WITH CHRIST IN INDOCHINA - IndoChina1911

CHAPTER XI
SAIGON
AT SAIGON the work was hard. Here was a
. big city, highly civilized, with all modern conveniences
and many luxuries, but without Christ.
Civilization without Christ produces a condition that
is worse than raw heathenism, for the civilized
heathen has added the vices of the West to those of
the East, and "the last state of that man is worse
than the first."
But God had His own there, too. A landowner
from a near-by town was one of the first Christians,
and around him there grew an outstation even before
the church at Saigon had gotten under way. A
government employee who had been the jailer at
Tourane, and a local barber were among the first
converts. They became leaders in the church, but
they were not sanctified, and the progress of the
church was retarded by them. If there is one man
more than another who needs to be cleansed from
sin and filled with the Holy Spirit, it is the heathen
who has come to Christ in one of those coast cities
where civilization and its vices have preceded the
gospel. These men were zealous Christians. They
would fight for the truth, but they did not live in
victory. They quarreled with one another and with
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