aries not only of travel, but of residence all over China; liberty to buy houses and lands and to make their abode wherever the susceptibilities of the people would tolerate them. And the Chinese Government has, to its credit, always protected the rights of property duly conveyed under this clause. It has even compensated French missionaries for damage to their property during the recent war with France. Accordingly, as the 1843 Treaty was at once followed by the establishment of Missions in Hong Kong and the five treaty ports; immediately after the Treaty of 1860 about thirty additional societies started missions in other treaty ports and in various parts of the interior. Our own Mission dates from this latter year.

The treaty known as the Treaty of Tientsin, and finally ratified (after a second war) in 1860, had been agreed to in June, 1858. As soon as the provisions of the treaty were known, there arose a great desire on the part of many Christians that the churches should enter by the door thus opened. John Angell James, of Birmingham, was one of the foremost in urging that strenuous efforts should be made to enter China.

COMMENCEMENT OF OUR MISSION.

The late W. G. Lewis, then of Bayswater, took also a leading part in urging on the Committee and the constituency that we should do our share. And a beginning was made by the acceptance, in 1859, of Mr. Kloekers and Mr. Hall. Mr. Klockers, a native of Holland, had already been employed in China in connection with the American Southern Baptists; his wife was an English lady belonging to a family held in high esteem for their worth and missionary sympathies-the Winterbothams of Stroud. The daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Kloekers is Mrs. Bentley, of our Congo Mission; Mrs. Morgan, of Tai Youen, is their niece, and another niece is labouring in connection with the London Missionary Society at Tientsin. Mr. Hall had belonged to the Chinese Evangelisation Society. So that we commenced work with two missionaries already in possession of the language.

In 1861 an appeal was made for six men for China, and in 1863 Messrs. Laughton, McMechan, and Kingdon went out to join them. The commencement, however, did not prove to be made at a very favourable time. For though there was peace between China and England and a new deference to foreigners, the result of their victories, gave foreigners facilities for work, the Empire itself was in the throes of the great conflict known as the Tai-ping Rebellion. It had broken

out in 1850, and from small beginnings had grown into a movement already dominating more than half of China. Unquestionably the force it possessed came largely from Christianity. It was a war against idolatry, and succeeded in suppressing the public worship of idols throughout two-thirds of the Empire. It urged the worship of the Supreme God, proclaimed the Ten Commandments as the rule of life, and preached a corrupt form of the Gospel, representing Jesus Christ as the Redeemer of men, but representing the rebel leader as His brother and a proper object for equal reverence and obedience.

The wider that the movement grew, the more corrupt and cruel it became, until at the time our first missionaries got to China it had degenerated simply into a struggle to obtain the supreme power. And for a long while it seemed as if it would be successful in attaining it, the rebels reaching as far north in their victorious progress as Shansi and Shantung, and their progress being unchecked; until first the American, Ward, and subsequently our own General Gordon, at the request of Li Hung Chang, led the Imperialist forces against them. Our brethren directed their course first to Shanghai, the nearest of the original treaty ports to the headquarters of the rebels, and commenced work in the city, and also in the rebel headquarters. Mr. Kloekers was the one to whom fell most of the work amongst the rebels. At first, great hopes were entertained that the movement might be hallowed and guided to right ends; and in the annual report of the Mission, issued shortly after their arrival, the welcome given to our brethren was accentuated as being of great importance. But any hopes thus cherished were soon doomed to disappointment; for the rebel leaders became conscious that the sort of Christianity taught by Mr. Kloekers was not the sort that would materially further their cause, and accordingly required a modification of their doctrine such as would associate their chief with Jesus Christ in the matter of supernatural claims. And when the missionary could not oblige them in this, he was no longer permitted to work where they had sway.

In 1863, Messrs. Laughton, McMechan, and Kingdon arrived in China. By the time they arrived they found that Mrs. Kloekers had died of cholera at Shanghai, and that Mr. Kloekers had gone north to Chefoo, with the intention of joining Mr. Hall, who was working in that city and the adjoining neighbourhood.

Mr. Kloekers arrived in Chefoo only in time to see Mr. Hall fall a victim to the cholera, after ministering successfully to many assailed by it, and after losing his child by the same, disease,

He made arrangements for Mrs. Hall's return, and then in double loneliness, without wife and without colleague, addressed himself to work in that city, which, until 1875, when Mr. Richard left for Tsing Chow Foo, continued to be the headquarters of our Mission work.

In 1863, Messrs. Loughton, McMechan, and Kingdon reached Chefoo. In 1869, Messrs. Richard and Baeschlin joined the work there. In 1870, Dr. Brown went out. But the trials that beset the commencement of the Mission were manifold. First of all, the climate tried the missionaries intensely. The annual report for 1867 speaks of its "direful influence." To-day Chefoo is the sanatorium of China. But Chefoo the sanatorium is the foreign settlement, somewhat detached from the native town, and beautifully situated; and between the Chefoo of the English merchant and the native city, in a street of which our brethren essayed to live, there was a wider difference than there is between the London facing Hyde Park and the lowest slum in Bethnal Green.

Sewers without any gradient-or with a gradient of the most imperfect and interrupted kind-occupy the middle of every street. Where the traffic is heavier they are flagged over sufficiently to give support for the traffic; but the flags permit the effluvium to rise freely between them. In the less frequented streets there is no covering ; and, accordingly, the recking filth fills the air with overpowering odours. Situate in the latitude of the southernmost point of Italy, the heat in summer is extreme, as is also the cold of winter. Mr. Hall and his child died here. Severe illness drove Messrs. Kloekers, McMechan, and Kingdon home within five years of their setting out; and in 1870 Mr. Laughton died. So that in 1865 the Committee report that they have "hitherto met with great discouragement in the prosecution of the work"; and, in 1867, they report that, in view of the ill-health of Mr. Kingdon, "the continuance and extension of the work has been the subject of a special committee."

Then, the rebels were in the neighbourhood; and two American missionaries were murdered by them. Then, in 1870, came the massacre of Tientsin, raising a wave of anti-foreign excitement against all foreigners, and leading the brethren in Chefoo to write: "Popular rumour postponed the day of our massacre from day to day, and from week to week; we were every day, more or less, prepared to hear that the fatal hour had come at last."

Then, over and above all, a large seaport is one of the worst places in China to be the headquarters of a Mission. The thoughtful are