"Ripest Field"

That China's 400 earthbound millions may surge into Communism has frequently been predicted. But what if China's millions should turn to Jesus Christ? Last week an expert Christian wrote: "China is the ripest evangelistic field in the world at the present time."

The expert was Dr. Eli Stanley Jones, who has labored in India 25 years, whose Christ of the Indian Road is one of the best known evangelical works of modern times. Dr. Jones counts Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore among his friends; Indians call him Rishi (Holy Sage). Christian Modernists and Fundamentalists have both claimed Dr. Jones. The Methodist Episcopal Church thrice offered him bishoprics, but his only allegiance is to its Board of Foreign Missions.

Dr. Jones was to have taken a furlough in the U. S. last year but it was postponed until this year. Word came lately that he had been preaching throughout China, that henceforth he might spend half his time there. What he saw in China, what he thought of it, he told last week and the week before in Christian Century.

Half dozen years ago China was violently antiChristian. Nearly all the missionaries were turned out, their property seized. The missionaries have now returned. Dr. Jones found that his audiences, from Mukden to Canton, listened "with breathless interest." Says Dr. Jones: "China today is in the moment of the Great Hesitation. She has decided not to be antiChristian, but she has not yet decided to be Christian. . . . The whole situation is awaiting a push--a gentle, loving, Christian push."

Missionary Jones is sure it is not Christianity v. Buddhism or Confucianism. "These faiths are simply out of it. Climb to the top of China's sacred mountain, Taishan, and you will find the Buddhist and Taoist priests smoking opium or gambling." General Chiang Kai-shek told Dr. Jones the final battle in China would be between Christianity and Communism-- "and not only in China but throughout the world." Whether Christianity as preached in China has enough social content to beat Communism remains to be seen. Certainly it is less imperialistic than before. General Feng Yu-hsiang wavered in his Christian faith when a missionary defended the shooting of Chinese students by foreigners. "But," says Dr. Jones, "he is climbing back to a living faith and will be stronger when he emerges again, I believe."

The Laymen's Report on missions, currently discussed all over the Protestant world (TIME, Nov. 28), urges that Christianity be rooted in foreign soils. But Missionary Jones talked with Dr. Hu Shih, poet, philosopher, agnostic leader of China's "renaissance," who told him: "China has nothing worth preserving. . . . We must make a clean sweep and adopt Western culture and outlook." Says Dr. Jones: "I gasped."

The Laymen's Report also tells evangelists to preach Christ as a way, but not the way. Dr. Jones found this "hesitant and dim. . . . We expected a call--are you going to leave us with a caution? ... I am convinced that if the Christians who were in public life during these recent years had lived out the full implications of the gospel it would have swept China." C. Spurred by the Laymen's Report, Rt. Rev. James De Wolf Perry, presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal church, set out last week for a four-month visit among Far Eastern missions. He will reach Japan within a few weeks of the 80th anniversary of the famed visit of his great-uncle, Commodore Matthew C. Perry, who opened Japan to the world.

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