used in the printing of the newspaper.  The type-case is usually long, for the purpose of allowing all the type-pieces to be spread out.  The type runs up and down in a column, and you read from right to left as in Hebrew or other Shemitic languages.  The characters are as old in form as the days of Confucius.  The “Chung Sai Yat Po” has a very large circulation and finds its way to the islands of the Pacific Ocean and into China.

From the newspaper office we wended our way to a little Baptist mission chapel for the Chinese.  There were about forty persons congregated here, among them some ten or twelve Americans who were teaching the Chinese the English language.  This night school is popular with young, ambitious Chinamen, for when they learn our language it is much easier for them to obtain work in stores and offices, and even as house servants.  The books used had the Chinese words on one page and the English sentences opposite.  Sometimes converts to Christianity are made through the medium of the night school, but it takes time and patience to win a Chinaman from the religion of Confucius.  It is worth the labour, however.  The difficulties in the mastery of English are a great barrier to conversions.  Nevertheless they do occur.  A Chinaman is readily reached through his own language.  Hence the importance of raising up native teachers of the Gospel who can speak to the hearts as well as to the understanding of their countrymen.  As we observed in the foregoing chapter, in the Orient, as in Syria and Egypt, Jews and Mohammedans sometimes allow their children to attend the English schools, and to a large extent from a worldly motive.  The Syrian or Arab who can speak English is in demand as a dragoman, an accountant, an office clerk in the bazaar, or a camp-servant or boatman.  Indeed a great revolution is now taking place all through the East.  Nearly all the young Egyptians can talk English, and this is the first step towards their conversion to the faith of the Gospel.  When they are able to read the books of the Christians in the English, they are led to look favourably on the Church.  They catch the spirit of belief in Jesus Christ from the Christian tourist.  They lose the narrowness and bigotry which the mosque or the synagogue fosters, and in time they examine the claims of a religion which has built up the great nations of Europe and America.  The future has in store great developments for the Church in Palestine and the old land of the Pharaohs through the agency of the English schools, and I believe the readiest way in which to convert the Chinese people, whether in Chinatown in San Francisco, or in China itself, is to teach them our language and give them access to the Holy Scriptures in our noble tongue.  Our Church schools in China are doing a great work in this respect.  So is St. John’s College in Shanghai.  They should all be liberally supported with offerings from America, and what we sow in this generation will be reaped in the next, a splendid harvest for Christ and His Church!