The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-12-03
COND|T|ONS|N
 CHINA STARTLING Reason Why China Needs Christian Prayers REV. CARSON'S VIEWS A Presbyterian Moderator Reports Findings From His Trip Over
 COuntry-Men and Re-
 ligion Up to Date
REV. CARSON'S VIEWS

Not community in America but there is in it somesparticular friend of Christian missionary wdfk in China. Few commun- ities there are that have not furnished one or more of the almost 5000 missionaries now in that country. The missionary so- cieties report that nothing in the present uprising in China seems aimed at foreign CTS, while there are many. reasons why rebels and loyalists alike will protect them, if for no other one than to prevent intervention by American or European powers and possible division of their em- pire.
 The committee of reference and counsel of all foreign missionary societies of the United States and Canada, the Rev. Dr. Arthur J. Brown of the Presbyterian board, chairman, has just sent to churches in both countries requests for interces- sory prayer by Christian people, giving as reasons many startling facts These facts are under three heads
 l. For the people of China, a great and virile nation which, awakened from the torpor of ages by the quckening forces of the modern world, is convused by civil war at d time when all it's energies are needed for the legislative economic, edu- cational and moral readjustments which the new era involves. Flood, famine and pestilence are intensifyisg the tragedy of internal strife. Vast areas have been in undated in the provinces of Nganhwel kiang-su and Human, the two former facing desolation and famine for the third time in five years. The Yang-tzse river is 45 miles wide 259 miles from the sea, and thousands of villages have been sub merged. Five hundred thousand families must be aided through the winter at an average cost of s15 per family or ten times more people win die of starvation than of wounds in battle.
 ?. For the Chinese Christians, who share in full measure the privations and sor- rows that are the common lot of their countrymen, and often the despairing re- breaches of their non- Christian neighbors who imagine that these multiplied calam- fties are due to the wrath of the spirits against those who have abandoned the ancestral faith. Hundreds of Chinese pas tors, teachers and evangelists, who have been supported wholly or in part by the Christians on the field, cannot now be maintained by their impoverished peo- pie. Churches and schools have been swept away by floods, families have been scattered by war. and multitudes of Chris tians are without food and shelter for the winter.
 3.For the missionaries who are in posi- tions of extraordinary difficulty. with myriads of ruined and starving Chinese looking to them for provisions and em- ployment, with throngs of the sick and n- Jured daily brought for treatment, wth Chinese and foreigners alike expecting them to perform the ierculean task Of purchasing and distributing food, they must necessarily toll in circumstances of almost unbearable physical and mental strain.
 In addition to the special burdens which revolution and famine entail. there are in creased responsibilities for the great and varied missionary work under their care, work which is now represented by 4299 foreign missionaries, 11,611 Chinese minis ters, teachers and evangelists. 3IS5 sta tions and out-stations 2029 primary schools, 1l16 academies. colleges, industri- al, medical. nurses and normal schools. ITO hospitals, II orphanages, Is leper asy- 1ums, 3 homes for untrained children of lepers. II institutions for the blind and for deaf mutes, rescue homes for fallen women, 100 opium refuges, ? industrial homes, one asylum for the insane, 231 churches with PTS, ,62S members, a Christian community of 750,00O and property valued at millions of dollars-aH this not incud- ing the missions of the Roman Catholic church.
 Christian work. says the committee .'has been greatly prospered, the growth in a decade having been 175 per cent. The missionaries are in immediate charge of this extensive enterprise The American minister at Picking has ordered women and children out of the zones of hostili- ties, but as a rule the men heroically re- main at their posts. They feel that they cAn no more leave at such time than a .p2ysicial could leave his patients when Epptagious disease is epidemic. or chap NM his regiment in time of war. This is 4fe day when the faithful missionary of Qljristsis most needed, not only to care