Non-Christians Pray To Jehovah

     In one of the remote valleys of Shantung, one of our Chinese evangelists, Mr. Liu, was invited to preach to the people by the aged schoolmaster of the village. The account, which appeared some years ago in the Far Eastern Division `Outlook, continues:

     "After the discourse the schoolmaster remarked that now it would be most fitting if they all do honor to the great and only supreme God. He had been a student of the classics, as he said, and there it was stated that the ancients worshiped the one supreme God by a solemn `kowtowing' in the open air. He desired that they might revive that most admirable worship. And so they spread a mat in the courtyard, and solemnly lined up in two lines, elders in front and pupils of the school behind, and these forty or fifty people, who never in their lives before had worshiped anything but idols, filed forward one by one and `kowtowed' the head to the ground three times to the invisible God, tendering in the most respectful way known to their race their acknowledgment of His authority."

     "The evangelist, perceiving their sincerity, entered heartily into the proceedings, suggesting that they close the ceremony with public prayer led by himself. Some of the farmers present asked if it would be proper to pray to this invisible God for rain, as they had been doing, alas, in vain, for many days to their idols. Shantung had had a drought for three years, and the small farmers were reduced to starvation. The wheat this year had already been planted some time, but no rain had yet come to make it sprout, and should it not come very soon there would be no hope for the poor people but to sell their wives and daughters into slavery, and take their sons and go begging. The evangelist took the situation by faith, and read to them from the Bible of Elijah's experience, and then he prayed earnestly that God would send rain immediately.

     "The meeting closed, and while the evangelist was going through the ceremony of taking his departure, the raindrops began to fall. A heavy rain followed, soaking the evangelist to the skin as he made his way across the fields to a neighboring village. `The incident was blazoned through the district,' wrote the missionary in charge, `interest in idols and deities waned, and many people await a teacher to instruct them in the worship of the Christian's God.'"