Reformed Presbyterian Minutes of Synod 1928 - Rparchives.org

REFORMED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 75
continuation of the work. The only exceptions to this were
occasional outbreaks of malice and hatred on the part of irresponsible
agitators. As will be known by all, political conditions
have brought vexing and almost baffling problems. The
most distressing of these lie in the sphere of the spiritual.
Our Chinese brethren, many of them mere babes in Christ,
find it hard to understand and meet these conditions. They need
our prayers. As the Presbytery in China undertakes to deal
with such problems our brethren there find what we find here:
sin within their lives, and the lives of the church members.
The inexperience of the Chinese as well as their peculiar social
customs, make it very difficult for them to find a proper
remedy for this. Even their leaders have been strangely reluctant
to lay hold on sin and scandal in the church and uproot
them. All this has reacted on our missionaries to discourage
them at times, and yet God thereby led them into a larger use
of the important ministry of prayer. For many years past a
great volume of prayer has gone up to God with reference to a
most vexing problem within the Church. Now the cheering
news has come that God has made the Church responsive to the
Spirit's leading, and so it became possible for Him to answer
these prayers. He has led the Presbytery to deal courageously
with this matter, and the heavy burden which has been resting
upon the Church for years, crushing and blighting its life, has
been lifted. May the Church's life be quickened and the power
of the living Christ be released through her.
Speaking now in more general terms, the field reports
make repeated reference to a seeming unwillingness on the
part of native Christians to push evangelistic work, to take
over aggressive leadership in the Church and bravely try to
make the Church self-sustaining and self-propagating. Yet
large things were actually done. In other centers successful.
evangelism has been pressed forward as never before. For at
least half the year all members of the force were at their
stations. At no time was the work without at least indirect
oversight. The hospital work was quite effective, that at Lo
Ting being at no time suspended, and the Redpath Schobl for
Girls, conducted part of the year only as an industrial institute,
was in February reopened at the request of the Chinese themselves.
Thenceforward it operated in all the courses, including
the religious. At the time this report of your Board is being
prepared it is hoped that Dr. Dickson, and perhaps others,
may be present to address the Synod. As far as we can now
judge the hope seems warranted that some of the missionaries
at home may be returned to the fieldin the early autumn. They
wish to return, the Chinese brethren want them, the Lord
seems about to call them back. May God fulfill our many
prayers!
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