83

NINGPO, AND OUR MISSIONARY PROSPECTS THERE. would feel very much what the Apostle Paul felt when the proud scholars and gentlemen of his day called out, "What will this babbler say?"

And with this pride there is another thing joined, which is very trying to us, and that is, apathy. The people are indifferent: they don't care any thing about religion. Talk to them of eating and drinking, of buying and selling, tell them strange stories of things that are not true, and they will pay attention; but directly you begin to speak of the Saviour they are ready to get up and go away: they don't care to hear. Some of the Missionaries used to go to many different villages around Ningpo to preach, and at first there would be a goodly number to listen; but directly the novelty wore off, then they would not come hardly any could be gathered together, and these were not at all attentive; so this had afterwards to be, in a great measure, discontinued. How different is this from some places in the Missionary-field! I remember reading of one person who spoke for more than an hour to persons who came round his boat, and, when he was quite exhausted, they let him rest a few minutes, and then woke him up again, and asked him to speak to them again. Oh, how we long to see this among the Chinese-a real earnestness about the work of salvation! And they can be in earnest. You see them very much in earnest about getting on in the world, very glad to listen to any plan for getting dollars together, or benefiting their families; and so, if they are brought to a real sense of their own need, we may expect to find earnestness among them. If you wish to discover how indifferent the people are, you have only to stop in your address for a few moments: not one remark, probably, will be made about any thing that you have said; but the cost of your clothes, the length of your nose, the number of your fingers, the colour of your skin, will be the subjects they will observe upon. A Missionary, who has laboured in the WestIndia islands, has told me that it is very easy to make the blacks serious by merely naming the name of God in a solemn way, and they would listen as long as you liked to speak; but that he never could produce solemnity in a Chinese, and it was very difficult to keep their attention for five minutes together.

I will not refer to their idolatry generally, because this is a hinderance that applies to all heathen people; but I must just say a word about one particular form of idolatry which they are very tenacious of-I mean, the worship of ancestors. They can hear us talk of the folly of worshiping idols, and not care much, or even agree to what we say; but if you say they must not worship their ancestors, then you strike at the heart of one of their most cherished practices-you touch them to the quick. For however much their own idolatry may be objected to and it has been objected to even by their own writers-no one ever ventures to say a word against ancestral worship: they follow in it the teaching of their most revered sage, Confucius, and no one ever questions the authority of his teaching on any point. This, then, seems a great difficulty. We must tell the people that it is wrong; we must require them to give it up; and we feel that this will be one of the last strongholds that will yield to the spiritual weapons of the soldiers of Christ.

The last point I shall mention, as among the peculiar difficulties of our work in China, is the ignorance of the people. And yet I do not Leupolt's "Recollections of an Indian Missionary," second edition, pp. 66— 68.-ED.

84

NINGPO, AND OUR MISSIONARY PROSPECTS THERE.

know that this is peculiar to China, save in this way, that, while they think themselves so wise, they are so foolish. As the Chinese have schools of their own throughout the empire, as they have had much intercourse with Europeans, as they are so clever in many things, you might think that they could not be so very ignorant as they are; but the fact is, that in their own schools there is nothing taught but the moral sayings of Confucius and his followers-no arithmetic, no geography, no history, no Euclid, no algebra, no chemistry, no astronomy, nothing but dry, very dry books, of which they do not teach even the meaning till the boy has been at school several years: he only learns, parrot-like, to repeat the sounds. Consequently, with all their boasted learning, wherever there is an eclipse of the sun or moon, there all the people come out to the doors of their houses with gongs, and make a great noise to frighten away the celestial dog who is swallowing the sun or moon. We are continually met with the inquiry, "Where is the dwarf country, where the men are so small that they are obliged to walk in companies, lest the birds of the air should seize upon them and carry them away?" "Where is the loadstone rock which ships that have iron nails cannot pass, for the iron nails would be drawn out and the ship go to pieces?" You will hear them talking of the needle of the compass being tinged with the blood of the white stork, which always flies from the north to the south. They will tell you of the king of medicine, who had his glass stomach, wherein he could see the operation of the various kinds of medicine. They will tell you how you may learn to walk upon the water, namely, by wearing great thick iron shoes, and continually increasing their weight, till, all of a sudden, you take them off, and you are so light that you can go across the water. You will hear of the man who was so strong that he could lift himself up by taking hold of the hair of his own head. And all this is believed, not only by the common people, but by the teachers, who refer to their own books as proof of the truth of what they say.

Now you will say this statement of difficulties is enough to discourage one altogether: surely it is better not to go to China, if there are such difficulties as these. Don't say so. There were plenty of difficulties in England when people came, nearly two thousand years ago, to convert the Britons; and yet these difficulties were removed, and England became Christian. There were plenty of difficulties in New Zealand, when we went to try and convert the New-Zealanders; and look how Christianity has spread in that once savage country. There were plenty of difficulties among the dark and cruel tribes of West Africa; and look how these are becoming Christian. Don't mind the greatness of the difficulties: only mind faintheartedness. Mind that your faith, and hope, and patience, fail not; mind that you send out men of faith and prayer; mind that you support them by your faith, your prayer, and your sympathy with them in their trials.

It is a day of small things with China, but the oak is wrapped up in the acorn; the great mustard-tree is wrapped up in the smallest of all seeds; and SO "the little one shall become a thousand" in China, and the sowing of the Gospel seed shall produce great results. You will like to know something of what has been done, so of this I will give some account in another paper, if God will.

PRESERVATION IN SHIPWRECK.

OUR Christian friends, in perusing the following letter from our Missionary the Rev. J. Beale, dated Freetown, May 17th last, will unite with us in thankful acknowledgment of the deliverance vouchsafed to him and his brother Missionary, Mr. Young, and all who sailed with them, from the circumstances of imminent peril which he details. In reading of danger and deliverance such as this, we are reminded of that shipwreck which we have all suffered by sin, all hope that we should be saved by our own works or our own exertions being wholly taken away, and in the midst of the wreck and ruin in which we are plunged, the promise of deliverance in Christ, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved;" so that if we fly for refuge to lay hold on this hope, we also shall “escape all safe to land."

You will have been looking for our arrival in England by the "Dart." Addressing you, therefore, from my old residence, will at once strike you as something strange. As we are all disappointed in appearing personally, by the mail being full from the Cape, I have only time to inform you and the friends that we were cast away, on the evening of Easter Monday last, on the Conflict Reef, in lat. 10° 20′ N., and long. 15° 17′ W., when that beautiful vessel became a total wreck. We had been but five days at sea when the accident occurred. On the 11th, Easter Day, we distinctly saw Cape Verd, and during the night, though standing to the west, we saw the reflection on the horizon of fires on shore. The wind was freshening at the time the vessel struck-six o'clock P. M.-and was going from four to five miles an hour. She ran so far on the rocks, that it was plain to all from that instant that the vessel was lost. I need not say that the utmost consternation seized the passengers, thirteen in number. The boats were immediately lowered, and the three ladies and two little girls put in. Such was the violence and straining labour of the ship, as she rolled with the heavy breakers from side to side, that it was not until near eight o'clock P.M. that the long-boat could be got out. In doing this she received much injury from striking the ship's side, and in having the mast accidentally struck through her, near the bow. the boats being exposed to the sun, and excessively dry, as well as injured, were with difficulty kept afloat. All that could be saved was placed in the long-boat, with water and provisions. To save the boats from being swamped by the rolling vessel, as soon as possible the captain ordered them to push off.

From the moment the long-boat let go, with the gentlemen passengers and three sailors, we found her quite unmanageable, and were drifted at a rapid rate by the wind and current among the breakers, which were now rolling their white foaming heads around us as far as the eye could reach. She was now far from the ship, fast settling down with the crowd of passengers, baggage, and provisions in her, with near two feet of water in her, and no possibility of baling her-in fact, without any kind of vessel to bale with. At this awful moment she struck a sunken rock, and a dreadful cry of distress ascended from the sailors and passengers for help. The ladies, being between us and the ship in the jolly-boat, hearing this, urged the sailors to row down to her. Being afraid of perishing themselves, they refused; but at length the cries of distress and the entreaties of the ladies prevailed. The long-boat was drifting stern first

PRESERVATION IN SHIPWRECK.

87

on the rocks, which we could distinctly see from their being covered with large white oyster-shells. At this moment baggage and provisions were cast overboard by the sailors, and a place made to get the water out. Pillows and blankets were placed over the large hole in the bow, with a person to sit against it. Brother Young had this office, until nearly paralyzed with cold and wet. Three times the midshipman with an oar pushed her from the rocks, but was just being overpowered when the gig took her in tow. At a late hour of the night we all got to the wreck again, and a long rope was made secure to the boats. The masts were cut away, and at midnight fell over the side of the ship.

All being done that could, about one o'clock A.M. we finally left the wreck, which was fast breaking up, and steered for the land, which we supposed to be about forty miles distant. I need not say that every soul felt that to be an awful moment-to launch forth on the mighty deep in our half-sinking boats, able to carry but little, and that with raw provisions, to seek a refuge we knew not where, on a coast inhabited by savages! By means of lanterns the boats were kept together for a short time, but soon our light went out, and we were gradually separated as far as the eye could reach. Strange to say, but one boat out of the three had a mast or rudder, and none proper sails. Hence, when the sailors put up temporary ones the boats could not be kept to the wind, and drifted away to the south instead of the east. The long-boat was the worst; but being dependent on her for water, we were obliged to keep near to her, though taking the wrong course. At daybreak we were far apart, but succeeded, after a laborious effort, in reaching the long-boat for water. All looked in a sad, wet, forlorn condition; some being without hats. The daylight, for which we had longed, cheered us all, though there was nothing around us but the wide expanse of waters. The men pulled incessantly. In the course of the morning, the gig being considerably a-head, put up a pair of trousers for a signal. Soon the topmast of a ship was seen, and the men worked as for their lives to reach her. Now it was calmer, and we began to near her—then the breeze sprang up, and she left us, and finally disappeared. Then another came in sight and raised our hopes, and then another. Every effort to reach them seemed in vain. By noon the gig was nearly out of sight a-head, and the long-boat as much or more astern. As the sun passed the meridian a strong breeze sprang up, and in a few hours the sailors cried "Land a-head!" Through God's good providence, the very breeze which sped us on our way at the rate of a steamer so set in to land, that a little Portuguese schooner from Bissao had been obliged to come to an anchor. The sea was running high, we were nearing land, but had no anchor: to land was impossible. In this extremity God provided for us; and after a few more hours, just as night came on, we reached the little vessel, and were allowed by the sable master and captain to fasten our boats to her. In less than half an hour the long-boat, which had given us anxiety for some hours past, made her appearance, and was soon alongside. On this little craft, pitching as she was all night, we took our necessitous meal of biscuit and raw ham. We all got a good sprinkling from a rough sea, and fortunate was any of our number who got a plank to stretch himself upon. Most of us made our beds upon the wet, greasy, palm-oil casks, side by side with the Negro-Portuguese sailors. Having lost our clothing, we all suffered much from wet and cold.