166
CARL SMITH
Several students began attending the Saturday evening prayer meetings held by the missionaries and Chinese Christians.
This encouraged Dr. Legge to recommend their example to the other students. He writes: "Last week I spoke to the whole school about it, saying that it was entirely a meeting of Christians and inquirers, who believed in the power of prayer, and felt their own dependence for spiritual blessings on God. I did not require them, I told them, to attend it, but we should pray specially for them, as having been highly favoured with Christian instruction, and for yet continuing apparently far from righteousness. On the Saturday evening there were 20 of them with us. A calm and earnest spirit shows itself on the countenance of many."
Behind this pious 19th century missionary language there was a bit more than gentle persuasion. With such suggestion placed before students, it was natural that they would wish to meet the expectations of a teacher they liked and respected. Whatever we may think of the methods, it produced results.
But Dr. Legge's gratification over the students' response was to be tempered later by disappointments, for he was severely tried by the defection of the three students baptised in Scotland from their theological career.
He first lost Song Hoot-kiam. Though born in Malacca, where he attended the Anglo-Chinese College, his family had moved to Singapore. Here he and his classmate, Lee Kim-leen, returned to visit family and friends over the Chinese New year in 1849. Dr. Legge did not wish to see them leave Hongkong but he did not stand in the way of their accepting an offer of free transportation from a British shipmaster.
While in Singapore, Miss Grant, headmistress of a school for Chinese girls, persuaded Hoot-kiam to marry one of her students. It was not every day that such a well qualified young man appeared as a possible husband for one of the girls under her charge. As an added inducement to marry and remain in Singapore she found him a position as third master in the Free School in Singapore. He accepted both the girl and the job.
166
CARL SMITH
Several students began attending the Saturday evening prayer meetings held by the missionaries and Chinese Christians.
This encouraged Dr. Legge to recommend their example to the other students. He writes: "Last week I spoke to the whole school about it, saying that it was entirely a meeting of Christians and inquirers, who believed in the power of prayer, and felt their own dependence for spiritual blessings on God. I did not require them, I told them, to attend it, but we should pray specially for them, as having been highly favoured with Christian instruction, and for yet continuing apparently far from righteousness. On the Saturday evening there were 20 of them with us. A calm and earnest spirit shows itself on the countenance of many."
Behind this pious 19th century missionary language there was a bit more than gentle persuasion. With such suggestion placed be- fore students, it was natural that they would wish to meet the expectations of a teacher they liked and respected. Whatever we may think of the methods, it produced results.
But Dr. Legge's gratification over the students' response was to be tempered later by disappointments, for he was severely tried by the defection of the three students baptised in Scotland from their theological career.
He first lost Song Hoot-kiam. Though born in Malacca, where he attended the Anglo-Chinese College, his family had moved to Singapore. Here he and his classmate, Lee Kim-leen, returned to visit family and friends over the Chinese New year in 1849. Dr. Legge did not wish to see them leave Hongkong but he did not stand in the way of their accepting an offer of free transportation from a British shipmaster.
While in Singapore, Miss Grant, headmistress of a school for Chinese girls, persuaded Hoot-kiam to marry one of her students. It was not every day that such a well qualified young man ap- peared as a possible husband for one of the girls under her charge. As an added inducement to marry and remain in Singapore she found him a position as third master in the Free School in Singa- pore. He accepted both the girl and the job.
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