in place
of making a proper return to heaven for a good year, they only take
the opportunity afforded them of running deeper into waste and
wrong-doing. Is this the way to get better harvests? Considering
the excessive growth and consumption of tobacco and opium, and the
excessive manufacture and use of whisky, what could any honest,
straightforward man say to the people, when they earnestly asked
how they were to get good harvests, but "_Repent, and cease this
great waste_"? And thus from no deliberate plan of mine, but from
the plain leading of circumstances, it came to pass that I felt
compelled to call upon the inhabitants of the district to lay aside
the use of not only opium but also of whisky and tobacco, as one of
the first steps toward worshipping the true God. Many friends have
demurred to my making teetotalism an essential of Christianity, and
many more have still more strongly demurred to my taking such a
pronounced stand against the use of tobacco. The position of my
friends is exactly the position I held myself before going into
that region, but after going to that region and seeing just how
things were, no other course seemed open to me, but to demand in
all who wanted to do right the abandonment of the whole three; and
I am convinced that almost any other missionary placed in the same
circumstances would have taken the same stand.

'This position too commends itself to the native mind, and the
native mind, quite apart from me, and before my going into the
district, had already risen up in protest against these abuses,
and, in some parts of the country there, the Tsai li ti sect boasts
not a few members. The main practical doctrine of this sect is,
_Yen chiu pu tung_--abstinence from tobacco, whisky, and opium. The
very existence of this sect, and its flourishing condition there,
is a plain indication of what serious-minded natives felt about the
excessive use of these three things. Friends say that I am putting
this self-righteousness in place of faith in Christ and the
practice of higher duties. I do nothing of the sort. Beginning with
the Chinaman where I find him, and answering the questions which he
insists on asking first, I appeal to him to give up what he admits
to be wrongdoing, sin (_tsao nieh_), as the first step in ceasing