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THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
you just put it beyond the limit of the genera- tion now living, because then nobody can check you. But Christ gave his disciples two facts by which they might check the truth of his prophecy, and one of them was this: "This generation shall not pass away till all these things be fulfilled." People said that that generation did pass away and these prophecies were not fulfilled. That was another of our errors. We said" generation" maant 33 years, but the Greek equivalent had no reference to time; it meant “a race "s people," and it was the Jewish race that Christ referred to. Frederick the Great once asked his chaplain what was the one single best proof of the truth of Christianity, and the chaplain replied, The Jews, your Majesty." 2,400 years had passed away. Had the Jew passed away He had not passed out of America, nor out of Hongkong, Dr. Pentecost thought. He had met the Jew in China, in the islands of the sea, in India, in Burma, in Persia. Never had he been anywhere that he had not met the Jew. His country, his kingdom, his cult and his temple had passed away, but he remained. Coattered, hated, ps.secuted, denounced, reviled, despised, there they stood. The Jew was a white man, a black man, a German, an Englishman, an American, everything but a Scotsman. He believed there were no Jews in Scotland (said the Doctor as an aside) for the reason that the lost tribes got there before them. Any o her nation but the Jews would have been lost in the stream of human nature, yet they moved along in the whole ocean of life like the Gulf Steam through the Atlantic. Christ sa'd the Gospel would be preached among all uations. It went forth in the hands of a few fishermen and one apostate Jew, Paul, and the temples of Greece began to be deserted, the old classical relig.on of Greece disappeared before it, the Pantheon of Rome was entered, the throne of the Caesars was mounted, the forests of Germany were invaded and the worship of wood and stone passed away, and all this in spite of fire, faggot, oppression and hatred, without an army, without a navy, Wherever force had been attempted to forward the Gospel, the Gospel had failed. Wherever it had gone simply as the good news of God it had pierced and penetrated every land. It was in Europe, in Asia, in Africa'; it was on the Congo, up the Yellow River, all through China, in Japan, in Core, in Australia, in the islands of the sea. The Gospel had been preached and would continue to be preached amongst the nations. Nothing in this world could stop it. Who sent out missionaries? Governments? No; missionaries
to Govern a very great trouble
Governments who did ments. Even the not persecute them would be glad to get rid of missionaries. But who sent them out? They came out themselves. Something came into a man's heart and he said “I must go." A brilliant young scholar who graduated from Edinburgh few years ago, carrying off the two highest prises of the University with every- thing to encourage him to adopt the career for which he had prepared himself, heard a sermon on foreign missions. The spirit of God, that mysterious, invisible power, took hold of that young man and he turned his back on his fine prospects, bis home life, and comforts, his pro- sperity and wealth, and went to the mission field. Oh, yes, they were always doing that. There were missionaries coming out here every day. An English officer whom he met on the ship coming out said to him one day, "All the missionaries are mercenary men; they all work|| for salaries; they cannot be sincere men. They come out here for their pay." And he said in reply That is quite true. I never met an English officer who was not a mercenary; it is not patriotism or love of country that makes him enter the army and face the foo and serve his King.". And the officer asked with surprise what he meant. "Oh, it is your
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as the response. It was extraordinary motives people would find that moved others to do things that they themselves did not do. The rule of Great Britain in India might pass away, but the Gospel would never pass away, The time might come when British
true.
THE ANGLO-SAXON IN THE ORIEN F. Under the auspices of the Odd Volumes Society, Rev. Dr. George F. Pentecost lectured | in S. Andrew's Hall (City Hall) on the 6th just. Hon. F. H. May, C.M.G., Colonial | Secretary, presided over an audience which completely filed the hall.
¿February 23, 1903
The men who accepted Jesus Christ; lian aborigines. the American Indians found a new life come into his life. So perhaps the Filipinoshe had ve y little hope truɔ Was it that when a man profersed for the Filipinos as a representativo ráce. Nor Jesus Christ and did not live Jesus Christ here were we facing 400 mil ions of barbarians. the world sail he was a bypocrite. It was true The time was p at when intelligent people not only for salvation but true also for the more spoke thus. Yet he had heard in India educated palpable sign of a new life, for sinc ification or people call the Bindo-a "nigger."" And in the Christian culture. Show him a yung man some way it was cast mary to talk about the who made the Word of God a lamp to his Chiness as "heathen Chiues," We did our- understanding and be would show them a man solves and the whole question a great injustice who was progressively developing a chractor. if we allowed ourselves to talk about the Chiñess Show him a young man who turned his back thus As a matter of fact we were dealing with on the Bib'o and he would show them a mau a very ancient, virile and constantly increasing who was as co tainly deterioratio. Let them type of man and not a man of a very greatly accept the Word of God and there would be an inferior ace. The Chinese represented a civilisation some centuries older than ours, a end of all doubt, scepticism and confusion.
In the evening Dr. P ntecost preached civilisation in many respects the equal of ours, to a large audience in the City Hall
in some respects the superior of onre, and ho represented an intellectual and ethical life that should give the Englishman and American srious pause before they spoke in terms of contempt of the Chinese. Here were we, a omparatively little handful of Anglo-Saxons, looking into the face of the Far East with its population of three-fifths of all the people that dwell upon the earth. In Chinn alone there The CHAIRMAN in his introductory remarks was one-third of the whole human race, If we said that to most of those present Dr. Pentecost looked at the question from a military point of must be known by reputation. During the view as between Europe and Asia it was quite short time he had spent in Hongkong, Dr. within the area of possibilities for China Pentecost had made his personality known, and, to put from 60 to 80 millions of soldiers' he took the liberty of adding, very favourably the field, d aling, that was to say, with known to all. (Applause.) He believed that her population on the same basis as Germany the reverend doctor had preached and lectured and other European nations dealt with Chineso since he was 21 years of age; he would not theirs. And they all knew what venture to guess how old he was to-dy
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Gordon said about the Chinese and their but he ventured to think that he had capacities for being soldiers. He did not devoted a great many useful years to a very apprehend that such an army would ever be noble work. (Hear, hear.) Of recent years put in the field for China, but it was a he had travelled extensively in India and potentiality, and, against it, it would not be other countries in the East, and uite lately he possible for Earope to put more than five had fulfilled a mission to our neighbouring millions. But it was not a question of the Colony-the Colony that our American cousins physical force of the East against the phy ival had taken over-there to inaugurate the work force of the West; it was the civilisation of to which he had devoted a lifetime. We were the one against the civilisation of the other. very fortunate in Hongkong to have had an Civilisation was the outgrowth of religion. opportunity of extending to him the invitation which he had so graciously accepted, and of which they hoped to reap the fruits that night. Dr. Pentecost was there at the invitation of the Odd Volumes Society, and be congratulated those present on the opportunity of hearing him. (Applause.)
Dr. PENTECOST chose as his subject, "The Orient, the Anglo-Saxoo and Christianity." An hundred years ago, he said, the Eastern or Oriental question practically meant Turkey and the Balkans, but the Orient had gradually been ooming East so that now politicians and news- paper men had divided the East into the Near, the Middle and the Far East. The interest of the Eastern question was centro'ng here. The storm-centre of the world's political interest was not now Berlin, London or Washington, but Peking, and they must largely discuss the question from that point of view: practically he should elimina'e "India and Japan from the discussion. The question really was what were we Anglo-Saxons going to do with the 400 millions of China or, on the other hand, what were these 100 millions of Chins going to do with the Anglo-Saxons? It was unwise not to turu the shield on both sides. Trade interests and political supremacy were questions which came in, but only in the larger horizon ang. gested by the question-what kind of civilisa- tion is to ultimately characterise thess 400 millions of yellow men? What was to be the human destiny of these millions? Civilisation, as we understood it and enjoyed it in the West was the cumulative product of past ages and our civilisation was the result of a constantly pro- au inheritance gressive movement. It was which had rapidly culminated. He supposed that more had been accomplished in the last century than in all the world's history before, and this was not only an encourage ment but a warning suggesting to us that in the twentieth century-parhaps in the first half-the process of rapid culmination might go on in the same ratio; and if that was so then some extraordinary things were going to happen out here in the Far East. Standing on the borders of China what position were we in ?
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would come no more to China, but the time would never come when the Gospel of Jesus Christa, ould not be preached at the mouths of his servants and hand-maidens. Was the In the first place, we were not facing a Gospel of salvation true? They knew it was ' dying, a decadent race of people like the Austra
THE CHINESE,
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CHINESE CIVILISATION.
What was the Chinese civilisation ? China had a very marked civilisation. She had a literature ancient and powerful; he thought it would be safe to say that Western literature had its roots in the literature of India and Chios. Had China arts? She had well-established and well-defined school of art. It met us at every turn-in pottery, in porcelain, in carving and decorati n, silke, satins and embroideries and a thousand and one other things ` Chinese curios so-called were of the very bigbest kind of art. Eastern art in a Western home was beautiful. Western
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art in 211 Eastern home excruciating. A Chines› gentlemau in his beautiful clothes carried more consciousness of his dignity than any Westerder he had over seeu. Then as to science, had the Chiuese science ! It comprehended a great many things. For one thẳng, the Chinese understood the science of agriculture. They know how to till the soil century after century without exhausting it. We had not learned that. Then be
mean engineer though he did not work with European machinery. The Chinese was not a patriot in our sense of the word, but he with every Asiatic man had a great deep consciousness of his Asiatic character. There was a racial antagonism between the East and the West which no man had yet boon India and China were par able to fathom. excellence the religious countries of the world. Their people were the people of faith. ~ ́~ ́We were oweentially materialisis, and tit was becaus› Christianity had come to us and had bred in us some little recognition of the supernatural that we had anything to do with the supernatural. The Asiatic was always seeing and being called by that other world. The European practically was a materialist; he believed in the Now; not in the Hereafter. It was that mind we weru bringing over here to deal with the extra- ordinarily spiritual mind of the East. We had got into the habit of talking about the Chinese as filthy. It was not fair to judge a people by its "submerged - tenth, but he thought there were whole - districts in London, Paris, New York and Berlin that for filth, squalor and degradation were as bad as anything to be found in China: Tooy v told the Chinese were forgel, ^!. Was that: peculiarly Chinese characteristic ? → Think of
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