Special Collections and Archives is pleased to announce seven issues of a rare early twentieth-century periodical are now available online for full-text browsing and download.
Though only four pages (one sheet of paper folded once) South China Chimes is rich in information about the work of missionaries E. L. Broaddus and Ethel Mattley. Given the circumstances of the war, there are fascinating, chilling, and poignant comments such as this note from the February-March 1938 issue:
We are continually being asked why we do not leave Hongkong and return to America until the trouble is over. I think you would feel very different about it if you could realize the great need of proper teaching at such a time as this. We have greater opportunities than ever to preach the gospel to the unsaved and many of them have more time to think on these things than they ever have or perhaps ever will have. To say the least the Seed must be sown and the Lord will look after the development.*
The following month Broaddus wrote this about Ethel Mattley:
After months of waiting for conditions to improve Miss Mattley decided to return to Kwongsi and go ahead with the work. She was not at all well here due to asthma and the higher altitude should relieve that and she will be able to carry on with the work among the women and children in spite of the war spirit and training of soldiers. The native workers and Christians need encouragement in such times as these and there may be an opportunity to even reach some with the gospel.**
South China Chimes, volume 11, number 3, April 1938. Center for Restoration Studies, Special Collections and Archives, Abilene Christian University.
Readers of these few issues of this scarce periodical will find several more similar comments, plus items of news and notes about happenings among Churches of Christ in China. Historians of missions and missiology, students of intellectual and social history, and anyone interested in the history of Churches of Christ will find these issues of South China Chimes a welcome addition to their palette of source material. We thank Dr. Stephen Crowder for making these issues available as part of our growing collection of digitized print materials pertaining to Churches of Christ, currently with over 500 books, tracts, pamphlets from across the Stone-Campbell movement available online.
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*E. L. Broaddus, “Opportunities in Hongkong,” So. China Chimes, 11(2), February-March 1938, p. 1.
**E. L. Broaddus, “Miss Mattley Returns to Kwongsi,” So. China Chimes, 11(3), April 1938, p. 1.