"Jean-François Gerbillon (1654-1707), a French Jesuit, reached China in 1687 with Joachim Bouvet and others, and the Kangxi Emperor kept him at court for his scientific learning. In 1689 he and Thomas Pereira served as interpreters in the negotiations for the Treaty of Nerchinsk; afterwards he often travelled with the emperor beyond the Great Wall, fixing the latitude and longitude of many places, and wrote works on geometry. In 1692 he obtained an edict granting the free exercise of the Christian religion; after Gerbillon and Bouvet attended the emperor through a fever, Kangxi gave them a site for a chapel and residence. He died in Beijing in 1707."
— Wikipedia
Source: Wikipedia, "Jean-François Gerbillon" (after the Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)
Mathematics, Reason, Truth
Views: 324
"God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called."
— Anonymous
Source: Modern Christian saying (often used to sum up Gladys Aylward's life; not her own words)
God, calling, power
Views: 307
"As a physician, Dr. William Edward Macklin saw the awful ravages of opium on mind and body: an addict would pawn or sell anything his family possessed, go hungry and let his family starve, even sell his wife or child to get the drug. He treated those who came to be cured with careful kindness, giving soothing medicines during the agony of withdrawal and tonics to rebuild the body afterward, and many were cured. Yet curing addicts did not satisfy him; he went back to "first causes": he fought the trade that brought the drug into China, sought to make poppy growing illegal, was an active member of an anti-opium society, wrote regularly for newspapers, and went to Washington to protest the way opium was being forced upon China."
— Edith Eberle (biographer)
Source: Edith Eberle, Macklin of Nanking (St. Louis: The Bethany Press, 1936), pp. 127–129
Smoking and drinking, introspection, the truth, Christ, the soul, freedom
Views: 298
"What God is looking for is not a great work, but the right person. If the person is wrong, no matter how great the work, it is just straw and stubble in God's eyes; if the person is right, even the smallest service is like gold and silver. Because what God wants is not what you do for Him, but what He reveals through you."
— Watchman Nee
Source: The Ministry of the Word of God
Work, people, service, manifestation, God
Views: 372
"Building operations proceeded swiftly, and by Sunday, May 14th, the chapel, with its thatched roof, was ready with seats for three hundred and fifty, and standing room for seven hundred. English people would have thought little of that poor little chapel with its mud walls, which had been erected at a cost of about twenty-five pounds; but to the Miao it was an epoch-making event; for out of their poverty they had subscribed to build this first Christian temple in Miao land. Their delight knew no bounds and in that pure joy Pollard shared."
— W. A. Grist (Pollard's biographer)
Source: Samuel Pollard: Pioneer Missionary in China (London: Henry Hooks / Cassell, c. 1920), Book III, ch. 6, "The Second Phase of the Mass Movement"
Promise, Trust, School, Miracle
Views: 304
"In general, it is better to think well of another than to think ill, or at least to dwell on another's good points than on his bad points. … Let us begin to commend, wherever it is possible, and give up the unpleasant, degrading sensations of hate, rancor, and denunciation."
— Gilbert Reid
Source: A Christian's Appreciation of Other Faiths: A Study of the Best in the World's Greatest Religions (1921), Preface
Christianity, Confucianism, Buddhism, Islam, common ground, differences, ethnicity
Views: 321