A half century among the Siamese and the Lao : an ... - Khamkoo

SCHOOLS—THE NINE YEARS' WANDERER 231
into the work. Soon, with my cook and boy, we had
the nucleus of quite an interesting congregation who
attended worship twice a day. It was a delight to
teach them.
The case of the Chinese was deeply interesting. He
believed the Gospel plan of salvation, and was deeply
anxious to be saved from his sin and its punishment.
But there was one serious obstacle in the way of his
making an open profession—he had two wives. The
real wife—the one he had formally married—was childless.
The one he had bought was younger, and had two
lovable little children, both girls. I recall almost with
tears the burning questionings we had over that situation.
He seemed willing to make any self-sacrifice that
duty required. But what was duty? Should he divorce
one of them? If so, which one? " Of course, he
must keep the real one," you will say. But what of
the young mother and the helpless babes? The very
mention of their being turned adrift, even with a
dower, had produced a scene in the family. The
poor woman felt quite unable to care for the children
alone. The children were his children. It might easily
have been the ruin both of mother and babes to put
her away. My heart was not hard enough to advise
that. Surely the man had not cut himself off from
the hope of salvation by his past—by an error or sin of
ignorance. The conditions of church-membership are
faith and repentance. The sacraments of the church
are baptism and the Lord's Supper. Shall we offer a
man the pardon of his sin without its sacramental
seals?—the glorious hope of endless fellowship in
heaven, but not the communion of saints on earth?
A precisely parallel case I had met before in the person
of a native doctor at Mtang Awn. " What then,"