day he was
preaching the story of Jesus to a crowd of Chinese gathered in the open
air. As his interpreter turned his words into Chinese the crowds listened
with great respect and keenest interest.

As he finished he asked them if they had ever heard the Gospel before. No;
none of them had. He was turning up absolutely fresh soil. And they
pressed in about him, earnestly asking that men be sent to tell them. And
this experience of Bishop Bashford's is being repeated, over and over
again, throughout the foreign-mission world.

<u>Who's There?</u>

But there is yet more than this. Everywhere among these peoples, as one
comes into close enough touch to find their hearts, there can be found
underneath the inarticulate, inexpressible yearning for something they
haven't. And they don't know enough to know what it is they long for. But
they are conscious of the constant, weary, yearning tug within. The great
heart of the non-Christian world to-day is asking dumbly, but earnestly,
as only the heart can ask, for the light we have. Its knocking at our
front door is growing louder in its insistent earnestness.

Since Commodore Perry steamed into the harbor of Yokohama, fifty years
ago, with open Bible and American flag, and knocked at the front door of
the Orient, the whole situation has completely changed. Then we knocked
for admission to these shut-in lands. Now they are knocking at our door,
for the knowledge and light that we have in Christian lands because we
have Jesus.

May I call your attention to some of the louder of these knockings?

For years students in great numbers, thousands, have been coming from
these heathen nations to our country to get our Western learning.
Throughout the colleges and lower schools of the land, both East and West,
in the greater universities, and in the more modest small church colleges
they can be found.

I remember a sight that never failed to thrill me in my visitations among
the colleges of our Central West. Almost always I saw one or more of these
young men, from Japan, and less frequently from China and India and other
countries, and sometimes young women, too; studying in these institutions.
Quite frequently they came from the better families of their people; often
from old wealthy families of position and influence. So that by blood ties
and position they will be the future men of influence and leaders of their
people. And it is a notable fact that many of them are to-day