Sketches from Formosa.

VIII
CONFIRMING THE CHURCHES
I SHALL here note down a few encouraging things I met
with during my recent visit to the region north from
Taiwan-fu. Our congregations there seem to be making
progress in the spiritual life, and individuals I repeatedly
met with were evidently speaking and acting under the
powers of the world to come. Several of the native
brethren accompanied me, and we set out to spend the
first Sunday at our station in Hwan-a-chan, an aboriginal
village about sixteen miles north from our headquarters,
and where stated Christian work began about two years
ago. It lies in a rather sparsely-populated region, but
one passes through a few towns where good opportunities
for wayside preaching can always be had.
We reached Hwan-a-chan on Saturday afternoon, to
have a pleasant meeting with the brethren that evening ;
and, on the following day, I conducted all the services,
our native assistant having gone to preach to a little
colony of worshippers which has sprung up in the village
of Thau-sia, fully three miles from Hwan-a-chan, in the
direction of Poah-be. At present, the regular hearers
in Hwan-a-chan number about thirty. They are a very
than their fellow-
poor people ; more dull, perhaps,
Christians at some of the other stations, and a good deal
looked down upon by their crafty and more prosperous
Chinese neighbours. Thus it is, however, that God
sometimes passes by the self-sufficient to make the poor