Fifty Years in China - The Memoirs of John Leighton Stuart, Missionary and Ambassador

John Leighton Stuart, who was born and brought up in Hangchow, China, where both his father and mother were leading missionaries, tells us that in his boyhood he always had “an aversion for missionary life.” Even after his graduation from Hampden-Sydney College, he still confessed his “lack of enthusiasm for missionary service.”

It is difficult to exaggerate the aversion I had developed against going to China as a missionary, . . . haranguing crowds of idle, curious people in street chapels or temple fairs, selling tracts for almost nothing, being regarded with amused or angry contempt by the native population, physical discomforts or hardships, etc., no chance for intellectual or studious interests, a sort of living death or modern equivalent for retirement from the world.

But, after prolonged inner struggle, Dr. Stuart finally decided “to put my religious belief to what was for me then the ultimate test.” He became a missionary to China and, as such, lived and worked in China for nearly half a century!