"I hope that your hearts will not be discouraged. Duty is ours, the result is in the disposal of the All-wise God. We should not be too sanguine of immediate success. We sow the seed, and probably both it and we may die before the fruit be seen. But the word of the Lord shall not return void."
— Robert Morrison
Source: Memoirs of the Life and Labours of Robert Morrison (1839), vol. 1, letter of 1812
Work, knocking on the door
Views: 480
"I open its exercises with religious instruction and prayer every morning … The improvement of the boys under their [the two lady teachers'] maternal, watchful, pains-taking culture, in their whole appearance, manners and conduct, strikes the most casual observer, so that you may almost judge of the length of time a boy has been in the school, by his very aspect."
— William Jones Boone
Source: "Report of the Rt. Rev. Wm. J. Boone, D.D., Missionary Bishop at Shanghai, China," The Spirit of Missions, vol. 12 (August 1847)
Preaching, school, truth, science, character, society, integrity
Views: 477
"Issachar J. Roberts (1802–1871) was an American Baptist missionary. In 1847 Hong Xiuquan studied with him in Canton for about two months and asked for baptism, but Roberts did not baptize him. In 1860 Roberts went to the Taiping capital at Nanjing and was dismayed to find that the Taiping beliefs departed widely from his own Christianity; he broke with Hong's court and left in January 1862, and thereafter was fiercely critical of the Taiping."
— Wikipedia
Source: Wikipedia, "Issachar Jacox Roberts"
Soul, vice, lamp, darkness, true light
Views: 462
"The good seed may be sown on a passing visit, while the Missionary has no time to stay and watch over its growth; and the written word may be sent through his instrumentality, to places whither his feet can never travel, and to a people whom his eyes shall never see. He will no doubt commend them to God, and the best wishes of his soul go along with the silent messengers of salvation which he himself cannot accompany."
— William Milne
Source: A Retrospect of the First Ten Years of the Protestant Mission to China (1820), Appendix
Heart Gate, Missionary
Views: 398
"But alas! if there were highways opened through every part of the empire, there are none "shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace" to travel them. The few missionaries whom all Christendom have made out to send to China, are by no means equal to the duties of their own stations. Those who have not been toiling for years at the language, are not qualified for such an undertaking; and the Christian world appear still to slumber over the claims and calls of these perishing millions."
— David Abeel
Source: Journal of a Residence in China and the Neighboring Countries, from 1829 to 1833 (New York, 1834), p. 141
Soul, Destruction, Transmission
Views: 389
"To acquire the Chinese is a work for men with bodies of brass, lungs of steel, heads of oak, hands of spring-steel, eyes of eagles, hearts of apostles, memories of angels, and lives of Methuselahs! Still I make a little progress. I hope, if not to be master, yet to gain as much as will suit the purposes of a Missionary. Every sentence gained I value at the rate of a dollar."
— William Milne
Source: Manuscript letter, 1814; quoted in Robert Philip, The Life and Opinions of the Rev. William Milne, D.D. (1840), pp. 129–130
Missionaries, nation, students, teachers, truth
Views: 445