The Newtown bee., 1900-12-14
Ten Pages.
Litchfeld County.
 NEW MILFORD.

CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH INTERESTS.
 Wednesday, December 5, was red
 letter day for Missions in New Milford.
 Three missionaries from North China,
 Revs w. P. Sprague, F. M. Chapin and
 H. P. Perkins, were present and gave
 thrilling accounts of their experiences
 in that land from which they had so re.
 gently escaped with their. lives. MT
 Sprague spoke first in tho afternoon, giv-
 ing an account of the manner of doing
 missionary work in China and the success that had attended their labors.
 MT Sprague is quite . veteran having been 26 years at Kalgan. Mr Chapin worked for il ge years with Mr Sprague at Kalgan, but for the last 12 years he and MT Perkins had worked together at
 Lin Ching. Mr Chapin was in the seige at Peking and spoke for an hour, show ing how marked was the hand of Provi- dence in all their experiences. One could hardly listen to his remarkably story
 without coming to the same conclusion that he did that an over ruling Provi- dence was guiding them and caused some ot the efforts made by their enemies to d .stroy them, in reality to work for
 their salvation. This address was listen- ed to with the closest .attention and
 strong desire to hear more. In the even-
 ing MT Sprague gave sn account of the
 remarkable journey through the desert
 of Gobi north into Siberia nearly 1000
 miles. Like MT Chapin in the afternoon
 MT Sprsgue related a number of in-
 stances where 6 kind Providence seemed
 to have made special arrangeme nts to aid them ia their undertak' ng. Readers of the Congregationalist will fad in the number for December graphic ac- count of this j,urney, far better than your correspondent can give, written by Rev J. H. Roberts, who was one of the company and had been stationed at Kal- gan with MT Sprague for some years. MT Perkins et caped by the southern route.
 His wifo and six children left before him for Japan, but he reached there some days ct rlier than they did. Mr Perkins did not dwell on the incidents of his es- cape but told in very instructive way the things which we wished to know about the present state of things in China. He aimed to correct the impression which he found quite general in this that all the Chinese were in deadly opposition to foreigners. He said the number was not so large as was sup. posed; in fact was comparatively small, but having the approval of the Empress Dowager. had been able to do a vast amount of harm. Some things were es. pecially noticeable in the remarks of all these men, and one was, the entire ab- sence of any thing that looked like re- sentiment towards those from whom they have suffered 30 much. Another was, their strong faith, that the work was not totally destroyed, but that it was yet to be carried forward with greater sue. cess, and they stand ready to go forward in it as eoon as God shall open the door for them. There was no word of dis from their lips. They believe China is yet to be redeemed and their faith oueht to stimulate our faith and the story of their suffering so nobly ought to stimulate us to make some greater sacrifice than we have yet made in order that we may do our share in this glorious work for Christ. There was large atte ndance both afternoon and evening, with quite good delegations from lBrookfield and Kent, and some from other churches in the village.