Mary Stone

Early Years and Calling

Mary Stone (石美玉) was born on 1 May 1873 into a Christian family in Jiujiang, Jiangxi. Her father was a pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and her mother ran the church's girls' school. Because of their faith, the family did not bind her feet according to the old custom, which was extremely rare in China at the time, and this became the first step toward her later leaving home and crossing the ocean. She was educated in mission schools from childhood; bright and eager to learn, she won the high regard of Gertrude Howe, a woman missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Medical Studies in America

In 1892 Gertrude Howe took Mary Stone and Ida Kahn (康爱德), a girl from the same town, to the United States, where they went to study in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 1896 the two graduated from the medical school of the University of Michigan, becoming among the first Chinese women to earn degrees in Western medicine. At a time when Western medicine was still the privilege of a few, these two young Chinese women held their diplomas in hand and were ready to return home to serve their people, an unprecedented page in the history of modern Chinese medicine.

Medical Work in Jiujiang

After completing her studies, Mary Stone returned to Jiujiang to practise medicine. With a donation from Dr. I. N. Danforth of Chicago, she founded the Danforth Hospital (Elizabeth Skelton Danforth Hospital), devoted to treating women and children, with an attached nursing school where she personally trained Chinese nurses. For decades she was both a physician and an educator, bringing Western medicine and the Christian faith together to her patients.

Founding Bethel

In 1920, because of her convictions of faith, Mary Stone and the American missionary Jennie V. Hughes left the Methodist Episcopal Church together and, bringing her younger sister Phebe Stone with her, founded Bethel (Bethel Mission) in Shanghai. On this ground they established in turn the Bethel Hospital, a nursing school, a Bible institute, primary and secondary schools and an orphanage. Medical work, education and preaching went side by side, and Bethel became a banner of independent Chinese ministry in the Republican era.

Revival Evangelism

Bethel's most far-reaching influence came from the evangelistic teams it sent out. After the revival around 1925, the Bethel Bible School trained a large number of preachers. In 1931 Andrew Gih (计志文) and other graduates formed the Bethel Worldwide Evangelistic Band, which John Sung (宋尚节) later joined. They travelled north and south of the Yangtze, holding more than a thousand meetings in thirteen provinces within one year and preaching the gospel to hundreds of thousands of people, stirring a wave of revival in the modern Chinese church.

Final Years and Rest

After the outbreak of the War of Resistance against Japan, Bethel's work was repeatedly hit by the fighting. In her later years Mary Stone went to the United States, and on 30 December 1954 she died in Pasadena, California, at the age of 81. She never married and devoted herself to her people through medicine and faith: she was one of China's first women doctors of Western medicine and a pioneer of indigenous Chinese mission work, and the church still remembers her today.