evangelistic, the preaching of the Gospel. This' was the -only message he believed that woukfdieTp.tho people to better living. He was visiting the churches in New Zealand to ask them for £11,400 for the erection of a medical mission hospital m Canton. Was there any use, it was sometimes asked, going to preach to the Chinese? Were not all the converts to Christianity “rice Christians?” His answer was, that Christianity worked transformation in the character of the Chinese as well as in that of other peoples. He had seen it work these changes. He had seen men who were profane and cruel to their wives and children, a terror to the neighbourhood, become changed so that they were kind and unselfish and upright. There were, ,he admitted, w rice Christians” in China, as there were some irt “New Zealand”,'but ho had known Christians- in China whosev religious life had made him ashamed of his own Christian experience.