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MAKING MEDICAL MISSIONARIES
A Notable College Where Students are Trained to Heal the Sick in Foreign Lands.
By GEORGE T. B. DAVIS.
URING a day recently spent at Battle
Creek, Michigan, I found located there
one of the most unique and far-reach
ing institutions in the Christian World.
It is a fully equipped college for the
training of men and women to go forth
into foreign fields, and like the Master,
“cure the sick” and “preach the
Gospel of the Kingdom.”
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The school is called The American Medical Mis
sionary College. Already twenty-six of its students
are practicing and preaching the gospel in China,
Japan, India, Russia, Persia, Turkey, Germany,
South Africa, Mexico and New Zealand. It is non
sectarian and is committed to no medical dogma.
It gives the best medical training to its students,
and then they go out under any denominational
board to any field in the world. The course is four
years, and through the generosity of Christian
friends the expenses are reduced to a minimum.
Board and room are given the students at $3 per
week or less, and the total other expenses do not
exceed $135 per year. Even this expense may be
greatly lessened as a student may earn his board
and room by working three and a half hours a day.
It was an astonishment and a pleasure to me to
find this remarkable school, of which I had heard
very little, having an equipment of a large recita
tion hall, two dormitories and several smaller build
ings at Battle Creek while at Chicago is located the
most up-to-date medical dispensary in the city. The
students are thus not merely trained in the theory
of medicine, but are given a umber of months of
practical training during the four years’ course.
No one can estimate the far-reaching effects of
this institution as its graduates go to the farthest
bounds of the earth healing the sick and preach
ing Christ. It is the medical missionary who paves
the way for the teaching and preaching missiona
ries. It may not be generally known that in many
of the great heathen lands the doors were flung
open to missionaries through the efforts of the mis
sionary doctor who had gone there as a pioneer at
the risk of his life.
Dr. Stephen Smith of New York City, in a com
mencement address to the graduates of the college,
pictures graphically some of the striking achieve
ment of medical missionaries. He says in part:
Curative Christianity.
“England’s first foothold in India was the fee
which Dr. Boughton placed upon his services for
the cure of a native princess of Delhi. ‘Let my na
tion trade with yours,’ was the surgeon’s reply to
the question as to his fee. 4 Be it so,’ said the
mogul, who immediately ordered the harborage of
British ships.
“ ‘What do you most fear in Western civiliza
tion?’ was a question to the famous Chinese states
man, Li Hung Chang, on his visit to this country.
‘I do not fear your commerce, nor your armies, nor
your navies, but I do fear your medical missiona
ries,’ was his prompt and emphatic reply. In ex
planation of his statement, it was learned that the
wife of a statesman had been cured by a medical
missionary woman after the native physician had
failed. So great was the gratitude of the wife,
and so completely had the physician won her con
fidence, that she appropriated a large sum to build a
hospital, and introduced the physician to the fam
ilies of the nobility.
“China herself was opened to the commerce of
the world by Dr. Peter Parker, an American medi
cal missionary, and hence the current saying, ‘Dr.
Parker opened China with the point of the lancet.’
In a similar manner Japan was opened to Chris
tian missions by Dr. J. C. Hepburn of New York.
So opposed were the natives to missionaries that
hired assassins lay in wait for him until he was
called by the local authorities to amputate the arm
of a man.
The success of the operation and the manifest
sympathy and kindness of the missionary surgeon
The Golden Age for September 27, 1906.
allayed all opposition. Patients flocked to his
house, and he was able not only to lay the foun
dations of scientific medicine in that most interest
ing of Oriental countries, but to complete a trans
lation of the Bible and to prepare a dictionary of
its language. Today this venerable missionary, liv
ing in retirement in this country, is revered by the
Japanese as a great public benefactor.
The Work of Dr. N. H. Allen.
“Korea was a hermit empire, and Christian mis
sionaries were strictly forbidden to enter it until
1884. In that year Dr. N. 11. Allen was transferred
from China to the United States legation to Japan
as a physician, the United States Minister, General
Foote, not knowing that he was a missionary. A
riot soon afterward occurred in which a prince, a
nephew of the queen and next to the emperoi in
rank, was severely wounded. Dr. Allen ventured
out alone, crossed the city in the face of grave
dangers, and took charge of the prince, whose
wounds had already been filled with wax. So mani
festly skilful was his treatment, and so prompt the
recovery of the royal patient, that Dr. Allen was
requested to attend professionally the emperor and
the royal family. From Dr. Allen the emperor
learned the great importance of a general govern
ment hospital whereupon he proceeded to establish
it, and when it was completed, he placed Dr. Al
len at its head. It was a year or more before it
was known that Dr. Allen and his assistants were
missionaries, but so completely had they won the
confidence of the authorities and the people that no
opposition was raised to them and their work. Out
of that simple professional act, very heroic in its
execution, has developed a large and fertile field
for the missionary work, among an interesting and
promising people, and the pioneer, Dr. Allen, has
been elevated to the position of United States Min
ister.
“Persia was opened to missions by Dr. Asahal
Grant, followed by Dr. Cochran. Patients thronged
from all parts to see Dr. Grant; many were carried
by friends five days’ journey. Nestorians came
from the mountains; Kurdish chiefs came from
Amadia and beyond. Princes of the royal family,
governors of provinces, and many of the Persian
nobility were among his daily patients.
“Rev. Dr. Hunter Corbett says: ‘All mission
aries in China agree * * * that one of the
greatest obstacles in preaching to the heathen is
the prejudice and suspicion which is everywhere en
countered, and the medical missionary has a power
possessed by no other agency to overcome this dif
ficulty. In some cases, every attempt to get a hold
in a new city failed, until the medical missionary
first won the confidence of the people by healing.
The preacher, known to be a friend to the doctor,
then met with a welcome.’
“In Central Africa Dr. Southon removed a pain
ful tumor from the arm of a king, and so successful
was the operation, under chloroform, that the king
begged him to remain in his kingdom, saying: ‘ The
country is before you, choose where.you will; it is
all yours.’ This was the beginning of a large and
flourishing Christian mission.
“These illustrations of the power of the medical
art to prepare the way for the successful preaching
of the gospel among all classes and conditions of
people can be indefinitely multiplied. In Syria, in
the New Hebrides, in Africa, everywhere that the
missionary has attempted to spread the good news,
the physician, when present, has been the most suc
cessful pioneer. Dr. Moffatt estimated the mission
ary physician as equivalent to two ordinary mission
aries. Dr. Paton of the New Hebrides, was so im
pressed with the success of the medical missionary
among the natives of that island that he advised
that hereafter every missionary should study medi
cine as a part of his equipment.”
Medical Colleges for Missionaries.
In few of these glorious triumphs of medical mis
sions, it is only strange that the Chiistian world
should have been so long in realizing their impor
tance, and in building colleges for theft- training.
For a time it was attempted to send the pros
pective missionaries to the ordinary medical col
leges to be trained, but the spiritual environment
was about the worst possible instead of the best
possible in the first place; and secondly, the train
ing was not sufficiently complete to meet the de
mands made upon a doctor in a heathen land.
The man who founded the American Medical
Missionary College declares that the recent opening
up of dark heathen lands to missions is a loud call
to Christian men and women to go in and possess
Them for Christ. They state that “the rapid open
ing up within recent years of vast areas of the
uncivilized portions of the earth, with their uncount
ed millions reaching out for knowledge and for spir
itual and physical help to their more fortunate fel
low beings living under the light and blessing of
Christian civilization, is a loud call to men and
women possessed of the spirit of self-sacrifice and
Christian altruism, together with the professional
skill and insight of the trained physician, to render
pioneer service in the transformation of these mil
lions of men and women, made like ourselves in the
image of God, b it debased by ignorance, enslaved
by superstition, and crushed to earth by the bur
densome delusions of idol worship, into enlightened
Christian communities. The experience of a century
of Christian missionary work in heathen lands has
amply demonstrated that the medical missionary
is the most powerful of all agencies in lifting up
the depressed masses of heathenism to the level of
Christian manhood and womanhood.
Any reader who may feel a call to devote himself
or herself to this form of Christian service should
write at once to Dr. J. 11. Kellogg, President, Bat
tle Creek, Michigan, and full particulars will be
promptly forwarded. It is the hope and prayer of
the writer that a number who read this article may
be led to go to this college and then “heal the sick”
and “preach Christ” in far distant lands, and thus
help mightily to advance God’s Kingdom upon
earth.
Love and Beauty.
By MARGARET SMITH GRAHAM.
Love and beauty, how they blend,
Mix and mingle to the end!
All the flowers as they nod,
Shed perfume that breathes of God.
Birds are singing on the wing,
Beauty is in ev’rything,
If we only look to see—
Come, my love, and dwell with me.
Sorrow plays her own sad part,
In minor chords upon each heart;
Beauty tiptoes softly in;
Builds up faith to purge out sin.
Joy keeps pace at standard time,
To the love that is sublime,
And the soul’s unfettered, free—-
Come, my love, and dwell with me.
All along the noisy brook,
Beauty peeps from ev’ry nook;
Birds and bees and butterflies—
All is love, it never dies.
And an open sesame ’tis
To the best, for we are His,
Sum the total up and see—
Come, my love, and dwell with me.
The Rev. Thomas Spurgeon maintains the same
attitude toward the British Baptist Union as his
father. He is not a member of it and has recently
declared his purpose to remain outside of it as long
as the present state of matters continues.
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