Mildred Cable once observed: 'The year 1900 holds the same significance as does the Flood in Old Testament chronology. All China mission history dates before or after 1900.'
Missions in China had been going for six decades of the 19th century when the Boxer Rising took place. There were 85,000 Chinese Christians in some 60 Protestant societies, and church buildings and institutions were just beginning to reach a fraction of the population.
The Rev. Sidney Brooks, an SPG* missionary, 24 years old, had been trained for his future work at St. Augustine's College in Canterbury. After his arrival in north China, he had a dream that he was back at his college looking on the cloistered wall of the Memorial Chapel at the list of graduates who had been martyred on the various mission fields. As he gazed at the space under the last name on the list, his own name began to appear.(1)
