Chinese from the mines and from the State, or to degrade them to a condition of peonage or slavery, was defeated, and a repeal of the law triumphantly carried during the next session of the legislature. Five years of this excessive labor brought the missionary to the borders of the grave, and he was compelled to quit the field.

In 1859 the Rev. A. W. Loomis, formerly of Ningpo, China, resumed the work of preaching and teaching in the Mission House. His faithful and incessant efforts for the good of the Chinese have been followed with success. Converts from time to time have been added to the Church, some of whom have been men of most sincere and active religious character and very useful in Christian labors among their own countrymen. From this centre an influence has been exerted over thousands coming and going through the port of San Francisco by tracts and other means. Frequent contributions from the pen of Mr. Loomis in American periodicals have served to enlist a general interest in the missionary work.

The Rev. J. L. Shuck, of the Baptist church, during several years, commencing with 1854, performed a considerable amount of missionary labor among the Chinese at Sacramento, in connection with his pastorate over an American congregation. The Rev. E. W. Syle, of the Episcopal church, spent usefully in the same cause parts of the years 1855 and 1856, in San Francisco. Each of these gentlemen had previously resided in China, as had also the Rev. O. Gibson, of the Methodist Episcopal church, who began to labor in San Francisco in 1868, and promises to be the means of engaging that numerous body of Christians in effective Sabbath-school and other instruction of the Chinese.

Within two years past numerous American churches in California have been roused, by the enlarged communication with China and immigration of the Chinese, and the public attention to them, to establish efficient Sabbath and other schools for their benefit. This we the way for that general popular interest in them as individuals which must be the chief hope of good for them.

may hope will prepare

These are the small beginnings of the effort of American Christianity to perform the duty assigned to it by Providence in this great School of the Nations. The beginnings of this movement of the Chinese race are in themselves but small. But wherever the members of it in coming days shall be scattered, among the Christian homes or fields or factories of all our country, let us hope that the Divine design in bringing these strangers from far will be kept in diligent remembrance. Our land has been chastened by affliction to prepare it for a great work for the good of mankind. Let us not, like the vain king of old, display our precious things, our silver and gold and spices and armor, and forget the "wonder that was done in the land," to inquire of which was the chief end for which the ambassadors of a neighboring powerful empire had been moved to come to him. God, who in judgment made the disappointed pilgrims to be the scourge of Israel, will visit kindred folly and sin in us with some kindred penalty. The most noble and imperishable memorial of even a Berkeley or an Edwards is the love which leads to the consecration of intellect, learning and influence to a species of work which is most of all on earth like what was assumed by the incarnate Son of God.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE FUTURE OF THE CHINESE RACE.

THREE empires fill the vision of the future—the

United States, Russia and China. Great Britain alone compares with them in the extent of her colonial possessions; but hers are remote and widely scattered, and will when ripe as to the Divine purposes fall away from her, as the United States has done, and become centres of independent influences. Each of the three nations named has vast contiguous colonies; each is wholly in the northern hemisphere; and each is animated throughout by the same general spirit, and possesses a certain unity in aims, laws, language, social habits and religious sentiments; and there are some peculiar features of resemblance and mutual interest existing between them all.

The rapid and mighty growth of the first two of those nations, and the prospect of the development of the longtreasured resources of the third, have deeply moved the prophetic minds of the latter days. They were pondered by that extraordinary man, born in a little island of the Mediterranean sea, who held at one time the continent of Europe at his feet, with whom we can compare no other as to the energy and capaciousness of his mind and as to his acquaintance with the secrets of European power. He anticipated confidently the time when the

Russian emperor "would make an irruption into Europe at the head of some hundred thousand of those barbarians on horseback and two hundred thousand infantry, and carry everything before him;" when Russia would "become mistress of Constantinople, get all the commerce of the Mediterranean and become a great naval power;" when she would take India from the British, and when, through the influence of America and Russia, all Europe would become "either republican or Cossack."

Napoleon looked forward also to the future power of China. He foretold the influence of the wars which England has continued to make upon that empire as an education of it in the art of war which was "madness" in a European government. He said to his Irish surgeon: "It would be the worst thing you have done for a number of years to go to war with an immense empire like China and possessing so many resources. You would doubtless at first succeed, take what vessels they have and destroy their trade, but you would teach them their own strength. They would be compelled to adopt measures to defend themselves against you. They would consider, and say, 'We must try to make ourselves equal to this nation. Why should we suffer a people so far away to do as they please to us? We must build ships,. we must put guns into them, we must render ourselves equal to them.' They would (continued the emperor) get artificers and ship-builders from France and America, and even from London; they would build a fleet, and, in the course of time, defeat you."1

An American statesman, distinguished above others for comprehensiveness of intellect, said with regard to 1 B. E. O'MEARA; Voice from St. Helena, ii. 55-70, 179; i. 472, etc.