There are inhabitants of three hundred towns in the Philippine
Islands to-day who are stretching out their hands to America
for Christian missionaries, and there is not a single person to
go. Do they need us? I reply by telling you an incident. I sent
a man named Nicholas Zamora, one of our preachers, out about
four or five miles from the city. The man has a good voice; it
is like a bell, and you can hear it four or five blocks. They
were singing for about ten minutes, when a policeman came along
and rushed the whole company off to jail. We have a saying in
the Philippines that our converts do not have any backbone until
they have been in jail about three times. They did not have any
regular jail, using instead the lower floor in the policeman’s
house. When they arrived there, Nicholas said: “Well, we are
here; I guess we might as well do something”; and they began to
sing the first verse of “Nearer, my God, to Thee.” The policeman
came down-stairs and said that singing must cease, and went back
up-stairs. Nicholas said, “I guess we might as well have the
second verse,” and they began to sing it. The policeman came
down again in high dudgeon and berated them most vigorously;
and having cooled off, he went up-stairs again. Nicholas said,
“We will now have the third verse.” The policeman came down
again as they were starting in strongly on the third verse.
This was too much for the policeman, who said in anger: “Get
out of here, and go right back to America. I don’t propose
to have any psalm-singing Methodists in my jail.”--J. L.
MCLAUGHLIN, “Student Volunteer Movement,” 1906.
(1755)