"In journeyings often, in perils of water, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness." 2 Cor. 11:26, 27.
Add to this perils of travel by air and perils of civil war, and you have a fair statement of the conditions under which many of our workers in China are now laboring. In our brilliantly lighted and warm houses in the homeland, we cannot easily visualize our people in Hankow, Yencheng, Chungking, Shanghai, and many other places living under conditions so widely different.
Accustomed as we are in our home countries to being able to take a pleasant walk along a quiet street or in a park any time we wish, we may not be able to appreciate what such a privilege would mean to our workers in the mission compound or at the hospital in Chungking. Confined to a plot of ground little larger than the house itself, if these good people in the center of the city wish to escape from the monotony of their narrow limitations and get out into the open air, they step into a narrow, crowded, filthy street, beset with hawkers, rickshas, coolies, and beggars.
Yes, it is interesting the first time you see it, or even the third time, or the tenth. However, for a steady program, when you are looking for refreshment and pleasant change, it is of little help to brush elbows with poverty, misery, suffering, and filth. But these are their living conditions, not for the day, for the trip, or for a season. This is permanent—as permanent as the pleasant street on which you live, or the park across the way.
In many parts of this land large areas are constantly threatened by bandits, and by the civil war raging nearly everywhere. Miss Gertrude Green and Dr. R. W. McMullen and his family carried forward their medical work in Yencheng in spite of constant threat of Communist attack. Recently this attack came right home to them, overrunning their station and their city. Connecting railways were torn up, trains destroyed, and these workers were forced to leave Yencheng.
Three hundred miles south of Yencheng, at the Wuhan Sanitarium, I found our staff there doing their hospital work in a temperature below freezing. Water was freezing in the basins of the patients' rooms day and night. Both nurses and doctors were doing their best in caring for patients, working in heavy clothing including overcoats. Attempt to visualize, if you will, doing under these circumstances such hospital procedures as surgery, obstetrics, and hydrotherapy. No, they were not attempting hydrotherapy, though they were well set up for giving hot and cold treatments—hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Working conditions at the Chungking hospital, where Miss Muriel Howe is holding forth, are little better.
Couple with these local living and working conditions the loneliness of the frontier outposts, the separation from family and friends, the absence of news from the outside world, the unavailability of usual fruits, vegetables, and other attractive foods, and we picture at least partially what is faced by the missionary in China today.
We 'frequently hear comparisons made between the conditions known to the missionary of a generation ago and working conditions today. It is true that today in some areas of the world electricity has replaced the old Coleman gasoline lamp, permitting also a refrigerator, a radio, and other electric devices. In some places running water has become available. We could mention also that air mail has in many cases reduced the time it takes to communicate with the home folks. It will be remembered, however, that a generation ago there was a security and stability in most countries which does not exist today. Furthermore, living costs in terms of local currencies and of actual gold values have mounted seriously.
While noting changes abroad, we must not forget that our own living standards at home are rising far more remarkably than in these foreign countries. This means just one thing. The worker who accepts a call to the foreign field today in many cases is accepting a more sacrificial situation relatively than his predecessor of a generation ago.
Do we have pioneers today? Do we have those at the front who could be compared with the founders of foreign missions who served fifty or a hundred years ago? These modern missionaries are not, as many think, overzealous idealists or romantic adventurers. They are the pick of our working force. They are our most consecrated ministers and Bible instructors. They are our most skilled educators, our most successful bookmen, our most self-sacrificing and capable medical men and women, and our most carefully selected administrators. These are the men and women who are making our foreign mission program possible. In spite of greater handicaps, smaller working force, less money, and most challenging circumstances, these men and women in Europe, Asia, Africa, the islands of the South Seas, and in South America are bringing in a larger harvest in souls than we are gathering in the home fields.
Would that our people in the home field could become more intimately familiar with this fine group of workers. They are our former schoolmates. They were our classmates in college. They were co-workers in our conferences, our churches, and our institutions.
These modern pioneers have volunteered to forgo home living conditions and comforts for a lower standard of living in definitely unfavorable surroundings and often in the midst of serious dangers. How does all this concern at home? Can we change the physical circumstances of these co-workers? Perhaps not very largely. It is a great encouragement to these foreign workers to realize that their brethren at home are largely aware of the challenge found in these lands. It is an encouragement to them to know that their brethren at home are ready to share the same limitations and sacrifices, the same readiness to go or come as the need or the call may direct.
We should keep these workers and the work before our believers by frequent representation of our foreign missions in Sabbath school and church services. Above all, as times become more critical, it is not only a privilege but a duty to more constantly hold up this loyal band before God in our prayers. It will then be our happy lot, when Christ makes up His jewels, to share with them the rewards of faithful stewardship.
