A Chinese Colporteur.
The Quarterly Record of the National Bible Society of Scotland gives an interesting account of a native colporteur in China who has just died. His name was Cheng-mao, and he seems to have been a truly Christian and devoted man. He was a man of prayer and meditation upon the Scriptures. He suffered much on account of his zeal for Christ and the salvation of his fellow-countrymen. He visited “the streets and temples, the shops and houses, the markets and gambling dens of the district. People called him ‘Big head.’ They struck his face and spat upon him, they tied straws to his queue, they emptied manure buckets over his shoulders. On one occasion a jeering crowd forced him on his knees, insisting that until he confessed his apostacy in forsaking the idols, he should not rise again; but, though they began to strike him, he behaved with such gentleness and wisdom, and spoke to them so effectively, that they were shamed, and let him go.”
He preached as well as sold the Scriptures, and it was after a day’s engagement of this kind that he took fever and died. The minister of the church which he attended said, “He was our little St. Paul.”
“The Scotsman” and “Christmas.”
There appeared in The Scotsman newspaper of 25th December, a long and bitter article, in which the ancient Scottish opposition to Christmas was scathingly denounced, and the growing popularity of the observance highly commended. The article was distinctly fitted to stir a sense of injustice and injury in the mind of any loyal adherent of “the old paths,” and a Free Presbyterian reader at once wrote a brief letter by way of reply. The letter was returned with a polite note from the Scotsman editor. The Free Presbyterian friend has forwarded it to us, and we have pleasure in giving it a place in these columns. It runs as follows:—
“To the Editor, Scotsman newspaper, Edinburgh—Sir,—The writer of the leading article on this subject in your issue of to-day evidently knows and can quote scripture. Will you be good enough to allow me space in your columns to draw his attention to Job xv. 6, and to ask whether, by this article, he really does not place himself under the indictment here pronounced? He says—’There is nothing so long lived as ecclesiastical feuds. . . . How hot the fire must have blazed can be judged from the fact that after three hundred years, the ashes are not yet quite cold.’ Verily they are not! This article fully proves it; and the writer can positively be none other than an ecclesiastic. Why, the intolerant spirit here evinced towards the poor and fast-diminishing unfortunates who may yet be found to differ from him, is only equalled by the ludicrously exaggerated benefits ascribed to the observance of Christmas. It would take up too much space to follow him in the epithets used against the Scot for renouncing this holy-day observance at the Reformation, such as—’The bane of Presbyterian Scotland has been the spirit of self-righteousness,’ ‘Its dour determination not to share in the rejoicing of the Christian world,’ ‘During the hey-day of fanaticism the nation donned the sackcloth of innumerable fasts,’ ‘The frenzy of the Covenant,’ ‘The stiff-necked Scot.’ But I may be permitted to ask whether the appearance of these somewhat uncharitable observations in one of the foremost newspapers in Scotland on ‘Christmas’ day, 1912, is to be accepted as an indication that, according to the same writer, ‘the old watchword of bitterness, which broke the peace of the Church in pieces, has all been submerged by the humanising influence which came when the Churches began again to commemorate the peace and goodwill which the first Christmas proclaimed?’ Is not this line of remark self-contradictory?
“The inference fairly deducible from this article is, that the Scot, from the time he renounced the observance of Christmas till he embraced it, was the most irreligious person in Christendom, whereas the exact contrary to this is successfully maintained by such as are considered the foremost historians, who prove themselves less prejudiced, and therefore more reliable, and capable of judging a cause in all its bearings than this writer appears to be. It would be interesting to hear how he could harmonize the alleged great improvement resulting from the return to this observance with the increasing wail from all other authorities as to the growing disrespect for, and non-observance of, almost every other religious ordinance. But there are a goodly number still left in Scotland who have not bowed the knee to this Baal of the Scotsman leader writer, and just for the honourable reason which, in an off-taking manner, he quotes in regard to our fathers, they ‘dare not religiously observe any other feast day than what the Divine oracles have prescribed.’ He may indulge in his flouts at them for not yielding to what he describes as mere sentiment, but he cannot charge them with inconsistency or sophism for unequivocal adherence to the Author and Finisher of their faith, who says of their philosophical traducers—’But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.’