encouragement for missionary effort. The Mandarin dialect prevails with more or less purity over the districts occupied by fully three-fourths of the people. By the translations of the Word of God, and of numerous tracts and books into the written language (which is current throughout the whole of the country), and into the Mandarin (which is easily read except in Fuh-kien and Kwang-tung and perhaps a small part of Kwang-si), a way has been prepared for usefulness among the literary classes of every part of the Chinese empire. And dictionaries, vocabularies, and grammars, already exist, and prepare the way for the further study of this written language.
But still more important is the fact, that the spoken languages in many parts of China are so easy of acquisition that now missionaries of moderate ability may begin to use the vernacular of almost any part of China after a few months' study. Hence, while there is ample room for those whom God has endowed with special philological talent, there is no reason why men "full of faith and of the Holy Ghost," who have enjoyed but few educational advantages, should not be engaged in the blessed work of carrying the gospel into the regions hitherto unevangelized. The masses of the people are unable to read or write; consequently, persons possessing only a limited education are competent to act as their teachers. By means of an adaptation of our Roman alphabet, the various spoken languages of China may be reduced to writing, and uneducated Chinese may be taught to read in their own mother tongue (which the written style is not) in a few months. High-style composition in the unspoken written character is, even to the learned, unintelligible when read aloud: it is addressed to the eye, not to the ear. To acquire the power of using it requires, even in the case of a Chinese, several years of incessant study: hence the small proportion of the population that is able to read. Their own vernacular, all, of course, speak; and by means of an alphabetized system, the unlearned may be taught to read it in a few months. In the writer's experience in Ningpo, about three months have usually sufficed for those who were engaged in daily labour, but who regularly attended an evening class. Boys in school, able to give up more time to it, often read nicely in about a month. He has known an intelligent woman learn to read in eight or ten days sufficiently well to spell her way through any part of the New Testament. She was soon removed by friends hostile to the gospel to a distance; and her Testament and Hymn-book,[1] which she had during a short
- ↑ We give two verses of the hymn, "There is a fountain filled with blood," from this hymn-book.
1. Z yiu ih dzi tsi-mun-leh hyüih,
Liu-c'ih dzong Yiæ-su sing;
Væn-nying læ keh-go dzi hao gyiang.
Ze-ky'in tsih-le ken-zing.2. Ting jih-z-kô kw'a si dao-zeh,
K'en-kyin keh dzi hwun-hyi;
Ngô ze se-tsih ziang gyi ka djong,
Yia k'o-yi gyiang-leh-kyi.
