The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1925, Page 66

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66 THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

Reclaiming Christ’s Heritage.

Vv.
CHINA.

The evangelization of China is one of the most
important and inspiring tasks of the Church to-day.
It is a land that looks back upon four thousand
years of history, and of all the nations that flour-
ished when Babylonia and Egypt were in their
glory, China alone survives. When our European
forefathers were yet savages, yes, when even Greece

Monument of Christian Martyrs at Taiyuensu.

and Italy were the homes of barbarous tribes, the
Chinese already had reached a high state of culture
and possessed a literature which is still in existence.
A land with such an old history, a race with such
strength and vigor, together with the crying spir-
itual need of the people, place a responsibility upon
the Church not surpassed by India or Africa. Here
conditions hold out the promise that many souls
can be' won for that Kingdom which shall outlast
even so ancient a nation as China.

The Field to be Reclaimed.

China includes in its boundaries about one-
twelfth of the habitable globe. It has an area of
more than four and a quarter million square miles,
greater than the whole of Europe. And this large

territory is mostly well, indeed, even densely popu-
lated. With the exception of the valleys of the
Ganges and the Lower Nile no other large sections
of missionary territory are so densely populated as
most of China’s provinces.

The natural resources of China are practically
unlimited. Except a few limited stretches, there is
little waste land in the country. The amount of
coal and iron to be found in China in almost every
province holds out the promise that China will
probably some day be the coming power in our age
of steel. The land abounds also in other minerals.
Since practically every square foot of tillable soil
is under cultivation, the agricultural resources of
the country are also very great.

That the climate is quite varied in a country of
such great extent is easy to understand. However,
for foreign missionaries it is more than usually
favorable, since the winters are bracing in the
North, and even in the South mountain homes, not
too distant from the mission-stations, afford the
missionaries an opportunity to regain strength for
the trying hot months.

Many portions of the mission-fields are made
accessible by the extensive seaboard, the great
natural waterways, and a network of canals in
Central and Southern China. But for all this
China remains that civilized country of the world
where communications are most difficult.

The People to be Reclaimed.

The population of the Chinese Republic reaches
almost four and a half hundred million. ‘This is
a figure so large that most people will not be able
to get a proper conception of it. Jor this reason
China’s millions suggests this comparison: “If you
were asked whether there were more people in
China than individual letters in the Bible, how
would you reply? Probably some would say: ‘Oh,
there must be more letters in the Bible.’ On the
contrary, there are eighty times as many heathen
in China as there are individual letters in our Eng-
lish Bible. Do we realize it? ighty souls for
whom Christ died going out into eternal night in
China for every single letter in the Book which has
brought light and life to us. Think of this as you
read your daily portion.” To put it in another
way: There are two and a half times as many
people in China who are as yet without the Gospel-
message as make up the entire population of Africa.
In other words, there are almost as many people
still unreclaimed for Christ’s kingdom in China as
there are in all the rest of non-Christian lands.