Published: 2016-10-19
Total Pages: 538
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Excerpt from The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal, Vol. 15 But not only in bringing patients and their friends under the preaching of the Gospel is medical work useful but in view of the numbers brought into the church through its instrumentality is medical work an. Advisable agency. The direct results in the number of converts added yearly to the mission are easily estimated and in this respect differing greatly from the indirect which cannot be computed. Medical missions as a direct evangelistic agency stand prominently forward as compared with ordinary preaching, itinerat ing, Bible colportage, schools, etc. A goodly number of the converts, preachers and native agents generally, will be found to have been brought into the church through the agency of the medical depart ment.. Dr. Edkins in one year reported as many as twenty-three adult baptisms, the direct result of hospital work. Other years have also sent in their quota. Many of the first agents of the mission are the direct result of medical work. In some cases, perhaps, the discontinuance of the medical work would practically amount to breaking up the mission. The chapels in some cases could perhaps not be filled but for the out-patient class. It forms always, to say the least, an important nucleus with which to begin. It brings a more widely extended class to hear the preaching than the mere preaching itself apart from the medical work could ever accomplish. And in proportion to the area from which hearers are drawn, we may suppose Christian ideas to get diffused. The bread is cast upon the waters to return at some other time. We cannot there fore think that the preaching to in-patients is a useless work nor do we place it second in point of importance to. Regular and ordinary congregations. As compared with direct personal contact in the wards, it is an agency, without doubt, of less power just as seeing and talking with the ordinary hearers at their own homes would produce greater results than mere chapel preaching. The good in uence exerted in the wards is probably not all owing to the softening in uences of the medical work, of the kindness received. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."