Britain it spread ‘by domestic and social association’. For 220 years Roman officials had come over with their wives and their households and their slaves. By the same token, it struck Mackennal, ‘You are going to come into closer contact with the domestic life of South Africa, of India, of China, than the preaching missionary ever came.’

doi:10.4324/9780203166505-100

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Britain it spread ‘by domestic and social association’. For 220 years Roman officials had come over with their wives and their households and their slaves. By the same token, it struck Mackennal, ‘You are going to come into closer contact with the domestic life of South Africa, of India, of China, than the preaching missionary ever came.’

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ABSTRACT

Towards the end of that decade, very early in 1928, although she had been back in England since spring 1927, she sent in her resignation. Her father, whose income had allowed her to remain an ‘honorary’ missionary, was reaching the close of his long life. Dr Gillison, who 31 years before had shown Arnold Pye-Smith the Hankow compound, wished Ruth Godspeed with a characteristic letter: ‘were every foreign missionary to leave China tomorrow the gospel is firmly planted in this land – and Jesus Christ will not leave China’. Then, describing how five young Chinese officers of the southern army had worshipped with them the previous Sunday, he added: ‘God is in this movement – the devil is very apparent too – but as one man said to me – “Where the devil is – there God is also!”’24